How insidious! Why can’t they just pick a dogmatic position and stick to it no matter what the evidence says? Isn’t that what science is about?

“It should not, after all, be surprising if people who believe that all truth comes from an ancient text disagree with Darwin, whose ideas are in no ancient text. Rather than bemoaning the fact that fundamentalists disagree with Darwin, let’s ask a much more interesting and disturbing question: Why do so many non-fundamentalist theologians and religious leaders have no trouble incorporating Darwin into their worldview?”

It’s a matter of choice; some merely believe it, but fail to carefully examine design, synergy, order, organization, esthetic manifestations …

But in many cases, I feel it’s political. Here’s a parallel, at least in the way that I see it.

Many support the Iraq war, from inception to its present state of affairs, not because they believe in it, but in deference to those responsible for it, and out of a desire not to denigrate those individuals.

Many support evolution for the same reason. Let us not, therefore, use that as an argument if favor of TOE.

I have a friend who is a Ph.D. in biology, is Islamic, and supports evolution. He also believes the Genesis account of six literal creation days. When asked how you reconcile the two, he states that evolution is “scientific fact”, but then states that by faith, he believes in the latter. He then smiles and shrugs.

It can be impirically shown, I believe, that many accept evolution for political reasons, rather than on its merits, or based on a personal belief.

“Natural selection is not some desperate last resort of a theory. It is an idea whose plausibility and power hits you between the eyes with a stunning force, once you understand it in all its elegant simplicity.”

He sums it up beautifully; … “in all its elegant simplicity” underscores what I think we all know, that NS+RS=UCD is an overly simplistic explanation for biologic complexity. Diversity within the species, yes. Survival under varying conditions, sometimes. But upward complexity? I think you know the answer.

Stuart A. Kauffman wrote: “To state that a given organ is so improbable that it requires design is just ill founded. The argument uses standard probability, which does not apply to the evolution of the biosphere.”

That’s pretty much a standard TEO position, that logic and probability don’t apply here, that given a few billion years, anything can (and did) happen. Rather than the time worn phrase oft times attributed to anyone that disagrees with them, ‘goddidit’, we now have ‘evolutiondidit’. See any similarity?

Linda Randall states: “We don’t have an intelligent designer (ID), we have a bungling consistent evolver (BCE). Or maybe an adaptive changer (AC). In fact, what we have in the most economical interpretation is, of course, evolution.”

Economical, perhaps, but valid? Simplistic is a better descriptor. If you believe that Occam’s Razor establishes anything as valid, it does fit. The problem is, however, that simplicity does not equate with truth. Genetic variability is a fact. It gives us diversity within species, and some measure of adaptability. But to believe that that mechanism builds functional biologic entities from nothing is an argumentum ad ignorantiam.

Scott D. Sampson wraps up the page with, “Rather than removing meaning from life, an evolutionary perspective can and should fill us with a sense of wonder at the rich sequence of natural systems that gave us birth and continues to sustain us.”

I think it’s obvious that evolution is a tool, placed there by our creator as an adjunct, and a clever one at that. Without it we’d probably all look alike (within species), and may not have survived to get to this point. Let’s face it: The embryo is the production line of life, and genetic variability a mechanism with several important functions. Scott is partially right, there is wonder in our universe, but let us not be too quick to rule out that which we cannot define.

Don’t count on it. Darwinism has a history of reinventing itself to mirror the data. The zealots will simply incorporate the data to fit their dogmatic view, and claim that there must be some naturalistic explanation for ID. (one might say this is already happening…[i.e. Matzke])

C.S. Lewis’s Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument From Reason

Yes, it is very ridiculuos when materialists talk about objective truth. According to them truth is a subjective term and has no universal reference. They’re using a reference point which does not exist at first place. If consiousness is a product of evolution then how can it be trusted? According to them consiousness is here only because of its selective advantage not because of its perfection. Consequently, the materialistic consiousness and its philosophical inference can never be verified for its truth. A snake that swallows its own tale.

But even more risible than that is his reason why consciousness has survival benefit: that it allows us to disbelieve Darwinism! Of course, consciousness is what allows us to believe anything at all. Now, what makes him think that his belief in Darwinism is rational and objectively true? Is it that the Darwinian mechanism built our conscious minds for the ability to weigh abstract facts, and arrive at objective truth, because knowing objective truth has survival benefit? Well, it can’t be that, because he has already argued that consciousness was selected for causing us to believe a falsehood. Besides, it’s meaningless to say that the material Darwinian mechanism has access to an abstract standard of objective truth. Humphrey’s whole spiele is a morass of post-modernist nonsense.

And then, throughout the introduction and many of the other entries, even as various pointy heads (particularly Humphrey) contribute to the deconstruction reason and objective truth, they complain that people are rejecting reason and objective truth. If so, who’s fault is that, geniuses? These morons were made for each other.

In seriousness, I expect he is referring to Bayesian statistics. Dr. Dembski wrote about this in the following paper:

http://www.designinference.com....._Bayes.pdf

Any kind of non-standard probability that makes Darwinian mechanisms probable.