Whenever I express my doubts about macro evolutionary theory I find I'm usually met with the 'Oh, you're one of them…” type of reactions. Recently I had an email discussion about evolution and Intelligent Design theory with blogger John Scalzi. The debate quickly degenerated when he resorted to claiming, 'the science is there for one and not for the other. By all means enjoy your ignorance, but don't expect me to treat it or you very seriously.”
Scalzi's attitude is, unfortunately, all too common. Thinking for oneself is considered a virtue when applied to areas such as politics or religion. But when it comes to science we mere mortals are to defer to the high priests known as 'Scientists.' All issues have already been settled by the 'experts” so there's no need to look behind the curtain.
The problem, I find, is that the people who think the 'science is there” are generally the ones with the most outdated views of evolutionary biology. Their opinions tend to be based on what they picked up in Biology 101 in high school or college. They would be shocked to find that the field of evolutionary biology is rife with disputes over how exactly macroevolution occurs (the fact that it does occur, is a matter of faith rather than evidence and hence is beyond challenge).
'Ah, but you are one of them, aren't you?” they exclaim. 'As an evangelical Christian you must be a creationist.” True, but irrelevant. The theory of macroevolution is not in conflict with my religious beliefs. God could have created every species on earth through the exact processes that the theory claims. The reason that I disagree with the theory is not because it opposes my religious beliefs but because it is inadequate as science.
A mature theory should not only have adequate explanatory and predictive ability but should also correspond with established scientific fact. Macroevolution survives not because it is an air-tight theory but because a large enough contingent of scientists is willing to believe that the 'gaps” in the theory will be understood…not today, of course…and maybe not this decade…but…someday…we just have to wait. (cue sounds of crickets chirping)
Forgive me if I refuse to drink the neo-Darwinian Kool-Aid but my commitment to logic keeps getting in the way. In a discussion on bacterial flagellum, William Dembski refers to the theory's inability to explain even this basic feature as a 'gross theoretical inadequacy.” Dembski is being generous. That phrase could be liberally applied to almost every area of the 'evolution-only” explanation.
Over the next few weeks I plan to highlight some of the issues that lead me to conclude that macroevolution is an inadequate explanation, but for now I want to point out one major hurdle.
Abiogenesis and the origins of life
If a creationist were to claim that species evolve, but only after they were first created by God, the evolution proponents would sneer at such an unscientific claim. We should give the creationist credit for at least attempting to start at the beginning. The ME advocate prefers to jump ahead to the middle and begin the argument with 'specifies evolve.” If you ask them how 'life” (a necessary feature for any evolving species) began in the first place they will claim that the issue is outside the theory.
Perhaps. But since the theory rises or falls on this issue it would probably be a good idea to make sure that this one is nailed down.
Unfortunately for the advocates, modern science doesn't have a clue how DNA, much less a living organism, could have been produced from non-living matter. If you ask most evolution advocates about abiogenesis they will either be under the (false) impression that this problem has already been solved or will claim that it is only a matter of time before the process is understood.
When used by creationists, this is known as the 'God of the gaps' tactic. (Don't understand how something occurred? Well…God did it. Case closed.) As scientific reasoning, this methoed, is obviously flawed. Yet the evolutionists turns around and resorts to the same tactic. Only instead of saying 'God did it” they claim 'Science will find it.'
Resorting to such specious methods as question begging, however, is beneath more thoughtful intellectuals. Some scientists, such as Nobel-prize winner Francis Crick, have at least attempted to come up with an alternative explanation. Crick, realizing the impossibility of abiogenesis occurring on earth, published a paper in which he suggested that life on earth was 'seeded” from another planet. (That's something to keep in mind the next time someone mentions that real science (as opposed to something like ID theory) is submitted through 'peer-reviewed science journals”.)
An adequate theory of speciation must begin at the beginning. Before there can be species there must first be living organisms. How did these organisms evolve from inanimate matter? No one knows. But until the theory can be rooted in a firm explanation for how this occurs, it can be dismissed as resting more on a foundation of faith rather than fact.
I got in a discussion with a friend going to school at the University of Minnisota. He's taking a class entirely devoted to evolutionary biology. Part of the class is spent coming up with retorts and counters for people questioning evolution.
I don't know if this adds at all to the article, but I was wondering if anybody knew about this? Or took one of these classes?
John Scalzi is quite correct in that “the science is there for one and not for the other".
