BD - I have thus far attempted to refrain from responding to your claims of miracle cures, however your riposte to Josies rankled. There is something immature about religion and its reliance on a 'protective' father and some kind of after life, however I doubt that you have the breadth of mind to see this.

Now, clearly you are special, so special that God looked down upon your broken arm and in a blinding flash repaired said arm - truly a miracle. I wish that your God had been paying attention during the holocaust, or had had words with Pol Pot, or, more recently, had stayed the force of nature during the recent disasters where people are suffering more than just a broken arm.

What has this to do with ID? Glad you asked. People who believe in personal miracles, after life and a good daddy God have the temerity to demand that ID be taught along with science. What amazes me about this thread is that so few of the religious on this forum are unable to accept science - I know plenty of religious people who have no problem with the concept of evolution - they see it as part of god's grand design. They also acknowledge evidence based theory and see that as part of their god's design as well.

Does this forum only attract the extreme fundies who can't see past their own dogma?

(Formerly Trinity)

Cheers dears

Some help, constrained by 350 word limit, for new posters:

Pedant: One who exhibits one's learning or scholarship ostentatiously.

Science: The observation, identification, description, experimental investigation, and theoretical explanation of phenomena.

Theory: A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be use to make predications about natural phenomena.

Falsifiable: capable of being tested (verified or falsified) by experiment or observation.

Theory of Evolution: a scientific theory of the origin of species of plants and animals.

Big Bang: The cosmic explosion that marked the origin of the universe according to the Big Bang theory.

Hypothesis: A tentative explanation for an observation, phenomenon, or scientific problem that can be tested by further investigation.

Abiogenesis: hypotheses of the origin of life from a primordial soup.

Model: A schematic description of a system, theory, or phenomenon that accounts for its know or inferred properties and may be used for further study of its characteristics.

Cyclic Model: A brane cosmology model of the creation of the universe [ one of a number of different models of the origin of the universe being investigated by scientists]

Theology: The Study of the nature of God and religious truth; rational inquiry into religious questions.

Creationism: Belief in the literal interpretation of the account of the creation of the universe and of all living things related in the Bible.

Fundamentalism: A usually religious movement or point of view characterized by a return to fundamental principles, by rigid adherence to those principles, and often by intolerance of other views and opposition to secularism.

Dogmatic: Characterized by an authoritative, arrogant assertion of unproved or unprovable principles.

God of the Gaps: An argument that suggests that since the domain of natural phenomena controlled by [explained by the existence of] God is shrinking, theistic or divine explanations for any natural phenomenon become less plausible.

Intelligent Design: 1) a theory that nature and complex biological structures were designed by intelligent being(s) and were not created by chance.
2) Creationist pseudoscience or junk science.

Please Josie, don't use the word nutters, it's not nice to demean the thickness of a nut, compared to the thickness of an ID proponent.

BD, if you keep going on like this, you will break that mirror stuck in front of you, then what will have you see, deeper blankness.

Explain the actions of neutron stars, black holes, stellar gas clouds and how their actions relate to ID. How does ID explain what occurs within a blackhole, where the material goes, where it comes from within a neutron star, and the evolution of the mind. ID says it is all there, nothing is new, everything is foretold and set. Yet you can't explain who, what or where the ID is, nor how the ID gave you this information.

The problem with ID proponents, is their theories belong to the distant past, they can't lift their minds beyond their fear of change. The evolution of the mind has left them far behind, way back, somewhere in the 1st dimension.

Those that live in the future (science), are always willing to have theories tested, which leads to change and understanding.

On the other hand, ID, IC and IS, have a single dimensional stance, which stays just where it has always been, deep within illusion. Throughout history, every claim by these people has be debunked.

Each dimension has its foundations, our foundations are the elements of the universe, that in their varying combinations gives existence, life. For ID to be real and the IS to prove their assertions, from their privileged stance as the knowing voice of the ID IC, then explain the outcome for the universe.

Come on, how about a little miracle, after all you say your churches are full of them. Yet not one has been proven (lost in transit), nor subjected to medical or scientific analysis. I have witnessed many healings in churches. Pity they didn't work, so couldn't be documented. I doubt they can provide any evidence to substantiate their claims. Doesn't that says something about the veracity of these people.

1212, you're largely talking about abiogenesis, which is different to evolution and not a requirement for it. Still, you are making the assumption that cells from the past would have the same/similar form as what we have today, but the complexity we see could have evolved from simpler versions. Ie. we need DNA to create the proteins in new DNA, but proteins form naturally and simple replicating sequences could have combined without so high a need for chance as has been suggested. Again, this is not evolution. What is a compact and efficient cycle now may not have been any of those previously.

