:: Running from the Thought Police ::

:: Friday, March 18, 2005 ::

Preview

Because I want someone else to look over the novel that will be my next response to Doug the creationst, I am going to sit on the draft of my response for a bit. However, I will post some of the concluding paragraphs (that chart out where my response has already been).

SO, to recap: You're working off Sola Scriptura, which falsely dictates that you take Genesis 1 literally. This leads you to be sympathetic to ID, and your lack of science education leads you to agree with the unsound theory. Reading Genesis contextually, though, does not logically lead to a conflict between God and evolution. God could create using whatever method he so chose, and from what science tells us it looks to have been evolution. The laws of physics, filtered through chemistry, do not prohibit "abiogenesis" (misunderstandings about thermodynamics to the contrary). Primitive cells (no where near as complex as modern cells) could've (and likely did) emerge over geologic time. Mutations aren't always lethal, do not always kill, and nonlethal mutations are shown, using the math you promise and have yet to deliver with, to be quite common. Adaptation leads, de facto, to speciation over geologic time periods. Those that support ID either aren't trained to deal with evolutionary topics, or have thoroughly discredited themselves within the scientific community so as to make themselves irrelevant to modern scientific discussions. Their arguments are filled with false conclusions, argumenta ad ignorantia, Red Herrings, and the occasional ad hominem attack mixed in with some libel for good measure. Such essays are occasionally written while wearing tinfoil hats and looking over one's shoulder for black helicopters. Irreducible Complexity having been demonstrated elsewhere as a logical fallacy, Intelligent Design doesn't have a leg to stand on as a scientific hypothesis. Evolution, not containing any logical fallacies that aren't easily refuted by a half-educated premedical student (like myself), is what's left standing.

If you're even still reading at this point, Doug, it should be obvious that I did not write to you to "find the Truth." I'm doing that already, through my church and through my studies of genetics and evolution (which is what three of my four in-major advanced classes are/will be on). I'm doing this out of concern for the sins you are committing out of your ignorance, that do not just injure yourself but also impact negatively on other people in my campus community. Restated, I'm trying to defend the defenseless from a person, you, who doesn't know better. As our miscommunications have shown, I'm relatively new to apologetics. Unfortunately, my chosen profession will likely not allow me to pursue it to the fullest extent possible. But, as my job will involve healing people, I think that's an acceptable tradeoff.

Hopefully I'll send my reply to him this afternoon (and post it here), and then it'll be off to spring break at home after my practice MCAT on Saturday.

:: The Squire 6:52 AM :: email this post :: ::
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