December 19, 2005

Buchanan on Darwinism

Pat Buchanan has an excellent opinion piece out today on the merits (or demerits) of Darwinism.

Clearly, a continued belief in the absolute truth of Darwinist evolution is but an act of faith that fulfills a psychological need of folks who have rejected God. That picture on the wall of the science class of apes on four legs, then apes on two legs, then homo erectus walking upright is as much an expression of faith as the picture of Adam and Eve and the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

Hence, if religion cannot prove its claim and Darwinists can't prove their claims, we must fall back upon reason, which some of us believe is God's gift to mankind.

Yeah...what he said. Read the entire thing.

And...now...I wait for the comments to come. heh

Comments:

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First of all, no one is an absolutist when it comes to evolution. The scientific theory is under constant empirical scrutiny to determine its validity. That's the nature of science.

Creation by God as explained a couple of times in Genesis is a belief based on faith. This is by its nature untestable by human means.

Why is this so hard to understand? The misunderstanding is the flaw in Buchanan's construct. He makes the wrong initial assumptions.

Besides isn't it clear to everyone by now that evolution is not an explanation for creation itself.

Posted by: Blake at December 19, 2005 01:54 PM

Sorry that last post was by Scott.

Posted by: Scott at December 19, 2005 01:56 PM

"This is by its nature untestable by human means."

So is the creation of life in a lab. The point is that both require faith that can't be proven scientifically.

Posted by: at December 19, 2005 01:57 PM

I didn't know life could be created in a lab. For instance?

Posted by: Scott at December 19, 2005 02:15 PM

Any discussion about the "faith" aspect of evolution should be joined by the following essay from Stephen Jay Gould- "Evolution as Fact and Theory"- http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_fact-and-theory.html

The relevant part-

"In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect fact"—part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus creationists can (and do) argue: evolution is "only" a theory, and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory. If evolution is less than a fact, and scientists can't even make up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope was campaign rhetoric): "Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science—that is, not believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was."

Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from apelike ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be discovered.

Moreover, "fact" does not mean "absolute certainty." The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science, "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms."

Posted by: Tman at December 19, 2005 03:29 PM

what i think is funny, if you look at what they evolutionists belive (on a large time scale) and the creation story, they phases of the development of the earth match up fairly closly.

Posted by: cube at December 19, 2005 07:17 PM

Um, Cube,

Could you give an example? It is my understanding that creationism and evolution could not be more opposite. One is a mixture of theories to explain facts using hard data, the other is a fairy tale.

One uses fossils and genetic evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that organisms evolved from point a to point b. The other says God did it, then didn't like it so he flooded the place except for a boat in which he neglected to include dinosaurs (they didn't fit perhaps?) and then did it again.

Please correct me where I'm wrong.

Posted by: Tman at December 19, 2005 07:40 PM