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.
There are lots of things besides God that science cannot bottle: intelligence, geometry, math, conscience, and many other things which cannot be seen, touched or made love to which we nevertheless know exist.
No, that is a misconception. For a great many, faith is borne of love and hope and a deep attraction to complete goodness.
I'm not 100 percent sure of the date on the removal of Thomas, but I was just using it as an example. From what I understand, there are somewhere on the high side of 100 additional literary works that would have been included in the Bible, had all the works from that timeframe been included. Who/what made King James and the Papacy (the other supposed main arbitor in those days) the be-all, end-all in that regard?
I'm pretty much playing devil's advocate here, I'll admit, but I have read much of the Gospel of Thomas, and have sought out parts of other works in my research over the past several years. There is plenty of insight to be gleaned outside of the books of the Bible.
Well, certainly many evolutionists (including on these threads) fall into that camp!
But, perhaps we are not necessarily meant to percieve what that "something" is/was. God certainly can. God may not want us peeking behind the celestial curtain before we are ready to understand/comprehend/percieve what is there...
Anyway, at this point, I am quite confident in the record as it stands, so I will simply link to that discussion, and allow those interested lurkers to examine the thread for themselves.
Yes, we can all make a choice. But we don't have to make it right now and and it's not irrevocable by any means. Meanwhile, we can continue to accumulate additional observations/information and see how things shake out.
Jlogajan - you castigate the religious for wading ignorantly into scientific arguments, but now you are wading in the same way into relgious arguments. Christianity, especially, is a religion based on great love. Yes, there is fear of rejecting goodness and ending up in hell, but there is no fear if one does not so reject. Further, a Christian may be forgiven at any time with true repentance. Most true Christians are NOT fearful of hell. They are fearful rather of being less good than they might be. And they are drawn to God's (and Christ's) love.
Corner, E.J.H., Contemporary Botanical Thought, ed. A.M. MacLeod and L.S. Cobley (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1961)
And there is compelling evidence opposed to your little papers opinion.
But then I will never convince you and you will not convince me. Why? Because it has never been proven, one way or the other. And that is my point - MacroEvolution is NOT fact.
‘The stone the builders rejected has become the capstone.’ (Luke 20:17)
"The most familiar, and the best-loved images of Jesus, are those that picture to us, his gentle, compassionate spirit. "Whoever comes to me, I will in no wise cast out"; "Come to me, all you who are weary"; "Let the little children come to me."
"But there are other images of Jesus in the Gospels, which show another aspect of his personality. They emphasize the steel in him. Sometimes Jesus was awesome; formidable."
"In the parable, Jesus presents himself as the landlord's Son; the rejected stone, that eventually becomes the most important stone in the superstructure of the kingdom of God. Jesus plainly thought that those who opposed him were in collision with God. He was warning nation's leaders: "It is unwise and unsafe to be against me." Tough talk from Jesus! He was signaling what was taken up by Peter at Pentecost, where, full of resurrection joy and authority, he preached saying: "This Jesus, you put him to death. . . . but God raised him from the dead. God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ" (Acts 2:31-36).
"In the parable of the wicked tenants, Jesus teaches that those who discard him, will not thereby have gotten rid of him. Jesus was not, and is not now, a passing phenomenon. So truly does Jesus represent reality; so deeply entrenched in the ultimate truth of existence, is his life and teaching, that He, and not his opponents, will prevail. If the universe is a moral place (and Christ himself is the most convincing evidence that it is), then his prediction that he would triumph, even over those who killed him, must come true. Therefore let us treasure the august aspects of his personality, as much as his gentle features, for they signal a world order in which 'goodness', as Jesus taught it, will... reign---unopposed. The stone that was rejected, will become the capstone."
Many scientists tend to believe 1) that we are close to discovering everything there is to be discovered (witness the rash of the 'Theory of Everything' books and 2) that everything that is can be brought to light through science. Neither is a certain or even likely assertion.
No, there hadn't. I see that it's time to bring out my standard explanation of why:
The question, "what happened before Archduke Ferdinand was shot" is a well-formed question, as is, "what is south of Topeka, Kansas." The question, "what happened before the big bang" is an ill-formed question, as is, "what lies south of the south pole."
Imagine you are travelling south, down to the south pole. As you get closer to the pole, the east-west direction does a curious thing: it curls back upon itself in an ever-tightening circle, disappearing completely as you reach the point of the pole itself. At that place, the ground is as smoothly two-dimensional as anywhere else on Earth, but every possible direction points north, even directions that lie at right angles to each other.
Imagine that you can go backwards in time, back to the big bang. As you get closer to the big bang, space does a curious thing: the spatial dimensions curl back upon themselves in an ever-tightening circle, disappearing completely as you reach the singularity itself. At that event, spacetime is as smoothly four-dimensional as at any other event in history, but every possible direction points towards the future, even directions that lie at right angles to each other.
I stress that what I have laid before you is not an analogy, but two separate examples of the same phenomenon.
There may exist events that are external to the space and time dimensions of our universe, but none of them can be said to come before or after any events of our universe; they cannot be included in any causal framework such as history. Time itself is strictly internal to our universe. If we want to use words like "cause" and "before", we must needs keep our game pieces on the board.
I'm merely suggesting that you can link, rather than post the articles in their entirety. As for whether I can prove that this is where you drew your material from...well, I wasn't standing over your shoulder, but it's word-for-word identical - it'd be a heck of a coincidence, don't you think?
As for whether that "taints" what you say - you're arguing a basically Biblical/Christian perspective against evolution. It should hardly be a surprise to anyone that you look for information from such sites, any more than it should be a surprise if I draw material from talk.origins, or the like. If I were to suggest that the material were invalid simply because that's where it came from, that really would be ad hominem argumentation, despite what Andrew thinks it is. ;)
The development of life on Earth falls squarely into that category.
Development, yes. Causality, no.
What I see is that the contenders on each side of the "issue" (a non-issue in my estimation) really fail to recognize that they're using and misusing disparate disciplines to reach disparate conclusions. Science is (or ought to be) about deducing the physical mechanisms that produce observable phenomena in the natural world. Theistic creationism is (or ought to be) about asserting that the natural world was created by a living God.
So did you walk to school, or bring your lunch? If each side would recognize the limits of their disciplines, they'd see that the reason they can't agree is because the two premises have nothing to do with one another. It's as though, in examining a car, the mechanic says "It runs on gasoline, which it uses to fuel a water-cooled internal combustion engine," to which the company exec replies "No, it was designed by the Ford Motor Company and produced in Dearborn, Michigan!"
At which point the mechanic and the exec get into a fistfight.
[sigh]
Amazing, so we both agree that you committed Ad Hominem----B. Circumstantial
The circumstantial form cites the opponent's personal circumstances as sufficient reason for dismissing a statement the opponent has made. Or it may point out a contrast between the opponent's lifestyle and his expressed opinions, thereby suggesting that the opponent's conclusions can be dismissed because the opponent is himself hypocritical.
| Be that as it may, you are unable to point to any post of mine where I have suggested that your arguments are not to be given credence because of some personal or circumstantial characteristic of yours. If you don't like people pointing out that you are behaving in a hypocritical manner in order to advance your cause, then stop doing it. ---general_re |
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