One interesting thing about the ID vs. evolution debates going on in school councils and courts right now is the utter reluctance of the Darwinists to even consider anything but their own theory as true. They won’t even let Darwinism be questioned.
When ID people say that evolution is only a theory and therefore liable to questioning, they retort by saying that gravity and quantum mechanics are technically also theories, and they are being proven every time you stick in a CD, or drop a ball to the ground. They say that evolution is a theory in the same sense. The first statement is true, but the major difference between quantum mechanics and evolution is that we see gravity and quantum mechanics being worked out day by day. But no one has ever seen evolution take place, either presently or in the fossil record. Evolution and Intelligent Design have to do with origins science, which you cannot observe in the present. In other words, you cannot observe them and conduct experiments according to the scientific method on them. Yes, they say that they see traces of evolution everywhere, but I see traces of Intelligent Design everywhere by a Supreme Creator. It all depends on your worldview.
The “scientific community” is doing essentially the same thing to ID that they did to Galileo in the early 1600s. Shut the guy down, burn his books, and threaten all those who follow his idea. All this because the view does not conform to accepted scientific fact of the time. When an editor of a scientific journal published an article with the conclusion of possible intelligent design, he was promptly fired. Why? Not because his facts were wrong, but because the idea of a creator scares the secular mind.
April 10th, 2006 at 6:09 pm
“Intelligent Design” is not even a “theory” in the usual sense.
A theory is something more along the lines where you say, “I bet if I put a burning match in that swamp gas I’m going to get carbon dioxide and water.”
Of course you can subsquently run an experiment and measure out what you get on the other end and prove that you made CO2 and H2O.
Evolution of course is a little different problem, but the “big picture” seems to be roughly correct.
One - we have produced new plant species in the lab.
Two - the BIG overall fossil record and current families of organisms show this really wild stuff called blue-green algae that goes back billions and billions of years and has elements of the other major families - bacteria, plants/animals, etc., and as you get into younger and younger rocks you start seeing big plants and animals when the oxygen level rose high enough about 600 million years ago, then you see fish, then amphibians, then reptiles, then birds and mammals, then primates, and so on.
In fact, there are many “ID” organizations that don’t even question WHAT happened - only HOW and WHY.
And, yes, particularly the question of “why” is best left to clergy and philosphers.
And, I think it is a foregone conclusion that if there was a “watchmaker” of sorts in charge of all this, we are staggeringly arrogant to think that we can figure out PRECISELY what such an entity might be up to …
April 10th, 2006 at 11:16 pm
The main reason that the evolutionists are so adamant about defending their theory is because of the nature of the theory itself. Since conventional scientific methods do not apply to evolution (supposedly it is so slow that we cannot run tests to show that it is a reality, as alluded to by Althusius), evolution’s existence is less like a theory and more like a philosophical or religious view or an endless search for evidence that supports the hypothesis (going off of the premise that it cannot be proven). Keep in mind that i don’t think that it is impossible (hypothetically) for evolution to be proven. For instance, REAL missing links and conclusive evidence for beneficial mutation would be a good start. Nothing of this sort, however, has been found.
The main point of evolution (why so many people support it) is because of its implications - no creator, therefore no all-powerful authority over the universe and no controlling purpose for our lives. It scares people to consider that there is a real meaning to life. They would rather speculate and say that there is no answer. People like relativity and objectiveness better than absolutes. In this way, evolution represents more of a world view than a scientific theory. Evolution will never completely die- it will just take on other forms. Actually, if the growing evidence against evolution discovered my microbiologists and others (e.g., the impossibility of beneficial mutation) is not enough to make the evolutionists reconsider, what will? Maybe evolution cannot really be fought since it is just a shell to cover the biases and fears of society at large.
April 11th, 2006 at 3:59 pm
You’re right Axinar, that ID is not a very good theory because it doesn’t explain WHAT actually happened, just that we see evidence of some superior intelligence. But the essence of ID is scietists who don’t believe in Christianity, but want to believe in creation because evolution doesn’t make any sense. As Supero said, the idea of an all-powerful God scares them.
Your number two fact about evolution has one major flaw: It assumes that the rock layers where those organisms were found are really that old. There is ample evidence that those dating metods are flawed. However, it does make sense that those organisms would be in that order if there was a global flood that “shook every thing up.”
If you want to know what God is up to, read the Bible, that’s what its about.
October 25th, 2006 at 8:36 pm
[…] They also won’t admit clearly that science is deeply wrong sometimes, and they never tie previous errors to the fact that science could be deeply wrong today. I noticed that the geologists of the period quickly dismissed Bretz because of his views of a “biblical” sized flood (which everyone obviously knows is completely impossible). The evolutionary community is dismissing creationism today in the same type of way. The evolutionists need to consider seemingly “far-fetched” ideas again and look at the world around them. Oh wait, that’s actual science. […]