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.
Well, it's a genuinely hard question for Christians. But because it is so is not a reason to reject the wisdom in the Bible. (It's hard, so I have no need to find the right answer. I can do whatever I want.) The Catholic Church, as an example, only excuses killing in the face of a 'just war-' that is, when one is brutally attacked by killers and you need to defend yourself and your family - and after all other attempts at making peace have been foreclosed. That stance has much support in the Bible. The 10 Commandments are pretty strong laws for most - but it is a summary, and it doesn't mean that thoughtful,loving and God-oriented people shouldn't use their brains to try and understand what God truly wants. And is it really so horrible that the Catholic Church would try to promote peace and disdain killing, but that it makes an exception when your family is brutally attacked? You don't have to agree with that, but it's an honorable attempt to do the right thing.
Well, Jesus Christ, as an example, strongly upheld the need to follow God's laws - but also using common sense in doing so. Thus he chastized those who criticized doing good works on the Sabbath. And actually, what better way to keep the Sabbath holy than by doing good works?
As I said before, what you presented were the measurements of a "metal swimming pool" not the value of pi.
As a philsophical outlook, yes conservatives tend to urge others to help each other by voluntary means. However, that is not to say that in reality liberals are any less likely to help voluntarily. There are a lot of hypocrits in the ranks of both liberals and conservatives.
For my own part, I will freely admit I am unlikely to be quick to help anyone other than friends and family. I'm not down at the soup line dishing it up for the homeless. Therefore I can't be calling on anyone to do that. But if they like to do that, more power to them.
Well, if everyone made a good faith attempt to follow the path of Jesus Christ (including in those situations where a clear and precise answer of what to do may not be present in the Bible), our world would be immeasurably and unfathomably better. God (and Christ) gave us strong general guidelines, which we don't even bother following anyway.
But liberals often have an unfounded and misplaced faith in the government to solve societal problems. All too frequently, such government interventions fail disastrously. And then further, when they have clearly failed, liberals tend not to be able to admit such, and to clean up the mess they've created.
That's right. Some folks refuse to dig a little deeper to understand the text. They would rather push the same old line, some probably knowing it's wrong in an attempt to further their agenda. So much for objectivity.
Actually you could. If you were in a closed box of non-zero height, you could measure the time of fall of a dropped object from the ceiling, versus your weight on a scale.
In a gravity field, the time of fall would be slightly longer than in an acceleration frame -- for the same scale measured body weight.
Gravity and acceleration are only "equivalent" at points of zero dimension. Beyond that they diverge in behavior/intensity.
But which makes for a better society? That in which one is implored and pushed (by society and by God) to do good works for others (including strangers), or one in which we send off a check to the government bureaucracy to do good works for us, and then sit back and wash our hands clean? As an atheist, you have no powerful presence in your life (that you discern, anyway) pushing you to give of yourself to others. I do not have that luxury.
Have you ever heard of an approximation, or rough measurement? Have you ever heard of rounding to the nearest unit? Asking the Biblical value of pi is like asking what is the length of an adult male's forearm from the point of the elbow to the tips of the extended fingers.
And besides, why is a rounding of of pi to 5 decimal points the correct reportage instead of to the nearest cubit? This criticism of an ancient writer's choice of where to stop rounding pi is as ridiculous as me saying that your value of pi is incorrect because it really should be reported as 3.14159265358979. Whoever wrote I Kings had to round pi somewhere or else he would have been writing until he died and he wouldn't have been able to finish the rest of I Kings.
Cordially,
That makes those advocates ignorant -- it doesn't make them uncaring or unhelpful. You really can't tell who is a decent person in normal life by knowing their voting record. Abstract philosophical thought is quite different than actually being there to help friends, neighbors, family, or strangers. I'm not big on helping strangers. I admit it. But it has nothing to do with my political philosophy of non-initiation of aggression. Seperate things, really.
Do you do it because you love people, or because you fear hell? That's an honest question, not a put down of any sort. I think religion is largely motivated out of fear of the hearafter, all lip service to love nothwithstanding.
BUt I haven't said that. I've said that liberals put more stock in government to solve societal problems than conservatives do. I do think conservatives are smarter people, on average, not better people. I also said that those who believe in God have a stronger impetus to do good in their lives, as they believe it's a requirement for them. Atheists can do whatever they want (good or no good), as it conveniences them.
Not always true. 25 Democrats voted last year to allow babies to die in hospitals if they were fully and healthily born by accident in a failed abortion procedure. (The mom paid for the abortion, and we're going to give her a dead baby, no matter what.) To me, those were NOT decent people voting for that.
I do it because I believe God loves me deeply, and I love Him. When he tells me I need to do something for my own good, I trust Him in that. The same way a son may take the advice of a loving father on the value of the father's wisdom and love - even if the son is inconvenienced by such.
Even by your generous error margin, 1 Kings is off by over a full cubit.
And the point is that Deutsch (the guy I was talking to) was saying that EVERY word in the Bible was LITERALLY true and completely without error of any kind.
When someone makes a claim like that, ANY counter-example proves him wrong.
Religious people fear becoming bad people, and distancing themselves from God by falling into bad and evil acts. Such distancing, on our own accord, IS hell. But Christians believe God works very hard to keep us from doing that, and is willing to forgive bad things we do as long as we truly repent and try our hardest to be better people.
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