Posted on 02/22/2009 10:58:04 PM PST by GodGunsGuts
Opinion
Monday, Feb. 23, 2009
Evolution debate persists because it's not science
By Raymond H. Kocot
...
But did you ever wonder why Darwinism's general theory of evolution, sometimes called macroevolution, has been debated for over 150 years without resolution? The surprising answer is Darwin's macroevolution theory is not a legitimate science. The National Academy of Sciences clearly defined science in its 1998 guidebook for science teachers. The definition begins with [stating that] science is a particular way of knowing about the world, and ends with, "Anything that can be observed or measured is amenable to scientific investigation. Explanations that cannot be based on empirical evidence are not part of science." In other words, a legitimate scientific theory (a hypothesis or idea) must be observable in real time and must be testable, yielding reproducible results. That is the core of the scientific method that has brought man out of the Dark Ages.
Because confirmable observations and generating experimental data are impossible for unique events like life's origin and macroevolution theory, world-famous evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr prompts evolutionists to construct historical narratives to try to explain evolutionary events or processes. In other words, stories are all evolutionists can muster to support macroevolution theory. If macroevolution theory, which must rest on faith in a story and is considered to be scientific, why not the creation story. With that in mind, it is no wonder the molecules-to-man debate has persisted for 150 years...
(Excerpt) Read more at myrtlebeachonline.com ...
And thank you for bringing that article describing the fascinating amoeba experiment to the table.
For the discussion, here's another researcher discussing his hypothesis and experiments on cell intelligence.
It's fascinating to note that the inspiration, the raison d'etre of this site is coming directly from the medical sciences. Nobody's taking either the evo or the ID side here. The folk here seem to be interested in what actually works in nature, and are interested in finding out how and why. In short, there's nothing particularly "ideological" here....
I do hope that allmendream will read the contents at this link.
And as ever, dearest sister in Christ, thank you so very much for your kind words of support and encouragement!
To me, allmendream, if you are trying to contort "purpose" so to include non-cognitive events, you are destroying the very idea of "purpose." Any purposive activity is a willed activity. An exercise of will depends on a rational appraisal — that is, a cognitive appraisal — of various opportunities/threats and a decisive choice about how to respond to them in an optimal way. And if there is a will, there is an agent whose will it is. Be it a bacterium, an amoeba, a man, or God Himself.
A good deal of the problem with speaking to persons of your conviction is you guys are so horrifically sloppy when it comes to basic language usage, not to mention epistemological rigor.
For example, you're happy to speak of "purpose" in nature if it involves a bacterium blindly increasing its survival value by randomly mutating as furiously as possible to overcome "negative messages" from the external environment.
But what signal triggered this activity? How did the beastie recognize then process the signal; i.e., get the message? How did the beastie then understand what to do with the message?
You suggest that each and every one of these questions is irrelevant because, as every good Darwinist knows, Nature has only apparent "purposes" (i.e., not real) purposes — and "apparent purpose" is only mentioned when convenient for (incoherent) discussion purposes. Your doctrine seemingly attests to the conviction that Nature cannot really/does not have/never will have any purposes at all. She's not only "blind," but STUPID.
And so the human mind, attempting to explore this hypothetical stupidity, is supposed to extract, by means of human reason, the laws of what, on your presentation, is totally unlawful in the first place.
Jeepers, if that isn't a good description of nihilist expectation, I don't know what is.
Anyhoot, I expect you think the evolution of life is a bottom-up process and a random one at that which, for all its randomness, somehow results in an ordered biota and an ordered universe as well.
Because to me it is so clear that "order" does not arise in a "random" system without an intelligent guide, let me offer a different perspective for your reflection if I may:
Depending on the direction in which one reads the next sentence, intelligence is a fractal property or/and an emergent property: ...Intelligent ecologies contain intelligent populations,which contain intelligent organisms, which contain intelligent cells, which contain intelligent compartments, which contain...and so forth. — G. Albrecht-Buehler, Cell Intelligence.And what is "random" anyway, but a term admitting that some things are unpredictable because we do not yet understand their causes/mechanisms....
Just some food for thought my friend. Thanks so much for writing!
There is a purpose to actions that happen without cognition.
We take breath without thinking about it, by unconscious action. Breathing serves a purpose.
But this "unconscious action" is not necessarily an "uninformed action."
Try stopping -- and see how long it remains an "unconscious action"...
The term "apparent purpose" avoids that point.
