Posted on 08/23/2005 10:39:22 AM PDT by woodb01
The Golden Calf of Evolution is on Fire…
STORY SOURCE
NoDNC.com staff
The recent notice that Harvard was going to engage in “advocacy” research (it’s difficult to call the advocacy science) shows how concerned the evolution camp is about the theory of intelligent design. Contrary to popular myth, the theory of evolution has many holes. The only way evolution continues to survive is because people don’t actually stop to think about the absurd things that evolution requires one to accept on totally blind faith.
If in fact evolution were truly a science, then according to the scientific method, challenges to the theory of evolution, even a challenge calling itself “intelligent design” would be readily accepted. The whole notion of science is to put forth a theory, and then work to further develop the theory, or abandon it, based on challenges to discrete aspects of that theory. Real science not only accepts those challenges, but encourages them to ensure its accuracy. Evolutionists routinely censor and attack all dissent.
Now why would real scientists be so concerned about “intelligent design?” Why would prestigious Harvard University commit to invest a million dollars annually in a new program dedicated on the origins of life in relation to evolution? And as Harvard chemistry professor David Liu noted "My expectation, is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention."
That is an interesting statement from a scientist. In professional circles, this is called “confirmatory bias” and it is not about science, but about making additional theories fit the predefined outcome that you want them to fit. It is advocacy “research” and not science. After all, with evolution, there is no way to test or verify history, so it is routine to just “create” anything you can imagine to fill the void, anything except intelligent design. Taking their cues from cults, when something doesn’t fit, just make up something that can’t be verified.
The secret of why Darwinists (evolutionists) see intelligent design as a threat is because in its simplest form, it is not only verifiable, but intelligent design is an ideal corollary [FN1] to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Paraphrased that law says:
Any system, on its own, moves from order to disorder, and eventually becomes totally random.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is considered an absolute, solid, verified truth in science. The reason it is considered a “law” in science is because it is said to apply to all matter in the entire universe and in all situations and circumstances. It has been tested, re-tested, verified, and re-verified and found to be a universal scientific truth.
Why is the Second Law of Thermodynamics Important?
Evolution defies the Second Law of Thermodynamics. In plain terms, it expects people to accept, on blind, unverifiable faith, that out of disorder, and through a bunch of accidents, order is created--, disorder becomes order.
Another way of looking at that would be to think of a deck of cards, carefully shuffled and thrown high in the air. With the expectation that eventually an “accident” would happen which would cause all 52 cards in the deck, to fall in perfect order, and perfectly aligned. [FN2]
Now we get to the interesting part, the part that absolutely horrifies Darwinists and all evolutionists in particular. INTELLIGENT DESIGN IS THE COROLLARY [See FN1] TO THE SECOND LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS!
With external inputs of energy, directed in a specialized way, disorder and randomness can be ordered.
Any system, whether open or closed, requires specialized work or specialized energy input to go from disorder to order. This same specialized work or specialized energy input is also required just to maintain order.
Let’s look at it this way. If you work at a desk, or construction, or homemaker, or whatever your job is, there are parallels. Evolutionists expect you to believe that if you leave a mess long enough, a set of accidents will eventually occur that will organize all your papers, build a new house, or clean each room in your house, etc. This is plain nonsense and not science.
Evolutionists realize that a COROLLARY to the Second Law of Thermodynamics is both science, is testable, is verifiable, and is true. This is why they are terrified. For evolution to “work” it requires that a settled scientific LAW be changed to accommodate it. Evolution’s FALSE COROLLARY to the Second Law of Thermodynamics expects one to accept the following paraphrased idea:
With external inputs of energy, random or disordered energy creates order.
In more “evolutionary” terms, enough accidents, stacked on top of each other, for a long enough period of time, creates order and perfection. Never mind that evolution also says that “natural selection” destroys all “accidents” that don’t have almost immediate usefulness. It is lunacy to believe that from random occurrence you gain greater and greater order. It then becomes zealous fanaticism when you deny that this is anything more than a secular fundamentalist belief system. In fact, this is in direct defiance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Under evolution, instead of moving toward disorder, we are moving toward order.
