Religion & Law

What Does the NAS Know About Science?

By John Pieret

Well, that does it!

All these years the vast and overwhelming majority of scientists have thought that evolution was a scientific theory ... you know, one of those things the National Academy of Sciences calls "a comprehensive explanation of an important feature of nature that is supported by many facts gathered over time." Why the NAS has even said that "Evolution stands on an equally solid foundation of observation, experiment, and confirming evidence" as the theory of gravity.

How embarrassing, then, to have to be corrected by William Dembski!

Despite this widespread support of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, Dembski noted that it is a hypothesis. A theory, he said, should both explain what a scientist observes while also gaining support from independent evidence.

"In fact, there is very little evidence for the power of natural selection," Dembski said, adding that the existing evidence concerns small-scale evolutionary changes like the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

According to Dembski, every worldview involves a creation story, a problem, a solution for that problem and an expected culmination. For Christians, this involves a world created by a wise God and marred by the sinfulness of man. As the solution to sin, the Son of God entered the world as Jesus Christ and died for the redemption of man. In the end, Christ will return and the creation will be renewed.

... "If you get your starting points wrong, you can count on everything downstream going amiss as well." As a result, some theistic evolutionists, who believe in God while also supporting Darwin's theory of evolution, hold to an unbiblical theology. For example, some have denied the fall of mankind and argue that man's problem is a selfishness caused by the process of natural selection, Dembski said.

As for Intelligent Design, "It is not creationism," Dembski said. "It's engineering." ID entails research that seeks to discover evidence of design, or engineering, within nature. For example, no human engineer has designed technology that can hold as much information in such a compact way as the DNA found in cells, he said.

Full post as published by Thoughts in a Haystack on February 17, 2009 (boomark / email).