Review of Godless -- (Centers on Evolution)

Godless: The Church of Liberalism by Ann Coulter Coultergeist A Review by Jerry Coyne

H. L. Mencken once responded to a question asked by many of his readers: "If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here?" His answer was, "Why do men go to zoos?" Sadly, Mencken is not here to ogle the newest creature in the American Zoo: the Bleached Flamingo, otherwise known as Ann Coulter. This beast draws crowds by its frequent, raucous calls, eerily resembling a human voice, and its unearthly appearance, scrawny and pallid. (Wikipedia notes that "a white or pale flamingo ... is usually unhealthy or suffering from a lack of food.") The etiolated Coulter issued a piercing squawk this spring with her now-notorious book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism. Its thesis, harebrained even by her standards, is that liberals are an atheistic lot who have devised a substitute religion, replete with the sacraments of abortion, feminism, coddling of criminals, and -- you guessed it -- bestiality. Liberals also have their god, who, like Coulter's, is bearded and imposing. He is none other than Charles Darwin. But the left-wing god is malevolent, for Coulter sees Darwin as the root cause of every ill afflicting our society, not to mention being responsible for the historical atrocities of Hitler and Stalin.

The furor caused by her vicious remarks about the 9/11 widows ("I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much.") has distracted people from the main topic of her book: evolutionary biology, or rather the pathetic pseudoscientific arguments of its modern fundamentalist challenger, Intelligent Design (ID). This occupies four of Coulter's eleven chapters. Enamored of ID, and unable to fathom a scientific reason why biologists don't buy it, Coulter suggests that scientists are an evil sub-cabal of atheist liberals, a group so addicted to godlessness that they must hide at all costs the awful "truth" that evolution didn't happen. She accuses evolutionists of brainwashing children with phony fossils and made-up "evidence," turning the kids into "Darwiniacs" stripped of all moral (i.e., biblical) grounding and prone to become beasts and genocidal lunatics. To Coulter, biologists are folks who, when not playing with test tubes or warping children's minds, encourage people to have sex with dogs. (I am not making this up.)

Any sane person who starts reading Godless will soon ask, Does Coulter really believe this stuff? The answer is that it doesn't much matter. What's far more disturbing than Coulter herself (and she's plenty disturbing: On the cover photo she has the scariest eyes since Rasputin) is the fact that Americans are lapping up her latest prose like a pack of starved cats. The buyers cannot be political opponents who just want to enjoy her "humor"; like me, those people wouldn't enrich her by a dime. (I didn't pay for my copy.) Rather, a lot of folks apparently like her ravings -- suggesting that, on some level at least, they must agree with her. And this means that the hundreds of thousands of Americans who put Coulter at the top of the best-seller lists see evolution as a national menace.

Well, that's hardly news. We've known for years that nearly half of all Americans believe in the Genesis account of creation, and only about 10 percent want evolution taught in public schools without mentioning ID or other forms of creationism. But it's worth taking up the cudgels once again, if only to show that, contrary to Coulter's claim, accepting Darwinism is not tantamount to endorsing immorality and genocide.

First, one has to ask whether Coulter (who, by the way, attacks me in her book) really understands the Darwinism she rejects. The answer is a resounding No. According to the book's acknowledgments, Coulter was tutored in the "complex ideas" of evolution by David Berlinski, a science writer; Michael Behe, a third-rate biologist at Lehigh University (whose own department's website disowns his bizarre ideas); and William Dembski, a fairly bright theologian who went off the intellectual rails and now peddles creationism at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. These are the "giants" of the ID movement, which shows how retarded it really is. Learning biology from this lot is like learning elocution from George W. Bush.

As expected with such tutors, the Darwinism decried by Coulter is the usual distorted cardboard cut-out. All she does is parrot the ID line: There are no transitional fossils; natural selection can't create true novelty; some features of organisms could not have evolved and therefore must have been designed by an unspecified supernatural agent. And her "research" method consists of using quotes taken out of context, scouring biased secondary sources, and distorting what appears in the scientific literature. Judging by the shoddy documentation of the evolution section, I'm not convinced that the rest of the book isn't based on equally shoddy research. At any rate, I won't belabor the case that Coulter makes for ID, as I've already shown in TNR that her arguments are completely bogus.

