I recently joined another online community site called Christian Connect. While participating in a debate of sorts on the origins of everything, a seemingly agnostic fellow made a comment that stuck with me. He stated
Creationists are in the business of trying to disprove evolution, but never disclose their evidence for their hypotheses. Do you believe that if creationists ever find a way to disprove evolution, that it (creationism) wins by default?
As is often the case, I thought about this for a week or so before taking the time to start researching anything. But once I got going I noticed a couple things. First off, I learned that no longer is the debate primarily between evolution and creation, but that there is now a new contender called intelligent design. Prior to doing a bit of research I had assumed that creation and intelligent design were the same, but I find now that they are, in fact, very different in certain areas.
So, now I’ve got 3 world views of sorts. The creation world view (or Biblical world view as it may be called), the Darwinian or Naturalistic world view, and the Intelligent Design world view. Looking at the three, the intelligent design view seems to be a hybrid of the first two.
Okay, now back to proving things. Much of the ‘proof’ I have for believing in the Biblical account of creation doesn’t really prove anything about creation, it merely disproves evolution. In addition to the creationists not proving their own case, I’ve found that evolutionists typically offer no or little attempt to disprove any findings presented by the intelligent design community. Instead they just dismiss the entire sect of scientists as religious nuts and ridicule the belief’s they are assumed to have. Why? Neither side is willing to accept the burden of proof. The evolutionists believe since they are the majority in the scientific community they can just dismiss the creationists and intelligent design folks. The creationists seem (to me anyway) to feel so confident in the infallibility of the Bible that other than taking a few potshots at the holes in Darwin’s theory they don’t bother trying to prove anything. And the new kid on the block, the intelligent design community, seems to be trying to straddle the fence as they only partially agree and partially disagree with both the evolutionist and the creationists. Much of the proof the intelligent design community offers is largely ignored by creationists and laughed at by the evolutionists.
With all this new information I must reflect and see where I fit in. Historically I’ve been a strict young earth creationist. And while I’m not ready to switch camps and become a proponent of intelligent design I must say that I am intrigued by some of the research they present.
In closing I want to mention something that I have always found amusing when it comes to debates on these topics. Evolutionists reject creationists (and now intelligent design) because they don’t follow standard established scientific methods. Such a method requires things like observation, ability to test and re-test, etc. But in all my years of being a hobbyist in this area, I’ve never read where someone observed a big bang or the evolution of a species, or any of the other theories that are out there. Yet the evolutionists are quick to say that creationists and intelligent design isn’t a science because we didn’t observe our God or Designer doing the creating. It still seems hypocritical to me. My 2¢ worth.
