Shame shame blacknad for writing:
"Evolutionists ... cannot help but talk in terms of 'purpose' no matter how much they try."
I don't try because it is unnecessary. There is no purpose to the universe. Not to the galaxies, the stars they contain, the molecules, atoms, force fields, planets, meteors, grains of sand, or those all so self-important two legged lifeforms on the third spinning rock orbiting Sol. If you are looking for purpose you need to find it inside of yourself.
blacknad asks:
"Einstein talked of 'God not playing dice' - it has to be asked (as the philosopher Mary Midgley rightly does), why would such a great man find the need to use such words to describe a purely material phenomena? He would not have uttered them without choosing them carefully and would have been well aware of their connotations."
Because he was (A) human and (B) raised in a Jewish family in accordance with Judiasm. Had he been raised a Hindu or in Japan with Shinto or in an animist society he'd have said something different. No physicist I have ever met has attributed meaning to that statement other than as a metaphor in the same way that many of us refer to the Higg's Boson as the 'God Particle'. Why don't you pray to the Higg's? Why doesn't anybody? Because the statement is harder to misconstrue.
blacknad wrote:
"I concede that it is overall a weak point but it does interest me."
good.
blacknad wrote:
"We cannot describe objective existence without these words with their subjective overtones."
Neither can we divorce ourselves from the cultures in which we were raised. When I suggest that someone "go to hell" I am most definitely not in doing so suggesting that such a place exists.
Blackad wrote:
"2. When we look at a painting by one of the great masters we are awed and moved emotionally. This is more akin to the religious experience of worshipping the designer behind the design."
Some react that way to Picasso. Some react that way to The Grateful Dead. I happen to like the works of the masters just as I like the work of J.S. Bach. But that says something about the artist ... not his inspiration. Van Gogh cut off his ear. He was a certifiable nut case. That doesn't affect how I react to his art. You are trying to paint the target after the arrow was shot.
blacknad wrote:
"I submit that it is clearly not irrational to believe in a designer."
Only if you posit that the designer was irrational. Male polar bears do not breast feed.