Aside from the older hoaxes (piltdown man), new light is being shed on the inability or tardiness of science to correct itself - Ontogony does NOT recapitulate Phylogony, and the Peppered Moths apparently don't like to alight on trees - suity or otherwise. Any Darwinian Dogma tends to stick because no one even attempts to repeat an experiment to determine if the revelation is indeed true.
Even in a purely computer model, where things can go faster than chemicals, they cannot create complex things ex-nihilo. Either they have to have what they are seeking as a test to know when to stop (a bazillion monkeys set to stop when they create Shakespeare will need a copy of Shakespeare in the system, and they miss Chaucer or Milton if they appear in the stream). Usually they create ink-blots that they say show complexity or something else THEY didn't expect.
Abiogenesis is the sine qua non, but the Cambrian Explosion (9 new Phyla if I remember right), and complex interdependent systems (eyes with irises, lenses, and retina) are also inexplicable by anything an evolutionist can show.
Excellent approach Joe! You might be interested in the upcoming book by Drs. Hugh Ross & Fuz Rana titled Origins of Life: Biblical & Evolutionary Models Face Off.
There are many problems with naturalistic origin of life scenarios. The complexity problem is virtually insurmountable (i.e., what are the chances that you can get approx. 750 proteins to form together to make the simplest form of life?). Another interesting hurdle for naturalism is that the data is telling us that life appears on Earth as soon as possible. There is virtually no time for this chance organization to occur.
Keep up the informative posts and "No! You are NOT forgiven for not drinking the neo-Darwinian Kool-Aid... you are commended!"
P.S. What are you doing posting at 1:40 AM?
The approach that life was 'seeded' from outspace doesn't solve the question of abiogenesis, it only postpones it. Great stuff, keep it up.
What's Joe doing up at 1:40AM, Rusty? Do ya think this blog writes itself? :)
Anyway, Joe, I'd add a minor point to your closing paragraph:
I'd grant that a hole in a theory (like not knowing how life originated) isn't necessarily sufficient reason to jettison the theory. The size of the whole and the quality of the rest of the theory need to be weighed, as we can never expect anyone to have a complete picture before we let them claim to have an idea of the outlines of things.
The kicker--and maybe a Darwinist expert in paleobiology can correct me here--is the trendline. It seems the more we know about the conditions of the early earth and the makeup of primitive life, the less likely it is that it could have originated by itself. It isn't mere ignorance, it's increasing knowledge and increasing despair over the viability of the naturalistic model in this instance.
Joe,
Out of curiousity, what's your scientific background?
Tim,
You bring up a good point that the claims of ID are based on "what we know" rather than "what we don't know." Evolutionists routinely accuse people like Michael Behe of resorting to a "God of the gaps" fallacy simply because he doesn't know how a flagellum was put together. But they miss the point of Behe's argument - it is precisely because of what we do know about the cellular realm that causes him to argue as such.
Crick's hypothesis that life on Earth was "seeded" by beings from another planet conveniently places the theory in a locale where the Scientific Method cannot be employed to test it. Crick is saying conditions are different on other plants and life can form there. Since he can't test his theory he accepts it on faith. Evolution is a religious belief.
The theory of macroevolution is not in conflict with my religious beliefs.
*Ahem*, yes it is, as Phil Johnson repeatesly pointed out in his interviews:
"...they have found a way to conform science and the Christian faith: evolution is God’s way of creating....
"But here I come up and say that they’ve made a complete blunder and totally misunderstood what the theory is about, and they have in fact given away what they thought they were preserving."
"They would prefer to think, ‘Well, it’s just one of those things that scientists argue about and we’ll leave that to the biologists to sort out as best they can.’ Whereas what is really at stake is not just the first chapter of Genesis, but the whole Bible from beginning to end, the first word to last, and whether nature really is all there is – nature is composed of particles, and that’s the whole story."
I think people who say it doesn't really matter are ignorant of the fact that it does matter, becuse evolution cannot be reconciled with not merely Genesis, but the rest of the Bible as well.
Rusty: P.S. What are you doing posting at 1:40 AM?
I'm in the process of moving and was told that my DSL connnection may not be up for 10 days(!). I was trying to ensure I got something out in case I couldn't get an Internet connection (I knew I should have kept one of those AOL disks around).
Tim: I'd grant that a hole in a theory (like not knowing how life originated) isn't necessarily sufficient reason to jettison the theory.
I agree. It isn't a fatal blow but I think it shifts the burden of proof back onto the pro-evolution side. And you're right, the more science learns about early earth conditions the more it hurts their theory.
