Re: You missed the point.
by
Ketone
10/27/2009, 8:45 AM
Tundrayeti:d. "Evolution is a purely natural process that has no influence from a divine being. The gradual evolution from a single-celled organism to a human being occured with NO influence from any God."
This is also NOT SCIENCE. It is also religion that is informed by the scientifically determined facts.
Both c and d are religion, not science. Both are entirely unproven and entirely unprovable statements of belief regarding real science. Science itself neither disproves nor proves religion... there is no statement regarding religion inherent in scientific inquiry.
The only thing that science DISPROVES is individual assertions and assumptions about the natural world that were put forward by people who believed the world is flat... The very few people that believe that every "jot and tiddle" of the bible was written by God could clearly have their faith threatened by science... but most people's faith has more depth than that.
Tundrayeti, I think you are trying to imply a symmetry that does not exist. Statement D can be modified to replace "any God" (such as the Christian god, Brahma, etc.) with "space aliens" or "magical fairies" or anything else. You may be literally correct in the sense that the better statement would be truly agnostic and say that "there is no empirical evidence" that evolution occurred under the influence of any god. But there is a world of difference between "not believing" in anything that arises from an untestable theory and is not supported by empirical evidence and "believing" in a very specific religious explanation. Yes, it may be a mild extrapolation to say that one does not believe in anything that arises from an untestable theory and is not supported by empirical evidence, but it's not the same kind of "leap of faith" required to believe in a specific religion and all of its tenets. I appreciate your attempts to develop a thoughtful debate, but you should know that your arguments are often stolen by the less enlightened to put "hard atheism" and religion on an equal footing in terms of leaps of faith and leave the door open to covert agnostics to the theist side. Those "leaps of faith" are not equal in magnitude because the amount evidence supporting each side is not equal.