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To: Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus
See there? That's circular reasoning. In short, what you said is that the theory itself becomes the basis for what evidence will be interpreted and which will not be. Hence, only evidence which supports the theory will be considered, rendering the theory tautological. Under such a scheme, of course the evidence supports your theory - because you've prescreened the evidence you will accept as "interpretable". Sheesh.

You are the one drawing out such a tautology. Theories change, get refined or are discarded. That is part of the scientific process. Theories and evidence are intimately linked. Thus far, there is no evidence that yields to a concept other than evolution. And evolution, like all scientific theories, is purely tentative. Evidence is not prescreened for acceptance or rejection based on a theory. Evidence is accepted or rejected based on it's reliablity. When you look at a preponderance of all the pyscial sciences, they all point, within varying degrees of accuracy the same thing: a billions years old Earth, and even older universe and that life changes via evolution. It's not one piece of evidence that supports evolution, its all of it. ID only criticizes evolution where something is not known. But that is insufficient to switch back to a pre-enlightenment, magical invisble dude did it superstitious thinking.

64 posted on 11/15/2007 6:27:39 AM PST by doc30 (Democrats are to morals what an Etch-A-Sketch is to Art.)
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To: doc30
You are the one drawing out such a tautology. Theories change, get refined or are discarded. That is part of the scientific process. Theories and evidence are intimately linked.

Yes, but what you said in your previous post, though it may have not come out the way you intended due to sloppy wording, sounded for all the world like you were saying that ONLY evidence which supports a theory ought to be considered. THAT is circular. Using the theory to define which evidence is acceptable for critiquing the theory.

Thus far, there is no evidence that yields to a concept other than evolution.

That is where you are wrong, insofar as your definition of "evolution" is confused. If by "evolution", you mean "natural selection", then yes, the evidence for natural selection is there. As a creationist, I have no problem with natural selection. It is observable, it is testable - but observation and experimentation have also shown that it is essentially an iterative process, not a creative one. It can lead to gradual changes WITHIN kind, but cannot and does not produce NEW kinds.

Further, we need to understand that natural selection IS NOT EVIDENCE FOR THE UNDERLYING WORLDVIEW OF EVOLUTIONISM. There is absolutely nothing about natural selection which, in and of itself, demands a purely naturalistic origin for life, which is really what the issue is all about, once we understand all angles of the problem. There is no conflict between natural selection and the Bible. None whatsoever. The view that the two are in conflict is a result of two things:

1) Ignorance about what the Bible says about these matters on the part of materialistic evolutionists, and

2) An insufficient knowledge of what the Bible says about these matters on the part of your typical church-goer.

This being said, natural selection neither refutes nor conflicts with what the Bible does say about the biological sciences.

I repeat again - There is absolutely nothing about natural selection which, in and of itself, demands a purely naturalistic origin for life. Natural selection as a process would function regardless which extreme of the ideological spectrum we look at. Natural selection, itself as a process, would work just the same whether God created the universe or whether it happened all by random chance. The only way evolutionism (defined as the naturalistic, random chance view of events) becomes "apparent" is when it is a priori defined as the "only" explanation, which is then applied circularly to subsequent discussion.

You, doc30, are a victim of your own insufficient ability to think about the issue clearly.

186 posted on 11/16/2007 7:35:06 AM PST by Titus Quinctius Cincinnatus (Conservatives - Freedom WITH responsibility; Libertarians - Freedom FROM responsibility)
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