The use of the Hubble constant in determining distances to standard light sources, (SN Type Ia), fails when it is extrapolated to the distances of extremely remote stars.The difference between the distances determined by star magnitude (light intensity observed) and the distance from corresponding redshifts has suggested that the very remote stars had accelerated, requiring a source of energy for the acceleration. This has resulted in the mystery of dark energy, which is suggested to provide the missing dark matter (through E=M*C*C). Another example of mistakes in the standard model of the universe that needs reexamination.

A simple proof that the use of the redshift cannot be extrapolated to very far distances is the realization that for increasing distances, the photon wavelength increases (the red shift), and the photon energy decreases. Thus, for increasing distances the photon energy would need to approach zero end then become negative.

Not very likely.

For more details, Do a Google search on my name.

sol aisenberg, your conjucture looks like tired light which does not work because it does not allow for time dilation of supernova at great distances (and which Big Bang theory does allow), As far as I can tell you’re just a run of the mill crackpot who thinks he has a ‘theory’ of everything when he doesn’t.
=====
I will match my education and experience against yours anytime, as well as in professional discourse.

Tired light is explained by me as due to loss of photon energy by interacting through photon gravitational drag on gas and dust in the interstellar space encountered by the photon in its travel to the observer. This contribution to the red shift is proportional to distance traveled. This loss of photon energy does not require collisions or absorption/re-emission as used by others trying to explain tired light, and d0es not result in blurred images.

If you want to learn more about this and other (12) mysteries in the standard model of the universe, go to the library and borrow a recent book “The Misunderstood Universe” by Aisenberg.
Sorry, it does not have any pictures.

Sol Aisenberg, PhD

Sol Aisenberg, PhD

It may not be their fault because of a lack of scientific education, scientific experience, or ability. They should try to understand some of the new material shared by demonstrated scientists, although many of the experts in the field of cosmology are repeating what others have said – without critical re-examination.

The scientific knowledge of today is the result of correcting many of the widely held beliefs of past generations.

Many of our current beliefs will be replaced by better understanding in future generations. In the meantime some people will have fun rejecting evolving knowledge. Remember, in the scientific method, valid observations take priority over theories – that can be generated without limit.

Except defining His terms seems to be part of the debate.

>By saying that many religions believe in the bible I’m not saying that to prove the bible true but to show that we all look at the same evidence or words and come to different conclusions so by that its not irrelevant.

I see that I misunderstood your point.

Your religious views may be convincing and satisfying to you, but they are not shared by everyone. Your belief that we come from Heaven and will return there is not entirely consistent within Christianty. Many denominations preach our soul originates during our birth, rather than coming from Heaven to begin with, where we had a prior existence in God’s presence.

Your explanation for our suffering here is unsatisfactory. The God of the Bible is alternatingly present and active, and then missing and silent. His responses to prayers (and lack thereof) and treatment of his followers and non-followers is problematic for someone described as “all Good”. The “God works in mysterious ways” explanation is the epitome of a lack of an explanation – it’s the defense of “we’re not fit to judge”. Hogwash. We’re given a moral sense by our creator so that we can judge. If our moral sense is inadequate to understand the issues, then it is unfair to judge us and punish us for the failing of our moral sense.

The Day-Age explanation for creationism is also unsatisfying. Why should descriptions written by humans for humans use a timescale of the divine creator? And why should God have the concept of “Day” himself, anyway? What does it signify for him? Days on Earth are tied to the light/dark cycle and are mostly meaningful for us because of biological necessity for periodic rest. Also, if one day for God is 1000 years for us, that explains god’s failure to answer prayers in a timely manner. By the time he hears them, processes them, and decides an answer, the deadline for response as typically passed. The real answer is that Genesis is metaphoric poetry, meant to convey a message about humanity’s place in the world and our significance to our creator. There’s no sense in trying to expect a truthful scientific account out of metaphoric poetry.

>I also read an article in scientific american that we are “hard wired” to believe in God.

