Pajamas Media

121 Comments

1. Believer:

And might it require, too, a measure of humility they cannot muster?

Apr 28, 2008 - 12:50 am 2. OmegaPaladin:

I doubt it is really conscious arrogance. When you rely only on one mechanism to get access to truth, you start to forget that there are areas to which it does not apply. The idea that only scientifically determinable facts are truth throws out a lot more than God.

Science cannot make a definitive statement on whether God exists or what He is like. That is not within the realm where science is useful, namely mathematically describable or repeatable events based on consistent principles. Law is another area where science is not the primary method of determining the truth. We use courts because science cannot directly determine guilt or innocence of a crime. Forensic evidence is vital to the legal process, but the final decision is a matter of a judge and jury.

We owe our civilization’s success partly to the skillful application of scientific knowledge. Science has plenty of vexing problems to tackle like the protein folding problem and quantum gravity. What is the point of trying to disprove religion, when there are so many fascinating things for which science can be better used?

Apr 28, 2008 - 1:46 am 3. New European:

I am an atheist. Yet I will be the first to defend believers against atheist “crusades” like the one from richard dawkins. I have no problem at all with praying in schools or the “under god”. And I think that believing in something greater than yourself is very important for your sanity.

But from reading this article I get the impression that the author thinks that evolution does not work and that the bible is closer to the truth than quantum mechanics.

Well, if that is the case, then _please_ refrain from using technology based on quantum mechanics and evolution in the future. That includes every single drug that has been developed since 1980 or so, most modern agricultural products, and also the computer you are currently using. They are all based on the intimate knowledge of quantum mechanics and genetics.

I will in turn promise not to use any drugs or computers developed by “creationist scientists”.

Apr 28, 2008 - 2:29 am 4. Pajamas:

Wherever things are hard to figure out, it has to be some kind of magic that’s the cause, right? Little by little superstition has been shown to be the wrong answer to life’s many questions.

Anyway, Einstein was an atheist by any modern standard. The others lived in a time where it was DANGEROUS to admit anything other than total obedience to the church. There was no one else that could be a scientist that we would have heard of, other than someone that at least paid lip service to the church.

Even now it is dangerous and career/income limiting to be known as non-religious. Most of us are smart enough not to even raise the subject.

Apr 28, 2008 - 2:30 am 5. Boris:

Those evil Darwinians, evading that evidence whenever they can!

Faith is great, but it cannot change objective scientific evidence. Scientists are often atheists because there is no objective evidence that God exists, not because they think they are all powerful or because they are secretly commmie astronauts.

“too much of science is too much like a racket”

I don’t see any scientists on TV in their expensive white suits pretending to heal people and swindling old ladies out of their savings. But, we’ve established that objective facts are not your strong suit.

Apr 28, 2008 - 4:32 am 6. Theory Parker:

Logic alone is perfectly sufficient to reason there are no gods. Science is not in the business of asking if gods exist because they cannot develop tests for gods. That is the realm of philosophy.

It’s funny how aggressively apologists defend creationism. First of all, they deride evolution for supposedly answering how life began (it doesn’t) by supposing evolution posits that life “just happened,” which is the very essence of creationist belief itself! Secondly, creationists never bother to extend a cause to God, their one uncaused thing. Their designer, by their own argument, must have a designer! God doesn’t have a cause they say? Then why does anything else need a cause.

See, I didn’t even need any science here.

Apr 28, 2008 - 4:33 am 7. Reza Sadreddini:

Choosing among the two,I have funny behaivior.
As a Ph.D.holder and a reader of at least 1000
books,text books I don’t include,in last 52 years,I am an atheist.BUT,I always advertise the religions,specially among the poors to protect the rich.Just imagine the lower and even lower-midle class don’t bleive in God,
heaven and hell and so on,what could have had
happened.Climbing up our walls,raping,and all
kinds of crimes and agressions would make life like hell to the midle and higher classes.So,be
careful where and whom to you talk about non-
existing God using scientific or any other
reasonings.Don’t bleive in,but praise it orally
or in writing.

Apr 28, 2008 - 4:44 am 8. Novathecat:

I am a scientist who is not an atheist, but also accepts evolution as the best explanation for the origin of species. The movie Expelled presents a false “God of the gaps” argument for creationism wherein gaps in our knowledge are filled with “God did it”, instead of the more rational explanation that we have not discovered everything yet needed to fill the gaps in our knowledge. I temporarily lost my faith as a teenager when confronted with fundamentalists who insisted that one could not both believe in God and evolution. I regained my faith in college in a required Old Testament course where more liberal theology was explained. Blame the fundamentalists and their rigid, literal interpretations of the Bible for the rise of atheism in our society.

Apr 28, 2008 - 5:19 am 9. Mr. Me:

As if the activists trying to claim the Founding Fathers were Christian weren’t obnoxious enough, now the faith of early Renaissance scientists has to be retroactively revised?

Galileo probably was somewhat religious, but we’ll never know because his public statements were, um, coerced. Conversely, most of the leading New Atheists aren’t scientists. (Of the big four, only Dawkins is one.)

If great scientists have been religious in the past, that doesn’t make modern atheists wrong. Isaac Newton believed in God, but he also thought he could turn lead into gold and that menstrual fluid had magical properties. As a result of those beliefs he died a poisoned virgin. Perhaps I am a prisoner of my time, but if I am going to be advised by scientists on non-scientific matters I’d rather hear from my contemporaries, even about religion. And I’d rather be advised by just about anybody than Ben Stein.

Apr 28, 2008 - 5:44 am 10. Alan:

Faith, by definition, is acceptance of a fact without proof. Science, now more so than ever, is about drawing conclusions from hard data. So it it really no wonder that scientists largely reject faith. What is remarkable is the hostility to religion that many scientists show.
I think there are two reasons for this. One is the attitude of condescension academics take towards ordinary people. Today, classes are being taught that claim the only reason ordinary Americans are, by and large, not Marxists is because they are brainwashed by corporate controlled media. It is understandable that someone coming from this environment would become very irritated when confronted with a conflicting belief held by these same brainwashed idiots.
Another reason is the stridency of anti-evolution advocates. People of faith are not without blame. Evolution is a clever theory with a great deal of data backing it up. It is the cornerstone of modern biology, and with it modern medicine. The fact that anyone would suggest that “intelligent design” a theory with no actual substance that literally cannot be disproven and has not a single shred of data to support it is somehow equal to the theory of evolution is infuriating. Furthermore, since intelligent design has no substance and can’t be disproven, it is impossible to draw any conclusions from it. You can never say “intelligent design implies this other fact, because if this fact were false so would be the theory of intelligent design.” That is, it will never be useful for predicting other aspects of the world, which is the entire point of a scientific theory. So a large reason for the hostility to religion displayed by some scientists is the encroachment of religion into the realm of science without any apparent respect for the rules and process of science.
Perhaps if the bible had a works cited page, everyone could get along.

Apr 28, 2008 - 6:29 am 11. flying squirrel:

The author neglects basic discriminations. First between doctrinal atheism and methodological atheism. The former as an component of Marxism countered the historical theistic bias of Western peoples; it is an alternate narrative contextualizing of human struggle as material dialectic rather than passion ridden drama with a divine audience. However doctrinal atheism long antedates Marxism and should not always be regarded as within its tyrannical shadow. It is a specific heretical or skeptical reaction to a specific historical theology (Christian or Olympian). It is ironically tied to the deity it rejects, as Marxist history is paradise (re)lost. Even monotheism enjoins rejection of all “other gods.”
Methodological atheism is however a strict obligation of all science, as it is with accounting. A scientist or bookkeeper who needs to explain a discrepancy between two figures as divine intervention is just a bad explainer (or crook).
Science does not need a God nor should it be persuaded that it does.
Theologically, a God required by nature or natural law –a god of the gaps–is bad explanation, You can’t logically have the reason for everything needing to be propped up with a piece of something. if God transcends nature, he transcends natural explanation.
Historically, there have been good scientists (and doctors and test pilots) who have been believers and who have been atheists. So there are today. Every Dawkins has his Collins.
In short, there is no threat to culture from scientific atheism. Doctrinal atheism remains a religious choice for scientists or anyone, like Methodism.
The essential secularity or methodological atheism of our cultural institutions like business science and government might, however be threatened by doctrinal theists who are tempted to suggest that our science or government or economics, cannot do without the support of their personal God.

Apr 28, 2008 - 6:40 am 12. syn:

“I don’t see any scientists on TV in their expensive white suits pretending to heal people and swindling old ladies out of their savings. But, we’ve established that objective facts are not your strong suit.”

He may not wear an expensive white suit however he feels himself as scientific as any scientist even won a Nobel Peace Prize AND an Oscar yet this preacher of Gaiaism has been able to con old, young and everyone inbetween to buy trees as attonement for the sins of being human living on planet Earth. Al Goricle is better than a Mayan priest, I’d say.

That said; I think without something greater than ourselves in which to believe, human beings would be quite capable of engaging in some really creepy things. For example, The National Socialist German Workers party such did some awfully creepy things to pregnant women all for the cause of scientifc research, much in the same way Socialists do today only they hide their creepiness behind the phrase ‘right to privacy’.

Apr 28, 2008 - 6:48 am 13. Nocomme1:

I think the real accomplishment of Expelled can be found in the fact that it points out a real flaw in the current scientific approach. The frontiers of science, the places where so much is still unknown – the hows and whys of existence – require the same unbiased attitude toward inquiry as is standard and necessary for science in general. But as Expelled shows to sometimes hilarious effect, bring up even the possibility of a God and many scientist become as close-minded and insistent as any 911 Truther.

Apr 28, 2008 - 7:25 am 14. William McIlhagga:

Faith don’t power my mobile phone, people. It didn’t get made by imagining that god pushes the electromagnetic waves around.

Apr 28, 2008 - 7:44 am 15. Akatsukami:

“Faith is great, but it cannot change objective scientific evidence. Scientists are often atheists because there is no objective evidence that God exists”

But shouldn’t that make them agnostics, rather than atheists? Or are the real atheists just too uneducated or too dishonest to make the distinction?

Apr 28, 2008 - 8:11 am 16. Bill Perron:

Scientists are people too, and they have just as much right to be wrong as creationists. My beef is with the professional pseudo scientist as well as the professoinal religionist, both have a very narrow agenda. The so called Skeptic Society as well as Al Sharpton are very good examples of very bad examples.

Apr 28, 2008 - 8:19 am 17. jerry:

I love irony and to hear Stephen Weinberg tell us the “we know better” is a gem. In his book “The Trouble With Physics: The Rise of String Theory, the Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next” physicist Lee Smolin singled out Weinberg’s inversion of the scientific method to try to avoid the fact that this now dominant theory of how the universe is put together cannot produce any results that are testable under conventional scientific means. Weinberg has declared (I don’t have the exact quote with me) that string theory is so obviously true that we need to change the way we do and prove theories. I can see no better example of a religious statement then this. Perhaps we need a corollary to the quote attributed to G. K. Chesterton, When a Man stops believing in God he doesn¹t then believe in nothing, he believes anything that says when man stops believing in God he invents his own substitute religion. For Weinberg it is String Theory, for Dawkins it is Darwin. Whatever the intrinsic truth of either theory, it has now become something more transcendent then mere science. Perhaps Dawkins is on to something when he claims that the false belief in God is an evolutionary event that is part of our genetic makeup. I would praise him for honesty if he were merely to claim that evolution has become his transcendent religion that satisfies this biological mandate.

Apr 28, 2008 - 8:37 am 18. Questions in the Blogosphere III | The Anchoress:

[...] didn’t want to know. Speaking of atheism, I notice that Pajamas Media has a feature piece on the Scientific embrace of Atheism, which looks like a good read. I have no problem with atheists, myself. I just think they should be [...]

Apr 28, 2008 - 9:43 am 19. Ken:

My personal take on the subject always went along these lines:
1. All science is based on the scientific method. It’s a simple premise that states that if you completely recreate the conditions of any particular event, the exact same even will happen again. Mix oxygen and hydrogen and add a spark and you will have water.
2. This is not in conflict with superior intelligences, but it does conflict with any omnipotent deities. If there was an omnipotent deity, that you would have to mix hydrogen and oxygen, add a spark, and with that deities permission you would get water. Alternatively, that deity may choose this moment to create wine, or cheese, or whatever.
3. If such a deity exists, it makes very little sense to study what conditions lead to what results (which is what scientists do), and makes a great deal of sense to learn of ways to obtain or manipulate the deities permission.
4. Historically speaking, society flourishes when people study natural processes. We owe our high standards of living to just such studies. However, when society becomes preoccupied with learning about deities permissions, dark ages inevitably follow.
5. I prefer current and better standards of living to religious oppression and dark ages, thus my view of reality necessitates the complete lack of omnipotent beings. Super intelligent beings are still fair game, so long as they are not limitless.

