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Intelligent Design Is Creationism in a Cheap Tuxedo
Physics Today ^ | July 1, 2002 | Adrian L. Melott

Posted on 07/01/2002 7:25:44 AM PDT by aculeus

My deliberately provocative title is borrowed from Leonard Krishtalka, who directs the Natural History Museum at the University of Kansas. Hired-gun "design theorists" in cheap tuxedos have met with some success in getting close to their target: public science education. I hope to convince you that this threat is worth paying attention to. As I write, intelligent design (ID) is a hot issue in the states of Washington and Ohio (see Physics Today, May 2002, page 31*). Evolutionary biology is ID's primary target, but geology and physics are within its blast zone.

Creationism evolves. As in biological evolution, old forms persist alongside new. After the Scopes "Monkey Trial" of 1925, creationists tried to get public schools to teach biblical accounts of the origin and diversity of life. Various courts ruled the strategy unconstitutional. Next came the invention of "creation science," which was intended to bypass constitutional protections. It, too, was recognized by the courts as religion. Despite adverse court rulings, creationists persist in reapplying these old strategies locally. In many places, the pressure keeps public school biology teachers intimidated and evolution quietly minimized.

However, a new strategy, based on so-called ID theory, is now at the cutting edge of creationism. ID is different from its forebears. It does a better job of disguising its sectarian intent. It is well funded and nationally coordinated. To appeal to a wider range of people, biblical literalism, Earth's age, and other awkward issues are swept under the rug. Indeed, ID obfuscates sufficiently well that some educated people with little background in the relevant science have been taken in by it. Among ID's diverse adherents are engineers, doctors--and even physicists.

ID advocates can't accept the inability of science to deal with supernatural hypotheses, and they see this limitation as a sacrilegious denial of God's work and presence. Desperately in need of affirmation, they invent "theistic science" in which the design of the Creator is manifest. Perhaps because their religious faith is rather weak, they need to bolster their beliefs every way they can--including hijacking science to save souls and prove the existence of God.

William Dembski, a mathematician and philosopher at Baylor University and one of ID's chief advocates, asserts that: " . . . any view of the sciences that leaves Christ out of the picture must be seen as fundamentally deficient."1 Whether or not they agree with Dembski on this point, most Americans hold some form of religious belief. Using what they call the Wedge Strategy,2 ID advocates seek to pry Americans away from "naturalistic science" by forcing them to choose between science and religion. ID advocates know that science will lose. They portray science as we know it as innately antireligious, thereby blurring the distinction between science and how science may be interpreted.

When presenting their views before the public, ID advocates generally disguise their religious intent. In academic venues, they avoid any direct reference to the Designer. They portray ID as merely an exercise in detecting design, citing examples from archaeology, the SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) project, and other enterprises. Cambridge University Press has published one ID book,3 which, the ID advocates repeatedly proclaim, constitutes evidence that their case has real scientific merit. ID creationist publications are nearly absent from refereed journals, and this state of affairs is presented as evidence of censorship.

This censorship, ID advocates argue, justifies the exploitation of public schools and the children in them to circumvent established scientific procedures. In tort law, expert scientific testimony must agree with the consensus of experts in a given field. No such limitation exists with respect to public education. ID advocates can snow the public and school boards with pseudoscientific presentations. As represented by ID advocates, biological evolution is a theory in crisis, fraught with numerous plausible-sounding failures, most of which are recycled from overt creationists. It is "only fair," the ID case continues, to present alternatives so that children can make up their own minds. Yesterday's alternative was "Flood geology." Today's is "design theory."

Fairness, open discussion, and democracy are core American values and often problematic. Unfortunately, journalists routinely present controversies where none exist, or they present political controversies as scientific controversies. Stories on conflicts gain readers, and advertising follows. This bias toward reporting conflicts, along with journalists' inability to evaluate scientific content and their unwillingness to do accuracy checks (with notable exceptions), are among the greatest challenges to the broad public understanding of science.