"Why throw out a theory that has substantial preliminary evidence?"
ID doesn't meet either of those conditions. Science doesn't rule out ID, it just ignores it since it lacks evidence, is unnecessary and isn't scientific.

BOAZ_David, if I'm not convinced by a book without any objective evidence supporting it, I'm not going to be convinced by objective evidence or proof of a miracle? Silly book. Of course, if I didn't have objective evidence that Lazarus was previously beyond resuscitation, I wouldn't accept that he had been resurrected. Your story doesn't tell us anything about the source of healing, since such stories come equally from other religions.

And then there's the aspects of it that make it less believable:
-The lack of x-rays to check, so we have just your word.
-Scout's point on why it happened to you.
-Getting prayed for over a broken arm?
-That arm apparently not being put in a cast?
-Overwhelmed? Yet you didn't tell anyone who suggested getting it checked? Or was so enthused that they wanted to show others?
-Alternate explanations, eg. the x-rays getting switched, endorphins from an un-pinched nerve.

Pericles, ID isn't specific, so it applies equally to "dust and breath", intervening in evolution, FSM and genetic engineering. (Wonderful material for scientific exploration.) And "Evolved, God guided" isn't necessarily ID.

Taffy, Grey's not going to be happy with you just stating all those assertions, others have no reason to accept them, the burden of proof is on you.

Deuc said “… just stating all those assertions, others have no reason to accept them, the burden of proof is on you”.

The majority of definitions given came from dictionary.com. A couple (namely the definition for “God of the Gaps” and ID) either came from wikipedia or a combination of entries in directory.com and wikipedia.

Now just because they appear in either web site doesn’t make them true, granted. However, they do seem to indicate that they are the standard accepted meanings.

The one that is in dispute is ID which is why I gave the two definitions, the second being taken from wikipedia, which in turn references this document:
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050530fa_fact
Not a particular scientific journal, but then wikipedia could have chosen this letter from Bruce Alberts, as president of the National Academy of Sciences. Where he, to my way of thinking, politely describes ID as being a “non-scientific based ‘alternative’” to evolution.
http://www.nasonline.org/site/PageServer?pagename=NEWS_letter_president_03042005_BA_evolution

My purpose for posting the definitions was a hope that it might give pause for thought [this applies to me as well]. It appears to me than a number of arguments in some of the various threads are not resolvable due to a lack of common agreement of the terms being used.

For example, as others have tried to point out, saying that the Theory of Evolution is flawed because it doesn’t adequately explain how life arose from an inanimate chemical soup is a strawman argument. The Theory of evolution doesn’t cover how life fist appeared, but how once it had appeared how it evolved [ I’m fudging it a bit here, as some maintain that natural selection did play a role earlier]. Equally wrong would be to say that Theory of Evolution offers scientific proof about the origin of life.

There are a number of scientific hypotheses on abiogenesis and the origin of life, and investigation is ongoing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Origin_of_life#Current_models_of_the_origin_of_life

I personally don’t believe that because science doesn’t have the answers for something today it never will. Or such gaps in understanding automatically requires that an intelligent designer(s) has to be invoked to plug the gaps.

Alchemist, you asked for an example of a miracle,
I'll give you one, although I apologise as it will be simplified due to the word limit.

Guadalupe, Mexico 1531.
Mary (mother of Jesus) appears to Juan Diego. Juan Diego tells the Bishop. The Bishop asks for proof. Juan goes back to the spot. Mary appears again and tells him to go up the hill and gather the flowers into his tilma (which is a classical Mexican garment- like a poncho). It's the wrong season too, but there are these flowers up there. He gathers them in his tilma and goes back down. Mary re-arranges them and sends him on his way. Juan goes to the Bishop where he lets the bottom of his tilma fall back down, the flowers falling to the floor. The Bishop and 1 or 2 others with him see the print of Mary left on the garment.
So that's the rough backround.

Interesting stuff about this image.
- In the eyes of Mary are relfected the men standing in front of Juan Diego as he reveals the image.

- The stars on the garment Mary is wearing are in a pattern. NASA checked it out. The pattern matches exactly the stars in the sky on that very day in that vey year- only they are in reverse (the perspective is from above, not below).

- These tilmas are made from organic material that rots away in a few years. Still today (it happened in 1531) it is perfectly preserved without anything been done to it (and there have been scientific analyses).

- In the second half of the 20th century some clown put a bomb in front of it. The huge metal cross (in close proximity) was bent double by the explosion (now on display). The tilma was covered by a glass sheet. The glass sheet shattered into thousands of shards. Normally these high velocity shards of glass would rip a tilma to shreds. Nothing...