Kevin says the biblical accounting of Genesis 1 & 2 matches perfectly with the scientific record.
I don’t see it that way, most particularly the stuff about plants coming before sea life. Nor do I see how the Genesis story is really all that different from other creation myths, inasmuch as God is said to “make” things and to hover and do other physical stuff, which would all seem to me to suggest that Kevin’s allowing Genesis to be figurative but forcing all the other creation myths out there to be literal. But… [shrug]
On the flip side, the Discovery Institute folks note an essay in The Scientist by Professor Phillip S. Skell noting that the idea that Darwinian evolution is central to understanding the modern biological sciences is highly questionable. Which has long been obvious to me. Skell notes:
Certainly, my own research with antibiotics during World War II received no guidance from insights provided by Darwinian evolution. Nor did Alexander Fleming’s discovery of bacterial inhibition by penicillin. I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin’s theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No.
When I’ve asked people who are rabidly opposed to the very idea that any scientist might possibly ask if there was any kind of creative design behind life, they can never give me a straight answer to this: what exactly is the harm in persuing this line of inquiry? No vague generalizations please. No fulminating about how it’s “not science” please. Harm. Harm. Tell me the harm in asking the question.
{ 38 comments }
Dear Kevin D.:
Excellent. Thank you.
I must say that Kevin D. knows his Bible, and his Hebrew, inside and out, far better than you or me or even Arnold Harris. I wouldn’t try to argue with him about the Bible. He also knows his science very well. He is an outstanding commenter here in Dean’s World, that I have found out more and more.
Actually, I’m taking Genesis quite literally. I simply cannot see how one can lump Genesis in with other creation myths simply because the fundamental elements there are so strikingly different. If you think God speaking things into existance is similiar at all to Gaia mating with Uranus (her own son)… then there’s nothing that can be said to dissuade you.
And I believe that it’s safe to assume with plant life appearing on land they also appeared under the sea. If you really want to get prickly about it why not state that Genesis tells us plant life was never created under the sea?
The 11 points I described as the Genesis process is perfectly scientific. But let’s say a few of the details are fuzzy, can you give me another creation story this close to science?
Simply, if you removed the mention of God from Genesis you would be left with an astonsingly accurate, yet still basic, description of what science itself believe occured. No other “creation myth” can boast this. If someone cannot see that it’s because they don’t want to.
Mr. Anderson,
Thank you for the kind words but I must give credit to my sources. I paraphrase someone much wiser than me, “… only because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.”
I love science and I love Yeshua. When the two seemingly come into conflict I must find out why by respecting both.
Although I don’t know all the references, Genesis is not the only place the creation is referenced in the Bible. I’m rather a fan of the Reasons to Believe web site. They take the six days of creation as not 24 hour periods, but long epics of time. They say the word day can also mean a long period of time. Also, later in the Bible there is a quote about how thousands of years to man can be as a single day to God.
In their model, and they call it a creation model, the say that God created for six days and then rested. They take that to mean that God stopped creating and we are still in the seventh day. The bible, after all, does finalize the first six days, but not the seventh. It just says that on the seventh day God rested.
Later in, in Revelations, God starts creating again when he creates a new heaven and a new earth.
Dean, I’m not so much rabid about it as simply adamant, when you talk about this “creative design behind life.” As a deist, I believe that my god set forth in motion the creation of the universe. What seems random to us may or may not be random, or directed, or coaxed, or even directly created. I simply don’t know. My faith ends at that point.
I do not have a scientific procedure to prove the existence, or the direct participation, of my god in daily events. Nor can I propose a way for people to actively prove and disprove his existence either.
It “isn’t science” because of the way we have designed the “scientific method” of acquiring knowledge. When does knowledge get supplanted by statements of faith? When does faith get supported by acquired knowledge? These are the questions you need to ask, not the “what harm can it do?”
What’s the harm?
A minister friend of mine was once asked by one of her parishioners if it would be okay for her son’s Jewish girlfriend to take communion. She didn’t want the girl to feel left out and after all, what was the harm?
If you see science and scientific inquiry as a ritual devoid of meaning, much as communion is to a non-Christian, then you’re absolutely right, Dean. There is no harm.
