Browse Search Feedback Other Links Home Home The Talk.Origins Archive: Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy

Index to Creationist Claims,  edited by Mark Isaak,    Copyright © 2004
Previous Claim: CI401   |   List of Claims   |   Next Claim: CI410

Claim CI402:

Due to their preconceptions and bias for materialism, evolutionists have blinded themselves to seeing design.

Response:

  1. This claim is nothing more than an excuse that design theorists use to try to explain away their own failure to make their case. When someone proposes a new scientific theory, it is that person's responsibility to make a case for it. Scientific theories have, in the past, achieved wide acceptance despite strong cultural and scientific resistance. (Evolution itself is an example.) If there is substance to ID theory, its proponents must make it clear.

  2. People who study evolution come from a variety of cultural backgrounds. Many of them are far from committed to materialism. Some students enter the field hoping to challenge existing dogmas, and objectively detecting design in life would certainly accomplish that. If there were anything to ID theory, there should be more than enough biologists to help the design theorists make their case.

  3. To all appearances, design theorists have blinded themselves to seeing flaws in their theories. Their religious motivation is obvious. Just as important, they do not follow the usual scientific procedure of testing their ideas.

    A scientific theory is tested by subjecting it to a very real chance of falsification. Scientists make specific predictions based on the theory, look to see if the predictions pan out, and consider the theory false if the results cannot fit what was expected. Intelligent design theorists, unlike evolutionary scientists, do not put their ideas to such risks. Apparently, they do not want their ideas at risk.

  4. Design theory is older than Darwin's theory of evolution. Design theory has nothing but its own lack of worth to blame for its failure.

Previous Claim: CI401   |   List of Claims   |   Next Claim: CI410

created 2003-6-23