ID creationism is largely content-free rhetoric. Michael Behe, a biochemist at Lehigh University and an ID proponent, argues that many biochemical and biophysical mechanisms are "irreducibly complex."4 He means that, if partially dismembered, they would not work, so they could not have evolved. This line of argument ignores the large number of biological functions that look irreducibly complex, but for which intermediates have been found. One response to Behe's claims consists of the tedious task of demonstrating functions in a possible evolutionary path to the claimed irreducibly complex state. When presented with these paths, Behe typically ignores them and moves on. I admire the people who are willing to spend the time to put together the detailed refutations.5

The position of an ID creationist can be summarized as: "I can't understand how this complex outcome could have arisen, so it must be a miracle." In an inversion of the usual procedure in science, the null hypothesis is taken to be the thing Dembski, Behe, and their cohorts want to prove, albeit with considerable window-dressing. Dembski classifies all phenomena as resulting from necessity, chance, or design. In ruling out necessity, he means approximately that one could not predict the detailed structures and information we see in biological systems from the laws of physics. His reference to chance is essentially equivalent to the creationist use of one of the red herrings introduced by Fred Hoyle:

A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there?6 Having dispensed with necessity and chance, Dembski concludes that design has been detected on the grounds that nothing else can explain the phenomenon--at least according to him.

Of course, design has no predictive power. ID is not a scientific theory. If we had previously attributed the unexplainable to design, we would still be using Thor's hammer to explain thunder. Nor does ID have any technological applications. It can be fun to ask ID advocates about the practical applications of their work. Evolution has numerous practical technological applications, including vaccine development. ID has none.

As organisms evolve, they become more complex, but evolution doesn't contravene the second law of thermodynamics. Dembski, like his creationist predecessors, misuses thermodynamics. To support the case for ID, he has presented arguments based on a supposed Law of Conservation of Information, an axiomatic law that applies only to closed systems with very restricted assumptions.7 Organisms, of course, are not closed systems.

ID's reach extends beyond biology to physics and cosmology. One interesting discussion concerns the fundamental constants. There is a well-known point of view that our existence depends on a number of constants lying within a narrow range. As one might expect, the religious community has generally viewed this coincidence as evidence in favor of--or at least as a plausibility argument for--their beliefs. The ID creationist community has adopted the fundamental constants as additional evidence for their Designer of Life--apparently not realizing that many fine-tuning arguments are based on physical constants allowing evolution to proceed. Physical cosmology is largely absent from school science standards. Where present, as in Kansas, it is likely to come under ID attack.

I have only scratched the surface here. Don't assume everything is fine in your school system even if it seems free of conflict. Peace may mean that evolution, the core concept of biology, is minimized. No region of the country is immune. Watch out for the guys in tuxedos--they don't have violins in those cases.

Adrian Melott is a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. He is also a founding board member of Kansas Citizens for Science.

Letters are encouraged and should be sent to Letters, Physics Today, American Center for Physics, One Physics Ellipse, College Park, MD 20740-3842 or by e-mail to ptletter@aip.org (using your surname as "Subject"). Please include your affiliation, mailing address, and daytime phone number. We reserve the right to edit.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

References 1. W. Dembski, Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Theology, InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Ill. (1999), p. 206. 2. See http://rnaworld.bio.ukans.edu/id-intro/sect3.html. Another source is http://www.sunflower.com/~jkrebs/JCCC/05%20Wedge_edited.html 3. W. Dembski, The Design Inference: Eliminating Chance through Small Probabilities, Cambridge U. Press, New York (1998). For a review by W. Elsberry, see http://inia.cls.org/~welsberr/zgists/wre/papers/dembski7.html. 4. M. Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Free Press, New York (1996). 5. See http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/catalano/box/behe.htm. See also http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/behe.html 6. F. Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, New York (1983), p. 18. 7. W. Dembski, No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, Md. (2002).


