December 17, 2005

I saw a great documentary episode

It was the last part of the PBS series Evolution. The title was What about God?. In a nutshell, it made it very clear that evolution has nothing to do with how we got here. Evolution explains what has happened since life began on earth. The documentary spent most of it's time on the struggle that Christians have making sense of evolution while keeping faith in God and the Bible.
It was refreshing seeing a biology professor, Keith Miller, who stated he was an Evangelical Christian who knows evolution is fact. Mr. Miller, realizes the facts of evolution are undeniable, yet he still believes there was an Adam and Eve who God made examples of. He acknowledges that Adam and Eve had to have evolved first though, and theorizes that Adam and Eve were the first, or among the first "human beings."
This documentary didn't mock Christians or believers at all. But it did make it clear that "Special Creation" or "ID" is becoming dangerous as exampled by a group of high school kids who went to a board trying to get it implemented in the science program. The board in this instance ruled that Special Creation can not be taught in science class because it can't be defined as science. They said it belonged in Philosophy class.
Again, I would like to see what an ID text book has between the book's cover. I would like to see one testable scientific theory put out by the dishonest IDers.
The one thing that was apparent from the documentary is that anti-evolutionists are scared or ignorant. They either do not want to understand scientific theory or they don't have the capacity in their brain to understand it. It is apparent that anti-evolutionists in almost every case have only spent their time "researching" faulty "scientific" articles that poke holes in evolution, if they have done any "research" at all. Those who read genuine scientific articles with an open mind have to accept evolution as fact, unless they are of below average intelligence. What I find is that Fundies seem to "observe" science with the bible as their reference. If it goes against the bible, it must be wrong.

FAQ about evolution:


http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/faq/index.html

Please note, those who say evolution is only a theory:
Isn't evolution just a theory that remains unproven?
In science, a theory is a rigorously tested statement of general principles that explains observable and recorded aspects of the world. A scientific theory therefore describes a higher level of understanding that ties "facts" together. A scientific theory stands until proven wrong -- it is never proven correct. The Darwinian theory of evolution has withstood the test of time and thousands of scientific experiments; nothing has disproved it since Darwin first proposed it more than 150 years ago. Indeed, many scientific advances, in a range of scientific disciplines including physics, geology, chemistry, and molecular biology, have supported, refined, and expanded evolutionary theory far beyond anything Darwin could have imagined.

4 comments:

  1. Interesting post. Have you checked out this book:

    "Unchosen: The Hidden Lives of Hasidic Rebels"?

    Sounds like something you might be into.

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  2. I agree. Not with everything you wrote, but this makes sense. God created the heavens and the earth, but all livng beings evolve over time, as does society.

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  3. Many scientists believe in God too. I really don't have a problem with people who believe in theistic evolution like yourself.

    ReplyDelete