Good news for the Discovery Institute September 21, 2006
Posted by Evil Bender in Religion, Science.trackback
Scientists have found two new missing links:
A 3.3-million-year-old skeleton of a young child curled into a ball no bigger than a cantaloupe — a unique fossil described as “a bright beam of light” on human evolution — was unveiled Wednesday by paleontologists working in the sun-baked badlands of Ethiopia.
But now that they’ve found yet another transitional fossil, of course there’s the question of where are the transitions to the transition. See, every time we find a missing link, creationists demand that we fill in those gaps to, so that the demand is we find every transitional form ever produced. Each time more evidence is found, then, creationists pretend that it is a problem for evolution, and not for them. Unfortunately, this is pretty hard to explain away:
The fossil offers clues about how the species blurred the line between ape and human. From the waist down, the skeleton looks like a human’s. But her upper body had many apelike features. Her brain was small, her nose flat like a chimpanzee’s and her face long and projecting. Her finger bones were curved and almost as long as a chimp’s.
“Clearly, we have a species in transition,” said Lucy’s discoverer, Donald Johanson, director of the Institute of Human Origins at Arizona State University. The species “sits at a critical point of human evolution.”
Wow. Human and non-human features, a unique anatomy–sounds like another one of them hoaxes put on earth by Got to test our faith.
So, to recap. Real, empirical science: 2 billion, “creation science”: 0.
C’mon, creationists, we’re still waiting for those testable predictions? Or is “God did it” really your best explanation for everything?
Yeah, I really think the biggest problem with creation science is that it isn’t always very scientific… but stills tries to prove things scientifically that are faith-based. Basically, creation is impossible to prove (though that is different than saying it is impossible or that it is impossible to believe) but some scientists still try. At the same time, they focus only on science and ignore historical-cultural evidence (such as flood narratives in biblical and other Ancient Near East texts–The Epic of Gilgamesh is my favorite–) and focus only on that which is unprovable. The other problem is that too many Christians believe that in order to preserve their faith in Christ, every piece of the cosmic puzzle has to match their traditions. I’m constantly reminded that tradition and scripture are very different things. Often, we fight hardest for that which is not even in the canon. I believe the biblical account of creation, but I have no hope of proving it scientifically. I do not doubt many aspects of evolution and see nothing in scripture to make me doubt many of those aspects. Darwinism is wrong but who holds strictly to Darwin anymore, anyway? I think it might be time to let science conclude what it will and admit we might not know everything. At the same time, however, don’t count on science to answer all life’s big problems. Faith is not the same as ignorance.
Science doesn’t answer questions, it asks them. Creationists have the problem of thinking too small. What the mind can conceive of is human, not God. God is above our preconceptions and knowledge.
People can’t know God?
Empirical Science, ftw! :D