What is especially striking is Coulter's failure to tell us what she really believes about how the earth's species got here. It's clear that she thinks God had a direct hand in it, but beyond that we remain unenlightened. IDers believe in limited amounts of evolution. Does Coulter think that mammals evolved from reptiles? If not, what are those curious mammal-like reptiles that appear exactly at the right time in the fossil record? Did humans evolve from ape-like primates, or did the Designer conjure us into existence all at once? How did all those annoying fossils get there, in remarkable evolutionary order?

And, when faced with the real evidence that shows how strongly evolution trumps ID, she clams up completely. What about the massive fossil evidence for human evolution -- what exactly were those creatures 2 million years ago that had human-like skeletons but ape-like brains? Did a race of Limbaughs walk the earth? And why did God -- sorry, the Intelligent Designer -- give whales a vestigial pelvis, and the flightless kiwi bird tiny, nonfunctional wings? Why do we carry around in our DNA useless genes that are functional in similar species? Did the Designer decide to make the world look as though life had evolved? What a joker! And the Designer doesn't seem all that intelligent, either. He must have been asleep at the wheel when he designed our appendix, back, and prostate gland.

There are none so blind as those who will not see, and Coulter knows that myopia about evolution is a lucrative game. After all, she is a millionaire, reveling in her status as a celebrity and stalked by ignorazzis. I have never seen anyone enjoy her own inanity so much.

But after ranting for nearly a hundred pages about evolution, Coulter finally gives away the game on page 277: "God exists whether or not archaeopteryx ever evolved into something better. If evolution is true, then God created evolution." Gee. Evolution might be true after all! But she's just spent a hundred pages telling us it isn't! What gives? As Tennessee Williams's Big Daddy said, there's a powerful and obnoxious odor of mendacity in this room.

What's annoying about Coulter (note: there's more than one thing!) is that she insistently demands evidence for evolution (none of which she'll ever accept), but requires not a shred of evidence for her "alternative hypothesis." She repeatedly assures us that God exists (not just any God -- the Christian God), that there is only one God (she's no Hindu, folks), that we are made in the image of said God, that the Christian Bible, like Antonin Scalia's Constitution, "is not a 'living' document" (that is, not susceptible to changing interpretation; so does she think that Genesis is literally true?), and that God just might have used evolution as part of His plan. What makes her so sure about all this? And how does she know that the Supreme Being, even if It exists, goes by the name of Yahweh, rather than Allah, Wotan, Zeus, or Mabel? If Coulter just knows these things by faith alone, she should say so, and then tell us why she's so sure that what Parsees or Zunis just know is wrong. I, for one, am not prepared to believe that Ann Coulter is made in God's image without seeing some proof.

Moreover, if evolution is wrong, why is it the central paradigm of biology? According to Coulter, it's all a big con game. In smoky back rooms at annual meetings, evolutionists plot ways to jam Darwin down America's throat, knowing that even though it is scientifically incorrect, Darwinism (Coulter says) "lets them off the hook morally. Do whatever you feel like doing -- screw your secretary, kill Grandma, abort your defective child -- Darwin says it will benefit humanity!"

Unfortunately for Coulter (but fortunately for humanity), science doesn't work this way. Scientists gain fame and high reputation not for propping up their personal prejudices, but for finding out facts about nature. And if evolution really were wrong, the renegade scientist who disproved it -- and showed that generations of his predecessors were misled -- would reach the top of the scientific ladder in one leap, gaining fame and riches. All it would take to trash Darwinism is a simple demonstration that humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time, or that our closest genetic relative is the rabbit. There is no cabal, no back-room conspiracy. Instead, the empirical evidence for evolution just keeps piling up, year after year.

As for biologists' supposed agenda of godlessness -- how ridiculous! Yes, a lot of scientists are atheists, but most have better things to do than deliberately destroy people's faith. This goes doubly for the many scientists -- roughly a third of them -- who are religious. After all, one of the most vocal (and effective) opponents of ID is Ken Miller of Brown University, a devout Catholic.