On one hand we hear that life has developed and “evolved” through “accidents” that create the variations of the species. And in contradiction to everything coming about because of these “accidents,” Darwin’s evolutionists say that “natural selection” does away with the “accidents” and “chooses” the superior “accidents.” On one hand we have life being created, derived, developed and sustained through “accidents,” and on the other hand we have life being destroyed and killed off (natural selection) because the accidents aren’t the “right type” of accident.
STOP AND THINK about what evolution demands you to believe. Disorder creates order, accidents fix things. This is not only intellectually dishonest, it is absurd when you stop to think about it.
Is this Corollary Theory of the Second Law – Intelligent Design – Testable?
Routinely we hear from the evolution crowd that intelligent design is not testable. Not only is this blatantly false, the Corollary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics (intelligent design) has been proven over, and over, and over again. In fact, it continues to be proven many thousands of times a day.
Every time a pharmaceutical medication is taken to treat a disorder, whether it is physical or mental, it is a test of the theory of intelligent design. The Pharmaceutical companies that research new drug applications to treat disease not only defy “natural selection” but direct energy and efforts to cure a disorder which results in a medication to treat the disorder.
Every time a doctor performs a necessary surgery, that is successful, it is not only a test of intelligent design, but proof that it is valid. The Physician brings order to disorder and again defies “natural selection.”
Over and over again, architect, electrical engineer, physicist, chemist, veterinary, and any number of professions routinely cheat “natural selection” with intelligent design. Over and over again evolution’s “accidents” and “natural selections” are overcome by intelligent design.
Is it any wonder that the evolution crowd is terrified by intelligent design? Proving intelligent design disproves evolution. When considering intelligent design as a corollary to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, as well as easily tested and verified, it’s no wonder evolutionists are frightened.
Why so narrowly confined?
When major problems with evolution are raised, such as the INPUTS to the whole evolutionary process, evolutionists shriek, almost in horrified pain “that doesn’t apply,” or “that’s another area.” Take for example the origins of life itself. When raising the proposition that the origins of the chemical INPUTS to life, and the origins of life itself are critical building blocks to verify whether or not evolution is valid, routine shrieks of “abiogenesis” or some other silly segment of the process is invoked to defend the indefensible. These silly segmentations, which alone may disprove evolution, are routinely segmented out of the idea of evolution. These things are treated almost as if they must be warded off with some magical talisman or incantation against any evil spirits that might challenge the evolutionary cult. Evolutionists hide behind these silly, ridiculous, and utterly absurd notions that you can build valid science on a small piece of a process and leave out all of the pieces that the process depends on.
When parts of the process not only demonstrate that the sacred theory of evolution may be invalid or false, the shrieks of heresy and blasphemy are raised. This isn’t science, it is utter madness disguised as science. And certainly I can understand why the issue of the initial origins of life terrify evolutionists. The idea of “abiogenesis” expects one to accept on blind faith that life just “magically appeared” from some accidents with rocks, water, and a few base chemicals. Evolution suggests that right after that life was created, it began evolving. This is difficult to believe when you stop and think about it. Life “magically appears” from rocks, water, and a few chemicals? I’m still amazed that all those alchemists in the middle ages couldn’t find a way to do something as simple as turning lead into gold. If they had simply applied evolution’s teachings, water would have been gold, diamonds, and every other form of precious gem.
Evolutionary theory demands that only physical / material properties can be evaluated. This notion completely ignores the fact that human beings have the ability to reason, to think through things, to make value judgments, to make decisions, to choose right or wrong, to have order and structure or to have disorder and chaos.
This is another point of conflict, if you accept evolution’s true premises, only natural selection is valid and all of our morals, values, and social structures aren’t valid. But they exist and their very existence proves that evolution has more holes. So what do the evolutionists do? No problem, they say that social structures just don’t apply. It’s not “material” so we won’t even consider it.
Evolution by other names is the law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, kill or be killed, a form of “natural” eugenics, etc. So, if you remove the social structures, the laws, rules, morals, values, the social structures, all you have are wild animals.