Dale
IMO, there’s no harm for someone to pursue this line of inquiry on their own time and nickel. The harm in pursuing it using money and effort which could be used to pursue other questions is mostly opportunity cost. I’m not sure how asking a given question could ever be harmful in the abstract; it’s when we’re going to devote our resources to the pursuit to the exclusion of other possibilities that harm comes in.
Also, and I say this with some exasperation, what *are* these hypotheses that the scientific establishment is refusing to explore? I would love to see an example of a specific experiment for which was turned down only because the outcome would threaten the Darwinian establishment. As I said in an earlier discussion of these issues, as far as I can tell ID is focusing its effort on school boards, not research.
Okay, we remove Genesis from the “creation myth†mold. Are we now to believe that Genesis is a news account of the Creator matching science in assembly line fashion sector by sector ? Somehow that approach seems lacking as does Dean’s—its just another myth legend fairy tale. Yet, I find myself agreeing with Dean that the scientist or anyone may ask questions after all they do come from ignorance do they not ? Answers, I have not but I think of a creator sort of like Picasso living by the sea with mud and sand and whatever mixing up a concoction that may sometimes go boom in the night, an independent sort you might say. Michaelangelo had good creation ideas as well which he painted and sculpted rather than the mundane written word.
Kevin: Sea life existed before plants. And when you say God “speaks,” do you mean he literally shaped his mouth and tongue and throat and breathed through his lips to make them? Did his spirit literally float above the water? What did it look like, a cloud? A guy with a sheet over his head?
Jay: I’m an atheist and I don’t need a God to explain anything. That’s completely irrelevant to the question.
It isn’t science to say that there cannot be a creative or intelligent force behind life. It is perfectly normal in science to look for signs that a phenomenon or object might be crafted by some intelligence. We can look at scratchings on bark and try to determine whether those scratches were done by a knife, by a bear’s claws, or by some other phenomenon. We can look at a funny-shaped rock and using scientific principles determine whether it’s an arrowhead fashioned by human hands or if it’s just a rock shaped by erosion. We can listen to signals from outer space and try to determine if they’re random noise or if some intelligence is sending a signal.
To fulminate that the search for evidence of intelligence is “not science” is not to defend science at all–it’s actually an outright attack on science.
Anyway, I take it that you’re ceding the point to me–that science is in no measurable way harmed by intelligent design speculation. Right? You would agree, thinking along these lines does not prevent people from understanding meiosis, or photosynthesis, or genetics? That it does not stop anyone from doing any research on any subject? You stipulate all that, right?
Dean, of course I stipulate that. I think that such inquiries won’t chill scientific research. But what is the threshold that says that something is intelligently designed?
The danger is when guardians of dogma (scientific or otherwise) refuse to be challenged. Are both sides prone to this behaviour? Why, yes!
Dale: Do you really mean to suggest that science is a religion, and that its rituals and its faith will be harmed by allowing someone to investigate the possibility that there is a creative design behind a phenomenon?
Elizabeth: The ID people have in fact published in peer-reviewed journals, at least once, and those who published their paper were immediately subject to censure and ridicule. If you think these people aren’t about actually persuing research, you’re simply mistaken. You need to look harder at who they are and what they’re doing, and what they’re being put through for the audacity to ask questions and explore ideas.
This paper at the Discovery Institute site answers the claim that all these people are doing is trying to sneak into the schools.
In point of fact, they publicly opposed the teaching of ID in the schools. So can we please dispense with that argument and talk about the actual ideas and proposals here?
Sorry for the (possibly misplaced) levity, but Dean: A guy with a sheet over his head? I doubt God is a Klansman. As Picard said… The universe isn’t so poorly designed.
Dean:
Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. Come on, you’re not even trying. For as open as you say you are you’re simply unwilling to look at Genesis as anything more than myth. Dispite mounds of evidence to the contrary. It doesn’t fit the myth archetype and, once you realize the perspective of the narrative, it’s stunningly accurate with what modern science tells us how life began.
