... Stein shows Darwinists insistently misrepresenting the scientific case against their theory. Where facts and reason might fail to persuade, personal attacks are employed, sometimes even by organizations supposedly committed to civil discourse.
When I was taught Darwin's theory in college more than four decades ago, it was represented as unassailable. But I also was taught in those days to respect academic freedom, which is a good standard to apply in any field. In the 1990s, before intelligent design was added to the ideas studied at Discovery Institute, I learned about an assault on the academic freedom of Dean Kenyon, a biologist and author at San Francisco State University who had come to view Darwin's theory as flawed.1 At first, the effort to restrain him from teaching seemed like just another skirmish over political correctness.
Then, following the Kenyon case, I began to examine the account of life's development that I once had been taught so dogmatically. One after another of the demonstrations of the theory that supposedly were "certain" and "conclusive" when I was a student â" such as Ernst Haeckel's embryo drawings that showed various animals looking almost identical in the earliest stages of life â" have been abandoned or replaced.2 What has not changed is the dogmatism.
I soon came to realize that differences over the development of life, unlike other disputes, spark so much controversy because the collateral stakes are higher than they seem. Where you stand on the origins question often influences your worldview on issues of human life, ranging from cloning to euthanasia. Are we ultimately the product of purpose and design? If so, we would seem to be heirs to a more-or-less settled moral reality. Or, is man the unguided "result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind," as Harvard paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson wrote?3 In that case, perhaps we can conceive our own values.
Public discussion on evolution is complicated further by confusion over words that lack any constant and agreed meaning. Terms like "evolve" and "theory" have different definitions in science than they do in everyday speech. Even among scientists, they are subject to varying understandings.4
People frequently use the word "evolve" as a genteel way of saying "change," as in, "The Toyota Camry has not evolved much this year." But that makes no sense as a scientific expression. Cars don't "evolve" in the way most Darwinists mean â" an undirected process of small, incremental mutations acted on by natural selection to produce new species. Cars are designed. Intelligence is involved. Auto designs â" like ideas or fashions or cities â" don't "evolve."5 My own ideas on evolution didn't evolve; I changed my mind.
Unfortunately, people sometimes are told that Darwinian evolution simply demonstrates "changes over time." If that were so, how could any sensible person object to it? Even ardent critics of Darwinism accept "microevolution" â" change over time within species. Animal and plant breeding, after all, are kinds of human-guided microevolution. Nature, too, plainly conducts microevolution.
But classical Darwinists such as Francisco Ayala and Richard Dawkins assert much more. Dawkins, for example, acknowledges that living organisms "give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose."6 But, he argues that this appearance of design is completely misleading because undirected Darwinian processes â" random mutations and natural selection â" can produce the features of living systems that look designed. In Ayala's words, natural selection produces "design without a designer."7
Advocates of the theory of intelligent design see things differently. They think there are discernible features of living systems and the universe that are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process like natural selection. They don't dispute that life changes over time; they dispute that u
The previous post is yet another feeble attempt to dismiss an arguement by waggling a bony, pointed finger toward a group, branding them with 'mindless psychosis' and attempting to call it a day.
The argument in question however cannot be reduced to such a simple assertion. Sure there may be a lack of "faith in humanity" among people of faith... but in fair critique, people of faith are not alone in this matter. Nazi examples aside, there are copious daily reports of atrocities across the globe being wrought against various people groups in the name of one wholly "rational" ideal or another.
This IS plenty of legitimate reason to fear "humanity," and is true for ALL the people on this planet. You cannot pin down one side of the scientific debate of Darwinism on a dubious psychological claim... especially the questionable "goodness of man", which is a whole other debate.
"[POSTED]--The negative reaction to evolution by otherwise intelligent religious folk is really a reaction against the idea of meaningless in life"... This statement mearly addresses a symptom of the larger debate's implications. It is also totally divorced from the other, more crucial aspect of the arguement... summed up here as, the total lack of foundational support for the current Neo-Darwinist theory.
Granted, upon brief inspection, the theory itself seems to make perfect sense from the mile-high view. But upon closer inspection--at the microscopic level (and beyond) the theory continues to break down, turn after turn, especially in light of the observations found in other scientific disciplines (most notably archeology... complete lack of an "evolving" fossil record, and in physics... 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts the assertion of mutation as a positive agent of progressive change). The rabbit trail goes much further, but suffice to say these are but two of many MAJOR hurdles that Darwin's theory hasn't even begun to persuasively address. So while its fun to show diagrams of land-bound squirrels turning into flying bats (over millions of years) it has proven hand-wringingly impossible to show a lump of coal turning into a fully funtioning cellular organism. There has been nothing observed in nature that can demonstrate the leap from in-organic matter to organic life. There just simply isn't. Period.
Foundational unexplained fissures in the otherwise beautiful theory of Darwinism aren't going away anytime soon. And just because its easy to label opposing views as religeous zealotry isn't lending any credence to the current establishment. There is plenty of myopic zealotry to go around on both sides of the arguement.
