Actually, I think the story insinuated that the baby had some minor injuries, it's just that the baby avoided major injuries. But anyway, it's a high probability that the child would have suffered some major injuries, but that doesn't leave out the possibility of not.

Funny, I was going to say the same thing to you. I'm not the one trying to explain this at all, it is you who is attributing divine intervention.

In principle we can explain everything, but I wont deny that the data is limited so far.

By attributing magical angels to this event, you would be creating unnecessary entities (violating Occam's razor). It would be equivalent to, say, a caveman to whom the operations of a watch are completely mysterious, suddenly coming across a watch, and attempting to explain how it moves by little invisible 'gremlins' inside the watch. Of course, someone might come along and say that the watch's operations can be perfectly explainable by it's mechanics inside, but the cavemen call him a fool simply because at the moment it is 'mysterious'.

Humans have been foolishly attributing intention and the supernatural to the unexplainable or unlikely since their beginnings.

On the premise that God is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good, then why would he permit the existence of unspeakable evils? Why would god intervene on the random account of this baby but allow children to suffer and die en masse in the plague, the holocaust, or starvation and AIDS in Africa? It is very inconsistent to suggest that God saved this good little white baby but when people see images on their television of AIDS, starvation, and war creating unspeakable suffering and death among children in Africa...oh, well that's just 'unfortunate'.

To suggest that God doesn't intervene in order to make good good (to be contrasted with evil) is one thing, but to suggest that God does intervene and he is undoubtedly inconsistent and devilishly ignorant of the greatest sufferings is another.

Depends on what you mean by evil. I heard of a case where two parents just decided it would be entertaining to put their child in the oven until the child died, is that evil in my opinion? Of course it is. It is evil because it brings suffering (and murder) to another human being, not because of some transcendental and teleological end of the universe dictates it so, but because of the inherent evil of the act itself.

Actually they wouldn't have to because evolution theory doesn't attempt to explain that. It only explains the origin of species.

And anyway, scientists have already been able to demonstrate the formation of monomers of life in the conditions of early Earth.

I thought this video was pretty entertaining:

The reason why biologists must reiterate why evolution is correct is because there are apparently people out there that deny the evidence and need such explanations.

I'm interested in meeting a child who is able to disprove a highly accepted scientific theory. Actually I'm interested in anyone who can do that.

Alternatively, a child can point out the logical absurdities of the god-concept.

That is the worst you can dig up on the evils of science? As opposed to what? Whole peoples being slaughtered in the name of God? I'd rather have someone use stem cells to cure various killer diseases or someone to be given pleasure by a robot than for a village of men and children killed and the virgins taken as sex slaves in the name of whatever God or 'divine cause'.

And anyway, "scientists are notorious for using animals as testing"? Of course animals are used for testing all the time, but is that unethical? I'm sure you're "notorious" for eating animals. The scientific community follows strict ethical guidelines in their research; scientists who break those guidelines are very hard to come by, because even if they were able to prove something in the process of their unethical treatment of test subjects, the scientific community wouldn't take them seriously and said scientist would probably land in jail.

Well it is a stated goal of evangelism to actively attempt to convert. But I don't necessarily complain about attempted conversions, I complain about discrimination against atheists.

Why did Christians have to hassle this innocent familiy?


Or this one?


And I think you're missing the point on the Utah case. The point isn't who purchased the crosses, the point is that they're on public state property. If they had put the crosses on private property no one would have a problem about it. Anal retentive? Perhaps. But usually the law is.

Science can be used in a bad way, but it's not bad in an of itself because it has no particular biases or dogma (minus the useful and empirical scientific method), unlike religion. I think religion is inherently bad because of the stifling of critical thinking, and because of inherently bad dogmas (death to infidels, etc.).

Perhaps, but why is this topic off limits yet people have no problem in ripping each other apart when it comes to political convictions? I personally see no reason why we can't have a dialogue on religion and philosophy. In fact I think we should have dialogues in an effort to root out intolerance and misunderstandings. If you don't communicate, people will ultimately become isolated and fight with other groups.

Maybe to some people. But being kind of Socratic myself, I think it's necessary to hold discussions in order to reach the truth.

Suit yourself.

I highly agree. That's a pretty humanist perspective and I don't need to believe in the supernatural to come to the same conclusions.