Theistic evolutionists ,like Kenneth Miller, think they can rightly conflate mindless evolution with teleology,but they fail as Amiel Rossow shows in the Yin and Yang of Kenneth Miller@Talk Reason shows .They think thre has to be a god behind selection but that cannot be because a god [teleology] means “a pre-ordained plan … ,by simply asserting it given at the beginning.And in thereby putting the future into the past,the effect before the cause,teleology negats time.” …Causalism denies foreknowledge of terminal states,preordination, purposes,goals, and fixed fates.It holds that natural events take place sequentially.Events take place only other event permit them to occur, not as pre-ordained goals or states.End states are consequences,not foregonde conclution, fo begginning states…Because scientists can obtain different end states after changing the conditons of initial states the idea of pre-determined goals loses all validity in scientific thought," Weisz, “The Science of Biology.” And I add philosophically as well. Therefore, teleology and natural selection do not mix.To obivate this contradiction, theists like Russell Stannard Christian physicist, maintain a two category classification of origins or contingency and creation or necessary being, but as Malcolm Diamond and Kai Nielsen show in their philosophies of religion, that is a circular argument . It would be the new Omphalos argument to maintain that the two could conflate:look selection does the job only by deceit of god ,for he does the real job! No, no deception: selection does the job as Weisz points out without any pre-ordained goals. The teleological argument,including the probablibity one and the anthropic one, beg the question by assuming a god had us in mind whereas selection sequentially worked with the materials at hand and unmindfully produced us. We are the products neither of chance or of design,but of natural selection , the anti-chance agency. One wants an ultimate purpose for us, but theri is none ;we make our own as I state in another thread on purposes and meanings.
Not true.
Natural selection is purely chance. Any knowledgeable evolutionist recognizes this, and thus the term “blind gunman” is used to refer to the methodology of natural selection as a determinate in the evolutionary process.
The fallacy is completely a matter of attempting to assign concreteness to anything within the “order” of nature.
Nature does. Humans assume, by religious faith, or scientific faith. Both beget the fallacy, as their inherent failure starts and ends with the perceiver, in either instance.
Which is why the whole thing seems ridiculous to me! Accident, indeed.
Hopefully Ucc, you are aware that the current paradigm of abiogenesis, is as fraudulent as science can become.
Accident. No, no accident.
I'm no scientist. If things like RNA, eyeballs, or cerebellums seem unlikely to me to have evolved from chance, I just chalk that up to my own ignorance. No, when I think "There's no way this stuff came about as a result of a cosmic accident", I'm thinking of things like pet rocks, Pop Rocks, and punk rock.
That is creationists’ =D> =D> misconception. Nautral selection is anything but chance as you would see from my quote. Reality is the bane of creationists! Check out Talk Origins before you make any more silly repsonses.
I was following that place a decade ago. Does that Till guy still haunt it? Does everybody still hoot about who has what degree, and bitch incessantly about Behe? I've moved on. Philosophy is my bag now. And yes, I know natural selection isn't based on chance, it's based on a mechanism. I did misspeak. Nevertheless, I'm not interested in the latest argument for the evolution of the flagellum. What I'd really like to see is an argument for the evolution of the absurd. I maintain that the notion of mankind as gene-reprducing machines is inductively defeated quite nicely by an hour of Must-See-TV.
No, actually this shows that you have spent too much time on the internets and not enough time studying the research that actually is the foundation.
Methylation of alleles is still a mechanism which escapes proper definitive order under empirical observation. It is exactly the “blind gunman” as described, especially as concerns turning on traits for disease susceptibility, physical and psychological disorders, and a host of other specieal aberrations across the mammal kingdom.
Let’s stay on the two category topic. Might one add to the discussion? One could check out Rossow’s commentary and report on it.Thus ,here a circular argument ,for it must first be shown there is a design. And natural selection shows no design- no purpose for things,just functions . It is a circular argument to maintain that a supreme mind had us in mind in the first place because we are the end result of sequential processes. Now while dismissing teleology ,Weisz states that religion is like another language , so he acknowledges a place for religion ,but 
I hear only grunts of pain. No such language! Also, there cannot be two non-overlapping magesteria as Gould proposes - religion and the scientific arena in that religion tries to account for a creation,which is a circular argument as I pointed out above. So two category period will not do. 
Let’s throw the doors wider open, shall we?
Let’s not say that the giver of life is “The Creator of The Universe”. Let’s not stipulate about where and what the ‘Creator’ or engineer of organic-life is specifically.
Let’s just say: something other then random inanimate crap caused organic life to exist.
“ID” does not have to be “creationism”, either.
“ID” can even be this:
“An alien race which have bodies made of darkmatter decided to do experiments upon their own capacity to influance matter, and the organic-matter-bodies which they created on the other side of their world [which is our physical realm]: these matter-bodies generate special materials as a biproduct of material-existence, and the aliens harvest these materials and have use for these materials for some reason. The alien race needed to develop a wide variety of matterial-life which would go through a cyclic existence, continually processing materials and generating desirable substances on the other side. Much like the yeasts in a whine-bottle, organic life was/is a carbon-based-automated-machine.”
