Re: WDDK

From: EarlCox (earlcox_at_earlcoxreports.com)
Date: 10/03/04 

Date: Sun, 03 Oct 2004 17:19:23 GMT

OK, evolution is wrong. And God exists. And we are made in his image. And
the universe is approximately 6000 years old. You win. Now what?

Scientific theories are always subject to revision, sometimes they are
discarded, and sometimes they remain consistent with the world at a
different level of granularity (such as classical mechanics and quantum
mechanics or Newtonian gravity and the general theory of relativity.) A
theory is seldom rejected because new details of its inner workings are
discovered. Of course, as Popper pointed out, theories must be refuted, not
confirmed. A theory that includes the premise that "All Crows are Black"
cannot be proved by observing millions of black crows, but can be refuted by
a single white crow. Evolution cannot be refuted simply because some macro
or species level mechanism is discovered, or simply because we find that it
works in some way inconsistent with the way Darwin proposed (or any other
scientists proposes), or simply because we cannot image how complexity
arises from simplicity after millions and millions of years of
modifications.

The constant drum beat of anti-evolutionists in the newsgroup means little
or nothing in the quest to find the actual laws of nature. Hundreds of
theories are undergoing revisions all the time - superstring theory or
quantum loop theory may replace our ideas about the quantum world, dark
energy and dark matter and the mass of the neutrino are replacing our
theories about the shape and nature of spacetime, deeper understandings of
"junk" proteins in the chromosome are replacing theories about the nature
and function of genomes, and so forth and so forth. Few, if any scientific,
theories during their formative years are constant and unchanging. The very
nature of the evolutionary process means that the cohesion of a totally
consistent and predictive Theory of Evolution its will have a much longer
"formative years" stage than most other physical sciences (although many of
the soft or social sciences are already use to this kind of long time
frame - consider psychology - from phrenology to a theory of consciousness
that is still undergoing revisions after a hundred and fifty years).
Evolutionary theory, of course, sits as a unique place among scientific
theories. It challenges our very image of ourselves and our place in the
cosmos. It challenges a hundred thousand or more years of human belief in
the supernatural, in the intercession of the gods in our daily lives, in, in
fact, our very origin as creates derived from the handiwork of God or "the
gods", depending on which mythological account you subscribe to. Hence it
invites aggressive and persistent attacks on every minor (and sometimes
major) principle of the theory by those who passionately want to believe in
god, in their existence as a design imposed by a supreme being, and in their
own post-mortem immortality. There is absolutely nothing wrong with
challenging the theory of evolution. All scientific theories are subject to
challenge. But to use errors in fact, facts out of context, wishful
thinking, and "god of the gaps" proclamations can only produce a hollow
victory.

Religion, as Soren Kierkegaard once declared, is "a leap of faith." If there
is no way of ever applying scientific methods to discovering the existence
and nature of god, then the debate between religion and science will always
be one of strong words, heated emotions, and attacks on the consistency of
this or that detail. Even if you prove that evolution, as we now understand
it, is wrong, that is NOT a proof for the existence of god.

"Jabriol" <jabriol1@excite.com> wrote in message
news:9e9431eb.0410030702.18968626@posting.google.com...
> Hi everyone,
> I can recommend the book "What Darwin Didn't Know" by Geoffrey Simmons,
M.D.
>
> This book examines the human body and shows repeatedly that what Darwin
was
> ignorant of about the human body provides convincing proof that design was
> inherent.
>
> Although written by an M.D. it is written in a style that the lay person
can
> easily understand (a feature I found especially useful). He clearly
exposes
> the theory of evolution for what it is a fraud and a hoax.
>
> Whilst he does not conclude that there must be a GOD he does conclude that
> we came about by design.

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