Posted on 03/07/2009 4:26:11 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
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The next for consideration is Jonathan Wells and his Icons of Evolution. A stinging critique of ten familiar textbook evidences for evolution, Wells’ book provoked shrill cries of dismay from Darwinists, including Jerry Coyne and Eugenie Scott. Wells’ reply is highlighted as a rhetorically powerful rebuttal in which he catches his critics in scientific carelessness and in the debate tactic of ‘shifting the goalposts’. An example is the issue of embryonic homology—the Darwinian claim that embryos in various vertebrates look alike at various stages of development, and that this indicates common ancestry. Wells pointed out the extensive dissimilarities between embryos, blowing the traditional textbook image out of the water. Coyne argued that if only Wells understood their evolutionary history, then he would see the differences as evidence for evolution. This is shifting the goalposts, and as Wells remarked,
So let me get this straight. Some of the strongest evidence for Darwin’s theory is that vertebrate embryos are most similar in their early stages—except that they’re not. But if we just interpret the embryos’ dissimilarities in the light of Darwin’s theory, they then have “evidential value”. … Darwin’s theory wins no matter what the evidence shows’ (quoted p. 94).
Woodward reviews in detail the arguments of Wells, Stephen Meyers and others based on the fossil record. The debate focuses on the Cambrian explosion and the lack of evolutionary ancestors, and Woodward notes that this is just the very visible tip of a very large iceberg of recalcitrant fossil issues for the evolutionists. A delicious irony Woodward points out is that though the Darwinists have always said that the fossil record problems would decrease as more fossils are uncovered, the situation on the Cambrian is worse now that it was just a few years ago for the evolutionists...
(Excerpt) Read more at creation.com ...
ping!
Countdown to the Darwin attack..........
The Science of Intelligent Design is sort of like the Moderate Taliban or the fiscally conservative Democrat — a great hypothesis that happens not to reflect anything close to reality.
The title is erroneous. Intelligent Design is about supernatural gobbledygook, not science.
You apparently have not studied the subject very carefully.
Quote from Coyne on old thread!
ML/NJ
Then why are the Evos constantly telling us that the Universe is not what it seems?...That it is really a master of illusion that dupes us into seeing design, when in reality it is merely a slight of hand (so to speak) that gives “appearance” of design?
Yeah, right. Ontology recapituates phylogeny. Evolutionists rejected that idea a century ago. Sheesh.
Evolution could still be true while Darwin is false. The problem then would be that there is no scientific theory to account for it.
Basically all the I.D. people have to do is to falsify neo-darwinism. They don’t have to create a new paradign.
I still miss Patrick Henry.
“Gravitation is a theory, not a fact. It should be approached with an open mind.”
That one chunk of matter attracts another chunk of matter is observable fact. That its cause is “bent space” or “an exchange of particles” is theory.
Kneejerk true-believers in Darwinism love to assert that Darwinism is no longer a theory, but is as factually well established as quantum mechanics. Unfortunately for them, we never hear groups of quantum physicists asserting that quantum mechanics is no longer a theory, but is as well established a fact as Darwinian evolution.
We don’t hear them say that for good reason: they’re too smart to say something so stupid and so untrue.
Quantum mechanics is no longer merely a theory because it has been experimentally verified to fourteen decimals. Does Darwinian evolution have any observation, any experiment — ANYTHING — that remotely approaches that sort of precision?
The short answer is “No.”
The longer, more nuanced answer is “No.”
Everything in science is open to revision — Newton, Einstein, Darwin — all of it. The desire to hold one causal explanation for a set of phenomena as “unquestionably true for all time” and “established beyond all reasonable doubt for all time”, as the Darwinists want to do with their theory of random mutation plus natural selection, is unscientific.
That Darwinists also permit no questioning of their explanation by threat of force via the courts, is both unscientific and immoral.
Darwinists are not trying to protect the sanctity of science, as they claim. They are protecting a worldview that denies the existence — or even the possibility — of “Mind” in “Nature.” If they are Moderate Materialists, they will deny the existence of Mind in Physical Nature, but admit its existence in human beings (and, to a lesser extent, other animals); if they are fully consistent, Radical Materialists, they will deny the existence of Mind altogether, and will embrace some form of behaviorism in their psychological views.
Even a hardcore Darwinist like Richard Dawkins admitted in Ben Stein’s documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” that humans could have been intelligently designed by, e.g., space aliens — he won’t rule out the possibility. However, for him, the space aliens themselves must have been intelligently designed by earlier space aliens, who themselves must have been intelligently designed by still earlier space aliens, etc. He balks at the infinite regress involved in the way he thinks about the process. What he objects to, even more than the infinite regress, is any sort of non-material, “supernatural” explanation for anything that might have started the process — a “prime mover” — God.
While many in the intelligent design movement believe in God, not all do; what unites them is the understanding that living things have solved certain problems to come into existence; problems that could not have been solved by any sort of random process.
Beautiful answer. Thank you.
“Darwinists” don’t stop questioning at all. The court thing is about curriculum. Intelligent design is, at best, an expose of the weaknesses of evolutionary theory. ID only offers a black box as an alternative.
Gee look, another creationist writes a book for the masses that merely picks at bits of pieces of biology, some of it very old and long ago dismissed. Not one shred of actual science or work or even a hypothesis or prediction.
Does this not bother creationists in the least? Are they under the assumption that science is done through popular media?
Darwinism has so many holes in its theory that calling it a theory gives it too much weight. The problem is that there is no end to end substitute for it. So they will cling to it regardless. Once ID can provide the methodology used and how it progressed, it will have a real shot at sending Darwinism to the dust bin of history.
One key fact: It is not survival of the fittest! It is survival of the sufficient. You must run just fast enough to catch the slowest of the prey. You must be just strong enough to dethrone the weakest leader.
Everything in science is open to revision — Newton, Einstein, Darwin — all of it. The desire to hold one causal explanation for a set of phenomena as “unquestionably true for all time” and “established beyond all reasonable doubt for all time”, as the Darwinists want to do with their theory of random mutation plus natural selection, is unscientific.
That Darwinists also permit no questioning of their explanation by threat of force via the courts, is both unscientific and immoral.
Yup...everytime the theory is questioned it resembles more cult than theory. EVERY criticism is attacked as a religious insult to science or flat out anti-science.
And there’s plenty of empirical evidence on this site alone that those that scream with their hair on fire “inquisition, theocracy and burnings at the stake” everytime someone so much as sneezes toward Darwin’s direction, (while lecturing others about what is or isn’t “real” science), the less these people know what science is or isn’t and don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.
They also show a profound ignorance of Christianity, but that’s another subject.
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