Darwin Defenders Lash Out at Creationist Origin of Species

By Dan Gilgoff, God & Country

Lots of Darwin defenders responded to my post about the new Creationist edition of Origin of Species. Needless to say, they're not pleased.

Here's Rick K:

Do the ends justify the means?

Is it acceptable to openly lie, so long as it is in defense of your particular religion?

Kirk Cameron and Ray Comfort have chosen to defend their narrow version of Christianity by lying about evolution.

An obvious example is the statement: "the absence of any species-to-species transitional forms".

If you say, over and over again, to everyone you can, that "The Moon landing was a fake", some people who haven't bothered to look into the matter will accept what you say. It works for any falsehood. How much money and effort were spent saying "cigarettes are not bad for you." It's a lie, some people may believe the lie, but it's still a lie.

"There are no species-to-species transitional forms" is just such a lie.

The fossil record is FULL of transitional or intermediate forms. Evolutionary theory and geology have advanced so far that we can figure out where a potential "missing link" would have lived, when it would have lived and where fossils might be found. We then go to that place, dig, and find them. Google "Search for Tiktaalik" for an example of this.

We have so many transitional forms between reptile and mammal that for many of them, we can't tell if they are reptile-like mammals or mammal-like reptiles.

Divine Creation has no need of transitional species. Evolution demands them.

So the statement "there are no transitional forms" is a lie.

Is lying acceptable, if it is in defense of your image of god?

Tom Hammond writes:

um, Einstein is being repeatedly used by creationists as an example of someone with 'faith'... but he did not believe in god:

"I do not believe in a personal God and I have never denied this but have expressed it clearly. If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it. (Albert Einstein, 1954)"

Einstein did not believe in creationism. he also believed in a deterministic universe (i.e. predetermined by natural laws) . . . a belief he later questioned when quantum mechanics became an ever more legitimate science. anyway, Kirk fails to really explain why educational institutions—especially universities—require non-atheist teachers/professors. If I am learning how to save someone's life, or how to design a building, I want the best teacher possible—his religion or lack thereof does not concern me.

And Dr. G. Hurd makes the case for Christians embracing Darwinism:

There are "transitional" or "intermediate" fossils literally by the ton. Museums and museum warehouses are stuffed with them. If we look for the tiny gradual changes over time in fossils, we need to look at the tiny organisms that preserve these sorts of changes. Examples abound in the marine sediments filled with foramifera, and ostracods. But, when we look at the large familiar critters, the tiny variations that added up over generations to new species are lost against the greater similarities. The scientific definition of many species today is difficult for the scientist, but easy for the sexually active members of the species. A recent example would be the "discovery" that the California Two Spotted Octopus was really two species. This was not news to the octopi. The physical difference, a two centimeter variation in their reproductive organs, would never leave a fossil in the first place. And finally, we do observe new species emerging, both in nature and in laboratory experiments.

Creationists like Ray Comfort harm Christianity by making it seem absurd. This was warned against by Thomas Aquinas (c.a. 1225-1274) who wrote, ". . . one should adhere to a particular explanation only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it if it be proved with certainty to be false, lest Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and obstacles be placed to their believing." Summa Theologica, Prima Pars, Q68. Art 1. (1273).

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