Questions Raised to Date
1. Are strict adherents to either side interested in civil conversation?
2. Should the debate be under the label of “science”? Why or why not?
3. How is science defined?
4. How does Intelligent Design not fall prey to a regress that concludes with an entity we traditionally define as God?
5. What does a basic definition of evolution need to consist of?
6. Does this definition go beyond
7. How many dissenters of the theory constitute a significant amount?
8. What do you mean by "accredited scientist”?
9. If the dissenters of the theory from #7 above make a supernatural conclusion, are they still practicing science?
10. Who has the burden of proof and why?
11. Is the burden of proof to show that evolution or intelligent design or creation is right, wrong, or that one is science and that one is not?
12. If the moral and Biblical implications of evolution are intolerable to so many of faith, is reconciliation, debate, coherency, or any other unifying word even possible?
13. Big Bang theory posits that at some point, there was nothing that somehow became something. Why is it that this belief considered science when it is plainly not naturalistic or empirically observed?
14. When has “mutability” been observed? Variation within species has certainly been observed, but when has “transmutation?” If we haven’t then why refer to this as science? If you can’t observe it in the present, in a lab for example, doesn’t that case to be science? Or does that line of reasoning apply only to those who believe in God?
15. How many evolutionists would adhere to the recent finding that the universe had a beginning?
Comments and Difficulties Raised to Date
A. Certain words and concepts need to be clearly and concisely defined if any productive conversation is to take place.
B. There needs to be a clear-cut statement of belief for Evolution, Creationism, and Intelligent Design.
C. Science should be systematic and not appeal to supernatural causation.
D. Religion and science, once you carry them back far enough, are both based upon faith.
E. Just as religion, science is based upon ultimate foundations that cannot be empirically verified.
F. The debate should not be under the label of “science” because I.D. and Creationism appeal to the supernatural and lack a methodology for further research. It would be acceptable for the debate to be under Philosophy, Sociology, or Education.
G. Current mainstream science appeals to the supernatural just as much as creation science does. If it did not, it would have no foundation upon which to rest its evolutionary conclusions.
H. Intelligent Design is equivalent to God and is simply a tactic around the Supreme Court ban on the teaching of Creationism in public schools.
I. Related to # 4 above. A regress presupposes that the ultimate Intelligent Designer is subject to the natural order that He created and exists outside of. This is illogical. God created the physical order of things that includes reason, logic, time, space, and laws. The idea that a creation must have a Creator is valid in the order that God created but it makes little sense to suppose that He is subject to rules that He created for a reality where He does not primarily “reside.”
J. There is still no observable evidence for transmutability. If evidence cannot be provided then there is a significant measure of “faith” that is involved in accepting evolution.
K. “That evolution is” versus “how evolution is” are two separate questions.
L. Under 1% of working earth and life scientists in the
M. Majority has absolutely nothing to do with truth. Most people thought Galileo was an idiot but the overwhelming majority was overwhelmingly wrong.
N. Related to L above. These are two different studies. You are committing a fallacy by combining the two to draw a conclusion. Your conclusion implies that the 700 dissenting scientists are the ONLY scientists who disagree of question the “absoluteness” of evolutionary theory.
O. Let’s make sure science treats its subjects with epistemological integrity.
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