Ronald Jackson Boyd: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ti3mtDC2fQo
Neil Tyson presentation about intelligent design
Dennis : This is interesting Ron, but as you see, he believes in evolution. That is his unquestioned foundation assumption, that evolution is true. He is making a straw-man argument by presenting the intelligent design position incorrectly, to make it seem that his logic is correct. However, creation scientists are doing real science in the classroom, just as many great creation scientists in the past have done, like Kepler, Newton, Mendel, Pasteur, Carver, etc. They use their creationist assumptions and do their science, just as evolutionists use their evolution assumptions and do their science. Because of their foundation assumptions both come to different conclusions.
The question we need to ask is which conclusions are more closely consistent with the evidence and need fewer saving or supporting assumptions or hypothetical devices along the way.
There are so many good creation science books, dealing with real empirical science and not just philosophy or historical science, that I am at wonder to how and why this speaker does not seem to understand the creation position correctly. He is either ignorant of the real position, and has not done his homework, or he is purposely presenting a straw-man argument for the sake of winning his argument. He comes across quite sincere, so it seems for some reason he has not studied the creation science/intelligent design question fully, to understand it correctly, however sincere he may be.
Ronald Jackson Boyd: If he hasn't studied the creation science/intelligent design argument fully, it may be because of the likes of Kent Hovind and Ray Comfort and others, which are living straw-men. When these people's assumptions coincide with a set of religious tenants which cannot be questioned, then what other conclusions can they come to?
Many of the same arguments brought up by creationists are simply the same ones argued in the 19th century. Some creationists actually duplicate Darwin's theories deriving their own terminology for the same ideas.
Maybe this is Tyson's synopsis of the creationist movement, but he looked at Newton and others not with the assumption that they were wrong in their observations but in a positive light. Our educational system does not go into that much detail about the thinking of people like Pythagoras, Darwin, Kepler, Pascal, and other scientists but just uses their theories which have been pretty well distilled throughout a long history which is covered in distinctly separate courses.
Most people don't do their homework on issues because of the sheer volume of repetitive information, so stereotypes based on a few examples are convenient. Not to say that I am not guilty of doing this kind of thing also, but I appreciate my high school an college education and it will always have an influence on the kinds of assumptions I would accept or reject. I regret that I did not study harder, but I think I can spot propaganda to some extent. When political agendas and fraudulent behaviors permeate a science, it casts doubt on whether it can be trusted.
Dennis´reply:
How anyone can believe that our highly and finely tuned for life on planet earth solar system/ universe is a result of an explosive "Big Bang" with all the laws of physics and chemistry, math and logic resulting from it, is beyond my comprehension.
However, I did believe those things during the time of my life when I was rejecting God, because of my experiences with the hypocritical religious system. My accepting the assumption that there was no spiritual plane and my belief in naturalism, led me to accept evolutionary doctrine.
We need to remember that naturalism, which denies the supernatural and metaphysical, denies the existence of a supreme being. The philosophy of science for many hundreds of years was the "search for truth." Today´s evolutionists have been trying to change that definition so that "naturalism" becomes the guiding principle of science. Science is defined as the human activity of seeking natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us. By removing the possibility of God as a possible assumption from the scientific equation, they push God out of the scientific debate.
The intelligent design movement has been trying to show in the laboratory that the scientific assumptions in the evolutionary paradigm do not add up to the facts of empirical science. Evolution is based on the false assumption that there is no supernatural. A theory based on a false assumption will lead to a false conclusion. The theory of evolution is based on the false assumption of naturalism, there is no supernatural, and therefore, leads to the false conclusion that evolution is true.
But naturalism is not a scientific fact, but only a philosophical assumption. Philosophical assumptions can be wrong and can lead to wrong conclusions. The philosophical assumption that evolution was true led to the idea that the white races were the privileged and fittest race. Other more primitive races were considered lower on the evolutionary scale and closer to the ape. The search for missing links, led to the murder of thousands of Australian aborigines, who were not considered human. Their skulls were then sold to Natural History Museums in England and the USA as proof that evolution had occurred and that this lower race of homo-sapiens was a link between modern man and his primitive evolutionary ancestors. Of course, modern empirical genetic science shows us there is only one race of people on the planet descending from one original couple. Had we started with Biblical assumptions, we would have arrived at this correctly proven scientific fact. The false evolutionary assumptions led scientific investigation astray and led to the cruel deaths of thousands of innocent people.
