It is hard to understand how individuals who fancy themselves progressives are so closed minded to seeing the truth about Darwinian evolution. Yes, it began several centuries ago as a theory that seemed reasonable. Man's scientific technology at that time was little better than stone age. But in the 21st century we know better. Today we have really good microscopes, telescopes that view the cosmos from space and computers that can do calculations impossible by the old methods. The reality, no matter how much it galls secularist, is that Darwinian evolution (and the "neo" form for nit-pickers) is flat-earth science; or maybe the example of the homunculus is better. The homunculus was considered to be the proper explanation of how sexual reproduction in humans worked; there was a "little man" inside the sperm. At fertilization, the little man entered the sanctity of the female egg, grew into a baby and was born into the world. Leading edge scientists believed this many moons ago. But obviously science has proven otherwise. Science is full of countless other firmly believed theories now on the ash heap of history.
So why is Darwinism so hard to shake? Because it is not just about science; it is because it carries with it metaphysical ramifications that stir the cultural pot; theism versus atheism. And in today's world, once you start down the road of "religion", politics is not far behind. So unlike the days of decorum, when polite company did not discuss religion or politics, discussions on evolution inevitably lead to a culture war food fight. Darwinism has more problems than it has proofs. Just read Icons of Evolution by Jonathan Wells. Regardless of the bile and vitriol spouted by those gored by Well's proofs of Darwinian hoaxes, his book is untouched by relevant criticism. In other words, it is true, and has been acknowledged as such even by terrorist evolutionists like Richard Dawkins.
Ultimately the point is this: Darwinism is bad science, full of errors. These problems are called "gaps" by evolutionary apologists. But for open-minded scientists without a metaphysical axe to grind, the problems with Darwinism are proofs of its failure. If the "Theory of Evolution" were new science today, it would never get past the metal detectors at the peer review board, so great are its errors. Again, Darwinism survives today because it is the last platform for naturalism and ultimately atheism.
Meanwhile, two years ago the worlds most influential atheist, Antony Flew, renounced his 50 plus years of atheist beliefs in favor of...Intelligent Design! Flew's rationale is the same as that of all open-minded people (true progressives). Flew follows Aristotle in "going where the evidence leads". Flew changed the forward of his seminal work God and Philosophy last year, explaining that Intelligent Design scientific analysis had demonstrated the necessity of an intelligent designer that he described as "god". He states in the forward that God and Philosophy must now be viewed from an historical perspective, given atheism's demise and the necessity of a Creator.
Those blinded by their paradigms of naturalism will not see the empirically clean work of the scientists working in the field of Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design is about identifying design in nature that cannot possibly be a product of neo-Darwinian mechanisms and theory. In the real world, such design only comes from an intelligent source. Flew calls the designer "god". ID scientists call it "designed by an intelligent source". Paradigm-bound political zealots shout "creationists", then cover the proven hoaxes of evolution shamelessly (see Icons of Evolution).
Open minds will allow ID to have its say and let it stand or fall of the veracity of its science, instead of being shouted down by ideologues. If the science is good (as it has been to this point), people will follow where the truth leads. If it is problematic, those will be exposed. If it is false, it will be rejected. Of course, evolution must be held to the same high standard; to date evolution gets a pass on empiricism. Progressive minds should always want to know, never to cover simply for the case of ideology. I recommend everyone to follow the long-established principle of genius and insight: learn the facts and change your straight-jacket paradigm to line up with them. That is progressive and that is reality.
I'm sorry you feel that, in order to be progressive, you must go around attacking other people's beliefs.
I believe otherwise. I believe that, to be progressive, one must be accepting of others' beliefs and one must be willing to listen, learn, and discuss before attacking and/or condemning another's beliefs.
I have read your blog and I have also read the back and forth between you and evolutiongeek. You always approach with a holier-than-thou attitude, which is apt to turn people off to what you're saying, whether you're right or not. I, for one, was reading the debate between Intelligent Design and Darwinism because I wanted to know both sides of the coin. What I found was a young man (evolutiongeek) asserting his beliefs on his own blog, and an older man (you, homunculus) coming along and basically attacking him and his beliefs. Just because someone disagrees with you, it does not mean that person is a terrorist liberal or non-Christian. It just means they have an opposing view, which everyone is free to.
Let me finish my thought. Evolution has been proved in baterias and virsuses, for example AIDS. That is why it is so hard to cure. Every time we come up with a new drug it mutates and evovles into something new. Or the Bird flu, not yet a virsus, but it is about to envolve into one. Though scientist can go no bigger than one cell evolving. They have never proven that anything larger than a cell can evolve. But because it has found some truth, that is why Darwanisim sticks around. But yes, there is much more evedence to contradict the Theory of Evolution. I personally think it is not right.
