Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: xenophiles

You’re talking about indirect evidence. Evolution is a theory about a PROCESS, not the current (testable/falsifiable) DNA in lizards today or fossils deposited in the past. As a process that hypothetically takes millions of years, unless humanity lives for a few more millions of years (and keeps a constant state or progress of civilization, observation, and records), or develops a time machine, one cannot observe the process happening. Do organisms mutate, adapt and change? Of course, no one denies that as it’s testable and falsifiable. But do they change for the better by progressively becoming more complex? In spite of thousands of studies on fruit flies, bacteria and the like, I know of no study that proves that...

This idea is not original to me. Dr. Norman Geisler, a respected conservative philosopher, brought this out: Since both creationist AND evolutionist hypotheses are about the distant and pre-historic past, which as the past is NOT subject to falsifiable experimentation and testing, theories need to be kept more humbly and without dogmatism. The fact is, neither you nor I KNOW what happened millions of years ago—since all we have is bones and layers of dirt—so are ideas are testable only in a most indirect way, and it’s sheer arrogance to profess that we do or even can know any pre-history for certain.

If legitimate historians argue about how Custer lost the Battle of Little Bighorn, a bit over a century ago, in an era of written records, and lots of forensic evidence and even eye witnesses, why do we have such overconfidence to describe events many million more times farther away?

To posit a bottom line that random processes made the Universe, and even more fantastically, that these made the scientifically proven unimaginable complexities of organic life, is, at its core a religious, albeit materialistic, faith. Even some great evolutionary scientists have acknowledged this problem (Jasper and the pan-spermia idea—which merely puts origins somewhere else, not solving the problem). Lacking that time machine, origin issues are, by their very nature religious issues, and scientific knowledge, like religious knowledge, but in different ways, is limited.

I simply don’t have enough faith to believe order “arose” from disorder, especially when a scientifically accepted law (and testable/falsifiable) on energy (2nd Law of Thermodymics) says just the opposite. Order arose from an Orderer...and is that religious? Yes, it is where religion and science meet, as there logically they must.


86 posted on 07/05/2008 10:40:59 AM PDT by AnalogReigns (Philosophies of science have a religious foundation.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 66 | View Replies ]


To: AnalogReigns
All right, your philosophy is that any event that occurs without a human witness is unknowable. Fine. (I suspect that the reason you purport to trust witness' reports more than evidence is so that you won't have to believe in evolution, but never mind.) Doesn't it strike you as a little bit strange that I can make these predictions and be right time after time? If I'm not working from a theory that makes accurate, testable predictions (albeit with a model that you consider pure fantasy) then I must be on an amazing lucky streak.

And I'll just point out a few of your misconceptions in passing (not that I think it'll do any good).

...do [organisms] change for the better by progressively becoming more complex?

Evolution makes no such claim.

..the past is NOT subject to falsifiable experimentation and testing...

Yes, it is.

To posit a bottom line that random processes made the Universe...

This has nothing to do with evolution (and I doubt it's even meaningful).

I simply don’t... believe order “arose” from disorder, especially when a scientifically accepted law (and testable/falsifiable) on energy (2nd Law of Thermodymics) says just the opposite.

The physicist's 2nd Law of Thermodynamics ("The entropy of an isolated system does not decrease.") concerns isolated systems, which Earth's biosphere is not. The creationist's 2nd Law of Thermodynamics ("Everything gets more disorderly... or something.") is pseudo-scientific drivel.

How about this: if I discover something new about nature, I won't call that God, and if you believe something on religious grounds, you don't call that science. All right?
119 posted on 07/05/2008 9:45:36 PM PDT by xenophiles
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 86 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson