Inteligent design or evolution?

Question

I personally think that the theory of evolution is pretty sound but understand that there are many people who think that the creation happened just a few thousand years ago. What do you think?

Answer 1

This debate is now so dated on these kinds of forums that the reasoned and explained answer is not even an option anymore. Evolution is a scientific theory. It is backed up by observations using the scientific method, fossil records, logical thinking and reason.

Creationism is a philosophy and a belief. It is irrational and cannot be disproven. This makes it unfit for scientifc scrutiny as a valid theory must put forward tests under which it would fail and then pass those tests to remain valid. By it's own rules it is also completely uselss as it would allow for the world to have been created 10 seconds ago or 10 minutes, or 10,000 years depending on how you felt..... it would also allow it to have been created by me or you in my or your own mind as easily as by god. Indeed we could all be the figments of the imagination of my neighbours pet hamster.

Evolution is also often misunderstood by lazy creationists who seem to think the whole thing is geared towards an inevitable creation of humans as the top dog. When infact in the evolutionary principle we are a fluke and lucky that we are of a favoured branch of the tree from which our bipedal mammals started. It should be noted that we did not evolve from monkeys, or from apes... and nor has any evlutionary theorist ever suggested this... though we are of the same tree... we are of a completely different branch / twig... the trunk of it all being very far down a long and dangerous ladder.

Scientists are not in the business of touting disproved theories and myths... there is no profit and no benefit in this for them. In fact what a scientist would love is to disprove a current theory and replace it with his own.... evolution however has such a great wealth of supporting evidence that this is unlikely to happen, though as with all theories... it is open to modification in the light of new evidence. That is one of the nicer things about rational science... we accept we don't know everything and are open to suggestion.

If the world were to adopt the views of the creationist on a broad scale, it would be a great big step onto a very slippery slope bag to the dark ages... the last religiously imposed void of intelligence to blight the Earth for so long it had a devastating effect on our rate of progress in every single area of sceintifc knowledge and human advancement and well being.

Answer 2

In order to accept the view that the world was created 6000 years ago you have to throw out basic phsyics. Since physics is pretty darn sound you have to look at the other angle, that creationists are wrong, and that the world is older than 6000 years. The dating of the earth is based on physical laws that have been estrablished to a point where it is perverse to deny them. The standard arguments by creationists that carbon dating is flawed (and boy must it be really really really flawed!! By many orders of magnitude!) are just silly. They must, however, be addressed loudly and clearly. The fence sitters must be shown that science is the best way we have of understanding our universe.

The theory of evolution is more than just sound. It is a robust scientific theory. In public, scientists should simply call it the law of evolution. If the creationists/IDers can use Theory in a colloquial fashion to obfuscate the strength of evolutionary theory then science PR should rise to the occasion and just say, "Fine if you wanna play it that way, we'll just say that the colloquial word for 'robust theory' is 'law' or 'fact'".

The debate may be endless, but it must be fought. This country is being overtaken by fundamentalist zealots with an antiscience agenda. Education is suffering and our competetiveness in the global market is suffering as well.

Intelligent Design is also not a scientific theory. No biologist worth his degree believes in this. It has no testable hypothesis and cannot be falsified. It makes no claims that can be tested! This isn't science! It is religion. It is the god-of-the-gaps argument. It is 'we don't know, so god must've done it'. This is anti-science. It is "We don't understand, so just call it God and give up." ID is not a theory, it is not science. Ask the IDers how plausible it was that a Flying Spaghetti monster made humans as they are. When they say "not at all!!" tell them to disprove your theory.

ID proponents are just creationists. The Dover decision proved this beyond a shadow of a doubt and Judge Jones chastised Behe's crowd for lying about the intentions of Intelligent Design.

Answer 3

http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?page=article&id=589

What scientific evidence exactly do you base your thinking that evolution is "sound"? Since there is not even the tiniest shred of scientific observation that supports evolution, that would be none. You basically like the theory and assume it is valid without bothering to investigate. Because, 'lo and behold, it turns out that every single scientific inquiry into the matter proves that it is false. Worse, evolution directly contradicts several proven biological principles without bothering to explain why it should be exempt from these. It's basically in the category of myth.

