Evolution v Creationism: A Dead Issue

[Jose Fly]

As someone who spent a lot of time on the evolution v creationism battles over the last 20 years, I've noticed that in the last 5 years or so the issue seems to have largely gone off the radar. In the message boards that are still around (both Christian and secular) it's barely debated, if at all. Websites specifically dedicated to countering creationist talking points such as talkorigins and pandasthumb have gone silent, seemingly because there just isn't much to talk about.

Surveys have shown that younger Americans accept the reality of evolution at pretty much the same rate as the rest of the developed world. Thanks to national focus on science education by organizations like the NCSE, evolution is more widely taught than ever, even in the deep south. The Discovery Institute (the main "intelligent design" organization) stopped advocating for ID creationism to be taught in schools years ago, and they closed their alleged "research arm" last year.

On the science front, creationism remains as it has for over a century....100% scientifically irrelevant.

So for all practical intents and purposes, this debate is over. There isn't any sort of public debate over teaching creationism, nor is there any real debate about whether evolution should be taught. For sure there's still work to do in some parts of the country (mostly the south and interior west) where even though evolution is officially required, teachers don't teach it either because it's "too controversial" or they don't believe it themselves, but big picture-wise, "evolution v creationism" is in about the same state as "spherical v flat earth"....nothing more than something a handful of people argue about on the internet, but outside of that has little to no significance. And even on that front it's kinda dead....most forums where it's openly debated have a very skewed ratio where there's like 10 "evolutionists" for every 1 creationist.

Glad to see it!

[brunumb]

How else can one recognize that something has been designed, other than by examining it and seeing that it looks like it was designed? do you know of another way?

Good question. What does 'designed' look like? The question particularly applies to things we encounter that cannot be directly compared with things we already know have been designed. For example, if we find an object that looks like a clock and we know that clocks were designed, we might confidently conclude that the object was designed. What if we have no precedent for comparison? What criteria do you suggest we then apply to determine if something has been specifically designed or not?

[sp]

[Difflugia]

This is an argument you made:

Creationism offers the same quality of answer as a drunk guy with a lampshade on his head claiming that time-travelling wombats from the future took some viruses back in time with them to create a paradoxical time loop. Except I wasn't that drunk and it wasn't a lampshade, but my underwear.

You describe it as an analogy, but it is your interpretation of what Creationism is, the whole point of even saying it is so that the nature of the conversation can move from discussing a creationist thesis to discussing the analogy, I mean why make such an analogy?

The creationist thesis was provided without evidence (or, more accurately, evidence that doesn't actually apply to the thesis coupled with a bit of unsupported speculation). I pointed that out and extended the analogy to all of creationism. Unfair? Perhaps. Untrue? No. In any case, one way to effectively counter my response would be to present evidence that ERV sequences have a supernatural origin.

I bring these things up because it is deeply rooted in how people argue against theism, creationism, supernatural and so on.

Yes, as it should be. Poor evidence is still poor evidence, no matter how deeply held your faith.

You work to move the discussion away form the original thesis to something else, you perhaps don't even realize your doing it, but why even make an analogy?

The original thesis was that ERVs have a supernatural origin. If the thesis is in a science thread and is poorly evidenced, "your evidence is poor" is an appropriate response and exactly the one you should expect.

what logical part does it play in the discourse other than to lay the foundations for ridiculing the opponents thesis?

A thesis about science is argued on the strength of evidence. If the evidence is poor, but you continue to insist that your thesis is more than speculation, then your argument is ridiculous.

Now you overlooked this point I made:

Well right there is where you err - clearly if it looks designed then we might well be looking at evidence it was designed, if something looks like evidence why not regard it as evidence for what it looks like?

Darwin did this, to him it looked like species had adapted to a huge array of environments and now we take that appearance of adaptation as being evidence of adaptation.

The reason I say this is because you seem to think that regarding something that looks designed as maybe actually being designed, is somehow unjustified, yet it may in fact be evidence of design.

