Should move heardquarters to Poland, where:
1. Catholic religion is indoctrinated in kindergartens and elementary schools at taxpayers' expense,
2. Army has on payroll priests in ranks of Generals,
http://www.ordynariat.wp.mil.pl
3. Calling pope an old man gets you 2 years in jail (suspended, if you are famous overseas),
4. Police conducts "Save Vacations" program sniffing vegetarians at camp sites (which are known to be suspected memebers of any non-Catholic sect = criminals),
5. Police use Catholic priests during traffic stops to lecture citizens!

All in the middle of European Union.

I guess, it does not fit to print in certain New York newspaper.

I'll believe people are concerned with science qua science - i.e. largely with empiricism and rationality - when I also see evidence they are concerned with, for example, materialist philosophical agendas that variously attach themselves to purportedly purely scientific projects and agendas. Taking easy and cheap shots at young earth creationists is to be expected and is fine in this type of arena if one is likewise ready to take shots that are not so cheap - i.e. at other philosophical, ideological and social/political influences that erode better conceptions of science.

But that equally balanced willingness is not typically on evidence, even to the contrary, and that fact belies the notion that truth qua truth is the most basic issue at hand. People tend to count costs, as well they should, before they take their shots and place their bets. But the costs to the person vs. the costs to science qua science and truth for its own sake are not often, fully and justly, weighed in the balance.

(Global warming brow-beatings, or debates, or whatever they're more properly conceived as, are but the most obvious arena where that lack of balanced willingness has evidenced itself. Though in this arena the pressure is beginning to alleviate due to the increasing numbers of "skeptics," i.e. the other consensus.)

Did I mention that in Poland you can also have the government build for you an entire school, provided you are willing to indoctrinate Catholic faith in it:
fancy school link

Or, at worst, you can have the government take on public payroll an entire staff:
http://kul.edu.pl/art_138.html


All with European Union money.
I guess, this too did not fit to print in certain paper.

Roger - And we would have been saved the Critical Legal Studies movement....

...and the earth would still be the center of the universe

Can we decredit all the universities that are still pushing the falsified socialist program? How many times must an experiment fail before the theory is deemed unworkable?

Mike99:
Oh dear. In making a decision regarding accreditation, only one question need be asked and honestly answered: Is "Creation Science" (or scientific creationism, etc;) falsifiable? Evolution, and any other scientific pursuit relies on theories (theory does not have the same meaning in scientific use and as used by the general populace) that are always and at any time, in part or in whole, falsifiable. Indeed, that is the hallmark of science. If a theory cannot be falsified, it cannot claim to be science.

Is evolution falsifiable?

Is evolution falsifiable?

Yes. See, e.g., fossil rabbits in the Pre-Cambrian. Facile God-of-the-gaps arguments miss the point entirely. In fact, your link misses several points, not least being: 1) biological evolution and origin-of-life theories address completely separate questions; and 2) adaptability in the face of new evidence is a strength, not a weakness, of a scientific approach.

Darn, Guest 101 beat me to the Haldane quote.

Okay, here's a more nuanced description.

In response to c.j. ammenheuser:

1. All evidence does not support evolution

You're right. Only all evidence relevant to the truth or falsity of evolution supports it.

2. I stated that schools teaching spoon-fed Darwin education 'precludes TOO MANY answers'- I did not say all answers,

I did not say you said "all answers". What I said was that accepting a scientific theory does not preclude *any* answers.

3.Isaac Newton, if alive, would be considered a creationist: perhaps he is infallible, since his theory is still the foundation of physics

Newton was eminently fallible and no scientist would claim otherwise. The fact that he was right about many things does not mean he was right about everything.

4.Scientists should be free to learn and research without the limits of a state imposed education directed to the 'left brain mentality of memorizing' such as Darwinian evolution,

They are. A scientist who can disprove evolution -- or even come up with a credible alternative theory that is consistent with the evidence and scientifically sount -- would earn a place in the scientific pantheon. The reason it hasn't happened is not that scientists are closed-minded; it's that no such theory has ever been proposed.

5.a scientist should not be fired for exploring theory beyond Darwin

I agree. I have never heard of one who was, though I have heard of some being (rightly) fired for refusing to explore theories consistent with Darwin. I have also heard of scientists being fired for basing work upon theories that were not scientifically sound; that is also proper regardless of whether the theory has anything to do with evolution.

6. Sir Newton wrote more about God than he did gravity, and did so without persecution: would he be able to do this now? Evidently not

Sure he would. Of course, Newton was not a biologist. What he wrote at the time was consistent with the then-current understanding of biology. Were he alive today and writing about God based upon a current understanding of biology he would likely have very interesting things to say. They would be theology rather than science, but he would understand that distinction. Would you?

Sir Newton wrote more about God than he did gravity, and did so without persecution

Because he kept those writings *secret*. Doh!

Well, this is tedious rehearsing of the well-worn, the cheap, and the irrelevant.

Hey, look what I found in the footnotes of a book published in 2027:

(293) The famed "Pre-Cambrian Bunny" story took an ironic turn when the fossilized remains of a rabbit were, in fact, discovered in an otherwise consistently Pre-Cambrian rock formation. Researchers have puzzled over how to explain the inclusion, suggesting several mechanisms by which the very improbable may have happened. "At any rate," says Dr. W. N. B. Haldane, "from now on we shall perhaps have to speak of a 'Pre-Cambrian Reindeer' to be on the safe side."

------------------

Falsifiability is a canard. If an explanation is found interesting and satisfying to a sufficiently influential group, they will exclude contrary explanations and explain away inconsistencies. This tendency is certainly present in scientific communities, whether the view excluded is one new in the past two centuries, or one common to the preceding millennia.

Using any evolutionary theory, including Macroevolution or micro evolution, how does one explain the intelligence of the human species and its ability to think and solve problems, other than to say, we do NOT know all the answers, but perhaps we should consider the possibility that life was created by an energy that carried the Trait of Intelligence; and call the energy Intelligence, or call it god, or call it rocktreefish-

c.j. ammenheuser:

Scientists who disbelieve a theory for reasons outside of science should not take jobs which their beliefs prevent them from doing properly. I'm sure you would agree that a civil engineer who rejects the theory of gravity should not design bridges. The same concept applies here.

Falsifiability is the underpinning of science. Faith is the underpinning of religion. Evolution, in part or in whole, may certainly be falsified. That it has not as yet been falsified speaks not to some anti-God conspiracy, but to the fact that no theory that sufficiently explains observed and tested phenomena as well as evolution has been, to date, proposed. In all of the history of science since the Enlightenment, it has not always been easy to overturn, to falsify what was accepted, but in every case, the truth has won, the better, more provable and more replicable observations have ultimately been accepted and we are immeasurably the better for it. But the ultimate truth is that it is certainly possible that a hypothesis that better explains the facts that embody evolutionary theory may come to be regarded as the valid theory, and may be tested and accepted at any time in the future, just as evolutionary theory has been tested and come to be accepted.

None of this can be said about "Scientific Creationism." Why not? Because its ultimate, final, immutable explanation is always and forever that God did it. That cannot be falsified, indeed, no "creation scientist would ever entertain such a notion, and that is just fine, as far as it goes. The problem arises when those who feel that way proclaim their way as the one, true, scientific way, a way that deserves equal time with real science in the nation's classrooms. But this is ultimately deceptive, for the true believers in creationism would, if they could, wipe away evolution in the nation's texts and in the practice of science, and would brook no attempt to falsify it.

Again, all of this is unnecessary as those who wish to believe in creationism need not call it science. They are absolutely free to publish, to read those publications, to stand on a soapbox in the public square, and to persuade any who would believe them. What they cannot do, what they can never be allowed to do, is to seize time in the public schools for this. Should they suceed in that endeavor, what honestly, strongly held belief could legitimately be kept out of our textbooks?

With the creationists and ID folks out there doing their goofy thing, religion needs no enemies. On the other side, we have Hitchens, Dennett, Dawkins, Harris, et al., doing their village atheist thing, so science needs no enemies, either. But both these groups badly need each other to sell their books, do the lucrative lecture circuit, etc.

The whole lamentable, unnecessary, bogus charade should be sanctioned by Vince McMahon and the WWE.

Falsifiability is a canard. If an explanation is found interesting and satisfying to a sufficiently influential group, they will exclude contrary explanations and explain away inconsistencies. This tendency is certainly present in scientific communities, whether the view excluded is one new in the past two centuries, or one common to the preceding millennia.

This is an interesting defense of something that is scientifically indefensible: Simply claim that all your opponents are liars.

I have to ask, though... If falsifiability is a canard, and scientists routinely exclude contrary explanations, whence came the Theory of Evolution in the first place? Relativity? Quantum mechanics? All science, ever?

c.j. ammenheuser:

Scientists are not supposed to "prove the impossible is possible". That is a description of magic, not science. Until you understand what science is and is not, there is little point trying to discuss scientific questions with you.

That scientists accept evolution is not because they fail to think "outside the box". It's because no other theory adequately explains the available evidence. Scientists are *supposed* to believe theories under these circumstances. They are also supposed to reject those theories when better ones come along, but no better explanation has yet been found and it is very unlikely that any ever will.

CJ,

Most scientists don't think outside the box. In industry, they are hired to make their company's detergent 5% more effective annually. At universities, they apply a scientific theory to solve a problem that is only slightly different from the problem that was recently solved. This safe approach is understandable given the pressure to make money or publish lots of papers. It's incremental but it's not bad. A relatively few scientists think outside the box but it's not the norm.

I'm not familiar with evolutional biology but I don't understand how the results of any study could support creationism (excluding a choir of angels singing around the scientist). Results might not support theories A through Y, but that does not mean that that they have to support theory Z. A scientific theory needs evidence to support it in its own right.

Elliot123:
The science that explains creation is physics: the Theory of Relativity and Quantum String Theory. Even the Catholic Church believes the big bang theory.
Edward Hoffman:
Darwin's Theory of Evolution is a paradigm, and at some point that junk science will be replaced with better science

It would be a collosal waste of space to list the enormous amount of scientific breakthroughs in technology and medicine directly developed via modern biology, which rests firmly on evolutionary principles.

On the other hand- would someone care to list the discoveries Creation Science has provided the world? When creationists manage to develop a new antibiotic or explain the the mechanisms of virus propogation, i'll take notice. To date all theyve apparently produced is a lot of hot air.

c.j. ammenheuser:

The definition of junk science is not "science that fails to support my position".


Qwinn:

The "irreducible complexity of the eye" is a false premise. Here is a brief explanation of why from a New York Times article by Daniel C. Dennett, a professor of philosophy at Tufts University:

But as we learn more and more about the history of the genes involved, and how they work - all the way back to their predecessor genes in the sightless bacteria from which multicelled animals evolved more than a half-billion years ago - we can begin to tell the story of how photosensitive spots gradually turned into light-sensitive craters that could detect the rough direction from which light came, and then gradually acquired their lenses, improving their information-gathering capacities all the while.

We can't yet say what all the details of this process were, but real eyes representative of all the intermediate stages can be found, dotted around the animal kingdom, and we have detailed computer models to demonstrate that the creative process works just as the theory says.

All it takes is a rare accident that gives one lucky animal a mutation that improves its vision over that of its siblings; if this helps it have more offspring than its rivals, this gives evolution an opportunity to raise the bar and ratchet up the design of the eye by one mindless step. And since these lucky improvements accumulate - this was Darwin's insight - eyes can automatically get better and better and better, without any intelligent designer.

Brilliant as the design of the eye is, it betrays its origin with a tell-tale flaw: the retina is inside out. The nerve fibers that carry the signals from the eye's rods and cones (which sense light and color) lie on top of them, and have to plunge through a large hole in the retina to get to the brain, creating the blind spot. No intelligent designer would put such a clumsy arrangement in a camcorder, and this is just one of hundreds of accidents frozen in evolutionary history that confirm the mindlessness of the historical process.

Should read sign a pledge

Qwinn wrote:

"I personally find many of the arguments against evolution to be compelling, such as the irreducible complexity of the eye, just for one."

Many people do ... until they study the subject in more detail, and discover it's entirely possible for an "irreducibly complex" system to evolve by Darwin's process of variation and selection. I've been there and done exactly that. So can you.

Pro-evolution types frequently dismiss creationists' anti-evolution arguments without comment because they've seen and disproved those same arguments with comments -- often extensive comments -- in the past, and it never makes any difference at all. I've read creationist books, articles, pamphlets, and other publications going back almost a hundred years, and the arguments never change. Behe's "irreducible complexity of the cell" claim is nothing more than a rewrite of William Paley's "Watchmaker Argument."

As for the question of whether evolution can be falsified, consider this:

* If the fossil record was not sequential, evolution would be falsified. In well over two hundred years of geology as an organized science, covering millions of man-hours spent surveying and excavating rock formations all over the world, no one has ever found even one case of such an out-of-sequence fossil.

* If we could look around and find animals, living or extinct, that didn't fit the great Tree of Life, evolution would be falsified. Note that when I say "don't fit," I mean really don't fit. For example, a centaur would be a fusion of two widely separate mammalian lines of descent, not to mention a vertebrate with three pairs of limbs. Crossbreeding between two such widely separate organisms is impossible, while no land vertebrate, living or extinct, has ever had more than two pairs of limbs.

* If we examined organisms at the biochemical level and found they were fundamentally different, evolution would be falsified. For example, if a dog used a completely different genetic code from a cat, or a fish's biochemical processes looked nothing like a whale's. That hasn't happened. From fish to fowl to flower to fungus, all known Earth organisms use the same genetic code and basically similar biochemical processes.

In short, there are a lot of ways evolution could be falsified. A lot of potential counterexamples. But no one has ever produced even one of them. Instead, anti-evolutionists resort to complex theoretical arguments such as "intelligent design" -- arguments that they can't even defend in the scientific literature. Why? Because every single piece of real evidence ever produced by any experiment or found in any field expedition supports evolutionary theory.

Oops, sorry for the double post. My browser flaked and I accidentally hit 'post' twice.

oledrunk, my understanding is that one of the developers of MRI doesn't believe in evolution. Sign a pledge that you will never have a MRI scan, will you?

Grr, the idea that falsifiability is necessary for scientificness is indeed a canard. Were we to discover rabbit fossils in pre-Cambrian rock, biologists would not say, "Oops! That evolution stuff was a huge mistake! Throw out all the old textbooks and start teaching creationism to the undergrads!" That would be crazy. Instead, they'd ask how on Earth the fossils could have gotten there, and come up with a bunch of possible explanations (the fossils are fake, the fossils were moved around in an unusual way over the course of geologic time, our rock dating techniques are wrong, our evolutionary timeline is screwed up and there were actually rabbits in the pre-Cambrian, etc.) and try to figure out which of them made the most sense.

The idea that science could or should proceed by throwing out a well-tested theory wholesale on the basis of a single compelling data point is indeed a canard. A case for throwing out a theory requires a much more complicated weighing of evidence than is provided by the simplistic falsificationist model.

Or, alternatively: if aliens showed up, and explained in great detail why and how they had gone about designing and creating all life on Earth with their superior technology, should scientists really refuse to listen to them because intelligent design isn't "falsifiable"? And even this wouldn't falsify evolution, since one would have to go about evaluating whether the aliens were telling the truth, which gets us back into the complex weighing of evidence. (Back in the real world, though, "intelligent design" is still a fraud.)

Wolfwalker: As for the fish,fowl fungus all having the same genetic code: considering that everything came from the big bang it is impossible for everything to not share at least some commonality of genetic code. It's the theory of rocktreefish. Humans have commonalities with each- the rock, the tree, the fish. Where evolution does not provide answers is when you consider traits, personality, free will, uniqueness. For example why is a rock stationery and a tree supple and a fish swims- because these are inherent traits, and which to some degree humans also have; but the difference is free will and intelligence to alter the traits and define our own uniqueness. Evolution does not, and can not explain free will.

This is a very offensive post. I'm frankly surprised at Mr. Adler.

Wow. So evolution is true and creationism is false because Lynne Spears has two wayward girls?

Evolutionarily speaking, what has Lynne Spears done wrong? How can you pass judgment upon her? If nothing else, her parenting advise might be useful if only as what not to do.

But since you somehow equate creationism and bad parenting and draw moral conclusions, there are other questions to ask:

What is your scientific basis to determine right and wrong when raising children? Do your evolutionary scientific child-rearing methods provide answers as satisfying as your answers concerning how matter arose from non-matter, how life arose from non-life, how the randomness of the big bang's mother-of-all-explosions became ever-increasing order in violation of science's own law of thermodynamics, how non-quantifiable, non-falsifiable qualities like love, ethics arose from non-love?

Left to evolutionary theory as practiced in a truly atheistic environment, would you not agree that all children are best and most efficiently raised by the state? We have already decided that their minds, education and wealth production belong to the state. That same state has scientifically replaced fathers in many parts of our inner-city society--with obvious great success.

Surely it is but a small matter to remove something as important as child rearing from such incompetents as mere biological incubators called mothers.

Michael B. wrote:

Mr. Hoffman,

You are conveniently naive and have bitten off more than you seem to realize. The FSM was in fact first and foremost aimed at pseudo-science. Still, it is, and I dare say rather obviously, of a piece with celestial teapots and unicorns on the far side of the moon. Do you disagree?

My statement that the FSM is "really a challenge to pseudo-science" suggests that we agree, so I don't understand why you call me such unkind names.

I also don't understand why you fail to address my argument. What evidence is there that supports "creation science" and/or "intelligent design" that is not equally consistent with the view that the universe was created by the Flying Spaghetti Monster?

Anderson wrote:

"For the record, Catholics understand and have no problem with the theory of evolution."

Or with Galileo -- centuries too late.

Guest101:

Is evolution falsifiable?

Yes. See, e.g., fossil rabbits in the Pre-Cambrian. Facile God-of-the-gaps arguments miss the point entirely. In fact, your link misses several points, not least being: 1) biological evolution and origin-of-life theories address completely separate questions; and 2) adaptability in the face of new evidence is a strength, not a weakness, of a scientific approach.

That's your idea of falsifiable? Pre-Cambrian rabbits? Ok, here's a creationist theory that has the same standard of falsifiability: the creator created all life in the universe and located it exclusively on Earth. To prove the theory false, all you have to do is demonstrate that life exists in any other place in the whole wide universe, and you will have demonstrated the theory false.

Is that the kind of scientific falsifiability you had in mind?

As to "completely separate questions", well that's the dispute, isn't it? Creationist theory holds they are one and the same. Merely asserting they're not is a pretty weak argument.

Chemistry began life as a set of theses based upon such abstractions as Dalton's Law and the Law of Multiple Proportions. Mendeleev derived the Periodic Table synthetically. The atomic theory explained why these laws existed and extended them.

Similarly, Darwin's theses were based upon observation. It was not until Crick and Watson discovered DNA that a similar explanation was found for why Darwin's theory worked.

The synthesis of classical genetics with DNA-based biochemistry incontrovertibly establishes Darwin as correct.

