Back at ya!

I do want to be careful here that we try to keep the discussion here as civil and respectful as possible. I know this is tricky to do in this kind of forum as well so hope that my posts have not been coming off in an offensive way. That said, I also don't want my blog to read like a politically correct pile of shit either so I try to inject a few zingers here and there to spice it up a bit. A little trash talk never hurts does it. The reason I mention this is your comment in my last post could carry a few flavours of it's own and without the benefit of having the discussion real-time (afterall I just spent a day in Houston learning that 80% of communication is visual) it's hard to decipher which flavour it is. I enjoy these types of conversations because they force me to elevate my game, I hope everyone is looking at this discussion that way. SO just checkin'

Anyway, on to your comments.

I really don't know if your intent is to entertain rather than to enlighten.

Both actually. I hope I hit at leaast 0.500 on that front. I really don't care which one got the base hit.

The virtual conversation should be considered nothing of how I would converse

Tell that to your virtual self - I quoted him word for word :P In any case, I will also point out that discussions with your virtual-self and even your real-self would be easier and more accurate if we had some kind of understanding of what frame of reference you are coming from. Don't want to push or assume anything if you don't want to go there yet for whatever reason, but it is definately easier to sit and play the devils' advocate when you don't have any of your own skin in the game. Just sayin'

The Ad Populum Fallacy is nothing to do with eye witnesses

This whole discussion was a bit of a red-herring if you ask me, but I'll play along. I don't think I'm am committing the logical crimes you are accusing me of.
"Coming up on CSI: Ancient Greece - Lieutenant Socrates hunts down the sadistic maurader - The Ad Populum Bandit...."
Where was I? I am not trying to use the number of beleivers in God as proof of it being true (which would be a fallacious argument). In the context of the question of reconciling my faith in God vs. my non-belief in UFO's I still submit that pointing to the number of beleivers on each side is a sound, logical argument for one being more likely to be true than the other. Hence the court-of-law analogy. If you have two people accused of a crime and 10 people say person A did it and 1 person said person B did it, I think that would carry some weight would it not?

you tell me that your bible proofs are not what I had listed but you provide no links or reference

You think these posts are long now? You don't want to see what happens when I go into dissertation mode. And I wasn't aware that we needed this to be research quality posts :P Again, I want to be sure that we understand I am not trying to offer the Bible's (particularly the New Testament) verified place in history as proof that the meta-claims it makes are true. Check out http://www.carm.org/questions/trustbible.htm for your "reference". It's probably by some nut job, right wing Christian extremist group that also thinks the earth is only 6000 years old and that evolution is a deception planted on earth by the devil. So I do not necessarily endorse all their views, and I am loathe to give them more airtime than they deserve, but it illustrates my point so there it is.

and your defense on science pointing to intelligent design is not backed up at all. If I were you, and it seems you might need some help here, is start talking about something like the "Bacterial Flagella" (http://www.counterbalance.net/id-hvt/bacte-frame.html)

Again, not wanting to turn this into a research paper on evolutionary biology, my main point is to illustrate that I beleive that science has shown life, particularly when you dive into the genetic details, to be far too complex to have occured by chance, without some kind of "divine intervention". I kind of lump that into "intelligent design", but there are some issues many have with that label. Personally, I find the argument Dr. Demski makes using flagella as a case for intelligent design pretty weak. But he does make some pretty good arguments in some other areas.

Interstingly enough, I was able to attend a lecture during my lone year at Calvin (while not showering with your roomates - see Jen's post on Stragershereourselves - we were actually able to get a bit of education in) given by the guy referenced in the link you provided. It was a really good lecture on exactly the topic we have been discussing and, looking back, probably helped somewhat in helping me find my happy place today. Oddly enough, the link you provided was actually a discussion by Dr Van Till discrediting intelligent design when compared to evolutionary creationism, but I digress. That's a whole other can-o-worms.

The reason I am still typing this at 1:30 in the morning and not in bed is that the link you provided kind of lead me on a treasure hunt of some really good reading. What I was reading would probably put many people to sleep, but I found it fascinating. I ended up reading a lot of material by both Dr. Van Till and his adversary Dr. Demski (they are actually friends). I also managed to stumble accross a couple good blogs on the subject we've been debating as well. I found a post here that sums up (well sum might be stretching it - this guy is as long winded as I am) how I look at the whole evolution/creation/design/Christianty relationship. Also found another pretty good blog by another good ol' professor of biology at Calvin. It can be found here.

In any case - time to go to bed. I expect to have your reply by the time I wake up to go to work :)