The honest "reaction" would be to admit personal bias. What we all have to admit is that ultimately there is a larger worlview attached to whatever side of the arguement we find ourselves. And let there be NO delusion (or progress for that matter) that the origin of life debate will simply end by name-calling the opposing view. The debate exists and persists because biology at its current level of maturity simply cannot give sufficient support/evidence to the root-level precepts that govern Neo-Darwin beliefs. And if scientists were truly honest, they also would admit that in the investigation of these core problems, biology is still in its infancy.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was taught Darwin's theory in college more than four decades ago, it was represented as unassailable. But I also was taught in those days to respect academic freedom, which is a good standard to apply in any field. In the 1990s, before intelligent design was added to the ideas studied at Discovery Institute, I learned about an assault on the academic freedom of Dean Kenyon, a biologist and author at San Francisco State University who had come to view Darwin's theory as flawed.1 At first, the effort to restrain him from teaching seemed like just another skirmish over political correctness.
Then, following the Kenyon case, I began to examine the account of life's development that I once had been taught so dogmatically. One after another of the demonstrations of the theory that supposedly were "certain" and "conclusive" when I was a student â" such as Ernst Haeckel's embryo drawings that showed various animals looking almost identical in the earliest stages of life â" have been abandoned or replaced.2 What has not changed is the dogmatism.
I soon came to realize that differences over the development of life, unlike other disputes, spark so much controversy because the collateral stakes are higher than they seem. Where you stand on the origins question often influences your worldview on issues of human life, ranging from cloning to euthanasia. Are we ultimately the product of purpose and design? If so, we would seem to be heirs to a more-or-less settled moral reality. Or, is man the unguided "result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind," as Harvard paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson wrote?3 In that case, perhaps we can conceive our own values.
Public discussion on evolution is complicated further by confusion over words that lack any constant and agreed meaning. Terms like "evolve" and "theory" have different definitions in science than they do in everyday speech. Even among scientists, they are subject to varying understandings.4
People frequently use the word "evolve" as a genteel way of saying "change," as in, "The Toyota Camry has not evolved much this year." But that makes no sense as a scientific expression. Cars don't "evolve" in the way most Darwinists mean â" an undirected process of small, incremental mutations acted on by natural selection to produce new species. Cars are designed. Intelligence is involved. Auto designs â" like ideas or fashions or cities â" don't "evolve."5 My own ideas on evolution didn't evolve; I changed my mind.
Unfortunately, people sometimes are told that Darwinian evolution simply demonstrates "changes over time." If that were so, how could any sensible person object to it? Even ardent critics of Darwinism accept "microevolution" â" change over time within species. Animal and plant breeding, after all, are kinds of human-guided microevolution. Nature, too, plainly conducts microevolution.
But classical Darwinists such as Francisco Ayala and Richard Dawkins assert much more. Dawkins, for example, acknowledges that living organisms "give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose."6 But, he argues that this appearance of design is completely misleading because undirected Darwinian processes â" random mutations and natural selection â" can produce the features of living systems that look designed. In Ayala's words, natural selection produces "design without a designer."7
Advocates of the theory of intelligent design see things differently. They think there are discernible features of living systems and the universe that are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process like natural selection. They don't dispute that life changes over time; they dispute that u
If ONLY it were that simple.
The previous post is yet another feeble attempt to dismiss an arguement by waggling a bony, pointed finger toward a group, branding them with 'mindless psychosis' and attempting to call it a day.
The argument in question however cannot be reduced to such a simple assertion. Sure there may be a lack of "faith in humanity" among people of faith... but in fair critique, people of faith are not alone in this matter. Nazi examples aside, there are copious daily reports of atrocities across the globe being wrought against various people groups in the name of one wholly "rational" ideal or another.
This IS plenty of legitimate reason to fear "humanity," and is true for ALL the people on this planet. You cannot pin down one side of the scientific debate of Darwinism on a dubious psychological claim... especially the questionable "goodness of man", which is a whole other debate.
"[POSTED]--The negative reaction to evolution by otherwise intelligent religious folk is really a reaction against the idea of meaningless in life"... This statement mearly addresses a symptom of the larger debate's implications. It is also totally divorced from the other, more crucial aspect of the arguement... summed up here as, the total lack of foundational support for the current Neo-Darwinist theory.
Granted, upon brief inspection, the theory itself seems to make perfect sense from the mile-high view. But upon closer inspection--at the microscopic level (and beyond) the theory continues to break down, turn after turn, especially in light of the observations found in other scientific disciplines (most notably archeology... complete lack of an "evolving" fossil record, and in physics... 2nd law of thermodynamics contradicts the assertion of mutation as a positive agent of progressive change). The rabbit trail goes much further, but suffice to say these are but two of many MAJOR hurdles that Darwin's theory hasn't even begun to persuasively address. So while its fun to show diagrams of land-bound squirrels turning into flying bats (over millions of years) it has proven hand-wringingly impossible to show a lump of coal turning into a fully funtioning cellular organism. There has been nothing observed in nature that can demonstrate the leap from in-organic matter to organic life. There just simply isn't. Period.
Foundational unexplained fissures in the otherwise beautiful theory of Darwinism aren't going away anytime soon. And just because its easy to label opposing views as religeous zealotry isn't lending any credence to the current establishment. There is plenty of myopic zealotry to go around on both sides of the arguement.
The honest "reaction" would be to admit personal bias. What we all have to admit is that ultimately there is a larger worlview attached to whatever side of the arguement we find ourselves. And let there be NO delusion (or progress for that matter) that the origin of life debate will simply end by name-calling the opposing view. The debate exists and persists because biology at its current level of maturity simply cannot give sufficient support/evidence to the root-level precepts that govern Neo-Darwin beliefs. And if scientists were truly honest, they also would admit that in the investigation of these core problems, biology is still in its infancy.