Posted on 08/04/2005 6:47:03 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback
President Bush sent reporters into a tizzy this week by saying that he thought schools ought to teach both evolution and intelligent design. Students ought to hear both theories, he said, so they “can understand what the debate is about.”
Well, the usual critics jumped all over the president, but he’s absolutely right. Considering all competing theories was once the very definition of academic freedom. But today, the illiberal forces of secularism want to stifle any challenges to Darwin—even though Darwin is proving to be eminently challengeable.
Take biochemist Michael Behe’s argument. He says that the cell is irreducibly complex. All the parts have to work at once, so it could not have evolved. No one has been able to successfully challenge Behe’s argument.
In fact, the scientific case for intelligent design is so strong that, as BreakPoint listeners have heard me say, even Antony Flew, once the world’s leading philosopher of atheism, has renounced his life-long beliefs and has become, as he puts it, a deist. He now believes an intelligent designer designed the universe, though he says he cannot know God yet.
I was in Oxford last week, speaking at the C. S. Lewis Summer Institute, and had a chance to visit with Flew. He told a crowd that, as a professional philosopher, he had used all the tools of his trade to arrive at what he believed were intellectually defensible suppositions supporting atheism. But the intelligent design movement shook those presuppositions. He said, however, on philosophical grounds that he could not prove the existence of the God of the Bible.
In the question period, I walked to the microphone and told him as nicely as I could that he had put himself in an impossible box. He could prove theism was the only philosophically sustainable position, but he could not prove who God was. I said, “If you could prove who God was, you could not love God—which is the principle object of life.”
I admitted that I had once gotten myself into the same position. I had studied biblical worldview for years and believed that I could prove beyond a doubt that the biblical worldview is the only one that is rational, the only one that conforms to the truth of the way the world is made. But that led to a spiritual crisis of sorts, when one morning in my quiet time I realized that while I could prove all of this, I could not prove who God was. I began to worry: When this life was over, would I really meet Him?
Some weeks later, as I describe in my new book The Good Life, it hit me that if I could prove God, I could not know Him. The reason is that, just as He tells us, He wants us to come like little children with faith. If you could resolve all intellectual doubts, there would be no need for faith. You would then know God the same way that you know the tree in the garden outside your home. You would look at it, know it is there, and that’s it, as Thomas Aquinas once said.
Faith is necessary because without it you cannot love God. So as I said to Dr. Flew, if you could prove God, you couldn’t love Him, which is His whole purpose in creating you. He later told me that I have raised a very provocative point that he would have to give some thought to.
So, I hope you will pray for Antony Flew—a gentle and courageous man who appears to be seeking God. And we should remember that if this brilliant man can be persuaded out of his atheism by intelligent design, anyone can see it. Those of us contending for the intelligent design point of view, which now includes among our ranks the president of the United States, I’m happy to say, are on increasingly solid ground.
Just don't teach it in a science class, because it ain't science.
I don't mind having evolution taught next to a competing scientific theory, but no matter how scientific they make it sound, ID will never be a scientific theory. There's no way to falsify it and no related occurrences that can be tested. It's just philosophy, which is why the main source of this article is not a scientist, but a philosopher.
The day we teach solid scientific theory next to pseudoscience is a sad day for science education.
AMEN!!!
I pray for "the reestablishment of contact" daily. The world is becoming a cesspool.
The theory of evolution has BEEN falsified, repeatedly. The fact of a theory's adherents being in states of denial does not amount to an argument for the theory, and that's about the only argument anybody's making for evolution any more.
That is to assume that Karl Popper is right. But science has always progressed by steps into the dark, by leaps of faith. If you look at Darwin's "Origin of Species," you see that it is at bottom a collection of ancedotes in support of a thesis, rather than a rigorous marshalling of evidence. In fact it seemed to be in opposition to the newly minted cell theories.
But as to falsibility, all one has to do is to provide a darwinian or some other transformational mechanism to explain the phenomenon that he points out to refute him. One thing to consider: as we look at small thing things, the simple rules that operate at our everyday scale often seem not to apply. What we know depends on our powers of perception and our ability to create tools that enhance our perceptions.
no the theory of evolution is remarkably strong. It certainly hasn't been falsified!