I haven’t read that particular article, but there is much debate on the topic of what that even means, much less the implications for it. Religious believers wish to take the fact that our brain creates religious experiences to mean that we were created to have those experiences. Non-believers explain that by having structures that create those experiences, it proves that the experiences aren’t “real” but constructs of brain performance. The goal is then to explain how that activity would arise if it weren’t driven by reality. The evolutionary perspective is that the trait offered some survival advantage to our ancestors and was thus selected for through genetics. That survival advantage need not have been through being true, but by offering some intangible value to the individual and community. Needless to say this is a topic for heated contention.

>There are how many different religions that believe in the same words in the bible?

Irrelevant. The commonality of the Hebrew Bible as a religious source book does not prove it’s truth. Rather, it is an artificial construct arrived at through the curious and twisted path of cultural heritage and social interaction across communities. Political entities and social power structures have much to do with the spread of monotheism. The commonality speaks to the historical path of development of the religious structures, not the underlying truth of any particular text. Christianity is derived from Judaism by the simple expediency that Jesus was a Jew. The religion grew out of Jewish monotheism, adapted to reach a wider (Gentile) audience and provide a new relevancy to different lifestyles and traditions, but to draw upon themes and elements of the Jewish tradition to justify and add legitimacy to the claims. Islam is a separate offshoot from Judaism that took a more orthodox approach and then tailored it to reach a different community – Arabs. Islam was then influenced by the other Eastern traditions that it supplanted. Western religious diversity is largely rooted to the Bible throuh the same influences of historical baggage of branching from a common source. Even Mormonism is an offshoot primarily by drawing upon the themes and legitimacy of the existing socially predominant religion to “justify” the new tradition. Interpretations of the meaning and value of the content is debated and contested across the various groups that draw upon the same scripture – witness the existence and diversity of all the various denominations.

Heck, some rather unorthodox and incompatible religious views are linked by their proponents to Christianity (and thus the Bible) through a convoluted line of reasoning that ultimately is based upon common heritage and social continuity rather than any logic or relationship between the belief structures. Anything vaguely monotheism is lumped in as “Christianity” by adherants – including some Deistic and Agnostic believers, as well as generic New Age “spirituality”. Witness Thomas Jefferson’s acceptance and following of the “teachings of Jesus” while advocating the non-divinity of Jesus and the impossibility of the miracle stories. Yet he was a self-described Christian – though on his own terms.

Rad, engineers work with available tools, to develop something this is good enough to do the desired job.
Evolution works because that which fails to get the job done, ie. reproduction of DNA, is eliminated from the gene pool by death. If the organism lasts long enough to reproduce, that’s good enough and so we see inefficiencies retained because they don’t produce a ( before reproduction ) failure.
Is God then, just an engineer?
For me to worship someone they’re going to have to be a WHOLE lot smarter than me and I don’t mean just Steven Hawking or Jerry Garcia smarter. I mean wow, gee whiz , outta sight smarter,,,and more compassionate, loving, patient, immortal,,,etc, as well as being beyond this reality,,,oh, wait, if they’re BEYOND this reality, that should also mean they can’t interfere here, so, tell me again, why should I worship something that can’t even be here???

As I recall, the bible says something about ” ,,,as above, so below.: Doesn’t that imply we’re supposed to create in this reality, the “excellance” we suppose exists in heaven,ie, cure all disease, poverty and mortality? Which is exactly what we as scientists are trying to do,,,improve the human condition.

Peace and Love to all who disagree. By such means we make progress.

Gary 7

2) Science is always open to revision. For that reason, its definition of ‘natural’ is inherently expansive to include all potential phenomena. In science, there is no ‘supernatural’ by definition. There is no ‘metaphysics’ by definition. There is only nature. There is only physics. This is not an arbitrary restriction.

Quality philosophy is quickly absorbed by other disciplines. It’s arguments like your preceding posts that make the “humanities” the focus of contempt of actual thinkers.

