If someone told you, "Gravity does not exist," or "Germs are not the main cause of disease," hopefully you would avoid such a silly person.
If someone was on Fox News or a newspaper scoffing at the germ theory, cell theory, gravitational theory, atomic theory, relativity theory or any other well-tested scientific theory, hopefully you would find that laughable. Would you consider that any of them had the slightest case? I am fairly sure that person would be viewed as much of a crackpot as a flat Earth believer to most everyone.
Then why is the most important theory in biology questioned by the United States public so often? The theory has existed for around the same duration as the others, or more, and gone under the same rigorous scrutiny. Why then is intelligent design so appealing?
Honestly, there is a disconnect between the few people who have some strong convictions about ID as a valid biological theory and those who favor it for religious reasons - though religion is important to both groups.
Often, people choose ID simply because of this reinforcement rather than it being supported by evidence (e.g. unmistakable patterns in the fossil record or genetic trends). ID is a political movement, pushed by people rather than by science.
Even if evolutionary theory does contradict a religious belief, we get results only by trusting that the universe is governed by natural laws, and we can learn only by studying it. The observations are all we have, and we build theories to explain these observations and to predict new phenomena to find.
All theories in science survive by their agreement with observation and their ability to reliably make predictions, including evolutionary biology. Nothing supernatural has ever been required.
There is also something very interesting about the types of people that are so fervently against evolutionary biology. Note that I avoid 'evolution' or 'Darwin's theory of evolution' because it is an ongoing topic of research that has abandoned or updated several original ideas presented by Darwin.
It is not one man's theory, but a well-tested one for the past 150 years. These people often say that science cannot investigate God, but they will then believe in this 'scientific' theory that involves God. If a god simply created everything as it is, then it would be possible to see evidence of it. If the world worked according to ID, the fossil record would look very different. In this way, ID makes a few main, testable statements outlined by Michael Behe, a major advocate of ID, in his book, "Darwin's Black Box."He proposes that any system that is found to be "irreducibly complex" would be evidence for a creator, as in a system that has a fundamental unit that could not be formed through natural selection. This is precisely true.
But no such system has actually been found. A system that was brought up in the Dover, Penn., trial - the first trial against ID being taught in schools - was the flagellum of bacteria.
Behe argued that this resembled a motor developed by a designer and could not have formed through evolutionary processes. However, during the trial, Ken Miller from Brown University stripped down the flagellum and found that its root parts (less than 50 percent of the original parts) formed a simple and deadly function.
From his online paper, "The Flagellum Unspun," Miller gives a very in-depth argument against ID, specifically about the flagellum. He explains that the base of the flagellum consists of the same proteins of "the type III secretion system (TTSS), (which) allows gram negative bacteria to translocate proteins directly into the cytoplasm of a host cell," and "the proteins transferred ... include a variety of truly dangerous molecules, some of which ... are directly responsible for the pathogenic activity of some of the most deadly bacteria in existence." So the base of the flagellum does have another function, therefore evolution can act on it (i.e. not irreducibly complex).
The Dover trial ended with the court ruling against ID stating, "We find that ID fails on three different levels, any one of which is sufficient to preclude a determination that ID is science. They are: 1) ID violates the centuries-old ground rules of science by invoking and permitting supernatural causation; 2) the argument of irreducible complexity, central to ID, employs the same flawed and illogical contrived dualism that doomed creation science in the 1980s; and 3) ID's negative attacks on evolution have been refuted by the scientific community."
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stop being a bunch of haters on fox news already. and its a dead horse and scientifically ridiculous to think ID beats out evolution. so why even address the issue?
