Evolution vs. Intelligent Design

World Net Daily ^ | August 5, 2005 | Dr. Samuel L. Blumenfeld

[wallcrawlr]

Back in 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 1981 Louisiana law which mandated a balanced treatment in teaching evolution and creation in the public schools. The Court decided that the intent of the law "was clearly to advance the religious viewpoint that a supernatural being created humankind," and therefore violated the First Amendment's prohibition on a government establishment of religion. In other words, the Court adopted the atheist position that creation is a religious myth.

In speaking for the majority, Justice William J. Brennan wrote: "The legislative history documents that the act's primary purpose was to change the science curriculum of public schools in order to provide an advantage to a particular religious doctrine that rejects the factual basis of evolution in its entirety."

Of course, no one bothered to remind the learned justice that some of the world's greatest scientists were and are devout Christians, and that it is atheism that is destroying true science, not religion. Also, Justice Brennan seemed to be totally unaware that an "establishment of religion" meant a state-sanctioned church, such as they have in England with the Anglican Church, which is the official Church of England. Belief in God is not an establishment of religion. Belief in a supernatural being who created mankind is not an establishment of religion.

Also, there is no factual basis to key tenets of evolutionary theory. The fossil record shows no intermediary forms of species development. No scientist has been able to mate a dog with a donkey and get something in between.

But homeschoolers, although not affected by what the court forces on government schools, should know how to refute the fairy tale called the Theory of Evolution. Justice Brennan called it fact, which simply indicates the depth of his ignorance.

First, what exactly is the Theory of Evolution? For the answer, we must go to the source: Charles Darwin's "The Origin of Species," published in 1859. Darwin claimed that the thousands of different species of animals, insects and plants that exist on Earth were not the works of a divine creator who made each specie in its present immutable form, as described in Genesis, but are the products of a very long, natural process of development from simpler organic forms to more complex organisms.

Thus, according to Darwin, species continue to change or "evolve," through a process of natural selection in which nature's harsh conditions permit only the fittest to survive in more adaptable forms.

Darwin also believed that all life originated from a single source – a kind of primeval slime in which the first living organisms formed spontaneously out of non-living matter through a random process – by accident.

The first false idea in the theory is that non-organic matter can transform itself into organic matter. Pasteur proved that this was impossible. Second, the enormous complexity of organic matter precludes accidental creation. There had to be a designer. There is now a whole scientific school devoted to the Design Theory. William A. Dembski's book, "Intelligent Design," published in 1999, is the pioneering work that bridges science with theology. Dembski writes:

Intelligent Design is three things: a scientific research program that investigates the effects of intelligent causes; an intellectual movement that challenges Darwinism and its naturalistic legacy; and a way of understanding divine action ...

It was Darwin's expulsion of design from biology that made possible the triumph of naturalism in Western culture. So, too, it will be Intelligent Design's restatement of design within biology that will be the undoing of naturalism in Western culture.

Dembski proves that design is "empirically detectable," because we can observe it all around us. The birth of a child is a miracle of design. The habits of your household cat is a miracle of design. All cats do the same things. These are the inherited characteristics of the species. The idea that accident could create such complex behavior passed on to successive generations simply doesn't make sense. The complexity of design proves the existence of God. Dembski also notes:

Indeed within theism divine action is the most basic mode of causation since any other mode of causation involves creatures which themselves were created in a divine act. Intelligent Design thus becomes a unifying framework for understanding both divine and human agency and illuminates several longstanding philosophical problems about the nature of reality and our knowledge of it.

Intelligent Design is certainly proven by the fact that every living organism lives through a programmed cycle of birth, growth and, finally, death. That very specific program is contained in the tiniest embryo at the time of conception. The embryo of a cow probably does not look any different from the embryo of a human being. But each has been programmed differently: one creates a cow, the other a human being.

In the case of the latter, that tiny embryo contains an incredibly complex biological program that causes the individual to be born, pass through infancy and childhood, develop into maturity, middle age, old age and, finally, death – a process that takes sometimes as much as a hundred years. How can an accident know what is going to happen 100 years after it has happened?

But since Intelligent Design infers the existence of a designer – God – it is likely that evolutionists will resist any change in their views, since the acknowledgment of the existence of God is too nightmarish for them to contemplate.

[Moral Hazard]

"The only time God identifies Himself in Scripture, He names Himself, basically, as the One Who Is."

Pretty cryptic, don't you think?

[Join Or Die]

Unless I'm mistaken, that's not the concern of an evolutionist. It's definitely not my concern.

It could be God, it could be something we don't yet know, or it could be the product of a drunken bet between a magical rabbit and his hippopontamus friend.

The point is I am not satisfied with any of the current ideas for how we got here. And I can die perfectly happy never knowing.

[bobdsmith]

It's not reproduceable in a laboratory, nor is it observable, therefore it fails the standard of empiricism and is pseudoscience at best. More accurately, it's a religion based on faith.

You are wrong. Bacterial resistance is reproducable in a laboratory. Bacterial resistance is an example of darwinian evolution. Therefore darwinian evolution is observable and reproducable.

Also were in the scientific method does it say anything abuot laboratories? You clearly don't understand this issue too well.