There are very few fully accepted scientific theories, and they are all correct experimentally. This is a very powerful concept. It only takes one verifiable counterexample to invalidate a major theory. Unfortunately for Creationists, there are no demonstrable experimental counterexamples to Darwin. The scientific community is still awaiting even one single contradictory experiment. Well, we're still waiting.

Ok, here's a creationist theory that has the same standard of falsifiability: the creator created all life in the universe and located it exclusively on Earth. To prove the theory false, all you have to do is demonstrate that life exists in any other place in the whole wide universe, and you will have demonstrated the theory false.

Maybe the Flying Spaghetti Monster just liked Earth the best, or maybe He killed all life elsewhere in the universe. Who knows the workings of the FSM?

Evolution does not, and can not explain free will.

Anyone who thinks only humans have free will should own a cat.

It's ridiculous that we're still having this creationist "debate" in the 21st century.

koblog asked: "Left to evolutionary theory as practiced in a truly atheistic environment, would you not agree that all children are best and most efficiently raised by the state?"

No. In fact, as far as its social and cultural ramifications go, evolutionary theory is a theory that political conservatives ought to embrace and liberals ought to despise, because one of the fundamental conclusions to be drawn from it is "don't screw with success." A trait that survives thousands of generations is probably a successful one. Theism has survived at least six thousand years and perhaps more than ten thousand. The nuclear family of "husband, wife, kids" goes back a lot further. It might even go back as far as four or five million years. That's a fairly successful trait, at least over the short term. The liberal's wild plunge into new ideas for ideological or emotional reasons, without regard to the facts or the lessons of history, is not an evolutionarily smart thing to do. (By the same token, the reactionary's desire to return to old ideas that were demonstrable failures, such as a state-sanctioned religion and a theocratic government, is also not an evolutionarily smart thing to do.)

As for the free-will issue, evolutionary theory is irrelevant to the question of whether it exists or how it originated. Darwin's attitude toward physical variation was "I don't know where it comes from or why it appears, but I can't deny that it does, so I will accept it and use it in my theory." We can't explain where free will comes from or why, at least not yet, but it's pretty hard to deny that it does.

There probably aren't that many scientific arguments that can be had over old-earth Intelligent Design, especially because one tack on it is that it's Evolution but with a purpose. In other words, rather than random mutations, something guided changes that happened. So what? The fact that mutations or changes were random isn't falsifiable, any more than the fact that they weren't random.

In other words, if you look at the theory of secular Evolution as a set of logical statements E, with one of those statements C1 being "For every mutation/alteration, there was no guiding force", you could look at ID as E - C1 + !C1. The only difference in how falsifiable one is vs. the other is whether or not C1 and C2 is true. If E-C1 is falsifiable, then so is ID.

All of the arguments regarding irreducible complexity or how silly it would be for God to design a platypus are just emotional appeals to one side or the other - they don't falsify either theory. They just explain why someone would rather believe C1 or C2.

Koblog: Brilliant!
Exfizz: Brilliant!
Baseballhead: That's because cats and dogs are superior beings to humans. Maybe they're from another galaxy? We are naive and egocentric to think we humans are the only intelligent life form. Kidding aside, how does evolution explain animal's communication? We rescued a fragile newborn kitten, took it to the vet, and took great care of it; a few days later the dog started barking to wake me up, I realized the kitten had died and the dog was trying to wake me. Darwinian evolution can not explain the 'advanced' trait of telepathy, and it cannot explain intelligence or free will. The answer lies in the many unknown qualities of electromagnetic energy, which some people label Intelligent Design and others label God.
The various theories, on any subject, should be taught at schools at advancing levels, and taught as theory as this will lead to a critical thinking mind capable of problem solving.

Its true- individual Catholics may believe whatever they wish (god knows), but Catholic dogma has no issue with evolution.

"Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than an hypothesis. In fact it is remarkable that this theory has had progressively greater influence on the spirit of researchers, following a series of discoveries in different scholarly disciplines. The convergence in the results of these independent studies -- which was neither planned nor sought -- constitutes in itself a significant argument in favor of the theory."

Pope John Paul II, 1996

I've got some serious issues with the Church, but this isnt one of them. If anything, the Vatican has walked a smart line with evolution in the last fifty years. They aren't going to stake their faith on something science is pretty overwhelmingly disproving.

This: "Ok, here's a creationist theory that has the same standard of falsifiability: the creator created all life in the universe and located it exclusively on Earth." is not a scientific theory. It has an unproveable clause in it, "the creator created all life". You could prove that there is no other life in the universe and it wouldnt prove this, or you could discover life is abundant in the universe and it wouldnt disprove it. That particular statement is a philosophical argument- ie, that IF there is no other life in the universe, its evidence that our life is special, and hence endowed specifically by a creator. Science has nothing to say on that matter, other than to establish whether or not the life part is true or false.

The reason Creationism can never be compared to evolution is for one singular reason- it assumes its conclusion (the cardinal sin of science). It starts out with the answer and then goes back to answer the question, discarding anything contrary along the way as irrelevant or unsubstantiated. And like most SOCIAL movements, Creationism projects its own failings onto its target- by claiming Evolution is somehow fait acompli to scientists, instead of the logical (and unplanned) conclusion the facts have led us to. Darwin never woke up one day and decided the world needed Evolution and he was going to give it to them. Creationists essentially did.

I am a Bible-believing Christian, and can probably be called "evangelical" if not "fundamentalist." I don't consider myself a literalist, but I do take the Bible seriously and consider it God's word to man.

I used to be a creationist, and rejected evolution as a secular alternative that was a contradiction to the Bible's account of God's creation of man. I was never a "six day" creationist, and did not take the six days of creation literally. I believed (and still do) that a day can stand for an indefinite amount of time, even millions or billions of years. I also took seriously the "gap theory," which claims that there is a gap between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 that accounts for geologic time and astronomical time. That is, God created the heavens and the earth in Genesis 1:1, and then "the earth became formless and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep" in Genesis 1:2. In this theory God's original creation was perfect, and then the creation became ruined billions of years later. This was usually seen as a reference to the fall of Lucifer and the rebellion of his angels, which damaged God's original creation from Gen. 1:1. (Many evangelicals still use this theory as an explanation for the age of the universe and the age of the earth as proven by science.)

I eventually came to the conclusion, through research, conversations with scientists (including many Christians), and my own considerations, that evolution is true. I simply can't refute the evidence for evolution, which is overwhelming. Although I once was part of and respected both creationism and the Intelligent Design movement (and I still understand where they are coming from), the fact is that from a scientific perspective such beliefs are laughable in the modern world.

There are many Christians like myself who term themselves "theistic evolutionists." That is, evolution is clearly true, despite the fact that it contradicts the Biblical account. Genesis is to be read not literally but metaphorically, as stating the truth that God created man in His image. Evolution was the vehicle, the process, through which God created man. What science terms as "random mutations," a Christian will view as God's guidance of the process to consummate in mankind.
(Francis Collins, in his book the Language of God, gives a good rendering of this synthesis of Christian belief and scientific fact.)

But there remains a dilemma for someone like myself, and I've been struggling with this for some time. The story of Adam and Eve in many ways reads like a myth. Once you believe that evolution is true, it no longer makes much sense that these two people were literal, and that the fall of Adam equals the fall of all mankind who were his descendants. If eventually mankind came out of the process of evolution, it seems peculiar that two people would become out of the newly created human race the focus of God's interaction, representing all of mankind.
Yet in the New Testament, with the geneaology of Christ in Luke, and in the writings of the apostle Paul, Adam and Eve are referred to as real people. This aspect of the Genesis account is treated as true.

For example, Paul refers to mankind as being either "in Adam" or "in Christ." Adam was the beginning of the "old creation," and Christ is the beginning of the "new creation." Paul also refers to the serpent deceiving Eve with his craftiness.

To me, this is very difficult to reconcile with evolution. As someone who believes that God created man in His image, that mankind rebelled against God and became fallen, and that Christ came to reconcile God and man through His incarnation and then His death on the cross, the evolutionary view just doesn't fit.

I think this is why, despite the seeming ridiculousness of creationism, many Christians simply can't accept evolution regardless of the scientific evidence. We are not just talking about Genesis, we're talking about the whole Christian view of mankind, and the whole purpose behind the life and death of Christ. If Adam was not a real man, then the fall of man is hard to pinpoint. But if man did not fall, then the death of Christ no longer becomes necessary.

As I said, I believe in evolution, and no longer consider it incompatible with my Christian faith. But I do not have an answer for how evolution and the creation/fall of man, or the view of the New Testament which treats Adam and Eve as real people, can be fully reconciled.

I'm curious what other people here believe. Are there other Christians out there who are struggling with this? My assumption is that any Christian who studies the evidence for evolution with an open mind will become convinced of its factual basis. But I don't believe that requires a rejection of the faith. How, then, is evolution really compatible with not only Genesis, but the Christian perspective on the significance of Christ's death and resurrection (to pay the price for sin, to reconcile man back to God, and to release the divine life so that man may be regenerated, i.e. "born again")?
I don't mean to write such a long comment or to send this comment thread in only one direction. But I'd like to hear from others (whether Christian or non) who have explored these aspects of evolution and the Christian faith.

Waldensinian—Galileo et al were exactly in the business of explaining away contrary data. At the time, the failure to observe stellar parallax from Earth was a major problem for heliocentric theories. The explanation proferred (the stars are very, very, very far away) turned out to be correct but at the time it was completely ad hoc. Heliocentricity eventually won out not because "the earth revolves around the sun" is observationally superior to "the sun revolves around the sun and the other planets revolve around the sun in ellipses" (the two are indistinguishable except for the stellar parallax issue) but because it's much easier to do astronomical calculations in the heliocentric reference frame than in the geocentric one.