Having said that, religious belief or faith, contributes a great deal to society, It helps a great many thru tough times (or any times), and it is largely responsible for people being descent to each other (Yes, all of that could be done without it), so I see no harm in people practicing their religion, as long as I am not forced to change mine. I believe Douglas Adams explained it best, in saying that belief in a deity is much like money. Money has no real worth, but our belief in its worth allows us to cooperate and work together. We could, in theory do all that without money, but it is not all that simple.

Apr 28, 2008 - 9:50 am 20. BMoon:

I recently YouTubed an 1965 tape of one of my favorite musicians, Brian Auger, doing a rendition of a blues song with Rod Stewart as a backup singer. I was shocked at how gospel sounding the song and the exuberant atmosphere it created was. And then it struck me what modern music really is – it all came from the church. It sought to recreate and comercialize the joyous pathos of the church but without the message of the Subject.

Same goes with modern science, especially the scientistic (the correct term) version preached by Dawkins, Weinberg and other of this odd sect’s prophets and evangelists. They blissfully ignore however, that both modern science and faith have the very same origin and core belief- the unprovable dogma that everything has an explanation. Newton explained once that his desire to discover the laws of nature was rooted in the belief that a wise Creator would design a universe to run on such principles.

Now that science has come full circle, climbing over the final precipices and, in the words of agnosic NASA astronomer Jastrow, “finding a group of theologians waiting there for centuries,” the phenomena reported in “Expelled” is the sad story of frightened reactionary anti-religionists, that has nothing to do with science.

Good article.

Apr 28, 2008 - 10:19 am 21. David Berlinski:

Just for the record: I have never endorsed any creationist views whatsoever; and I am a published critic of intelligent design. I take airplanes because I believe in the principles of fluid dynamics; when I must use a cell phone, I place my faith in quantum electrodynamics.

So what?

DB

Apr 28, 2008 - 11:17 am 22. smg45acp:

I have been studying the creation evolution debate for over twenty years.
What has constantly amazed me is how little the devout evolutionists know about what they have placed their faith in.
Over and over again the evolutionists put forth platen lies and half truths. If they really have all of the facts in their corner why do they have to fake it.

Just a few examples:
Those pictures showing the evolution of horses have been proven for fifty years to be wrong. Yet there are still in the textbooks.
Java man was found on the same strata as modern man, yet there he is in the textbooks as proof for evolution.
The Nebraska man that was used as proof in the Scopes trial was found to belong to a species of pig that isn’t even extinct.
Lucy, the famous icon of human evolution was put together with bones found over an area 1.8 kilometers apart and from strata differentials several hundred meters. No way in hell was it from one animal or even put together from the same species.

The list goes on and on. If the evolutionists really have cornered the truth market, why all the lies.

Apr 28, 2008 - 11:42 am 23. New European:

smg45acp: What is your point? It is not exactly news that books used in public schools are often outdated. Evolutionary biology is unfortunately not the only subject where this is the case.

But the theory of evolution is used to develop new products in every single lab on the planet. It is even used as an optimization algorithm in computer science.

If you are really convinced that it is all wrong, then for your own safety please stop using any modern pharmaceuticals and modern cars and airliners that are optimized using genetic algorithms.

Apr 28, 2008 - 12:18 pm 24. WR Jonas:

Ultimately it is not up to the faithful to prove God exists , it is up to the evolutionist to prove to God that he does not exist.
He is after all ,their creator and their sinful disobedience does have consequence . Their egos and intelligence will have little weight when their mortality is realized.

Apr 28, 2008 - 1:18 pm 25. BMoon:

There is some confusion over the debate topic and terminology it seems. The article is about the attempt to silence other points of view by people who themslves hold to a rigid weltanschauung that they equate with “science.” Furthermore, the ID debate is one of origins principally, not evolution. Thirdly, evolution itself covers a huge amount of areas, theories, opinions. Most of the time, the term is with reference to macro evolution theory- the metamutation from one species to another, not micro-adjustments in genetic structures.

That being said, New European makes the same mistake that science author David Mendell was criticized for by another evolutionist, Jerry Coyne:

To some extent these excesses are not Mindell’s fault, for, if truth be told, evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say. Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably. But hasn’t evolution helped guide animal and plant breeding? Not very much. Most improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of ‘like begets like’. Even now, as its practitioners admit, the field of quantitative genetics has been of little value in helping improve varieties. Future advances will almost certainly come from transgenics, which is not based on evolution at all.”

Apr 28, 2008 - 1:47 pm 26. Scott:

I think David Berlinski is getting at something important but ultimately misses the target. I don’t think that scientists are drawn to atheism because they are trying to protect their status or power.
They are drawn to it because of a mistake that scientists make in expanding the rules of science to cover all domains of knowledge acquisition. Reliance on supernatural explanations is essentially forbidden in scientific inquiry (and appropriately so), but the scientist makes the mistaken generalization that this must apply to all forms of knowledge and human reasoning. Atheism is a philosophy that also rejects supernaturalism and so scientists think it must be true, or at least are drawn to it because of shared philosophical foundations.
If arrogance plays a role, it occurs when scientists think the rubes are too dense to see the wisdom of science in all domains of life.
In my experience, only in very rare circumstances are scientists drawn to atheism because of a desire to protect their turf and I think Derb is going to hammer away at this explanation.

Apr 28, 2008 - 2:31 pm 27. New European:

BMoon: “evolution hasn’t yielded many practical or commercial benefits”

Are you serious? I am a software engineer, so I can tell you that genetic algorithms ( applying the principle of evolution to an optimization problem ) has many practical or commercial benefits.

And the nice thing about simulating evolution on a computer is that you can simulate thousands of generations in a very short time, so you can really see the principle in action.

Apr 28, 2008 - 3:35 pm 28. FP:

Um…

These atheists you point to are mostly liberal feminists first and scientists second. (This is relevant.) Most scientists –just like with people– are idiots and fools (and crypto motivated by events from childhood).

Cause and effect is why things do what they do. Period. Natural Selection is cause and effect on the scale of biology.

If god did ordain this from the beginning, so be it; if he sees and saw all the branching implications –_times 15 billion years (and continuing)_ of the particles, from the immense to minute, colliding and coalescing, with further branching implications– then he is The Great Savant indeed.

Natural Selection means different baby variations occur –because of cause and effect. Only some babies go on to eat and breed –as unwittingly decided by the local environment. If environments remain relatively unchanged for multigenerations, then this selection leads to family ‘types’ forming. As environments shift over time –because of cause and effect– different family types get selected. (This is why we see around us now and in earth’s record, different types of whatever: whales and dolphins, wolves and foxes, monkeys and chimps etc etc.)

“Evolution” does not mean “better”; better is not synonymous with “forward moving time”.

Better/good/ moral etc are relative constructs…

Eg a billard ball moves into a billard-table pocket (because of cause and effect). Is this contingency of the Universe ‘good or bad’? …It depends on what the observer wants /who’s side the observer is on.

Science facts don’t have to lead to any ‘commercial benefit’, in order to be facts.

Apparently-commercially-irrelevent facts might have relevancy on a scale beyond your limited scope.

Stupid people should be eliminated –if their slave labors are not needed by the smart any more– …”so that the [neo cortex] shall not perish form the earth”. ‘Natural selection’ allows Man to understand that very clearly.

Creationists (and all delusionoids and ignoramuses) should _not_ be enlightened; educating the blind is not cost effective (science lets us understand that in excrutiating bean-counting detail too). They should be purged (along with feminists).

The god module (a mental-delusion creator so as to reset the shock of ’seeing’, or rather ‘optimism’ on the grand scale) has been naturally selected. Most convictions (including NON-deist ones –ie feminism, ‘atheism’ etc) are the continutation of the god module’s compeling force; Compeling us to believe hope-giving nonsense which holds together groups of hive vs hive combatants in the grand Natural Selection scheme of things.

========
No one needs “science” to be an “atheists”…

Nature is red in tooth and claw as its main bio motor. It is horribly painful and bloody on a good day.

Either The Great Savant did this or is too weak to stop it.

Man begs mercy from a fiend or a fraud.

Apr 28, 2008 - 4:54 pm 29. Andrew Garland:

Evolution is the observation that living things change over time as they adapt and compete in the natural world. This goes as far back as there is evidence. It is unknown what the conditions were that produced the first organic systems that could reproduce.

The alternative to evolution is … what? That God created complex organisms and placed them directly into existence.

If God created the first reproducing organisms 4 Billion years ago, which then evolved, it would be consistent with the evidence today. Or, God could have created just the energy and the birth of the universe, and allowed everything to progress from there.

Some people believe that the Bible story is literally true, that God created Humans in particular and placed them into the natural world. This puzzles me.

I want to know where monkeys came from. What did they evolve from?

If monkeys didn’t evolve, then God must have created them also, along with humans (or, God created monkeys and then had us evolve from them – smile).

So, trace back. What is the last animal that evolved, before God decided to create the “next” one. Did some animals evolve from the other animals (and plants and bugs) that God created?

If some animals evolved, and others were created, why did God choose to meddle with some but not others?

If no animals evolved, then they were and are all created. So, there is God, creating new viruses and bacteria, just to get around antibiotics and our immune systems and kill us. A vengeful God.

I prefer to think of a loving God who supports evolution, but doesn’t continue creating things to make us miserable. Of course, He also doesn’t stop viruses from evolving to make us miserable.

Apr 28, 2008 - 5:14 pm 30. Andrew Garland:

A religious person says “I believe in God. It is a feeling within me, not based on reason.” Yet, that person tries to convince atheists that they should also believe, although the athiests feel differently, and much of their feeling is in accord with their reason. Further, some religious people try to use reason and facts to convince others to believe, even though their own belief is not based on reason, and they are offended if athiests try to use reason on them to change their belief.

Apr 28, 2008 - 5:21 pm 31. Democritus:

I’ve watched these discussions unfold for a long time now. In general the loosing side works very hard to change the subject to one in which they think they have an advantage. That is a good debating tactic, but not a good way of arriving at true answers. In this case, Expelled is about appalling behavior in American higher education, a place where there should be a free marketplace of ideas. Trying to derail the conversation into a debate about what kind of toothless snake-handling fundamentalist Taliban Christian the agnostic Jew David Berlinski is clearly begs the question (and is flat out stupid).

And what of all those evolutionary drugs being dispensed in Darwinian hospitals? Yes, get very worried everyone, if we don’t believe in evolution, persecute evolution skeptics and keep lots of government grant money flowing we are all going to die, Die, DIE!!!!

Or maybe not. I work on a campus with a very large university hospital. There are over 100 therapeutic studies going on at any time, major advances in medicine are being constantly made . . . and they are Christians here, the place is riddled with creationists. Darwinism contributes nothing. Next time you have an MRI, a cardiac catheterization, a pacemaker inserted or any number of other medical wonders, thank a creationist. Oh, and don’t hesitate to have your health taken care of at a Catholic, Adventist, Methodist, Presbyterian or other Christian hospital. You may die before you find an Atheist one.

As far as genetic algorithms are concerned, of course they work, that is what they are DESIGNED to do. Get one to work without a computer designed by computer geniuses, a very clever program written by a brilliant programmer and a preset goal decided in advance by someone and you have something like Darwinian evolution.

Now, how about asking why Darwinists, instead of simply allowing Darwinism win in an open marketplace of ideas, have to fall back on slander, red herrings and vicious attacks on the careers of promising scientists. Whether Darwinism, Intelligent Design or some other theory is correct, the behavior of promoters of Darwinism reveals what they really think about the strength of their ideology.

Apr 28, 2008 - 5:25 pm 32. Patrick:

This all makes for great comedy. Why not stop wasting time arguing about something that is not now, nor will ever be provable one way or another. Choose what you want to believe and go about your business. Hey, if you’ve got some extra time (which apparently you do) go out and help someone that needs it for no other reason than providing a helping hand.

Apr 28, 2008 - 6:06 pm 33. Jeremy:

Anyone who still maintains that the founding fathers were anything but Christian is living in a dream world.

http://www.wallbuilders.com/LIBissuesArticles.asp?id=121

Observable – X
Testable – X
Repeatable – X
Falsifiable – X

Evolution fails the “Is it science?” test every time. It is little more than a limp attempt to account for the hole left by removing a Creator.

