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Old 03-22-2008, 11:07 AM
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Robert Ingersoll Robert Ingersoll is offline
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For the OP:

"The priests of the different religious sects. . . .dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live." - Thomas Jefferson

Hey SpaceCowboy, maybe you can toss up Hoyle's Boeing 747 so I can pick that apart.

Creationists -->>

"And I thought and thought and thought. But I just didn't have enough to go on, so I didn't really come to any resolution. I was extremely doubtful about the idea of god, but I just didn't know enough about anything to have a good working model of any other explanation for, well, life, the universe, and everything to put in its place. But I kept at it, and I kept reading and I kept thinking. Sometime around my early thirties I stumbled upon evolutionary biology, particularly in the form of Richard Dawkins' books The Selfish Gene and then The Blind Watchmaker, and suddenly (on, I think the second reading of The Selfish Gene) it all fell into place. It was a concept of such stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe it inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day." - Douglas Adams.

And finally, to paraphrase Daniel Dennett, the idea that it takes a big fancy smart thing to make a lesser thing is the trickle-down thoery of creation (and works just about as well as the trickle-down economic theory). You'll never see a spear making a spear-maker. You'll never see a horse shoe making a blacksmith. You'll never see a pot making a potter. But Darwin's discovery of a workable process that does that very counter-intuitive thing is what makes his contribution to human thought so revolutionary, and so loaded with the power to raise consciousness.

So, trot out Hoyle's 747 & Archaeopteryx. I'm sure that's where you & the other creationists are heading. I'm waiting with baited breath to pick it apart.
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