As for the sea life/plant thing I believe Genesis 1:21 gets a bit more specific, as far a specifics goes in Genesis. That is it mentions, “the great creatures of the sea,” and I believe this to mean mammals. So, unless you’re saying mammals came before plants… I suppose an arguement could be made that any creature is great. But I’d say it was weak simply because the same wording isn’t used to describe land mammals but sea creatures specificly. And creatures such as the blue whale is certianly deserving of the word, “great.”
McKiernan:
No. The point of Genesis is twofold:
1. Give us a general idea of the events which lead to the creation of humanity.
2. Show humanity the awesome power and care of God.
Genesis was never intended to be an abject lesson in the scientific process. Indeed it should be kept simple so that it is obtainable to those without the benefits of scientific experence. However, that in it’s simplicity it is accurate should make the world sit up and notice. But that said far too many are more than happy to relegate it to the realm of ancient myth and leave it there.
Dean,
I don’t think that scientists are saying there is any harm in asking “if there was any kind of creative design behind lifeâ€. At least I have not heard any scientists saying that.
Scientists are always free to put forward any theory they want. To be taken seriously, a scientist needs to suggest ways of verifying his theory. Usually this means designing experiments that can be done to test the theory. If a scientist claims to have verified his theory, then other scientist will try to reproduce the experiments. Only after some number of respected scientists who are viewed as impartial have been able to reproduce the experiments that verified a theory, will scientists generally accept a theory.
The proponents of Intelligent Design (ID) are free to put forward their theory, but they also need to suggest ways of verifying the theory. Experiments that other scientists who are not true believers in the theory can try to reproduce.
The theory of evolution as put forward by Darwin has been subjected to experimental study for more than 100 years and is generally accepted by the vast majority of scientists in the field. The Intelligent Design theory has not been subjected to this kind of review and is not generally accepted by the scientists in the field at this time.
What’s the harm? Because asking the question is the antithesis to science. The question is not falsifiable.
Color me an idiot, but SCIENCE is what should be taught in a SCIENCE classroom–you know, things that meet the definition of science: things that are falsifiable or provable.
And of course scientists are not going to say ID is impossible, because they’d have to hand in their scientific badges and decoder rings to do so. Again, it is not falsifiable so you cannot state it isn’t possible. That doesn’t mean it is what the research suggests. On the contrary, research doesn’t suggest “hocus pocus poof” for something that science cannot yet fully explain.
This whole discussion is an exercise in bad logic.
Here’s one of the simplest logic tests:
__, 5, __, 15, 20, __, 30
Can you fill in the blanks without the values? THAT is Darwin’s theory of evolution. Any one who can pass a simple logic test can understand that. The absense of a few of the pieces doesn’t mean that theory is unsound or false. The pattern is obvious.
Will pigs fly past my window tomorrow? Answer: MAYBE, because until tomorrow it isn’t falsifiable. That is exactly how credible scientists would answer the question and make up the generic statements such as “scientists won’t say it isn’t possible.” It isn’t SCIENCE.
Intelligent Design Has No Place in the Science Curriculum
“This whole discussion is an exercise in bad logic.”
I’m sure that cannot be explained logically. I should like to present a few disjointed ideas.
Firstly, Regarding Sir Alexander Fleming:
“Had he not been an untidy man and apt to leave his cultures exposed on the laboratory table the spore of hyssop mould, the penicillin notatum might never have floated in from Praed Street and settled on his dish of staphylococci.”
Secondly, Yogi Berra once said: in baseball (which for him was life itself) three things can happen: “you can win, you can lose or it can rain.†I think life is like that.
Thirdly, I once made this comment which I believe has merit if one examines its premises:
“Evolution is based on theory. Scientists love theory. In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, yet, in practice there is. This causes problems. Firstly, scientists, say, we made too many wrong mistakes, but our theory is still good. Yet, they cannot prove their theory because they cannot measure it. The creationist doesn’t believe in theory, they believe in God.
But no-one can measure God. This also causes problems. Scientists do not believe anything unless it can be measured with the exception of theory. One goal might be to convince scientists that God is a theory but not one that can be measured.
I think the point of the Genesis story is not so much of how the universe came to be, although it as that. Rather that man’s place in it is unique. Man is special in that he was made in God’s own image. Just as importantly it points out the how and why of Man’s fall.