Apr 28, 2008 - 6:44 pm 34. wnelson:

It is impossible to build information storage and retrieval systems, piecemeal. It cannot be done. But, not only are we expected to believe that that these systems were built piecemeal, but chaotically as well. All the explanation offered amounts to is a vague shell game of existing information, alleles, etc.

Apparently: Time + Chaos = Self-replicating Information Storage and Retrieval Systems. Satire herself stands mute.

Apr 28, 2008 - 8:04 pm 35. IAEE:

“William McIlhagga:

Faith don’t power my mobile phone, people. It didn’t get made by imagining that god pushes the electromagnetic waves around.”

Your cell phone is the direct result of one man’s faith. A guy by the name of James Clerk Maxwell.
Your phone communicates via the use of electomagnetic waves. And there are four simply expressed equations that describe those waves, called Maxwell’s equations. They’re named after Maxwell who discovered them. He looked at light and didn’t understand how it worked. But he believed that since God was logical and not whimsical and since God created light, that therefore there must be a logical (mathematical) means of describing light. And he also went so far as to believe that God created us to look at creation and learn more about God. So Maxwell’s theology convinced him that light had to have some logical (mathematical) structure and that it had to be discoverable by man. And so he devoted himself to finding out the logic that underlies the wave nature light. Guess what? He found exactly what he thought he’d be able to find. And almost all disciplines of electrical engineer are directly built upon Maxwell’s work. So, no, the electromagnetic waves which allow your phone to function are not pushed by God. But Maxwell believed that God created mathematical laws which govern the universe, including said electromagnetic waves. And he discovered those laws. So, what has atheism contributed to science? (And I mean atheism, not agnosticism. Agnostic scientists I can understand. Atheistic scientists, not so much.)

And, yes, I am a Christian and an electrical engineer. And I do have the deepest respect for Maxwell and men like him.

Apr 28, 2008 - 8:59 pm 36. blue sky in texas » Cool stuff found on 4/29:

[...] Pajamas Media » The Scientific Embrace of Atheism – [atheism ] [...]

Apr 28, 2008 - 9:08 pm 37. ChrisPer:

As a christian and a geologist, I get so tired of creationist twaddle.

Science works as a mechanism for finding and refining the objective truth about the real world. When it is extended by speculative theories, over time each element of the theory stands or falls on evidence. Evolution is supported way beyond falling, but the self-deluding cognitive patterns of fixed belief misreport the evidence.

Perhaps the preacher who led the healing service I attended three weeks ago and claimed he had seen the dead raised and missing limbs restored, could convince me otherwise – if he did not indulge in self-confirmatory faith exercises instead of requiring extreme claims to have solid evidence.

Apr 28, 2008 - 10:15 pm 38. Benjamin L. Harville:

David Berlinski:

Just for the record: I have never endorsed any creationist views whatsoever; and I am a published critic of intelligent design.

But you are a member of the Discovery Institute, whose stated goal in the “Wedge Document” is “To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.”

Your affiliation with anti-science clowns like Behe, Dembski, and Stein make it hard for me to take you seriously.

Apr 28, 2008 - 11:08 pm 39. Pajamas Media » Getting it Wrong about Atheism and Science:

[...] Berlinski’s article on atheists manipulating the sciences is both deceptive and illogical. Here’s an attempt to set the [...]

Apr 29, 2008 - 12:00 am 40. Laika's Last Woof:

I’m a scientist and skeptic, but these days it is the imprimatur of “science” we need to be skeptical of.

Everyone knows to be skeptical of religion. It goes without saying. Even fanatically religious people will tell you that the religion club is open only to those who can jettison reason — or at least temporarily suspend it — and embrace “faith”. That makes people naturally skeptical.

Calling something “science”, though, that can make otherwise rational people check their brains out at the door without their even realizing it. The by far best example is Carl Sagan’s “scientific” prediction that the Earth would be engulfed in a cloud of ash from burning oil fires if we liberated Kuwait. We were supposed to be living in a nuclear-winter-equivalent Ice Age right about now … I’m looking out the window for the glaciers, but the global warming must’ve scared them away …

I’d like to coin the word “Saganism” as the science equivalent of Spaghetti Monsterism but the English language already has a word for it:

Quackery.

I fear Quackery more than any other religion in America. Quackery has the potential to do a whole lot more damage.

Apr 29, 2008 - 12:02 am 41. FP:

wnelson:
It is impossible to build information storage and retrieval systems, piecemeal. It cannot be done. But, not only are we expected to believe that that these systems were built piecemeal, but chaotically as well. All the explanation offered amounts to is a vague shell game of existing information, alleles, etc.

Apparently: Time + Chaos = Self-replicating Information Storage and Retrieval Systems.

============
Of course the above “info-set” sophistry says absolutely nothing about “evolution through natural selection”.

Let’s try it again…

Natural Selection means different baby variations occur –because of cause and effect. Only some babies go on to eat and breed –as unwittingly decided by the local environment. If environments remain relatively unchanged for multigenerations, then this selection leads to family ‘types’ forming. As environments shift over time –because of cause and effect– different family types get selected. (This is why we see alive now and in earth’s record, different types of whatever: whales and dolphins, wolves and foxes, monkeys and chimps etc etc.)

And info set sophistry likewise says nothing about a-bio-genesis, though it aspires to. A-bio-genesis (the first DNA molecule creation) is also the story of particle-chain-reaction as part of the grand cause and effect and natural selection model.

(The Universe is a temperature/movement machine; ultimately different solids and their interactions. This movement is called “cause and effect” if humans process it, chaos/”luck” if they don’t. The principle of _movement, chain reaction and ‘natural selection’['which chain reaction pathways of movement continue converting energy and which don't']_ is very easy to understand.)

The “scientific principle” of ‘evolution through natural selection’ ends there. It is simply correct. And people that don’t “believe in it” are simply wrong. Period. No debate. (And you’re not equal too.)

—-
As for atheism, it doesn’t need an understanding of natural selection to exist. It simply needs the following:

Nature is red in tooth and claw as its main bio motor. It is horribly painful and bloody on a good day.

Either The Great Savant did this or is too weak to stop it.

—–
If god did ordain this from the beginning, so be it; if [he] sees and saw all the branching implications –_times 15 billion years (and continuing)_ of the particles, from the immense to minute, colliding and coalescing– then he is The Great Savant indeed.

——–
A terrible terrible savant…

Be afraid. Very afraid.

The only thing that lets this torturer in the sky off the hook is the comforting idea that he never exsisted.

——
You look both ways before you cross the street right? You don’t just rely on god’s suppossed-active-control of the cause and effect of the road to protect you, do you? You look both ways, right? Well congratulations — you’re a scientist.

Have a cookie.

———
Ultimately all this blabber is irrelevant. We need more culling war crime and less debate; In the end, that has always decided everything. The only thing left to understand is which narrative will be ‘best’ at holding together the succsseful killing hives of mindless automaton drones (otherwise called freewilled age of reason citizens).

Natural selection will decide.

…Natural selection will always decide and there aint nothing you can do about it.

And your god wouldn’t have it any other way.

Apr 29, 2008 - 12:45 am 42. New European:

Democritus: It is kind of hard to change the subject when the subject is so vague to begin with. David Berlinski attacks evolution and quantum mechanics, yet he refuses to state what he really believes in. He says that he is not a creationist, yet according to Benjamin L. Harville he is member of a creationist “institute”. By the way: it is hard to refute a theory like creationism if it does not make a single falsifiable prediction.

About genetic algorithms: I guess the whole concept of abstraction is lost to you. The nice thing about genetic algorithms is that they come up with solutions to problems that are not obvious to the creator of the algorithm. For example genetic algorithms have been used to create a sorting algorithm that is better than the best man-made algorithms.

Solution emerge from applying the principles of evolution to a given problem. So far evolution offers the most satisfying explanation on how complexity can emerge in large systems of simple parts. If you can come up with something better, more power to you. But “god did it” is not a scientific theory since it can not make falsifiable predictions about the future.

It is a shame that you insist in a literal interpretation of the bible, since if you want to convince a rational human being of the existence of god you will have much more success by discussing emergent behavior than by trying to convince him that the earth is 6000 years old.

Apr 29, 2008 - 2:49 am 43. William:

I said “Faith don’t power my mobile phone”

IAEE says “Your cell phone is the direct result of one man’s faith. A guy by the name of James Clerk Maxwell.”

1) If I stop believing in my mobile phone, it still works. So it doesn’t require my faith. That’s the case with science. No _extra_ belief above logic & evidence is needed to make it work.

2) Your argument seems to be Maxwell’s equations were motivated by a belief in god, and the equations are right, therefore god exists. I think there’s a bit missing from that logic.

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:02 am 44. griefer:

This is a sillie and basically dishonest argument, Berlinski.
Science is the process whereby orthodoxies are overthrown by heresies.
Scientists are heretics.
Just as geo-centrism was suceeded by helio-centrism, creationism/intelligentdesign (the orthodoxy) was suceeded by ToE (theory of evolution) the heresy.

And yes, there is a significant, even a strong correlation between profession:scientist and faith:none, but the hidden variable is most likely IQ.
This post is IQ-baiting, just like the movie Expelled.

How seductive, how infinitely appealing is this meme?

You are just as smart as those snobby scientists!
You are smart where it really matters!
god-smart!

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:15 am 45. wnelson:

FP:

You can hem and haw all you want, but you cannot build information storage and retrieval systems piecemeal. Period.

I cannot be done; no one has modeled this, no one can model this. If they could, they would have by now.

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:17 am 46. Wacky Hermit:

Just an aside; reading this reminded me of how wonderful Berlinski’s book “A Tour Of The Calculus” is. I have recommended it to my calculus students many times.

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:50 am 47. Dana H.:

Ayn Rand wrote “…if devotion to truth is the hallmark of morality, then there is no greater, nobler, more heroic form of devotion than the act of a man who assumes the responsibility of thinking…. the alleged short-cut to knowledge, which is faith, is only a short-circuit destroying the mind.”

Anyone who seriously doubts Darwinian evolution has either not looked at the evidence or has not assumed the responsibility of thought about it. The evidence for evolution and life’s common ancestry is so vast, so overwhelming, crossing fields from biochemistry to paleontology, that to deny it betrays either ignorance or willful blindness.

By contrast, the evidence for the existence of a god is: nothing.

Atheism is not merely attractive to scientists. It is attractive to any rational person who assumes the responsibility of thinking for himself.

Apr 29, 2008 - 8:27 am 48. John Hansen:

New European:

I am also a software engineer. Please do not make stupid statements and insult our profession. The fact that software engineers can intelligently design an optimization algorithm that, given a bit of randomness and a way of rejecting useless selections in a “generation”, can solve difficult problems says nothing about the battle between ID and evolution. Honestly if anything, it argues for ID. Its not a good proof for evolution at all. Of course, you probably can’t see it. Maybe if you e-mail the author directly he can explain it to you. But it would take you having an open mind – something you do not seem to possess in this area.

Apr 29, 2008 - 9:33 am 49. griefer:

sheesh….genetic algorithms are one of a class of adaptive heuristic search algorithms including simulated annealing and hillclimbing.
genetic algoriths arent proof of ANYTHING.

Apr 29, 2008 - 9:52 am 50. Scott555:

I’m pleasantly relieved that this is the best they can come up with. By “they” I mean anyone that fails to realize we will flounder and fall until we abandon our fairy tales wholly and completely.

Apr 29, 2008 - 10:00 am 51. hkperera:

this article is pretty ridiculous, the pretense that this author is putting on scientists “it is only sensible for scientists to suggest aggressively that no power exceeds their own” excuse me? what type of scientist aggressively suggests that no power exceeds their own, that is just simply being naive and arrogant.

the whole reference with god in any religion, is just filling in voids of subjects that humans to date and time have not had the full understanding of. We do not have a full understanding of the universe and why we are here, none of us will get there in our life time, and it could be generations before we get there. There are answers, some people (religious) clearly just don’t get that we don’t have that level of understanding yet, so they fill in the void with god an religion. There is such thing as the unexplained, meaning no current explanation. Science is slowly but surely building on explaining through scientific method, not just speculation with no backing.

Apr 29, 2008 - 10:05 am 52. Ratatosk, Squirrel of Discord:

I have examined this area of contention from many angles. I was once a Christian and fully believed in the 6 Creative Days. I became an Atheist and understood their model of existence. I became a Pagan and invoked Godforms into myself, a spiritual experience far exceeding anything I had done in 25 years at a church.

