Posted on 06/17/2002 3:10:50 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
Opponents of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up
When Charles Darwin introduced the theory of evolution through natural selection 143 years ago, the scientists of the day argued over it fiercely, but the massing evidence from paleontology, genetics, zoology, molecular biology and other fields gradually established evolution's truth beyond reasonable doubt. Today that battle has been won everywhere--except in the public imagination.
Embarrassingly, in the 21st century, in the most scientifically advanced nation the world has ever known, creationists can still persuade politicians, judges and ordinary citizens that evolution is a flawed, poorly supported fantasy. They lobby for creationist ideas such as "intelligent design" to be taught as alternatives to evolution in science classrooms. As this article goes to press, the Ohio Board of Education is debating whether to mandate such a change. Some antievolutionists, such as Philip E. Johnson, a law professor at the University of California at Berkeley and author of Darwin on Trial, admit that they intend for intelligent-design theory to serve as a "wedge" for reopening science classrooms to discussions of God.
Besieged teachers and others may increasingly find themselves on the spot to defend evolution and refute creationism. The arguments that creationists use are typically specious and based on misunderstandings of (or outright lies about) evolution, but the number and diversity of the objections can put even well-informed people at a disadvantage.
To help with answering them, the following list rebuts some of the most common "scientific" arguments raised against evolution. It also directs readers to further sources for information and explains why creation science has no place in the classroom.
1. Evolution is only a theory. It is not a fact or a scientific law. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
2. Natural selection is based on circular reasoning: the fittest are those who survive, and those who survive are deemed fittest. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
3. Evolution is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable. It makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be re-created. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
4. Increasingly, scientists doubt the truth of evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
5. The disagreements among even evolutionary biologists show how little solid science supports evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
6. If humans descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys? [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
7. Evolution cannot explain how life first appeared on earth. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
8. Mathematically, it is inconceivable that anything as complex as a protein, let alone a living cell or a human, could spring up by chance. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
9. The Second Law of Thermodynamics says that systems must become more disordered over time. Living cells therefore could not have evolved from inanimate chemicals, and multicellular life could not have evolved from protozoa. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
10. Mutations are essential to evolution theory, but mutations can only eliminate traits. They cannot produce new features. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
11. Natural selection might explain microevolution, but it cannot explain the origin of new species and higher orders of life. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
12. Nobody has ever seen a new species evolve. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
13. Evolutionists cannot point to any transitional fossils--creatures that are half reptile and half bird, for instance. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
14. Living things have fantastically intricate features--at the anatomical, cellular and molecular levels--that could not function if they were any less complex or sophisticated. The only prudent conclusion is that they are the products of intelligent design, not evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
15. Recent discoveries prove that even at the microscopic level, life has a quality of complexity that could not have come about through evolution. [Rebuttal omitted to save space. See the original article.]
CONCLUSION
"Creation science" is a contradiction in terms. A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism--it seeks to explain the universe purely in terms of observed or testable natural mechanisms. Thus, physics describes the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy, and it tests those descriptions experimentally. Physicists introduce new particles, such as quarks, to flesh out their theories only when data show that the previous descriptions cannot adequately explain observed phenomena. The new particles do not have arbitrary properties, moreover--their definitions are tightly constrained, because the new particles must fit within the existing framework of physics.
In contrast, intelligent-design theorists invoke shadowy entities that conveniently have whatever unconstrained abilities are needed to solve the mystery at hand. Rather than expanding scientific inquiry, such answers shut it down. (How does one disprove the existence of omnipotent intelligences?)
Intelligent design offers few answers. For instance, when and how did a designing intelligence intervene in life's history? By creating the first DNA? The first cell? The first human? Was every species designed, or just a few early ones? Proponents of intelligent-design theory frequently decline to be pinned down on these points. They do not even make real attempts to reconcile their disparate ideas about intelligent design. Instead they pursue argument by exclusion--that is, they belittle evolutionary explanations as far-fetched or incomplete and then imply that only design-based alternatives remain.
Logically, this is misleading: even if one naturalistic explanation is flawed, it does not mean that all are. Moreover, it does not make one intelligent-design theory more reasonable than another. Listeners are essentially left to fill in the blanks for themselves, and some will undoubtedly do so by substituting their religious beliefs for scientific ideas.
Time and again, science has shown that methodological naturalism can push back ignorance, finding increasingly detailed and informative answers to mysteries that once seemed impenetrable: the nature of light, the causes of disease, how the brain works. Evolution is doing the same with the riddle of how the living world took shape. Creationism, by any name, adds nothing of intellectual value to the effort.
The Author(s):
John Rennie is editor in chief of Scientific American.
And a placemarker.
Just from the excerpts, I particularly like that he is offering this theory knowing it is controversial and incomplete.
This is not at all the "certainty" you see from the "literalists." It is my opinion the thing that you call hermenutics has and will continue to save Christianity from the dustbin of history due to the otherwise "literalist" conflicts with emerging scientific knowledge. Alvin Plantinga seems to be fighting a bit of a rear-guard action, but that's okay.
Scientific results have a way of blowing away other explanations, and so religions better learn to adjust or be ultimately discreditied.
Thanks, I do try to excell at whatever I do. Mediocrity is so pedestrian, don't you agree?
I answered the way I did because if, for instance, I felt an individual didn't have a clue what they were talking about, I'd ask some basic questions, to see what level of knowledge they were working with. By the way, did I get the four categories of fossils right? My archaeology books are boxed up in my garage right now so, outside of a web search (which sometimes, more often than not, ends up being more time-consuming than it's worth -- see "Omphalos" below), I can't confirm the information.
