Evolution Critics Are Under Fire For Flaws in 'Intelligent Design'

Wall Street Journal ^ | Feb 13, 2004 | SHARON BEGLEY

[The Raven]

Even before Darwin, critics attacked the idea of biological evolution with one or another version of, "Evolve this!"

Whether they invoked a human, an eye, or the whip-like flagella that propel bacteria and sperm, the contention that natural processes of mutation and natural selection cannot explain the complexity of living things has been alive and well for 200 years.

[Stultis]

Invoking God to explain what we can't otherwise account for, he says, is "a kind of idolatry," because true faith should come from within and not because we can't fully explain the natural world.

It's long been my view, that beyond this, many versions of creationism -- including both classic "creation science" and "intelligent design" -- are deistic rather than theistic. They focus repeatedly on arguing that God (or "intelligence") must be invoked here or there, to account for some occurrence or phenomena. But the corollary to a God who is occasionally present is a God who is occasionally absent.

I prefer what might be referred to as a doctrine of "continuous creation". The creation isn't just an event that occurred back then, "in the beginning," but occurs in each and ever moment as God's investment of being upholds the world in continued existence. In fact I wonder if the relationship between God and the creation isn't even more intimate than a willful investment of the former's being into the existence of the latter. It could be that that the material world is an aspect or manifestation of God's being. IOW the world is "part of" God rather than something apart from Him.

[PatrickHenry]

For example, Harold J. Morowitz, Professor of Biophysics at Yale University ...

Why then is your buddy being mentioned on a creationoid website as being pro-evolution? Read "THE ARKANSAS DECISION ON CREATION-SCIENCE" at Institute for Creation Research.

[longshadow]

"Festival of Really, Really Big Exponents" placemarker

[tang-soo]

Why then is your buddy being mentioned on a creationoid website as being pro-evolution? Read "THE ARKANSAS DECISION ON CREATION-SCIENCE" at Institute for Creation Research.

Good question, I'm not sure. I initially heard this quote on a video produced by IRC. Maybe he still believes in extrodinary odds (grin).

[PatrickHenry]

[<1/1,000,000th%]

He arrives at a probability figure for the spontaneous formation of one complete bacterium of Escherichia coli in the history of the universe, of less than one chance in 10 to the power 100 billion.

And yet creationism requires that this be so. Evolutionary biologists do not believe that e-coli spontaneously popped into existence out of nothing.

[js1138]

It could be that that the material world is an aspect or manifestation of God's being. IOW the world is "part of" God rather than something apart from Him.

I would like to believe that God feels our pain literally and continuously, rather than in occasional photo-ops, like Bill Clinton. More than a few thinkers have suggested that God is in us.

[js1138]

I'm still waiting for a response to

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1077306/posts?page=453#453

Has our friend dropped out?

[PatrickHenry]

Ignoring evidence -- expecially evidence that contradicts them -- is classic creationoid behavior. Some call it dishonesty; but I think denial is the appropriate term.

[Virginia-American]

I agree. My problem with the theory, in general, is that is presupposes no divine intervention.

Which hardly distinguishes it from any other scientific theory.

Remember the old story:

Napoleon, after he (claimed to have) read Laplace's Mécanique Céleste

"Why didn't you mention God"

Laplace: "Sire, I had no need for that hypothesis"

[Virginia-American]

... probability figure for the spontaneous formation of one complete bacterium of Escherichia coli ... 1 in 10¹⁰¹¹

Therefore, it didn't happen that way. Are there any other possibilities?

[Doctor Stochastic]

My problem with the theory, in general, is that is presupposes no divine intervention.

Do you have the same problem with Newton's Theory of Gravity?
With Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity?
With Einstein's Generaly Theory of Relativity?
With the Debye-Huckel Theory of Ionic Solutions?
With Cartan's Theory of Differential Invariants?

None of the above presuppose divine intervention.

[donh]

To the general public, calling something a theory is as misleading as calling something a law. The law of gravity is incontrovertible but the theory of evolution is immediately assumed as an uncertainty.

Whatever is your point here? That since the public is confused about laws and theories, we should also confuse them about the nature of proof?