And of course contemporary physics rejects the whole dispute. There is no such thing as absolute space, so whether the earth revolves around the sun or the sun revolves around the earth is a question without an answer.

C. J. Ammenheuser,

If you want to make a valid point concerning evolutionary theory, you should move beyond arguing from ignorance or incredulity. There have been many, many times someone has said "X cannot explain..." only to have X subsequently provide an explanation.

Or, perhaps evolutionary theory has provided an explanation, and you have not been able to find it. I suggest www.talkorigins.org is a good place to start.

In any case, you are opening yourself up to embarrassment when you rely entirely on an argument from ignorance or incredulity. You may never accept evolution as a valid explanation for the diversity of life, but you will be much better served in your arguments against it if you study it.

It would be a collosal waste of space to list the enormous amount of scientific breakthroughs in technology and medicine directly developed via modern biology, which rests firmly on evolutionary principles.

A lot of discoveries were made based on Newtonian physics, but that doesn't mean that relativity isn't true. It is possible to have a useful model that isn't true. I'd bet that there are better examples of incorrect scientific theories that nonetheless led to useful applications consistent with the incorrect model, but I don't know much about the history of science.

I have no reason to doubt that evolution is indeed the best explanation out there. That doesn't mean it's true. But it seems prudent to me to keep doing biomedical research as if it were true if it's proving fuitful.

My best theory about what happened to my missing cell phone is that I dropped it somewhere. But it may have been stolen, eaten by animals, or miracled out of my pocket by Jeebus.

Could someone(s) knowledgable create a list of common scientific theories in a continuum of most likely to be true to least likely to be true? Obviously it's not exact, but is the theory of evolution closer to the second law of thermodynamics or DRWN's theory of cellphone disapperance?

How, then, is evolution really compatible with not only Genesis, but the Christian perspective on the significance of Christ's death and resurrection

It doesnt bother me at all, and this is why: I take Job 38 very seriously indeed ("Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?"). In other words- it is not important that I understand the mechanism the Lord used to create the universe, and in fact it is a fools errand to try in that context. Essentially, God has already told us we have no hope of understanding his mysteries, so why are we trying? For our own edification, our own pride, and to butress our faith, I suspect. Those are not good reasons in my opinion, and I think ultimately they are destructive to faith and the faithful.

Science fascinates me because it reveals the wonder of creation, not because it has the capacity to reveal the mind and works of the Lord to me. I could spin a fantastic scenario using god's omnipotence to postulate how the universe was created as per Genesis and yet agrees with modern science- but why bother? Its a pointless task. Its our good fortune that someone infinitely wiser has already taken care of that, and I suspect he is little pleased that we waste so much time and effort trying to do it for him.

Bible-believing and evolution-believing Christian:

Beliefs in Adam, Eve, the fall of mankind, its redemption by a messiah and an eternal reward/damnation are not left brain activities. Don't worry about it so much.

Had you been born in another time or another place, you may never have picked up that King James version.

Mark Buehner says: "Its a pointless task. Its our good fortune that someone infinitely wiser has already taken care of that, and I suspect he is little pleased that we waste so much time and effort trying to do it for him."

But Mark, if you believe that God created us in His image, what is wrong with using our God-given mentality to search for and discover the truth? I suspect that He is little pleased with your narrow and anti-intellectual perspective. He gave us minds for a reason.

PLR, thanks for the laugh! I am left handed, though I'm not sure that fits your point. My perspective, however, is as someone who already believes the Bible to be true. I suspect that if I lived in another time or place, I would have still run into the equivalent of a Gideon Bible somewhere.

While a sufficiently narrowly defined hypothesis is usually falsifiable (in the former sense), a general theoretical framework like evolution or relativity isn't, because theories have too many moving parts.

This isn't true. Of course you can falsify general relativity: demonstrate that e!=mc^2. Demonstrate that the Equivalence Principle is incorrect. Demonstrate that Newton's first law of motion is actually correct. Heck, attack the underlying assumptions: prove that the principle of general covariance is somehow wrong, or find a problem in the math describing Lorentzian manifolds.

Simple. Your name in lights, baby.

Elliot Reed:

"you could prove X false based on a single piece of observational/experimental data," not "it would be possible to find evidence that mitigates against the truth of X."

Agreed, up to a point. My phrase "find evidence to the contrary" can be read as too weak, but see the rest of my post for clarification.

My quibble is with the phrase "prove X false." In science, unlike mathematics, you can rarely honestly say anything is "proven true" or "proven false." Most scientific theories are simply the best, i.e. most probable, explanations of observed facts. You can say with a very high degree of confidence "this happened in my laboratory experiment," but with reduced degrees of confidence "this must have happened 50,000,000 years ago." At the same time, with adequate evidence and logical analysis you can say with great confidence "it is far more likely that this happened 50,000,000 years ago than any of the other things that people have suggested." Thus "falsifying" any particular statement in evolutionary biology is likely to be a relative thing: you're more likely to demonstrate that a proposition previously accepted as essentially "true" (i.e., very likely the one best explanation of known evidence) is actually a poor explanation and unlikely to be true.

And how does one go about showing that something like that couldn't have happened?

Conceptually it's simple, which is what I was referring to: if you do find such an example, you have in fact shown the hypothesis to be false.

Realistically? I'd suggest that if you find a present-day animal structured like a dolphin, with lungs and no gills and horizontal tail flukes, and a skeletal structure like the rest of the cetaceans, but with lizard-like scales and with its DNA overall resembling that of lizards much more closely than that of mammals, you've found something that could not have evolved from any other known species. How (or even why) God might have created such a thing is no problem; how it fits into the logic of known patterns of evolution would be a big one. It would not "prove" evolutionary theory to be false, but it would present it a huge challenge.

That's an extreme example. In general, if you find an organism that breaks fundamental patterns of development, that makes no rational sense in terms of why such a thing would ever come to exist in its historical and local ecological matrix, you are tending to contradict evolutionary theory. Again, as far as I'm aware it's never happened, but if it does, science will have to admit that the evidence exists and see how to make sense of it.

What I am saying is that I think it is a mistake to go looking for The Garden of Eden, or researching growing a woman from a rib bone.

Would you mind listing scientific disciplines that people should not pursue?

And is this list applicable only to Christians, or can, say, Hindus still research them, subject to their own list?

If that Hindu research, for instance, found a cure for AIDS, would Christians be permitted to take the cure?

SteveG: would the discovery of such an animal actually be taken as falsifying evolution? Would biologists really just throw out all the textbooks and start teaching creationism in freshman bio, merely because of one species? It seems much more probable that it would get an explanation like "those types of life must be a lot more related than we thought" or "those particular animals were created by humans through genetic engineering." And indeed that would be the sensible course: you don't throw out a well-tested, well-verified theory on the basis of a single bizarre data point.

On the other hand, if we found enough weird species that we just couldn't fit them all together into any sort of Tree of Life after trying very very hard, evolution would indeed become difficult to sustain, and might reasonably be thrown out. Theory rejectability is really more of a practice than a property of theories as such: you can make any general theory consistent with the evidence if you're willing to tack on enough ad hoc hypotheses to deal with the contrary evidence. I think that's one of the major differences between sciences like biology and pseudosciences like creationism or classical "scientific Marxism": creationists and "scientific Marxists" are/were explaning away the data, not explaning it.

Would you mind listing scientific disciplines that people should not pursue?

I have no idea what you are talking about. People from all religious backgrounds should pursue all SCIENTIFIC discplines that strike their fancy.

All i am warning about is allegedly using science to prove a religious conviction. Its a dry hole.

All i am warning about is allegedly using science to prove a religious conviction.

I'm unclear on what that 'allegedly' is doing in there, so I'll assume it is an excess of caution.

I know of no practicing scientist who is trying to prove a religious conviction. (Dawkins is being a bit of a jerk of late, but he isn't doing any science these days. I think this sometimes happens to folks who come late to celebrity.)

Now, it could be that discoveries make some religious people uncomfortable. Science takes you where it does; it is about investigating fact. Facts frequently make people uncomfortable (this is still a law blog, right?). That shouldn't mean that we stop looking for them.

On the other hand, I can name many, many religious people who are trying to undermine science and use the state to teach those religious beliefs as if they were equivalent to science.

I've no problem with religion; believe what one likes. Just don't pretend that it is science.

For fishbane:
creation is a miracle
unexplainable but oracle

Mark, I understand what you're saying now. But you proposed the following as a danger for believing Christians: "If evolution cannot be true lest Genesis not be true- what happens if evolution is proven to be true beyond a doubt? This is a particularly dangerous way to teach young people, at least if you hope for them to have an enduring faith."

This works on a broader scale as well, which is why I take issue with you. If the Bible cannot be true unless Genesis is true, then young people who are raised as Christians but eventually accept evolution will have to throw out the Bible in its entirety. Indeed, that has happened with many.

I know a pastor who is evangelical (and charismatic) who also believes evolution. He does his best to help young people in his congregation know about evolution so that their faith isn't rattled when they go to college. His view is that we want Christian young people to go into the sciences (or wherever their talents take them), and to teach them something false (i.e. strict creationism) will damage their faith in the long run.

