Posted on 11/18/2005 4:34:43 AM PST by StatenIsland
Why intelligent design proponents are wrong.
Because every few years this country, in its infinite tolerance, insists on hearing yet another appeal of the Scopes monkey trial, I feel obliged to point out what would otherwise be superfluous - that the two greatest scientists in the history of our species were Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, and they were both religious. Newton's religiosity was traditional. He was a staunch believer in Christianity and member of the Church of England. Einstein's was a more diffuse belief in a deity who set the rules for everything that occurs in the universe.
Neither saw science as an enemy of religion. On the contrary. "He believed he was doing God's work," wrote James Gleick in his recent biography of Newton. Einstein saw his entire vocation - understanding the workings of the universe - as an attempt to understand the mind of God.
Not a crude and willful God who pushes and pulls and does things according to whim. Newton was trying to supplant the view that first believed the sun's motion around the Earth was the work of Apollo and his chariot, and later believed it was a complicated system of cycles and epicycles, one tacked on upon the other every time some wobble in the orbit of a planet was found. Newton's God was not at all so crude. The laws of his universe were so simple, so elegant, so economical, and therefore so beautiful that they could only be divine.
Which brings us to Dover (Pa.), Pat Robertson, the Kansas State Board of Education and a fight over evolution that is so anachronistic and retrograde as to be a national embarrassment.
Dover distinguished itself this Election Day by throwing out all eight members of its school board who tried to impose "intelligent design" - today's tarted-up version of creationism - on the biology curriculum. Robertson then called down the wrath of God upon the good people of Dover for voting "God out of your city." Meanwhile in Kansas, the school board did a reverse Dover, mandating the teaching of skepticism about evolution and forcing intelligent design into the statewide biology curriculum.
Let's be clear. "Intelligent design" may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud. It is a self-enclosed, tautological "theory" whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge - in this case, evolution - they are to be filled by God. It is a "theory" that admits that evolution and natural selection explain such things as the development of drug resistance in bacteria and other such evolutionary changes within species, but that every once in a while God steps into this world of constant and accumulating change and says, "I think I'll make me a lemur today." A "theory" that violates the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science - that it be empirically disprovable. How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur, or evolution - or behind the motion of the tides or the "strong force" that holds the atom together?
In order to justify the farce that intelligent design is science, Kansas had to corrupt the very definition of science, dropping the phrase "natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us," thus unmistakably implying - by fiat of definition, no less - that the supernatural is an integral part of science. This is an insult both to religion and to science.
The school board thinks it is indicting evolution by branding it an "unguided process" with no "discernable direction or goal." This is as ridiculous as indicting Newtonian mechanics for positing an "unguided process" by which the Earth is pulled around the sun every year without discernible purpose. What is chemistry if not an "unguided process" of molecular interactions without "purpose"? Or are we to teach children that God is behind every hydrogen atom in electrolysis?
He may be, of course. But that discussion is the province of religion, not science. The relentless attempt to confuse the two by teaching warmed-over creationism as science can only bring ridicule to religion, gratuitously discrediting a great human endeavor and our deepest source of wisdom precisely about those questions - arguably, the most important questions in life - that lie beyond the material.
How ridiculous to make evolution the enemy of God. What could be more elegant, more simple, more brilliant, more economical, more creative, indeed more divine than a planet with millions of life forms, distinct and yet interactive, all ultimately derived from accumulated variations in a single double-stranded molecule, pliable and fecund enough to give us mollusks and mice, Newton and Einstein? Even if it did give us the Kansas State Board of Education, too.
Originally published on November 18, 2005
No, that's not what ID is at all. If ID were about abiogenesis, it wouldn't be at all in conflict with the Theory of Evolution since the Theory of Evolution has absolutely nothing to say on that subject. What ID does say is that God (or Xenu or some unspecified Creator) occasionally steps in and mucks about with the evolutionary process, creating "features" that ID proponents insist could not possibly be created through evolution. Now, in every specific case they cite, such as the flagellum, science has managed to provide a hypothetical evolutionary pathway, but when confronted with that the ID proponents simply smile and either repeat the same example over and over hoping no one will notice, or pick some new supposedly "irreducibly complex" mechanism to harp on, which is in turn dispensed with by the scientific community. Note that ID never actually attempts to tell us what the Creator is, how it works or what mechanisms it uses, it simply posits some unspecified miracle for everything that is not completely understood.
Are you suggesting if I created a fortune of 100 millinon dollars, it just sprang into existence one day. Or if I created an artistic masterpiece, it just sprang into existence. Creation is a process, not an event.
You do know the English word "created" didnt exist at the Time that Moses wrote Genesis? So why do you put such great emphasis on your distinction between created and evolved when in God's mind there might be no difference. God can do creation how He wants, not how you demand He do it.
Where have I demanded anything? I simply read Genesis. Sounds if you are the one demanding that God conform to your Darwinist beliefs.
Are you saying that God made a mistake when he created Neanderthal Man and had to keep creating Man until he got it right with us? If God didnt use evolution, then why did he screw up with all our forebearers like Neanderthal? I dont read anything in the Bible about Neanderthal? Are you saying that God didnt create him and that he was a work of the Devil?