The real reason Coulter goes after evolution is not because it's wrong, but because she doesn't like it -- it doesn't accord with how she thinks the world should be. That's because she feels, along with many Americans, that "Darwin's theory overturned every aspect of Biblical morality." What's so sad -- not so much for Coulter as for Americans as a whole -- is that this idea is simply wrong. Darwinism, after all, is just a body of thought about the origin and change of biological diversity, not a handbook of ethics. (I just consulted my copy of The Origin of Species, and I swear that there's nothing in there about abortion or eugenics, much less about shtupping one's secretary.)

If Coulter were right, evolutionists would be the most beastly people on earth, not to be trusted in the vicinity of a goat. But I've been around biologists all of my adult life, and I can tell you that they're a lot more civil than, say, Coulter. It's a simple fact that you don't need the Bible -- or even religion -- to be moral. Buddhists, Hindus, and Jews, who don't follow the New Testament, usually behave responsibly despite this problem; and atheists and agnostics derive morality from non-biblical philosophy. In fact, one of the most ethical people I know is Coulter's version of the Antichrist: the atheistic biologist Richard Dawkins (more about that below). Dawkins would never say -- as Coulter does -- that Cindy Sheehan doesn't look good in shorts, that Al Franken resembles a monkey, or that 9/11 widows enjoyed the deaths of their husbands. Isn't there something in the Bible about doing unto others?

The mistake of equating Darwinism with a code of behavior leads Coulter into her most idiotic accusation: that the Holocaust and numberless murders of Stalin can be laid at Darwin's door. "From Marx to Hitler, the men responsible for the greatest mass murders of the twentieth century were avid Darwinists." Anyone who is religious should be very careful about saying something like this, because, throughout history, more killings have been done in the name of religion than of anything else. What's going on in the Middle East, and what happened in Serbia and Northern Ireland? What was the Inquisition about, and the Crusades, and the slaughter following the partition of India? Religion, of course -- or rather, religiously inspired killing. (Come to think of it, the reason Hitler singled out the Jews is that Christians regarded them for centuries as the killers of Christ. And I don't remember any mention of Darwinism in the Moscow Doctors' Trial.) If Darwin is guilty of genocide, then so are God, Jesus, Brahma, Martin Luther, and countless popes.

As Coulter well knows, the misuse of an idea for evil purposes does not mean that idea is wrong. In fact, she accuses liberals of making this very error: She attacks them for worrying that the message of racial inequality conveyed by the book The Bell Curve could promote genocide: "Only liberals could interpret a statement that people have varying IQs as a call to start killing people." Back at you, Ann: Only conservatives could interpret a statement that species evolved as a call to start killing people.

Coulter clearly knows better. I conclude that the trash-talking blonde bit is just a shtick (admittedly, a clever one) calculated to make her rich and famous. (Look at her website, where she whines regularly that she is not getting enough notice.) Her hyper-conservativism seems no more grounded than her faith. She has claimed that the Bible is her favorite book, she is rumored to go to church, and on the cover of Godless you see a cross dangling tantalizingly in her décolletage. But could anybody who absorbed the Sermon on the Mount write, as she does of Richard Dawkins, "I defy any of my coreligionists to tell me they do not laugh at the idea of Dawkins burning in hell"? Well, I wouldn't want Coulter to roast (there's not much meat there anyway), but I wish she'd shut up and learn something about evolution. Her case for ID involves the same stupid arguments that fundamentalists have made for a hundred years. They're about as convincing as the blonde hair that gets her so much attention. By their roots shall ye know them.

She repeatedly assures us that God exists . . . so does she think that Genesis is literally true?), and that God just might have used evolution as part of His plan.

Intelligent design is a form of Theistic evolutionism, not literalist creationism (which is why I'm not really into ID). The only difference is that ID insists that it can be known with scientific certainty that evolution was intelligently guided. This being the case, why does Coyne imply that ID'ers don't believe that G-d used evolution?

What makes her so sure about all this? And how does she know that the Supreme Being, even if It exists, goes by the name of ---- . . . ?

