NEO-DARWINISM JUST DIED: Creationist view (Introduction)

by dhw, Wednesday, October 03, 2012, 19:45 (4434 days ago) @ David Turell

DAVID: An evenhanded comment by a creationist says the science is beautiful but doesn't prove design by God:-http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2012/09/everyones-excited-about-encode.html-Good to hear of an even-handed creationist. Of course nothing can "prove" design by God, any more than anything can "prove" design by chance. Nor, if it comes to that, can anyone "prove" that Neo-Darwinism is dead. -As I see it, the junk/not junk argument cuts both ways. An atheist can argue that design has to be functional, anything non-functional suggests lack of design, and so even 20% is 20% too much. A theist can argue that a mechanism capable of adaptation and innovation will have to contain elements that are POTENTIALLY functional, even if they are not used all the time, and we can't know the potential without knowing the full range of possible conditions. However, I would have thought a creationist who believes in the separate creation of all organs and organisms would be hard pressed to justify any non-functional DNA, whatever the percentage. This is where the argument gets muddied. Theism and creationism are not the same thing, though some atheists like to pretend they are. -Only creationists deny the process of evolution, and even in America, a hotbed of creationism, it seems that the population is evenly divided on the subject, according to the article David posted under "Americans and Creationism". 46% believe in creationism, 32% in God-guided evolution and 15% in evolution without God, which = 47% who believe in some form of Darwinism. I'm surprised that only 7% appear not to have any firm belief either way, but can we trust these polls? -If God designed the initial mechanism for reproduction, heredity, adaptation and innovation, the process of evolution can follow precisely the same course as a non-designed mechanism. Once it is in place, it will use what needs to be used in accordance with varying conditions. The only question is whether you believe the INITIAL mechanism is or is not too complex to have arisen by chance.-As regards the overall heading of this thread, if Neo-Darwinism means belief in Natural Selection as the driving force of gradualistic evolution, and random mutations as the cause of innovations, I would agree that it is at least on the way out. If it means that all species descended from earlier forms of life, that changing environments may bring about sudden as well as gradual genetic changes, and hence new organs and organisms, and that Natural Selection decides which of these survive, then it is not dead. But I don't think the percentage of junk DNA makes any difference either way.