Elliot Reed: <blockquote>would the discovery of such an animal actually be taken as falsifying evolution?
</blockquote>What I actually said was:<blockquote>how it fits into the logic of known patterns of evolution would be a big one. It would not "prove" evolutionary theory to be false, but it would present it a huge challenge.</blockquote>And: <blockquote>Would biologists really just throw out all the textbooks and start teaching creationism in freshman bio, merely because of one species?</blockquote>Not reasonably competent ones. As I tried hard to make clear, even if it cannot reasonably be accommodated into evolutionary theory, that by no means suggests that creationism is the next logical alternative. That was my whole point. <blockquote>It seems much more probable that it would get an explanation like "those types of life must be a lot more related than we thought" or "those particular animals were created by humans through genetic engineering." And indeed that would be the sensible course: you don't throw out a well-tested, well-verified theory on the basis of a single bizarre data point.</blockquote>Well, at least the first does <i>not</i> seem like a reasonable hypothesis at all, just intellectual blinders; the second, as bizarre as it seems, might be the first thing to test for. (And yes, it probably could be verified or refuted.)

But let's assume you can't come up with a rational explanation; assume the DNA just makes no sense and you can't come up with any decent evidence for natural evolution from known species, nor for the notion that it was genetically engineered. Where does that leave you?

It leaves you with a major scientific challenge to work on, <i>not</i> with creationism. The inexplicable animal is evidence for the existence of an inexplicable animal – that's all. There is no basis for saying "well, then the cause must be X" just because you can't think of anything else yet. In order to get from the inexplicable animal to supernatural creation, you need a reason to get there, in the form of evidence. If you want to get there on the basis of faith, go ahead – just don't call it science.

SteveG, please learn to use HTML.

To wm13: You see, I do not hold that my soul be endangered by the products of science, whatever the faith of the inventor.

Fishbane- i think we are compeletely in agreement.

I'm very glad that we agree that no practicing scientists (at least that we're aware of) are attempting to investigate religion through the scientific method, and that many theological professionals are attempting to subvert the teaching of science on the government's dime.

This has to be the most interesting exchange I've had on the topic with someone who seemed to disagree with me.

I mean this in all sincerity - that I don't have a faith doesn't at all inform how I consider those who do. I sometimes wonder if life would be easier if I did, but it is a moot point. I respect faith, in whatever form. I may bait people talking about it at times, because I don't consider it beyond critique - nothing is, in my view, and much more so when policy is supposed to flow from it. Thank you for acknowledging the point.

For example and despite those ad hominem attacks, Behe is in fact an IDer and specifically not a creationist

Only for a very constrained definition of "creationist." Behe clearly believes in miraculous intervention carving out black boxes where reason and science should be excluded; you have to limit "creationist" to the Hovinds and Hams of the world to exclude the Behes. Fortunately, few serious critics of his professional ignorance share your curious hostility towards science.

If science relies upon such demonizations and misrepresentations, to what extent is that "science" being faithful to its own most basic underlying tenets?

It doesn't rely on demonization or misrepresentations. You, however, have misrepresented Behe rather severely. Saying that he supports "evolution in curricula" is an empty platitude; he supports teaching evolution subject to the dictation of zones of exclusion, which are dictated by faith and unaffected by evidence or science. See, i.e., the disproof of Behe's blood-clotting example of IC, and his refusal to modify his theory in light of contrary evidence.

Saying that Behe accepts the evidence of an old earth doesn't make him not a creationist; "creationism" is a more plastic term than that. There are old-earth creationists, and creationists who believe in what they call "micro evolution." Behe goes further than most, but he still carves out a zone of empirical exclusion where only his faith will explain biology to his satisfaction.

What is your beef with empiricism?

To wm13. I trust the inventor of the MRI to which you refer did not use the biblical value of pi (3) in the calculations.

Any attack on evolution has to confront the fact that thousands and thousands of practicing scientists strongly disagree. The people who do this work on a daily basis think you're nuts. This inevitably leads to conspiracy theories, where scientists get together in large atheist meetings and plot to foist their unverified science on the world....

Qwinn, the point remains that the scientists who are experts in the field are overwhelming convinced. Thousands of them would just roll their eyes at your claims - which they have heard (and dismissed) again and again and again.

Qwinn, it looks like you're reading creationist sources instead of actual biology texts. Eyes have not only evolved, they have evolved independently in multiple lines. Nor is Behe on any better footing with cilia - his typical problem is that he writes from his ideological biases, rather than from a familiarity with the literature or evidence. See, i.e., his enormously amusing admissions on the stand in Dover. With specific Beheian arguments like the cilia, you can easily find many examples of his ignorance of (or his hope that his audience will be ignorant of) counterexamples that disprove his point.

Being an ideologue, however, I don't think he's ever modified his theory to account for this data - he just carves out special exceptions, because he prioritizes the ideology over the evidence. This is one reason why Michael B's vitriolic defense of the creationist is so silly; Behe stopped doing empirical science a long time ago.

Michael B., Behe argues that natural processes are incapable of producing life as we know it. He appeals to a boundary event (in other words, an unknown miracle) to explain what scientists explain with empirical examinations. Read, for instance, Ruse's account in his book of Behe telling him that in his opinion, the designer suspends the laws of physics through miracles. How is he not a creationist? You have to use an artificially constrained definition of "creationist" to call him anything else.

For someone who claims to not have any problem with empiricism, you seem to always wind up struggling against it on the side of magical thinkers. If you want to do Behe a favor, leave off championing him against the criticism of empiricists on blogs and write him a letter. Tell him to get back in the lab, do some actual science, and resuscitate his career.

Incidentally, it's "spaghetti," not "speghetti," and PZ Myers, not Mathers or Mothers.

evolutionary theory would -require- that there be -millions- of transitional forms on Earth -right now-, and there's in fact virtually none

Hmmm. What a gaping hole in evolution! You've done it! Either that, or you've grossly misjudged what evolution requires. Which could it be? No explanation of evolution that I've ever heard requires this....

if it's not evolution, and you are hellbent on believing there's no God, then you don't have a lot of other options, so you'll stick with evolution till you die.

And there is the aforementioned conspiracy theory....

There are indeed plenty of scientists who doubt evolution

And the number is "growing every day", right? I won't say that you can't find a few cranks in a profession made up of thousands of people - but the idea of repressed scientists keeping silent because of a cabal of angry leaders is simply ludicrous.

Go away and try to convince someone that Bush planned 9/11

"if it's not evolution, and you are hellbent on believing there's no God, then you don't have a lot of other options, so you'll stick with evolution till you die."

And there is the aforementioned conspiracy theory....

\

Are you f'ing kidding me? So it's perfectly okay for you to dismiss all theists as irrational grunts who will twist data to serve their purposes, but if atheists are considered in the same light, well, that's a whackjob conspiracy theory?

Remember, I'm not a theist. I'm an agnostic. I have no dog, or God, or need to disbelieve in a God in this fight. But what I -do- see is that militant atheists behave -exactly- the way they accuse theists of behaving, and in fact often more so.

Qwinn

And our pets--domestic dogs, cats.

Great Danes and Chihuahuas can interbreed with human help. Some have argued that members of the same "species" should be able to interbreed in the wild - and that dogs should therefore be considered speciated.

In either event, being unable to repeat a process doesn't make it unscientific, especially when science says that the process will take thousands and thousands of years.

I don't believe the continents ever formed Pangaea. Science has never replicated the movement of continents over large distances. Sure there are micro-movements and earthquakes, but I don't believe in macro-movements. The idea that lots of small changes can add up to big changes over long periods of time is silly.... /parody

PS. J.F. Thomas is right, the evolution of corn is fascinating. It was basically a big weed when it began.

Yes, dogs can be bred, and cats, and corn.

I would really like to see one of these dog/cat/corn hybrids.

It was meant as a joke. Lighten up.

::sigh:: Qwinn, you're presenting a caricature of evolution and then demanding that it be refuted. Scientists have worked out many methods that add/subtract chromosomes, but because you don't know about them you think they don't exist. Please spend some time in the Talk Origins archive.

Again, my point is a point about expertise. You wave your counterarguments around as if they are new ideas that smash gaping holes in a 150 year-old theory. You think that scientists have either been too stupid to think of your ideas or have all agreed to continue to ignore them.

Can this really be what you think? Do you really think that if you took your ideas down to a university and challenged the professors that they wouldn't have answers? (Many of which are available at Talk Origins.) They would roll their eyes and you know it.

This is why I said that all evolution opponents must eventually turn towards a conspiracy theory. They recognize that evolution is overwhelmingly supported by the experts that know it best. This is where you come in, with your claim that "There are indeed plenty of scientists who doubt evolution, but the "consensus" political orthodoxy treats them the same way "global warming deniers" are treated. They're shunned."

Ahhhh. You - with your grade school understanding of the subject - can't be wrong. The establishment must be covering up the truth. It's the only explanation.

No, Chris. I -have- studied the subject, and you simply make the assumption that because I don't agree with you, I musn't have. I've read the explanations on the chromosome splitting, and I find it unconvincing. Primarily because the answers I'm often given when I ask these questions or when I look them up is "The mechanism for how this works isn't well understood". You'll see that -constantly- when looking up these matters, but that doesn't bother you. Why? Because you have -faith- in the theory, and you are confident that eventually the holes and gaps will be filled in and the answers will be found, or the specific transitional form between these two species will be found in the fossil record, or whatever. Yes, I read those sites, and I read the arguments, and the amount of times that a difficult question is raised is answered by "Scientists believe that it may have occurred like this" happens so often that eventually you realize they're working on at least 60% faith. You share the faith, so the umpteen thousand times they'll say "We're not sure" don't bother you, cause eventually we'll have all the answers!

Qwinn

And surprise of surprises, you can cross-breed Asian and African lions and get fertile offspring, but if you try and cross-breed a lion and a tiger you get sterile offspring. Same with great apes. Bonobos and Chimps can cross breed but you can't get a Chimp/gorilla hybrid.

Perhaps you're identifying something I was unaware of here, but I'm not sure I'm understanding you properly. This doesn't seem to me to fit what I was asking.