Thanks for the comment. You are right and you are wrong. There is no controversy about "micro-evolution". That's what we see when colds mutate, or bird flu or even something as simple as crossing two different pure-bred dogs to get a different breed of dog. Everyone agrees with that and it is proven without a doubt. People who believe in a 10,000 year old earth and a literal reading of the book of Genesis as the explanation of the creation of life on earth believe also in micro-evolution.
What has never been proven is "macro-evolution", which says that cold virus mutates into a dill pickle. Or a man from a monkey's uncle. Never happened, zero fossil evidence. Darwin said the world would be full of the fossils if his theory was true; so far, the fossil count for Darwinian "intermediates" is zip, zero, nada, niente'. Now this kind of assertion will cause the Darwin Youth to fall out in gran mal seizures. But the theory of macro-evolution is toast. Unfortunately, because it is essential to the philosophy of atheists world-wide, and the fear of secular progressives and socialists of Christianity, they defend Darwinism with rabid fury. Just look at the various posts directed at me and the bile and vitriol, name calling and insults. But NEVER an address or refutation of the points I make, such as the bankruptcy of Darwinism due to it's reliance on methodological materialism.
Anyway, thanks for the comment.
PS Great screen name; may I borrow it for other sites?
The intelligent design theory doesn't explain why humans have wisdom teeth and an appendix that are entirely unneccessary... And the reactions of such diseases as AIDS and avian flu to our modern drugs tell us that, in fact, evolution DOES exist. Darwinism is NOT all wrong, and neither is intelligent design all right. But you're all too pigheaded to admit that the truth is probably somewhere in the huge GAP between your convictions.
This is the post that originally brought me to ProgressiveU. I found it because it was referenced on Google News. I read it and thought that it had so many wrong things in it that I needed to make a comment. In order to comment, I had to register. When I registered I was given my own blog. Intrigued I looked around on the website before commenting and I found that another blogger, evolutiongeek, now better known as laelaps had already responded to this blog with a blog of his own. I thought his response was very good so I didn't leave my response.
But since this post reappeared, I thought it might be appropriate to comment now.
(1) Darwinian evolutionary theory is not centuries (plural) old. Darwin published ORIGIN OF SPECIES in 1859. That would make it 148 years old, so about a century (singular) and a half.
(2) The technology in Darwin's time was not nearly as good as it is now, but it was far from "stone age". Microscopes were showing a completely unseen world. Chemistry had already identified the chemical structure of many biologically important compounds. Geologic stratigraphy had already demonstrated that no global flood had taken place and casted severe doubts on the biblical age of the earth. Paleontology had already established that organisms in the past were very different than organisms are now. Astrononomy had established that the sun, not the earth was the center of the solar system, and that stars were not all at the same distance from the earth.
There was plenty of science already known that made it apparent that the bible was NOT a credible source as to the workings of the universe.
(3) Here in the 21st Century, it is still true that EVERY SINGLE CUTTING EDGE JOURNAL ARTICLE IN BIOLOGY is consistent with modern evolutionary theory and VERY OFTEN at the expense of Intelligent Design. Modern evolutionary theory is hardly "flat-earth" science.
For just a touch of the OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE supporting modern evolutionary theory see my following blogs:
http://www.progressiveu.org/152714-the-cambrian-explosion-part-1
http://www.progressiveu.org/185137-the-cambrian-explosion-part-2
http://www.progressiveu.org/190000-modern-evolutionary-theory-versus-intelligent-design-part-1
http://www.progressiveu.org/190000-modern-evolutionary-theory-versus-intelligent-design-part-2
http://www.progressiveu.org/151101-modern-evolutionary-theory-versus-intelligent-design-part-3
http://www.progressiveu.org/184956-modern-evolutionary-theory-versus-intelligent-design-vestigial-structures-evolutionary-remnants
(4) While science has had a lot of theories put on the "ash heap of history", each one has been replaced by a more accurate one. That is what science does. Everything it says is tentative and could be changed with the advent of new data. When theories are changed they are changed such that they are consistent with all known data. We have been doing formal science long enough now that we many theories with tons of supporting data. Enough that it would be ridiculous to withhold provisional ascent. Modern evolutionary theory is in the forefront of those theories. Furthermore, it should be noted that among those theories that have been put on the "ash heap of history" is creationism.
(5) Modern evolutionary theory is "so hard to shake" because it explains findings in a parsimonious manner, and it makes verifiable predictions ... for instance it says that we will never find a newly discovered dolphin fossil alongside an ichthyosaur fossil even though both animals show remarkable similarities in shape and presumably occupied very similar niches. The reason is that ichthyosaurs lived during dinosaur times and dolphins evolved much more recently. So far that prediction has held true.