Hogwash. Intelligent Design is predicated on the assumption of an agent who exists before the universe so he can create and craft the universe. The only candidate for that role is a supernatural agent, a god, something the ID proponents admit to their core constituencies while refuting in public statements and offering that perhaps the Designer is aliens. Right. This god is essentially the God of the Bible – described as all-powerful, all-knowing, and all-good. Therefore, perfection is a part of his identity. The lack of perfection in the world is, in fact, one of those huge philosophical problems for religion and christianity in particular. It’s called “the Problem of Evil”. The typical answer proposes something to do with the Fall of Man, and either the eating of the Fruit of Knowledge or else the later Noachian flood.

But the premise of ID is that God is directly responsible, that his creations were built with a particular intent (designed), and that the design was well thought out and well planned (intelligent). A well-planned design by an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-good (aka perfect) Designer should be perfect. Flaws point to a lack of intelligence in the design. They show a lack of foresight (Damn, I should have realized those feet would go flat), or a lack of creativity (I’ll start with a monkey and go from there), or a lack of efficiency (let’s add some random, useless tissue that can go bad and kill the organism). If the Design is not perfect, it didn’t come from a perfect God, and so the IDers are chasing a faulty premise that is counterproductive to their main goal anyway, which is to put God back into science. (See the Wedge document.)

“Ah, but God chooses to act through slow, inefficient, flaw-allowing processes,” you say. “His ways are mysterious.” Fine, but then don’t attribute those same flaw-allowing processes as Intelligence and Design.

>My contention is that based on my presuppositions, Intelligent Design makes best light of the evidence.

I get the impression you are working with a flawed concept of what ID means. ID is not just a statement of theistic belief, that “God did it” through whatever means he chose. ID is the specific premise that naturalistic mechanisms are not enough to explain the diversity of life, and that evidence of God’s role is identifiable.

Ross, from A Mind Occasionally Voyaging Said:
>In the first place, “excellence” is subjective; you see cancer, flat feet, and tonsilitis as design flaws, but this is only an assessment you can make if you know the whole intent of the design. You wouldn’t look at the Mona Lisa and assume there was no intelligence behind its design because the paint is cracked. For all we know, cancer is just Divine DRM.

Except that the Intelligent Designer is perfect, so he should be smarter than us. That we can spot flaws he didn’t suggests he isn’t any brighter than we are, or that he has some other reason for including them. But he’s “all-good”. Allowing flaws seems evil, especially flaws that are painful and debilitating and killing. Da Vinci was limited by the tools and methods available to him, the technology of his time. Are you saying God was limited by the tools available to him? I thought he was all-powerful?

>In fact, the “stupid design” argument seems to me to be a little counterproductive: it seems like the natural processes of evolution would get rid of any major “design flaws”, since they would be disadvantageous and therefore get “bred out”. The fact that they’re not could be taken as “evidence” that they’re in there because *someone wants them there*. That is, you could argue that the human body is designed *too* poorly for it to just be an accident.

Phooey. Evolution doesn’t achieve perfection, merely “good enough”. Also, Natural Selection has to work with what’s available. Improvements are slow and incremental. Design flaws only have to be survivable long enough to be passed on, and competitive with the rest of the population. If the design flaw is inherent because of the prior state from which the organism evolved, then everyone has it, so it can’t just be “bred out”. And they’re not a disadvantage compared to the competition, only an objective disadvantage that all face equally.

Caledonian Said:
>What I feel is irrelevant. According to the most basic principles of rational thought, religion is an invalid methodology.

>Furthermore, there isn’t anything but the physical world as far as we’re concerned. It’s convenient to treat ideas and the like as ‘abstractions’, but even abstractions exist only through the interaction of physical systems. If religion attempts to make statements about reality, it necessarily crosses over into the domain of science. If it doesn’t, it becomes utterly and completely meaningless.