Which law of gravity is incontrovertable? Einstein's, Newton's, or quantum gravity?-- or the nature of the gravity hypothetically attributed to dark matter?

[Stultis]

More than a few thinkers have suggested that God is in us.

I see it (or at least suspect it may be) the other way around. God is not in us, but rather we are in God. If the physical world -- the creation -- is a manifestation of God's own Being, then it seems to me that this is the same as saying that the creation is part of God.

If one claims that the world is the full expression of God's Being, IOW that the world and God are the same thing, this is pantheism. The suggestion that the world is part, but not all, of God's Being has been called "panentheism," which literally means "all in God".

So, to reiterate, on this scheme you have three possibilities:

Theism: The world and God are separate things.
Pantheism: The world and God are the same thing.
Panentheism: The world is part, but not all, of God.

Theism can, of course, be combined with the claim that God is immanent (present) within the World. Most of those who say that "God is in us" are probably expressing a doctrine of immanence in the context of theism. This is different from panentheism.

[Stultis]

In this country, religion is taught in churches while science is taught in the schools.

That was not true from the beginning of our nation. It occurred for the first time during the middle of the last century (mid 1900's) via the usurpation of power by tyrannical judges.

Baloney. You clearly don't know your history. Evolution was first included in secondary school textbooks in the late 1800's. Specifically in a very popular and widely used botany text written by Asa Gray (who, btw, was not only one of America's most important botanists, and an early advocate of evolutionary theory, but also an evangelical Christian).

Your comments are revealing, however. Best I can tell you have in mind the Supreme Court decision Epperson vs. Arkansas (1968) which overturned laws outright prohibiting the teaching of evolution. In any event ALL the court cases from the "mid 1900's" did involve PROHIBITIONS of teaching evolution. (Litigation involving permitting the teaching of creationism only began in the late 60's in California, and didn't emerge nationally until the 70's and 80's.)

Therefore in describing this (overturning of laws prohibiting evolution) as judicial "tyranny," you suggest that you do in fact approve using the power of the state to flat-out censor theories you don't like, and that Ophiucus was on point in comparing you with the mullahs in Iran.

[Elsie]

Your dyslexia is showing............

[Elsie]

Would you accept a non-Christian nation, or are all religions equivalent in their ability to sustain a state?

 

"Blessed is the Nation whose god is the Lord...."

Psalms 33:12

 

[js1138]

I am not suggesting any particular ism. I am suggesting that God is conscious through us. I am not suggesting that God is limited to our level or kind of consciousness.

[PhilipFreneau]

>> I'm no historian, but I'll toss out China, India, Rome, Persia, the Aztecs, the Incas, Egypt, the Ottomans, the Huns.

All of these have either met their complete demise, or, in the case of China, India and Egypt have brand new governments since World War II.

Prior to World War II, India was controlled, politically, by one outsider after another from about the 8th century on, the last being the British. Egypt had a similar history to India; but outsider control started much earlier, before Christ. The British left Egypt after WWII. China had one of the leading civilizations for centuries, but it started to unravel in the 19th century. The communists took over after WWII.

The Ottoman empire was a force to be reckoned with at one time. The height of its culture was around the 16th and 17th century. It fell apart after the secularization of Turkey after WWII.

Rome was a long-standing civilization. Gibbon blamed its decline on the effects of Christianity. But modern-day historians dispute that, blaiming it on factors such as disease, invasion, famine, etc.. The major factor seemed to be the creation of a welfare state (or, more to to the point, the transfer of wealth from the countryside to the cities). Socialism, not Christianity, was the primary cause of the fall of Rome.

The Huns were more more nomadic than civilized. The Persian civilization was destroyed by Alexander before Christ. I don't recall much about the Aztecs, except for human sacrifice. The Incas had a fine civilization.

Most of those civilizations were long-lived due to isolation, or rather, the lack of competition for the resources and the people. The same for the American Indian.

Any high school kid could have named those (although they would have probably omitted the Huns, and added Japan). Now go back to my original statement and list a successful, self-sustaining secular nation with reasonable longevity.

[PhilipFreneau]

>> Has our friend dropped out?

Do you live on this board? Get a life.