The “law of the jungle” part of evolution is a glaring defect and a strong demonstration that evolution misses the mark. There is something more to human life than just “kill or be killed.” So what do the evolutionists do? They simply spout their dogma “that doesn’t apply, we’re only looking at the material world!” It’s easy to understand why they would do this, under the idea of eugenics, Hitler slaughtered millions.
If you stop and think about what “evolutionary processes” was required to create emotions, social structure, values, order, and the awareness of “self,” it is easy to understand why evolutionists are terrified of this. By their nature, by what these things ARE, they are not “natural” evolutionary occurrences. By themselves, they could not have come about by any type of evolutionary theory known today. So having these “artificial” structures imposed on “evolution” disproves evolution.
Evolution’s true believers treat any challenge to their sacred cow as blasphemy or heresy --, I guess that’s a normal reaction to a religious belief.
Evolutionists are terrified. And the debate must be contained. If the debate is not contained, the public school indoctrination and the cult of evolution will collapse. Once people actually stop and think about the blind leaps of faith that evolution requires, it will be seen as the cult it is. Evolution is nothing but wild religious beliefs clothed with the appearance of science.
The golden calf of evolution is on fire. As more and more people actually stop and THINK THROUGH the lunacy that evolution expects you to believe on totally blind faith, evolution will finally be seen for what it truly is, a religion pretending to be science. At that point the fire consuming the golden calf of evolution will turn it to ashes.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[FN1] A corollary is something that is generally a “natural consequence” of the thing it is related to. So when a corollary is based on something that is already proven, the corollary generally does not require much proof because it is accepted and understood. For example, water freezes and turns to ice at about 32 degrees (F) depending on atmospheric conditions. A corollary would be that water melts as it rises above 32 degrees (F).
[FN2] Before all of the shrieks from the Darwinists, what I have just outlined is called an analogous syllogism, it is a writing tool to help understand complex issues.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Additional Resources:
Links:
http://www.nodnc.com/modules.php?name=Web_Links&l_op=viewlink&cid=12Resources:
DNA: The Tiny Code That's Toppling Evolution (DNA is PROVING that evolution is a hoax)
The controversy over evolution includes a growing number of scientists who challenge Darwinism. (The fraud of Darwinism...)
Einstein Versus Darwin: Intelligent Design Or Evolution? (Most LEGITIMATE Scientists do NOT agree with Evolution)
What’s the Big Secret? (Intelligent Design in Pennsylvania)
What are the Darwinists afraid of? (The fervent religious belief in evolution)
The Little Engine That Could...Undo Darwinism (Evolution may be proven false very soon)
I'm bookmarking this and adding it to my profile page...
titles... titles...
"Dumbest Neo-Creo... EVER!"?
"Tonweights of Pearls Heaped upon Swine"?
suggestions are officially solicited
what's an "istory"?
izzat like a n iPod, but lacking the snappy ad campaign?
In order to accept Intelligent design of creation one has to ascribe to the theory that a certain Intelligent Being exists. Where else can this design originate from? (By the way, it must be One Being only because more beings would only create more chaos and disorder.)
One must then also accept that this Being set down laws which creation must adhere to in order to continue its orderly existence. Straying away or ignoring these laws can only result in chaos and disorder.
Laws, and rules of law are anathema in our secular world. Isn't it much easier to make your own rules? Isn't it therefore not necessary to deny the existence of this Being?
Of course, when things go awry i.e. chaotic, because of our rejection of His laws, we can always blame that Being for for not caring. Poor Being, He is caught in a Catch 22.
Yes, in the same sense that we can predict the future behavior of a Quincunx or Galton Board, to a high degree of statistical accuracy because we understand the stochastic process by which it works, yet will still be unable to predict where any given ball will land.
Where's your sense of 'umor?
Y'all quit, I've got My Fail Lady stuck in my skull now... ;-)
Left out again I see. Crushed I tell ya, CRUSHED!
Um... My Fair Lady... damn typos.
Creationist "logic": "If the Hawaiian Islands appeared via purely natural geologic processes... then it should be real easy to duplicate that feat in lab... oh you can't produce Hawaii in a lab? didn't think so. Geology must be bunk."