In the end, I have discovered several things, I think.

1) The Universe is far more complex than any of us will ever understand. For an individual to conclude that X is the Truth, be it God or a Big Bang, seems utterly insane to me, for the reasons that follow.

2) Humans are very good at cherry picking data, without realizing it. Christians cherry pick what appears to support their point of view (I did when I was one), so do Atheists (Been There Done That) and Pagans (Yep, did it there too). All think they’re right based on the data they like… but all ignore the data they don’t like.

3) The human brain appears very good at making up data that it thinks should exist, even if such data doesn’t exist… or making inconvenient data disappear.

Anyone who concludes that They Know are probably wrong. We don’t know, we don’t even know what we don’t know. We have five senses that don’t provide us full access to data (we know that subsonic, ultrasonic, infrared, etc exists… but we cannot perceive it without special equipment). We don’t even know what other sorts of data may be out there. And yet, we, we pathetic fools seem more willing to die believing nonsense, rather than simply say “I don’t know”.

There exists no strong objective evidence for God… which means at best Science should be silent on the subject. However, There exists no strong objective evidence for God which means anyone banging a bible and screaming about salvation also, should be silent on the subject.

We can all make our own decisions, we can choose to believe in God, or believe in the Big Bang, or we can choose to consider all the options, examine all the Maybes and consider what we might learn from them, rather than foolishly trying to conclude anything. After all, a conclusion, appears as the place where you decided to stop thinking about the subject.

Apr 29, 2008 - 10:10 am 53. Ardsgaine:

I don’t need a reason not to believe in God anymore than I need a reason not to believe in Shiva, Kali, Zeus, Minerva, unicorns, moon women, ESP, and any number of other ridiculous propositions. Belief requires positive evidence. There is no evidence that supports the belief in God. Not knowing the answer to a scientific question is not an excuse for positing the existence of a supernatural being. Ignorance is not evidence. What we are given by our senses, which is our only source of knowledge, is that the universe exists. By definition, the universe encompasses all that exists. If there were some omnipotent being, he would be part of the universe. That makes the question of how the universe got here nonsensical. You can’t get outside existence, stand inside the Void, and ask how Nothing was able to produce Something. If it is sufficient for God to account for himself by saying “I am,” then it is sufficient to account for the universe by saying, “It is.” The universe has the distinct advantage over God of being observable and knowable by all Men. We don’t need Faith to believe in the universe. We are all of us in direct contact with it. By contrast, those who claim knowledge of God base it on a subjective experience that is available only to them. If I were to recognize that sort of claim as valid, then I would be leaving my mind open to any arbitrary assertion any self-proclaimed prophet wanted to make.

That’s not to say that I think the children of religious people should be force-fed evolutionary theory. If people want to try to hobble their children’s minds with a brainless, literal interpretation of the Bible, I think they should have that right. To that purpose, I support privatizing education, and letting each person choose to which school they wish to send their children. We can let the marketplace–a kinder, gentler version of natural selection–determine which theory has greater value.

Apr 29, 2008 - 10:39 am 54. formerdriver:

The kalam cosmological arguement is thus:

1. Everything that has a beginning, has a cause.
2. The Universe has a beginning.
3. The Universe has a Cause. We call this Cause “God”. God did not have a beginning.

Any other arguement is ‘turtles all the way down’, and hence nonsense. Thus, if God does not exist, then the universe is irrational, and this converstation is pointless as Reason does not exist.

Roughly the same arguement can be applied for why we know God is Reasoned. Since, we know reason exists, therefore there must be a Source of Reason.

Science is founded on a rational universe. Without God, there is no rational or reasoned universe. Is it an accident that Science arose in a land where Christian ideas were held? Of course not.

As to the charge that God is evil, a fiend, (now that we have disposed of the charge of ‘fraud’), we all have the freedom to make evil choices, and some of those choices ripple on through time. Would it really be more pleasant to be a total robot kept by God’s omnipotence from making any mistakes?

The second answer to this is for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son to be crucified on a tree for you and me.

As to evolution, sigh. There is a preference cascade coming. Once scientists feel safe from losing their jobs, and people feel safe from being mocked by all their friends a cascade like the fall of the Berlin Wall will come. In tyrannies, no one can say “I hate the dictator” because the secret police will destroy them. And people don’t know if its just them, but if people had a way to converse with others, and to realize, its not just them, in fact, its pretty much everyone who hates the dictator, why the dictator would not be long in power.

And so the petty tyrants of Darwinism strive to stop the free speech of scientists and laymen alike because the Darwin Wall is cracking, and soon bits and pieces of it will be on sale for 9.95.

Philosophy, science, and faith are on the side of the deists, and the creationists. The atheists and the Darwinists stand against the tide of history with increased desperation. But the People will be free!

Apr 29, 2008 - 11:00 am 55. Bugs:

I think it comes down to this question: Is science something you DO, or is it something you ARE?

For some scientists, science is an activity – one out of many modes of thought and action in the human repertoire. For other scientists, science is a large part of who they are – it answers their questions, fulfills their emotional needs, and gives them a sense of identity and importance. The former love doing science. The latter love being scientists. The former consider science a massively powerful tool for the survival and betterment of mankind. The latter consider science a massively powerful tool for the survival and betterment of their egos.

Apr 29, 2008 - 11:47 am 56. ME:

New European said:

“I will in turn promise not to use any drugs or computers developed by “creationist scientists”.

If, god forbid, you start to suffer from AD and the AD drug my wife helped to develope is approved by the FDA you may be forced to make good on your promise – she is a creationist and a scientist.

Apr 29, 2008 - 12:14 pm 57. griefer:

look tools
Berlinski is a DI stooge.
this is not an honest arguemnt.
it is more Wedge Strategy crapology–

The Wedge strategy is a political and social action plan authored by the Discovery Institute, the hub of the intelligent design movement. The strategy was put forth in a Discovery Institute manifesto known as the Wedge Document,[1] which describes a broad social, political, and academic agenda whose ultimate goal is to “defeat [scientific] materialism” represented by evolution, “reverse the stifling materialist world view and replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions”[2] and to “affirm the reality of God.”[3] Its goal is to “renew” American culture by shaping public policy to reflect conservative Christian, namely evangelical Protestant, values.[4]
Intelligent design is the belief that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not a naturalistic process such as natural selection. Implicit in the intelligent design doctrine is a redefining of science and how it is conducted. Wedge strategy proponents are dogmatically opposed to materialism,[6][7][8] naturalism,[7][9] and evolution,[10][11][12][13] and have made the removal of each from how science is conducted and taught an explicit goal.[14][15]

The strategy was originally brought to the public’s attention when the Wedge Document was leaked on the Web. The Wedge strategy forms the governing basis of a wide range of Discovery Institute intelligent design campaigns.

this is a giant waste of spacetime.
may i suggest in all courtesy, David Berlinski, that you take your farkin social engineering and insert it where the sun don’t shine?
tyvm

Apr 29, 2008 - 12:39 pm 58. Reginald Selkirk:

“In the documentary Expelled,”

You mis-spelled “propaganda piece”

“…There is no absurdity Dawkins is not prepared to embrace so long as he can avoid a transcendental inference.”

Dawkins was asked whether any form of ID could be scientific. He gave one, directed panspermia. It would be possible to look for evidence of past alien visitation to our planet. It would be possible to look for supporting evidence for this scenario in the fossil record and in our genes. That Dawkins is willing to consider such scenarios could hardly be considered “embracement,” at least by anyone who is perceptive and honest. Dawkins does not consider this proposition to be likely or well-evidenced, only testable. In that way it is unlike the “God did it” proposition that Stein favors. You may ask yourself then, does Berlinski lack perceptiveness or honesty? I consider the question to be unproductive.

The propaganda piece Expelled tries to make two contrary arguments at once:

1) That Intelligent Design is scientific, not religious, and
2) That ID is religious and opposition to it constitutes religious repression.

It does not help their quest for the first point that they openly and unintelligently mock all scientific ideas for the origin of life that are presented in the movie.

Apr 29, 2008 - 2:15 pm 59. Reginald Selkirk:

“The great physical scientists — Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton, Clerk Maxwell, Albert Einstein — were either men of religious commitment or religious sensibility.”

I think you’re on to something – every one of those great scientists had trouble accepting quantum mechanics. Even Einstein, who can be credited with some early advances in QM, made his silly “God doesn’t play dice” comment. Einstein, by the way, did not believe in a personal god. Everyone who is qualified to speak on his religious inclinations knows that.

Another common trait: they’re all dead.

Apr 29, 2008 - 2:29 pm 60. john e morrissey:

the frequent comments that all or much of our scientific progress including drugs, and high tech rely on darwinian evolution and not on, e gintelligent design is simply not true.
the issue of the “Origin of the Species” simply never arises, nor is it considered in any context but the highly non-scientific but fun debates. on both sides, as to how we arose from the amoebas which were the only living things 8o million years ago on this Rock on which we live.There are some misconceptions about the positions of the prominent debaters.I have read most of what has been written from both sides for many years.No one, from Gould to Shockley to Berlinski to Aristotle denies that evolution has taken place. To claim otherwise is to argue that there is no difference from our current status as non feathered rational bipeds than from the amoebas crawling around the pre-Cambrian swamps.The essential debate is about the mechanism which acted on these earlier life forms to create our current status.The Stephen Jay Goulds and Richard Dawkins arguement is that the physical records and our scientific knowledge establish the mechanism of “natural selection”.I suspect that they are right,but the problem is that the evidence is simply not there and requires a leap of faith, and a pretty substantial one at that,to go from the scanty evidence on fairly simple issues such as the changing color of birds or moths, to acceptance of the way ribosomes work with RNA as the result of Darwinian evolution .The evidence is just not there.Berlinskis arguement is that a belief in intelligent design is a kind of Occams razor, the simpler explanation is usually right.The discussions of Quantum Mechanics are simply not part of this arguement.Whatever mechanisms are at work at the quantum level were always there from the first instant of the Universe and will not evolve, and if they do, we will never know it.Einstein did not believe in Q M, and while it is fun to talk about it and read the latest theories, they will be superseded. Most of the scientists involved in QM (Feinman, Weinberg, Higgs) have said that it may be that our brains are simply not capable of understanding what is going on. For those who doubt this, try thinking about the nature of “Time” and how it works, and are there quantum levels of time and if so what purpose do they serve.Let me know when you have the answer.Personally, I believe in some sort of Darwinian evolution, but the detailed mechanism doesn t have much evidence to support it, and I really don t see that it needs to make atheists out of we who do believe in a Darwinian type of evolution. A God who can create the Universe shouldn t find much of a problem in creating a system which relies on Darwinian type evolution to people the Earth, if that was his intention. In the meantime Dr Berlinski s articles are fun to read,and he serves us all by destroying the guesswork on the other side. Enjoy the debates, they are fun, and have no effect,absolutely noe, on science or its progress.

gpulds

Apr 29, 2008 - 2:33 pm 61. Reginald Selkirk:

Berlinski: “Just for the record: I have never endorsed any creationist views whatsoever; and I am a published critic of intelligent design.”

Alright then; how about if we just tell people that you “embrace” creationism? I think that would be consistent with your use of the language and your code of ethics.

Apr 29, 2008 - 2:40 pm 62. john e morrissey:

In reviewing my posting i see I have misspelled Richard Feynmans name.Sorry.

Apr 29, 2008 - 2:56 pm 63. john e morrissey:

in reviewing the postings, the most consistent characteristic is the passion behind so many of the writers remarks.The issue simply isn t one that should generate such heat, making me think that for many this is a political debate, not a scientific debate.I suggest that anyone who stoops to name calling or character assassination stop for a moment and think about the issue.It can never be resolved , on either side, so that it becomes by definition, a non-scientific question. There is no experiment either side can suggest that would determine who or what is right.It is an arguement on the order of was Bobby Jones or Tiger the greatest golfer, or was the Babe greater than Alex R.The arguements are fun, if you listen carefully you can learn some interesting things you didn t know, but the questions can not be definitively proven.Instead enjoy the efforts and evidence each side collects.They are each composed of very bright guys .

Apr 29, 2008 - 3:13 pm 64. Gabriel Hanna:

Of course Maxweel believed in God. He also believed that EM waves were propagated by a mysterious substance called “ether”.

