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To: PreciousLiberty
However, science by definition does not address "God" or the "supernatural", at least as long as they are claimed to have traits and capabilities that transcend the physical world.

Atheistic science by definition does not investigate such things, yet it seems to do fairly well. You make the mistake of protracting your preferred definition of science into a universal definition of science. It is well within reason to assume science is simply the exploration of everything supernatural while it merely assigns the words "natural" to those things for which it has an explanation. One thing for sure: there is no lack of organized matter behaving under predictable laws. That is what intelligent design is all about.

Maybe your definition of "scientists" extends only as far as those who wear lab coats and propose detailed hypotheses for specific phenomena. Mine is wide enough to accomodate any intelligent observer who is free to accept or reject any positive statement about the universe based on the evidence at hand. Since the universe is replete with organized matter that behaves according to predictable laws it is hardly unscientific for an observer to deduce that an almighty, intelligent agent is present and operative.

628 posted on 12/13/2005 11:10:43 AM PST by Fester Chugabrew
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To: Fester Chugabrew; PreciousLiberty
Mine is wide enough to accomodate any intelligent observer who is free to accept or reject any positive statement about the universe based on the evidence at hand.

The more restrictive definition is better. Anybody can run around creating any sort of crazy explanation for anything, from crop circles to the Bermuda Triangle. But mere statement doesn't come with any credibility. Who's to know what's credible? Do we teach crystal therapy in med school because some new-age people think it works? A scientific process is in place in order to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Even long-standing theories have had to be changed over time or partially ignored due to a constant attack from within the scientific community. We've punched holes in Newton's gravity theory, but we did it by offering a testable, falsifiable, predictive scientific theory that better explained the same phenomena.

Thus you can be sure than ideas that went through the scientific vetting process unscathed are at least pretty damned good explanations for what we see around us. The longer the theory's been up, the more credit it has.

The rest, ID included, is chaff.

643 posted on 12/13/2005 11:30:36 AM PST by antiRepublicrat
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