Clue for the clueless: A process which took hundreds of millions of years and an entire planet to achieve stochastically is going to be a tad unlikely to be reproducible in a few test tubes in a few years. Nor are we likely to reproduce the formation of the Hawaiian Islands in a laboratory either.
I've recently noticed that most creationists have absolutely no clue about how the scientific method works, so allow me to give you a *very* simple overview. The reality is far more rigorous than this, and subjected to endless review and retesting, but here's the short version...
Creationists imagine that scientists just gather some data, make up a "reasonable" speculation that they think could account for the data, and then kick back and go on vacation. The creationists think that's all there is to science, just the "speculation" part.
Nope.
That's just the barest *beginning*.
That's called the "hypothesis" stage. Scientists all over the world try to come up with all the hypotheses they can as possible explanations for any given scientific puzzle. This is a good thing -- the more brainstorming, the better the chance that someone will come up with a "speculation" that hits closest to the right answer.
So then they just argue over it to "decide" which one's right, eh? Nope, sorry, that's the creationist version.
Instead, they *test* these various ideas to see which ones actually work when compared against reality, and which ones fail when compared against reality. You've heard of those "experiment" things, right? This is the testing.
But contrary to cartoon-level public impressions of experiments, they're not always done by guys in a lab pouring test tubes together, or by scientists attempting to actually *reproduce* the process they're studying. Those are *one* way to test a hypothesis, but nowhere near the only reliable way. It's not possible to recreate the entire Hawaiian Islands chain in order to test hypotheses about how they formed, for example, but there *are* countless other ways to test hypotheses about geology -- or evolution, or any other field.
That's why you've heard scientists talk about "predictions" so much. One of the most widely useful, and most reliable, methods of testing a hypothesis is to work out its consequences -- to determine what results would occur if that explanation *was* the correct one. If that really *is* how things happen (or happened) in the universe, what "side effects" would it have, aside from the data or phenomenon itself which we crafted the hypothesis to explain? These are its *predictions*.
This is how we test to separate the good explanations from the bad explanations. If the Hawaiian Islands formed as a result of continental drift carrying the Pacific tectonic plate across a crustal magma plume, this would leave many, many kinds of tell-tale results which would be noticeably (and *test-ably*) different than the kinds of things you'd find if some *other* explanation was correct about a different manner in which the Hawaiian Islands had formed.
So to decide between the two (or fifty) potential explanations (hypotheses), you work out the "side effects" (predictions) of each different explanation -- what you'd find if X had actually happened, versus what you'd find differently if Y had actually happened, etc., then you go and *look* to see which of those side effects (if any!) you actually find when you look.
This "looking" can take different forms depending on the nature of the process being explored. In the case of some physics questions, you can build a tabletop setup of lasers in a certain configuration, or whatever, to reproduce the conditions which should act one way if hypothesis X is right, or another way if Y is correct, etc. This is a classic "experiment" in the layman's mind. In the case of medical hypotheses about what disease a patient has, you can try different drugs to see which he responds to. In some cases of geology, you can take core samples of the rocks under the Hawaiian Islands to see whether their composition and structure matches the predictions of one hypothesis, or another. In evolutionary biology, you can go check the DNA of various species to see if the pattern of differences and similarities matches the precise patterns (not just *general* patterns) which distinguish one hypothesis from another, or go find new fossils (or re-examine old ones) to see whether predicted features which no one sat down to check before match the predictions of various hypotheses, etc.
When this is done over and over and over again, and the *dozens* of different predictions of any one particular hypothesis are tested and all the predictions are found to match, and perhaps even more importantly, the things that the hypothesis predicts you *won't* find are looked for and found *not* to be present as well, then you can have more and more confidence that the hypothesis is, if not 100% correct (since you can never be *entirely* sure), very much on the right track, and is very close to being right explanation. Meanwhile, you can have great confidence that the alternative explanations which made predictions that *failed* are wrong, and can be taken out to the trash dumpster.