Mac: Ahem*, yes it is, as Phil Johnson...
You have a point and I should have been more clear about what I meant. Macroevolution as an undirected process is incompatible with my beliefs. It could be compatible with God as the initial creater of life and evolution simply as the "natural law" that kicks into effect after the process is started.
Josiah: Out of curiousity, what's your scientific background?
I have a P.hD. in Creation Science from the Gish Institute of Fundie Science. ; )
Actually, other than wasting several semesters on a M.S. in Forensic Sciences, I have no formal background. I will say, though, that studying FS convinced me that ID theory may not only be a plausible hypothesis but the only adequate explanation. But I must admit that I am just a laymen with a below average understanding and too much time on my hands.
Joe Carter writes:
"The debate quickly degenerated"
There was no debate. Debate implies there was a serious exchange of ideas. Your ideas are not serious, however, nor were you seriously interested in having your ideas questioned.
I sent you a link to a previous column of mine which discussed the "macroevolution" rationale you prefer to hide behind, which itself featured a link of evidence of a "macroevolutionary" change occuring, which you chose to ignore or didn't read or didn't understand. The link, for those of you interested:
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/newsrel/science/mchox.htm
In any event, the micro/macro evolution "debate" is only viable among people who don't or choose not to understand the evolutionary process, as there's no difference in the processes between the two. Same process, different scale. If you "believe" in microevolution, then you believe in macroevolution because the mechanics of both are the same.
Incidentally, you didn't "express your doubts" when you came over to my site; rather, you suggested that that *I* didn't know the meaning of the word evolution based on what I wrote in one of my essays. I asked you how my definition materially differed from the textbook example, which I provided. You responded with your blather about macroevolution, to which I responded with the above-mentioned link. Your e-mail was non-responsive, at which point I felt free not to take you seriously.
So it's not that you expressed your doubts, it's that you suggested that I didn't know what I was talking about. Complaining that you get beat up every time you doubt macroevolution with someone who knows more about the subject than you do is aside the point. You didn't come to "debate," you came along to pick a fight, so whining when you get your ass handed to you (or worse, when you're dismissed out of hand) is bad form at the very least.
The one thing I do believe is that *you* believe that macroevolution is somehow incorrect. But I doubt that you've taken the time to patiently ask someone about it -- if you had bothered to say politely that you doubted macroevolution on my thread, for example, your concerns might have been taken more seriously (note that other people coming from non-evolutionary points of view in the thread were answered responsively by me and other people).
But that's not how you approached it; therefore I came to the conclusion you're comfortable in your ignorance and decided to leave you to it. And I don't feel particularly beholden to take you seriously. As I've said before on my site, if you want me to take your ideas seriously, get some better ideas.
"God could have created every species on earth through the exact processes that the theory claims."
I used to think as much, myself (admitedly half-heartedly). I then read an interesting observation: The macroevolution process requires death to succeed. Death was the result of sin, and sin did not appear until Adam was 'created', however you want to look at that.
All in all, it's easier to just take the Bible at it's Word.
Joseph,
The Bible does not state that death came as the result of sin but that human death came as the result of sin. Romans 5:12 "Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned" Death through sin... only humans can sin.
Went to Mr. Scalzi's web site and found no science and no arguments other than ones completely of point, only name calling. Read the article he posted here in the comments about evolutionary biology at UCSD. Filled (and properly so) with the words might and could, but no real evidence. Great art work though,and I'll bet that the computer models are even better art work. Someone visiting his website thinks that it would be ok to teach intellegent design if it were taught by the philosophy dept. From what the evolutionists present for evidence, I think they should properly be taught in the art dept.
I read recently that an ancient cataclysm - possibly an asteroid impact - wiped out 75% (or more?) of existing species. The fossil record confirms the extinction.
Sooo...how many gigayears did all those species take to evolve before the impact? Because during that entire time, there couldn't have been any other planetary catastrophes. Or else we REALLY had a lot of species before the next-to-last asteroid.
Anyway, does evolutionary theory thus imply that asteroid impacts are unimaginably rare?
Extinction Events are another sore spot for evolutionists. After the K-T event (65 million years ago), which took out the dinosaurs, there were new, large species of animals on the scene within 10,000 years. Ecosystems reappeared fully functional. The Permian Extinction (250 mya) was even worse with upwards of 90% of all species being wiped out! How do some evolutionists respond? - Obviously the extinction event set up an environment that was fertile ground for evolution to occur rapidly.