Neither God, nor ether, is referenced in the Maxwell equations. The Maxwell equations are these:

Electric fields can be produced by electric charges
There are no “magnetic charges” to produce magnetic fields
Electric fields can be produced by changing magnetic fields
Magnetic fields can be produced by electric currents and changing electric fields

The only quantities in the Maxwell equations are currents, charges, fields, and properties of space.

Einstein USED Maxwell’s equations to prove that there was no such thing as ether. Maxwell’s equations did not cease to be valid.

He assumed that waves needed something to wave in–that something was called ether. But that assumption was not necessary to his theory.

And neither is God. The Maxwell equations still work in the absence of ether and gods.

Pythagoras believed that beans were poisonous and worshipped numbers. What has those beliefs to do with the truth of the Pythagorean Theorem?

Apr 29, 2008 - 3:25 pm 65. frege:

The only defensible position on the question of the origin of the universe is agnosticism. You can believe whatever you want – and I mean anything – but your belief is not probative of the question.

Apr 29, 2008 - 3:26 pm 66. onsecalme:

john e morrisey:

“making me think that for many this is a political debate, not a scientific debate”

Of course it’s a political debate. Creationism is not science, so this “argument” isn’t by any stretch a scientific debate.

But it is an argument ABOUT science – about why it is wrong for people to try to derail and discredit science itself, just because they are miffed that some of their cherished (but irrational, and certainly unscientific) beliefs aren’t getting enough shrift out there in the marketplace of ideas.

Scientists react angrily to creationist nonsense being pushed at them because the people pushing it, if they get their way, will cripple the teaching of critical thinking in our schools. It makes me angry too. The idea of little kids rocking back and forth like those madrassa kids, reciting illogical and anti-intellectual “sacred” texts, and arguing for ideas like the Earth being flat (as one of Egypt’s major universities does officially even today, for example), makes me cringe.

Believe what you like, but dragging society back several millennia to ridiculous, irrational beliefs? No thanks! Leave me and my kids out of it.

Apr 29, 2008 - 5:40 pm 67. formerdriver:

Mr. Morrissey,

I think you are talking about the famous ‘moths change color due to industrial pollution’ study in England. Its one of the great foundation stones of evolution.

Unfortunately, its tripe.

Hogan, hard SF author, pointed out the obvious. When you send in a hundred troops in jungle wear, and a hundred in artic wear into a jungle to a fight, and at the end of the week there are more survivors among the jungle camo wearing troops than the artic snow camo troops, it does not mean that the artic troops evolved into jungle camo troops. Nobody thinks certain colors don’t have survival advantages in certain situations.

Also, there is the little matter that those moths photographed were dead, and pinned to the branches because such moths only came out at night.

So that experiment was logically flawed, and dishonest to boot.

I encourage you to study the ‘great supports’ of the Evo theory. I think you’ll find that hoaxes, warped logics, and misinterpretations of evidence are extremely common. Strictly on a scientific basis, evo is a failed theory.

Apr 29, 2008 - 6:44 pm 68. Laika's Last Woof:

Onsecalme has a point; Creationism is a religion and doesn’t belong in a science curriculum.
Teach it in Comparative Religion or Philosophy but keep it out of the important classes. Teaching a religion in a science class is as pointless and destructive as teaching Abstract Impressionism in a drafting class.

Apr 29, 2008 - 6:54 pm 69. Gabriel Hanna:

You know, the Bible describes the Earth as flat, with water beneath, and the sky made of something like crystal (the “firmament”) with water above it, so that the Earth is a kind of bubble in a universe of water.

This is not surprising, the Sumerians and Babylonians and Egyptians all had similar ideas, and they are not “unscientific” for the times in which they were written.

There are a few flat-earthers out there and they have the plain text of the Bible backing them up.

I don’t know why creationists find evolution so objectionable, but take a spherical earth, orbiting the sun, in the vacuum of space, so calmly.

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:02 pm 70. Gabriel Hanna:

When you send in a hundred troops in jungle wear, and a hundred in artic wear into a jungle to a fight, and at the end of the week there are more survivors among the jungle camo wearing troops than the artic snow camo troops, it does not mean that the artic troops evolved into jungle camo troops. Nobody thinks certain colors don’t have survival advantages in certain situations.

Wow, you completely missed the point.

If arctic troops were BORN in those colors and jungle troops born in theirs, and if we were talking about what the population looks like after ten generations of jungle warfare, then you would have a valid analogy.

Moths can’t pick what colors they wear. They are born in them. If white moths get eaten by birds at double the rate that black moths do, in a few generations you find very few white moths.

This is evolution by natural selection, no more, no less.

Two insects, one of which looks 5% like a piece of stick, the other looks 1% like a stick, the difference due to genes. If birds eat one more than the other, then in a few hundred generations you get insects looking 99.9% like a stick.

That’s evolution. On the human time scale you can seen it in bacteria and insects, for the longer scale there’s the fossil record.

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:09 pm 71. wombatty:

************
New European wrote:

I will in turn promise not to use any drugs or computers developed by “creationist scientists”.
************

Indeed? Then be prepared to refuse to take advantage of your local hospitals’ MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) machine, should you need such services.

The MRI was invented by Dr. Raymond Damadian, a Christian and – gasp – a Young Earth Creationist.

See profile here http://www.creationwiki.org/index.php/

You sure about that promise (I think the MRI certainly qualifies as a computer of sorts)?

Apr 29, 2008 - 7:59 pm 72. wombatty:

***
Gabriel Hanna wrote:

That’s evolution. On the human time scale you can seen it in bacteria and insects, for the longer scale there’s the fossil record.
***

Not quite. Alan Linton, in his 2001 review of Niles Eldredge’s book ‘The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism’ (The Times Higher Education Supplement; 14, May, 2007) states:

But where is the experimental evidence [for evoltion]? None exists in the literature claiming that one species has been shown to evolve into another. Bacteria, the simplest form of independent life, are ideal for this kind of study, with generation times of 20 to 30 minutes, and populations achieved after 18 hours. But throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another, in spite of the fact that populations have been exposed to potent chemical and physical mutagens and that, uniquely, bacteria possess extrachromosomal, transmissible plasmids. Since there is no evidence for species changes between the simplest forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for evolution from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, let alone throughout the whole array of higher multicellular organisms.

Apr 29, 2008 - 8:04 pm 73. griefer:

i repeat…do not engage.
Berlinski is a Discovery Institute stooge.
he argues in bad faith.
his entire piece is wedge strategy social engineering.

a colossal waste of spacetime.
you could be reading Penrose or Susskind or Scott Atran.

Apr 29, 2008 - 8:33 pm 74. CB:

Novathecat writes:

“The movie Expelled presents a false “God of the gaps” argument for creationism wherein gaps in our knowledge are filled with “God did it”, instead of the more rational explanation that we have not discovered everything yet needed to fill the gaps in our knowledge.”

I recall an interview in one of Lee Strobel’s books with a particular ID subscriber and one in the scientific business – it may of been Behe, but I can’t remember (as an aside the post characterizing Behe as “anti-science” is a laughable example of the malice this issue elicits – on both sides, to be fair – Behe is a trained scientist – his disagreement is with a specific issue – correct or incorrect, he’s hardly “anti-science”). The quote this interview elicited was interesting and I’ll do my best to paraphrase it. More or less the suggestion was that scientists often find “science in the gaps.”

The irony of the claim is obvious enough. It’s quite natural for scientists to posit naturalistic solutions to the problems they encounter, because science is after all a naturalistic discipline. So, the claim that IDers find “God in the gaps” is fair enough… to a point.

The problem is that where science cannot explain something, there is no guarantee that a naturalistic explanation is the truth. Indeed, it is arguable that even a “plausible” naturalistic explanation or theory is not in any sense falsifiable in the terms of the scientific method until a sufficient body of evidence exists to verify the claim.

This doesn’t mean that there *isn’t* science in the gaps. It simply means that there is a difference between investigating the gaps under the material terms of the discipline of science and assuming that you will *necessarily* find answers that fit that discipline. Indeed, that assumption only degrades the power of the methodology of the discipline to get at factual truths regarding the gaps. “We don’t know,” is a perfectly legitimate scientific answer. “We’re sure it’s a natural explanation, even though we don’t have physical evidence,” is a statement of dogmatic faith. There are plenty of scientists who hold that faith.

None of this discounts evolution or many or even most cosmological theories. As Catholic teaching attests, Christianity (for one, as I am a Christian) and these scientific theories are not incompatible.

Yet, Novathecat’s statement about believing (even in the context of pigeonholing fundamentalism) reveals a conundrum. As a fellow believer (for which I am thankful), Novathecat clearly finds God in at least one gap, be it the source of the Big Bang, the architect of DNA, the arbitrator of the probabilistic elements forming life, or a more direct hand in events.

If we accept that premise, and all believers do to some extent, then which gaps are the ones in which God may be found and which ones are the ones in which science is found?

The answer will almost certainly depend on which gap you are looking at. If God is in one gap however, and it only takes one, then the door is thrown open to the possibility that God is in other gaps.

The point is that if one holds open the possibility of God’s existence, certainly if one is a believer, then the complaint of “finding God in the gaps” becomes a rhetorical exercise that only serves to diminish one’s own faith-based position. ID may be mistaken about the notion of how and where intelligence was applied to the process, but the assumption of God in some gap or gaps is hardly a strong criticism, except perhaps as a procedural matter regarding the application of the scientific method – much akin to crying foul in baseball when a player runs outside the base paths.

It is a correct interpretation of the rules of the discipline, but it doesn’t necessarily explain anything about the truth of the particular situation.

I would add, that an atheistic perspective on the use of the phrase offers no more defense. Complaining about finding God in the gaps is more or less a complaint about finding God, period, and while an atheist or agnostic is perfectly free to do so, the absence of any conclusive evidence regarding God’s non-existence does not improve the implication that science will be found in the gaps a whit. We’re left with an unknown.

Speculation is fine, but the assumptions that accompany the use of “finding God in the gaps” aren’t really as condemning as many people seem to think they are. They are a procedural complaint, not a factual rebuttal.

Apr 29, 2008 - 11:32 pm 75. Gabriel Hanna:

there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another

This right here is a dishonest argument, and I will explain why. It is because species are not distinct over time.

Take my father’s skeleton. Lay it at one end of a long table. Next to his place my grandfather’s, then my great-grandfather’s… until you have 10,000 or however many it takes to get to homo erectus.

Clearly my father and my grandfather don’t differ enough to be called “two distinct species”. Neither do any pair of adjacent skeletons. But if you removed all of the skeletons except the two at the end of the table, you would call them “distinc species”.

OF COURSE the fossil record can’t show “one species becoming another species”. Fossils separated in time are distinct species BY DEFINITION.

In other words, for every “missing link” I dig up between two species, that creates two more gaps that creationists will demand that I fill with “missing links”.

As far as creationists are concerned, the more gaps I fill in between two species, the more fossils I have to find to satisfy them. For people with common sense, finding ten fossils linking two species would mean the connection is twice as well supported as if I have five, but for creationists it would be half as well supported.

And so the argument is fundamentally dishonest.

It is as though every time astronomers discovered a new speck of rock or gravel in space, “gravitation-doubters” would demand that they calculate the orbit and see if it supports the theory of gravitation.

Apr 29, 2008 - 11:39 pm 76. wombatty:

Gabriel Hanna:

Earlier, you wrote:

Two insects, one of which looks 5% like a piece of stick, the other looks 1% like a stick, the difference due to genes. If birds eat one more than the other, then in a few hundred generations you get insects looking 99.9% like a stick.

That’s evolution. On the human time scale you can seen it in bacteria and insects, for the longer scale there’s the fossil record.

Now you write:

This right here is a dishonest argument, and I will explain why. It is because species are not distinct over time.

Then how, pray tell, can we see evolution in baceteria and insects on a human time-scale?

Clearly my father and my grandfather don’t differ enough to be called “two distinct species”. Neither do any pair of adjacent skeletons. But if you removed all of the skeletons except the two at the end of the table, you would call them “distinc species”.

Which would be in error. We would probably do the same for fossils of a toy poodle and a great dane if dogs were extinct today. Yet, we know they are not two distinct species.

OF COURSE the fossil record can’t show “one species becoming another species”.

My post didn’t address fossils, it addressed your claim that baceria have been observed evolving on a human time-scale. Linton refutes that.

Fossils separated in time are distinct species BY DEFINITION.

To the extent that this is true, it is simply an artifact of assuming that evolution is true. There are countless examples of fossils said to be millions of years old that are identical to their mondern-day counterparts. The only reason they are ever classified as a separate species is because evolutionists believe that the creature must have evolved in all of those supposed millions of years.

