Re: Neither Intelligent nor Designed

Actually, I do hold those sciences to a higher standard. I don't claim that physical reality is precisely understood by chemistry, for example. The only claim I make is that we have a model, based on observation, which does an excellent job of predicting chemical behavior.

But you are incorrect that these are based on "circumstantial evidence". In chemistry, what we have a lot of observation about the way atoms and molecules behave, and when you dive right into it, patterns are found and described, but it's simply regurgitating what has been observed, finding the pattern, finding everything that falls within that pattern, then testing it to see if the pattern holds, and then voila, we have established fact that has been tested and confirmed. The patterns give way to predictions, and then the predictions are tested, and then those tests provide more observation, which is then the basis for our knowledge about the behavior of matter.

It's actual observation that's the key here.

Likewise, in physics, we have, well, we have layers. Newtonian physics is simply a model based on observation. It doesn't explain why or how, it merely describes the pattern or the relationship, and it does so based on observation.

But when either makes a prediction, it is really only predicting what's already been observed. Chemistry makes predictions about chemistry. Newtonian physics makes predictions about the various forces or interactions of matter that were observed and modeled in the first place.

Things get weird when we get into subatomic phenomena, and so I have my doubts about the Standard Model, precisely because predictions made (say, Higgs boson) have not proven out (yet?). Further, theorists make assumptions (like, say, gravity is a wave that travels at the speed of light) and then generate tests that depend on those assumptions which then turn around and "prove" that gravity travels at the speed of light. Kids these days...

I can also make arguments against astronomy and cosmology, precisely because they tend to deviate away from what they observe and into guesses outside the scope of their ability to make observations. (These are, however, topics for another time and place.)

Darwin, on the other hand, made some observations, saw some similarities, drew some conclusions, and, instead of limiting his predictions to what he saw (that any given genome or species or whatever has a lot of flexibility in terms of what gets expressed, and that the genome is influenced by the environment through sexual transmission of successful traits and death of the unsuccessful ones, relative to the environment), made the inductive leap that all life eventually came about through natural selection.

The problem here is that Darwin's understanding of life at the time he made this theory was drastically less than what we know today. Cells were unknown. Bacteria were unknown. Cellular structure and function was unknown. And as we've learned things, Darwinists have tried (unsuccessfully, as far as I'm concerned) to make what's been found fit in with the theory of evolution.

And yet, despite never having observed any of this, he nevertheless made predictions (that all life evolved through gradual changes) without ever having observed the full scope of what he was predicting or having the potential to do so. And as we've learned various things about the makeup of life, we've come across things like cells, DNA, ribosomes, mitochondria.... And there is, as yet, no good, provable explanation for how these things came about to create life. I mean, evolutionists have stripped any idea of non-physical causation from the creation of life. Therefore, we have to work entirely from physics and chemistry in order to explain biology, and that is a very tall order.

So... How did the cell wall come into being? How did DNA form? How did the cell learn to divide? How did cells learn to cooperate to become multicellular organisms? How did cells learn to specialize? How did the system for DNA replication spontaneously come into being? Etc., etc., etc. Dozens, hundreds, thousands of questions that go unanswered. All these unanswered questions form the foundation for a system of belief that life came about in some completely random, lucky (for us), mechanical manner, because evolutionists have certainly never shown how any of this could occur. I'm not saying it can't ever be shown; I'm simply saying that it's so far from proven that it's possible for life to spontaneously occur (for the sake of argument, you can pretend the early Earth environment was anything you want -- now, with that assumption, make life happen) that it's (almost) no better to say "random activity did it" than it is to say "Jesus did it". At least the "random activity did it" could be tested, but despite how much we already know about cellular operation, we still haven't come anywhere close to synthesizing life from non-living matter -- any non-living matter, any initial starting configuration you want, get a living cell to form. Just start there, and we'll at least have a basis for the evolutionary "nothing but matter" claim.

Lacking that makes evolution as a theory more religious than scientific, because it's based on belief about unobserved phenomena (that the first cell or cells spontaneously self-assembled and eventually went on to become life as we know it), rather than a sound understanding of observed, observable phenomena. I would turn around and embrace evolution as fact in a heartbeat if evolution could answer all of these questions, but it does not yet have the ability to do so, and there is no guarantee that it ever will. I'm done with someone else's belief systems, no matter how "scientific" they may claim to be. If you want me to accept it as scientific fact, show me the proof.