I firmly believe in every person's right to their own beliefs. There are plenty of respectable scientists who are people of faith. But faith, by its very nature, is not science.
You've got a lot of faith in science, Paul
Not blind faith, of course, but then neither is mine.
And it's nice to say everyone can believe whatever they like, but logically speaking, they cannot all be right. When two people disagree, at *least* one of them is wrong (quite possibly they both are).
Science is a search for causes. But scientists are human beings, who have preconceptions and biases just like the rest of us. Someone who starts off saying "well, of course there's no God; that's ridiculous" is going to *artificially* limit his/her search to the natural, not the supernatural. "There is no God" is not a proven (or provable) statement; it's a premise. And it might or might not be true. And if the premises are false, the conclusions are very likely going to be wrong.
ID is actually *more* falsifiable than evolution. ID says, frex, "the blood clotting process involves about twenty different chemical cues all firing in a specific sequence, and if one of them is missing, it's disastrous -- either blood doesn't clot at all and all blood is lost, or it clots up all over the place, causing strokes and shutting down blood flow. Either way, you're dead. This sequence only works when *all* elements are present together, therefore it could not have been built up a piece at a time." To falsify that, just prove that it *could* build up one piece at a time.
Evolution says "the blood clotting process built up one piece at a time. We haven't any clue how it happened, really, but we're certain it did." How do you falsify that? No matter how many failed experiments you conduct, the hard-core neo-Darwinist can just shrug and say "well, sure, *that* way didn't work. But that just means it was a different process, one we haven't found yet. Give us more time; we'll find it."
When you look into it, the odds against evolution are staggering. Takes more faith to believe in *that* than in God, IMHO. And faith, as we all know, is not science.
PJ
