Doubting Didymus

Again, who should it compel?

Charles Darwin

Well this could get complicated. Let me try to keep it simple. First, creationism and ID are not the same thing. There is no question that ID is asking a scientific question and using scientific means to get at the answer. You may disagree with their results, and you may claim that they fail to prove the case that there is intelligent design. But the idea/theory does not make religious claims as, say, evolution does.

Is creationism a scientific theory? That's more difficult. As I've said, science can be used to show that it is superfluous (that is; that evolution is compelling). But it should be obvious that science cannot be used to test the idea in the sense of any particular finding falsifying the idea, for the simple reason that God is sovereign. Imagine looking at the latest sports car, and deducing that it couldn't have been designed or created by an auto firm because they'd never use such an awkward body design. Obviously, the engineers and designers have a certain amount of autonomy and cannot be modeled like natural laws. But beware of opponents who claim that creationism is a science stopper. The idea that God created the world has never been cause to stop investigating it.

lpetrich

Charles Darwin:
Let's see, evolution claims that the most complex things we know of arose all by themselves. They have no actual details showing how this happened.

CD, this is natural selection, not evolution -- there are mechanisms other than natural selection that can drive evolution.

Like design by invisible elves. Or Lamarckian inheritance. Or orthogenesis. Or ...

However, natural selection does have some things going for it that poofing does not. Natural selection has been observed in abundance, to the point that many creationists now brag about how much "microevolution" they accept. However, new species being poofed into existence is no something that has often been observed -- if at all.

The DNA code and echolocation are supposed to have arisen by themselves. How? Well, we don't know, but it is a fact.

If we don't really know, then "goddidit" cannot reasonably be considered to be established.

Charles Darwin

Creationists (at least this one) do not assert that they must be functionless to be vestigial; creationists assert that the argument fails.

By what virtue are vestigial structures particularly good evidence for evolution? Would you agree that evolutionists do say that vestigial structures have undergone a reduction in function, of some sort? And that it is by virtue of this reduced function that they serve as evidence?

Assuming you agree; but then what happens when a perfectly good funtion is indeed discovered? An insect wing becomes a highly advanced gyro, the ostrich wing is a balancer, other designs are supposed to have become vestigial and then evolved to provide all sorts of functions. What happens is that the design *continues* to be considered to be vestigial and as good evidence for evolution. So reduced function or lack of function is, in fact, *not* required for the structure to serve as evidence. By what virtue does the structure served as evidence? It is by the presupposition that evolution is true, and that therefore the design must have evolved from that of some cousin species, and since it must have evolved, it is evidence for evolution. But of course, this is circular.

lpetrich

Duvenoy:
Echolocation is an excellent means of navigating and finding food. Even the aye-aye�s rather crude method of bug-snagging serves it very well. And yet, extremely efficient echolocators such as pilot whales kill themselves yearly, stranded on a beach. I think, that if echolocation was evolved, it is pretty much the same sort of patchwork common among species. If created, the gods must be mad.

Charles Darwin:
So in other words, though the idea of such complexity arising all by itself is ludicrous,

Why do you keep on laughing at the idea of natural selection rather than trying to understand it?

you accept it because its implementation in nature doesn't fit your view of how God should create.

As opposed to espousing Panglossianism, the doctrine that this is the best of all possible worlds.

Charles Darwin

Good points. You might also add that this is hardly an example that requires evolution, in the way that, for example, the giraffe's laryngeal nerve claim does. If the giraffe's nerve derives from fish, then evolution is true, end of story. If the cave fish's vision system rudiments derive from fish with functional vision, then there is no need for macroevolution. That is, it is perfectly understandable if some fish migrated to a dark environment, and then mutations disabling the vision system became fixed in the population.

lpetrich

Charles Darwin:
Well, of course, anything is possible once one has swallowed evolution.

As opposed to anything being possible because "goddidit".

(Pax6 and deep homology...) If you're going to claim it as evidence for evolution, then you need to reckon with the problems it brings with it.

Like what problems?

You say maybe some simple "eyespots" were there. Yeah, like I said, anything is possible once the door has been open to unfounded speculation.

Except that there are lots of animals with simple eyespots. Why not study various eye architectures some time?

lpetrich

LP:
Why aren't you demanding that creationists work out the mechanism of the poofs that new species appear in? And why some features were selected and not others for the organisms poofed into existence?

Charles Darwin:
I am not claiming creationism is a scientific fact (or theory for that matter).

Is that why you lower your standards for creationism?

It is true that an empty safe tells you a theft occurred, even if you don't know the how's, or when's about the theft. Likewise, though the species certainly don't appear to have evolved, this doesn't give us knowledge of the how's or when's of their origin.

What counts as "appearance of having evolved"?

And that empty-safe analogy is more confirmation of lowered standards for creationism, because according to the empty-safe criterion of inference, evolution wins VERY big.

lpetrich

Charles Darwin:
Imagine looking at the latest sports car, and deducing that it couldn't have been designed or created by an auto firm because they'd never use such an awkward body design.

In this case, there is direct evidence that certain usually-good designers had designed that car; in such a case, one is forced to think "why did they come up with such a harebrained design?" One does not force oneself to come up with some contrived Panglossian hypothesis that this is some excellent design.

And the same with the Earth's biota. Isn't it better to accept that if its major features were designed, then the designers had been fallible?

lpetrich

So CD accepts that evolution happens as long as it is "microevolution"?