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Evolution is a fact, and it is among the more secure facts known to science.
All that we have seen and tested in 150 years has confirmed the concept
of evolution.
The evidence for evolution and for the Earth being over 4 billion years old
is so overwhelming that only a person with a morally irresponsible disposition
to ignore evidence would not accept it. That is the definition for a
stupid person.
The scientifically savvy philosopher Daniel Dennet pointed out that
evolution counters one of the oldest ideas we have: the idea that it takes
a big fancy smart thing to make a lesser thing. Call it the "trickle down
theory" of creationism. You'll never see a spear making a spear-maker, a
horse-shoe making a blacksmith or a pot making a potter. Darwin's discovery
of a workable process that does that very counter-intuitive thing is what
makes his contribution to human thought so revolutionary, and so loaded with
the power to raise consciousness.
Excerpts from The God Delusion, by Richard Dawkins
- One of the greatest challenges to the human intellect, over the
centuries has been to explain how the complex, improbable
appearance of design in the universe arises.
- The natural temptation is to attribute the appearance of design to
actual design itself. In the case of a man-made artifact such
as a watch, the designer really was an intelligent engineer. It is
tempting to apply the same logic to an eye, a spider or a person.
- The temptation is a false one, because the designer hypothesis
immediately raises the larger problem of who desigmed the designer.
The whole problem we started out with was the problem of
explaining statistical improbability. It is obviously no
solution to postulate something even more improbable. We need a
crane, not a "skyhook", for only a crane can do the business of
working up gradually and plausibly from simplicity to otherwise
improbable complexity.
- The most ingenious and powerful crane so far discovered is Darwinian
evolution by natural selection. Darwin and his successors have
shown hows living creatures with their spectacular statistical
improbability and appearance of design, have evolved by slow,
gradual degrees from simple beginnings. We can now safely say
the the illusion of design in living creatures is just that - an
illusion.
- We don't yet have an equivalent crane for physics. Some kind
of multiverse theory could in principle do for physics the
same explanatory work as Darwinisn does for biology. This kind
of explanation is superficially less satisfying than the biological
version of Darwinism, because it makes heavier demands on luck.
But the anthropic principle entitles us to postilate far more
luck than our limited human intuition is comfortable with.
- We should not give up hope of a better crane arising in physics,
something as powerful as Darwinism is for biology. But even in
the absence of a strongly satisfying crane to match the biological
one, the relatively weak cranes we have at present are when
abetted by the anthropic principle, self-evidently better the
self-defeating shyhook hypothesis of an intelligent designer.
Intelligent design is an assumption without a scientific basis.
For this assumption to be considered a hypothesis, there must be evidence.
Where is the evidence of intelligent design, unless you consider evolution
itself intelligent design.
For a hypothesis to gain credibility, it must be testable.
I do not see how intelligent design can be tested.
For that same hypothesis to become a theory, the testing of it must be
repeatable with the same results each time. It should also be open to all
for meticulous scrutiny.
Intelligent design can not be considered a hypothesis or a theory, but it can
be considered as a nice fairy tale.
The Bible is the only one source of creationism. It merely
provides an assertion of creationism, without any shred of evidence.
The evidence for evolution is found in numerous scientific fields
like archeology, palentology, microbiology, genetics,
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