Chris Albano said:
>Irish Man, I understand what Caledonian is trying to say. I contend that he is not entirely correct in saying so though. There are realms of Science that absolutely no religious/philosophical system short of post modernism (which may I add is somewhere beyond rediculous and unlivable) have any issue with. Chemistry, Physical Biology, and Physical Geology come to mind. They deal entirely in the realm of observable data, and have virtually no presuppositions neccicary in examining them. Consiquentially they do not radically dissagree with religion’s interpretation of reality, but instead fit very nicely in the framework therof. It isn’t until science starts dealing with issues of a more philosophical nature such as origins that religion begins to radically dissagree with it. I would argue that science is out of it’s element, and is becoming somewhat ad-hoc when dealing with these issues,…

I rest my case.

>There are realms of Science that absolutely no religious/philosophical system short of post modernism … have any issue with. Chemistry, Physical Biology, and Physical Geology come to mind. They deal entirely in the realm of observable data, and have virtually no presuppositions neccicary in examining them.

I would contest that. Believers in Homeopathy have a real conflict with Chemistry, even if they don’t realize it. Something can’t simultaneously become less potent and more potent with dilution. Chemistry says dilution weakens the effect. Homeopaths are forced to suppose some extra dimension to the homeopathic preparations – some “memory” inherent in the mix of the properties of the “important” component, triggered by the special method of preparation, the “succession” – shake the mix a special way and it “remembers” the properties even though the active ingredients are no longer present. They have to suppose some kind of magic – a special kind of “energy” that is unspecified, unidentified, unlocalizable and unmeasurable, but somehow conveys the property of memory.

You might quibble that homeopaths aren’t a religion or philosophical system, but I disagree. There is a type of mindset of some people that accept things like Homeopathy, Astrology, Clairvoyance, etc. They have a worldview that there is an extra dimension to reality that science hasn’t tapped into. These believers may not be conventional religion, but their beliefs are “faith-based” and operate in exactly the same mode and form as a religion.

>Before a person has the right to make the claim that my view is invalid because it is theistic, it is that person’s responsibility to establish that there is no God. Establishing that HE is not neccicary to explain a phenominon is not enough to establish that HE did not act through that phenominon. Conversely, before I can say that person’s view is invalid because it is atheistic, I must first establish that there is a God, and that HE is active in the world. Neither of these can be accomplished, so it is stupid and foolish to make the assertion that no theory that doesn’t coorelate with an atheistic worldview can be true, or conversely that no theory that doesn’t fit into the framework of a theistic worldview can be true.

Actually, there are good philosophical grounds to assert that the concept of God is either self-contradictory or a meaningless abstraction. But that does step beyond the evidenciary grounds.

>On the other hand, Pascal’s wager establishes that it does make far more sence to believe in any god then none at all… though that’s a different discussion all together.

Pascal’s wager is a load of hooey that is only convincing to the unsophisticated.

>The claim that there is no God is just as much an existential claim as that there is a God. It makes the assertion that this entity, God, does not exist, and consiquentially has no interaction with the realm of Nature.

I see no positive evidence for the existence of Santa Claus. I see a lot of folk tales and games played with children to make them believe in Santa Claus, but the notion is outlandish and at odds with reality, and there is no positive evidence for it. Therefore, I presume that Santa Claus is not real. If someone were to dig up positive evidence, I would reassess my claim, but for now I’m satisfied. God is in exactly the same position as Santa Claus, except with God adults don’t break down and eventually admit to their children they were lying. The adults continue to believe it themselves.

I can’t hunt down and prove God doesn’t exist by eliminating all possible locations for his existence. For starters, one must define what it is they mean by “God”. (If you actually polled people, you’d come up with an incredibly diverse list of definitions that only bear marginal relation to each other. But most of them claim to be Christians, because of some unexamined social heritage.) And even if I go with a fairly generic and conventional definition of some anthropic supernatural agent, I suddenly find that I am unable to search locations where he could hide. Even if I could search the full expanse and breadth of the universe, from the farthest stars and galaxies to the tiniest quantum fluctuations to the interior of black holes, I still can’t eliminate hiding places for a supernatural agent – outside of the universe, for instance.

