I think you misunderstood him. There is no way anyone can say that miracles cannot happen. However, we as mortals cannot tell the difference between a real miracle and a natural occurance for which we simply haven't found the correct explanation. Science is only possible if people do not give up trying to explain with natural causes. If Fleming were too quick to resort to the miracle explanation then we wouldn't have penicilin today.
Science can not determine if a miricle occured simply because a miricle is outside the relm of scientific explanation. A miricle defies the laws of physics. Admit it. Science is limited in scope and can not be used to determine all truth.
That is exactly the problem the theist faces. We dont see anything that happens that when examined under a microscope does not have a natural explanation. What looks like a miracle or an unnatural event always turns out to be a lack of understanding or a scam.
Yeah, like caveman bones & fossil records. What of the 97% (or 98% or 99%!) similarity claimed between humans and chimps? The figures published do not mean quite what is claimed in the popular publications (and even some respectable science journals). DNA contains its information in the sequence of four chemical compounds known as nucleotides, abbreviated C,G,A,T. Groups of three of these at a time are 'read' by complex translation machinery in the cell to determine the sequence of 20 different types of amino acids to be incorporated into proteins. The human DNA has at least 3,000,000,000 nucleotides in sequence. A proper comparison has not been made. Chimp DNA has not been fully sequenced.. Where did the "97% similarity" come from then? It was inferred from a fairly crude technique called DNA hybridization where small parts of human DNA are split into single strands and allowed to re-form double strands (duplex) with chimp DNA . However, there are various reasons why DNA does or does not hybridize, only one of which is degree of similarity (homology) . Consequently, this somewhat arbitrary figure is not used by those working in molecular homology (other parameters, derived from the shape of the 'melting' curve, are used). Why has the 97% figure been popularised then? One can only guess that it served the purpose of evolutionary indoctrination of the scientifically illiterate. Interestingly, the original papers did not contain the basic data and the reader had to accept the interpretation of the data 'on faith'. Sarich et al. obtained the original data and used them in their discussion of which parameters should be used in homology studies. Sarich discovered considerable sloppiness in Sibley and Ahlquist's generation of their data as well as their statistical analysis. Upon inspecting the data, I discovered that, even if everything else was above criticism, the 97% figure came from making a very basic statistical error - averaging two figures without taking into account differences in the number of observations contributing to each figure. When a proper mean is calculated it is 96.2%, not 97%. However, there is no true replication in the data, so no confidence can be attached to the figures published by Sibley and Ahlquist. What if human and chimp DNA was even 96% homologous? What would that mean? Would it mean that humans could have 'evolved' from a common ancestor with chimps? Not at all! The amount of information in the 3 billion base pairs in the DNA in every human cell has been estimated to be equivalent to that in 1,000 books of encyclopaedia size. If humans were 'only' 4% different this still amounts to 120 million base pairs, equivalent to approximately 12 million words, or 40 large books of information. This is surely an impossible barrier for mutations (random changes) to cross. Does a high degree of similarity mean that two DNA sequences have the same meaning or function? No, not necessarily. Compare the following sentences: There are many scientists today who question the evolutionary paradigm and its atheistic philosophical implications. There are not many scientists today who question the evolutionary paradigm and its atheistic philosophical implications. These sentences have 97% homology and yet have almost opposite meanings! There is a strong analogy here to the way in which large DNA sequences can be turned on or off by relatively small control sequences. The DNA similarity data does NOT quite mean what the evolutionary popularizers claim!
That's a misunderstanding of science. Science does not make any claim about things "outside the relm of scientific explanation." The foundation of science is that there is a natural explanation for everything. For example, the conservation of energy is one of the founding laws of thermodynamics. If somehow somewhere an event occurs that violates the energy conservation law, what do you think the first reaction of people would be? Is it a miracle? Should we abandon science because it cannot explain it? This happened in the beta decay of radioactive nucleii. It was discovered in 1926 that the energy was not conserved during beta decay. This was shaking the foundation of modern science since energy conservation was one of the central laws of physics. It would be easy for people to simply attribute this nonconservation of energy to something "outside the realm of science" and go home. Science would stop at that point and won't make any further progress. Pauli wouldn't buy that anything can be outside the realm of science. So in 1930 he "invented" a particle called neutrino to account for the deficiency in the energy. At this point neutrino was simply a hypothesis because no one was able to see it. It remained a hypothesis for over a quarter of century. Finally in 1956, physicists were able to observe neutrino in experiments. This was one of the great triumphs in science in the past century. If we were too quick to admit that there are things that cannot be explained by science, then we wouldn't be looking for neutrino and there wouldn't be any progress in science any more. Nearly all discoveries made by human, were made because a few of them foolishly believed that humans could understand things, even extraordinary things, in terms of natural causes.