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Government
KEYWORDS: adrianmelott; crevolist
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To: That Subliminal Kid
ID still allows for evolution,

I would disagree with that. The evolutionary process is totally happenstance, not organized. If something was designed it could not have arisen in an disorganized way. Evolution and ID are mutually exclusive.

501 posted on 07/03/2002 9:11:41 PM PDT by gore3000
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To: PatrickHenry
Science deals only with verifiable data. This limits science to dealing with nature, and within that limitation, science has been able to describe the world and provide natural (and testable) explainations for natural phenomena. If there is a super-natural agency lurking in the background, science is incapable of observing it, testing it, probing it, etc.

It may not be able to test non-natural phenomena, but it can detect its existence. We know there is thought, though we cannot touch it, feel it or make love to it. We know there is love, though it has no materiality. We know there is such a thing as conscience, though we cannot measure it. In fact, science even knows about the power of faith and recognizes its value. That is why doctors will encourage the patients to get well. They know that faith in that they can be healed, faith in wanting to continue to live, faith that their prayers will be answered, is often more powerful than any medicine they can administer. In fact, the power of faith is so much recognized by science that before a new drug is allowed to be called effective, it must pass a test where a control group is told that they are getting the drug when all they are getting is sugar pills.

502 posted on 07/03/2002 9:23:17 PM PDT by gore3000
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To: That Subliminal Kid
How does ID prohibit you or anyone else from studying the development of life from a naturalist point of view? It isn't like someone's going to make a new law saying you can't continue to study the way you want.

Excellent point. And it shows exactly why evolution is not science. Science is about seeking the truth. Evolutionists only seek confirmation of their philosophy and seek to bar others from investigating other avenues of inquiry. The behavior of evolutionists is not that of science, which always welcomes new ways of thinking, new questions, new ideas. Their behavior is that of ideologues who seek to control others and forbid them to follow any path but their own.

503 posted on 07/03/2002 9:28:29 PM PDT by gore3000
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To: PatrickHenry
The ID advocate, however, is content to halt the search at a convenient place -- such as right now -- and declare that not only is there no natural explanation at this time, but that there will never be one.

Totally untrue. ID seeks to find the connections amongst different parts of an organism. This is science. In fact, for the last hundred years, that is about all that biological science has been looking at - the interconnections between different systems in the body, different cells, different genes, different bits of DNA. The evolutionists however, deny these interconnections because they cause problems for their random theory. A thoroughly interconnected organism cannot arise through random means because no part is impervious to all the other parts. Therefore gradual change in such an organism would be impossible as Darwin himself admitted in the Origins when he said:
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. "
From: Charles Darwin, "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life", Chapter 6.

In a biological system in which each part is both affected by every other part and affects every other part, gradual, haphazard modification is utterly impossible. The discoveries of science have all shown that ID's theory is correct. The human body and that of other creatures is indeed totally interconnected. Therefore ID is the way to scientifically explore biology. So it is evolution and its silly reductionist theory that is not science, and that is why evolutionists want to make sure no one hears about ID.

504 posted on 07/03/2002 9:52:27 PM PDT by gore3000
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To: PatrickHenry
the cumulative effects of mutation and natural selection can account for the presently-observed diversity of life on earth

Actually no. This is the problem with natural selection being the agent of diversity: natural selection is a killer. All it does is kill mistakes, it destroys variety, it destroys genes, traits, etc. It does not creat any. In other words it is more like the grim reaper than a creator. Which brings me to another point about evolution. Evolutionists seem to be the only people that assert (and with a straight face!) that 4 - 2 = 6. They are the only people that say (more than that, they insist) that you can add to something by taking away things from it.

as well as the fossil record of life in prior eras.

Aah, the fossil record! What a marvelous thing! The first human descendant not so long ago was a face which was more plaster than bone. The first primate nowadays is two ankle bones and a lower jaw discovered decades before a thousand miles away. The first mammal is again a lower jaw and some crushed bones conveniently plastered together. This is some fantastic proof! Of course they cannot tell us if any of these 'proofs' had the same DNA as others in their supposed 'evolutionary tree' because of course DNA does not survive that long. They cannot tell us what their brains were like either, whether they were cold blooded or warm blooded, what they ate, how they behaved, whether they were smart or dumb, whether they had mammary glands, whether they could talk or any of the numerous very important things which could show descent. The fossil record is therefore nothing more than fairy tales for atheists.

