This is what I posted in other thread, "Do you believe in Evolution?", but I feel it is appropriate here:
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There are some things that have not been mentioned or touched in this discussion, that would have ended it when it started, let me quote Stephen Jay Gould from his book, “Hen's Teeth and Horse's Toes”:<dir><font color="#0000dd">“Although no thinking person doubted the fact of evolution by 1909, Darwin's own theory about its mechanism – natural selection – was not at the height of popularity. Indeed, 19090 marked the acme of confusion about how evolution happened in the midst of complete confidence that it had occurred. An embattled group of strict Drawinians, led by the aging A.R. Wallace in England and by A. Weismann in Germany, continued to hold that virtually all evolutionary change occurred by the <B>cumulative power of natural selection building adaptation step-by-step</B> from the random raw material <B>of small scale genetic variation.</B>
Lamarckism remained strong and provided an alternative to natural selection for the gradual building of adaptations – <B>creative organic response to perceived needs and the transmission of these favorable responses to offspring through the inheritance of acquired characters.</B> Mendelian inheritance, when properly elucidated, tipped the scales in Darwin's favor, but in 1909, merely sown more confusion by adding yet a third mechanism to the swirling competition – <B>production of new species all at once by large and fortuitous mutations.</B>
By 1959, confusion hade ceded to the opposite undesired state of complacency. Strict Darwinism had triumphed. The flowering of Mendelian genetics had finally laid Lamarckism to rest since the workings of DNA <B>provided no mechanism for an inheritance of acquired characters.</B>” … “But random, small scale variation produces no changes by itself and requires a shaping force to preserve and enhance its favorable component.“</font></dir>Later on in his book, Gould talks about Creationism, and says this:<dir><font color="#0000dd">“Philosopher Karl Popper has argued for decades that the primary criterion of science is the falsifiability of its theories. We can never prove absolutely, but we can falsify. A st of ideas that cannot, in principle, be falsified is not science.”
“The entire creationist program includes little more than a rhetorical attempt to falsify evolution by presenting supposed contradictions among its supporters, Their brand of creationism, they claim, is ”scientific” because it follows the Popperian model in trying to demolish evolution. Yet Popper's argument must apply in both directions. One does not become a scientist by the simply act of trying to falsify a rival truly scientific system; one has to present an alternative system that also meet Popper's criterion – it too must be falsifiable in principle.
“Scientific Creationism” is a self-contradictory, nonsense phrase precisely because it cannot be falsified. I can envision observations and experiments that would disprove any evolutionary theory I know, but I cannot imagine what potential data could lead creationists to abandon their beliefs. Unbeatable systems are dogma, not science. Lest I seem harsh or rhetorical, I quote creationism's leading intellectual, Duane Gish, Ph.D., from his recent (1978) book, <I>“Evolution? The Fossils Say No!”</I>: “By creation we mean the bringing into being by a Supernatural Creator of the basic kinds of plants and animals by the process of sudden, or fiat, creation. We do not know how the Creator created, what processes He used, for he used processes which are not now operating anywhere in the natural universe [Gish's italics] This is why we refer to creation as special creation. We cannot discover by scientific investigations anything about the creative processes used by the Creator.”
Pray tell, Dr. Gish, in the light of your last sentence, what then is “scientific” creationism?<br></font>
Personally, I find creationism childish. I was expelled at the age of 7 from catechism class, prior to making my First Communion, for being a "subversive charater": I asked how come Cain, after killing Abel, went to live among "other people". If they were the first ones on Earth, where these people came from? My mother grounded me for a month. My father congratulated me.