[Mister_Diddy_Wa_Diddy]

What about corn? I suppose you could argue it is "still grass". I would argue it is nothing at all like the original species.

Yes, corn is still grass. It is in the grass family, as well as other species of grass.

[jimmyray]

"Why did God create the appendix? "

Lack of understanding does not neccessitate the lack of need. To Wit, in the embalming process, the Egyptians discarding the brain, assuming it was worthless. For an interesting discussion of the use of the appendix, see

http://www.answersingenesis.org/tj/v3/i1/appendix.asp

Of course, this must be discounted because it came from a non-eveolutionist source, eh?

[Bigh4u2]

Not that it matters much!

"Dr. Bumenfeld graduated from The City College of New York in 1950 "

[Mister_Diddy_Wa_Diddy]

You mate a horse with a donkey to get a mule.

Horses and donkeys are in the same family.

Try mating two from distinct families. You get zippo.

[SoothingDave]

Pretty cryptic, don't you think?

Not nexessarily. But if God always is, that would certainly explain His failure to inform us in Scripture where He "came from." He didn't come from anywhere. He is.

SD

[Mister_Diddy_Wa_Diddy]

I think he was being facitious on the part about evolving from rocks, which is the logical conclusion of organic matter coming from rocks, that according to Darwinism, we evolved from rocks.

[trubluolyguy]

OMG these threads are great! My fiance says, wanna piss off both sides? Evolution or Creationism.....Prove it or shut up!

[bobdsmith]

Of course, noone seemed to see a problem when vertebrates were found in the lower Cambrian.

Because vertibrates were quite close to there beforehand. I mention mammals because the fossil evidence indicates they evolved from reptiles hundreds of millions of years after the cambrian. So clearly Evolution predicts not to find mammals in the cambrian. Therefore the theory of evolution is testable by searching the cambrian for fossils. This is just one, very specific way the theory of evolution can be tested.

Also, if a mammal were found in the lower Cambrian, would the scientific community accept it, or simply ridicule the person who found it and make ad hoc excuses for why its there?

If it was a genuine find in the cambrian they would have to accept it.

[A message]

Gotta love when micro and macro discussions meld into one discussion.

My problem is with the macro-evolutionary theory.
i.e. single cell organism(s) eventually evolved through numerous stages by random chance to become humans and other higher order organisms.
Not saying that the theory is not possible, but that the macro evolutionary theories are more plausibly explained through Intelligent Design rather than random permutations.

The fruit fly experiments can point to a validity in micro evolutions ( a term in my opinion fairly synonymous with adaptation.) But in no way can they offer proof or validity to macro evolutionary arguments based on random chance and mutation.
But then heck I'm still waiting for my lottery numbers 1,2,3,4,5,6 to be a winner. In theory it should happen someday.

[Mister_Diddy_Wa_Diddy]

You are wrong. Bacterial resistance is reproducable in a laboratory.

you are confusing evolution from mutation within a species.

I can produce resistance to antibodies in you in a laboratory too, but that does not test evolution from one species into a totally new and different phylum. It only proves that you are able to develop resistance to antibodies.

[jimmyray]

What about corn? I suppose you could argue it is "still grass". I would argue it is nothing at all like the original species.

See

http://www.trends.ca/~yuku/tran/7mz-duke.htm

Quote "But the earliest known versions of corn have far smaller ears that bear fewer and tinier kernels, providing silent testimony to the corn genome's great adaptability."

What about califlower, for that matter? What about Ligers? Pumapards? Leopons?

Proofs of eveolution, or of Biblical "Kinds". Is it possible all dogs (and big cats) came from a common ancestor - fresh off of the ark?

[Thalos]

Yes, corn is still grass. It is in the grass family, as well as other species of grass.

By your logic, we're the same as gorillas.

Anyway, we can't cross corn with rice. Wasn't that the qualification the ID folks on this thread had to distinguish "selection" from "evolution"?

[BikerNYC]

Even quantum mechanics has a cause, or else it wouldn't be.

Why? That's a very 19th Century deterministic view of the world. The idea that nothing happens without a cause simply doesn't wash nowadays.

[bobdsmith]

you are confusing evolution from mutation within a species.

That is evolution. The fact is you are attacking the theory of evolution when to be honest you really don't understand what it is or what it says. You seem to have this popular notion that evolution is one animal turning into another.

I can produce resistance to antibodies in you in a laboratory too, but that does not test evolution from one species into a totally new and different phylum. It only proves that you are able to develop resistance to antibodies.

So perhaps you should have been more specific and not broadly said "Darwinian evolution can't be tested by empiricism", because bacteria developing resistance is darwinian evolution.

[Mister_Diddy_Wa_Diddy]

Also were in the scientific method does it say anything abuot laboratories?

That was given in an earlier post. Since the rise of empirical science in the western world, being able to reproduce an experiment or observance in the laboratory has always been a standard of empiricism, for hundreds of years. That's why Darwinian evolution is not real science any more than social science or political science is real science.

You clearly don't understand this issue too well.

I understand it very well, within the parameters of real empirical science. Unfortunately, you have believe the lie of Darwinism that it is real science when it fails the standard of empiricism.