Atheism 29.Evidence of Evolution |
Creationists seem to be hell
bent of denying their own eyes - that is -
Evolution is happening all around
them and yet they think it is God. Let's look at what the evidence is for what Evolution says and what it does not.
What does the bible say?
Evolution is a theory arrived at by looking at the facts and trying to work out what is happening - no one had a vested interest in disproving the bible - but creationists get annoyed by Evolution because it shows so clearly that they are plain wrong.This is why they try so hard to undermine it or teach people Creationism alongside it or throw people in jail for teaching it as a truth. Thursday, August 25, 2005 Isn't 'Intelligent Design' just a theory? Whenever I'm confronted by a creationist, sooner or later I face the question: evolution is 'just' a theory, and it shouldn't be taught as fact in public schools. To do otherwise is to be intellectually dishonest, and it clearly leads us to the road of perdition and to the collapse of our country. Patiently, I try to explain that evolution is both a fact and a theory (or, rather, a body of facts and theories). Just like there is a fact of, say, gravity, as well as a scientific explanation for that fact, so there is a fact of evolution (living beings really have changed and continue to change through time) and a theory of how this happens (by natural selection and other processes). But the thought recently occurred to me, partly because all of the clamour about Bush and Intelligent Design: isn't it fair to ask the same question about ID? Isn't ID 'just' a theory? In fact, it is worse: intelligent design is not even a (scientific) theory, it's a generic idea that used to have some philosophical valence in pre-scientific times (let's say from Plato in the 4th century BCE to William Paley in the 19th century CE), but is clearly dead now (as science, regardless of how many Americans may think otherwise -- let's not forget that a sizable percentage of Americans believes in haunted houses, but that doesn't make ghosts a serious possibility...). So, ironically, ID is 'just' a theory precisely in the derogative sense typically reserved by creationists for evolution: not only it's not a fact, not only it isn't a scientific theory, it's just the unsubstantiated hunch of irreduciblysuperstitious and insecure people who really can't stand the thought of a universe where they are not the center of all the attention.
posted by Massimo Pigliucci | 12:28 PM |
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