Intelligent? Design
Charles Darwin
To my surprise, I have started to see that religious conservatives want to "offer alternatives" to evolution. For some reason, they dislike evolution and when they do that they also show contempt for the science that lead into the development of the theory. What is somewhat encouraging is that, apparently, they have tacitly acknowledged that creationism cannot survive in a well informed world.
Intelligent design is creationism that tries to show itself as science. It is exactly the opposite to science. The word science has a Latin origin that means knowledge. It is knowledge acquired , to describe nature, to improve our living conditions and sometimes to beat our enemies. When Charles Darwin proposed the theory of evolution in his book Origin of Species, he did it based on observations he had made for years. Natural selection is a phenomenon that is seen all the time. Whenever a bacteria develops resistance to an antibiotic, whenever an insect develops resistence to a pesticide or whenever a population of birds changes its color to be more protected from predators we see natural selection. Evolution is just the appearence of new species based on it. Since the species that exist now, are not the same that the ones which existed 5 million years ago, we have to conclude that there has to be a process that leads into the formation of these new species. Natural selection is the strongest candidate. Intelligent design appears in order to contradict evolution, not to describe nature, so it is not science. It is interested, it has an agenda. It implies that a superior (intelligent) being created the complexity of the Universe. It want as to keep gods in our mind in view of the dying creationism.
posted by Doctor Marco at 18:42
10 Comments:
That is the issue. The "engineer" cannot modify the laws he created, otherwise chaos will ensure. If he cannot modify them, then he cannot intervene in our Universe. If he cannot intervene in our Universe, he is so useless that it is exactly the same as not existing.
If someone thinks that the laws of nature equal the "engineer", then he or she is agreeable with Pantheists think (see posting). It would be a nice point to promote understanding between religious people and atheists.
The ones who exclude themselves from evolution are certain religious fundamentalists, used to practices of discriminating people according to what they think
Ray:
Thanks for your comment. Definitely, you believe in ID. As I belief, it is entirely your choice and I respect it. However, the fact is that it is a belief and it is not science. You can believe that there is a supernatural designer, but you cannot prove it. I disagree with people that try to place ID at the level of science when they are totally different things.
Evolution is a theory. It is based on the sciences of biochemistry, genetics, biology and archeology. It is not a belief because there is enough evidence of it to deny it. The theory of evolution says that isolation is key in the process so that different populations can be exposed to different environments, undergo different mutations, avoid recombining genetic material with already changing individuals of their own species and, in the end, form different species. The examples are in Madagascar and Australia. Hundreds of millions of years ago, when they were united to the other continents they had similar species, based on fossil studies. After they separated from the continents, they generated species never seen in the main continents. Natural selection is a process that happens everyday. The question of why a species or group of individuals is the fittest is a function of the relationship with the environment.
Honestly, I find it more difficult to accept that a supernatural being placed the species in the world at different points of time and made them disappear at other points of time.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics, does not contradict evolution. I will write about it in a future post since there seems to be a misconcept about it.
I guess that we have to agree in that there is a process that converted the unicellular organisms that lived billions of years ago into the tigers, monkeys and humans that live now. Evolution is a theory that explains it. Has anyone seen an atom? No. The atomic theory is just a theory. A theory that works very well and explains our environment, as evolution does. You cannot expect to see quarks or atoms. You cannot expect to reproduce millions of years of genetic transformation in a lab. What you see are its consequences and evidence of it, like the examples of Madagascar and Australia or the atomic bomb.
Tokilla: You seem to smart person, so you can make me get to the bottom of it. What makes evolution so bad for a religious person? Why a theory that is beautiful, self-explanatory, advanced and intellectually interesting is rejected in the terms it is rejected by people who believe in gods? I am not refering to the people who is uneducated. I am referring to the people like you, who have education and are able to understand abstract concepts. What makes evolution so wrong?
The example of the flat Earth is probably a not a good one. 1700 years before the end of the middle ages there was a Greek scientist called Eratosthenes who not only demonstrated that the Earth was a sphere, but calculated its diameter. See my posting called "Eratosthenes and the awakening of the mind" from December 9, 2004.
I am glad you have no problem with the theory of evolution. I respect other people's beliefs also. However, the question is still floating...
Why a theory that is beautiful, self-explanatory, advanced and intellectually interesting is rejected by people who believe in gods?
interesting conversation...sometimes I get so tired of this though - arguing about what science means and what the difference between that and belief is, etc. - don't they teach people what science and theory are in school? Why must people twist these definitions, and twist the evidence in front of them, to conform to the beliefs they already have? I cannot say that I am exempt from this; I am sure that sometimes I must see things and fit my analysis of them to conform to beliefs I already have...but still, sometimes human nature is so disappointing to me.
I totally understand you
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