[beyond the sea]

500 years ago science revolted against theological dogma as the source of all knowledge. Today it is science that is trying to assume the mantle of the sole arbiter of truth. On magazine covers such as this month's National Geographic and in legal battles across the country, the scientific community has become absolute in its belief that evolution will answer all of the questions regarding our beginnings.

Evolution answers many questions about the continuousness, "progress" and changes of life forms through time, but nothing about the "beginnings". There should be no arguement.

Case closed.

[tkathy]

Hopefully the liberal birth rate will continue to plummet. That should prove some kind of Darwinism.

[Jim Noble]

Natural selection to explain interspecies variation has indeed become dogma.

If it were a theory, it should be debatable and testable.

Cellular evolution is demonstrable by simple high school experiments. Intraspecies variation from environmental pressure (the finches) is likewise trivial to demonstrate.

Interspecies mutational change driven by environment, OTOH, lacks both a biologically plausible mechanism AND physical evidence that it has ever happened.

This, of course, does not falsify it. But it DOES make its enthronement as dogma unscientific.

[helmetmaker]

Was Darwin wrong? No.

Was Darwin incomplete? Yes.

Does science deprive man of spirituality? No.

Intelligent Design = magic

Does a belief in magic = spirituality? No.

C'mon. Believing the magic hypothesis answers nothing and certainly doesn't make you right, religious, or scientific.

[Pitiricus]

Well science is right... And only literalists (and contrarily to what is said Orthodox Jews aren't literalists) believe it is wrong...

The funny thing is that the literalists that think that Genesis is true don't understand symbols...

So the answer is, the evolution theory is as true as Newton's laws of gravity and as true as any scientific theory is...

[A. Pole]

Bump

[Wonder Warthog]

More creationist drivel. The folks who write this stuff simply do NOT understand what science is and how it works.

"Intelligent design" is not, and will never be, science. The minute you assume a designer, you move outside the boundaries of science into metaphysics (or, as another poster put it----"magic").

And no, Virginia, believing that evolution happened and that intelligent design is bullshit does NOT deprive the scientist of spirituality.

[BibChr]

Heretic!

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

"Why are there so many antievolutionists?' they ask impatiently. Why indeed?

IMO it's because members of the atheist religion have attempted to use evolutionary arguments to undermine the faith community (or people of the book in PC). The reaction of the faith community has been to attack the science.

[MEGoody]

"They have become so dogmatic that anyone who questions this belief is considered a heretic who should be ridiculed into silence."

Well, they attempt to ridicule into silence. They don't seem to have been very successful.

[Trinity_Tx]

"500 years ago science revolted against theological dogma as the source of all knowledge. Today it is science that is trying to assume the mantle of the sole arbiter of truth. On magazine covers such as this month's National Geographic and in legal battles across the country, the scientific community has become absolute in its belief that evolution will answer all of the questions regarding our beginnings. They have become so dogmatic that anyone who questions this belief is considered a heretic who should be ridiculed into silence."

Sheesh. Was this writer competing for the "How much nonsense can one pack into a single paragraph" award?

You'd think he'd at least try to sneak up on ya with it after he'd gotten your interest with a halfway rational beginning.

[Oztrich Boy]

why would the venerable National Geographic entertain (even rhetorically) the apparently foolish question 'Was Darwin wrong?"

A homage to Chas. Darwin's literary style.

[Silent major]

ping

[jackbill]

There is an interesting critique of the National Geographic article at:

http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2292&program=CSC%20-%20Views%20and%20News&callingPage=discoMainPage

By the way, I looked up the author of the NG piece and it appears that he doesn't have any college degree - he's a writer, period.

[Buggman]

Thanks for posting this, Lindykim. The last few lines pretty much sum up what I've been arguing on FR for years:

To say that evolution has not answered all the scientific questions regarding our origins does not suggest you have to teach creationism in schools as a scientific theory. What should be taught is an honest assessment of what science does and does not know regarding our beginnings. The questions regarding our origins are too big for science alone to answer. People of faith should not allow themselves to be relegated to an anti-science position for questioning Darwin. Questioning the validity of theories is what science is supposed to do.

[jennyp]

These Discovery Institute op-eds just write themselves nowadays, don't they?The DI must have a bot that compiles a new op-ed from their Big-Database-o-Talking-Points.

[betty boop]

The truth is not that Bryan was wrong about the dangers of the philosophical materialism that Darwinism presupposes but that he was right, not that he was a once great man disfigured by fear of the future but that he was one of the few to see where a future devoid of the transcendent would lead....

Good arrticle, Lindykim. Thanks! BTTT!!!

[IonInsights]

Has Darwin Become Dogma?

No, just scientific fact.

[Tribune7]

good column bump

[chitownfreeper]

Oh, pleeeeeze. This sort of crap just makes us look bad.