^
Not [God:] “Let us make man in our image.”
But you get the point.
If we are “created”, then we could have been “created” for any number of reasons, by any number of advanced life-forms in any number of unseen or distant realms.
Oh that’s a sexy theory Dan…
It’s time we stepped down from our self righteous inclinations. Not to say we all can’t stand with Oscar in the free-will gutter and stare at the stars with a smile. Gotta love the place where you work, especially when it doesn’t feel like it.
See Talk Origins and Darwinana and Evolution for serious talk on evolution. Yes , if granted the premise , an alien race could have done so.But natural selection is the creative force .It builds sequentially on the characterisics of life forms and when mutations are enough,it forms new species on up the line to kingdoms.Macroevolution is microevolution across time. Let’s stop with paradeilia- seeing what is not there like seeing the man in the moon ,only here seeing a divine force when the evidence only shows natural selection and adding a divine force would violate Ochkam’s razor. So theists make a contradiction , beg the question of a second catefgory and violate the razor. That is why my signature says that logic is the bane ot the theist. =D> 
Don’t just go and say “Logic is the bane of theists”.
There’s nothing illogical about belief in higher-life-forms.
You should remove that sentance from your signature.
You would then also have to conclude that believing something with no physical or empirical evidence is logical.
Would they?
Within the class of theism there even includes pantheism, which is the belief that the universe, [which has been proven to exist?], is the supriem being/force/entity, the source of existence, etc. etc.
Do you know what the word “theism” means…?
Did you know that you can believe in dieties non-literally, and still be a theist?
As in: the mind cross links the comprehensible with the formless, thus making that which is not literally a diety – into a more relatable symbolic form or image, then the person “worships” it symbolically, to inwardly manifest its essence.
Dorkykidoo, you are so right.Also , in my posts I show theists’ logical fallacies to confirm my signature. It is hardly ad hominem to state that fact .We skeptics show the inadequacies of theistic thought . I attack theistic arguments. I do not use the signature to say do not look at their thought as ad hominem is used ,but to show what to look for . Otherwise , the point is wll taken to get away from the computer if in a huff. My signature shows that I am ignorant ,but will argue for my points and that my humble naturalism can be changed if need be.
Did you know that even this form of theism wouldn’t have any empirical or physical evidence either? Of course it’d be a nice possibility that the universe is the “supreme” being, but it is thousands of times more likely it is simply the universe, supreme in no other way than being what it is. But I don’t think one could rank it “supreme.” I’m not sure even what it would be supreme relative to, seeing as how supreme is a human idea, not one of the universe.
As Ricahrd Dawkins states in his ‘The God Delusion"Design is not the only alternative to chance. Natural selection is a better alternative.Design is not real atlernative at all because it raises an even bigger problem: who designed the deigner? Chance and design both fail as solutions,because one of them is the problem,and the other one regresses to it.[N]atural selection is a cumulative process,which breaks the problem of improbability up into small pieces. Each of the small pieces is slightly improbalble,but not prohibitively so.When large numbers of these slightly improbable events are stacked up in series , the end product of the accumulation is very very probable iindeed, improbable to be beyond the reach of chance…The creationist completely misses the point [ I Skeptic add: so do some non-creationists]because he… insists on treating the genesis of statistical improbability as a single, one-off event. He doesn’t understand the power of accumulation.’ Sahakian maintains that it is the use of the fallacy of many questions to ask for the deigner of his god, but that is to argue for special pleading in making that god different from anything in the universe , and I add a circular argument thereby assuming it has the attributes accorded it to make the special pleading. Earlier Dawkins states :“Natural selection is not only a parsimonius,plausible and elegant solution,it is the only workable alternative to chance that has ever been suggested.” Even earlier he states:“It shatters the illusion of design within the domain of biology, and teaches us to be suspicious of design hypothesis in physics and cosmology as well.” He further note s that Peter Atkins describes a lazy god that Atkins : ’ [S] tep by step redu[ces] the amount of work the lazy God has to do until he finally ends up with doing nothing at all: he might as well not bother to exist." So , both Weisz and Dawkins show no need for teleology and natural selection, indeed, is the anti-chance solution. Dorkydood, your comment is noted ,but not followed. Thanks.
I don’t think either of you understand or can disprove all forms of theism.
Creationism is not theism.
Theism is a belief in the existence of higher beings.
How can you prove that higher life does not exist in the universe?
Surely it was a good guess to think that there exists something alive which is greater than humanity?
Creationism= theism. There are early ,old and evolutionistic creationism- theistic evolution , narrow and wider forms. They all posit a creator and use faith . 
Rational people do not need a higher intelligence at all to get along in this world. If one does not like our disproofs , she should show why.