You're making the "possible is probable" leap again. If all we know is that something looks designed, then yes, we have some evidence that it is designed. It is consistent with other explanations as well, though. If we find more and more evidence that natural processes not only can produce the same results, but do when tested, the evidence begins to shift toward a natural explanation. If we fail to produce more evidence that the supernatural is involved or even exists while amassing more natural evidence, then it becomes vanishingly unlikely that the supernatural is involved. It's still possible, but at this point, you're no longer letting the evidence lead you.

Even if we accept Meyer's argument to allow the supernatural into science. all the supernaturalists have so far is, "Hey, that's weird, maybe it's God." Even if we call that science, it's still speculation. At the end of the day, nobody has yet provided any evidence of a supernatural mechanism of any sort, let alone one of the gods the various kinds of creationists would like it to be.

How else can one recognize that something has been designed, other than by examining it and seeing that it looks like it was designed? do you know of another way?

Find independent evidence of a designer, for starters. Maybe if you could produce a blurry video of a strange, bipedal designer or a bag of designer poop, we might have something more to go on.

I can think of a lot of analogies here!

Do any of them involve chasing gambling losses?

[Sherlock Holmes]

To reiterate, it's the combination of ignorance and arrogance about your knowledge and abilities in biology that I find fascinating, such as how even though you don't know basic biology, you still think yourself sufficiently qualified to unilaterally declare that evolution is falsified. I'm not sure what drives you to do that or what's preventing you from seeing why that's a problem, but it's amazing to watch nonetheless.

In the past, when I've seen this sort of thing from a creationist I usually try to illustrate the point by explaining how it's like if I started making grandiose claims about the Bible, but in doing so it's revealed that I don't know who Moses is or that there are both New and Old Testaments. Would you see such a person as sufficiently knowledgeable about the Bible to be able to declare that it's been proven false? No? Well, hopefully you now understand how your assertions about evolutionary biology come across.

Right, you've cried about this already, elsewhere, now please show us all where I claimed to be an expert? or is that a claim that you'd like to retract?

[Sherlock Holmes]

How else can one recognize that something has been designed, other than by examining it and seeing that it looks like it was designed? do you know of another way?

Good question. What does 'designed' look like? The question particularly applies to things we encounter that cannot be directly compared with things we already know have been designed. For example, if we find an object that looks like a clock and we know that clocks were designed, we might confidently conclude that the object was designed. What if we have no precedent for comparison? What criteria do you suggest we then apply to determine if something has been specifically designed or not?

[sp]

That's the challenge that ID strives to explore, it is a legitimate question isn't it? The same kind of question arises in SETI.

The very question you asked "What criteria do you suggest we then apply to determine if something has been specifically designed or not?" is exactly what ID represents to me and why it interests me so much.

As an ID proponent I've asked that identical question and been attacked and ridiculed for asking it.

[Sherlock Holmes]

This is an argument you made:

Creationism offers the same quality of answer as a drunk guy with a lampshade on his head claiming that time-travelling wombats from the future took some viruses back in time with them to create a paradoxical time loop. Except I wasn't that drunk and it wasn't a lampshade, but my underwear.

You describe it as an analogy, but it is your interpretation of what Creationism is, the whole point of even saying it is so that the nature of the conversation can move from discussing a creationist thesis to discussing the analogy, I mean why make such an analogy?

The creationist thesis was provided without evidence (or, more accurately, evidence that doesn't actually apply to the thesis coupled with a bit of unsupported speculation). I pointed that out and extended the analogy to all of creationism. Unfair? Perhaps. Untrue? No. In any case, one way to effectively counter my response would be to present evidence that ERV sequences have a supernatural origin.

I bring these things up because it is deeply rooted in how people argue against theism, creationism, supernatural and so on.

Yes, as it should be. Poor evidence is still poor evidence, no matter how deeply held your faith.

You work to move the discussion away form the original thesis to something else, you perhaps don't even realize your doing it, but why even make an analogy?