Of course evolution is not the only possible explanation for the close similarities between human and primate DNA's. Another good explanation is that God is lazy and reused most of the codes when making all the animals. He is a very good OO programer.
First you try to explain that God's acts are beyond the comprehension of scientific understanding, and then you attempt to prove the existence of God's work by resort to empirical evidence. Science does not attempt to prove or disprove the existence of God, because science requires measurability as axiomatic and God is unmeasurable by definition. Thus, any attempt by anyone, regardless of his/her belief, to either verify or refute the existence of God using any natural method or evidence cannot possibly succeed. What is left, then is "faith." Nothing more nor less. You believe in God or you don't or you remain open on the question, due to insufficient information -- insufficient, precisely because as long as you are a mortal confined to this universe, you cannot possible measure or know anything about a limitless or incomprehensible God. Once you "know" for a certainty, anything about God, you have measured/verified something about God, and that something is no longer limitless and incomprehensible. It becomes of the flesh, i.e., part of the natural universe. Attempting to deny evolution as a means of proving God, or the reverse, is a non sequitur, because if God IS God, then God could maintain two (or more) entirely inconsistent sets of facts about the natural universe simultaneously, and there would still be no contradiction. God could have created evolution and evolutionary processes for scientists to find and understand, and simultaneously, God could have created the antediluvian epoch of Earth for theists to find and understand. And, even though both sets of findings and understandings would seem to logically rule each other out, God, if God is God, could declare the two states consistent and they would BE consistent by virtue of God's declaration. There are many things missing in the gaps of scientific knowledge regarding evolution. However, those gaps do not necessarily rule in or out the existence of God. The scientist's obligation to his craft is to fill the gaps with more scientific knowledge, while the theists obligation is to provide faith and comfort to those who need more than science to make their lives complete. There is simply no reason to battle over the one truth, because there is no means of proving that the one truth is the only truth, or that there aren't tens, hundreds or an infinite number of truths available at any given moment. From the scientist's perspective, the evidence strongly suggests that biological organisms evolved. Does this evidence refute the existence of God in any way? Not in the slightest, because God can maintain scientific and theologic truth in the universe, despite any apparent logical consistency, and without regard to whatever we mere mortals think about the issue. All of this, of course, assumes that God IS God. But, if he/she/it isn't, then it still doesn't matter, because either way, no one in this universe will ever know.
I've said all I had to say. It's a simple concept, there's no point in re wording the same material over and over again. When you figure out how to observe quarks and gluons separately, we can continue the discussion. These matter also could very well be constituted by other less finite forms of matter. Using your frame of logic, since scientists can't measure gluons independently, they must not exist. As you commented: .........you presuppose Existence for those things first, and therefore Existence is THE primary imperative. There is no in-between. Therefore to continue the discussion, you yourself must figure out how it's possible to know a form of matter exists when there is no verifiable proof of its existence independent of other matter.
It's the absolute same thing! Your pre-supposed "educated" point of reference is nothing more than a refinement of your past prejudices. Your "educated" point of reference will always include your past experiences and alleged knowledge. Since no knowledge can ever be final ( as scientists find out every day!! ) , your "educated points of reference" is nothing more than a linear collection of past prejudices terminating at the lastest point of collective discovery. ( btw, The purpose of all knowledge is to terminate into God) The very nature of your comment reflects that you will not be able to refine your thought to arrive to the above conclusion. What are your statements? Furthemore, how childish is it not to see the difference between ..... Therefore by the very nature of how you construct your thought, your logic is doomed into a recursive loop that you will always terminate at a point of logic that is analogous to the point you began. And why is that? well it's like mothers "home cooking". Familiar and comforting.
it is always amusing to hear the theist proclaim that evolution is false because we dont yet have all the answers and yet he will readily believe that some unseen deity just spoke and the world popped up from nothing just as it is today. as far as fossils go there has never been a fossil found in a layer of the earth that would not be expected if evolution were true.