I think the post I was working on yesterday, when the browser blew up, would have clarified the meaning of the poorly-worded expression you called into question, but alas, it's gone. The HTML page I mentioned I'd compile is about 50% complete, however. When it's done, I'll post a link to it for you and then you can see just how demented I really am :-)
Additionally, it was a little difficult to divine your meaning from the phrase: "Not the "Omphalos" business", which is why I didn't address it in my reply.
So, in short, the fossil, to me, implies Divine Judgement, which is meaningless to people who have eliminated the divine from the equation.
When I was younger, fossils told me of the journey of life, from simple bacteria-like creatures of ages past, to the emergence of Man from his primitive roots. A bit like that drawing that still hangs in school classrooms across the country, depecting the ascent of Man.
As to rejecting "mainstream science", I guess what you mean is what evolutionists make of fossil data, and yes, I do reject the inference that fossils demonstrate a succession of life. As I said above, when I believed that, I was young and no one had taught me any different. It seems, at least if the commentary on FR is any indication, the only way to be considered "mainstream", is to subscribe to evolutionary thought.
As for Omphalos, what do they have to do with this? Or were you perhaps meant something more esoteric, or archaeologocal? It's context-dependant. Maybe this is a vocabulary test? You're going to have too be more specific because He who answers a matter before he hears it, it is folly and shame to him (Prov.18:13), and I've all too often assumed a meaning which ended up being totally different than the originator had in mind.
Anyhow, I had no intention to be rude, and I apologise if you felt ignored.
No, this is false. The results are not given by parameters (what do you mean, parameter, constants?) of the experimenter. This is not the nature of experiment.
Thank you very much. My first FRaward. I gratefully accept this award on behalf of all humanity. I will spare the forum from several minutes of inchoherent Halle Berry-type sobbing, and just say thank you all very much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Excuse me. Thank you. Excuse me. Thank you. Thank you so very much.
Cordially,
Well... Marx was certainly a fan of Darwin. He asked Darwin in a letter if he could dedicate Das Kapital to him, but Darwin declined the honor. Marx latter sent Darwin a copy of the book, but the pages were never cut (i.e. Darwin never read it). Darwin was interested in political economy, but his Whiggish tastes ran toward the Scottish economists. Despite more than a dollop of uppper middle-class chauvanism and satisfaction (or maybe to some degree because of it) Darwin was a thorough going classical liberal who properly feared socialism.
The truth is, despite Marx's own enthusiasm, Darwin's version of evolutionary theory never really fit well with socialist thought, and in many ways undercut it. It is true that radicals in England had been pushing the concept of evolution even when Darwin was a young man (in this regard see Adrian Desmond's excellent book The Politics of Evolution: Morphology, Medicine, and Reform in Radical London) but leftists always favored Lamarkian versions of the theory. Darwin's evolution by a sort of "free enterprise" (the guiding hand of natural selection not unlike the guiding hand that bestowed economic success and failure in the philosophy of the Scottish economists) was anathema to leftists. When the neo-darwinian revolution came a-borning, elaborating the mechanism of natural selection in terms of the new science of genetics, it even inspired a series of purges in the Soviet Union under Stalin, and Russia's leading geneticists were marched off to the gulags. (Lookup "Lysenko" or "Lysenkoism".)
This was especially true of the social Darwinism movement, and the Eugenics movement of the turn of the century.
There certainly was a major renaissance of scientific racism, although I would date it more like 1911-1939. I don't think for a minute this was caused by darwinian evolutionary theory. I suspect the major immediate cause was a then unprecidented wave of world-wide immigration, as well as the mounting failure of classical liberalism to face challenges from the left and from anti-liberty anti-market conservatives, and so on. Earlier waves of scientific racism had occured under the creationist paradigm, most notably in America about the 1840's and 50's, where one can assume that it was tied to controversy over slavery.
Darwin's ideas, that life is "only chance" and that "the fittest" survive, inspired many to take the next step: since life is only chance, there is no God. Since the fittest survive, and there is no God given right to life, we have the right to kill or sterilize untermensch.
The result is Hitler, and Peter Singer.
Firstly, genocidists before Darwin never showed much inhibition or need for his theories. The population of Tasmania, for instance, was all but wiped out (save for a literal few individuals who died in latter years) around bout 1830 something if I recall correctly. The governor who organized the colonists to hunt the natives down like vermin was what we would today call a "fundamentalist Christian".
Secondly, if you actually read Hitlers speeches and/or Mein Kampf, you will find that, while he does often appeal to evolution in connection with urging Germans and "aryans" to adopt a militaristic ethos and ethic, he does not invoke evolution when he is discussing "racial purity" and similar ideas relating to the genocidal aspect of the Nazi regime. In these later cases he appeals to essentialistic, rather mystical and decidely unevolutionary notions like the "spirits" of different races. (Look into the writings the Nazi's main philosopher of race, Alfred Rosenberg, and you will find him talking of these "spirits" being "created". Not that I'm saying the Nazis were creationists, but rather that their ideas about race had an irrational and mystical basis that had little or nothing to do with evolution. Scientic justifications were slapped on afterwards. Indeed it is surprising to me how little leading Nazis seem to have been influenced by the scientific racism of the day, which certainly had plenty of German representatives. Maybe this is because the Nazis were socialists!)
That is why my argument insists the problem is the RELIGION of scientism, the church of Dawinian evolution, not in evolution per se, nor in science per se.
Now this I can agree with wholeheartedly, except that any wholesale and uncritical extension of scientific theory beyond its proper bounds is illegitimate. IOW I wouldn't tie the sin of "scientism" to some particular theory. We weaken rather than strenghting important principles when we employ them for ox goring and apply them only in the service of our prejudices.
Just wanted to see that again. :-)
It's what prompted my post, Vade.
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