Contingent evolution: what pushes it? (Introduction)

by dhw, Monday, November 03, 2014, 23:32 (3462 days ago) @ Balance_Maintained

TONY: I haven't dismissed evolution because of how it has been used for atheism. I dismiss it because it isn't very scientific. There is no EVIDENCE of common descent, only speculation of it. There is no EVIDENCE that random chance could create the information needed for the genome to advance, only speculation. Read virtually any article on evolution carefully and you will see lots and lots of terms and phrases that are nothing but speculation presented as fact. That is not science. What Darwin did was speculate, and his speculation appealed to the naturalist at the time. They became intoxicated with the idea that they could explain life, and have been trying to do so for the last 150 years with little more than speculation to back up their claims.-Once more you are generalizing. “Explain life” is not clear. Evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life (atheists plump for abiogenesis), but focuses on how the first forms of life developed into the vast variety we see today. It is based on decades of scientific research, but yes, like all theories including that of the existence of God, its conclusions are speculative because nobody knows the full story. However, it entails a progression (though not smooth - hence the theory of punctuated equilibrium) from simpler to more complex forms, which has been confirmed by the fossil record, unless you are also questioning the dating methods scientists use. Of course you can question all the scientific data we have, just as I can question the validity of ancient texts and your interpretation of them. Nothing is certain, and so we go by consensus, if there is one, and currently there is scientific consensus that some fossils are older than others, and many millions of years older than, for instance, the creationists would have us believe. What David calls the “patterns” fit in nicely with the idea that organisms have inherited basic forms and over time have branched out in all directions. How much of this, if any, was planned and directed by a god or by what atheists prefer to call natural laws is anybody's guess. No, it's not a fact, and gradualism and random mutations are highly dubious elements of the theory, but if a theistic scientist like David believes in common descent, and “the science findings strongly suggest such a mechanism”, I don't know why you can't at least keep an open mind instead of dismissing it. -(More tomorrow!)