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Intelligent Design
vs.
Darwinian Evolution

Summary of Issues, version 1.1, 2002
©2002 T Mander and DeepScience.com

Introduction

Many Darwinian evolutionists claim that any opposing perspective is just a bunch of religious mumbo jumbo. To set the matter straight I've summarised here all the arguments that I think are most relevant to the debate. I hope it won't upset anyone to find out that there is an alternative to the religious mumbo jumbo of atheistic darwinism. This alternative is open to supernatural causality and yet does not depend on even the mention of that wonderful three-letter-word, God, for it's arguments. It isn't a full explanation. There are many books covering individual points on the list. I may expand sections with specific evidence or arguments as time goes by.

General Observations

1. Darwinists use the news media to cast all opponents as n religious dogmatists n preventing learning n inserting religion into secular school
2. All these are attacks against character (ad hominem) but which don't deal with the scientific issues.
3. The fact remains that there are scientific problems with Darwinism that are quite independent of what anybody thinks of the Bible.
4. In addition, the doctrine of Darwinism can be shown to be a philosophical assumption not proved by scientific observation.
5. Intelligent design includes a belief in God, Darwinism includes a belief in materialism. Both are "religious" or philosophical worldviews.
6. Materialism did not found modern science, Theism (the belief in God) did (Pascal, Newton, Farraday, etc)
7. There is a difference between origin science (a type of forensic science which looks into evidence for past events) and operation science (which is observation of current events).

Intelligent Design

1. Entropy (chaos) is increasing - therefore there was a beginning to the universe
2. Time is Limited - only a finite number of moments before this one.
3. Limited Causality - can't have infinite series of causes of "being".
4. The universe had a beginning - three logical possibilities:
   Uncaused (but nothing never causes something)
   Self-caused (but it would have to exist before it existed in order to cause its own existence - which is silly - like pulling yourself into the air by tugging on your shoe laces.)
   Caused by another - the most logical choice
5. Anthropological principle - Earth is so finely balanced to support life that it is practically impossible (as opposed to theoretically impossible) that this would have come about by random chance.
6. Intelligent Design arguments do not rule out religious solutions to the problem of pain and suffering in the world like materialistic Darwinian evolution does.
7. Specified complexity exists in all living things.
   
   • There is no simple life - even a single celled amoeba has the complexity of the city of London and reproduces that complexity in only 20 minutes.
   • Primary information is the chemical structure of something. Eg, cover a school white board with marker ink - the ink has a chemical structure.
   • Secondary information is information that is added on top of and in addition to the chemical structural layer. Eg, write "take out the rubbish please" on the school white board. The ink still has exactly the same chemical structure of ink but that structure now also contains a second level of information. The message carried has nothing to do with the chemical structure - it has its own meaning. Just as books are not just complicated (binding, pages, ink etc) living things are more than just complicated groupings of chemicals. Both these things have specified complexity, not just complexity.
   • There is no natural process which can blindly construct secondary information structures. Only a guided process of construction can do it, ie. Either copying information from one place to another or the presence of an intelligent designer.
   • DNA, the building structure for all living things has a chemical structure and a secondary information structure. If written down, the code for a human being might cover 500,000 pages of text.
   • The presence of a digital watch lying in a field would point to a intelligent designer because of its specified complexity.
   • The simplest form of life is more complicated than a jumbo 747 jet plane.

Darwinian Evolution

Darwinism Defined:

1. Many transitional forms will be found (there are fewer today than in Darwin's day, some forms were found to be fakes)
2. New species will be made (they have not)
3. Purely natural processes (natural selection and random mutation) have created the different species observed today

Common Problems:

1. Incorrect Distinction:
   • There is a difference between micro-evolution, and macro-evolution.
   • Evidence given for evolution is (almost always) evidence of micro-evolution, basically that's small changes within species.
   • Everybody accepts that micro-evolution (commonly known just as "evolution") occurs.
   • Evidence for (micro) evolution is not evidence for macro evolution, darwinian evolution, or big changes from one species to another.
2. Begging the question, avoiding the issue, and materialism
   • "You have a religious bias, why can't you accept the findings of science?"
   • "All events are natural events because supernatural events don't happen."
3. Natural selection works against darwinian evolution, not for it.
4. Random mutation works against darwinian evolution, not for it.
5. Distancing the problem doesn't make it go away "Ok, so life didn't form on earth, it came from outer space."
6. Not understanding the problem "simple life is easy to make."
7. Strawman arguments that also attack character not the issue:
   • "All creationists are biblical literalists"
   • "All creationists believe the universe is 10,000 years old."
   • "All creationists are fundermentalist Christians who don't have proper training in science."
8. Absence of pre-cambrian fossil ancestors. The missing link is still missing.
9. Can't offer a solution to the existence of pain and suffering
10. About 90% of people don't believe in Darwinian evolution
11. It is essentially a religious dogma unsupported by the scientific evidence. As an example, Dr Graeme Finlay in his defense of theistic evolution focuses on HRV insertions to prove common descent and then happily proclaims evolution proved. Common descent, however, even if proved, hardly counts as a proof for a mechanism of how that descent happened.
12. Changes in Finch beak length shows adaptation or micro evolution, it is not proof that humans are the result of a random, purposeless, materialist universe, slowly being accidentally changed from an amoeba.
13. Ultimately Darwinian evolution can't explain:
    • The origin of first life (incredible specified complexity)
    • The origin of species (fundermentally different forms of specified complexity)

Links:

William A. Dembski
Hugh Ross
Access Research Network

Quotes:

From the Supreme Court in the USA: Antonin Scalia, with Chief Justice William Rehnquist in agreement, said this was nonsense. The evidence, said Scalia, was overwhelming that the law’s framers were not trying to impose religion in the classrooms.

“The act’s reference to ‘creation’ is not convincing evidence of religious purpose,” said Scalia, “because the proponents and witnesses repeatedly stressed that the subject can and should be presented without religious content. We have no basis on the record to conclude that creation science need be anything other than a collection of scientific data supporting the theory that life abruptly appeared on Earth.”

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