Thought Provoking, or Bald Assertions? You decide

Exposing more nonsense found on Telic Thoughts.

Salvadore Crdova and Thought Provoker have this interesting exachnge (Sal in bold and Thought Provoker in italics):

If God exists and is deeply invovled in the workings of reality, I can think of no greater scientific discovery.>

This gets into semantics. I make a distinction between science and philosophy. I believe many others do this too when they make a distinction between science and religion.

If you define science as simply the search for truth, then religion is the ultimate science. This is why I use the term "knowledge" in an attempt to explain the distinction. The existance of a supernatural being might be the ultimate philosophical truth but it wouldn't be a great scientific discovery any more than declaring 2+2=5 would be a great mathimatical discovery.

If a big booming voice was heard all over the world (in all different languages) commanding us to prepare for the events descibed in the Book of Revelation, it would hardly be a great scientific discovery.

Did you get that?! First who says that religion is interested in the truth?

Next the existence of a supernatural being, if true, would be much more than philosophical. It would be reality. Science deals with reality.

And if a big booming voice did what you said, it would again be reality and science would deal with it. But you are right it wouldn't be a scientific discovery because it wasn't discovered by science. It wouldn't really be discovered at all. It would be presented.

As an engineer (me) to a fellow engineer (you), I can only say I'll respect your belief system and right to follow your conscience. God only wants people who have chosen him of their own free will, not because they were indoctrinated. That of course is the personal side of ID.

If however, you are interested in the commercial money making side of ID, I have suggested that the Dembki's EF will help us uncover and reverse engineer the hidden codes of life and help us make breakthroughs in the pharmaceutical industry.

You may have a wrong impression of what I am saying at multiple levels. This is neither about my beliefs nor my financial well-being, at lest not directly. However, Indirectly it is influenced be my determined belief in exploration and learning, to challenge and to be challenged, to think. And yes, my ability to think does put money in my pocket.

Speaking of thinking… I am interested to learn how you rationalize simultaneously rejecting and accepting a naturalist approach to the same subject. If (and it is a big "if") Dembki's EF can be repeatably applied and tested in real world applications, then it is naturalistic. We can reverse engineer why it works and gain insight in the mechanisms behind it. That would be useful knowledge.

However, if the EF is equivalent to the Oracle at Delphi we can have a philisophical argument about who is wiser than whom, but it wouldn't be very useful.

In conclusion, if you want to have a philosophical and religious discussion, that's fine. I could and would participate and we could have a lively discussion as to why your beliefs are any more valid than Socrates, Pythagoras, Buddha, Mohamed, etc. However, please don't pretend that you are simply telling like it is.

Provoking Thought

As I have stated many times now, the EF is just a process and is only as good as the people who use it and the data and knowledge they have.

But I will tell it like it is:

We exist. There is a reality behind that existence. Science is to help us find and understand that reality. And reality still says that the materialistic anti-ID position is sheer dumb luck.