A mighty fine rebuttal, Mr. Lewis.

Dawkins or Dennett (I'm currently not sure which, I have to go home and review my library) have already disposed of the strawman Chief Scientist's argument. It's the equivalent of the massively multi-monkeys madly typing and producing Shakespeare. Takes far, far longer than the current or projected age of the universe.

You would wait endless eternities for wind, sand, radiation, and electrical charges to form a microchip.

The mad monkeys argument is used by creationists to argue that biological complexity cannot arise by chance alone, but needs divine creation/intervention. Dawkins argues that evolutionary processes are not random, and that lifeforms' ability to bring energy in while moving entropy out, confer an advantage that overcomes the daunting statistics of the mad monkeys.

So no real chief scientist would ever make this argument.

When you begin with the presumption that there CANNOT be any explanation other than naturalism, then you by default reject any evidence that challenges this. Dawkins, et al start out presuming there is and can be no God. So if they find evidence of it, they instantly find a way to explain it away, no matter how byzantine and extraordinary it must be.

The simplest and best explanation is that if you find evidence of design, then there's probably design there unless you find good reason to think otherwise. That's how everyone handles everything EXCEPT origins. Then suddenly rule 1 comes into play: there cannot be a designer.

There are so many things wrong with this analogy that it ain't funny. But briefly: Evolution is a process whereby extremely non-random processes act on a randomly varying population, and over an astronomically large number of trials. This necessarily implies that one will never find just one biological sample or even a uniform population.

Evolution and abiogenesis are NOT the same thing. To illustrate this point I would like to offer a fictional scenario; one in which humanity got to the point of creating semi-autonomous AI ore collectors working in the ocean - and then some final catastrophe happened to humanity, leaving the robots behind. A billion years or so later, there was an entire ecosystem on Earth composed entirely of what looked like highly sophisticated robots, that had spread out to fill all the ecological niches that life fills now. But it started with a created being - or more accurately, several thusand of them.

One IC on Mars could have all sorts of explanations, including some alien species having left it behind. And if it had ever formed part of some sort of cybernetic ecology you'd never find just one.

Don't know it's so much an analogy as a myth. It's important to stress the myths. Myths are much more powerful.

Don't know it's so much an analogy as a myth. It's important to stress the myths. Myths are much more powerful.

Or, if myth misses, consider it an apologue.

I think of the Creator/Nature issue as two separate axiomatic systems. They don't compete directly at the level of data/hyypothesis/theory.

Different axiomatic systems don't reject any data because it supports alternate axioms. Each system create theories that explain all the data, consistent with the starting axioms. One might say the data are joint, the theories are disjoint.

The good thing about these different systems is you get to personally pick and choose which ones you adhere to. Which one is "right" is dependent on the "results" aggregated across the multitudes of adherents.

In fact you can go all Red Queen and adhere to multiple, choosing and using as you see fit.

Just for Fletcher, Hey fool, origins are a real bitch. Right, fronting the Supreme Muffin with the statement "We can make like" gets the response, "Get your own dirt."

Tough isn't it!

Let us try LIFE, not like. This computer doesn't type better than I!

I don't think Fletch is a fool. Dawkins is. I saw a headline somewhere today where Dawkins said that we are just apes. Which might even be true. But as Gagdad Bob frequently points out, if that were the case, we probably would not be aware of it.

Were God to reveal His methods of design, not even the smartest men could fathom it. Which, I suppose, is why Jesus had to speak in parables.

You know, Jewel, that's a good point. I was having a discussion of sorts with a fundamentalist who believes that God created everything in six 24-hour days about 6000 years ago. He said, "Don't you think God is capable of saying what He meant?" I didn't bother to reply since the lack is not in God's ability to explain but man's ability to understand.

What would the equations of Newtonian physics let alone quantum mechanics have meant to a bunch of guys out in the desert 4000 years ago? Or even to the Apostles 2000 years ago? God meets us where we are and reveals to us what we can comprehend. He didn't write Einstein's equations down in His book -- first because His book is about Him and our relationship to Him, but second because He could -- when we were ready for it, just give us Einstein.

"So, where is everybody?" - Enrico Fermi

Oh, and by the way, those look like basalt columns behind her. And that rock doesn't look like basalt. Which means it's probably a meteorite with a fusion crust. And the reason she's examining it is to determine if it should be taken back to the colony to be chopped up, melted, and used as a low-energy raw material source. Fossils and life and "exploring" are the last thing on her mind. More like, what can I find that our colony will find useful, with the limited time I have out here, so that we can continue to live on this god-forsaken rock.

Which is still all wrong, because that's what robots are for, to go scurrying around looking for all the useful rocks and hauling them back to the colony for processing.

"To go exploring" is a silly reason to go to Mars. If you're gonna go, go to stay and make something of the place. Land at Veracruz and burn your ships.

Thank you Mushroom.

Peccable - I'll put it much more succinctly. Evolution does not mean that life arose from unliving chemicals. Who are you to say that God did not choose evolution as a method of making us in the end?

As a Great Cry

Blowing through heaven and earth, and in our hearts and the heart of every living thing, is a gigantic breath - a great Cry - which we call God. Plant life wished to continue its motionless sleep next to stagnant waters, but the Cry leaped up within it and violently shook its roots: "Away, let go of the earth, walk!" Had the tree been able to think and judge, it would have cried, "I don't want to. What are you urglng me to do! YOU are demanding the impossible. But the Cry, without pity, kept shaking its roots and shouting, "Away, let go of the earth, walk!"

It shouted in this way for thousands of eons; and lo! as a result of desire and struggle, life escaped the motionless tree and was liberated.

Animals appeared - worms - making themselves at home in water and mud. "We're just fine here," they said."We have peace and security; we're not budging!"

But the terrible Cry hammered itself pitilessly into their loins. "Leave the mud, stand up, give birth to your betters!"

"We don't want to! We can't!"

"You can't, but I can. Stand up!"

And lo! after thousands of eons, man emerged, trembling on his still unsolid legs.

The human being is a centaur; his equine hoofs are planted in the ground, but his body from breast to head is worked on and tormented by the merciless Cry. He has been fighting, again for thousands of eons, to draw himself, like a sword, out of his animalistic scabbard. He is also fighting - this is his new struggle - to draw himself out of his human scabbard. Man calls in despair, "Where can I go? I have reached the pinnacle, beyond is the abyss." And the Cry answers, "I am beyond. Stand up!" All things are centaurs. If this were not the case, the world would rot into inertness and sterility.

Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco

Evolution does not mean that life arose from unliving chemicals. Who are you to say that God did not choose evolution as a method of making us in the end?

Indeed, and while I reject much of evolutionary theory as failed and poor science, most Intelligent Design proponents are also proponents of evolution. There is no scientific or philosophical conflict between the two ideas.