Evolution vs. intelligent design
Published Friday, April 29th, 2005 at 12:35 am
Also, it is apparent that many IDers have very little knowledge of evolutionary science as it exists today. Pharyngula points out that Geoff Brumfiel in his article refer to evolutionary biologists as Darwinists. Pharyngula equates this to calling physicist Newtonists. As a physicist I would hate to be called a Newtonists. Science is not stagnant. Evolutionary Biology has improved a lot from the Darwin’s natural selection. Modern evolutionary theory includes the concepts of punctuated equilibria and evolutionary synthesis which add to the evolutionary driving force. They also don’t recognize that evolution is not a forward only process. There is not necessarily a magical driving force leading to the creation human beings in particular. If there was evidence that evolution was driving for the creation of a particular species I too would believe in ID. Rather humans are the result of many billions of failed biological experiments. We evolved the way we did not because of a designer but because we did (This relates to the weak anthropic principle). Evolution is as much working to create new forms of bacteria as it is to create a human. The number of bacterial species is immense and grows everyday. To quote from Stephen Jay Gould’s Planet of the Bacteria:
On any possible, reasonable or fair criterion, bacteria are — and always have been —the dominant forms of life on Earth
With all this talk of skeptics and skepticism feel I should explain myself. Yes, I am a skeptic… I don’t believe in ghosts, witches, or alien abductions. And no, I don’t believe in God. However, I’m not going to criticize anyone for believing in God. You can believe in what you like. If you try to prove to me the existence of God through pseudoscience or logical fallacy I’ll argue against you (if I can) but I feel everyone has to right to believe in anything they want. I believe that life exists on other planets without proof. My world view can accept the existence of extraterrestrial species. If your world view can include the existence of God they I’m happy for you. I ask simply that you be consistence with the facts. There is evidence that the world is over 40,000 years old and if you have an explanation for that (i.e. God made it look that way) then I’m satisfied and you will hear no arguments from me.