Another Ritualistic Denunciation of ID

Mr. Fox, Exactly my point. The origin of evolutionary theory was philosophical, not scientific, a fact that modern evolutionists do not like to advertise. What Darwin supposedly did was provide a scientific foundation to a theory that intellectuals already believed for philosophical reasons. The theory of evolution was not "first proposed" by Darwin because he never proposed a theory of evolution at all. That had already been done. What he did was propose the mechanism, "the origin of species by means of natural selection." The article implies that evolution had its origin in the disinterested investigations of scientists, as though Darwin were just a disinteresed naturalist who one day proposed a "theory of evolution" that no had heard of before. Then scientists carefully and objectively evaluated the evidence, and only after long and careful analysis did they pronounce evolution a fact. That's nothing like the real history. Darwin's proposal was quickly hailed as a triumph by intellectuals like Spencer and Huxley, and used as it is today, as scientific proof of materialist philosophy. taciturnus

Spencer was a philosopher, not to any real extent a biologist. His theory of evolution was Lamarckian and his main contribution to Darwin was the phrase 'survival of the fittest" for which Darwin gave him full credit. Alan Fox

It's an indication of the state of Darwinism that Darwinists don't even bother to get their own history right anymore, as long as they can get some whacks in at ID. The theory of evolution did not have its origin with Darwin. There were plenty of theories of evolution before him, and the word "evolution" owes its popularity to Herbert Spencer, not Darwin, who barely used it at all in the first edition of the Origin of Species. Darwin's big breakthrough was the idea of "the origin of species by means of natural selection." It's "natural selection" that is Darwin's baby, not evolution. Spratt's coy remark that evolutionary theory has advanced beyond Darwin may be a backhanded acknowledgement that many scientists today don't think natural selection is up to the tasks that Darwin set it. taciturnus

"A scientific theory is falsifiable, i.e. it holds until proven incorrect." An interesting definition of falsifiability, and another example of how Faithful Darwinists stack the deck in their favor--perhaps without even realizing it. Actually, I think Spratt's argument is fairly typical: Without discussing any relevant facts, he makes a high-level argument in which he throws the cloak of "science" over his philosophical materialism--which can never be ultimately proven or disproven, and which he _assumes_ to be true--and then claims unassailability until proven wrong! Hard to argue with such a nice tight little circle--unless he's willing to admit that his assumptions are just that--assumptions and not the facts he thinks they are. SteveB

Oops. Change that last paragraph, please--where I said "hypothesis" I was really thinking "theory." Again, if I'd starting working out hypotheses and seeking evidence in grad school without a theoretical basis for it all, I'd have had my hand slapped. That was in a social science--but isn't it the same in all sciences? TomG

Well, I'll credit them this--they didn't just roll out the usual weak or false objections to ID, they made up some new ones. Their definition of "falsifiable"--"it holds until proven incorrect"--has nothing to do with the way the word is generally used in philosophy of science; it's simply false. (I guess we can say it doesn't hold any longer.) Their description of how theories are developed, "by gathering evidence and testing hypotheses", assumes that evidence is gathered before anyone considers a hypothesis--not very accurate to the real world. I was taught in research methods to start with a hypothesis and then work on the evidence. Is there even any such thing as "gathering evidence" without a guiding hypothesis? TomG