Yes Dan, only in this century, but like the B/W movies of the 1930,s , when we view the past actions of the times, it was almost inconceivable to them that the future we live in now, couldn't possible ever happen, but it does!
And a hundred years from now, the people of the future will view your comment's as quite amusing, as for all of us for that matter.

But you are right about the no astronaut policy,cause no-one in their right mind would do the star-trek thing. Speed testing and unmanned technologies will do the searching for us and as for getting closer to light speed, don't worry, iam sure they will work it out.
But sometimes the smallest of starts can have the biggest rewards.
All in good time. ( fingers crossed )

A lot of people wonder why I have a war on religion. that's easy! I truly believe it is just a fraud. It is inconceivable to me that this spirit is all around us and through out the universe with the label love attached to it. These gods of yours are not merciful and the biggest worry is that the sheep people ask for help to assist them in their day to day lives and rely very heavily on divine intervention to keep them out of harms way. Yeah! I can see that's working.

If I went back in time with bic lighter to the time of christ, and with a few other fancy gadgets, you would of never heard of the bloke! Just with a box full of pharmaceuticals would of put him out of business.
OK! Its clear I have no idea what you religious people get from it, and quite frankly, after viewing the last 2000 years of it, you can have it! ( healing powers are in the mind ).

As for the name evolution, I think the definition speaks for its self.

EV

Waterboy - ‘Science and Theology are different disciplines.’

I could agree to that. The question then becomes, into which domain does evolution really fall? From your description in Teilhard's “Phenomenon of Man”, evolution (at least Teilhard's version of it) was a quite a ‘mystical’ and ‘spiritual’ process.

One way to help determine whether something can be classed as ‘scientific’, in the common usage of the word, is whether it can be falsified. Can we imagine a test that might disprove evolution? This is rather problematic. Some suggest that looking at the fossils may provide an objective test. When creationists have pointed out the sparsity of transitional fossils between the major groups, evolutionists have responded by giving possible reasons for their lack. At this point, we realised how much evolution was an idea that is difficult to falsify.

In the end, evolution is better described as an interesting philosophical model rather than an objective scientific discovery.

By the way, the design argument is not based on ignorance. We know much about DNA and genetic sequencing. Also, it is not based on probability alone but a mixture of probability an analogy.

For example, you talk of the trillion to one example that just might happen (or may have happened). Can I ask you, what would you conclude if you saw the letters H E L P scratched into sand on a beach? The chances of this occurring through natural (non intelligent) means, perhaps sticks being blown by the wind, or crabs pushing stones on the beach, are trillions to one.

What would you conclude if you heard a repeated Morse code like message being sent from a far flung sector of the galaxy?

>>...this spirit is all around us and through out the universe with the label love attached to it. ... If I went back in time with bic lighter to the time of christ, and with a few other fancy gadgets, you would of never heard of the bloke! Just with a box full of pharmaceuticals would of put him out of business.<<

Yes EV, this is what I meant when I said in my previous post that "also some atheists and agnostics are very naive about what Christianity is all about (very often also because of a naive understanding of the bible and science, as well as logic, evidence etc.)".

Sorry George, I was distracted by the intellectual humor of Dan the man, but I did understand what you said. ( how I enjoy a good blogging ) I think hes trying to take my spot.lol. but back to reality? Its a for gone conclusion to most scientists, that evolution
is a more likely start for us and I am sure a have a living relative to prove it, he wins the cave-man contest at any fancy dress hands down.
Now some say throwbacks are clear evidence of our connection with early man and some say it's a genetic malfunction and the whole theory is dismissed.

What do you think? ( I wonder if Adam from the bible had these hair follicle problems.)

EVO

Dan

My words were "imaginative" and "semi-mystical" but your ingenuous paraphrase "mystical and spritual" does illustrate that the creation v evolution "debate" is largely an exercise in devious rhetoric.

Good science is the product of hard-work, good luck and powerful imagination. The creationists' resort to the Bible for "evidence" is basically intellectual laziness. Their experimental work, given that it is almost entirely aimed at disproving evolution, locates them as a minor niche sub-group of evolutionary biology rather than a separate branch of biology in its own right.

The creation myths, however, do reflect great imaginative powers. Well, actually, they are largley borrowed stories from other cultures adopted and adapted by the Hebrews during the time of their exile in Babylon. But they're pretty good stories despite that.

The creative work that the Hebrews put into these stories was to cast them as stories about universal human identity and relationships. Their truth is greater by far than any stolid, literal interpretation of them can ever reveal. Their importance lies not in what they say about cosmogenesis but rather in what they say about being human, spirited, social, sexual and immersed in this physical world.

Evolution is not a threat to creation theology. Evolution is observable everywhere. It suggests a mechanism for macro scale biological change. Feral rabbits in Australia are now largely resistant to Myxamatosis and Calisivirus thanks to the mechanism described by evolution... well part of that mechanism anyway. Could they eventually change so much that they become a new species? Evolution is not, in itself, a theory about how the first living things came into being. By postulating a mechanism by which living organisms can change and become more complex it complements the various scientific theories about bio-genesis but those theories are much less certain than evolution itself.

Creation is delightful theology and the theory of evolution is brilliant science. You do not seem able to appreciate either. That is your loss.

Dan
you said
..what would you conclude if you saw the letters H E L P scratched into sand on a beach? The chances of this occurring through natural (non intelligent) means, perhaps sticks being blown by the wind, or crabs pushing stones on the beach, are trillions to one.

If I was not human or even just not familiar with the roman alphabet then I would not see any significance whatsoever in that particular configuration of lines in the sand. However, I do understand your point. It takes a considerable imaginative leap to get from the observation of 'organisation' to the idea of a creating God. Not everyone can make that imaginative leap and at any rate it does not exclude the possibility that God 'created' by processes entirely consistent with all our other observations of the physical and biological world.

The great flaw in creation science is that it implies a capricious, meddling God and that is not consistent with Christian theology as I know it. The same problem arises with the idea that God chooses to heal some people while allowing others to die horribly in wars, starve in famines and suffer in any one of the many other nasty ways that real people really do suffer. A doctrine of God that postulates such random interference with the laws of nature is deeply problematic.

Once you escape from the strictures of Biblical literalism the world becomes at once, more sensible, more beautiful, more subtle and more spirited... though perhaps a little more threatening and definitely more challenging. Theology becomes playful, life-giving intercourse with the Divine and every breath, every movement and every thought becomes prayer.

You dont have to give up your faith to give up your Biblical literalism. A rich experience of life within Gods creation is possible on the other side of fundamentalism.