(Also, any one person can obviously make mistakes about reasoning out the predictions, or how to test whether the real world matches the predictions, etc. This is why science places such stress on *repeatability* -- you have to publish your data, your reasoning, your tests, etc., so that thousands of other experts can go over it with a fine-toothed comb looking for mistakes or fraud or untested presumptions, and can repeat your tests to verify that your results were valid and/or not a fluke. Also note that *this* is the kind of "repeatability" that science requires -- creationists often think that it means that the *processes* need to be repeatable, like being able to repeat the formation of the Hawaiian Islands; that's not the case. The *tests* have to be repeatable, the *verification* needs to be repeatable by anyone who cares to double-check your results, or try a new method of validating them.)
The core tenets of evolutionary biology make *VERY* specific predictions about what we should find (and what we *shouldn't* find) when we go looking at nature, and make *hundreds* of different predictions which allow multiple independent validation tests (since any one prediction might "come true" and match just by luck, even if the explanation is wrong). The tenet of common descent doesn't just predict that DNA from closely related species will "be similar", it predicts that they will be similar in *very* precise, specific ways, and that they will *differ* in other precise, specific ways. And when we examine and compare DNA, this is *exactly* what we find, *every* time we compare new DNA sequences which we had never examined before.
But wait, there's more!
Creationists often say, "but maybe DNA doesn't match all those predictions of evolutionary common descent, maybe DNA just happens to be that way because God chose to make it that way, even if those features of DNA don't seem to make sense from a 'design' standpoint (because after all, He works in mysterious ways, and He might have some Design reason for that configuration which is beyond our understanding), and it just *happens* to 'look like' the results one would expect from evolution."
Ah, but that excuse doesn't hold water.
Here's why.
The beauty of the scientific method is not only that it can decide between the hypotheses that *have* been thought of, it can also validate a hypothesis in the face of alternate *unknown* hypotheses (like the "maybe God did it instead" hypothesis).
Here's how that works.
The beauty of the "make predictions and then test them" method (especially since it's iterative -- after you do that, you make *more* predictions and test *them*, repeatedly) is that if your hypothesis (explanation) is wrong, there's *no* rational reason for an entirely unrelated explanation to "just happen" to match *all* of your explanation's 70 or 80 predictions "by coincidence", no matter *what* unrelated explanation we're talking about, including ones you haven't even thought of.
An unrelated explanation, if true, might by chance match the results of 10 or 12 of the predictions of your "wrong" explanation, but it's just ridiculous to think that (and mathematically close to "impossible" for) a process which actually works in a different manner than your speculatory explanation to "just happen" to match *ALL* the same expected results.
It's like OJ saying, "it wasn't me who killed my wife, it was some *other* guy, I don't know who... who just happened to wear my same large shoe size... and just happened to be wearing a rare, expensive type of shoe... that I just happen to have owned too... and just happened to get injured during the struggle and drop blood from his right hand... on the same night I just happened to cut that same hand shaving... and his blood DNA just happened to match mine... and he just happened to leave a glove at the murder scene that just happens to match one found in my alley... and I just happened to have received gloves just like that from Nicole as a gift and been photographed wearing them... and hairs matching mine just happened to be in the hat left at the murder scene... and fibers matching the carpet of my Bronco just happened to also... and the only hour of that day I can't account for my whereabouts just happened to be the time of the murder... and my houseguest heard thumps like someone climbing over the fence into the yard which just happened to match the time I would have had to have returned from Nicole's... But I didn't do it, it was some other guy."
Not freaking likely, is it?
