<<Accepting evolution on blind faith is no less foolish than accepting creationism on blind faith.>> I and the rest of the rational world accept evolution because of the mountains of evidence for it. This is the opposite process to blind faith. << By saying that evolution is "it", you close your eyes and put your hands over your ears.>> Only if there was no evidence for the position. The time for debate on evolution passed a hundred years ago. It is obvious to all who choose to examine biology without preconceived notions that evolution is the only explanation for anything which is studied in the field. Saying that accepting any conclusion is equivalent to closed eyes and ears is a dangerous precedent. Must we also allow for the possibility of a flat earth surrounded by sea monsters? Is rejecting that due to the evidence for another position equivalent to closing my eyes and putting my hands over my ears? <<Science is based upon making theories, testing them out, and seeing what parts of the theory work out and which don't. If you follow Kuhn or Imre Lakatos, no theory is ever truly disproven. If you follow Karl Popper, no theory is ever truly proven. >> According to all of these people, particularly Lakatos who addressed this particular problem in depth, the fact that we cannot know something with ONE HUNDRED PERCENT certainty does not preclude it from being true for all practical purposes. Once again, this line of reasoning is not specific to evolution and can be taken to an absurd extreme of rejecting all knowledge. <<There is nothing wrong with a question on creation science that asks questions based on scientific principles. >> "Creation science" is not based on scientific principles. <<The assumption that things exist the way they are solely because of an involved higher power is as perfectly legitimate an original assumption as the idea that things exist the way they are because of chance. >> Since chance mutations are observable in the world today, I'd say that this is a much more legitimate assumption--and in fact is not an "assumption" at all but an empirical fact. --M.W.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.4.0: Sat 12 Feb 2022 12:30:44 AM EST EST