Given the content of the rest of your post, you are quite misinformed concerning the modern creationist poistions on issues.

(Damadians profile is here: http://www.creationwiki.org/index.php/Raymond_Damadian)

Apr 30, 2008 - 4:13 am 77. formerdriver:

Gabriel,
You’re making a leap of logic which I’m not joining you in which is why you think I missed the point.

==Moths can’t pick what colors they wear. They are born in them. If white moths get eaten by birds at double the rate that black moths do, in a few generations you find very few white moths.==

This is true. Just as its true that after a week, there will be a lot less artic wearing troops.

==This is evolution by natural selection, no more, no less.==

This is the leap of logic. As I said “Nobody thinks certain colors don’t have survival advantages in certain situations.” But proving comparative advantage is a very far cry from proving evolution.

You’ve at this point managed to prove what a monk (ewww, a creationist!) named Mendel proved with peas a few centuries or so ago. Cutting edge of science and all that…but proving Mendelian genetics does not prove Darwinian evolution. One is Science, and is repeatable, testable, and makes predictions, and the other is Dorm Room Speculation.

BTW, natural selection is a conservative force. It contributes to keeping genomes stable in the main. It is kind of funny that Darwin’s main engine of change actually works against change.

Apr 30, 2008 - 7:10 am 78. Bob Sky:

Gotta say, most scientists I have known are quite humble about their ignorance. If more scientists than other people are atheists, it’s because they are finding nothing but natural explanations.

Scientists who are atheists believe we are an extraordinarily unlikely accident, and are keenly aware that we could easily have never existed at all. Now THAT’s humbing. They feel that relying on a God to have put it all together is a cop-out, especially as every year, more “mysteries” turn out to have natural explanations.

Yet they are accused of arrogance by people who insist that we are the special creations of God, destined to rule the earth? Who’s arrogant?

I’ve never met more arrogant people than Creationists, and more deceitful people do not exist. Expelled is based on flat-out lies…read the Scientific American series on it, no one was forced out, no one was fired. He simply made up the story.

And for the record, I’m a believer myself.

Apr 30, 2008 - 7:39 am 79. Jorge Fernandez:

Dr. Berlinski’s writings usually contain deep, thought-provoking material – this was no exception. It’s too bad that he’s not yet made certain connections after which he’s sure to become a Creationist.

That aside, one of the many points that his article sheds some light upon is that the alleged ‘anti-religious / separation-of-church-and-state stance’ of the scientific establishment and of education-related and other organizations is actually a popularly-held myth. It’s *not* that these groups are anti-religious or religious separatists at all. The simple fact is that their true objective is to retain the monopoly for *their* religious views – a monopoly now held within the public education system and elsewhere. These people do everything in their power in order to retain said monopoly where only materialistic Naturalism has freedom of expression and practice. They do this via academic platforms, politics, the courts and all other forums available (e.g., note the NCSE, the ACLU and others). The recent film ‘Expelled’ is a good introduction to these phenomena.

Keep up the excellent work, Dr. Berlinski.

Apr 30, 2008 - 10:37 am 80. CAPISCEO:

ID is not the Trojan Horse of the Religious Right as its enemies keep repeating ad nauseum. It just happens to be the way we humans think. We really have to jump ship to swim with the “time+chance explains everything” crowd. That’s why polls keep showing that people are not buying the just-so stories of Darwinism. It would be nice for everyone to simply and humbly admit that we bring all evaluation of so-called truth and observations into our minds through our grids and biases.

Aldous Huxley, for example, had the honesty to admit to his personal bias when he wrote (in ENDS and MEANS) “I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning: Consequently assumed that it had none, and was able to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics; he is also concerned to prove there is no valid reason to prove he should not do as he wants to . . . For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.”

MICHAEL POLANYI, philosopher of science, posits the assailibility of logical positivism in PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE. Here’s some material on him from the good folks at WIKIPEDIA –

Philosophy of science

“From the mid-1930s, Polanyi began to articulate his opposition to the prevailing positivist account of science, arguing that it failed to recognize the part which personal commitment and tacit knowing play in science. Polanyi stands out among philosophers of science by the extent of his scientific training, and by the amount of scientific research he carried out.

Polanyi argued that positivism encourages the belief that science ought to be directed by the State. He pointed to what happened to genetics in the Soviet Union, once the doctrines of Trofim Lysenko were deemed politically correct. Polanyi, like his friend Friedrich Hayek, supplied reasons why a free society is preferable.

Polanyi embraced the existence of objective truth (Personal Knowledge, p. 16). However, he criticized the notion that there is something called the scientific method which enables science to supply us with truths in a mechanical fashion.

Instead, he argued that all knowing is personal, and as such relies upon fallible commitments. Our skills, biases, and passions are not flaws but play an important and necessary role in discovery and validation. Observers cannot remove themselves from their observations and judgemnts, nor should they; it is enough that we act in accordance with the consequences imposed upon us by our beliefs. What saves this claim from relativism is his belief that our tacit awareness connects us with realities, although as our tacit awareness relies upon assumptions acquired within a local context, we cannot simply assume that they have universal validity; we must rather be open to the possibility of error while seeking to identify objective truths. Any process of articulation, however, inevitably relies upon that which we have not articulated. Indeed, reliance upon what we have not articulated is how words become meaningful, i.e. meaning is not reducible to a set of rules; it is grounded in our experience of the world – where experience is not something that can simply be reduced to collections of sense data.”

Regarding Atheism and Dr. Einstein, some may not be aware that Albert Einstein believed there was an “illimitable spirit” in back of the universe. He also likened our universe to what he called a “well-ordered word puzzle”, which he went on to describe as one where many individual words could be put in many places for a fit, but in the end, only one unique set would fit the whole. To him, “God” was too distant to have any interest or involvement in trivia such as earth and its inhabitants. When he was faced with the awful truth of the Holocaust and its implications, he could only come to grips with its horror by reminding himself that our small earth revolves around a very insignificant star.

There is partial support for the quote from Einstein at TIME Mag website -

EINSTEIN (from Time Magazine)

” . . . My religion consists of a humble admiration for the illimitable superior spirit who reveals Himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds.”

Unfortunately, most of the arguments for/against Atheism/ID make little headway, since one’s “Weltanschauung” generally is the driver of interpretations of sets of observations. In that respect, I believe Dr. Berlinski is making a point that hits home. Far too many in the human race prefer a) a “tame” God, b) no God, or c) a distant, non-involved God.

Apr 30, 2008 - 11:34 am 81. FP:

>Which would be in error. We would probably do the same for fossils of a toy poodle and a great dane if dogs were extinct today. Yet, we know they are not two distinct species.

Yes but they did form _through [Natural] Selection_.

So why should I beleive that this already proven principe –which you have just demonstrated you understand– doesn’t apply to larger genetic shifts over time?

Apr 30, 2008 - 12:22 pm 82. FP:

>those supposed millions of years.

You don’t believe the universe and this planet are at least “millions of years” old?

Apr 30, 2008 - 12:29 pm 83. Toady:

An interesting fact is that, statistically, the less religious and the irreligious have fewer or no children than the religious.

For all the tooting of Darwin’s horn, atheism is an evolutionary dead end.

Apr 30, 2008 - 1:21 pm 84. Gabriel Hanna:

wombatty: My point is that species are a label invented by man and assigned to organisms. If the organisms are closely related the division may be arbitrary, just like the difference between “bald” and “not bald”. You can never prove that “one species turned into another” for that reason. You can prove that a population evolved, and the sum of those changes may well be enough to warrant calling them a different species.

An example-shrews from Spain can’t interbreed with shrews from Mongolia. But they can interbreed with shrews from France, which can interbreed with German shrews, and so on until you get to Mongolia. So how many species are we dealing with? It’s like asking, how many hairs must be missing from your head before you are considered bald? It’s a pointless question.

Since your definition of evolution seems to be “one species turns into another”, and since species are simply labels put on organisms for scientific convenience, your argument is dishonest. No evidence can satisfy you. If the two organism are too similar, you’ll say they’re different but “the same species”; if they are too different you will say they are “different species” and I didn’t show you one “tunring into another”.

It’s like asking me to show you two 2’s turning into a four.

Evolution is the change, over time, of gene frequencies in a population. It’s not “one species turning into another”.

former driver: Yes, the example I gave IS evolution as biologists use the word. Laymen who don’t know anything about biology and want all their scientific answers from the Bronze Age can make up any definition of evolution they like, but they are arguing with a straw man of their own creation.

IF the characteristic is inherited and IF it enhances reproduction success THEn it will spread through the population. Very testable.

Get cats with tails born with tails and cats born without. Let them live in a big room full of traps that grab cat’s tails. Kill those cats (or humanely remove them from the room) and you will find, in a few generations, that you’re room is full of tailless cats.

How to disprove evolution? If the percentage of tailless doesn’t change. Or, instead of using cats born tailless, cut the tails off regular cats. If cats start being born tailless then, you have proved evolution by Lamarckism and disproved evolution by natural selection.

It’s a small and unimpressive evolution, but people don’t live for millions of years to see impressive ones.

Apr 30, 2008 - 1:41 pm 85. Gabriel Hanna:

Toady: if those who believe the Earth is flat have more children than those who believe it round, does the Earth get flatter?

Apr 30, 2008 - 1:56 pm 86. The Scientific Embrace of Atheism « αληθεια και χαρις:

[...] aggressively that no power exceeds their own. PJM will publish a response by John Derbyshire to this piece [...]

Apr 30, 2008 - 2:13 pm 87. FP:

>Toady:

An interesting fact is that, statistically, the less religious and the irreligious have fewer or no children than the religious.

For all the tooting of Darwin’s horn, atheism is an evolutionary dead end.

——-
And that’s germain to what facts again?

—
And note that for most of the planet after the christians toadies get done destroying islam– …in the name of liberalism (cause the christians are that inherantly confusable and dense –the same problem that prevents their understanding of “darwinsim”)– there will be a very real majority of agnsotics and atheists who spread to the ‘high ground’ of space.

(God being an invention of the simple or complex mind that conjures him is either a simple spirit protector activist –who needs to be _defended_ by his wards with subterfuge– or a grand cosmic casue and effect progenitor.)

I repeat: the christians are fighting to spread atheism et al right now (and continuing) at the behest of their city-owing liberal masters. (The christians do this cause they are simple minded gullible hill folk; this is the same reason they don’t understanding the simple material cause and effect concept.) So it seems that dumbness at least for this species is continuing to be selected against (in a grand way that goes over your ever marginalizable heads).

Apr 30, 2008 - 2:23 pm 88. CAPISCEO:

“If the axe is dull and he does not sharpen its edge, then he must exert more strength (force).” (words of wisdom from the Jewish King, Solomon)

Entertain this question: “why do apologists hit so hard?”. A modern-day expression in a similar vein is “empty barrels make the most noise”.

May the ultimate Intelligent Designer keep us full and equipped with a sharp cutting edges!

Apr 30, 2008 - 2:35 pm 89. wombatty:

Gabriel Hanna wrote:

Since your definition of evolution seems to be “one species turns into another”,…

My definition?

In the introduction to his book ‘The Origin of Species’, Darwin’s states:

In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings, on their embryological relations, their geographical distribution, geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the conclusion that each species had not been independently created, but had descended, like varieties, from other species. Nevertheless, such a conclusion.

[...]

I am fully convinced that species are not immutable, but that those belonging to the same genera are lineal descendants of some other and generally extinct species, in the same manner as the acknowledged varieties of one species are the descendants of that species.

(The Origin of Species: Complete and Fully Illustrated; Gramercy Books, 1979; pp. 66, 69)

Indeed, the whole premise of Darwin’s theory was that, as quoted above, species are not immutable.

In their book The Myths of Human Evolution, Eldredge and Tattersall state:

[M]ost major change is related to speciation events. Certainly no one has ever shown much real evolutionary change to occur in lineages where there has been little or no speciation.

Stephen Jay Gould’s huge book The Structure of Evolutionary Theory is filled with passages like the following:

But punctuated equilibrium suggests another, remarkably simple, explanation once you begin to think in this alternative mode…If evolutionary rate correlates primarily with frequency of speciation – the cardinal prediction of punctuated equilibrium – then living fossils may simply represent those groups at the left tail of the distribution for numbers of speciation events through time.
(p. 816)

Further, Berkeley’s evolution website defines evolution thusly:

Biological evolution, simply put, is descent with modification. This definition encompasses small-scale evolution (changes in gene frequency in a population from one generation to the next) and large-scale evolution (the descent of different species from a common ancestor over many generations). Evolution helps us to understand the history of life.

