Welcome to the sixth and final part of our series
debunking the creationist article, "Is evolution scientific?"
Brought to you by Creation Ministries International:
No calories, no trans fats, and no truth whatsoever!
Here's the essence of their claim, stated in their opening paragraph:
And what do they do to support this? They say:
And this means, what, exactly? Nothing at all.
This is a mindless, baseless guilt by association
which is exactly what Ben Stein did in his liecumentary, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.
He interviewed a few scientists, including Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, and Eugenie Scott,
all atheists.
Clearly, both CMI and the makers of Expelled are trying to convince you of a fixed association
between evolution and atheism that just isn't there.
In fact, Dr. Kenneth Miller, author of the foremost textbook on evolution,
is a devout, practicing Christian.
Yet, neither source quotes or even mentions Miller
or any of the other dozens of evolutionary scientists who believe in God.
Why not? The editors of Scientific American asked this very question
to Expelled producer Mark Mathis:
[John Rennie, Editor-in-Chief]
The implication--
and it's not just an implication, it's explicitly stated a number of times--
the idea is that, if you accept that eventually, inelectably
it pulls you over to the "No God Allowed" side of things, so I guess--
[Mathis]
Yeah, I think that case is made pretty strongly by PZ Myers, Richard Dawkins...
[Rennie]
Sure, they definitely make that argument. That's actually not what I was--yeah, that's right.
[Steve Mirsky, podcast host]
I did have a question about that:
Why not also include comments from somebody like Ken Miller?
[Mathis]
Uh...
[Mirsky]
Who's famously religious, and an evolutionary biologist.
[Mathis]
I would tell you this, and this is keeping in mind who you're talking to:
this is an associate producer, I don't make decisions about who gets interviewed,
and I don't make decisions about if they're interviewed, what makes it in the film.
[Mirsky]
Mmm-hmm, sure.
[Mathis]
But I would tell you from a personal standpoint as somebody who's worked on this project
that Ken Miller would have confused the film unnecessarily.
I don't agree with Ken Miller, I think that you--
I think that when you look at this issue and this debate,
that really there's one side of the line or the other, and it's hard to--
I don't think you can intellectu--honestly, intellectually
stand on a line that I don't think exists--
[Rennie]
I mean, I think there are obviously plenty of people--
as you mentioned: PZ Myers, Dawkins, and so on--
a lot of them would make exactly that same argument: that somebody like Ken Miller is wrong.
But, I mean, you say he would have, his presence would have "confused the film,"
the point is what, it would actually have, I mean, it would have,
it would have considerably undercut the major point that is made:
that, really that belief in, in evolution obliges you not to believe in God.
[Narrator]
Moreover, both sources are guilty of outright fraud.
When the atheists were interviewed,
they were told that the movie was called "Crossroads: The Intersection of Science and Religion."
That's right--they were misled as to the very subject of the movie!
This is the ONLY reason they were talking about their atheism.
When confronted with this, Mathis claimed
that they had changed the name of the movie after the interviews.
However, according to the Network Solutions WHOIS database,
they had registered the domain ExpelledTheMovie.com in March of 2007--
months before the scientists were interviewed.
They also registered it as a private domain name.
As a result, every word said by the scientists in the movie was a quote mine.
And the CMI page is no different. Not only do they quote-mine different scientists,
they do a very dishonest attempt to associate atheism with Darwin.
They don't quote Darwin making atheistic statements--because he didn't make any.
T.H. Huxley was a colleague and friend of Darwin,
who earned the reputation of being "Darwin's bulldog,"
since he aggressively defended Darwin's theory from the assaults by the religious.
So, is it T.H. Huxley that they quote?
No--they quote his grandson, Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World.
They try to pin this on Darwin by quoting, not Darwin himself,
but the grandson of a friend of Darwin.
Give me a break!
They then try the old creationist canard of painting evolution as a religion.
To do this, they quote the Dictionary.com definition of religion:
But guess what? They quote-mined the dictionary!
Here's what it REALLY says:
1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe,
esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies,
usually involving devotional and ritual observances,
and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.
That's VERY different from what they quoted. As for the second definition:
2. a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon
by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.
The addition of the word "sects" and the two examples
likewise make the definition different from what CMI quoted.
How pathetic is your position when you have to quote-mine the dictionary?
So, does evolution have presuppositions?
Remember that CMI got these criteria from
the National Research Council's National Science Education Standards,
so the relevant information is the paragraph CMI got this criterion from:
The only one of these that they even TRIED to associate with evolution is "personal beliefs,"
but that fails because of the mere presence of Christian evolutionists.
Understand the difference here: young-Earth Creationists (like those at CMI)
believe that the universe is 6,000 years old because of presuppositions:
it's based on a myth published in a book
which their personal beliefs tell them is inspired by a mystical deity,
and they base the conclusion on the authority of the literal text.
The conclusion of evolution that life is billions of years old
does NOT come from any of these things, however,
despite the fact that creationists commonly claim this.
It comes from EVIDENCE. And that evidence stems from observations in geology,
paleontology, chemistry, nuclear physics, and many other independent branches of science,
all of which point to the same conclusion
without ANY collusion or agreement between the scientists in these different fields.
And the same is true for every other finding of evolution.
Evolution is based on observation, deduction, and multiple independent lines of investigation.
It therefore does not in any way violate the requirement as set down by the NSES.
So, is evolution free of suppositions? Check.
In their conclusion, they write the word "fail" alongside each criterion,
but the real fail--the major, epic fail--is theirs and theirs alone.
They conclude:
As we've seen in all six parts of this series, that just is not true.
As we saw, for all six criteria, it was check, check, check, check, check, check.
It's creationism that doesn't do this.
Both creationism and its preacher-in-a-lab-coat version, Intelligent Design, fail all six criteria.
They are contradicted by the observational evidence in numerous fields of science.
They make no accurate predictions whatsoever.
The logic breaks down to the point of being inconsistent with gravity, as cdk007 showed in this series.
They respond to criticism with insults and platitudes, they commit frauds and hoaxes,
and use lies and quote-mines often and with great relish,
and it's all based on their own religious beliefs and their presuppositions
about the literal truth of the Bible, or the Koran, or whatever their religious text is.
Evolution is WIN. Creationism is EPIC FAIL.