Both Hitler and Stalin used their evolutionary beliefs to justify the murder of thousands of people. Hitler said the Jews were more closely related to the ape than to man. He considered the German people to be the fittest race and therefore had the right to dominate and rule over those other weaker peoples. His ideas of military/politics had been adopted from the false paradigm of the evolution theory. Stalin, likewise, was a student of Darwin and felt liberated after reading the Origins. He, too, accepted this so-called scientific theory and applied it to the political/military realm resulting in the deaths of thousands.
Evolution is based on the assumption of naturalism, or the belief that there is no supernatural. However, naturalism is only a philosophy, an assumption or belief system and is not based on the facts of the world around us. I have had a supernatural or spiritual experience which changed me from an agnostic to a real believer. Millions of other people around the world have had similar experiences or know someone who has had one. My mother and father both shared their spiritual experiences with us, their children. As a missionary, many people have shared with me their spiritual experiences. Research has been done and books have been written about such experiences by qualified medical doctors. Life after death experiences have been studied. Therefore, we can conclude the the supernatural does exist.
Those with an evolutionary/naturalistic paradigm will come to a totally different conclusion because of their belief system. No scientist comes to the scientific table without assumptions. Like in the CSI and forensic science, usually different police investigators start with different assumptions of how the murder happened. However, the facts of the scientific investigation begin to eliminate the false assumptions. As the case goes on, the police reach a more probable conclusion. Usually they try to get the murderer to somehow confess, because they are never really sure unless he does. All they have is circumstantial evidence, however strong it may be.
Dr. Tyson´s comment about the 15% of the scientists who do not believe in evolution should be looked at more closely. Maybe the scientific community should be more open to their voice and viewpoints. If we study the history of science we see that usually what turned out to be the correct scientific truth was often in the minority and persecuted for years until finally the weight of scientific and factual proof defeated its adversaries.
The creation/intelligent design movement is advocating that the problems with the evolutionary paradigm be openly addressed and covered in the classroom. Students should be taught factual empirical science. However, philosophical/historical science needs to be presented as such so that contrary ideas/philosophies can be presented. Neither creation nor evolution can be proven in the laboratory. Neither can be tested. A valid scientific hypothesis must be capable of being tested. Neither evolution or creation can be either confirmed or falsified scientifically. They are both really outside the realm of empirical science and the scientific method of observation, hypothesis, testing and retesting to reach a conclusion which can be retested by others who reach the same conclusion. It would be better to think of them in terms of two scientific models or frameworks as that is a more accurate way to look at them. By doing this then maybe they can be debated more objectionably, scientifically and logically, to then be able to discern which is more aligned to observable facts and science.
One evolutionary scientist made the following comment after the conclusion of his life´s work in scientific investigation. Dr. N. Herribert-Nilson, Director of the Botanical Institute at Lund University in Sweden said "My attempt to demonstrate evolution by experiment carried on for more than 40 years of my life has completely failed......The idea of an evolution rests on pure belief." (1953)(References: "The Assumptions Behind the Theory of Evolution" by Dave Schoch, 2008, and "Scientific Creationism" by Dr. Henry Morris, 1974.
It is interesting how Dr.Tyson does praise Newton so much, yet denies the God that Newton loved. Newton said "There are more sure proofs of the authenticity in the Bible than in any secular history.All my discoveries have been made in answer to prayer. I can take my telescope and look millions of miles into space; but I can go away to my room and in prayer get nearer to God and Heaven than I can when assisted by all the telescopes of Earth."
Newton, however, was no friend of traditional religion of his time and remained on the outskirts of religiosity. Nevertheless, he had a firm faith in the Bible as the word of God, believed in a 6-day creation and a young earth/universe, and spent more time reading the Bible than doing science. He predicted that man in the future would be able to travel at a speed of more than 50 miles an hour. When the skeptic Voltaire heard of this prediction he said Newton had gone mad from reading the Bible so much. Now, today, we know better.
At one point, Newton made a mechanical model of our solar system with the sun and planets. By turning a crank all the planets would travel in their course around the sun. An atheist friend of Newton's came for a visit and was admiring Newton´s model and asked, "Who made it?" Newton replied, "Nobody made it, it made itself." The obvious point he was trying to show his atheistic friend was that just as it would be stupid to think that no one had made the model solar system, so, too, it would be stupid to think that no one had made the actual solar system.
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