However, that’s not the burden on me. I am not required to believe in something that I don’t see convincing evidence for. I’m not required to believe in Santa Claus. I’m not required to believe in fairies and elves and Invisible Pink Unicorns hiding in my garage. I don’t have the burden of proof to disprove them before not believing in them. It is up to people who believe in them to convince me with evidence – not smoke and mirrors and fancy talk, but evidence. Cottingly Fairy pictures won’t do. Got is the same thing. I don’t have to believe in him until I’m shown evidence. I’m not irrational for that position. And most religious people don’t disagree with that notion – they can’t argue with it. So the argument is over what evidence exists and what constitutes evidence, because nobody can argue the premise. The only other response is to rely on Faith – to state that the lack of evidence is intentional so that we have to actively choose to believe. That is an unconvincing argument because it stands normal belief on it’s head. The less evidence I have or the more the evidence is contradictory, the more I believe, because it shows I have faith? That’s ridiculous. And yet it’s argued with a straight face by many believers.

>The claim that God’s existance is irrelivant is even weaker, because it conveniently ignores the fact that if there is a God, and HE is active in the universe, then it will act in a manner totally different from if there is no God, or HE is not active in the universe. Thus I would contend that claiming that my assumption that there is a God makes my theory unscientific makes little sence, since it is impossible to make a theory apart from making an existential claim of one form or another about God.

Do you really want to go down the road of saying that if God exists and is present there will be evidence of his presence? Because the whole point of the debate is that there isn’t evidence, or at least good evidence. If there were evidence, the argument wouldn’t be over whether he exists or what his nature is, the argument (if any) would be over how and why to worship him.

Your previous statement was that a God exists and operates through the mechanisms identified by science. Fine, let’s study those mechanisms and leave the part about God for personal belief.

It is realy hard to escape the conclusion that going to the Times was a LAST resort (certaintly not the first) and that he had probably tried — and failed — to get NASA administrators (perhaps even NASA Chief Michael Griffin himself) to do something (ANYTHING) about the problem.

Are we really to believe that people like Griffin had ZERO inkling before the NY Times piece of what Hansen and several others have said was going on at NASA?

This is simply too much to swallow.

From what I have read on other science blogs, I think people are giving Griffin WAY too much benefit of the doubt in this case. It is NOT sufficient simply to send off a flurry of emails re-iterating NASA’s “commitment to openness”.

What Griffin SHOULD have done by now is set in motion an UNBIASED investigation of Hansen’s allegations — by a team of university scientists who are completely independent of NASA and the US government.

ALL of those who are found to have engaged in the political interference (not just Deutsch) should be unceremoniously shown the door. If Griffin himself knew what was going on and did nothing, he should resign.

It’s a lot of fun to make “stupid design” arguments, but they don’t really do much to debunk ID.

In the first place, “excellence” is subjective; you see cancer, flat feet, and tonsilitis as design flaws, but this is only an assessment you can make if you know the whole intent of the design. You wouldn’t look at the Mona Lisa and assume there was no intelligence behind its design because the paint is cracked. For all we know, cancer is just Divine DRM.

In fact, the “stupid design” argument seems to me to be a little counterproductive: it seems like the natural processes of evolution would get rid of any major “design flaws”, since they would be disadvantageous and therefore get “bred out”. The fact that they’re not could be taken as “evidence” that they’re in there because *someone wants them there*. That is, you could argue that the human body is designed *too* poorly for it to just be an accident.

(This is, like all ID arguments, not a very good one, but still. Back before ID was a thing, I used to have little debates with a staunch creationist. One of the things he kept pulling out as an argument was “If evolution is real, why haven’t we evolved all the bugs out?”)

It’s easy enough to demonstrate that ID is bunk using valid scientific arguments. “Stupid design” is nothing more than a clever joke.

My contention is that based on my presuppositions, Intelligent Design makes best light of the evidence. According to your presuppositions, it doesn’t. It really is that simple.