The original thesis was that ERVs have a supernatural origin. If the thesis is in a science thread and is poorly evidenced, "your evidence is poor" is an appropriate response and exactly the one you should expect.

what logical part does it play in the discourse other than to lay the foundations for ridiculing the opponents thesis?

A thesis about science is argued on the strength of evidence. If the evidence is poor, but you continue to insist that your thesis is more than speculation, then your argument is ridiculous.

Now you overlooked this point I made:

Well right there is where you err - clearly if it looks designed then we might well be looking at evidence it was designed, if something looks like evidence why not regard it as evidence for what it looks like?

Darwin did this, to him it looked like species had adapted to a huge array of environments and now we take that appearance of adaptation as being evidence of adaptation.

The reason I say this is because you seem to think that regarding something that looks designed as maybe actually being designed, is somehow unjustified, yet it may in fact be evidence of design.

You're making the "possible is probable" leap again. If all we know is that something looks designed, then yes, we have some evidence that it is designed. It is consistent with other explanations as well, though. If we find more and more evidence that natural processes not only can produce the same results, but do when tested, the evidence begins to shift toward a natural explanation. If we fail to produce more evidence that the supernatural is involved or even exists while amassing more natural evidence, then it becomes vanishingly unlikely that the supernatural is involved. It's still possible, but at this point, you're no longer letting the evidence lead you.

Even if we accept Meyer's argument to allow the supernatural into science. all the supernaturalists have so far is, "Hey, that's weird, maybe it's God." Even if we call that science, it's still speculation. At the end of the day, nobody has yet provided any evidence of a supernatural mechanism of any sort, let alone one of the gods the various kinds of creationists would like it to be.

How else can one recognize that something has been designed, other than by examining it and seeing that it looks like it was designed? do you know of another way?

Find independent evidence of a designer, for starters. Maybe if you could produce a blurry video of a strange, bipedal designer or a bag of designer poop, we might have something more to go on.

I can think of a lot of analogies here!

Do any of them involve chasing gambling losses?

You accuse me of making a "leap" and implying that the possibility of something leads to it being probable, I don't think that's true at all, if something seems possible then that's all we can say without any more information.

If something looks designed then yes, of course it might be designed, I never said it was highly likely it was designed. The atheist argues from the assumption that it cannot even be contemplated as design yet has no criteria whatsoever for that biased interpretation.

For the atheist there is a biased way of looking at this, the chosen default position is that nothing in nature was designed, intelligence, creativity (things we know about) were not involved and further information is said to be needed before giving the idea any consideration but nothing is said about the nature of that further information and so whatever further information might be presented can be simply rejected thus defending the biased assumption as if it were some fundamental truth.

I realized this decades ago, I realized that I was doing exactly this when I was an outspoken and articulate atheist and evolution advocate.

Today it is taught that to even suggest that "the biological cell might have been designed" has no place in science and that is not right, it is not honest to teach that, either explicitly or implicitly, to young minds.

Science - as popularly regarded - has become far too rigid in terms of what a person can think and consider, it has become more about conforming to some way of thinking rather than a way to explore and hopefully understand the natural world.

Science - I never thought I'd say this - is becoming just boring, regimented, it should be fun, it should be speculative, it should be encouraging alternative ways of perceiving nature, the over emphasis on the "scientific method" as if that's all there is to science, is a step backwards.

If there is a God and God did design stuff or used creativity to produce some of what we see in nature, then so what? what the hell is all the fuss about? what harm is done? what are all the trumped up, stuffy "science types" worried about? scared of?

[DrNoGods]

[Replying to Sherlock Holmes in post #145]

Today it is taught that to even suggest that "the biological cell might have been designed" has no place in science and that is not right, it is not honest to teach that, either explicitly or implicitly, to young minds.

If there is a God and God did design stuff or used creativity to produce some of what we see in nature, then so what? what the hell is all the fuss about? what harm is done? what are all the trumped up, stuffy "science types" worried about? scared of?

