And you consider the article above to be logical? If so, I'm staggered.
Now, I would have to agree that the theory of evolution, like all scientific theories, is a work in progress. There is no end of the road in science as the quest for knowledge is never ending. It is just not a legitimate criticism of scientific knowledge to say that it is incomplete.
Yet, the theory of creationism is also "full of holes", that is to say that it fails to explain, in any way other than the circular, HUGE elements of the real world as we find it. It is not enough to say that "God just made it that way." That is not an adequate answer.
Yet, on threads like these, that argument is the one that is always resorted to. And always by people who have no trouble tossing the entire body of scientific research into the evolution of life on earth on the trash heap because some issue or another remains unexplained in full detail.
It's basically dishonest.
And your theories are what? The primordial soup coded and manufactured the just right media for life and animated it on the one planet with life sustaining abilities? Not just once but with multiple species and self sustaning sexual modifications to propagate? You actually believe this? The acceptance of creation is so much more likely and believable by such a large magnitude, it's hardly worth the effort.
The article isn't about creationism. It is essentially about the defeat of TOE by ID.
Many of the people described in the article are scientists who have become "people who have no trouble tossing the entire body of scientific research into the evolution of life on earth on the trash heap."
I'm staggered that you're staggered.
You are correct in that science cannot abide such a lame explanation as "God just made it that way".
But if he DID just make it that way, it wouldn't really matter that it isn't a satisfying scientific explanation.
Creation is by its very nature an extra-scientific event. But it doesn't claim to be anything else. Evolution on the other hand makes the scientific claim, and therefore must be measured on that basis.
There are those who argue for "scientific creationism", but they don't mean that the act of creation is scientific (which really confuses the issue). They mean that the evidence of history which is discovered through observation is not inconsistant with whatever view of creation they are peddling.
But the detective work of divining history through observation is not the same "science" as the "scientific theory" of evolution. Which in fact is a theory with widespread evidence,observable and repeatable. It's just that the "scientific theory of evolution" describes a natural process, not an historical event. Historical events are not scientific theories.
If we could distinguish between history and science, and teach stuff in the proper context, I imagine most "creationists" would crawl back into their spiritual worlds and leave the rest of you alone. They have a point -- no matter how well you can 'explain' observations by the evolutionary model, and no matter if you can find fossils which fit a historical hypothesis that is consistant with an evolutionary model, you simply cannot prove the manner in which we reached our current state of affairs.
Part of the problem is that those who wanted to be free from religion co-opted the science of evolution to use it as a hammer to smash the pillars of religion. The "God is Dead" crowd made a religion out of the science of Evolution, and it was inevitable that those who held to other doctrine would fight back. Science simply was caught in the crossfire.
A very important implication of DNA study is its proof of the unique individuality of every person. I wonder why this has not become an important part of pro-life discussions. They would then not be discussing something abstract called life, but a singular, irreplacable person which begins to exist when the DNA does. Individual worth has been undermined by Marxist thought that considers people as faceless members of classes, and you can see that this is often the basis of what democrats say.
I think the fundamental issue is not that it is incomplete but that it is fundamentally flawed in explaining the rise of complexity. Dr. Behe in Ithaca readily assented that some Darwinian mechanisms - like selection pressure - can be easily shown to exist, but they have very limited scope. The fundamental issue is that these cannot adequately explain the rise of irreducibly complex biochemical structures and processes - so complex that they won't work if one element is missing. But Darwinian approaches must insist that they developed incrementally, piece at a time. But since Darwinian processes have no foresight, it canot be "known" that there is an advantage to begin developing a complex system ("trust me, you'll need this protein synthesis gene sequence later!"). Each step (the genetic blueprint and the resulting biochemical product and process) must arise RANDOMLY, and at each step these structures/products must confer an adaptive advantage (or at least no disadvantage). Then, after countless generations, the last step/structure develops, the new biochemical machine can start up, and run, and confer an adaptive advantage? To quote Vizzini in The Princess Bride, "Inconceivable!" Yet this is exactly the foundation on which modern Darwinism stands. And the increasing unveiling of the complexity of the genome compounds the issue.
I remember sitting in college biochemistry listening to DNA replication mechanisms being explained. In high school we were told the DNA strands magically unfold, more DNA floats in, lines up, and voila, a perfect copy. Sorry - more complex. In real life a biological machine (an enzyme, a hunk of protein) slides along a chromosome, snipping the DNA strand in half. Another one works its way along the chromosome, piecing in new matching components according to the prescribed base-pairing. Finally, another enzyme works along the chromosome to CHECK the pairing. If it finds an error, it seeks to snip out the bad acid and bring in a correct one. But the really flooring fact is that this checking enzyme has steric structure ("handedness")- it can only read and fix in one direction. One one side of the chromosome it can work fine, but on the other, it has to back up two bases, then read ahead one, back up two, read ahead one. Remember, this all just happened. And it had to happen early on, as part of the genetic replication machinery essential to all life.
Yet, the theory of creationism is also "full of holes", that is to say that it fails to explain, in any way other than the circular, HUGE elements of the real world as we find it. It is not enough to say that "God just made it that way." That is not an adequate answer.
Indeed - it is intellectually lazy to rest there, I agree. But as regarding current Darwinist thought , Behe suggested pursuing inquiry solely along lines tainted with fatal logical flaws will ultimately go nowhere.
Yet, on threads like these, that argument is the one that is always resorted to. And always by people who have no trouble tossing the entire body of scientific research into the evolution of life on earth on the trash heap because some issue or another remains unexplained in full detail. It's basically dishonest.
See above comment. What is fundamentally dishonest is the position of the mainstream scientific establishment, assuring the general public that the overall pattern of evolution is proven, and there are just a few details to work out. I was at a university forum where a retired professor (not of biology) referred to the "proven facts" of evolution. A renowned and uniquely honest professor of evolutionary biology stood up to rip that guy's statement to shreds. He said, to paraphrase, "I was a graduate student during the great evolutionary synthesis of the 1960's, and nothing we thought true then is thought true any more ... We still don't have ONE good example of speciation!" [the divergence of a single species into two].
To see how thin the ice has often been, read "Of Moths and Men" (check Amazon or google it - I forget the author). Written by a non-creationist, it shows how contrived the famous "pepper moth" experiments (industrial melanism) were that you read about in high school (Hint: in real life the moths never land on sooty tree trunks but on leaves). No one has ever been able to replicate the claimed selection advantage, but they have become mythic in more ways than one. You will also read about what happens when even committed Darwinists stray too far off the plantation.
It's not that some issue or another remains unexplained in full detail.
It's that the FUNDAMENTAL concept of Evolution is so uterly and obviously incapable of producing the complexity of life.
No matter how loudly you decry our insistence that God designed and formed the universe and everything in it ... it is still enescapable that as a darwinian evolutionist you still believe in spontaneous generation. How silly.