> dhw: As for the course that has led us to our current positions, we have indeed come from opposite directions. I have always thought deeply about these matters ever since childhood, and am fully aware of the possibility that I think too much. (That may need explaining, but it's a subject in itself.) Initially I was very religious, in my teens I began to question and became an atheist, and on reading Darwin became an agnostic. I too am “strongly committed to a self-educated point of view”, and opened this website in the hope of enlightenment. Thanks to you and other contributors, I have certainly found plenty of light, but so far it has only lit the way to an impenetrable darkness. However, I love the light, and am not afraid of the dark.-I'm delighted with others to have led you into the darkness with all the information I have unearthed after becoming committed to Theism from earlier research. I will keep trying to show you the light through scientific research.

dhw:The surprising thing is how often you present us with information which lends itself to a very different interpretation from your own. But that is often the case when someone has preconceived ideas: they automatically select the pros, and seem to miss the cons. The latter usually underlie my own contribution to the scientific areas of our discussions, the intelligent cell being a prime example.-You have my developed ideas backwards. I was a lazy agnostic after medical school. Lazy in the sense that I had not done any deeper thinking than religion is boring and science will in time probably explain everything, a thought based on how well medical training was explaining the human biology. Then I began to read lay science reviews of the latest discoveries in particle physics and cosmology and surprisingly the Big Bang theory read like the first few chapters in Genesis. I had just written my book on American politics and discussed with my editor doing something on a comparison of the BB and Genesis as a piece of evidence there might be a God. He told me to check out Darwin's theory of evolution. I found it to be totally wanting, and also found a book by a Ph.D. theoretical physicist who also was an Orthodox Jewish scholar of the OT. He had done the comparison of the BB and the first chapters of Genesis, and I was now fully convinced there was a God. What you see from me does not come from an original preconception. I am strongly committed to a self-educated point of view.


> DAVID: Thanks again for another wonderful article. No wonder dhw and I keep at it, but I think have taught him a great deal, even if I can't convince him. 
> 
> dhw: David has indeed taught me a great deal. (Pssst, he may have learned a few things from me, but please don't tell him - he likes to think he knows it all.) -George's article tells us that philosophy may have advanced our ways about thinking about deeper truths, but we are still at Aristotle's level, and in comparison, I find the same result in noting that you are still on your picket fence, unable to reach conclusions. And more surprising, the experts you throw at me are generally from information I have presented to you.- As an example of experts disagreeing, global warming comes to mind: alarmists and deniers. Please keep in mind there is room for both. I am on the side of the deniers who in a nuanced fashion point out there is certainly current warming from the previous Little Ice Age (1450-1800)but no need for extreme alarm over the small possibility of excessive warming since the actual temperatures don't fit any of the predictive alarmist models.

I enjoyed reading this and thought you might like it too.
> 
> http://commons.pacificu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1396&context=eip-
&... Thanks again for another wonderful article. No wonder dhw and I keep at it, but I think have taught him a great deal, even if I can't convince him.