I asked where A and B can breed together, and B and C can breed, but A and C can't. Saying "Bonobos and Chimps can cross breed but you can't get a chimp/gorilla hybrid" isn't an example of that, unless bonobos and gorillas can breed. Are you saying they can? The same question applies to almost all the other examples you gave.

Qwinn

You're right. When scientists say things like "Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of evolution" or "evolution is the foundation of modern biology" they are lying. In fact, evolution theory is a bunch of I-dont-knows dressed up as certainty.

Those silly lying scientists. Thanks for exposing them.

I wonder why they did that? Why did an overwhelming number of biologists for almost a century engage in a vast conspiracy to hide the complete lack of support for evolution and pretend that it existed?

Now I'm afraid. I hope other things don't turn out like this. I was always proud of humans for walking on the moon....

Colin,

No. Yet again you're allowing your presumption, leveraged with yet additional snide and contempt, to get in the way of any clarity and rational discourse. Most critically - or rather most fundamentally in terms of your presumption - you're misrepresenting my own position. It's as if you've added one plus one and have, with great confidence, arrived at three.

My position is not that of an ID proponent, rather my position is that free and open scientific inquiry should be allowed to proceed and to be supported. In point of fact, I'm skeptical concerning ID's general thesis when it comes to IC, though my skepticism is founded on an intuitive basis and not on empirical/rational proofs - hence I openly acknowledge the qualitative basis of that skepticism. As such, I allow for other, contrary hypotheses.

Differently, you are misrepresenting Behe's outlook.

It's not a strawman. I think that the, what, 95% of scientists that support evolution are right, and the 5% who disagree are wrong. If these numbers were reversed, I would reverse. You, on the other hand, believe that the 5% are right and just can't seem to convince the other 95% no matter how many years they try.

5% seems to be about the standard crazy level in any profession.

To use your words, you think 95% of scientists are letting "their prejudices affect their judgment" while I think it is the other way around. If you're right and I'm wrong, I would expect these numbers to slowly reverse themselves. Scientists respect truth, especially when the 5% begin to make discoveries the 95% can't explain. Instead, the 5% spend their time lobbying school boards and producing absolutely nothing of value.

But give it time. I'm sure they'll get there someday. Until then, your equivalence of mainstream science with fringe scientists is the straw man.

Qwinn,

Regarding Dawkins: it may surprise you to find that I hold a similar opinion about Dawkins's political views. Politically he's a loudmouthed jerk with very little to say that's worth listening to. However, if you dismiss evolution because one of its most vocal proponents is a jerk whose politics are nonsensical, you commit a logical fallacy: guilt by association.

You asked: "An example where Species A can breed with Species B, and Species B can breed with Species C, but Species A cannot breed with Species C. Shouldn't there be a great many of these situations at any given time?"

Yes, there should. And in fact there are. I recommend some research into the phenomenon that biologists call a ring species. Several populations -- let's call them A, B, and C -- form a ring species when A can interbreed with B, and B can interbreed with C, but A cannot interbreed with C. Wikipedia describes one well-known example of a ring species; a page at PBS's website includes another. Also, judging by your level of knowledge, you shouldn't have any trouble understanding A. J. McCain's classic book Animal Species And Their Evolution, which goes into great detail on ring species.

Qwinn,

Responding to your numbered points,

1. Identifying a person's eccentricities or crank characteristics is irrelevant. The question is whether that person is led by their ideologies. Dawkins' ideas are put to the scientific community and rigorously tested; Behe hides from his peers and publishes to a fawning audience of the under-educated and under-curious. I judge both their theories of biology by the fruits of that labor; the theories of empiricist scientists produce practical, testable, and proven results. The theories of creationists produce pamphlets snapped up by the faithful, and churn in that puddle of ignorance without ever producing actual, tangible results.

2. You betray your ignorance of biology. Your portrayal of the evolution of the eye is consistent with creationist caricatures of biology, but not real science. We have examples of light-sensitive cells forming primitive eyes, as well as extant eyes analogous to the intermediate steps. You won't get that from reading Answers in Genesis; again, please read a science textbook to see how science works. When you parrot the nonsense you read online, you sound as if you don't have the first idea what scientists actually understand about the natural world.

3. Congratulations on finding a computer model online! Are you qualified to interpret its output? Do you know how many mutations are plausible in a given timeline, or when that timeline would have begun with regard to homo sapiens? Is this the same model Dawkins used, or one that you found by Googling and produces convenient results? Is the model more persuasive to you than the living examples of “intermediate” eyes biologists are familiar with? These are not rhetorical questions. In the meanwhile, congratulations again on being more insightful, better educated, and much smarter than thousands of professional biologists worldwide! Quite an achievement. I'm sure your careful and methodical examinations of the evidence will be trumpeted worldwide forthwith. When do you anticipate publishing the results of your groundbreaking research?

Um, sounds to me like you're talking about microevolution there. Yes, dogs can be bred, and cats, and corn. But in the end, the doberman and the chihuahua are still the same species, and they can breed. That's the definition of a species.

While you're counting your Nobel prizes, please identify for us the process or natural feature that stops “microevolution” from producing gross morphological changes. Once again, this is not a rhetorical question . . . just one that's difficult for armchair creationists to answer.

Tell me, can you envision how the human genome could change, en masse, across even an isolated human stock, to 24 base chromosome pairs?

“Can you envision” is not how science is done. Evidence is how science is done, which is why your poorly-informed complaining is not science. Evidence such as, for instance, evolutionary biologists' prediction of chromosome fusion in human DNA. How did that prediction work out, by the way? Once again, not a rhetorical question.

And if you're wanting to know what I'd accept as such, how about this: An example where Species A can breed with Species B, and Species B can breed with Species C, but Species A cannot breed with Species C. Shouldn't there be a great many of these situations at any given time?

It's called a ring species. The best cure for your confusion is to read a book. Failing that, try Wikipedia. I don't for a single moment believe that data will remedy your ideological pretensions, but it might convince you that your poorly considered complaints have been raised, and dealt with, long before you started bravely crusading against wicked science.

Oh, and please let me add a stipulation here. I don't consider difficulties in cross breeding due to size or other macro-physical consideration, such as chihuahua and doberman, to be relevant. I'm talking about viability of genetic makeup.

This is an example of allowing your ideology to lead you by the nose. Physical barriers to reproduction, from an organism's size to geographical isolation, are one significant source of differeing “chromosomal makeup.” There is no serious logical reason for excluding these engines of speciation, other than to engineer the result you desire. Honestly, we've all seen creationists wriggling through hoops before; your pretensions to genius are nothing new and not difficult to see through.

Colin:

In the meanwhile, congratulations again on being more insightful, better educated, and much smarter than thousands of professional biologists worldwide! Quite an achievement. I'm sure your careful and methodical examinations of the evidence will be trumpeted worldwide forthwith. When do you anticipate publishing the results of your groundbreaking research? . . . While you're counting your Nobel prizes, please identify for us the process or natural feature that stops “microevolution” from producing gross morphological changes. . . . your poorly considered complaints have been raised, and dealt with, long before you started bravely crusading against wicked science.

EXACTLY.

I forgot that there is another possibility besides believing that science is a conspiracy theory. Sheer, unadulterated, overwhelming arrogance. "Sitting at home hunched over my computer, I managed to poke holes in a scientific theory that has been accepted by nearly every significant biologist for almost two hundred years." Sure buddy, sure.

But who did Galileo convince? Fellow scientists who could verify his results with their own telescopes.

I guarantee you that if intelligent design proponents produce results then scientists will listen to them. Until that time, the 5% have been harping for 150 years without producing a damn thing. You would be upset too.

Sorry if I was rude, but I was trying to shake you into thinking about some of these things. The comment section of a blog is not the place to get into detailed explanations of evolutionary theory (and I would ask a professor to do that, not me) but do you really think those explanations aren't there? That thousands and thousands of professional biologists have been blinded by prejudice / conspiring / wrong for years and years and years?

You MUST answer this question "yes" to maintain your position (as you in fact did) and I think people should recognize that.

Qwinn -

Before you formulate any notions about the gulls, be sure to look in to other examples of ring species. To the best of our knowledge, the various flavors of the phenomena are real. And not that the gulls might be in the process of forming a new ring.

I have no idea why citing Erlich in a long thread about the validity of common descent would be worthwhile. If someone misinterprets economics to make a Malthusian argument that some people embraced almost 40 years ago, does that mean that creationists have to answer for for the Time Cube guy? I'd argue no - they have to answer independently for their weird claims.

Tell me, Chris, do you belong to the Church of Gaia? Is global warming certified human-caused in your worldview?

Trying to change the subject, much?

That there are fads in science is obvious. Just like in religion. Ahem. And sports, and popular music. I'd find it far more interesting if you attacked the fad of general relativity, which, after all, hasn't been around as long as the one you choose to attack.

fishbane,

Chris Bell's arguments for at least half a dozen posts on this thread have relied exclusively on "consensus" - that since 95% of scientists (his number) claim something, it absolutely positively has to be true. Don't take my word for it, scroll up. He didn't just bring it up once or twice and drop it, it's been the vast majority of his arguments. Pointing out repeated examples where the consensus was wrong is hardly off topic. If you don't consider "consensus" a valid argument, then great, feel free to agree with me and point out his argument is flawed, but don't jump on me for responding to it.

Qwinn

When dealing with a field that requires expertise (like biology) the consensus argument does have force. A layman is unlikely to make new discoveries in fields like this.

Given that, consensus should be more convincing (1) the more widespread it is, (2) the longer it stays around, and (3) the more it survives challenge.

So it has less force with global warming, which is fairly well accepted and seriously challenged, but not that old. Evolution has been overwhelmingly accepted for years and years and years despite continued assault from all corners.

