Posted on 12/09/2004 9:21:27 AM PST by Michael_Michaelangelo
Is Darwin winning the battle, but losing the war?
As soon as one challenge to the teaching of evolution is beaten in the courts, another emerges to take its place.
The current contender is “intelligent design,” a theory that according to advocates at the Discovery Institute “makes no religious claims, but says that the best natural evidence for life’s origins points to design rather than a process of random mutation and natural selection.”
(Excerpt) Read more at firstamendmentcenter.org ...
As someone who can tell the future, I predict this topic will contain childish name calling!!
Kidding. :)
D'oh. Beat me to it. Can I still be the first one to bring up Jesus and Hitler?
"The current contender is “intelligent design,” a theory that according to advocates at the Discovery Institute “makes no religious claims, but says that the best natural evidence for life’s origins points to design rather than a process of random mutation and natural selection.”
I believe in Evolution and I believe in the Bible and God. "Intelligent Design" satisfies both my beliefs.
Here's my beef with "Intelligent Design." Science starts with the questions. "Intelligent Design" starts with the supposed answer.
Not 'again', but STILL!
Feh.
Design is typically an iterative process.
I believe the scientific method starts with observation.
Not quite.
After Evolution has been given it's chance to run with the ball of 'randomness', the 'time' has expired; so a FASTER way to get ALL of this diversity we see is explained by ID.
Certain things just have to be a certain way first, or 'The rest of the Story' (as Paul Harvey likes to say) is going to be missing.
Yes you can.
What time is the next train?
It IS on schedule; right?
;^)
"Here's my beef with "Intelligent Design." Science starts with the questions. "Intelligent Design" starts with the supposed answer."
Not always so, go study the history of science. Scientists can be shockingly dogmatic about pet theories/concepts. One could say, some/many of them have almost a religious attitude towards evolution, amoung other things.
The answer to the first question is easy: of course we do. Scientists control the scientific literature, and we decide whether to accept the credentials of those who wish to be included in our community. Attempts to force an extraneous agenda on the scientific community have always failed. When Stalin tried to suppress Darwinian ideas, he failed; all he managed to do was destroy Russian genetics research and kill another million people or so. When the Church tried to suppress heliocentrism, it failed; astronomical research merely migrated to countries where the Church held no sway. Ideologically based attempts to suppress genetic research on race and gender in the last 20 years fell prey to the rapid pace of genomics.
No school board or religiously run University can give scientific legitimacy to ID; the only legitimacy it could ever possess has to be earned, and ID is not earning it.
The second question - can people with an ideological agenda take control of the scientific curriculum out of the hands of scientists? - is harder. The answer is that probably in the short term they can. The results will be a weakening of already tottering science education in the US, and a brewing fight when scientists like myself decline to accept the credentials of students educated according to unscientific curricula. However, in my opinion, ID is destined to lose, because while it can be forced into schools; while it might even be forced into a couple of the more religiously oriented universities (like Baylor) it can't be forced into the hearts and minds of the scientific community. And those institutions which embrace creationism will simply be excluded from the body of the scientific community.
The problem is that those two things are mutually exclusive. As your post said, Evolution is a process of random mutation and natural selection rather than a specific design.
But I still share your belief that there is no conflict between Genesis and Evolution. It's just that I think God created the very concept of "randomness" and "natural selection" at the core of Evolution. No conflict.
The Discovery Institute lost their earlier attempt to make a living promoting "Creationism" which ignored scientific evidence entirely. Now they've modified their stance enough to appear "scientific", and are having better luck forcing schools to include ID which basicaly claims that they have scientificly "proven" the existence of God via the creation of the earth.
That's where they loose me, because science can't be used to prove any diety. That might be nice, but sorry, it just doesn't work that way.
Ping
OK. If Darwin is a crackpot, and living things do not evolve, then please explain why we now have anti-biotic resistent bacteria.
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