The serpent cause man to doubt God’s word and tempted him with, “For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.â€
This is where man turns his back on God and, in essences says, I don’t need God. I can do this all myself. And the world has suffered for it ever since.
Jacob Bronowski makes the very same point is his “The Ascent of Man†series. There is a very moving scene where he grabs a handful of mud from the ashes in Auschwitz and he say, “It is said that science will dehumanize people and turn them into numbers. That is false, tragically false. Look for yourself. This is the concentration camp and crematorium at Auschwitz. This is where people were turned into numbers. Into this pond were flushed the ashes of some four million people. And that was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe that they have absolute knowledge, with no test in reality, this is how they behave. This is what men do when they aspire to the knowledge of gods.â€
/SERMON OFF
Depends on where you get your dogma from, I suppose, when considering harm, etc.
A Jewish Kabbalist might read Genesis in a much different fashion than a Biblical literalist, for example. In that sort of reading, he might be looking more for indications along physics lines so as to pursue an inquiry. He wouldn’t try to force the universe into the text, since the text came forth from the universe. Its just the wrong way ’round.
Harm ? None I guess. My question still remains, no matter where this discussion takes place – To what end ? The “evidence” of “intelligence” is alleged to already exist. What is the point, exactly, of looking for MORE ? Now, whomever chooses to look for said evidence, have at it, I don’t particularly care.
Until, however, it can be proven or disproven (something distinctly difficult for a non-falsifiable theory) there is no real point to finding more evidence of the voodoo of creation. It is faith, whether you can logically cobble together observations that someone feels is “evidence” of intelligence, or not.
When dealing with faith, either you believe or you don’t. To me it seems transparently obvious that the only point to looking for more evidence is to convince us “non-believers” that the IDers are right.
AND.THEN.WHAT ????? There is no “then what”. You’re done. That isn’t science. Not even close.
Re: the Intelligent Design question.
The harm is largely fictional, because 99% of ID critics haven’t taken the time to read the ID researchers. They saw Inherit the Wind once and figure that’s close enough to get the general idea.
Interestingly, I’m not an ID proponent. But I might as well be, because whenever the question comes up lately I end up defending the IDers. Actually, all I defend is the idea that a scientist can ask any question he wants, provided he properly follows scientific procedure. And since we’re talking about people who had long careers in various scientific fields before their ID research, they know how to do that to a level that would stun most ID critics. One of the reasons I don’t consider myself qualified to comment on the merit of their research, is that I haven’t taken the time to read more than high level summaries of it. But those summaries have described properly framed scientific questions.
Of course, non-scientists leap to invalid assumptions about what ID is, and those folks make all sorts of scientific errors – not the least of which is a failure to understand evolutionary theory to begin with. But then, I could say the same of most of evolution’s “defenders.” The general public on both sides routinely make huge mistatements about evolutionary theory every time this topic comes up.
When I was in college, the greatest threats to “Darwinism” at the time were considered to be Steven J. Gould and Niles Eldridge. Had Gould not been such an outspoken atheist (I have no idea what Eldridge’s religious ideas were) and instead been a devout Christian, I seriously wonder if his (in my opinion correct) theory of Punctuated Equilibrium would have been shouted down as strongly as ID is today.
A test for completing a numeric sequence is not a test for logic, it’s a test for pattern-matching ability. In fact logically, any answer to that question would be correct. For any three numbers you put in those blank spaces, I can come up with a perfectly sound mathematical function that produces the resulting sequence.
I keep waiting to hear someone say: what’s wrong with using ID as an object lesson in science classes, to illustrate the very concept of something that exists outside of science and that the laws of science can’t encompass?
It’s something you can’t measure, observe, or prove. It’s something you can’t describe through induction or deduction. Above all, it’s something that science can’t disprove.
The existence of ID does not threaten anything taught in a science class; therefore let’s have science classes explain to kids, dispassionately, what ID is and how it does and does not fit in with science. Use it as an example to show where science’s limits are. Science exists within the bounded universe of human perception, and it seems to me that teaching kids where those bounds are is a fine way to give them an understanding of what to expect science to do for them.
