[Tonio]

Originally Posted by This_person

In that it is completely inexplicable. Now you don't see it, now you do. Something more significant than a chemical reaction HAD to account for it, in my opinion.

What you mean by "significant"?

When one is faced with an unexplained event, saying something like "Oh, it must have been the work of gods" is a non-answer. That is like attempting to solve an algebra equation by making up values for X and Y.

Originally Posted by This_person

We were created with free will, not a subservience to a religion.

Some schools of Christian thought reject free will in favor of predestination. Both positions almost certainly rest on assumptions, although the latter seems to involve a few more. My point is that anyone can present any claim about the nature of supernatural beings and there is no way to test such claims.

Originally Posted by This_person

While you may think the assumption baseless, the people who believe it thiynk it's not. I think you find it baseless because there's not yet been a provable essance to it - like science's views on the origins of life.

The assumption is baseless because the proponents started with another assumption - the existence of a single god - and attempted to marshal evidence to support that assumption. That stands the scientific method on its head. What ID does is stack assumption onto assumption like a Jenga game. The strongest explanations are the ones that involve as few assumptions as possible.

Originally Posted by This_person

I agree, it's not proof of either side (any of the religions nor science). It just continues to find scientific evidence in support of what was said thousands of years ago about the origins of the planet, lending credence to other claims.

First, the scientific theories about the universe's origin have some resemblance to many religion's myths. Genesis has no valid claim of specialness. Second, no modern scholars claim that the Trojan War grew from a dispute over which goddess was the fairest, even though there is evidence for the war itself. There's no reason to treat the Bible any differently. With any historical and cultural artifact, separating the supernatural claims from the historical claims is a necessity. It's not an all-or-nothing proposition.

Originally Posted by This_person

I agree, it does not prove it. It merely suggests that these are not just "stories" out of people's need to be told stories, but there is some truth to them.

I agree that these weren't merely exercises in storytelling. The likely origin is that these arose out of a desire to have explanations for natural events, before the development of the scientific method. This is even more obvious in the Greek and Norse myths.