Gallup, Darwinism, and Scientism
American Thinker,
by
Bruce Walker
Original Article
Posted By: Judy W.,
8/5/2019 8:09:18 AM
Gallup recently announced that forty percent of all Americans believe in creationism. A better storyline to its recent polling data might be that only one in five Americans believes in Darwinism, which was a wobbly theory when first proposed almost two centuries ago and which has become an increasingly improbable explanation for the origin of life and species during the last two hundred years. That would be a better storyline, but it is not the storyline presented by Gallup.
Darwinists are invariably the product of an educational system that has as little to do with free thought as the educational systems of Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union.
Reply 1 - Posted by:
Lawsy0 8/5/2019 8:56:13 AM (No. 143128)
General Science, circa 1959 in the mid south, taught by a football coach: He had us read from our textbooks about the Earth's beginnings. Then he said put your books away and listen to this. ''This'' was his reading to us the story of creation as related in Genesis. He then asked us, ''What is more believable, the textbook or your EYES?
That was back in the days before the government outlawed God, or the Bible or prayer. (Prayer got me through high school, for sure. Didn't know until graduation morning that my extra credit had pulled me over the line.)
1 person likes this.
Reply 2 - Posted by:
franq 8/5/2019 8:56:21 AM (No. 143129)
The time is soon coming when the truth shall be known.
0 people like this.
Reply 3 - Posted by:
Sunhan65 8/5/2019 9:25:13 AM (No. 143166)
I liked the article, and I do find the simplistic assertions of Darwinians tiresome. Most of the people claiming to be Darwinian aren't scientists at all. They are simply people who dislike religion. However, adopting explanations that require no further investigation is also not science.
There is a difference between stating "God created the universe" versus exploring sincerely how the universe came to be, with the possibility of a creator being one avenue of inquiry. The first is a statement of a presupposed truth that requires no further proof. In other words, it is a belief. The second is a scientific inquiry willing to consider all possible pathways to improved knowledge. They are not the same; their motivations are different.
Religion is truth revealed through faith. It does not require proof and is very difficult to falsify. Science is opinion tested by fact. Religious truth need not change over time. Scientific "truth" changes as explanations improve, opinions are tested and falsified, and more facts are assembled.
This does not make religious faith any more or less valuable than scientific inquiry, nor does it preclude scientists from being religious, as the article correctly notes. They serve different purposes. Scientists who "believe" in Darwinism are missing the point. Science isn't about belief. Exponents of Intelligent Design who seek to re-confirm their religious beliefs under the guise of scientific inquiry are also off base. They are looking for God in all the wrong places. And literal Creationists who believe no further explanations are necessary are not teaching science at all. They are teaching a different truth that can be taught in a class called religious studies or taught, believed, and practiced in church and in the lives of its faithful adherents.
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Reply 4 - Posted by:
John Gee 8/5/2019 10:35:47 AM (No. 143232)
The author keeps calling it "Darwinism" instead of the correct term "Evolution." Why is that? Then he claims the theory (Darwinism) is about how life itself began.
No it isn't, Bruce. Evolution describes how species' traits are molded over thousands of generations by selection pressures of all kinds. It does NOT try to say how life began. That's a separate question and you should know that.
Yes, lets debate that question, but let's not conflate it with evolution, which started happening AFTER life began, however that occurred.
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Reply 5 - Posted by:
GO3 8/5/2019 10:48:16 AM (No. 143249)
Agree #7. No matter how one views Darwin, his book and theory had to do with the Origin of Species, not the origin of life. As you said, two different things.
4 people like this.
Reply 6 - Posted by:
HotRod 8/5/2019 11:51:28 AM (No. 143337)
Evolution is the product of mutations. Some mutations are more successful at survival than others.
1 person likes this.
Reply 7 - Posted by:
davew 8/5/2019 12:49:57 PM (No. 143398)
The issue for scientists in the 19th century was to explain the recent discoveries of fossil remains for animals that were extinct in the present time. The central question then and now is whether one believes that all life forms were created at the same time in their present forms or whether what we see today is the result of changes from previous forms that no longer exist. If you accept that things can and have changed from the past then you can always go back incrementally to earlier and earlier time periods to explain each epoch. This is what anthropologists and archaeologists did and they found the evidence for change rather than static creation.
Darwin's insight was to realize that if change was what led to new species it had to be change that made that species more likely to survive in a particular environment. He had no way to know how this might work but he published his observations and data and let history be his judge.
Only with Mendelian genetics at the end of the 19th century and later the discovery of DNA and genetic mutations did science find a way to explain how natural selection might work.
The hard question has become what was the earliest thing(s) that changed to become the new (living) thing. The science of systems and replicative chemistry has discovered some interesting molecular behavior that suggests catalytic reactions between molecules that use free energy from the sun can spontaneously create copies of themselves and that these copied molecules experience changes that make them better than their ancestors at using the energy. We will never have actual evidence of the origin of life but if the process can be replicated using modern technology in the lab it will confirm that this is a natural process and does not require supernatural intervention.
2 people like this.
Reply 8 - Posted by:
Judy W. 8/5/2019 1:04:17 PM (No. 143421)
Darwin was unable to explain the origin of species, though his book had that title. He explained only how variations on existing species came to be, and after all this time his piddling examples like the length of finches' beaks are still the examples that Darwinians use to justify Darwin. To the person above who didn't like the word "Darwinian" -- almost nobody doubts evolution in the sense of changing characteristics within species. Animal breeders do it all the time. It's Darwinian evolution that has been discredited in many ways -- by the knowledge we have now of DNA and the minuscule chance that any useful change would occur within it; by the Cambrian Explosion, in which a huge number of new species and even classes and orders appeared in a very short time, geologically speaking, with no similarity to past life forms; and a lot more. Scientists with mainstream Ph.D.s have written and are writing books about these things which you can read. Michael Behe, Stephen Myers, Jonathan Wells, Michael Denton, and a lot more. See evolutionnews.org.
1 person likes this.
Reply 9 - Posted by:
GO3 8/5/2019 2:38:00 PM (No. 143506)
And Gerald Schroeder, #11.
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Reply 10 - Posted by:
MickTurn 8/5/2019 6:13:09 PM (No. 143649)
I have a simple question...If Humans evolved from Apes, why do we still have Apes?
Because the "THEORY" is total BS.
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Comments:
The author does well in showing that Creationism isn't the only alternative to Darwinism, and that many eminent scientists have concluded that Darwinism is wrong, based on a host of reasons. Holding on to a disproven theory and enforcing it as a dogma is scientism, not science.