Then, perhaps, kids wouldn’t have to go to school and be told by their teachers that their parents are idiots, and then go home and be told by their parents that their teachers are lying to them.
Instead, today it’s this you must not speak of the snares business. What good does it do kids to wave your hands agitatedly, look around huntedly, and tell them in a whisper that there are certain things they’re not allowed to discuss in school?
This from another atheist who’s sick to death of seeing the very nature of science willfully obscured to the point that its practitioners behave as though it were a religion.
Dean,
Call me lazy but I’m not interested enough to wade through that article line by line. I skimmed a bit, but foundered on sentences like:
“The deployment of flawed or metaphysically tendentious demarcation arguments against legitimate theoretical contenders has produced an unjustified confidence in the epistemic standing of much Darwinian dogma, including “the fact of evolution” defined as common descent.”
C’mon now.
Can you answer the question of whether they’re proposing specific lines of research that go beyond “look at the phenomenon and decide if it just seems too complicated to have evolved”?
In studying world religions, I’ve gradually come to the sense that they are all, in some respect, wrong. No religion has been bequeathed a true understanding of the universe. But some are arguably closer than others, and many may offer some insights.
Looking at religion empirically, one can pretty easily come to the conclusion that if you had to pick one religion as most right, in terms of “physcially correct” by being compatible with accepted scientific truth and “morally correct” by being compatible with the accepted principles of secular humanism, you would probably choose Christianity. You could also make this choice on the more practical considerations: that their societies have been able to apply their principles in such a successful way that Christian nations today are the most powerful and generally enjoy the highest standards of living.
Some religions, like the torture/death cult abomination practiced by the Aztecs, are easy to disqualify on the basis of being essentially sadistic. Other religions like Buddhism and Hinduism offer a lot that is certainly valid and beautiful and correct, but are arguably lacking an overarching virtue. Some are doctrinally or philosophically incompatible with science; Muslim science stopped progressing around 1400 AD largely because it was decided all knowledge that could be known was now codified in their texts while Buddhism tends toward mysticism re natural laws.
We all know the challenges from religious authority Galileo faced in upsetting the heliocentric model, but ultimately his findings were accepted and Newton allowed to publish. Christians were peculiarly able to take the logos of the Greeks and develop it into empiricism, the most powerful tool ever invented by man, a conceptual tool probably more materially valuable than all other conceptual creations since or before. Empiricism created the modern world. Other societies became civilized long before, but never developed that principle.
Of course, which religion is “right” is a very contentious issue, and scholars will debate it till the end of time.
Dean
We modern people read an account like Gen 1&2 and see Astronomy and Biology 101. I think the people who first heard the account 3500-4000 years ago would find something completely different.
The original is, despite the translation, poetry, when have your ever seen a science test book in Iambic Pentameter? It is not telling how — it is telling who, why, and what.
God is building a garden.
He spends 3 days with physical landscaping, one day making plants, one day making animals, one day making people , and then one day to rest and enjoy.
Of course people never know a good thing when the got it, and in the next two chapters get thrown on the Garden of Eden.
Lots of good things can be extrapolated from that, but Astronomy and Biology 101 are not among them.
The above goes back to before Christ, it is not some new fad.
Note: Educated Christians knew that Genesis did not tie in with Ptolemy whose theory was the best scientific theory of the time. It is not until the last 400 years or so the literal 7 day creation version became popular. IMHO it is unbibilical
Dean says:When I’ve asked people who are rabidly opposed to the very idea that any scientist might possibly ask if there was any kind of creative design behind life
I suggest that you are positing the existence of class that is insignificant at best, and entirely irrelevant to the discussion in any case.
Having established a straw opponent, you then posit a straw argument for him:
they can never give me a straight answer to this: what exactly is the harm in persuing this line of inquiry? i.e. pursuing this line of questioning would be harmful.
Finally, having set up a contrived situation, you severly limit the realm of acceptable responses:No vague generalizations please. No fulminating about how it’s “not science” please. Harm. Harm. Tell me the harm in asking the question.
