: Has anyone read William Dembski's "Mere Creation?" That book alone has caused me to reject Darwinian naturalism.Perhaps, Jim, you might consider expanding your reading material. Dr. Richard Dawkins and Dr. Stephen Jay Gould have each written several remarkable, eloquent, and easily accessable books on the subject of evolution, and I highly recommend anything written by either author. The theory, at its core, simply says (1)that we are not exactly the same as our parents, and our children will not be exactly the same as us; (I consider this indisputable.) and (2) that some of the differences between people are advantageous to survival and reproduction, while others are not (I also consider this indisputable). Therefore, the theory predicts that animals and plants that have advantageous differences will tend to have more offspring than those that have disadvantageous differences. That seems pretty logical to me. Through time, as more of these unique differences appear, (for whatever reason,) descendant populations will tend to look less and less like ancestral populations, since they will have accumulated a number of advantageous differences that the ancestral populations didn't have.
That is what Darwinian evolutionary theory is about, fundamentally. If you believe that this can not be true, please tell me which of these points you consider to be at fault.
This says nothing about the existance or non existance of a god, nor about the validity or invalidity of any particular religion. One, two, or thousands of gods could conceivably exist, and may even play an active role in biological change. That is certainly a sufficient explanation for the observed phenomena. It is not, however, a necessary precondition, since the process may be entirely undirected. As we can neither confirm, nor refute the existence or activity of a god or gods, science doesn't use god as an explanation. That says nothing at all about whether or not god exists, only about the limitations of our abilities to observe his/her presence or absence.
Evolution has been demonstrated in lab conditions and observed in the field. Evolution is a fact. Natural selection, Darwin's remarkable idea, is the theory which best accounts for this fact, as far as our current knowledge allows. If, at some future time, someone devises a conclusive, replicable test for the existence and action of a god, then revising our understanding might be in order. In the meantime, science still explains biology pretty well, and religious beliefs still account for our moral and ethical selves. Both are more effective at their specialties when they remain separate.
-Floyd