On Berkeley’s speciation page, they define the term:

Speciation is a lineage-splitting event that produces two or more separate species. Imagine that you are looking at a tip of the tree of life that constitutes a species of fruit fly. Move down the phylogeny to where your fruit fly twig is connected to the rest of the tree. That branching point, and every other branching point on the tree, is a speciation event. At that point genetic changes resulted in two separate fruit fly lineages, where previously there had just been one lineage. But why and how did it happen?

This isn’t my definition of evolution – it is Darwin’s and that of nearly every evolutionist that followed him.

Gabriel Hanna wrote:

…and since species are simply labels put on organisms for scientific convenience, your argument is dishonest.

Hardly – I am merely following Darwin and his disciples on this point. You are misinformed or ignorant at best and dishonest at worst.

Gabriel Hanna wrote:

No evidence can satisfy you. If the two organism are too similar, you’ll say they’re different but “the same species”; if they are too different you will say they are “different species” and I didn’t show you one “tunring into another”. It’s like asking me to show you two 2’s turning into a four. .

Not so. For instance, there must have been innumerable intermediates between a ‘mouse-ish’ creature and a bat. Somewhere (say, 2/3 along the way), there must have been a ‘mouse-ish’ thing with some very strange looking leg/wings. And they would be where?

However, it does seem that any evidence will satisfy you. To wit:

Evolution is the change, over time, of gene frequencies in a population. It’s not “one species turning into another”.

Nice dodge. Nobody disagrees with ‘change, over time, of gene frequencies in a population’. That is observable and repeatable. What many take issue with is the completely baseless extrapolation of that observation to claim that all of life descended from one or a few common ancestors.

Apparently, you believe that ‘change, over time, of gene frequencies in a population’ can explain how, for instance, all mammals descended from a ’shrew-like’ ancestor. That’s some pretty strong faith you have there.

Apr 30, 2008 - 4:44 pm 90. griefer:

Fernandez, Berlinski is a Discovery Institute stooge.
google Wedge Strategy please.
then go to expelledexposed.com
Expelled has been totally outed on the interwebs as total crap.
It’s been called a blood libel against science.
Poor Stein is reduced to floggin his crappy fake-umentary on the Trinity Christian Network.
He’s being sued for copyright infringment by Harvard, NCSE and (someoneelse i forget) for the music and animations he stole.

Apr 30, 2008 - 5:21 pm 91. griefer:

total UNMITIGATED crap.

Apr 30, 2008 - 5:27 pm 92. » Science, atheism, and metaphysics:

[...] The Scientific Embrace of Atheism Why shouldn’t the scientific community find atheism so attractive a doctrine? It is only [...]

Apr 30, 2008 - 5:28 pm 93. CAPISCEO:

The invective spewing from the keyboards and the ad hominem attacks show that these issues cannot be dealt with honestly and dispassionately. Discussion quickly degenerates into an online version of the Jerry Springer show. I find myself coming down with the contagion, so goodbye to all. In true Springer-esque fashion some of you may bid (yell) “good riddance”. That’s OK – I have a soft heart and a thick skin.

Click on my blog name and you’ll be linked to a 3-minute movie related to these issues. It is also on YouTube under the name “Voice of the COSMOS II”.

Apr 30, 2008 - 6:57 pm 94. davej:

Maybe David Berlinski could be shot into orbit so he can get the big scoop from “you know who.” There might also be room in the capsule for Ben Stein. No return parachutes would be needed since they could both then simply ascend into heaven.

Apr 30, 2008 - 7:09 pm 95. Gabriel Hanna:

wombatty:

On species, you strike out again.

I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given for the sake of convenience to a set of individuals closely resembling each other …. it does not essentially differ from the term variety, which is given to less distinct and more fluxtuating forms. The term variety, again in comparison with mere individual difference, is also applied arbitrarily, and for mere convenience sake.

That’s Darwin.

Wikipedia, in the entry “Species” gives:

It is surprisingly difficult to define the word “species” in a way that applies to all naturally occurring organisms, and the debate among biologists about how to define “species” and how to identify actual species is called the species problem…

one species may gradually evolve into one or more others after a few million years; the original type of organism and the final one are so different that one could not regard the ancestors and the descendants as members of the same species if they existed at the same time; but the intermediate types are so similar to the next and previous types that one cannot say exactly where species A changed into species B. Paleontologists devised the concept of chronospecies to describe the simplest case, where at the end of the process there is only one descendant type of organism and there are no longer any individuals of the ancestral type. But even this refinement does not work in cases where several descendant types are alive at the same time or where the ancestral type and at least one descendant type are alive at the same time – and both of these situations are common in the evolution of life on Earth…

The rise of a new species from a parental line is called speciation. There is no clear line demarcating the ancestral species from the descendant species.

Leaving you to contemplate the First Law of Holes, let’s get back to the real point.

Does Archaeopteryx satisfy you as a transitional form? What about Ambulocetus? Maybe Tiktaalik?

Why am I sure in advance that your answer for these, or any others, will be no?

Do please give your reasoning.

Apr 30, 2008 - 7:38 pm 96. Michael:

griefer,

Harvard or NCSE, or the animator dropped their suit because they would not win. Yoko Ono will lose too, due to fair use laws in a documentary. Michale Moore and Al Gore would be sued if she won. Every single documentary would be sued if she won her case.

They stole nothing. Your assertion is false.

Your anger interrupts your thought process and misleads anyone reading here. Take time to look up facts.

Apr 30, 2008 - 8:29 pm 97. Interesting religion/evolution debate - The Prophecy Forums:

[...] It Wrong about Atheism and Science David Berlinski’s article on atheists manipulating the sciences is both deceptive and illogical. Here’s an attempt to set the [...]

May 1, 2008 - 2:35 am 98. Expelled - The Movie (Updated) « Dan’s Blog:

[...] Berlinski has another interesting take on this topic at http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/the-scientific-embrace-of-atheism/ Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)New movie opening this weekend, and it ain’t [...]

May 1, 2008 - 5:18 am 99. formerdriver:

Dinesh D’souza said there were six commonly accepted definitions of evolution, and that one had been proven (the example you offer of cats in a room), and that with a sleight of hand, this was meant to prove the rest were true as well.

I think he’s correct.

I think this is intellectual corruption. No doubt you feel confident because by the meaning of jargon that has been rigged to maximum advantage you’re right. But, words do need to be nailed down to reality.

You can take refuge from the facts in Fort Semantics in between President Clinton saying ‘what is the meaning of ‘is”, and on your left the ‘Communism has never failed because its never really been tried. Russia wasn’t Real Communism, so it doesn’t count.’.

But I invite you to leave sophistry off, and speak simply and truly. Otherwise, I shall have to say, I am *Way Smarter Than You.

*For the purposes and extent of this conversation the word ‘Smart’ is defined as ‘total agreement with formerdriver’. Hence any disagreement with formerdriver is proof of not being as smart as formerdriver who is naturally smart as he is in agreement with himself.

I tend to see your response you gave me as a possibly unconscious admission of “Yes, you’re right.” I wanted to leave it there, but I wasn’t sure it would be so obvious to everyone else that you had admitted failure, and were desperately clinging to sophistry in response.

At this point, feel free to curse me, call me, like your comrade in arms does, an ignorant hill folk, or make your concluding arguement.

May the Someone Who Does Not Exist guide you into all truth.

May 1, 2008 - 7:19 am 100. Gabriel Hanna:

formerdriver A few points:

1) You don’t know my religious opinions. There are many Christians who accept evolution. Almost all Christians accept that the Earth is round and orbits the Sun despite the Bible’s plain words to the contrary. I don’t know why evolution is different.

My profession is physics. Jesus had nothing to say about it. He was not concerned with this world, but that to come.

The Bible doesn’t tell blacksmiths how to make steel, chariot makers how big the wheels should be, house builders that flat roofs and thick walls make cooler houses in the Middle East.

Neither physics, nor evolution, will tell me how I should live. They can only describe the world as it is, not as it should be.

If I had an ethical problem, I wouldn’t write Stephen Hawking or Richard Dawkins about it.

2) You can accept the cats–good. One small change. Evolution by natural selection is just the sum of bazillions of them over a huge length of time.

You can accept that 1 + 1 = 2, but not that 1 + 782345698612935 = 782345698612936. Okay, fine.

But you’ve never seen an electron, or a germ, or an electromagnetic wave. You’ve never seen gravity, or time appear to slow down for objects moving faster than you. Those things may be absurd to you, but the people who know all about those things and work with them every day have used them to come up with other things that you take for granted every day. And their predictions work.

The reason that a lot of people who defend evolution get testy is that it’s always the same arguments over and over again from people who usually don’t even get what they’re arguing about.

Physicists have the equivalent, the “free energy” people. Check out keelynet sometime.

They say all the same things–it’s a conspiracy, physicists are too lazy/dogmatic/whatever to listen to what they have to say.

And we have work to do. We don’t have the time or the inclination to debunk every claim that somebody can get more energy out of a system than went in. All we can do is say, “Look, this is where we got assuming energy was conserved. You go do your own science where it isn’t, and when you invent transistors with it or something, get back to us.”

And so I understand the tetchiness. We’re human. We SHOULD have infinite patience to explain over and over what we spend our lives studying to answer the objections of people who don’t pay any attention to our work, but we don’t.

You think evolution is bad science, fine. Invent your proper science. Can’t get universities to listen? Teach it at Oral Roberts. When Oral Roberts starts coming up with inventions and whatnot that no other university can touch, the scientists will listen.

3) Argument from design is inherently contradictory.

You say complicated things can’t come from simple things. They can’t be assumed, they must be explained by something more complicated. Fine, you invoke a Designer.

But the Designer is also complicated, more complicated than what you are trying to explain by it-that’s your assumption. By your own rules, now the Designer needs a Designer.

If the Designer can be assumed, then why can’t I assume that life came about spontaneously and cut out the middleman of a Designer? If you’re not obligated to explain where your Designer comes from, how can you honestly demand that I explain where life came from?

May 1, 2008 - 9:54 am 101. griefer:

i think i will put this here too.
hey guyz, we are seeing a memewar here.
The DI intends to replace the current version of Science with something of their own design.
some god-as-designer version of real science i guess.
And they are using social engineering and Wedge strategy tactics to accomplish those goals.
Stein’s movie is an attempt to demonize Science and scientists.

Expelled is just the cartoon version of Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism.

And these poor fools desperately want to believe the theme endorsed by both the movie and the book, as vocalized by Goldberg here.

“I do think Darwinism led to Nazism, in a sense. But that’s because I see Nazism as one of many responses to modernism. And Darwin, for good and ill, represents the rise of modern science — along with Einstein and others. Nazism and Communism and Progressivism were all impossible without the industrial revolution, Darwinism, relativism, mechanized warfare, mass production, etc. They were reactionary responses to these things. Those responses amounted to an express rejection of the conservative and libertarian vision of society, which is why they were leftwing.”
The theme is–
that Science is Bad….reallyreally Bad…..UNLESS it is “guided” by judeo-xian philosophy.

This is what is happening– courtesy Reason and Peter Thiel

reason: What do you think are the most dangerous political trends in the United States?

Thiel: It seems like things are moving in a very anti-libertarian direction politically on every issue. There may be a few exceptions, but generally we’re moving toward a country that’s fiscally more liberal and socially more conservative, which is a very odd configuration. You can debate why that is. Maybe politics has become purely reactionary. It’s a reaction against progress, against globalization, against technology.

There is absolutely nothing libertarian about Goldberg’s and Stein’s premise, that science without religion causes the worlds ills.
They are reactionaries, the memetic equivalent of villagers with pitchforks and torches.

May 2, 2008 - 12:05 pm 102. griefer:

you might as well post it..it is already up on the other thread.

May 2, 2008 - 12:23 pm 103. Anna Keppa:

Just to correct what one poster said, the March 2008 issue of SciAm doesn’t contain an article questioning the Big Bang. You can look it up!

Secondly, If any ID adherent can tell us how “God/The Designer must have done it” is science, I would like to hear it. If you can’t prove God’s existence how can you prove that he’s the Designer?

Thirdly, if an ID adherent would like to lay out a grant proposal that would lead to reproducible results supporting ID, let’s hear it. And then tell us what would falsify ID. That’s a challenge to every ID person posting here.

