Friday, August 05, 2005

Intelligent Debate continues.

Tech Central Station has this excellent take on the evolution/I.D. debate:

"Darwin would have welcomed such debate because he was keenly aware that the problems he had raised were not capable of being resolved into trivial facts to be memorized like the names of the state capitals or the rules of the multiplication tables. He knew that his theory probed the ultimate questions, and that such ultimate questions could never be given a definitive solution to be taught by rote, and to be memorized by parrots.

What an insult to Darwin's intellectual genius to think that his theory is as obvious as two plus two equal four, or as innocuous as the facts contained in an almanac! Anyone who thinks Darwin's theory is obvious clearly hasn't a clue about its brilliance or its originality.

So this time Bush got it right, and the critics that are pouncing on his statement are getting it mostly wrong. There is no harm in teaching children to discuss and debate the ultimate questions -- indeed, the greatest danger is that we may raise a generation that is never challenged to think about such questions at all. If an open-ended debate about evolution stirs up the kids, then, for heaven's sake, let the stirring begin."

As Klinghoffer of NRO points out, although a majority of biologists reject I.D., there are respected scientists that suggest "that it is Darwinism that fails to explain the complexity of organisms."

And for those ridiculing ID as “non-scientific, NRO says this:

"ID theoreticians have published their findings in peer-reviewed scientific journals, in formidable academic presses such as those of Cambridge University and the University of Chicago, such denunciations start to sound like a worried defense of status more than a disinterested search for truth."

National Review is not defending I.D. nor endorsing it. It is simply pointing out that it isn't just religious fanatics demanding a look at different perspectives, including considering the origins of man to be that of a Creator.