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Replying to Purple Knight in post #195]
Yes, of course. Apart from JW's claim that nature shows a creator (name your own god and even religion and denomination, even if one accepted the claim) which is merely based of arguable to dubious as in ID claims (1) as well as dishonest ones, like a JW at the door claiming 'No Transitional fossils' which is cunning and crafty as no transitionals claimed to be found is not the same as all transitional fossils denied.
But you are correct is not being diverted into ID when it is God not making his moral intentions clear and common to all. True we have remarkably similar morals and customs, which can be explained by social instincts, especially when the mirals and custons do diverge in significant way, and sometimes for environmental reasons. (2)
(1) like the painter, which is merely the Watchmaker in another form. The watchmaker fails because if we see a watch lying in the grass we identify it as man made and the grass is not. So why do we hear the argument that the grass is made by God just as the watch is made by man?
The painting would be like we came across it hung on a tree. We would know it was manmade because we know about these things. But it isn't so easy. There is a example of a body of water. Was it natural or man -made? Not always easy to tell. Remember the Cydonia face on mars, where it looked man made? Investigation shows that was a mistake. There is also an example in Daiiniken, I believe of a rock face that looks like a face. Claimed to be man -made, but no reason to think it is and also there is the 'Golgotha' mound, which I gather was part of a quarry outside the walls just before Jesus' time, and weathered into a skull shape in the 19th c as was claimed as 'Golgotha'. I gather it is weathering again and no linger looks like a skull.
So natural or man made is not so easy to tell.
(2) I'm struck by the 'harem instinct'. Like it or not, man is instinctively programmed to spread his gene pool. Cultures have found ways of enabling this to be done, and never mind One man and one woman. While this tended to be limited to the wealthy and powerful, in old China, multiple wives and a few concubines were the norm. So what of the god -given morality not getting through? Cue the 'garbled radio message' excuse. But I read (I may check this) of a Tibetan custom where the women had multiple male partners as an adaptation to the local conditions. Now there's social evolution in action.
https://www.tibettravel.org/tibetan-peo ... tibet.html
cue: "obviously they need the word of God - send missionaries!'.