I hate to break it to both Ann and Coyne, but HaShem is the Jewish G-d, not the chr*stian one (n fact, some anti-Semitic chr*stians insist that HaShem is Satan!). As a matter of fact, Genesis isn't in the Hebrew Bible, not the "new testament." So what does that do for Coyne's "people who interpret Genesis literally are anti-Jewish" line?

If Coulter just knows these things by faith alone, she should say so, and then tell us why she's so sure that what Parsees or Zunis just know is wrong.

One difference between Ann's people and the Parsees and Zunis is that if anyone attempted to teach evolution to the latter groups, Jerry Coyne and his compadres would scream bloody murder that quaint, indigenous cultures were being exterminated by hegemonic Western science and rationalism. Don't you know there's no such thing as objective truth???

::Sigh:: Darwin made G-d "unnecessary" as an explanation for the existence of the universe, and morality, by definition, is "arbitrary Divine decree, which means that if Darwinism is true then morality does not and cannot exist, however little Darwin or his disciples have written about the joys of bestial sex. Of course, there are always those addle-pated, enlightenment-addicted philosophists who believe morality is determined by a philosophical elite speculating about "the good, the true, and the beautiful" and then drawing up an imaginary "social contract" in which everyone agrees to abide by common laws for purely utilitarian purposes (and which can only be enforced, in the absence of an Omniscient Creator, by a totalitarian state). Shouldn't these people live on Laputa?

It's a simple fact that you don't need the Bible -- or even religion -- to be moral.

What kind of nudnik has a definition of morality other than "arbitrary Divine decree?"

Buddhists, Hindus, and Jews, who don't follow the New Testament, usually behave responsibly despite this problem;

Genesis isn't in the "new testament."

and atheists and agnostics derive morality from non-biblical philosophy.

Morality is determined by the decrees of the Creator and by nothing else whatsoever.

In fact, one of the most ethical people I know is Coulter's version of the Antichrist: the atheistic biologist Richard Dawkins (more about that below).

Does Dawkins submit to the decrees of the Creator? Then he can be neither moral nor ethical.

Dawkins would never say -- as Coulter does -- that Cindy Sheehan doesn't look good in shorts, that Al Franken resembles a monkey, or that 9/11 widows enjoyed the deaths of their husbands. Isn't there something in the Bible about doing unto others?

No, that's not in the Bible at all--it's in the chr*stian "new testament." So does Coyne endorse chr*stianity? I notice an absolutely maddening tendency among liberals (and evolutionists of any ideology) to utterly confuse the TaNa"KH with the "new testament." If it's in the "old testament" (jealous G-d, shepherds named Caleb, kill the heathen and enslave their women) then it's chr*stian; but if it's in the "new testament" (like, it don't matter whether or not you do all that stuff, daddy, so long as you dig everyone, man) then it's "Jewish." What is it that causes "philo-Semites" to trash the Jewish Bible and "anti-chr*stians" to constantly invoke J*sus? I thought he was the villain in their worldview? But perhaps not.

I've said it before and will continue saying it: conservative chr*stians and liberal Jews should switch religions.

Where did Coyne learn about the Bible--from Howard Dean?

One fake, all fake!

Then there are no valid creationist arguments or spokespersons. Kent Hovind alone would suffice, never mind all the pure nonsense Duane Gish, Jonathan Sarfati, Jonathan Wells, Philip Johnson, etc. have written. Never mind the remainder of your post coming up.

It wasn’t so long ago that the Coelacanth was the transitional fossil de jour...

Pamphlet nonsense, rebutted on these threads over and over. Your one fake is up.

Another blow to the Tiktaalik is the fact that the fins evolutionists claim allow it to crawl on land are not attached to the skeletal structure with bone; the connection is made with muscle.