My entire point is that it's very arrogant of you (a non-scientist) to think you've discovered holes in a theory that scientists haven't discovered in a century and a half of searching. If, on the other hand, you think scientists have heard these complaints before, then you need to explain why they found them unconvincing. This is where your arguments about "prejudice" come in to play.

Every serious science organization in the country (and, to my knowledge, the world) supports evolution. Doesn't that give you any pause?

PS. Despite your personal opinion, Intelligent Design proponents certainly consider their theory to be a positive theory and not just a critique on evolution. See Behe's Kitzmiller testimony (available online)

PPS. Slightly off-topic, but have a read of this list of 10 common anti-global warming claims along with answers. You'll find your latest claim on the list. Again, I'm not here to talk about global warming, but it illustrates what I'm talking about. You have these claims that you think are unanswerable, but the experts who do this for a living disagree. Your only response is to claim that they are "prejudiced".

Qwinn,

I can't answer your questions about the flagella because I have extended myself to the limit of my competence with one celled critters. But, nevertheless, I do like to read about such things. I read the bit I related in the WSJ about three years ago, and found it again during the coverege of the Pennsylvania ID trial when Behe testified that astrology would qualify as natural science under his notion of natual science.

Just want to post my personal gratitude to Colin and Chris B. for making convincing and informative arguments, and doing so with more patience and grace then their interlocutors have noticed or acknowledged.

Can someone tell us how natural science has demonstrated the existence of an intelligence capable of taking the role assigned by ID? If not, what research is ongoing to deminstrate it? Who is doing it? Where? What progress has been made?

Too bad for Behe. That definition of a scientific theory is what most scientists call a scientific hypothesis, developed after observation. It's a proposed explanation. However, most consider a scientific theory to be an explanation confirmed by experiment and repeated successful replication of the experiment.

Behe is using the word theory in its popular usage. That is very different from a scientific theory. I would agree that astrology is a theory under popular usage, but it has never been verified by experiment. So is ID. But then it fails for lack of experiment.

I'm not sure why a smart guy like Behe chooses to define a scientific theory very differently from the way the rest of the scientific community does.

The trial transcript speaks for itself. Behe's own working definition of theory, as used during the trial, was explicit, not at all ambiguous. Again, Behe speaking: "Under my definition, a scientific theory is a proposed explanation which focuses or points to physical, observable data and logical inferences." As such it constitutes an explicit and transparent working definition during the course of the trial and a perfectly reasonable and responsible definition at that.

Chris Bell,

I do appreciate your more respectful tone, but as the trial transcript indicates, Behe formulated his working definition of the term ("theory") and it was the plaintiff's attorney who introduced astrology into the discussion, not Behe. It was only after the plaintiff's attorney introduced the term that Behe was forced to qualify the admission. I.e. courtroom sophistry which was subsequently further leveraged by the MSM and others, and then oft-repeated in standard agitprop and propaganda and demonizing mode.

Elliot123,

I would firstly point you to previous discussions of the term "theory" within this very thread before you further pronounce upon what theory is and what it is not. More importantly and by example, I would point you to Einstein's annus mirabilis, the year 1905, wherein the papers Einstein forwarded were not undergirded with any empirical findings whatsoever but rather were supported, essentially, with pure rational thought. So, by your definition, we're not to accept Einstein's 1905 papers as worthy of being thought of as proper theories?

Thirdly, you are conflating present tense with past tense conceptions and thus are corrupting the unambiguously historical references Behe alluded to.

In general, all this serves to strongly indicated how obfuscation, demonizations, etc. play such a prominent role in even the simplest aspects of these discussions. It can't even be allowed that Behe was setting the plaintiff's attorney's introduction of astrology into a purely historical context without snickering and obscuring the matter.

Oh, and Einstein's new ideas correctly predicted the perihelion shift of Mercury, so they had something going for them right off the bat.

Now, can you name a single prediction of Intelligent Design that has been tested and confirmed? Until that time, Intelligent Design remains an untested hypothesis that should not be taught in grade schools.

Bingo.

Or at least, ID supporters should be honest, and also support teaching grade schoolers about the FSM. They are the same, and if one is OK in science class, so is the other. (Before anyone attacks from the historical understanding of their invisible sky god, let me just ask what you think of Mitt's religion.)

"Take a square to represent the class of all statments of a language in which we intend to formulate a science; draw a broad horizontal line, dividing it into an upper and lower half; write 'science' and 'testable' into the upper half, and 'metaphysics' and 'non-testable' into the lower: then, I hope, you will realize that I do not propose to draw the line of demarcation in such a way that it coincides with the limits of language, leaving science inside, and banning metaphysics by excluding it from the class of meaningful statements. I stressed the fact that it would be inadequate to draw the line of demarcation between science and metaphysics so as to exclude metaphysics as nonsensical from a meaningful language.

I have indicated one of the reasons for this by saying that we not try to draw the line to sharply. This becomes clear if we rememer that most of our scientific theories originate in myths. The Copernican system, for example, was inspired by a Neo-Platonic worship of the light of the Sun who had to occupy the 'centre' because of his nobility. This indicates how myths may develop testable components. They may in the course of discussion, become fruitful and important for science..." Karl Popper - Conjectures and Refutations

"So you say, but that's all circular reasoning. You'd need, in a positive and unambiguous sense, to formulate your own working definition, one which would likewise allow itself to be subjected to critique."

Natural scientists have done just that. They have a common definition for a scientific theory. Behe uses the term "scientific theory" to identify a different concept.

One of the tactics used to get ID into the natural science curriculum is to change the definition of science. This is what Behe does. He changes a definition of "scientific theory" so ID qualifies under the label. Unfortunately, so does astrology, numerology, the Norse Gods, and reading tea leaves.

The definition change can get quite serious. The Kansas Board of Education changed the definition of natural science when it was controlled by ID supporters. That way the shortcomings of ID did not prevent including it as natural science. When the ID folks lost the next election, the board returned to the commonly accepted definition of a "scientific theory."

Chris Bell: "Now, can you name a single prediction of Intelligent Design that has been tested and confirmed?"

Absolutely. "We can take Kansas."

...

Look, I'm a nice guy, and obviously I'm rooting for the Know-Somethings, but I am frustrated with my own side. We're playing brilliant chess. Problem is, this is a p0ker tournament.

I complained earlier about how Creationists "neutralize far smarter opponents by misdirection and sleight-of-hand." They're doing it now.

Every time we allow ourselves to discuss, oh, flagella or Popper or chromosomes, the Know-Nothings win. It's not because they're right about flagella, or anything else in biology, it's because they've got us playing brilliant chess while they're playing (and winning) a pretty average game of p0ker.

This is not a debate about flagella. This is not about where species came from. This is not about the past at all. This is about the future, and about a fringe imposing their constricted views on the future of a dynamic nation.

This is not a battle being fought in academia. That battle ended two centuries ago. Darwin won. In a rout. Now, that battle was fought with the weapons of academia: flagella & Popper & chromosomes.

The present battle is being fought in places like the TX school board. Does the TX school board care about flagella? Or do they care about things like how many activists show up on their doorstep, how much money is on the table, what Texas' economy looks like, where Huckabee's campaign is headed, and how long until their pensions vest?

We shouldn't be arguing points like "flagella evolved from stingers." We should be arguing points like "25% of TX's highest paying new jobs will be created in life sciences industries." And "If Texas wants Texans to get those jobs it has to educate them with best-of-breed curricula." And "Creationism is a device that low-income dopes use to produce more low-income dopes." Maybe even "I won't hire Texas grads -- they're crap." Or "I question their patriotism."

Here's my prediction: we're gonna lose these battles unless/until we wise up. Pop that in yer Popper. ;)

"This has nothing to do with "Norse Gods," "tea leaves," "numerology," etc. which facile rhetoric equates to circular reasoning, a sneer and little or nothing more than that."

Sure it does. Don't short change the Norse gods. Behe says, "a scientific theory is a proposed explanation which focuses or points to physical, observable data and logical inferences."

People propose some unknown intelligence that designed everything. Some propose the Norse gods did it. Others propose our lives are effected by the positions of the planets and stars. Others propose numerology can be used to understand our condition. All these are perfectly reasonable proposals to which look at physical and observable data and make logical inferences. What's the problem.

And this is what Behe calls a scientific theory. The rest of the scientific world reserves the term for those proposals which have been demonstrated by experiment.

"We're talking about viable definitions of a seminal and pivotal concept and you couldn't even admit you had the term wrong ("natural science" vs. "theory") before launching into yet another attack based upon still further presumption and circular reasoning."

Actually, you and Behe are the only ones concerned with changing seminal definitions. The rest of the folks engaged in natural science have definitions for a natrual science hypothesis and a natural science theory.

The closest the Norse gods and ID get to natural science is the hypothesis stage. Both stumble badly when faced with the experimental hurdle necessary to join the world of natural science theories. But, on second thought, if I can't comprehend anything other than the Norse gods as an explanation, does that mean I can teach kids the Norse gods make thunder?

Michael, I'm not sure why you think your Einstein point is so incredible. I'm sure that if Einstein himself was here, he would agree that the most brilliant hypothesis still need to be confirmed by testing - as his were. (And Einstein refused to publish his papers until he could deduce the perhilion shift of Mercury, so his ideas were tested right at the beginning.)

I don't think what I'm saying is that difficult. Scientific ideas are heirarchical. Those ideas that have survived rigorous testing for years and years are at the top. Unverified hypothesis are at the bottom. A large part of doing science is choosing the unverified hypothesis that "smell right" (like Einstein's) and then testing them.