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There is a difference between real science, and scientism, or scientific naturalism. Many people have trouble knowing when one ends and the other begins. It is a blind spot in science today. Real science is a way of systematically finding out truth about the world around us. It has limits. It is not the only way of finding out truth, nor does it ever try to prove there is no supernatural. Miller’s observations about the flagellum are as much a problem for survival of the fittest as they are for design. If this is the result of mutation, it proves nothing about original design. You brought up the Dover trial. Since when are trial judges experts on what science is or isn’t? You claim: “Theories go through years of testing and development before entering into textbooks, never inserted without experimental verification.†There are many proofs given in the textbooks today for evolution that have already been disproven, or are outright lies. You talk about our poor understanding of biology, I agree. But it is the proponents of evolution theory who do not understand it. What an eye is, what it does, and how to treat it for disease is pure science. How we got an eye has nothing to do with biology. Anyone who claims that we got an eye when it evolved in an eyeless life form has gone beyond the limits of science, and are being motivated by a philosophical worldview, scientific naturalism.
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Arv Edgeworth is a young earth creationist (YEC), and a preacher at the Trinity Baptist Church in Flushing, Michigan. YECs absolutely hate the fact that science requires fundamental criteria such as *testability* and *empirical evidence*. They ignore astronomical and geological science whenever they feel like it, as motivated by their religious doctrine. Notice Edgeworth's remark, "Since when are trial judges experts on what science is or isn't." Professional scientists are the experts, and it's the results of scientific research that matter, but creationists deliberately ignore them just like they ignore everything else. When you have creationist charlatans such as William Buckingham and Alan Bonsell trying to push their religion-motivated anti-science nonsense on children in public schools, you take them to court. Judge John Jones' decision was based on the facts in evidence. The fact is that creationism is religion, not science. Edgeworth is actually trying to defend the idea that it's okay for charlatans to falsely pretend that something is scientific even though it isn't, and that you cannot take them to court when it becomes necessary and have a judge (or jury) look at the relevant facts of the case and make a decision according to due process of law about whether the charlatans are making a false claim. "Since when are trial judges experts on what science is or isn't?" is just an example of the rhetorical distortions based on false premises that creationists love to use.
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so arv is a creationist therefore he sucks as a person and he is a religious zealot. now that that has been said, you have any replies to what he wrote? you sound like the people opposing health care because it is communism when trying to tear down arv's arguments by saying he is a bible toting deuchebag
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So the human body has trillions of cells all working together to run many different systems. Do you really think it is more logical that all of these cells randomly assembled themselves over time to form a human body or that some external intelligent force decided how they should be put together. And oh yeah, if there were no intelligent creator, then where did the matter that formed the first cell come from or the energy to assemble it with another cell. For a long time scientists were convinced the world was flat. Were they right? Obviously not. Just because the majority of all the leading scientists buy into a theory doesn't make it fact. With as much scientific evidence that you have to prove there is evolution you can't disprove the existence of a creator. Think outside the box for a moment. Is it not possible that a creator intelligently created the world and evolution has taken place since that time?
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Either theory takes a lot of faith to believe it is the way it really happened. They're both as crazy and plausible to me.
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The first anonymous raises a good point. Why address this issue if its like beating a dead horse. The answer is to squash all debate before it starts. Watch the documentary by Ben Stein called "Expelled". It addresses this issue. Some food for thought.
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ID is an unprovable conjecture more than it is a science. Evolutionary theory has holes, as does gravitational theory (how is gravity "communicated," for instance - is there a graviton, and if not, how does the force work). The problem is an unwillingness on the part of some to allow science to have these holes. They want to patch these gaps with faith-based assertions. That's one's own prerogative, but calling it science is disingenuous. It's not necessarily "wrong" to believe in ID, nor is it wrong to be skeptical of the conclusions reached by evolutionary theory (remember when geocentric theory was consistent with all empirical evidence available at the time?), but it is wrong to confuse natural philosophy with science.
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So what disease is evolution curing again? Oh right, it is about as worth wild to study as the sexual behavior of fruit flies.
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It is a fundamental theory in biology, it is used in medical science all the time. So it is extremely worthwhile to understand.
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