505 posted on 07/03/2002 10:08:24 PM PDT by gore3000
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To: supercat
Of course, in many cases Mendel's understanding of genetics and the effects of recessive genes is a more important consideration, but from what I understand it is Darwinian mechanics that exposes the risk of captive-breeding programs that select against traits that are needed in the wild.

Not at all. Essentially there is no Darwinian mechanics. What evolutionists do is once a discovery is made, they say it was predicted by evolution. There is nothing in evolutionary theory that would predict that inbreeding is bad. In fact, Darwin was so wrong, that he thought he could get rid of genetic diseases by killing the victims of those diseases. Actually, Mendelian genetics tell us that if one wishes to rid the world of such diseases in such a horrible way, what one needs to do is to kill the carriers - the parents whose genes when joined together bring out these recessive horrible genetic diseases. Note, that I am not advocating such a thing, but Darwin did indeed advocate the killing of the victims of genetic diseases.

506 posted on 07/03/2002 10:17:07 PM PDT by gore3000
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To: supercat
The animals on either side of the divide would become more specialized as a result of separation from former predators. Such speciailization is not a matter of addition or subtraction, but rather substitution.

You do not understand. For man to have descended from a bacteria, you need additions, not deletions or substitutions. This is the problem with evolution and with natural selection, it cannot account for such additions. There is no agent to accomplish such additions. Evolution requires the creation of new faculties, genes, traits.

the fact that counterexamples have not been discovered provides strong evidence that they cannot be numerous.

Examples contrary to evolution are indeed known: euglena and the platypus, two creatures which could not have descended from any other species. Check it out. However, what is worse for evolution, is that no examples of transformations of one species into another more complex one have ever been discovered.

507 posted on 07/03/2002 10:26:02 PM PDT by gore3000
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To: supercat
This is what is colloquially called "micro" evolution. The species doesn't turn into what is clearly something else.
508 posted on 07/03/2002 10:35:25 PM PDT by HiTech RedNeck
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To: gore3000
And still you refuse to see. Take a quarter out of your pocket (again!) and start flipping (again!). Each flip equals one child. Heads they're unmutated, tails they got the mutation. Flip it ten times. How many tails (mutations) did you get (pass on)?

No Jenny, it is you who refuses to see. What matters is not how many children the person who has the child produces, it is the differential between how many children that person and the rest of the population produce that is the problem for transmission. Unless the mutation gives a tremendous advantage to the procreation of the individual - right away - it is almost impossible for it to beat the odds of 50%.

How big is your family? Mine is four. 50% of four is 2. If my dad had a neutral mutation, he would have passed it on to two of us on average. What was in one, is now in two.

Is 2 > 1? Or is 2 < 1?

Remember the old Alberto VO5 commercial? "Tell two friends, and they'll tell two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on..." Pretty dumb marketing idea, isn't it? To think that continually going from 1 to 2 could actually increase the number of people infected with the Alberto VO5 meme!

509 posted on 07/04/2002 12:35:54 AM PDT by jennyp
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To: gore3000
And still you refuse to see. Take a quarter out of your pocket (again!) and start flipping (again!). Each flip equals one child. Heads they're unmutated, tails they got the mutation. Flip it ten times. How many tails (mutations) did you get (pass on)?

No Jenny, it is you who refuses to see. What matters is not how many children the person who has the child produces, it is the differential between how many children that person and the rest of the population produce that is the problem for transmission. Unless the mutation gives a tremendous advantage to the procreation of the individual - right away - it is almost impossible for it to beat the odds of 50%.

How big is your family? Mine is four. 50% of four is 2. If my dad had a neutral mutation, he would have passed it on to two of us on average. What was in one, is now in two.