This appears to be just wrong. Note here for instance:

Tiktaalik fits this pattern to a T. In most respects its body is fish-like: it has fins and gill arches, just like a fish. However, its skull and especially its limbs mark it as a tetrapod ancestor. Species such as Panderichthys had true fins, similar to those of modern ray-finned fishes, consisting of an array of long, thin, spindly bones unsuitable for bearing weight. On the other side of the gap is Acanthostega, with true limbs - each containing a radius and an ulna, just like our arms, and outfitted with eight true toes. Tiktaalik is intermediate between the two, with limb-like fins terminating in stubby bones that were neither fin rays nor true digits. In addition, the skull of Tiktaalik is very tetrapod-like, and notably, it has a neck. This is a tetrapod feature not found in fishes, whose skull and shoulder girdle are joined together. Tiktaalik's shoulder girdle is stout and strong, capable of bearing weight, more like a tetrapod than a fish. Its ears, too, are an intermediate characteristic. In the course of evolution, the hyomandibular bone, which in fish helps to articulate the jaw, in mammals shrank, migrated deeper into the skull and became the stapes, the "stirrup" bone used to transmit sound vibrations into the inner ear. Tiktaalik's hyomandibular bone shows this transition in progress: it has shortened like the mammalian stapes, but has not yet moved back into the skull.

From "Hello, Beautiful! Fake two.

The scientists in their verve to find a transitional fossil, ignored evidence from the natural world and basic physics when making their interpretations.

What are you talking about? You said there weren't any. Now you're doing that dishonest thing of saying, yes, they exist but it's all interpretation, you see, blah, blah, blah.

In the one case, they really don't exist. Everyone knows this and scientists are scratching their heads why not.

Now you're saying scientists AREN'T scratching their heads. They think they have the transitionals but only you know they don't.

Bait and switch. You're up to three fakes already, personally, in one post and not a single good penny.

(BTW, there aren't any good creation/ID pennies. I've been looking since early 1999 for just one.)

For years evolutionists have declared that dinosaurs evolved into birds.

Earth to bray: The evidence for that is better than ever and they still think so.

This theory took a serious hit when paleobiologist Alan Feduccia of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill challenged the conclusion.

He's a voice in the wilderness, a bit of a crackpot, but he accepts evolution. He thinks birds evolved from archosaurs along a line which left no evidence. He's ignoring all the evidence that birds evolved from theropods, which is considerable. He's been doing that for decades in the face of ever-mounting contrary evidence, something like a creatonist.

So keep throwing those phony transitional species and we will keep shooting them down. I do admire your faith though.

All bad pennies. No donut. In particular, I warned you in advance not to do the stupid bait and switch argument on whether transitional evidence exists at all. There's no stopping you from simply parroting your talking points anyway.

Worse yet, you're not a particularly egregious example of creation/ID posting. You're doing it pretty much according to the standard template.

"Neither Evolution, ID, nor Creationism is completely falsifiable. However, contrary to evo claims, both ID and Creation Science have models that do make individual predictions, which can be confirmed or falsified. Just like evolution though, the failure of one prediction, does not invalidate the theory.

Creation Theory - Predictive model
Intelligent Design - Predictive Model"

Evolution is falsifiable - it has been subjected to falsification tests such as the confirmation of the prediction of chromosomal fusion in humans, confirmation of the existence of noncoding DNA, confirmation of trilobites found in the Pre-Siluran layer, etc.

However, Creationism is not falsifiable as supernatural deities cannot be subjected to tests nor can experiments be replicated. Also, ID is non-falsifiable for it is not possible to test for a non-natural Designer.

Regarding: Creation Theory - Predictive Model

Predictions made in the model:

A) Ultimate Primal Cause of Time, Space, and Matter/Energy - God created...

B) Complexity, Variety and Adaptability in Living Organisms and Ecological Systems - Inherent and complete in original populations as created; manifested (and subject to degradation) over time through genetic variation and natural selection

C) Massive amounts of Coded Genetic Information - Inherent and complete in original populations as created; sum total has steadily declined over time via mutational degradation

D) Similarities, ranging from Genetic to Morphological, between various Organisms - Indicative of Creator’s prerogative to employ similar or identical structures or information sequences for similar structures or similar functions in different organisms

E) Billions of Organisms quickly Buried in sedimentary Rock Layers laid down by Water all over the Earth - Global Flood & aftermath

F) The Ice Age - Post-Flood climate compensation

G) Entropy Law as formalized in the Second Law of Thermodynamics - Concurs, indicating a beginning (concurrent with or close to beginning of time) followed by constant degradation

H) Apparent Order or Sequence in Fossil Record - General pattern of ecological zones quickly buried from lower to higher elevations; variations expected

I) Erratic “Ages” given by Radiometric and various other Uniformitarian Processes - Residual effect of catastrophic processes and conditions during the flood

Problems in the predictions:

A - Unfalsifiable; That God created everything is unfalsifiable and violates methodological naturalism. This is cannot be confirmed.