In case anyone missed it, J. Scalzi writes on his website (about a particular cosmological theory, NOT evolution):
So, why is this good science?
1. It attempts to explain the observed data collected about the universe.
2. It does not start from a conclusion about the nature of the universe and work its way backward.
3. Those who have presented the hypothesis work in the field and know its intricacies -- indeed, one of of the presenters helped create the current "best-fit" model of the universe.
4. The presenters questioned their own hypothesis extensively and critically over a significant amount of time before presenting it to their peers -- i.e., performed due diligence.
5. They have presented it for peer review and accept the idea that it may be incorrect and recognize the need for data to support their hypothesis.
This reveals a good deal about the poor state of modern science education. The list boils down to 'some obviously smart people have this idea and we should take their word for it until someone proves them wrong or has a better idea.' The flaw here is that in order for a theory to be scientific, it must be testable. John, if you're reading this, I hope you would add some criteria before calling the list complete, regardless of the particular theory in question.
Actually, theistic evolution, not to mention Ross' gnostic Chardanism, are not compatible with Christianity.
For if God created by means of nature red in tooth and claw, sin is not sin, but "very good" and Christ died for nothing. Without Creation and Fall, there is no need for redemption.
A predatorary animal hunting down, killing, and eating its prey is not sin.
A human killing another human is sin.
The point is that it's people who sin. Christ died for people's sin, not because animals kill.
Check Psalm 104:21,27-28 The lions roar for prey, seeking their food from God.
...All of your creatures wait for you to provide them with food on a regular basis.
You give food to them and they receive it; you open your hand and they are filled with food.
The Psalmist doesn't seem to consider animals receiving their food from God to be sinful.
Dear Rusty,
Certainly, animals can't sin. God says that the only part of His creation that's not doing what He has in mind for it to do is man. He also says that the whole of creation groans waiting to be restored.
When Christ returns to rule the world, the lion will lie down with the lamb. Sounds to me like an end to predation. Did predation exist before Adam's sin or was it the result of that first sin and the curse that followed? Hard to be sure, but I lean toward it being a result of the fall. Probably just another of those things we'll understand later if our names are written in the Lambs book of Life.
Many people I've talked to who believe in evolution think(maybe hope is a better word) that man will evolve into something superior to what he is now. This saddens me greatly, since a free ongoing upgrade is now avaliable from the original manufacturer and they will miss it as they are pinning their hope on blind luck. Still we can all pray for them. God changed this fool's mind so there's still hope.
Mike,
Please check my post titled, Death Through Sin. I would argue that the Bible does not teach that we will be restored to our condition in the Garden. Rather I would argue that the Bible teaches that we will ultimately be ushered into a new creation.
Mike,
You ask whether predation existed existed before or after Adam's sin. Genesis 1:30 answers your question easily. G-d declares that to "every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat." From such, it seems clear that there was no predation until after the fall of man.
---If a creationist were to claim that species evolve, but only after they were first created by God, the evolution proponents would sneer at such an unscientific claim.
I'm not sneering. I'm saying first that I can do nothing with this--I can't prove or disprove it. But I have a problem even with the phrasing. What's a species defined as, to you?
Canis familiaris is a species that we refer to as the domestic dog, now the housepet. Domestic dog remains were found in Iraq, and date to 12k years or so ago. Are you saying that dogs existed before 10-12k years ago? That God created it earlier but it wasn't seen? Are you saying that it wasn't created by God and put on the planet until then?
Where such a species came from is still under debate. Agreed. There is mostly a consensus that this species broke off from a south eurasian subspecies and was domesticated by man, though there are other theories as well on which species of wolf it was that led to canis familiaris.
Regardless of the theories' beliefs in what the ascendant was, they do not disagree that the species arrived RECENTLY. we have records from before that point, and humans lived in societies before dogs appeared in those societies.
Which of those statements do you find to be untrue or unreasonable? which of my questions will you answer?
---We should give the creationist credit for at least attempting to start at the beginning. The ME advocate prefers to jump ahead to the middle and begin the argument with “specifies evolve.”
Are you saying that we should discredit the scientist who does not jump to the beginning?
Science CAN NEVER BE ABOUT "THE BEGINNING". Science is about observation of events. Events all come after the Beginning, whatever/whenever that was. Science is about explaining things with causal relationships: Given circumstances A, B, C, D, then X, Y Z happen. Science CAN NEVER tell you about A, B, C, or D except again by positing things before them, and then explaining them as results.