Is 2 > 1? Or is 2 < 1?

Remember the old Alberto VO5 commercial? "Tell two friends, and they'll tell two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on..." Pretty dumb marketing idea, isn't it? To think that continually going from 1 to 2 could actually increase the number of people infected with the Alberto VO5 meme!

510 posted on 07/04/2002 12:37:06 AM PDT by jennyp
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To: PatrickHenry
Blue-skipping placemarker.
Wildly eliptical placemarker.
1^720 placemarker.
Nobel Prize for biology placemarker.
All discoveries disprove evolution placemarker.
DNA disproves evolution placemarker.
The fossil record disproves evolution placemarker.
Nobel Prize for creationism placemarker.

[Note to moderator: there are no personal attacks in this post.]

511 posted on 07/04/2002 4:19:46 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
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To: supercat
Lesser gravity, or denser atmosphere?

The thicker atmosphere hypothesis doesn't work for several reasons. Before the teratorn and Texas pterosaurs were discovered people used to think the pterodactyl at 35 - 50 lbs was the largest flying or gliding creature which was possible because careful calculations indicated that even a pure gliding creature would snap its wings in turns at anything more than 50 lbs. That would, of course, just happen faster in thicker air, assuming the creature was able to breathe the thicker air and not burn up.

The bone fragments they have for the Texas pterosaurs by the way indicate wing spans of 60'; nonetheless, the aeronautic engineering dept. at UT would not allow Wann Langston to put them on display that way and forced him to limit the reconstructions to 40' wingspans, basically saying something like 'you're making us look stupid enough even at 40' since even that for a flesh and blood creature was impossible by any rational standards.

512 posted on 07/04/2002 4:31:31 AM PDT by medved
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To: forsnax5
Interesting but irrelevant for obvious reasons, not the least of which is the need to haul those stones over distance. Picture doing that with oxen or even elephants and ropes; I mean, you'd have to get all the animals to pull at the same time and just hard enough not to ever snap any one rope. That's just a big joke.
513 posted on 07/04/2002 4:35:46 AM PDT by medved
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To: medved
Interesting but irrelevant for obvious reasons, not the least of which is the need to haul those stones over distance.

Just as your picture of a stone that has never moved is irrelevant to the possibility that gravity has changed over time.

Picture doing that with oxen or even elephants and ropes; I mean, you'd have to get all the animals to pull at the same time and just hard enough not to ever snap any one rope. That's just a big joke.

Well, the three stones that form the base of the temple were certainly moved. I don't have enough details to suggest a probable method, but this strikes me as one of those things that involves clever uses of levers, inclined planes, block-and-tackle rigging, etcetera.

Humans are pretty ingenious, and I'm sure the solution wasn't arrived at (or executed) in a day.

Changing gravity as a solution has its own problems. And even if gravity was cut in half, that's still a 600 ton monolith...

514 posted on 07/04/2002 6:58:38 AM PDT by forsnax5
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To: medved
... careful calculations indicated that even a pure gliding creature would snap its wings in turns at anything more than 50 lbs.

Having spent 10 years flying sailplanes (gliders) as a hobby, I can tell you that this is not correct. A coordinated turn (and birds are much better at this than human pilots) at normal cruising speeds induces very little stress in the airframe.

Sure, it's possible to make hi-G turns that will snap the wings. Birds that encountered those limits wouldn't live to reproduce. Birds that grew to 200 pounds like your Teratornis were probably not doing snap rolls.

If your 50 pound limit were correct, then gravity would have to have been less that a quarter of what it is now.

... saying something like 'you're making us look stupid enough even at 40' since even that for a flesh and blood creature was impossible by any rational standards.

A 40-foot wingspan is about seven feet larger that a Cessna 150. The Cessna has about 10-pound wing loading at a maximum weight of 1600 pounds. The pterosaur you describe probably has a wing loading of less than 1 pound. The thing would float like a kite and have very little penetration (that is, it would accelerate very slowly and encounter very low-G forces in turns).