As a result, you get this giant meandering collection of beside the point discussions, mine included. The reason I say beside the point is because there are many specific points that could be made or denied. This is a large issue ranging from faith through philosphy though logic through practical evidence. There are many many angles, many many points. Your commenters are like the blind men describing the elephant.
If you realy want to clarify your own thinking on this subject, try to put less words into other’s mouths; try to define the questions more precisely; try to identify when you and your partner in conversation are talking about different things.
Your category links are blog archives. A logged collection of your and other peoples ideas. But maybe it is time for you to build a structured model on this subject. Or at least a collection of models, kind of like the spectrum guy. Tackle things a small piece at a time; build a framework. Eventually you will approach Dean’s answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything in it. I’d prefer 42 to the current bowl of mush. At least 42 makes no pretense.
I would really like to see you do it, because this subject frustrates me no end. I think you have the right temperment to construct a fair treatment.
John
Oh, and let me say again ID has a proper place: Sunday school. While it does have some valid debating points, it’s not a scientific proposition and shouldn’t be taught as such.
Now, if a school wants to include it as part of a study of Christitanity, that would make sense.
Dean
Geez I take some time off from posting here and you drop the ol’ Creationist bomb to bring me back.
My question is this: What’s the deal, Dean? Have you made up your mind and want to know why I don’t want my kid taught ID in school – or is it that you haven’t made up your mind and want to be convinced that ID makes about as much sense being taught in the classroom as Astrology?
As for the DI article, that isn’t science either: that’s anecdotal evidence from an extremely biased source.
You’ve gotta hang with some normal scientists, Dean, and get away from the crazies.
And no, Duesberg is NOT one of the latter. You might want to ask what HIS opinion of ID is, BTW.
If you take the Bible and the interesting ideas in Cradle of Saturn together (a hard SF novel by James Hogan of Gentle Giants of Ganymede fame, and a fellow who has written pro-evolutionary books, but is starting to be bit skeptical of doctrinaire gradualist evolution), you get an interesting idea or two.
Bible: How the world was created
Cradle: It asks the interesting question of why do all the myths have such an active solar system? Nowadays, if we were to sui generis make a mythology, we probably would not assign the planets a major role.
Perhaps, after Noah, the repopulation of the Earth was during a time of great chaos in the solar system. Cradle speculates that Venus was spat out by Jupiter, as the myth says that a goddess came from the head of Zeus.
I really think the central idea of Cradle, i.e. lets admit we scientists really don’t know what we are doing in cosmology, and should start with a clean sheet of paper is a good one.
Its idle speculation, but it does answer two questions: 1)Why is the Bible account so different (its describing a different and earlier event) 2)Why do so many creation myths have such a wild start?
Anyways, I reccommend Cradle of Saturn as a prime example of out of the box thinking on this subject.
What’s the harm? Because asking the question is the antithesis to science. The question is not falsifiable.
Color me an idiot, but SCIENCE is what should be taught in a SCIENCE classroom–you know, things that meet the definition of science: things that are falsifiable or provable.
A humble question.
Neo-Darwinian synthesis posits that natural selection acting on random mutation is sufficient to explain the origin of new lifeforms, correct? Can you point me to a falsifiable or provable test of this? To date I’m not aware of any falsifiable or provable experiment that shows that natural selection acting on random mutation can produce completely new living cells, tissue, or organs. I’ve done some poking around talk.origins for such a study and could not find one but it’s conceivable I simply missed it.
In the absence of such a study I will be forced to conclude that the Neo-Darwinian claim that natural selection can produce completely new living matter is not real science by the very definition of science used by its proponents. Would that be unreasonable?
“… what exactly is the harm in pursuing this line of inquiry?”
Depends. Pursuit is probably OK. Unless it persuades you that “there are things Man is not meant to know,” the tree-of-life part. May be true, but to find out what things we cannot learn we must find out what we can.
For myself, I fail to see why a putative God could not come up with a self-modifying system, which seems to be what is being said. Why should a Supreme Being be limited to only miracles, any more than far-from-supreme people must be limited to waiting for a lightning strike to cook food or crawling to travel?
As Bohr once said, “stop telling God what to do.”