B - Falsified; organisms do not appear fully formed in the fossil record.

C - Falsified; genetic code is not complete and contains massive amounts of noncoding DNA, endogenous retroviruses, and pseudogenes. Also, the genomes of organisms are related and several are ancestral.

D - Falsified; The existence of noncoding DNA, pseudogenes, and endogenous retroviruses do not support creation. Also, there is no way to confirm the Creator's intentions nor is there any way to confirm a Creator. Also,

E) Falsified; Geologic Columns show no evidence of a global flood and geologic layers point to millions of years of formation due to gradualism and intermittent rapid-change.

F) Falsified; there is no evidence of a global flood and ice ages are due to a combination of the position of continental plates, changes in the Earth's orbit in Milankovich cycles, et cetra.

G) Falsified; entropy is misstated and Creation violates the 2nd Law due to the inordinate amount of free energy that does not dissipate. Also, a Creator that is supernatural is unfalsifiable.

H) Falsified; Geologic layers show formation over millions of years, not aligning itself with catastrophism.

I) Falsified; Erratic ages result due to contamination and such factors are considered during dating, as per standard practice.

Regarding: Intelligent Design - Predictive Model

A) Biochemical complexity / Laws of the Universe - High information content machine-like irreducibly complex structures are commonly found. The bacterial flagellum is a prime example. Specified complexity found in the laws of the universe may be another.

B) Fossil Record - Biological complexity (i.e. new species) tend to appear in the fossil record suddenly and without any similar precursors. The Cambrian explosion is a prime example

C) Distribution of Molecular and Morphological Characteristics - Similar parts found in different organisms. Many genes and functional parts not distributed in a manner predicted by ancestry, and are often found in clearly unrelated organisms. The "root" of the tree of life is a prime example.

D) DNA Biochemical and Biological Functionality - Increased knowledge of genetics has created a strong trend towards functionality for "junk-DNA." Examples include recently discovered functionality in some pseudogenes, microRNAs, introns, LINE and ALU elements. Examples of DNA of unknown function persist, but discovery of function may be expected (or lack of current function still explainable under a design paradigm).

Problems in the predictions:

A) Falsified; irreducible structures evolve and the bacterial flagellum is not IC; precursors of it exist and there are simpler models of the flagella that function. Complex specified information has been shown to be both mathematically and biologically unsound. Dembski used an f(x) = x graph to shown how a graph cannot gain information. However, replication increases information and selection then spreads the information across the population, which is supported by evidence.

B) Falsified; while the fossil record is necessarily incomplete, organisms do not appear suddenly. It is a lack of specific fossils as fossilization is a rare process. For example, the Cambrian explosion has complex metazoa apparently appear. However, precursors to these, the Ediacarans, have been found.

C) Falsified; ERVs, noncoding DNA, and pseudogenes show that a Designer cannot have used the same material to design multiple species. Also, that seemingly unrelated species have similar genes is predicted by common descent.

D) Falsified; the DNA does not specifically code for proteins; junk DNA was never expected to be entirely functionless, simply noncoding. Also, entire sections of noncoding DNA have been deleted in mice with no effect. Sections of noncoding DNA are corrupted replications of coding DNA, etc.

9 of the 10 Creationist predictions have been falsified and 1 was unfalsifiable. All 4 of the ID predictions were falsified.

"It can be said that the theory of evolution has been modified with "punctuated equilibrium", "convergent evolution", etc. Like evolution, neither ID nor Creation claims to have a complete understanding of everything that happened. But I would say that all three are generally complete and not tentative."

By being subject of modification, evolution is logically tentative. If you claim that neither ID nor Creationism is tentative, then they are not scientific.

