Opinon Article: New facts could disprove evolution

Phaze SG

http://www.courierpress.com/news/2007/jul/17/new-facts-could-disprove-evolution/

New facts could disprove evolution

By TOM MCVEETY
Special to the Courier & Press
Tuesday, July 17, 2007

This past May, Ken Ham and his foundation, Answers in Genesis, finished their creation museum in Kentucky. Before the paint could dry, the criticism from the media began. I read the scoffing in various reports and saw the condescending smiles of scientists on the networks later that evening. One of the things that provoked them was that in this museum, dinosaurs exist alongside human beings.

The word for these extinct creatures has changed over time. The word "dinosaur" was coined in the late 1800s. Dinosaurs have been celebrated in sculpture, cave art and pottery of the ancient civilizations of Peru, long before there were textbooks. In Glen Rose, Texas, some have asserted, there are fossilized human footprints alongside ones made by dinosaurs, as they existed together inside a dried-out riverbed.

There were many species that became extinct over the many years of our existence. They died without any asteroid "rebooting" our planet.

We should, as a society, respect the logical opinions of others. When scientists state that evolution is a fact, without giving credibility to other valid data, I believe that is not fair.

We had the privilege of hearing Ham when he was in Evansville a few years ago. Then a little more than a year ago, we again were privileged to hear lectures by former evolutionist and atheist Mike Riddle and astrophysicist Dr. Jason Lisle. These men had compelling information to offer. It is wrong to censor these views from minds that are searching for other theories.

Riddle, a former Microsoft trainer, spoke of the Miller experiment, which produced amino acids inside a test tube. When oxygen was added, the experiment failed. Imagine, this key element to life prohibits any organic molecules from forming.

According to Lisle, laser reflectors left behind on the moon's surface by the Apollo astronauts revealed that our lunar neighbor moves a little over an inch farther away from us each year.

How many billions of years earlier was it scraping our mountaintops?

One of Lisle's associates calculated the amount of emissions given off by the various belts of Jupiter shortly before the Voyager probe visited it in the early '80s. The data returned was in sync with the thousands of years that the mathematics Ph.D. had suggested. The spacecraft had no knowledge of the Bible.

Years ago my science textbook had illustrations suggesting that our sun gave birth to the Earth and other planets, but this was not the apparent case in a section of the Orion nebula known as M22, where "orphan" planets exist, some orbiting each other without any nearby star.

It is not my intent to start an argument or debate; please save your hate mail for someone else. However, as some scientists are brassy enough to skip from theory to fact without all the evidence, it is only fair to make others aware that we do not have all the facts, and that additional exciting information is arriving in our generation data so simple even a cave man can understand it.

Tom McVeety is a resident of Evansville.

Phaze SG

The Bad Astronomer has posted a rebuttal on this website.

http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/07/18/another-passel-of-creationist-lies/

SturmDerSchatten SG

While it is true that evolution is a widely accepted theory, it is not fair that other claims like creationism and Intelligent Design are immediately dismissed as stupid , illogical claims. Some of the arguments can be quite logical and reasonable. Creationists are not as uneducated and irrational as the media would like them to be. I know of an older friend of mine who supports the creationist point of view, and he says “We’re not asking the whole world to immediately believe evolution is a lie or that creationism is the ultimate truth. We just want an equal playing ground, where people will actually listen and not immediately throw us out of the arena.” Hypocrisy within the professional scientific circle, perhaps?

Phaze SG

But they are not immediately dismissed. They are carefully examined and debunked. Creationist/ID claims are not immediately debunked but are carefully criticized.

Creationist/ID proponents use some logical and reasonable ideas, but there is always a fatal flaw in their argument. And I don't mean almost always. I mean always.

The problem is that Creationist/ID is not science. It's religion trying to, often dishonestly, masquerade as science.

I think in Singapore, we have a reasonably good, basic science education (though it's probably not as good at the higher levels). Ask yourself:
1. What is science? What are the key features of the scientific method?
2. How does creationism/ID fail to qualify as a science?
3. Given those failings (if any), how would you tweak creationism/ID method of investigation to make it qualify as a science?

malayatheist SG

There are too many problems with the ID arguments. Firstly, if it is a scientific claim, it sure doesn't add on to our knowledge. In fact, it's making things more difficult. It's already an arduous task explaining complex organisms like animals, plants and ourselves. Using an intelligent designer explanation makes it more complicated because obviously a creator who can create such complexities has to be itself a more highly complex being. How do you continue scientific progress from there? There has to be a simpler but not necessarily easier solution to this question.

Secondly, if ID wants to be taken seriously as a scientific claim. It has to follow the rules of the scientific methodology. I wish I could elaborate more but my understanding of the scientific methods are not as complete as I hope but as always Google is your friend.

Lastly, the creationist/ID movement is fueled by political motives. It has nothing to do with giving children a more all-round education. It's a tool to put God into the classroom by the fundamentalist Christian groups in the US. You can find information regarding the 'wedge' memos through wikipedia.

The Wedge Document outlines a public relations campaign meant to sway the opinion of the public, popular media, charitable funding agencies, and public policy makers. According to critics, the wedge document, more than any other Discovery Institute project, demonstrates the Institute's and intelligent design's political rather than scientific purpose.

The document sets forth the short-term and long-term goals with milestones for the intelligent design movement, with its governing goals stated in the opening paragraph:

* "To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural, and political legacies"
* "To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wedge_strategy

I mean, I'm ok with people believing whatever they want. Hey, I believe I'm great in bed but I definitely won't wanna put it to a scientific test. You can't have your cake and eat it.

Phaze SG

Yeah... we actually covered the wedge strategy in a previous post. hehe. Good stuff.

The actual Wedge strategy paper can be found at
http://www.antievolution.org/features/wedge.html

If you have the time, you may also be interested in reading Judge Jones' decision is Kitzmiller v. Dover Board of Education. This decision is interesting because it was used as a test case. Many 'big guns' were brought to testify at this case including Dr Barbara Forrest, author of "Creationism's Trojan Horse: The Wedge of Intelligent Design" and Michael Behe, author of "Darwin's Black Box" and the man responsible for bringing the idea of irreducible complexity to biochemistry and molecular biology.

The Kitzmiller decision can be found here.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/kitzmiller_v_dover_decision.html

or if you prefer a pdf version that can be printed

http://www.creationismstrojanhorse.com./Dover_Opinion.pdf

It's over 70 pages though so it helps if you have access to a fast laser printer. :p

Dr Forrest's expert report runs 50 pages and can be found here:

http://www2.ncseweb.org/kvd/experts/Forrest_expert_report.pdf

It's a very good read as well.