But what signal triggered this activity? How did the beastie recognize then process the signal; i.e., get the message? How did the beastie then understand what to do with the message?
Thank you so much for your wonderful essay-post, dearest sister in Christ!
LOLOL!
Another evolutionary bottleneck.
If groups as large as ones like the Amish are having difficulties because of (essentially) inbreeding, then how did all these evolutionary bottlenecks which allegedly reduced the population to a few thousand go on to produce healthy individuals?
Since I’ve been alive, almost half a century now, I’ve read and seen populations in Africa that are anything but healthy, because of some or all of the following:
war, pestilence, disease, poverty, natural disasters, not to mention inbreedindg and God only knows what else; teenage or even pre-teen girls hardly able to walk themselves, yet they manage to carry to term children that somehow live to be a few months old with swollen bellies, literally starving to death...by the sheer hundreds of millions for decade after decade.
As a whole to say there’s anything “healthy”, both individually and as a society, is a very cruel joke and yet it goes on and on since long before my time actually.
Seems like they think they are somehow the only ones qualified to speak on the metaphysical when it concerns science even when they know (and admit) that they have no basis for any of their pronouncements.
The hypocrisy is staggering.
Liberals are like that. I don’t know of any group more self-absorbed.
I’m still trying to figure out why science must somehow be sterlized of God/religion/intelligence/design...there’s no place for God in the science class, blah blah blah...
yet scientists ask for public money to study the effectiveness of prayer.
Except of course science class where He has no place?
God's glory is reflected in the heavens. The testimony of starlight is not all a trick and a lie but speaks to the grandeur of God; he is Eternal, and eternally patient, he is forbearing, and his forbearance is eternal. Do not lose sight of this one thing my FRiend, A day for God is as a thousand years, and a thousand years a day.
Why is it so all important children be told He has no place in science class to you?
Especially if it might be the one and only time that a child might understand His very existence, directly or indirectly?
After all, I've heard many a person exclaim the more they observe life and design and his creation in science endeavors, the more they came to believe in the existence of God!I've even read of people set out to DISprove God via science and came to the opposite conclusions!
Some people may not get it via a church or religious course or some other tidy traditional means, because it may not be at their disposal or available to them or *GASP* purposefully closed off to them (NEA public schools anyone????????).
This is very different from proselytizing or teaching religion in science class, rather a child having his world outside science class acknowledged and not so "at odds" with the rest of his understanding outside science.
In other words, imagine a young child where God is understood to be real, and then a teacher teaches him the first thing he needs to understand about science class is that He has "NO PLACE" there!
It need not be so 'either/or' in our minds allmendream, but this is exactly what's exploited today by godless liberals...science used as a tool to disprove God, and we all know it.
“(Science) is just as far out its league to suggest there is no purpose as it is to suggest there is no God or indeed anything supernatural. The scientific method does not apply to such questions, science does not have the right toolset to address such questions.” Alamo-Girl
Exactly correct, thus those that try to shoe horn theology into the scientific method are rather daft. Science doesn’t have the right tool set to address such issues.
These things were said about speaking over a wire and hearing another human voice thousands of miles away...it’s just “black magic” and so on.
And who is that decides for everyone again what is or isn’t “science” the “scientific method”, etc.?
And how about shoehorning godless liberal ideology, does that count?
Well said, all of it!
It’s pretty simple, for the Christian, we understand there’s a world beyond this one, and science is “subservient”, “less than”, “less important”, to this “beyond”, which we do not and never will understand, not the other way around for heaven’s sakes!
Except of course when he's trying to outrun a polar bear on ice, hold young, open a shell,...
whoooo-WEE you're reaching very very badly allmendream!
And yet we hear all the time about an animal being referred to as a "living dinosaur".
...and this born-again physical chemist is one of them...
It doesn’t need to be to show my point. The making of reproductive cells is something that takes place unconsciously and without cognition, it also serves a purpose.
There is purpose without cognition.
The premise was that an intermediate form between a full flipper and a full leg would be useless. A seals front limbs are most certainly intermediate between a flipper and a leg, and it is not useless at all.
The premise was that an intermediate form between a full flipper and a full leg would be useless. A seals front limbs are most certainly intermediate between a flipper and a leg, and it is not useless at all.
Pretty useless when it comes to escaping polar bears on ice, breaking open shells or holding their young...
And lemme guess, now all we gotta do is wait millions of years to see what you’re seeing.
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