Worldview Conflicts Part II

Post Reply: You assert that I.D. satisfies Occam's Razor as the simplest explanation. However, you overlook the vast complexity you assume when you posit something capable of that level of creation. Assuming the supernatural to explain the natural is MORE complex than only assuming natural causes.

At the very basic level, when we see design, it implies a designer. You are jumping ahead in the argument. Either the natural cause has always existed, or the supernatural Designer has always existed. Which is the first, or the uncaused cause? Science itself teaches us that the universe had a beginning, this is not at issue, so the former is less likely to be true. In addition, the fact that it has a beginning would also imply that it had a beginner which supports the latter argument of a Designer. Certainly a supernatural Designer would have unfathomable and unimaginable power, about this I do not disagree.

Chance is an 'input' to evolution, but things evolve because of natural laws that result in a selective bias, where non-beneficial chance occurrences are weeded out, or at least don't accumulate, but beneficial chance occurrences tend to accumulate over time.

I've stated that a design implies a designer. Even given your example of magnets and pennies in a shoebox....attempting to illustrate chance one would ask, who made the pennies? Or the shoebox? Or the magnets? And who is doing the shaking? Secondly, notice your choice of words in the above excerpt. You use terms like "natural laws," "selective bias," "non-beneficial" or "beneficial" chance. Laws? How did these laws come into being without a law-giver? Selective Bias? Who is doing the selecting, or how could a selection possibly be made by chance? A selection implies a Selector. Who decides what is beneficial and not beneficial? Is "chance" capable of choices now?

If there is a god that created this universe, then it seems to me that he most likely created the Universe with a "big bang" and ever since then has chosen to have all of his interactions with the universe be so subtle as to never leave a definitive mark that can be observed by many independent observers.

This astounds me. Creation is anything but subtle. You can refuse to see the design and detail if you wish, but to state that intricate and detailed design in nature is not a definitive mark of a Designer is perplexing.

One could even believe that the authors of the Hebrew Bible and The New Testament were 'inspired' by God, but wrote within the constraints of the world views accessible to them at the time. I honestly am puzzled why so many theists reject this world view.

Theists reject this world-view because it is contrary to Scripture itself. We believe that men are not the authors, but God Himself. If God gave us His word with constraints for the time period in which it was written, then it would have little to say to us today, and would be just like any other book. The Bible itself is astounding in that it was written over thousands of years, prophesying things that would happen thousands of years in advance. It is not some half-witted diary written by a Nostradamus-type figure that gets it only partially correct. When we say that we all "evolved" from one single life form, it is contradictory to what Scripture tells us about how life originated. When we contradict Scripture, we contradict God therefore making the two views incompatible. One is correct and the other patently false. We have chosen opposing answers.