Posted on 03/09/2005 1:46:32 PM PST by metacognative
Opinions
There are valid criticisms of evolution
BY DAVID BERLINSKI
"If scientists do not oppose anti-evolutionism," said Eugenie Scott, the executive director of the National Council on Science Education, "it will reach more people with the mistaken idea that evolution is scientifically weak."
Scott's understanding of "opposition" had nothing to do with reasoned discussion. It had nothing to do with reason at all. Discussing the issue was out of the question. Her advice to her colleagues was considerably more to the point: "Avoid debates."
Everyone else had better shut up.
In this country, at least, no one is ever going to shut up, the more so since the case against Darwin's theory retains an almost lunatic vitality. Consider:
• The suggestion that Darwin's theory of evolution is like theories in the serious sciences -- quantum electrodynamics, say -- is grotesque. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to 13 unyielding decimal places. Darwin's theory makes no tight quantitative predictions at all.
• Field studies attempting to measure natural selection inevitably report weak-to-nonexistent selection effects.
• Darwin's theory is open at one end, because there is no plausible account for the origins of life.
• The astonishing and irreducible complexity of various cellular structures has not yet successfully been described, let alone explained.
• A great many species enter the fossil record trailing no obvious ancestors, and depart leaving no obvious descendants.
• Where attempts to replicate Darwinian evolution on the computer have been successful, they have not used classical Darwinian principles, and where they have used such principles, they have not been successful.
• Tens of thousands of fruit flies have come and gone in laboratory experiments, and every last one of them has remained a fruit fly to the end, all efforts to see the miracle of speciation unavailing.
• The remarkable similarity in the genome of a great many organisms suggests that there is at bottom only one living system; but how then to account for the astonishing differences between human beings and their near relatives -- differences that remain obvious to anyone who has visited a zoo?
If the differences between organisms are scientifically more interesting than their genomic similarities, of what use is Darwin's theory, since its otherwise mysterious operations take place by genetic variations?
These are hardly trivial questions. Each suggests a dozen others. These are hardly circumstances that do much to support the view that there are "no valid criticisms of Darwin's theory," as so many recent editorials have suggested.
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The people he created WERE younger than the rocks.
And who knows what time means at the early stages of creation after all matter/energy/pulse/photon/etc. was flung out at enormous speeds and distances.
Are you smarter than a blind, deaf and dumb dude with a zero IQ?
but you see, dear metacognitive, he is their God
Don't pin your hopes on ID, it is doomed to fail. I'm not saying that with glee or malice. If ID begins to get a few judicial victories under its belt, the scientific community will wake up and squash it. The reason they will squash it is because ID has no basis in science. To force through the courts, something that scientists and biology instructors do not accept goes against academic freedom. In no other academic field would it be acceptable for untrained outsiders to force the professional insiders how to teach their field of study. The inmates cannot run the asylum.
There is no conflict between evolution and a belief in God. There are more effective way's to combat the moral and cultural relativism of the left than through ID.
Speaking of which - who's watching Rather in a few minutes? I got TEN BUCKS says he starts crying or foaming at the mouth! Any takers?
For God, stretching light across billions of light years of space, is like us stroking a brush across a paint canvas.
I can't tell if you mean Gish, Morris, Sarfati, Hovind, or that sneering jerk who writes Creation/Evolution Headlines.
Your definition of a 'scientific theory' includes a theory that can't be proved false and explains everything!
Darwinism is a philosophy developed to push God out and continues to attract adherents from a small minority with fantasies of magical alchemy.
Does he sure play a mean pinball?
"For God, stretching light across billions of light years of space, is like us stroking a brush across a paint canvas."
Yeah but can he make a brush so big he can't paint with it?
LOGIC - gets em every time!
Don't miss the march of the pinheads!
Couldn't piles of mud heap thousands of feet in a year of catastrophe?
HAH, HAH.....
Good one! Your to quick my friend.
Maybe some day. Humans have only been practicing science for a very short time.
Is that you, Tommy?
Weren't these evo-cultists warned not to have other gods?
I will answer your question with a question.
Where did matter come from?
The answer to your question must wait until you can ask God directly. He didn't cover that topic in His message to us.
There is an inate plan or design being carried out. That is as obvious as your observations of evolutionary change. Science does not understand the mechanism, much less the reason for these changes.
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