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.
Neither does the Pope nor the Catholic Church, for that matter. Two Popes have stated the official position of the Catholic Church is that the science of evolution is a potentially viable theory of which they do not object on any religious grounds.
True. However ONE God is perfectly capable of handling ALL the mysterious and "complex" dynamics unexplainable by the mini-gods of science.
The simplest explanation is that you don't understand the fundamental concepts involved in evolution and therefore are probably not going to get much out of the discussion until you read up a bit.
It would be similar to someone wondering how a rocket engine could work in the vacuum of outer space with nothing to push against. For them to understand, they would have to learn about the physics of conservation of momentum, etc.
Now returning to your question. If monkeys must cease to exist because "man evolved from them" then whatever monkeys came from must also cease to exist, and whatever that pre-monkey came from must have caused the previous species to cease to exist, etc.
Following your logic all the way back -- there should just be humans on earth -- no other organism, plant or animal, since everything has common ancestry.
But that's not how it works. The appearence of a new species does not automatically kill off the old species. That's how we can have many different bird types, for instance, even though they might all have a common bird ancestor.
Both Creationists, who deny Darwin, and Darwinians, who oppose creationists, are fundamentalists.
But unless one studied the Philosophy of science, you can't tell why both their arguments are based on unproven suppositions.
You have to go back to the arguments of the 12th century, when Aristolian arguments replaced the mysticism of the Platonic system.
Christian philosophers then insisted that logic and the ability to study the world was a gift given by God to men, and that a scientist doing such studies was in effect praising God by making us more aware of his creation.
So seeing the structure of evolution, or seeing the vastness of the universe, will not weaken the faith of someone who knows the immensity of God.
The fossil record tells us that millions of years and millions of creatures existed. It praises God in his diversity as lifegiver. Logic and science allows men made in the image of God to study this and devise theories.
Only those either ignorant of the philosophy of science or those who are fundamentalists in the religion of Scientism argue like this gentleman. But his argument is based on the unproven assumption that science is true. This is not the same as saying that the scientific method is an accurate way of investigating nature. It is assuming that scientists, like the religious leaders of old, are both infallible and have the ability to rule the rest of us. It also assumes that knowledge from experience outside of the scientific method (for example,intuition) have no place in the world. But philosophically, science does not deny intuition and other ways of knowing the world outside the scientific method. Only Scientists insist on this unproven statement.
They have of course an easy target in Creationists and others who are ignorant. which is why the rest of us tend to stay out of this ridiculous argument in the first place.
In Startrek, there is a scene where Kirk reminds Spock that something "is not logical but it is true". Truth is usually logical, but those who base "TRUTH" on incomplete data and deny what they do not perceive may be missing something.(Spock ignores psychology and emotions, for example, and those following the religion of Scientism may be ignoring the possibility that our machines are not sensitive enough to perceive God ).
A crude strawman. I am around scientists every day. I have never in my career heard anybody make this claim, ever. It would be a foolish claim to make, since anyone with even a peripheral connection to science sees previously accepted results being overturned regularly.
I will say that because of the self-correcting nature of science, the conclusions of scientific research do have a far more valid claim on the truth than conclusions reached by any other means yet devised.
No different from the dozens who believe that the U.N. is an impartial body dealing in promoting international civilization and justice...
I'm saying they better put their own house in order, because the outspoken ones come off making the rest look like morons. To be athwart science is ultimately to drive the best people away from your religion. I'd be very worried about that if I were you.
It proves devolution from the Truth as apprehended by Adam and Eve. Once they made the wrong choice, they were cast out of the Garden and their progeny were evermore susceptible to the blandishments of the Devil and were "open-minded" to such a degree that, for some, a multiplicity of Gods were substituted for the One Triune God. For others, even more "open-minded," apostasy became an intellectual conceit (rather than an embarassment) and these folks began to worship matter itself and transferred to it the creative abilities of God Himself.
Those, I think, are the ones that consider themselves "enlightened," yet none are so dark in their intellect.
No matter what you believe about evolution, science cannot prove that there is no Creator. Neither can people who believe in God prove that He exists. However, most thoughtful people in this world (what, about 90%), infer the existence of God. You are right. People try to use evolution to disprove God. It's a ridiculous argument.
Including Divine Revelation?
Yes. With regard to the part of the world you can see. But physicists, in particular, know that there are many parts of the world that are inaccessible, and about which we know nothing. Let's see: what existed before the big bang (and why the initial fireball was at an extremely low entropy), how to explain the quantum world of wave functions, which can't be touched or proved to exist (except by inferrence), and yet which makes up all existence, the existence of other dimensions (now widely accepted part of string theory), the world that may exist in time-like intervals in relativity theory. Neither are physicists good at explaining the existence of the beautiful and complex world of mathematics. Just chance occurrence that the world of mathematics fits together so well and completely? Maybe (but for many, doubtfully). Many people who believe in God infer his existence from other things, and assume that there is more to the world than that which can be measured and experimented with by physicists. They may be wrong. But physicists should be careful that they not limit their thoughts to only that which can be measured directly in the laboratory. Such may only be a tiny part of the ultimate reality.
I dont ignore science as a method of defining the objects around us and how we got to where we are but it will never define who we are in spirit. All it defines is who has a lack of it.
What kind of monster would send someone to eternal fire for any reason, let alone for using their brain. You have strange gods.
If you don't understand that, then you don't have a basis for rejecting evolution.
Think of it this way: new breeds of dog are developed all the time. Pit Bulls were developed from other terriers, yet there are still other terriers around. This is because the breeder took a few of the other terriers and bred from them. The other terriers continued to reproduce, and are still around. Or rather, their descendants are: they splintered into other breeds besides.
Likewise with humans: ONE particular group of monkeys developed in such a way as led to humans. All other groups of monkeys developed in different ways.
Please tell me you understand this very basic point now.
"The fool has said in his heart . . . "
And eventually, foolish is as foolish does and shows up on prime time. . . in God's timing, that is.
It ain't over until it's over and it's far from over in terms of your arguments carrying the "final" say on the "final" day.
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