You're missing the point. Science can't consider ID or god-did-it scenarios and not leave the realm of science and enter the realm of religion or baseless speculation. No god beings have been shown to exist yet, so science can't quantify them as agents for anything we observe, measure, etc. Defaulting to a god explanation, or ID, is just a cop out explanation when science has yet to arrive at a naturalistic explanation ... the realm where science operates.

If something appears to have been designed, it may well have been, but such a hypothesis can only remain a hypothesis until a god being or the ID agent can be shown to actually exist. People will probably never stop looking for the god they believe in, scientists included, but until one of these beings can be identified as actually existing there is no point in science invoking them as explanations for nature, or teaching kids that such explanations are in any way part of science.

[Sherlock Holmes]

[Replying to Sherlock Holmes in post #145]

Today it is taught that to even suggest that "the biological cell might have been designed" has no place in science and that is not right, it is not honest to teach that, either explicitly or implicitly, to young minds.

If there is a God and God did design stuff or used creativity to produce some of what we see in nature, then so what? what the hell is all the fuss about? what harm is done? what are all the trumped up, stuffy "science types" worried about? scared of?

You're missing the point. Science can't consider ID or god-did-it scenarios and not leave the realm of science and enter the realm of religion or baseless speculation.

Well that depends on what you understand and teach by the term "science" doesn't it? Why is the question "might this have been designed?" to be discouraged? this is a question about the world around us and science is basically the systematic study of that world. The question is far from "baseless" too! anyone can look at the machinations of a cell and quite reasonably recognize that it "looks like a little factory" or "look at how well all those different components mesh together" what is baseless here?

No god beings have been shown to exist yet, so science can't quantify them as agents for anything we observe, measure, etc. Defaulting to a god explanation, or ID, is just a cop out explanation when science has yet to arrive at a naturalistic explanation ... the realm where science operates.

How do you know? what evidence do you have that "no god beings have been shown to exist"? talk about baseless and speculation! If a biological cell was indeed designed (we don't know, we're asking but don't know) then obviously that could be evidence of a "god being".

You cannot logically argue that the the cell being designed is outside of science (systematic study) because no designer has been shown to exist when the existence of the designer is shown by the fact that the cell was designed!

This is absurd, the very thing that could "show god beings exist" is the very thing you won't consider as possible evidence that "show god beings exist".

If something appears to have been designed, it may well have been, but such a hypothesis can only remain a hypothesis until a god being or the ID agent can be shown to actually exist.

Except that if the only evidence is the designed things then you are trapped, you have setup a barrier of your own making, preventing you from discovery.

You can't (you've prohibited yourself) consider the only thing that is evidence for X, because to regard it as evidence for X, you first need evidence for X!

See? see what happens when you try to replace human thinking with rules? that is what your view of science is, rule following and that (as Godel revealed) always fails to reveal things that are real but undiscoverable by those rules.

People will probably never stop looking for the god they believe in, scientists included, but until one of these beings can be identified as actually existing there is no point in science invoking them as explanations for nature, or teaching kids that such explanations are in any way part of science.

There you go, a better demonstration of the incompleteness theorem has seldom been put into words!

[Jose Fly]

To reiterate, it's the combination of ignorance and arrogance about your knowledge and abilities in biology that I find fascinating, such as how even though you don't know basic biology, you still think yourself sufficiently qualified to unilaterally declare that evolution is falsified. I'm not sure what drives you to do that or what's preventing you from seeing why that's a problem, but it's amazing to watch nonetheless.

In the past, when I've seen this sort of thing from a creationist I usually try to illustrate the point by explaining how it's like if I started making grandiose claims about the Bible, but in doing so it's revealed that I don't know who Moses is or that there are both New and Old Testaments. Would you see such a person as sufficiently knowledgeable about the Bible to be able to declare that it's been proven false? No? Well, hopefully you now understand how your assertions about evolutionary biology come across.

Right, you've cried about this already, elsewhere, now please show us all where I claimed to be an expert? or is that a claim that you'd like to retract?

Pay closer attention to what I wrote, i.e. "you still think yourself sufficiently qualified to unilaterally declare that evolution is falsified"

It took me about 5 minutes to find things like this from you....