When *all* of the different pieces of evidence implicate OJ, even the most unlikely and specific ones -- when they match predictions of what you'd expect to find if the "OJ is the killer" hypothesis is the correct one -- the odds of those results being "coincidental" matches with some *other* guy actually being the killer, vanish to nothingness. As attorney Vincent Bugliosi wrote in his book, in his "how I'd have prosecuted OJ" speech:
"At what point do these things stop being a coincidence, ladies and gentlemen of the jury? When you folks, as intelligent human beings using your common sense, say to yourself- 'Aw, c'mon, you've got to be kidding. It's ridiculous to suggest all of these things are just an incredible coincidence. That's not life as we know it.' That's when all this circumstantial evidence stops being a coincidence. When you people, as intelligent, sensible human beings -and that's why we selected you folks for this jury- say to the defense attorneys in this case, 'Let's stop living in a fantasy world and come back to earth.'This is actually an excellent description of the manner in which scientific hypotheses are "proven beyond a reasonable doubt" as well."When a person is innocent of a crime, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, chances are there isn't going to be anything whatsoever pointing toward his guilt. Chances are there will be nothing. But now and then, because of the very nature of life and the unaccountability of certain things, maybe one thing, in rare situations maybe even two things, will peculiarly point toward his guilt even though he is innocent. And in highly unusual and virtually unheard-of situations, maybe even three things will point to his guilt, even though he is innocent. But ladies and gentleman of the jury, in this case, everything, everything, points to this man's guilt. [...] We've set forth for you a staggering number of pieces of evidence that point to this man, and this man alone, as the murderer of these two precious human beings. Under these circumstances, it is not humanly possible for him to be innocent."
When we test the biological hypothesis of common descent, we don't just test *one* prediction of that hypothesis. Any *one* prediction might, by chance, "just happen" to match the results of some *other* process that was "actually" responsible for the formation of modern living things. Any *one* successful prediction/test, as they say, "doesn't prove anything". The creationists are right about that. If God made living things through a process *other* than letting them evolve from a common ancestor, especially one we couldn't comprehend, it might "just happen" that this included the existence of a half-bird/half-reptile looking animal like Archaeopteryx. Just coincidence that you'd get something like that through common descent also. And maybe the non-OJ killer just happened to wear expensive, rare shoes that OJ had too. It could happen.
But science doesn't stop there.
Common descent *also* predicts that we should find shared endogenous retroviruses in the DNA related species (see the link at the top). And indeed, they are there in the DNA when we look. Match #2. Now, whatever God's beyond-our-understanding-but-not-by-common-descent method of making life, even though we *don't* know anything about it, there's *no* reason to expect that it *has* to match, down to the tiniest specific details, the several hundred exact characteristics of endogenous retroviral patterns which would have resulted from common descent. God's different-method-entirely would be very likely to have different characteristics, produce different patterns in DNA which, even if we didn't understand the reasons for those patterns, would be unlikely to match the intricate patterns produced by the common descent of past viral infections. But, gosh, they do! Does that make sense, that God's Method would *coincidentally* match the mathematically *hugely* unlikely exact patterns that common descent would have produced? It *could* happen by luck, I guess. And the real killer of Nicole Simpson might have been a one-in-a-trillion DNA match to OJ, too. It's not *impossible*.
Common descent also predicts that the number of synonymous codon SNPs between related species should be directly correlated to the time since their last common ancestor. There's no plausible "design" reason for this, by the way, since those nucleotides are functionally silent. Flip them on, flip them off, nothing changes. And when we analyze DNA, across thousands and thousands of species, the results *do* match the predictions of common descent (*and* the indications of LCA time match the fossil record -- another coincidence?) Once again, God's Method, whatever it might be, needn't "just happen" to match the results of common descent. Whatever God's design criteria, surely *some* of his choices are going to result in a design that "just happens" NOT to match the outcome of common descent in some respects or another. But here on test #3, we find that yet *again* the real-world tests beautifully match the predictions of common descent. But the creationists assure us that *this* is just a coincidence too, just like the random coincidence that Nicole's killer cut his left hand in the same place and on the same night that OJ cut his own hand too. Mere coincidence.
Item #4: Common descent predicts that synonymous protein substitutions should fit a very specific pattern across phylogenies, entirely apart from any phenotypic "design" considerations, because it has no effect on phenotype. Again, these very specific patterns *are* found every time we do DNA analysis. Again, there's no reason for God's Method to match these results, since God any other method than actual common descent would be unlikely to "just happen" to produce results that look *exactly* like the signature of common descent. And yet... that signature *is* found in DNA. Mere coincidence again? Still?
Items #5-#10,000... Well, you get the idea.
And even each "single" item above is actually *thousands* of smaller individual items in a "family" of predictions along that line of evidence, and they *all* keep matching the predictions of common descent. Coincidence?