Allright, learn something new every day. I admit my ignorance as to ID, since I haven't been following it. However, the theory of evolution still does not explain everything. Mathmatically, it is highly improbable for the primordial soup to have developed complex amino acids in the time frame specified by the theory. Am I saying that it is impossible? No I am not. All I am saying is that it is still open to speculation, which is what a theory is. I don't have much of a bio background, but I do know enough about math and physics and chemistry to understand that some of the things that have happened (the formation of complex protiens, the formation of the planets/solar systems/galaxies/clusters/superclusters) are still not fully solved by science, and will never be (in my eyes) until actual proof by first hand evidence is shown to prove it (does anyone have a good time machine handy?). If the ID people are wrong, then they are wrong, but likewise, the evolution crowd may not be right either, because there is no conclusive evidence supporting what that theory states about the begining of it all. If people believe that life started by an accident of nature, then more power to them, but it still as yet needs to be proven. I am aware that scientists are trying to re-create the conditions that are believed to have caused the formation of the first amino acids, and they still haven't done it yet. One of the theories that I know of states that the amino acids came from comets, which is all good and dandy, but WHERE DID THEY FORM, and how? Nothing is set in stone about it, so there is still room for a revision of the theory.
Actually the Bible does talk about the "giants" but doesn't say where they came from. And a lot of people think Neanderthals were humans so I don't see a problem.
You really do need to read a little bit about evolution theory. Nowhere does it say that man evolved from apes!! Oh, by the way which Genesis account aare we supposed to believe? There are two different ones you know of course.
But a whole generation or more of children will have grown up scientifically ignorant because they wont understand what science is or how it works.
What you say is equivalent to lets accept Islam as our faith and if it is wrong it will fall out of favor and the world will stil spin and the birds will still fly.
You are correct.
Besides, Einstein himself stated that imagination is more important than intelligence. Seeing the "mind" of God (i.e. ID) requires more than science, it *demands* creative thinking that is outside the scope of science. Anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of quantum physics can see this. Krauthammer, who can otherwise be brilliant, apparently does not.
Oh yeah! Then how do you explain Rumpelstiltskin, or what ever his name was, predicting global warming? Ain't global warming science? Ain't prophecy religion? There, argument over!!
:-)
Every term - elegant, simple, brilliant, economical, creative - describes the exact antithesis of evolution. Evolution my be a lot of things but it is none of these.
"That is called faith, something that science cannot change, and most likely cannot prove or disprove due to our flawed nature (Man is not perfect)."
To the contrary, I believe that science (the work of Bohr, Einstein, Heisenberg, et al. on quantum physics) *proves* the need for faith.
Faith is an integral part of the equation of life. Quantum physics suggests as much. God, in His brilliance, set it up that way.
Why would Christ use up part of his short ministry to tell the backward pre-science era early Christians about evolution. Im sure Christ had more confidence in His creatures that they would be able to figure that out for themselves some day when they got to the point that they could understand science.
In that same inerrant Bible you quote, He also said some here today will not pass away before I return. Do we have 2000 year old Christian Jews still alive on Earth and waiting for His return? Im not saying that God made an error but whoever wrote it down and translated it over the years didnt get it all right.
Ok, ape-like. Not sure what the supposed difference is, though. I personally prefer the King James account.
I couldn't have picked better words myself.
LOL. Why confess your own shortcomings? It's not like they aren't readily apparent.
"........The relentless attempt to confuse the two by teaching warmed-over creationism as science can only bring ridicule to religion, gratuitously discrediting a great human endeavor and our deepest source of wisdom precisely about those questions - arguably, the most important questions in life - that lie beyond the material......."
As I've said in the past on these Threads, the purpose of Creationism/ID is to destroy the Conservative Movement and this website. Those that practice or spread these lies are either Evil Trolls because they knowingly lead people astray, or are unwitting ignoramuses.
Hope this helps.
I don't know about that. I think that Quantum physics leaves it open (wide open), but to prove it conclusively (especially to the secular population) is a bit of a stretch. Heisenberg's uncertantity principal does give a leg up to the arguement in my mind, but they won't listen to it, and just cite that God doesn't exist because of "X". The works of the Quamtum mechanics proved to many of them that God does exist, because they understood it, but to people who haven't studied it, or don't/can't understand it, the arguement is as meaningless to them as the Bible says God exists.
Like I said before, do I believe that God exists? Yes I do. And I do believe that Quantum mechanics as well as cosmology prove that there is more out there than meets the eye. It is just that the average secularist won't look at it, much like some of my hard core religous friends think that it is a sin for us to be in space, or even try to explain the Macro and Micro-cosm.
As much as I would like to stay here and discuss more, I need to go to work.....I have an education to finance (my own).
"Seeing the "mind" of God (i.e. ID) requires more than science, it *demands* creative thinking that is outside the scope of science."
I wouldn't go quite that far.
While ID is the only thing that I know of that explains the origin of the universe, it's als a one size fits all answer to almost anything.
It doesn't take a lot of creativity to say that things are the way they are because they were designed that way.
ID is an answer that cannot be proven. Therefore ID is never the end answer to an investigation into something.
Scientists need to be open to the fact that the world may have been designed to be the way it is, but that doesn't mean they should stop trying to understand better how the universe works.
The problem with religious fundamentalists is that they see ID as the end answer and suggest that we stop looking for answers.
ID is not imcompatible with science or with evolution. If there is a God, which I believe there is, science is the study of his creation. Seeking to understand Gods creation in more depth is something religion should embrace, not oppose.
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