Darwin's theory was not empirical in nature, because the evidence he presents is not the kind that is easily reproduced in a lab setting. Even his "bulldog" had misgivings about it because of this. What gave his theory celebrity was its explanatory power which his supporters quickly applied not onlto to natural history but to every aspect of human life. So we quickly get "social darwinism" and eugenics, because each serves the purposes of those who rule society. Just as Christianity was used to keep the weak "in their place",now science was used. This fact is what made William Jennings Bryan an implacable enemy of evolution. Conventional wisdom to this very day makes Bryan out to be a fool, because he resisted the claims of the powerful to a natural superiority.
God created science.
Absolutely! Faith-based chemistry, here we come!! And now we can *finally* prove how many angels can dance on the head of a pin...
Meanwhile, the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese will clean our clocks academically.
The same can be said of evolution.
Chemistry can, and does, get along fine without theology. Science would, and could, do better without the albatross of evolutionism. In fact, evolutionism does not qualify as science, but as a philosophy.
Long before the world was created there was an island, floating in the sky, upon which the Sky People lived. They lived quietly and happily. No one ever died or was born or experienced sadness. However one day one of the Sky Women realized she was going to give birth to twins. She told her husband, who flew into a rage. In the center of the island there was a tree which gave light to the entire island since the sun hadn't been created yet. He tore up this tree, creating a huge hole in the middle of the island. Curiously, the woman peered into the hole. Far below she could see the waters that covered the earth. At that moment her husband pushed her. She fell through the hole, tumbling towards the waters below.
Water animals already existed on the earth, so far below the floating island two birds saw the Sky Woman fall. Just before she reached the waters they caught her on their backs and brought her to the other animals. Determined to help the woman they dove into the water to get mud from the bottom of the seas. One after another the animals tried and failed. Finally, Little Toad tried and when he reappeared his mouth was full of mud. The animals took it and spread it on the back of Big Turtle. The mud began to grow and grow and grow until it became the size of North America.
Then the woman stepped onto the land. She sprinkled dust into the air and created stars. Then she created the moon and sun.
The Sky Woman gave birth to twin sons. She named one Sapling. He grew to be kind and gentle. She named the other Flint and his heart was as cold as his name. They grew quickly and began filling the earth with their creations.
Sapling created what is good. He made animals that are useful to humans. He made rivers that went two ways and into these he put fish without bones. He made plants that people could eat easily. If he was able to do all the work himself there would be no suffering.
Flint destroyed much of Sapling's work and created all that is bad. He made the rivers flow only in one direction. He put bones in fish and thorns on berry bushes. He created winter, but Sapling gave it life so that it could move to give way to Spring. He created monsters which his brother drove beneath the Earth.
Eventually Sapling and Flint decided to fight till one conquered the other. Neither was able to win at first, but finally Flint was beaten. Because he was a god Flint could not die, so he was forced to live on Big Turtle's back. Occasionally his anger is felt in the form of a volcano.
The Iroquois people hold a great respect for all animals. This is mirrored in their creation myth by the role the animals play. Without the animals' help the Sky Woman may have sunk to the bottom of the sea and earth may not have been created.
No. This is the kind of story that pops up when one relies upon his own imagination and experience in explaining where mankind came from and where he is going. There are many more examples one could posit, but none of them have any basis other than imagination and experience. Regardless, your example hardly addresses the issue at hand, namely the insufficiencies of evolutionism in addressing the complexities found in nature.
But not the Arabs; they are creationists.
Another day, another 10-20 threads dealing with creation versus evolution. Not a single mind will be changed doing this, yet keystokes are wasted daily.
Intelligent Design does not preclude evolution.
No. This is the kind of story that pops up when one relies upon his own imagination and experience in explaining where mankind came from and where he is going. There are many more examples one could posit, but none of them have any basis other than imagination and experience. Regardless, your example hardly addresses the issue at hand, namely the insufficiencies of evolutionism in addressing the complexities found in nature.
The difference between the creation stories I post and the bible is that the bible was written down.
Well, actually the creation stories I post were written down too, by anthropologists! And all were believed within their own cultures.
What we have here are competing creation stories. Should we not teach alternate creation stories in the interest fairness?
Name?
I have not seen or heard any suggestions that various creation stories be taught in science classes, if that is what you mean. You prefer to dredge that straw man up on a regular basis, and it simply isn't working. As far as creation accounts go, the biblical text outstrips them all both in terms of origin and content. Evolutionism has only imagination and experience to guide it as well, and thus it, too, does not belong in science classes.
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