If life is *not* the result of common descent, by what STAGGERINGLY enormous "coincidence" does God's "other method", *whatever* it might be, JUST HAPPEN to match in every large and small detail, EVERY prediction of common descent? What dumb luck for the evolutionists, eh? The evolutionists are wrong, the creationists say, but the evolutionists lucked out in the evidence lottery, because God's non-evolutionary Design criteria "just happens" to LOOK EXACTLY LIKE THE RESULTS OF EVOLUTION IN EVERY WAY.
Just by mere coincidence, of course, and it don't prove a thing. The creationists assure us of that.
Thus endeth the lesson on the scientific method, and how it is used to validate theories in hundreds of ways, large and small, and carry them far, far beyond the shaky unreliability of "simply speculations". Speculations have not passed a mind-boggling battery of tests and reality-checks. Scientific theories have -- and continue to be tested and retested every day, and adjusted as needed to keep them as accurate as possible as new evidence and test results keep being added to science's vast body of knowledge.
Now, for a few clarifications. In the above, I have *not* said that science could rule out the existence of God. I have not said science could rule out the *involvement* of God. (For that matter, science can't rule out the existence of Santa Claus, and neither can any other method.) Some things are impossible to demonstrate even in principle, nor does science make the attempt. What I *have* said, however, is that the scientific method can rule out certain *kinds* of explanations. In the example I gave above, what we ruled out (to a high degree of probability) was any *alternative* to common descent that did not *include* common descent. In other words, we demonstrated that *whatever* (or "Whoever") else might be involved in the formation of life, common descent *was* part of the process. God may have made us, but if He did, he did it via some variation on common descent.
The second caveat is that yeah, there's some bogus "science" out there. But for the most part, it isn't really science -- it's not stuff that has passed through the "reality-checking" filters I've described above -- it's some quacks putting on some white coats and calling a press conference to masquerade their agenda as actual science. The things that deserve the name "science" are those that have really passed the gauntlet of heavy-duty testing and restesting, and have survived all challenges thrown at it. And yes, there have been mistakes and frauds (albeit not nearly as frequently as the creationists try to claim). But science, by its very nature, is self-correcting -- eventually someone will spot the problems, and weed them out. And almost without exception, that someone is another scientist.
The final caveat to the above discussion is that in order for predictions to be testable, the world has to work in ways that are, well, *predictable*. The world (Universe, whatever you want to call it) has to be non-capricious, it has to work within guidelines, so to speak -- it can't be *deceptive*. This is often misunderstood and mislabeled as a "presumption of materialism", but it's not. As long as God doesn't play tricks on us, or act capriciously, the world is still "lawful" enough to be testable, to operate by steady "rules". As long as God/Nature/pickyourfavoritename doesn't *actively* attempt to disrupt our quest to learn how things work, the scientific method still works too. But, in exactly the same way that all the evidence of the guilt of OJ really *could* be "coincidental" if someone carefully *framed* him for the crime, it's also possible (in concept) for all of the features of life, DNA, fossils, etc. to so exactly match the results -- the predictions -- of common descent in so many different ways, but common descent *not* to actually have happened, if God *purposely* set up all the evidence in order to falsely *mimic* such results. But I don't think that *anyone* is actually willing to claim that God might be a liar, trying for some unfathomable reason to convince us of something that isn't really true.
Barring that, though (and barring newly discovered evidence overturning everything we've already discovered -- and don't hold your breath on that one), the only rational conclusion is that so many findings, in so many different independent lines of evidence, *so* closely match the *countless* predictions of common descent, because common descent *is* actually the case. Common descent has been demonstrated to be true.
If you want the bumper-sticker version of all of the above, it's the old saying, "If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and waddles like a duck, it probably *is* a duck." Likewise, when the vast amounts of evidence overwhelmingly look like common descent, then...
[A dozen creationists posting, "that doesn't prove anything" in 3... 2...]
My FAIL Lady?
You were pinged in the same post that brought me to this thread. Quit whining. All you astronomers can ever think about is Uranus.
yarbles! great bolshy yarblockoes I say! Ye wuz pung at #2, me starry droogie
We *do* "produce our own evolution". See the post on genetic algorithms, and look at the vast array of crops and domestic animals which mankind has created through selective breeding (which is just molded evolution), and recently through direct genetic engineering.
