Claim CB990:
Evolutionist explanations are just-so stories. They are entirely
speculative and do not qualify as evidence.
Source:
Dembski, William A., 2002. No Free Lunch, Lanham, MD: Rowman and
Littlefield, chap. 6.
Response:
- It is indeed wrong to offer a just-so story as evidence that something
happened a certain way. However, such stories still serve a purpose as
hypotheses. They present a model that can be tested by further
research and either rejected or qualified as more probable. For
example, the just-so story that horns on horned lizards evolved as
defense has now been supported with experiments (Young et al. 2004).
Science makes little progress without hypotheses to test.
- Such stories also function to rebut claims that something could not
have happened. If a plausible story is presented, the claim of
impossibility is shown to be false. This is true whether or not the
story is speculative.
- Creationists have almost nothing but just-so stories to back up their
models (such as they are). For example, every detail creationists
give about the Flood is a just-so story, due to a lack of basis for
anything more than the broad outline given in Genesis. And no research
is ever done to test their stories.
Links:
Lindsay, Don, 1998. Scenarios and "just so" stories
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/creation/stories.html
References:
- Young, K. V., E. D. Brodie Jr. and E. D. Brodie III, 2004. How the
horned lizard got its horns. Science 304: 65.
created 2003-5-18