I would also add that the more anatomists and physiologists study the human body, the more oddities they find that actually make sence in ways that they hadn’t expected. I have no reason to expect that this trend will end any time soon. Our understanding in that aria of science is still very limited as I understand it.

Also, by denying the existance of the metaphysical, you are making a metaphysical claim. It goes something like this: “There is nothing beyond the physical world.” is your base supposition and claim. However, you make this claim specifically about what is beyond they physical world–metaphysics.

PK, this isn’t something that can really be analogised to vegetarians vs. other people, so much as it is something that can be analogised to the various foods out there, and why some people abstain from certian types of foods. Let’s say that vegetables are analogous to the physical world, and meat to the metaphysical. A vegetarian’s refusal to eat meat does not make meat nonexistant or nonrelivant… All it means is that for some reason the vegetarian doesn’t think that eating meat is appropriate, so misses out on the potential benefites of meat in their diet. Likewise, a Secular Humanist’s refusal to acknowledge the metaphysical does not negate its existance, and potential interaction with the physical universe. All it means is that the Secular Humanist is of the oppinion that the metaphysical doesn’t matter in studying the physical world, and consiquentially misses out on the insights that come from examining the metaphysical nature of existance.

I think that I need to clarify and define a term though. That may be part of why I am doing such a miserable job of explaining this. When I say metaphysical, what I mean is the study of being and knowing, and the true nature of existance, and implications therof. Epistomology (the theory of knowledge, what constitutes knowledge, where it comes from, what purpose it has and so on) is a subcategory of metaphysics that nobody can escape from by denouncing the whole subject as irrelivant. If you can not explain 1: what constitutes knowledge, and 2: how to obtain knowledge, then you can not honestly hold that any view you hold is accurate or valid. Another subcategory (though I don’t remember the fancy name for it) that can not be escaped is the true nature of existance. “Will nature continue to act in a predictable manner tommorrow?” fits into this category. If you can not give me an answer based on nature alone that does not lead to circular reasoning, then you have no basis for believing that things will remain ordered, if you denounce the possibility of the existance of the supernatural. You have to take it on blind faith… Consiquentially science as you have defined it again becomes invalid. The final subcategory is Onthology, the nature of being. “Am I real?” “Are you real?” “Is the world real?” Try as you may, all the more answer that can be given relying solely on Nature as our guide is blindly saying yes and taking it on faith–wait… isn’t that your biggest qualm with religion is blind faith…? Isn’t it great fun to find yourself in the same (percieved to be sinking) boat?

!) non-functional appendix(a bit of a waste of biological rsources)
2) Tonsils that tend to accumulate more infection that they prevent.
3) Feet that go “flat”.
4) cancer( wild, uncontrolled cells. Gee, how did THAT get past the design team?)

I know there are 40 different examples of species that have or are in the process of developing, eyes. So, how come the designer had to do it over and over and over and,,,

If I had a student design engineer who was so bloody incompetant, I’d
have to say he was anything but Intelligent,,,

Gary 7

“My moral beliefs have not been mentioned, nor can they be inferred from the discussion thus far.”

I am confused as to how this could be the case.

It appears that you have claimed, repeatedly, that all that is real is the exclusive domain of science. Morality is not science; “good” and “evil” are inherently unscientific concepts. Therefore, morality is not science, and therefore, by your argument, not real.

You also say:

“If you believe that a religious statement has any meaningful implications at all, even if it’s only on your own behavior, then you’re permitting the domains of science and religion to intersect. Since their methods are mutually exclusive, you must therefore choose between them. ”

I do not see how this argument could fail to apply to morality. Since concepts of good and evil are not scientific, they can not be “real” according to the schema you have described.

I can see no logically consistant way for you to accept the existence of morality, and therefore, by your own description, it can’t have “meaningful implications at all, even if it’s only on your own behavior.”

It appears that simple deductive reasoning gives me a way to infer your moral beliefs:

That which is not scientific does not have any meaningful implications (~a => ~b)
Morality is not scientific (c => ~a)
Therefore morality has no meaningful implications (c => ~b; modus ponens)

Not that I actually think you’re amoral, but it seems to be the only logical consequence of your argument.

