All the more reason to not “take the bait” when they say that such-and-such mutation could only have happened with God’s involvement.No George.
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If by “atheists”, you mean atheists-on-this-forum, then I’d suggest that (i) the Creationists-on-this-forum tend to be sufficiently ardent in their viewpoint that, even if all the atheists disappeared in a puff of smoke, you still wouldn’t get any movement from them. (ii) That the real problem isn’t atheists providing ammunition, but the willingness of creationists to tap dance around, or even blatantly ignore, contrary evidence and logic.
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If by “atheists”, you mean atheists in the US, I’d suggest that they see the main issue as Christian Nationalism, not Christian Creationism.
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I disagree that the theists on this forum are any more “disciplined” than the atheists – they simply have somewhat different priorities, and so are perhaps more focused on emphasising areas of agreement with their creationist co-religionists.
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I also would tend to disagree that, to the degree that he “fully includes God in the mix”, Joshua is doing science. This is particularly true with GAE, which appears to me to be an exercise in apologetics rather than science. The motivation for its hypothesis is blatantly religious, and it is carefully situated such that science can do nothing to confirm nor disconfirm it. Thus, apart from its religious implications, it closely resembles Russell’s Teapot. That said, I am not against it, if it allows some Evangelicals to accept Evolution. I just don’t think that it is of much interest to those who aren’t both Biblically Inerrantist and strongly motivated to keep their views consilient with mainstream science – an intersection that would only be a small subset of either group. I am not, and never was, one of the former, so I am not its target audience.