RE: " HOMEWORK: Evolution & Creation"

This is a response to Jeff Boyd's post on the debate between evolution and creation. I apologize for not noticing your post earlier, Jeff. Of course you understand that this is a very difficult topic to cover in 300 words.

One point of confusion here is the idea that evolution is contrary to creation. You have correctly pointed out that the ultimate origin of life can not be studied by science, but evolution and predictions from evolutionary theory can be studied by science. In fact, creationists that believe in a young earth must believe in a very rapid evolution of species to account for the great biodiversity we see today. Evolution simply means change and the idea of fixity of species (that species never change and were created essentially as we see them today) has been abandoned by almost all creationist scientists for at least 100 years. However, many creationists that are not scientists have difficulty with this.

But I think the subject of your essay is the ultimate origin of life and possibly even the universe, as opposed to questions over the reality of evolution. The difficulty is that any theory of abiogensis requires evoultion to work. But i think it is important to distinguish bewteen the two.

In the fifth paragraph I think a few important points are not addressed but I don't know if you can make room for them.

• One: and this is a paraphrase of my professor Ron Carter, “In science you get kudos for being self critical and changing your mind when you are wrong. But in religion you get kudos for being certain and steadfast in your believes.”
  
• And two: opponents of ID argue that it is philosophy and not real science. Scientists are not opposed to teaching ID in school. But the idea that it be taught in science classrooms is very frustrating. This goes back to a previous post of mine.

I think that your questions are good. If the point is to start a conversation this will definitely do it and i think that philosophical accuracy is not that important. I could go on and on about it but I think if you could address the issues I mentioned that would be good.