XPost: sac.politics, can.politics, alt.atheism   
   XPost: alt.politics.homosexuality   
   From: les@shant.tell   
      
   Divers persons wrote:   
      
   >>  You believe divine miracles have happened,   
   >>that makes it YOUR burden to provide proof of   
   >>them.   
   >   
   >    Those who believe there's always a different reason have no less burden of   
   >proof to provide THEIR explanation. They just are totally incapable of making   
   >any attempt to support their belief.   
      
   Extraordinary claims of things that cannot happen in nature require   
   extraordinary evidence amounting to proof beyond reasonable doubt   
   whilst claims of events happening within the normal bounds of nature   
   do not require anything near like as much evidence given it is   
   something we know can happen.   
      
   As Conan Doyle once remarked, Once you have eliminated the impossbile,   
   (whch includes events that cannot  happen in nature) whatever remains,   
   however improbably must be the answer.   
      
   Thus if there are two possible explanations for an event, one based on   
   'miracles' (god-did-it) and one based on the normal workings of nature   
   then the latter, if viable,  should be the one accepted everytime   
   pending further invetigation. An explanation that fits within the   
   bounds of nature and is viable is self proving in basics if not in   
   detail. Which means that if we produce a viable explanation  it   
   automatically over turns the miraculous one - even it is not   
   the actual explanation  for the event - simply because it brings the   
   event within the bounds of the possible in nature for one   
   reason or another thus elminating un-natural.   
      
   Thus Darwin has produced a viable explanantion for how we   
   got to be the way we are now (how we evolved)  He may have been wrong   
   in some of the details but basically it is a viable explanation  that   
   is within the normal workings of nature and more than suffcient to   
   overturn an extraordinary  claim some god did it.   
      
   To continue to insist that some god did it when there is a perfectly   
   good natural explanation is perverse, stupid and pig-headed   
      
   Reason and sense tells us always to look for a natural expanation   
   for things happening before considering the possiblity of some kind of   
   'god' (whatever one of those are) intervening. I know of no instance   
   where such an approach has failed. We may not yet have all the   
   answers but as long as we still have natural avenues to explore that   
   is not yet a failure   
      
   --   
   Les Hellawell   
   Greetings from YORKSHIRE   
   The White Rose County   
      
   "Faith must trample under foot all reason,   
   sense, and understanding".   
      
   Martin Luther   
      
   This means that if Luther practised what   
   he preached nothing he ever said makes any sense   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)