I don't think either side could with tragic unintended consequences,
If you think so, feel free to go back to eating nothing but naturally-occurring plants and animals, instead of those "tragic" plants which have been evolved into sustainable crops. No corn or rice for you for example, unless you subsist on the wild ancestral forms which resemble wild grasses.
so in that sense, the jury still remains out as to who is actually right.
Uh huh. Sure.
True
"The First Born of Barsoom," he explained, "are the race of black men of which I am a Dator, or, as the lesser Barsoomians would say, Prince. My race is the oldest on the planet. We trace our lineage, unbroken, direct to the Tree of Life which flourished in the centre of the Valley Dor twenty-three million years ago.From The Gods of Mars by Edgar Rice Burrows"For countless ages the fruit of this tree underwent the gradual changes of evolution, passing by degrees from true plant life to a combination of plant and animal. In the first stages the fruit of the tree possessed only the power of independent muscular action, while the stem remained attached to the parent plant; later a brain developed in the fruit, so that hanging there by their long stems they thought and moved as individuals.
"Then, with the development of perceptions came a comparison of them; judgments were reached and compared, and thus reason and the power to reason were born upon Barsoom.
"Ages passed. Many forms of life came and went upon the Tree of Life, but still all were attached to the parent plant by stems of varying lengths. At length the fruit tree consisted in tiny plant men, such as we now see reproduced in such huge dimensions in the Valley Dor, but still hanging to the limbs and branches of the tree by the stems which grew from the tops of their heads.
"The buds from which the plant men blossomed resembled large nuts about a foot in diameter, divided by double partition walls into four sections. In one section grew the plant man, in another a sixteen-legged worm, in the third the progenitor of the white ape and in the fourth the primaeval black man of Barsoom.
"When the bud burst the plant man remained dangling at the end of his stem, but the three other sections fell to the ground, where the efforts of their imprisoned occupants to escape sent them hopping about in all directions.
"Thus as time went on, all Barsoom was covered with these imprisoned creatures. For countless ages they lived their long lives within their hard shells, hopping and skipping about the broad planet; falling into rivers, lakes, and seas, to be still further spread about the surface of the new world.
"Countless billions died before the first black man broke through his prison walls into the light of day. Prompted by curiosity, he broke open other shells and the peopling of Barsoom commenced.
"The pure strain of the blood of this first black man has remained untainted by admixture with other creatures in the race of which I am a member; but from the sixteen-legged worm, the first ape and renegade black man has sprung every other form of animal life upon Barsoom.
"The therns," and he smiled maliciously as he spoke, "are but the result of ages of evolution from the pure white ape of antiquity. They are a lower order still. There is but one race of true and immortal humans on Barsoom. It is the race of black men.
"The Tree of Life is dead, but before it died the plant men learned to detach themselves from it and roam the face of Barsoom with the other children of the First Parent.
"Now their bisexuality permits them to reproduce themselves after the manner of true plants, but otherwise they have progressed but little in all the ages of their existence. Their actions and movements are largely matters of instinct and not guided to any great extent by reason, since the brain of a plant man is but a trifle larger than the end of your smallest finger. They live upon vegetation and the blood of animals, and their brain is just large enough to direct their movements in the direction of food, and to translate the food sensations which are carried to it from their eyes and ears. They have no sense of self-preservation and so are entirely without fear in the face of danger. That is why they are such terrible antagonists in combat."
True enough...but to figure out how the islands formed an efficient scientist wouldn't simulate a random process and wait until something looking like Hawaii popped up. We are able to use observations and logic to skip the random experiment and hone in on a conceptualization of the process.
Climate modelers have been relatively successful at generating plausible physically realistic outcomes given realistic inputs to a complex system.
To your knowledge has much progress be made in this way with regard to the generation of life from chemicals?
The debate wasn't designed intelligently if that's what you mean. It has evolved even though throwbacks appear now and then. It also demonstrates how complexity can appear from simple beginnings and simple rules.
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