More sloppy thinking on origins

This time it's the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that has weighed in with their editorial, "Stick to science in school."...

This time it's the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that has weighed in with their editorial, "Stick to science in school." The title is ironic, as you'll see below. A local talk-radio host read it on the air this morning, and I couldn't stand to let its poor thinking go unanswered.

Their first error is misstating the case on evolution:

The evidence in support of evolution is silent about God. Evolution itself could well be a product of an intelligent design, and the theory may simply explain how God does things. There is certainly nothing in evolutionary theory that shuts out God.

Look, folks, the whole purpose of evolutionary theory is to explain how life could have arisen without a God to guide it! They don't state it in such a bald way every time, of course. Usually it's more like this: "We believe matter and energy and chance over time produced life, and we want to understand how." But if you're not excluding God when you say everything came from matter and energy and chance, then what place are you leaving him?

That's why "the evidence in support of evolution is silent about God;" the scientists running the show have locked God out of their realm of consideration! Read Richard Dawkins' The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design if you doubt it.

The editorial then says,

There are no credible alternative scientific models or theories that can reasonably account for the evidence that has surfaced and that continues to surface in support of evolution. There is evolution and there is religious belief.

Apparently there are only two disciplines of study: science and religion. That's why the editorial says, "Stick to science in school." Let's not teach literature or history or economics or ...

No, they don't believe that any more than you or I do; but are they ignorant of the fact that other disciplines have a voice that must be heard? For example, there is an important philosophical question on this debate:

How is it possible for evolutionary processes to produce a creature that could think true thoughts about evolutionary processes (or anything at all, for that matter)?

This is the intentionality or "aboutness" question. Everyone agrees that physical events are not "about" anything, they just are. A chemical reaction is not "about" the meaning of life, or the interpretation of reality, or anything at all. It simply is; it doesn't think "about" and it doesn't care "about" anything. (See here for a technical discussion.)

If evolutionists are right and we are merely the product of physical events, then it's hard to see how we could be anything more now than an organized bundle of physical events. And if that's the case, how could these physical events (even by becoming organized) have gained the ability to be "about" something else?

So when evolutionists say, "this is what we believe about origins," how can they even say another word without contradicting themselves?

Please, let's not just "stick to science in school". Let's teach people how to think. I'd be glad if the evolutionists were more forthcoming about the assumptions that drive their thinking.

Posted: Thu - December 16, 2004 at 05:23 PM |

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson getCategoryName("<$CategoryUUID$>");

More sloppy thinking on origins

Thinking Christian by Tom Gilson