Science is about finding how certain causes create effects. It can never explain how those causes got caused--except by hitting this infinite regression. It isn't TRYING to, either.
This is why the ME advocate goes to the middle--they KNOW they can't say anything about the First First--only about later "Firsts". They start in the middle because they are attempting to determine how certain things cause other things. This is a middle-process, by definition, because it presupposes something comes before!
If *THAT* is your problem--that it presupposes a "something before", and can't make testable theories about the "before", I have to give up. Because how can you possibly do that? ever?
---If you ask them how “life” (a necessary feature for any evolving species) began in the first place they will claim that the issue is outside the theory.
It IS outside the theory. ME isn't proclaiming to know how life began--first, we don't know. Second, it's not clear that question is well defined. What do you mean? When did the first cell division happen? When did the first self-replicating structure exist on earth? in the universe? Formulate the question precisely, and maybe it can be answered in a year or a thousand. Along the way, scientists may find the question keeps changing, as they understand slightly more about the issue, and define that out of the remaining question. But evolution isn't trying to answer questions about biochemistry and cell biology. It never was, and it never claimed to. Why is this a flaw? That's like asking an economist or a physicist why they can't tell you how life began.
----Unfortunately for the advocates, modern science doesn’t have a clue how DNA, much less a living organism, could have been produced from non-living matter.
This is true. So what? Why is this a detraction of science, or even of evolutionary theory? 60 years ago, we didn't even know that DNA existed. We didn't know how the structure of DNA led to replication for cell division. 110 years ago, we didn't know about the electron. We certainly couldn't have explained then how a computer worked, how dye molecules emit color, or even why clothes cling coming out of the washing machine. We couldn't explain why different chemicals react differently, why energy can be made by certain processes, why light can be emitted by molecules, etc. 700 years ago no Europeans knew the earth was round, either. We could not have explained why someone travelling right forever would appear on our left. So we have a lot to learn. Why is that bad?
---If you ask most evolution advocates about abiogenesis they will either be under the (false) impression that this problem has already been solved or will claim that it is only a matter of time before the process is understood.
I don't know who these evolution advocates are you are referring to; I grant you most people are uneducated and ignorant. Most people probably don't know why the moon has phases, either. Maybe they think it's because the earth casts a shadow on it. That's not the reason, and them being wrong doesn't mean that the actual reason--that as the moon revolves around the earth, the moon is illuminated differently (from the earth's perspective) by the sun --isn't true, and known by others.
--instead of saying “God did it” they claim “Science will find it.“
I am claiming that science has found all sorts of answers to questions. Virtually every question posed by Copernicus has been answered. Fermat's little theorem has been proved. Nearly all of Hilbert's famous problems at the turn of the 20th c. have been solved. Actually, maybe they all have been--one just a few weeks ago, in fact. I have, therefore, decent reason to believe that as humans progress, they answer questions. Reason. As in, probabilistically. I give humans a high probability of answering that question if they live for the next 1k years or so. Can I say with certainty that they will solve that one? No! Of course not. Do I need to pose a certainty here? No, I do not. Why do you?
Did you know that there is STILL, TO THIS DAY, debate on how things with wings, like airplanes, fly? The typical bad high school answer is "Bernoulli's principle", which, poorly stated, says "the shape of a wing, which is longer on top than on the bottom, combined with laminar flow over it means that that the air needs to move faster over the top than under the bottom; moving faster makes the pressure go down; hence, the plane rises.
There are SERIOUS problems with this theory. For one, planes can fly upside down. (and then there's those biplane things :) ) If the above explanation is correct, why don't planes going upside down fall toward the ground? Empirically, they do not. Not surprisingly, there are other theories. Some people believe Newton answered this, and his third law alone explains it. Others don't agree.
Does this mean we'll never know the answer? Does this mean planes don't fly? Does this mean all aerodynamic science is bogus? Does this mean "God makes planes fly" ?
Planes do fly. Some of aerodynamic science is probably true, since planes fly. Wings do something, in certain conditions; jet engines do other things; rockets "fly" also. We are still learning. This does not mean we will necessarily get the right answer, but it doesn't mean that the basic fact of some relationship between lift/wings/bernoulli's principle isn't at play here. It means that we don't know why planes fly; or rather, some scientists probably know, but hasn't explained it clearly enough for it to be understood by high school students (which is a way of saying that scientists don't understand it, not really.)
---An adequate theory of speciation must begin at the beginning.