Lower the gravity to one fourth of the current value and the thing would need to carry rocks to be able to maneuver...

515 posted on 07/04/2002 7:35:57 AM PDT by forsnax5
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To: PatrickHenry
I totally disagree. The mechanisms of evolution -- mutation and natural selection -- are supported by abundant evidence. I know of no species which is immune to these influences. Over time -- lots more time than the "young earthers" will admit -- the cumulative effects of mutation and natural selection can account for the presently-observed diversity of life on earth, as well as the fossil record of life in prior eras.

Maybe I missed a great scientific breakthrough, but I am unaware of any empirical evidence which shows that genetic variation and natural selection alone are capable of going from zero biological information to all the wide and varied biological information we see today. Perhaps you can point me to a reference? Please note (again) that I have never said that genetic variation and natural selection don't occur. I agree, there is abundant evidence that they are real phenomena. So what? Where is the empirical evidence of their creative power?
516 posted on 07/04/2002 9:47:40 AM PDT by That Subliminal Kid
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To: gore3000
Evolution is genetic variation and natural selection over time. Those are obvious facts of reality. I and other ID proponents who are read on this subject do not question them. We question their creative power, and are asking for evidence that they are capable of generating new specific and complex biological information. I've never seen any. I've seen lots of conclusions based on data, but of course conclusions are always based on a set of philosophical presuppositions about reality. These presuppositions themselves cannot be empirically verified.
517 posted on 07/04/2002 9:49:57 AM PDT by That Subliminal Kid
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To: gore3000
I think Evolution is quasi-science. Much of it cannot be subjected to the scientific method, and indeed a general concept of natural evolution cannot be falsified. I don't really regard "Evolutionists" as my enemy or as someone who has some dark alterior motive. I regard them as people who are unfortunately unable to see the blinders that a strictly scientific philosophy puts on a person. Science is a wonderful thing, but concluding that science has a monopoly on reality is patently absurd. I'm constantly amazed when I see people touting natural evolution as "fact" when the facts they are pushing are merely conclusions founded upon a philosophical presupposition which itself is unverifiable. Recognizing the inherant limitations of science is something I think everyone would be wise to do.
518 posted on 07/04/2002 9:55:28 AM PDT by That Subliminal Kid
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To: That Subliminal Kid
Maybe I missed a great scientific breakthrough, but I am unaware of any empirical evidence which shows that genetic variation and natural selection alone are capable of going from zero biological information to all the wide and varied biological information we see today. Perhaps you can point me to a reference?

From zero? No, I can't do that. The means by which naturally-occuring organic compounds drifting in earth's early oceans eventually combined to become self-replicators, and eventually living cells, is not yet known. Evolution begins at the point when simple living organisms already exist.

Please note (again) that I have never said that genetic variation and natural selection don't occur. I agree, there is abundant evidence that they are real phenomena. So what? Where is the empirical evidence of their creative power?

I'm confused about what you're asking. You seem to agree that mutations occur. I'm confident that you agree with the concept of natural selection -- that in every generation, the better adapted, stronger, least sickly individuals are likely to be the ones who breed the next generation. So what is it that you're missing?

519 posted on 07/04/2002 10:01:04 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
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To: That Subliminal Kid
I don't really regard "Evolutionists" as my enemy or as someone who has some dark alterior motive.

I agree with most of what you say, but I strongly disagree with the above. Many people say they believe in evolution just to get along. They really could care less either way so just mouth it because others say it. However, there are many evolutionists, who definitely have an atheist agenda and promote evolution in order to attack religion and promote atheism. This is easily evident on these threads where you see many evolutionists when the argument starts going against them begin to bash Christianity. In fact their term 'creationism' is an insult to Christianity. Christians believe in a Creator, not in creationism. Christianity is a religion, not an ideology as evolutionists try to paint it.

520 posted on 07/04/2002 11:10:13 AM PDT by gore3000
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