Many of you know how I like to argue things; I have a more distinct fervor for arguing things that I think have a connection with our faith but do not require our faith for the explanation to make complete sense. Something that occurred to me either this morning or sometime yesterday while I was almost a lone ranger on the Hard Core Christians Living Hardcore MySpace forums arguing for Creation against several advocates of evolution. I found it entertaining and somewhat challenging, not so much because they came up with new arguments that I have never seen before, but because I had to explain and come up with examples of evolution's incompleteness. It is not often that an entire debate will end in one sitting in a forum atmosphere but this one did.
I don’t want to keep this blog unreasonably long because I noticed from my previous blog I got a little too excited to dump all the arguments on the table and it only resulted in a really long blog that intellectually vomited on the reader with so many points and arguments. I found as I got to the last several points to fully elaborate would be simply too long. I suppose that is what happens when I try to summarize points made from several books and journals into such a small place like a single blog. So let's see how this one goes.
Oh before I get on with it I also want to through a shout out to Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box". This is a very interesting book so far, I am about 1/6 of the way through it, it is through Dr. Behe's style of this read that this blog has really come to be. He does not claim to believe in Intelligent Design or Young Earth theory (the earth is 6k-10k years old) like most authors of material that question evolutionary theory as it stands today. On one hand I feel as though he is arguing for something he doesn't fully believe in, but then it hit me, he isn't really arguing for Creationism as his quotes are being used throughout the world in creation vs. evolution debates. All Dr. Behe is doing in this book, so far, is pointing out that evolution as it stands has issues that need to be addressed.
As simply as I see it in my mind right now it is that evolutionary theory has many problems within itself. So far Dr. Behe has not gotten on a soap box after exposing difficulties with the theory; he has just shown how the current theory is inadequate for what it is. These problems range from: the origin of life, benefits through mutation, irreducible complexity, explanation of the Cambrian explosion, and overall age of the earth in respect to what mutations must exhibit, and the list goes on. Each of these problems I can write a mouthful about it with my limited knowledge on the subject. I know full well I can't explain the complete difficulties and failings of the theory but I can give a good summarization of each of those issues. To get a full explanation the kind that should be the satisfying standard of the scientific world would require some serious post-graduate level explanations.
I am not saying that only people with doctorates can understand or explain the problems, just that the bases of those problems need to be explained at such a level that it takes an expert in that field of science. For example, as a micro-biologist Dr Behe listed on the molecular level a very "basic" version of how sight functions in our eyes. I know I am more current with remembering my college biology and chemistry and even that "basic" explanation had me struggling to get the gist of it. This example of the eye is just one of the many problems found within biology that will need micro-biologists to fully explain the function and possibly its origins.
I am greatly tempted to break out some of the evidence in support of creationism but that would be to miss the point that I want to really elaborate upon. Often within a debate over a controversial issue it comes down to two sides, the majority verses the minority. This is present in every debate setting, but as I pointed out in my abortion blog, there is actually a core issue within the debate. It is not given the attention it deserves instead the arguments dance all around the core topic. Abortion for example is "Is the unborn human?" simple as that. What is the core issue within the creation vs. evolution or ID (Intelligent Design) vs. Evolution argument?
In the midst of the "us vs. them", feel of this debate I think many people over look the true stance of the ID community. It is not so much that we are pointing to evolutionists and saying "you're wrong", we are pointing to evolutionists and saying, “you got problems and contradictions within your theory." In addition we like to add "our explanation through ID fits like this..." That is the heart of the issues as I see it. I think special attention needs to be made to keep this idea in mind because it is so easy to get bogged down in so many arguments which turn into an intellectual shouting match, sometimes not always involving intellect or shouting.
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