Nothing in science begins at the beginning. Science is about what comes after something else. What happens when other things occurred. All science can do is ask "Why" something occurred. This means "go back one step from what we know right now, and figure out how This Thing Happened."
No theory of gravity started at the begining. No one started figuring out the movement of the planets and the stars by positing where matter came from. Guess what? We still don't know! They started by observing how things at rest stayed at rest. They didn't start by explaining first how things came to rest. They started by observing how things in motion went in a straight line for a rather long time. They didn't start by explaining how gravity, and the lack of other forces that follow Newton's 2nd law, explains straight line motion as a consequence. We still don't know *why* gravity is an r^2 law, for example.
No theory of chemistry started at the begining either. Chemists didn't know what the period table looked like until it was invented --in the 1860s. By then people knew about lodestone and gunpowder, but they didn't know why, per se. They didn't start by trying to explain the way atoms form elements by filling electron shells, and as the shells are filled differently, the elements behave differently.
Neither did learning about penicillin start at the beginning. No one first explained why mold grows, or why antibiotics are effective against certain types of bacteria before finding pencillin. No one even *knew* that bacteria existed.
Your arguments seem to be based on a very strange view of science. Are there incompetent, inarticulate scientists out there who think they can prove "Firsts"? Sure. of course. Are they the majority of scientists? Not of the well-respected ones.
This does not put "God intervened here" on the same plane of testabilityas ME. While we can't answer every question, we do work backwards, asking "why" certain things are true. Our answers even change. We learn more about the world as we answer more of the questions. Yours seem to stay the same "because God did that/created a system that did that/intervened/wanted it that way." One answer, regardless of the "scientific" question posed. This isn't testable at all. Our questions' answers can at least be shown, over time and data, to not fit with a theory--to require or imply results that we don't see. Your answer does not, does it?
here, I have two hypoethetical situations for you.
A week from now, alien life comes to Earth. Big space ships, meet with the heads of state, etc. They say "We're so glad to see you and your earth prospering. We've been waiting a long time for you to agree to getting serious about space travel."
They tell us about their world--they have a monarchic system, they have slavery and violence, but they don't have any diseases any longer. Clearly a mixed bag of a being. They aren't even moral by our standards. They've been around a few millienia, they know everyone else in the galaxy, and there's thousands of other inhabited planets.
we ask them some questions--like for instance, is there other life in the universe, why do they know about us Earthlings, etc. they say "oh, see, we've known about humans for the last few hundred thousand years. Every once in a while, we came around and interfered with life here. You know, brought that obelisk thing." We ask "you mean natural selection didn't create us?" They say "weeeeell, it would have, probably, but we tweaked it for you. We couldn't wait another few million years for you guys to make a society already. " We ask if there are others they did that to. they say "oh, tons. a hundred different planets. We brought you dogs, too, because you hadn't figured them out yet, but some other planet had. And penguins. you didn't have penguins. They evolved from these weird fish things on that planet." And say, for convenience sake, that we can validate all of these claims of theirs.
Would this change your understanding of the universe, of science, of human origin, or evolution, of your belief that God created the species? Because it would change *my* understanding of the universe, of human origin, of how penguins got here, etc. Would it change your defn of God, since you said God created species? How would your beliefs change, given that new evidence? See, my theory is testable--I receive this information, I reconcile it with what we've got, I keep what works, throw out what doesn't. What do you do?
Now, what if they had said
"oh, see, we created you. Every once in a while, we came around and interfered with life here. You know, made you conscious. Created human life as distinct from animal life. We ask "you mean natural selection didn't create us?" They say "nope, not at all. Here's the blueprints we worked from for humans and all the other animals and plants." We ask if they did that to. they say "oh, tons. a hundred different planets." we ask:"well, what are all of these fossils here for????""to make you think about things." And say, for convenience sake, that we can validate all of these claims of theirs.
Would THIS change your view of creationism, of God, of evolution? Would you call these flawed, immoral creatures God? If not, how do you reconcile what they are saying with the God you know?
If this were to happen, it would change how I interpret the world ( thought not how I interpret God), and of human origin, etc. That is, this situation would invalidate my theory in some ways, though not in others. But it doesn't disturb me. If this happens, my theory is testable, and I'd keep it or throw it out as appropriate. Is yours testable?
EMAIL: dseki@sexmuch.com
IP: 24.242.112.133
URL: http://www.linkspider.us
DATE: 06/30/2004 10:29:20 AM
It is only the most intelligent and the most stupid who are not susceptible to change.