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Evolution is a Religion
The conflict between creationism and evolutionism is a struggle between two religions, not a scientific dispute.
Date: 6/27/2005 3:09:45 PM ( 19 y ) ... viewed 2612 times Quotes By Leading Evolutionists
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** We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. (R. Lewontin, biologist, ‘Billions and Billions of Demons,’ New York Review, January 9, 1997) **
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Most people think that ‘science’ follows the evidence wherever it leads. But it is impossible to avoid letting our world view color our interpretation of the facts. Creationists are honest about the philosophical basis behind their interpretation, whereas naturalists often pretend that they don’t operate from any philosophical bias. The late atheist Stephen Jay Gould, unlike many of his peers, was candid about this bias:
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**Our ways of learning about the world are strongly influenced by the social preconceptions and biased modes of thinking that each scientist must apply to any problem. The stereotype of a fully rational and objective ‘scientific method,’ with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable) robots is self-serving mythology. (S.J. Gould, Natural History 103 (2):14, 1994.) **
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The philosopher of science David Hull had earlier noted:
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**… science is not as empirical as many scientists seem to think it is. Unobserved and even unobservable entities play an important part in it. Science is not just the making of observations: it is the making of inferences on the basis of observations within the framework of a theory. (D. Hull, ‘The Effect of Essentialism on Taxonomy — Two Thousand Years of Stasis (II),’ British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 16 (61):1–18, 1965)**
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Dr. Scott Todd, an immunologist at Kansas State University, was candid about how certain conclusions would be avoided at all costs, regardless of the evidence:
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Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic. (S.C. Todd, correspondence to Nature 410 (6752):423, September 30, 1999) **
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It is vitally important that words such as ‘evolution’ be used accurately and consistently. The theory of ‘evolution’ that the evolutionists are really promoting, and which creationists oppose, is the idea that particles turned into people over time, without any need for an intelligent designer. The evolutionist Kerkut accurately defined this ‘general theory of evolution’ (GTE) as:
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**‘the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form.’ He continued: ‘The evidence which supports this is not sufficiently strong to allow us to consider it as anything more than a working hypothesis.’ (G.A. Kerkut, Implications of Evolution (Oxford, UK: Pergamon, 1960), p. 157) **
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However, many evolutionary propagandists are guilty of the deceitful practice of equivocation , that is, switching the meaning of a single word (evolution) part way through an argument. A common tactic, ‘bait-and-switch,’ is simply to produce examples of change over time, call this ‘evolution,’ then imply that the GTE is thereby proven or even essential, and creation disproved.
‘Information theory,’ as it is called, is a whole new branch of science that has effectively destroyed the last underpinnings of evolution — explained fully in the monumental work In the Beginning Was Information by Dr Werner Gitt, professor and head of the Department of Information Technology at the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology. The second episode of the PBS Evolution series, titled ‘Great Transformations,’ faced this problem when it tried to prove the ‘big picture’ of evolution, i.e., the ‘general theory of evolution.’ Of course, it could offer no experimental evidence, only inference. Its only experimental ‘evidence’ for ‘evolution’ was a bunch of examples of biological change that don’t increase information content, and so actually these examples have nothing to do with the ‘big picture.’
The PBS program did make a revealing comment about the real nature of the ‘evidence’ for evolution: ‘The evidence for evolution is all around us, if we choose to look for it.’ The comment is revealing, not because the evidence really supports evolution, but because the narrator inadvertently makes an important point. That is, creationists and evolutionists have the same evidence (facts), but we interpret it differently because of our different axioms (starting assumptions).
The PBS narrator blindly asserts that all living organisms come from a single source and that we can now trace branches and roots. Yet the series utterly fails to explain one of the most vexing problems with evolution: how non-living chemicals could form a living cell by time and chance, despite the insuperable chemical hurdles. (see C.B. Thaxton, W.L. Bradley, and R.L. Olsen, The Mystery of Life’s Origin (New York, NY: Philosophical Library Inc., 1984).
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**There are open questions and controversies, and the fights can be fierce. Just a few of them: The origin of life. There is no consensus at all here — lots of theories, little science. That’s one of the reasons we didn’t cover it in the (PBS) series. The evidence wasn’t very good. (discuss.washingtonpost.co...92601.htm, last downloaded September 1, 2002 ) **
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Evolutionists gloss over their complete lack of evidence for so-called ‘macroevolution.’ Their supposed ‘evidence’ doesn’t speak for itself; it must be interpreted . As John Rennie admitted in Scientific American , this evidence is interpreted within a materialistic framework. Ironically, materialists turn around and proclaim evolution as a major evidence for materialism, even though their materialistic framework was responsible for this viewpoint in the first place! Circular reasoning at its finest.
One of the most absurd, self-serving criteria that evolutionists give for a good scientific theory is that most published scientists accept the theory as valid. There is clear proof of censorship by Scientific American , Science, and Australasian Science , where they have even denied creationists the normal courtesy of the right of reply. So why would scientists bother to waste their time? They know that their papers will be rejected, no matter how good the research, which explains why creationist scientists have, years ago, commenced their own peer-reviewed journals. Scientific American acknowledges the credentials of some creationists, but not the fanatical censorship that they face.
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**Some anti-evolution authors have published papers in serious journals. Those papers, however, rarely attack evolution directly or advance creationist arguments; at best, they identify certain evolutionary problems as unsolved and difficult (which no one disputes). **
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Another quote from Scientific American:
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**Evolutionary biologists passionately debate diverse topics: how speciation happens, the rates of evolutionary change, the ancestral relationships of birds and dinosaurs, whether Neandertals were a species apart from modern humans, and much more. These disputes are like those found in all other branches of science. Acceptance of evolution as a factual occurrence and a guiding principle is nonetheless universal in biology. [ SA 81] **
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Modern evolutionary theory is all about providing a plausible mechanism for explaining life’s complexity without God. If the disputes undermine all the favored mechanisms for evolution, then the whole materialist apologetic crumbles. When the supporters of various evolutionary camps score mortal blows against the mechanisms proposed by their rival camps, it’s perfectly reasonable for creationists to point this out.
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**In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to bend their observations to fit in with it. (H. S. Lipson, professor of physics, University of Manchester, UK)**
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**Belief in the theory of evolution is exactly parallel to belief in special creation-- both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof. (L. Harrison Matthews, FRS, Introduction to Darwin's The Origin of Species) **
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**Facts do not speak for themselves; they are read in the light of theory. Creative thought, in science as much as in the arts, is the motor of changing opinion. Science is a quintessentially human activity, not a mechanized, robot-like accumulation of objective information, leading by laws of logic to inescapable interpretation. (Stephen Jay Gould)**
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