"I've studied this in some detail for decades"

"I've studied this in some detail for decades"

"I declare evolution stands falsified, the evidence is inconsistent with empirical expectations"

"The theory stands falsified, this is a fact, it meets the criteria for falsification"

"There are serious difficulties facing several aspects of evolution, you either accept this claim or reject it but I make no apologies for stating what is a fact"

That's quite a lot of hubris from a person who's understanding of biology isn't even at a high school level.

[Sherlock Holmes]

To reiterate, it's the combination of ignorance and arrogance about your knowledge and abilities in biology that I find fascinating, such as how even though you don't know basic biology, you still think yourself sufficiently qualified to unilaterally declare that evolution is falsified. I'm not sure what drives you to do that or what's preventing you from seeing why that's a problem, but it's amazing to watch nonetheless.

In the past, when I've seen this sort of thing from a creationist I usually try to illustrate the point by explaining how it's like if I started making grandiose claims about the Bible, but in doing so it's revealed that I don't know who Moses is or that there are both New and Old Testaments. Would you see such a person as sufficiently knowledgeable about the Bible to be able to declare that it's been proven false? No? Well, hopefully you now understand how your assertions about evolutionary biology come across.

Right, you've cried about this already, elsewhere, now please show us all where I claimed to be an expert? or is that a claim that you'd like to retract?

Pay closer attention to what I wrote, i.e. "you still think yourself sufficiently qualified to unilaterally declare that evolution is falsified"

It took me about 5 minutes to find things like this from you....

"I've studied this in some detail for decades"

"I've studied this in some detail for decades"

"I declare evolution stands falsified, the evidence is inconsistent with empirical expectations"

"The theory stands falsified, this is a fact, it meets the criteria for falsification"

"There are serious difficulties facing several aspects of evolution, you either accept this claim or reject it but I make no apologies for stating what is a fact"

That's quite a lot of hubris from a person who's understanding of biology isn't even at a high school level.

So first you accuse me of "arrogance" then "ignorance" and now "hubris", you seem unable or unwilling to discuss anything with me without resorting to personal slurs.

See I did not ever once in any post say I was an "expert" so you were wrong.

The other things you cite above are true, I stand by those statements, get over it.

[Difflugia]

You accuse me of making a "leap" and implying that the possibility of something leads to it being probable, I don't think that's true at all, if something seems possible then that's all we can say without any more information.

This right here is the equivocation. What does "seems possible" mean? You've been using "possible" to mean "not falsified," which you've emphasized within this thread means that one is not "100% certain" that something cannot be true. Something that's "possible" is "not impossible." It's a binary state, so unless you want to acknowledge that you're changing what "possible" means, there's no such thing as "seems possible."

If something looks designed then yes, of course it might be designed, I never said it was highly likely it was designed.

No, but you want us to think it without you having to say it. All you've got is "possible."

The atheist argues from the assumption that it cannot even be contemplated as design yet has no criteria whatsoever for that biased interpretation.

You've got it backwards. The problem is that, at least by this criterion, the atheists are the ones that aren't biased. You want to lift one speculative, unfalsified, and unfalsifiable hypothesis out of the stack and give it preferential treatment. Sure, an intelligent designer is "possible," but so are Last Thursdayism, leprechauns, and sentient ham sandwiches. As you pointed out, all one can say about any of them is that they're possible. That's where the atheist leaves them. You're the one that wants us to give a wink and a nod to your favorite supernatural possibility and allow it a better spot in line without earning it with a falsifiable hypothesis and experimental evidence. That's what science is and why Stephen Meyer wants it redefined.

Today it is taught that to even suggest that "the biological cell might have been designed" has no place in science and that is not right, it is not honest to teach that, either explicitly or implicitly, to young minds.

Unless you think "leprechauns might be responsible for rainbows" also belongs in science class, you're demonstrating that bias and probably don't even realize it.

I realized this decades ago, I realized that I was doing exactly this when I was an outspoken and articulate atheist and evolution advocate.

And then you managed to fool yourself and never looked back.