Metaphysical ramifications have virtually no bearing on its acceptance within the scientific community. The only people I know who cite such metaphysical ramifications are Christian Fundamentalists. I happen to be an atheist but Modern Evolutionary Theory was far from being the main reason I became an atheist. The main reason is that I took a close look at the bible and decided that the whole God hypothesis makes no sense.
(6) I have read ICONS OF EVOLUTION by Jonathan Wells, and I find it among the most dishonest books ever published. Wells is a self-professed member of Rev. Sun Young Moon's Unification Church and has written that he studied for his PhD (in Developmental Biology) for the express purpose of destroying modern evolutionary theory. He never seems to miss a chance to misrepresent what science actually says.
(7) Anthony Flew was an atheist. He no longer is. But he is not a Christian either. He is a deist. He is 83 years old and no longer tries to defend his decision to convert. He did originally claim that Gerald Schroeder convinced him of the probability of God's existence with his book, THE SCIENCE OF GOD. When it was pointed out to Flew that EVERY OTHER PHYSICIST which has reviewed Schroeder's book claimed it to be utter nonsense, Flew said that he had been impressed that Schroeder had been at MIT and Weismann Institute in Israel and that perhaps he (Flew) had made a fool of himself in taking his word uncritically.
Flew was a well-respected Cambridge philosopher at one time. He is just an old man now. Prior to his conversion to deism I had never heard of him. Now since theists have made such a big deal of his conversion I have tried to read everything I can about his views. His most recent writings have not shown any critical thinking. He is not the philosopher he once was. I feel very sorry for him. I also find the fact that theists are using him in such a dishonest way to be contemptible.
(8) Nobody "will see the empiracally clean work" of ID proponents, because (A) they do not do anything empiracal with respect to ID, and (B) they do not publish in peer-reviewed research concerning ID in scientific journals. If one wanted to be generous one could say that the Broad and Axe paper along with the Behe and Snoke paper claim to support ID, but in reality they don't. Their real attempt is to be critical of Modern Evolutionary Theory, and even there when one looks at what the data really is, one finds it perfectly consistent with Modern Evolutionary Theory.
(9) I can think of no statement more ridiculous than "evolution must be held to the same high standard [as ID]; to date evolution gets a pass on empiricism". Evolutionary theorists publish more peer-reviewed research papers each year than ANY OTHER SCIENTIFIC FIELD. That is thousands every year. To date ID has produced ZERO that support ID. The papers they cite as supporting ID do not. The most that can be said for them is that they criticize Modern Evolutionary Theory. Most of them are not research papers either. The few research papers that have made it through peer-review have NOT even produced data that is in any way inconsistent with Modern Evolutionary Theory.
I find this blog to make unsubstantiated assertion after unsubstantiated assertion. In many cases the real facts are the exact opposite of what the author claims. ID is bogus. It has no evidential support. There is plenty of data that are very difficult to explain using an ID paradigm. While homunculus claims that those supporting Modern Evolutionary Theory are blinded by ideological dogma, the true picture is exactly the opposite. Philip Johnson, the founder of the modern ID movement, has written in his "Wedge Document" that the real purpose of ID is to tear down naturalism as a scientific paradigm and replace it with a biblically based science. William Dembski has said that ID is simply "the logos doctrine of John expressed in terms of information technology" [quoted from memory]. Michael Behe has decried the effects of "materialism" underlying evolutionary theory as a major contributor to the world's problems. As already noted, Jonathan Wells became a scientist for the purpose of destroying Modern Evolutionary Theory at the behest of his religion. And Dembski, Behe, and Wells are among the top "leading lights" in ID.
Judge Jones in the Dover v Kitzmiller trial that went so poorly for ID proably said it best:
"After this searching and careful review of ID as espoused by its proponents as elaborated on in submissions to the Court, and scrutinized over a six week trial, we find that ID is not science and cannot be adjudged a valid, accepted scientific theory as it has failed to publish in peer-reviewed journals, engaged in research and testing, and gain acceptance in the scientific community. ID as noted is grounded in theology not science. Accepting for the sake of argument its proponents', as well as Defendants' argument that to introduce ID to students will encourage critical thinking, it still has utterly no place in a scientific curriculum. Moreover, ID's backers have sought to avoid scientific scrutiny that we have now determined it cannot withstand by advocating that the CONTROVERSY, not ID itself, should be taught in science class. This tactic is at best disingenuous and at worst a canard. The goal of IDM is not to encourage critical thought, but to foment a revolution that would supplant evolutionary theory with ID."
Cheers,
Darwin's Beagle
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Evolution says that we share a common ancestor with a jackass. It does not give us license to act like one.