"Only in the field of evolution does "naturalistic" become part of the definition of science. There are many fields of science in which "design" plays a part. Forensic sciences and geology frequently look to see if something was caused by man or was caused by other forces. So to say that in the field of life sciences, a designer cannot be considered a primary cause, is ridiculous. It's a weak attempt by evo's to narrow the scope of science until no other explanation that evolution exists, because all others have been defined away. We now have designer corn. But under your definition of science, anyone looking at a vegetable would be forced to conclude that it arose strictly from happenstance because no other explanation is defined as 'science', even thouth genetic modifications are clearly a science."

False analogy. Those are naturalistic designers, whereas the Creator and the Designer are respectively supernatural and non-natural, eliminating the capability of falsifiablity. Also, methodological naturalism applies to all sciences, not merely evolution. This assures that only natural explanations are used for natural phenomena such that those explanations may be subject to falsification. Science does not deny the existence of a supernatural but is incapable of objectively investigating it.

"Oh, like evolution makes the least assumptions possible!!!!"

You did not answer the question. Yes, evolution is parsimonious as it does not unnecessarily complicate itself nor does it make many assumptions. Perhaps the only assumption in evolution is that life exists.

Creationism/ID assume the existence of a supernatural/non-natural Creator/Designer that is not subject to falsification, logically is forced to explain ERVs, pseudogenes, and noncoding DNA as the will of the Creator/Designer, must suspend the laws of physics (in response to c-decay, entropy, ice ages, etc), etc. It is not parsimonious.

"Evolution has made many many false predictions. For example evolutionists taught us that there were something on the order of 169 vestigal organs in the human body, including the tonsils, the appendix and the tailbone. Now not one is believed to be vestigal. Evolution taught us that much of DNA is 'junk DNA'. But we now are discovering function to that 'junk DNA'.

ID and Creation do make predictions, some prove correct. And some prove false. Just like evolution."

Certainly evolution is inaccurate at times. That is why theories are tentative. However, the appendix is a vestigal organ, along with the coccyx, and the pilica semilunaris, and wisdom teeth. Junk DNA is simply noncoding; as I said earlier: "junk DNA was never expected to be entirely functionless, simply noncoding. Also, entire sections of noncoding DNA have been deleted in mice with no effect. Sections of noncoding DNA are corrupted replications of coding DNA, etc."

All of the predictions made by Creationism were falsified (only one was unfalsifiable) and all predictions made by ID were falsified. However, evolution has made risky and incredibly accurate predictions including: chromosomal fusion in humans derived from common ancestory from other great apes, location of fossils based on geologic understanding, existence of ancestral DNA, etc.

"I've already pointed out that evolution has made many false predictions. It's not "very accurate". But each time new observations are made, evolution restates itself and incorporates the new observations post humously as "predictive". Evolution didn't predict 'punctuated equilibrium', but once the fossil record did not show a continous progression like evolution predicted, the theory was modified to fit the observations. And now it's claimed that evolution predicts punctuated equilibrium, when it really did not such thing."

Certainly evolution has been wrong on accounts and is thus tentative. But it is quite accurate as discussed above. Darwin himself predicted PE as evidenced by his works. (http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~theobal/PE.html) Even then, that doesn't discredit the theory if it even was inaccurate on one matter; however, both Creationism and ID are false on key evidences they bring forth; that so many of their major predictions which form the basis of their theory are false discredits the theory entirely. They have no foundation.

"There are. Answers in Genesis posts article after article demonstrating evidence. A biased mind however, can reject those evidences. As one evolutionist on FR told me, we must have evolved because we are here. Thus when you aren't willing to consider any other possibility, evolution becomes the most likely."

AIG has been shown to be wrong all the time. They claim that the Earth is 6000 years old. Evidence points otherwise. They claim that a global flood occurred. Evidence suggest otherwise. They claim that Archaeopteryx is a bird and not evidence for dinosaur-bird transition. Analysis shows otherwise. Their evidence consists of distortions, not actual evidence.

Also, IDers/Creationists use negative arguments against evolution (misinformed albeit) and rarely put forward positive evidence. And the evidence, as shown above, consists of distortions or lies.

In summary, neither Creationism nor ID are scientific theories.

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