Fourth, the ignorance among the right regarding Darwin is simply astounding. Coulter, Limbaugh, Stein, that cretin Tom Bethell, all feel free to pontificate w/o having the slightest idea of what science is, let alone “darwinism”. As a conservative , I am deeply embarrassed when I read the idiocy they put forward.

Finally, the arguments about “truth” are just lame. Mathematicians are interested in “proof”, not “truth”, though they will tell you that a math proof is as true a statement that there is.

Scientists don’t seek truth, they seek knowledge. They all know that their knowledge is contingent, subject to being superseded.

ID adherents betray their anti-science stance when they claim to have found “the answer”, one that will never change. NOthing contingent in their “science”!

May 3, 2008 - 11:39 pm 104. griefer:

Here you go, Mistah Berlinski!
Just for you.

Anyway, the anti-evolution self-improvement program Human Events is pitching is called “Tear Apart the “Theory” of Evolution — And Win Every Debate, Every Time,” and here’s the introductory description:

Show any Skeptic that Evolution is Based on Myths,
Falsehoods and Outrageous Lies – In 5 Minutes or Less!

Dear Friend,

I’m fed up with Darwin…

When evolution supporters tried to make me feel foolish for believing in God, I decided to do something about it.

Evolution is not proven fact. Every one of their claims can be torn to shreds. All you need are the missing pieces. Today, I’ll show you what they are.

Within minutes, you’ll:

* Quickly take down self-righteous atheists…

* Easily and accurately defend God’s role as our Creator…

* Send hardened skeptics into a state of confusion…

* Expose the “theory” of evolution and leave scientists with their mouths hanging open…

My name is Jeffrey Howard. If you ever challenged someone on evolution, I have great news.

By the time you read to the end of this letter, you’ll have everything you need to take on the skeptics and win. You’ll never be at a loss for words. The whole evolution debate will be right in your pocket.

Use it anytime, anywhere… It’s much easier than you think. Once you get the real story, it takes less than 5 minutes!

via Eric Scheie at Classical Values

May 4, 2008 - 10:24 am 105. FP:

>”My name is Jeffrey Howard. If you ever challenged someone on evolution, I have great news.”

Be the life of the party. Get girls. Win at life. The secret is so simple you will be amazed…

750 words later…

It can all be yours for as little as $39.99…

Comical. Infomercial capitalism mixed with creationism.

“So act now!”

May 5, 2008 - 3:35 am 106. griefer:

From Jim Manzi: Show me the Science on NRO

Trying to wish away valid scientific findings because you believe that they imperil religious or ethical beliefs is a fool’s errand on many levels. Augustine’s guidance from The Literal Meaning of Genesis is quite relevant here:

Even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipse of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he holds to as being certain from reason and experience. Now it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn.

Mr. Berlinski may claim to be a secular jew, but I think we “laughed him to scorn” anyways.
hahaha

P3WNED!!!!

May 5, 2008 - 5:40 am 107. griefer:

So now the cowardly Mr. Berlinski has retreated to the bastions of NRO where he doesn’t get comments, since he got punked here, not just by the, but by UNDERGRADUATE COMMENTERS!!!!!.
Berlinski: The Dang Thing

Run coward run.

May 5, 2008 - 6:31 am 108. griefer:

not just by the Derb, but by UNDERGRADUATE COMMENTERS!
hahahaha

not exactly fighting fair in the meme wars.
Berlinski is chickensh*t.

BTW, none of us in the expelledexposed cohort are going to give stein money to watch his shabby fakeumentary.
and we already googlebombed expelledexposed onto the front page.
Its pretty sweet that stein is reduced to flogging expelled on the xian broadcast networks.

May 5, 2008 - 6:37 am 109. The Scientific Embrace of Atheism « The Latest News and Opinion on Intelligent Design and Creationism:

[...] aggressively that no power exceeds their own. PJM will publish a response by John Derbyshire to this piece [...]

May 5, 2008 - 6:26 pm 110. Seth:

You know why I like Chuck Darwin, because even he was willing to admit in his book “Origin of Species” that there were “Difficulties of the Theory” (Chapter Six). I wish Evolutionists of today would be willing to admit the same. Call to all Evolutionists!!! What are the difficulties with the theory of Evolution and what are the explanations of them. You won’t convince anyone by trying to convince them the theory is infallible.

May 6, 2008 - 9:06 am 111. griefer:

Seth, go for it.
it’s not our responsibility.

you can’t prove IDT by poking holes in ToE.
IDT simply has to become the better model.

maybe you can take the course, lulz.

Show any Skeptic that Evolution is Based on Myths,
Falsehoods and Outrageous Lies – In 5 Minutes or Less!

Dear Friend,

I’m fed up with Darwin…

When evolution supporters tried to make me feel foolish for believing in God, I decided to do something about it.

Evolution is not proven fact. Every one of their claims can be torn to shreds. All you need are the missing pieces. Today, I’ll show you what they are.

Within minutes, you’ll:

* Quickly take down self-righteous atheists…

* Easily and accurately defend God’s role as our Creator…

* Send hardened skeptics into a state of confusion…

* Expose the “theory” of evolution and leave scientists with their mouths hanging open…

My name is Jeffrey Howard. If you ever challenged someone on evolution, I have great news.

By the time you read to the end of this letter, you’ll have everything you need to take on the skeptics and win. You’ll never be at a loss for words. The whole evolution debate will be right in your pocket.

Use it anytime, anywhere… It’s much easier than you think. Once you get the real story, it takes less than 5 minutes!
>”My name is Jeffrey Howard. If you ever challenged someone on evolution, I have great news.”

Be the life of the party. Get girls. Win at life. The secret is so simple you will be amazed…

750 words later…

It can all be yours for as little as $39.99…

hahahahaha

May 6, 2008 - 1:10 pm 112. Sharon:

Anna, you wrote: ” .. . if any ID adherent can tell us how God/ the Designer must have done it is science, I would like to hear it.”

I take the following paragraphs from Nancy Pearcey’s book “Total Truth” (2005),pp.181-2:

“Critics say that the concept of design does not belong in science. They argue that it is a ’science stopper’ that puts an end to scientific investigation . . . . But that accusation is based on a misunderstanding. The process of detecting design is thoroughly empirical. In fact, it is already an important element in several areas of science. Back in 1967, I was startled to read a newspaper article announcing that astronomers may have discovered radio messages coming from outer space. They dubbed the signals ‘LGM’ to signify ‘Little Green men.’ Later, however, they realized that the radio impulses were coming in a regular, recurring pattern like the flashing of a lighthouse, not an irregular pattern like the sequence of letters in a message. what they had discovered were not aliens but pulsars–rotating stars.

“Today astronomers involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) have worked out extensive criteria for recognizing when a radio signal is an encoded message and when it is just a natural phenomenon, like a pulsar. In other words, they have developed criteria for distinguishing between products of design and products of natural causes.”

“The same distinction is made in several other fields:

-Detectives are trained to distinguish murder (design) from death by natural causes.
-Archaeologists have criteria for distinguishing when a stone has the distinctive chip marks of a primitive tool (design), and when its shape is simply the result of weathering and erosion.
-Insurance companies have steps for deciding whether a fire was a case of arson (design) or just an accident.
-Cryptologists have worked out procedures to determine whether a set of symbols is a secret message (design) or merely a random sequence.”

Pearcey later sets forth the most recent and powerful evidence that living systems were designed: the DNA code, which is made up of chemically arbitrary sequences of 4 chemical “letters” (amino acids). She allows Richard Dawkins to explain the significance of this, “What has happened is that genetics has become a branch of information technology. The genetic code is truly digital,in exactly the same sense as computer codes. This is not some vague analogy, it is the literal truth.” (Richard Dawkins, “Why Prince Charles is So Wrong”, Checkbiotech.org, January 28, 2003 at http://www.checkbiotech.org.)

Clearly, just as a design implies a designer, a book (or computer code)implies an author. Given that any one cell in our bodies contains more information than “the entire 30 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica” (Total Truth, p. 196), how can it be irrational to suspect an intelligent source of so much complex information?

May 6, 2008 - 3:11 pm 113. griefer:

“how can it be irrational to suspect an intelligent source of so much complex information?”

the complexity argument is a multiple loozer, Sharon.
Go back to Oral Roberts and take a course in probability and statistics.
If they even offer it there.

/giggles

May 6, 2008 - 5:27 pm 114. Driving the wedge into Christianity « Open Parachute:

[...] during a recent TV interview that “science leads to killing people.” David Berlinski in The Scientific Embrace of Atheism also attacks science in a manner John Derbyshire shows to be ridiculous (see Getting It Wrong about [...]

May 15, 2008 - 5:00 am 115. blah blah:

ID is FAR better position them mystical pre-Socratic ideas led to Darwinism. period.
You can talk all day long… about statistics, math (as it disqualifies religing… ) by the way did you notice Dembski and Berlinski have degrees in math. hmmm… maybe you should read more before posting spam.

It’s annoying reading kids’ posts online. read guys… read.

Jul 28, 2008 - 1:13 am 116. Mark Goodson:

It is not surprising that many evolutionary scientist embrace atheism and the evolutionary position since both positions are without merit as can be seen here and here.

Nov 10, 2008 - 7:06 am 117. The wedge undermines Christianity « Open Parachute:

[...] during a recent TV interview that “science leads to killing people.” David Berlinski in The Scientific Embrace of Atheism also attacks science in a manner John Derbyshire shows to be ridiculous (see Getting It Wrong about [...]

Dec 28, 2008 - 4:01 am 118. jrodmc:

Why are so many of the atheists so angry? They have no answers, no solutions (since their are none), their theory leads to nihilism and a realm of hate so unattractive that it makes me wonder why scientism would appear attractive to anyone. Highly-evolved, superior taste buds, no doubt.
Dawkins, Dennet, Harris; these people write and talk like they have cornered the market on arrogance and overly verbose irritability. Funny, how long would any of these supergeniuses last in a completely Darwinian world? As Dawkins intimates, he obviously would be one of the easier targets for a facist regime to deal with.

Dec 29, 2008 - 10:53 am 119. brizzo:

I find it truly sad that people refuse to see the amazing inhuman intricacies of creation. I believe without a shadow of a doubt that Almighty God is the ultimate designer & creator of this world. Because we humans can only use a fraction of our brain and because we exist in this very strict environment of time, we cannot possibly comprehend the concept of no beginning and no end. How can we possibly fathom a space where God always was, is and will be? Or the micro-quantum mechanics God used to create life.

How can we definitively know there is a God? He has written it in his creation. This world is so intricately put together and so much depends on the most miniscule of parts, that’s how we can know for sure. It is incredible to me that anyone could be so arrogant as to leave God out of creation. But I understand that to admit there might be a God is to put a person in subjegation to the laws dictated by that God. Boy, those two most important commands are really horrible aren’t they? To love God and to love your neighbor be they friend or foe. Better to argue there is no God and to try and discredit him with the science He created.

I will continue to live my life as if there is a God and be relieved to find out there isn’t one, than to live my life as if there isn’t a God to find out in horror that there is.

In my mind, science proves there is a God with a magnificient creativity and love.

Jan 7, 2009 - 11:02 am 120. manbooks:

I believe Evolution is a fact: adaptation within a species (micro-evolution) based on environmental causes can easily be demonstrated by the scientific evidence. What most certainly is NOT a fact is that evolution could POSSIBLY explain the origen of life. There is NO evidence for cross species evolution (macro-evolution). As Dr. Berlinski points out, there are simply too many steps needed to turn, say, a bird into a cat. There are no intermediary species. In fact, the fossil record shows that most of life came to be within a very short period of time (Cambrian explosion).

As far as faith is concerned, is it really believing something for which there are no facts? Only a fool would do this. Science can not answer the question of the existence or nature of a Divine Being, but it can and does point to the most reasonable explanation for the origen of species: Intellegent Design.

May 27, 2009 - 9:40 pm 121. Eugene Shubert:

#42. The theory of devolution (a creationist theory) is both a tweak and a refinement of standard evolutionary theory and makes many falsifiable predictions.

For example, the possibility of chimpanzees and gorillas taking over the planet and enslaving humans is consistent with the modern evolutionary synthesis. That evolutionary scenario, with its obvious dependence on the evolutionists’ mindset, was the basis for all the planet of the ape movies. But anything like those events would falsify the theory of devolution.

All laughter aside, the simplest way to falsify the theory of devolution, if it were possible, is to find mutants of Escherichia coli that are unquestionably healthier than their ancestral strains.

Sep 5, 2009 - 11:01 am

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