And a vegetarian is a special kind of meat eater.

To say that there is no metaphysics, is metaphysics too.

When it comes to medical truths, (based upon evidence), they change incessantly.

My moral beliefs have not been mentioned, nor can they be inferred from the discussion thus far.

Science does not venture into metaphysics (as that term is commonly understood). It rejects the concept of metaphysics itself.

There’s nothing more to say on the matter.

I’m not contending that my view is better or that your view is better, only that the two of us are able to see the same data and interpret it in radically different ways because our presuppositions. This is where science invades the realm of the metaphysical–the realm of faith and religion. Like it or not, your Humanism is a religious idea at its core. It addresses ultimate issues such as “where did we come from?” “Why are we here?” “Is history going anywhere?” “Can anything ever really be known?” and so on. These aren’t questions of science (well, “Where did I come from?” is sorta, but not entirely) they are questions of philosophy. Consiquentially, your assertion that religion is an invalid methodology for gaining knowledge about anything is internally incoherent and self-refuiting.

Irish Man, I understand what Caledonian is trying to say. I contend that he is not entirely correct in saying so though. There are realms of Science that absolutely no religious/philosophical system short of post modernism (which may I add is somewhere beyond rediculous and unlivable) have any issue with. Chemistry, Physical Biology, and Physical Geology come to mind. They deal entirely in the realm of observable data, and have virtually no presuppositions neccicary in examining them. Consiquentially they do not radically dissagree with religion’s interpretation of reality, but instead fit very nicely in the framework therof. It isn’t until science starts dealing with issues of a more philosophical nature such as origins that religion begins to radically dissagree with it. I would argue that science is out of it’s element, and is becoming somewhat ad-hoc when dealing with these issues, (They are no longer simply an issue of examining the Total System as it currently is, but are extrapolating back in time that things always have acted in much the same manner that they act today… A potentially dangerious extrapolation that has been demonstrated to be false in several instances that I am aware of… by science I should add.) so the weight of its assertions and claims becomes weaker. Couple that with Atheistic scientists’ claim that God can not play any roll in explaining the origins of whatever (be it a rock formation, life on earth, or the existance of the entire universe) and of course people who hold that God exists and is active in the world are going to say “Hold on, that can’t be right.” They have every right to. Their ideas about origins are not invalid, as the atheistic scientist claims, just because they start with the presupposition that there is a God. (Note that I do agree that Fiat Creationism is unscientific, though that isn’t because of their presupposition that there is a God, but rather because they interpret the data to mean exactly what they want it to, rather then interpreting it to mean what it means in light of their presupposition… And they also sellectively interpret the Bible to mean what they want it to mean, rather then what it “litterally” means, as they claim.) Before a person has the right to make the claim that my view is invalid because it is theistic, it is that person’s responsibility to establish that there is no God. Establishing that HE is not neccicary to explain a phenominon is not enough to establish that HE did not act through that phenominon. Conversely, before I can say that person’s view is invalid because it is atheistic, I must first establish that there is a God, and that HE is active in the world. Neither of these can be accomplished, so it is stupid and foolish to make the assertion that no theory that doesn’t coorelate with an atheistic worldview can be true, or conversely that no theory that doesn’t fit into the framework of a theistic worldview can be true.

On the other hand, Pascal’s wager establishes that it does make far more sence to believe in any god then none at all… though that’s a different discussion all together.

I will say one more thing, then be done. The claim that there is no God is just as much an existential claim as that there is a God. It makes the assertion that this entity, God, does not exist, and consiquentially has no interaction with the realm of Nature. The claim that God’s existance is irrelivant is even weaker, because it conveniently ignores the fact that if there is a God, and HE is active in the universe, then it will act in a manner totally different from if there is no God, or HE is not active in the universe. Thus I would contend that claiming that my assumption that there is a God makes my theory unscientific makes little sence, since it is impossible to make a theory apart from making an existential claim of one form or another about God.