And why exactly is there any debate between evolution and creationism? If you prove one, you don't in any way negate the other. It is highly probably that God works through science. He did make the world after all. Or, who is to say he didn't make it 5 minutes ago, complete with all laws and everything in place? How could you tell? Probably God created the world and set the principles of Universal Natural Law in motion to go where they will....resulting in us. However, evolution obviously isn't a part of that process. We really don't know what is. The converse is also true. We know evolution is false. But that proves NOTHING about creationsism. There is no "debate" between the two.

Answer 4

A theory can't be called a theory without good hard evidence to support it. If you don't have evidence it's just a guess not a theory. The religious nuts seem to think that theory and guess are the same words. A theory means that it has been tested and proved to work but still does not have enough evidence to proved that it is the only method.

Neither is evolution something that happened millions of years ago. Its happening constantly, right now and we can actually see it. Germs will mutate to become resistant to medicine, animals when moved from their indigenous locations have also been seen to mutate and change to suit their new environments over time.

Answer 5

The evidence for evolution is overwhelming. I find it strange that this theory is picked on so much when many other ones don't have as much evidence to back them up.
Kent Hovind is a good e.g. of a young earth creationist who is brilliant at presenting his side of the argument and making it seem like there is one however any detalied examination of his points will show them as invalid. A common argument against evolutionary theory is that there are no beneficial mutations observed in nature yet a bacterial strain has recently evolved an enzyme which allows it to feed on nylon, a synthetic substance.

I have absolutely no time for young earth creationists who deny that the various radiometric dating procedures are valid and who take the Bible literally.

The idea of teaching creationism alongside evolution is preposterous since the former is not scientific in any way ,shape or form it is blind faith i.e. religion.

Answer 6

Wrong creation did not happen only a few thousand years ago as others have suggested as the proof around us is more than certain. Intelligent design is an accepted thoery in many scientific circles as there is many flaws in evolution. Such animals and plants have genetic flaws in their DNA. The cheetah or leopard (I forget which) has actual dog hair although its in the cat family and the Venus Fly trap has no similiar branch in the plant family. I believe that some form of interception has occured in the evolution as some species has just arisen too quickly whether it be alien or some higher existence.

Answer 7

Evolution was the means by which God created all this life. I know there are fundamentalist Christians who believe that God made the earth and all on it in "six days" ... but that is beyond belief.

The entire Creation Story is precisely that ... a story. Men of the age when the Bible was being written could not conceptualize the science involved ... and the very term "day" was an indistinct term for an "undefined period of time".

Evolution is real and, in my opinion, is how God created Man. Not by snapping his fingers and saying, "here is Man" ... but through a process, called evolution.

"Intelligent Design" is merely how the fundamentalist Christians call "Creationism" ... in an effort to bypass the separation between Church and State. It's balderdash.

Answer 8

Intelligent design only make sense if you are trying to make your religious beliefs work.

If you were to give someone totally unbiased the facts that pertain to evolution and the theories for and against, the majority would plump for darwinian evolution being the only answer.

Other things I find strange about intelligent design theory is that they use funny examples to try and prove their theory. For example they quotethe eye as being too perfecet an organ to ahve evolved by chance. The eye is not a perfect organ by any means and has many inherent flaws, whcih the brain has to compensate for so that what we see makes sense.to .

Answer 9

Evolution, because design in man is lousy.
If a designer would face the challenge of building a decent human body he would design better:
Senses, lots of animals do better than humans and are more tuned.
Knees: present design is very bad lots of problems here connected to weight, alignment, balance.
Veins: lousy design more than 40% of adults develop varical veins, lots of pain, burning sensation and itchiness.
Heart: a decent pump would have a stronger myocardium and a better outer layer, besides more efficient coronary arteries.
Arteries, present stage is lousy too, they have an ugly and growing tendency to generate thrombotic tissue, leading to infarcts on brain, heart, lungs, kidneys and intestines.
So evolution does have the best answer, because a designer would do way better.

Answer 10

All the scientific proof pints to evolution. Carbon dating shows signs of animal and even human life much earlier than just a few thousand years.