I don’t see how the ID/natural selection debate could influence the subject of my thesis (in biochemistry) or any other subject I’ve heard anyone talk about recently.
The only CONCEIVABLE link is that natural selection suggests that features of living beings tend to exist for a good reason (which biologists ought to keep in mind), but I suppose ID suggests the same thing.
The whole fuss is because scientists have a theory which pretty nicely explains all life in general, and some of them absolutely can’t stand it when people don’t give them credit for this.
Maor
You use the word “tend” very judiciously, which makes me suspect that you recognize that features of living beings may exist because they aren’t selected against or because they once provided a benefit to the organism.
What I don’t understand is how ID proponents and agnostics tend to nit-pick around established, proven, and useful theories such as Evolution and its engine, natural selection.
If you want to see a theory falling apart, look at the Standard Model of Cosmology. Contrarian evidence has been mounting for decades, and the whole issue of Dark Matter and Dark Energy stinks of the suggestion of “cosmic ether” posited pre-Einstein.
ID makes mountains out of molehills and when that fails, invents s**t up from scratch.
Color me an idiot, but SCIENCE is what should be taught in a SCIENCE classroom–you know, things that meet the definition of science: things that are falsifiable or provable.
As if Darwinian macroevolution is any more provable or falsifiable than ID. Yet it is taught in nearly every biology class in the USA.
Don’t agree? Fine. Post your falsifiability criteria for macroevolution.
I’ve been looking for those criteria for a while now, and no one has taken me up on the offer.
As if Darwinian macroevolution is any more provable or falsifiable than ID.
I think it’d be very unlikely for anyone to name a single piece of evidence that would falsify modern evolutionary theory overnight, but I can definitely imagine results which would eventually make it clear that it was not a good fit for the evidence. I’m not an evolutionary biologist, but here are some things which would cause me to consider macroevolution profoundly undermined, or possibly completely recontextualized (a la Newton/Einstein).
a) discovery of large numbers of new fossil deposits containing bones of animals with no age stratification whatsoever in current terms; hominids show up before dinosaurs and with trilobites, the dinosaurs have modern canine bones in their stomachs, etc.
b) the revelation that all current fossil evidence has been systematically faked somehow
c) the discovery that human DNA is more similar to, say, box turtle DNA than chimpanzee DNA
d) convincing evidence that the earth is only 10,000 years old
e) The discovery of animals on another planet possessing DNA and which are in other ways homologous to animals on our planet.
Thanks, Elizabeth. That was exactly what I was asking for.
Some of the criteria seem to have been met in certain ways. For example, I remember reading about a fossil of human and dinosaur tracks, in the same rock, and even crossing each other, which would seem to contribute to your point A. Assuming my memory is not deficient and the evidence is valid, how many examples of this would we need?
Others sound a bit beyond the pale, such as your point B. By that criterion, no scientific theory is safe.
Others, such as point E, don’t sound sufficient. Given similar inputs (for a given definition of “similar”), should we not expect similar outputs? I suppose we wouldn’t know until such evidence is found, if it exists. Perhaps the mere use of DNA is “similar enough”, while off-planet humanoids with nearly identical DNA may not.
But I will have to think on this further. I cannot quibble; you have certainly met my challenge.
Jeff,
<i>I remember reading about a fossil of human and dinosaur tracks, in the same rock, and even crossing each other, which would seem to contribute to your point A. Assuming my memory is not deficient and the evidence is valid, how many examples of this would we need? </i>
The dinosaur/’human’ tracks have been pretty convincingly explained (by my standards anyway). You can see a summary at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/paluxy.html.
If legitimate examples were found, I don’t have a hard number for ‘how many’; enough so that the mixing of organisms from different eras couldn’t be easily written off as a geological anomaly.
<i>Others, such as point E, don’t sound sufficient. Given similar inputs (for a given definition of “similar”), should we not expect similar outputs? </i>
What I was getting at is that if we got to another planet and found animals which didn’t just fill the same niches as our animals but were morphologically and genetically very similar, I’d take that as decent evidence of intelligent design. If the animals there were cross-fertile with the ones here, the way all hominids are on ‘Star Trek’, it’d be extremely convincing evidence that an intelligent designer was at work.
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