Despite what you say, I haven't claimed at all that Miller's definition is "absolutely" right, but it is what scientists mean when they carefully talk about theories. In other words, it is the standard definition. Sure Behe can define his own terms, but it is certainly suspicious that he feels the need to do so when previously defined terms are available. Why do you think he did that?

I don't want you to think I'm avoiding your questions, so:

5) When they made a prediction that was verified by experiment (something that didn't really happen until the birth of modern science with Gallileo)
6) When repeated experiment showed the theories were wrong
7) You can still speak of them in a historical sense, but it would be correct to qualify it. I.e. "The discarded theory of vitalism"

Now of course there are no absolute definitions, but this definition has a pragmatic element. Scientific ideas which have not been tested are hypothesis, those which have survived testing are theories. This puts the emphasis on testing, which is a key value of science. Behe explicitly said that under his definition untested and tested hypothesis should both be considered "theories". Why did he choose a 'working definition' that minimized the distinction between tested and untested ideas? Hmmmm...I wonder

Now please answer my question, which I have asked several times. WHY should we teach high school children unverified hypothesis instead of theories? We don't teach string theory in ninth grade, why should we teach ID? Ninth graders don't need to know the hottest hypothesis, they need to know what is tried and tested. You learn about new hypothesis in graduate school, and you can try to get your PhD by testing them. Add to this the fact that scientists have overwhelmingly rejected ID as pseudoscience, and you've really got some 'splainin to do.

exfizz: Exactly. We need more colleges to threaten not to accept students from schools that teach pseudoscience. The University of Kansas caused a stir when they said that teaching ID would severely hurt admissions, and the Florida school board recently turned around when UCF threatened to move elsewhere.

Yes, I'm sure thats the reason c.j...

Chris Bell,

While avoiding mere smarm and snark (which serves as contrast with many herein), you're nonetheless taking a breezy attitude, are indulging in circular reasoning of the most fatuous kind and are most certainly and most critically continuing to elide the difficulties in coming to terms with a viable, positive definition of the term. Again, though this reflects one example only, where does that leave string theory vis-a-vis the problem of a viable definition? Other problems come to mind as well.

And no, essentially saying "I'm sure Einstein would agree with me" is not an argument; it's difficult to imagine anything more fatuous. Or how about this for a counter-argument: "No, he'd agree with me." Convincing? Persuasive? (Btw, I do think Einstein would agree with me, but I wouldn't presume to forward that as some type of argument or breezy comment in support of my view, barring a relevant and direct quote from Einstein himself. I do believe despite the scant empirical support and correspondingly the fact his papers were based upon almost pure rational thought - he even stated Michelson-Morley was "negligible" in his thinking - that he'd accord his papers the status of viable theories and hypotheses both, c. 1905. His theory of gravity specifically was considered extremely strange or exotic. And what of his gravitational theory that reaches even greater proportions of strangeness or exoticness even presently, absent empirical support, vis-a-vis black holes? That is not accorded the status of "theory"?)

You are, and imo clearly, reasoning backwards, and are then breezily dismissing and/or rationalizing away anything that doesn't accord with that backwards reasoning. And why? Seemingly because your anti-Behe agenda vis-a-vis the definition he gave is primary. It's a perfectly viable definition - regardless though, that's why a positive definition, one that can withstand scrutiny, is absolutely pivotal here. You're continuing to elide and finesse that central point.

As to the perihelion of Mercury note vis-a-vis Einstein, that reflected a single aspect of Einstein's five papers that year only; in very large part they were supported with his rigorous reasoning, but the empirical underpinnings were scant. Biographies often make a point of precisely that fact.

As to answering your question, I've never argued that point to begin with, so why would I argue a point I never did forward in the first place? Given the quality of exchanges in this and other forums, however, for other reasons as well, I have purchased my first ID book. The thought-to-smarm ratio in this and similar threads is not convincing.

No, I give Behe no "deference". I'm asking and have been asking for a positive definition of theory. In the remainder, yet again, you're presuming to know what I'm thinking and once again you're relying upon ad hominem inferences, innuendo, snark, snide, sneering contempt, etc.

But you do provide cover for both yourself and others to continue to avoid supplying a positive definition of the term; in that vein, not a bad strategem. Your "reasoning" is the barest rhetorical cover for precisely that, and more. As to the "baselessness" of anything, that's a particularly rich snort coming from yourself.

I've had two objectives in mind since the subject of Behe's testimony arose, 1) to gauge others' sincerity, intellectual integrity and depth of comprehensions as related to both that testimony and the concept of "theory" more pointedly, 2) absent a positive definition that can withstand scrutiny, to reconstitute that aspect of Behe's testimony. (The level of reasoning as reflected in this thread, by too many, is execrable, from the most banal and fatuous forms of circular reasoning to pure ad hominem drivel and other vacuities as well. All this, by those who are putatively concerned with science and its most fundamental tenets.)

Again, a positive definition that can withstand well reasoned scrutiny.

Various people took the time to make a huge point concerning Behe's definition of the term, essentially using it to dismiss Behe and his testimony in toto, certainly so as applied to the definition in question. Yet time and time again, after repeated requests, no one has forwarded a sound, contrasting and positive definition that can withstand well-rounded and substantial critique.

And Elliot, you do not evidence the ability, at least in this thread, to reason sufficiently concerning the concept of theory, yet we're suppose to believe you understand the problems, for example, of the bacterial flagellum and what it poses to a neo-Darwinist, as conceived in random and purely materialist terms.

Don't get me wrong, I'm only now beginning to delve into the specifics of the science and am proceeding slowly and cautiously, but if you cannot honestly and sincerely come to terms with a single, critical definition, then I've learned enough to know that just-so stories and facile reasoning, as evidenced herein, is not going to cut it, nor is an unscrutinized reliance upon "experts" who evidence prominent extra-scientific agendas.

I'm asking and have been asking for a positive definition of theory.

Given how often I tease you for not explaining yourself, you're perfectly right to chide me. But is this really the question you mean to ask? Behe specifically offered a definition of "scientific theory." I don't know whether you see any particular difference between the two in this context -- I'm not sure whether I do -- but it's worth pointing out.

I think Behe's definition is useful in a casual conversation about epistemology or science, but not in the context of a discussion with actual, practical consequences. It opens the definition of "science" to any systematic explanation of anything, because every advocate of a "theory" will point to some physical evidence and make what they describe as a logical inference based on that evidence. Kent Hovind loves to describe his religion as "science," and under Behe's definition, it is a "scientific theory."

I much prefer Dr. Miller's definition, because it adds objective criteria. Again, there's no problem with Behe calling his ideology a "scientific theory" in casual conversation - although I think it's a farce, obviously, he's entitled to his own religion. But in a courtroom or policy-setting context, where the conversation implicitly involves the entire community, objective criteria such as testable predictions are an essential part of defining what is and isn't "science."

Like yourself, I'm not a scientist, and my opinion here is provisional. While I think Behe's definition is impractical and specifically designed to advance his personal ideology, I can't produce a perfect definition insulated from my own policy preferences. That's another reason to prefer objective criteria - it allows a wedge to be placed in between such a definition and its proponents if they fail to satisfy it.

I apologize for not answering your question earlier.

we're suppose to believe you understand the problems, for example, of the bacterial flagellum and what it poses to a neo-Darwinist, as conceived in random and purely materialist terms . . . I've learned enough to know that just-so stories and facile reasoning, as evidenced herein, is not going to cut it, nor is an unscrutinized reliance upon "experts" who evidence prominent extra-scientific agendas.

If you haven't read the technical literature, in which science is actually done, then what basis do you have for presupposing that scientists disregard creationism on the basis of "just-so stories and facile reasoning"? Once again, this thread is not the scientific process that has discarded creationism. We are analyzing the proper policy response to a theory that has already been dismissed as unscientific and empirically unsupported, but that uses political and legal maneuvering to achieve preferential treatment out of proportion to its factual validity. You're attacking the scientific process as if it's here before you, on display, but it's not. This is the legal and political analysis of the consequences of that process.

Colin,

Yea, it's the question I've meant to ask all along - and the result? Nada, nil, zil, nihil. Nothing that has been able to standup to scrutiny. As to Ken Miller's definition, I like aspects of it fine as well, but objections have already been noted in this thread and they have not successfully been addressed.

As to what IDers are or are not, I've decided to look into that myself. I've decided to do that for the following reasons:

1) I'm an evolutionist and decidedly so and believe the empirical evidence points to that process as an absolutely prime biological factor, but am a theist as well and for that reason and other reasons still remain inquisitive in terms of man's overall development and his genesis as man.

2) Imo clearly (e.g., the global warming "consensus" and in general the ideological supplanting of science with various forms of scientism) there is in fact an emerging and not so latent authoritarian and ideological set of trends that have impacted both science itself (administratively and via funding mechanisms, directly impacting lab and experimental work) as well as popular views of science and scientific developments, variously communicated to the culture at large.

3) The increasing tendency to purposefully confuse scientific interests with other, non-scientific interests, perhaps most obviously as evidenced by the absurdly self-confident forays of Harris, Dennett, Dawkins, et al. but also, again, as evidenced by the global warming debates, though those are only the two most obvious and well publicized examples.

4) The fact that so many of the "debates" and "discussions," right from the start, are heavily weighted with ad hominem inferences and attacks suggests that not only ideological and political interests are at play, but various psychologies are at play as well - all of which sums up to a veritable mountain of subjective, not "objective" or purely scientific motivating factors.

For those reasons, perhaps some others as well, I've decided to look into this myself. I'm no more impressed with your and others' intellectual bearing and integrity than I am with that rhetorical mephitic of yours.

Pathetic and genuinely, substantively and thoroughly so.