The Argument: Science has proven that creation theory and intelligent design are false.
My first reaction to this argument is something along the lines of, “That’s news to me, I generally keep up with science and technology and I haven’t heard of any recent discoveries or new knowledge that proves against creation theory or intelligent design. What evidence was uncovered or what was tested or found that proves against it?”
Now, the general response from someone with knowledge of or involved in the scientific community is: “Well, nothing new per-say, but the big bang and non-intelligent evolution theories are undisputed concepts and well established, well understood facts.”
Okay, lets take a look at that for a moment. First off the ‘big bang’ theory doesn’t do anything to disprove or prove creationism, because even if it was proven a ‘big bang’ took place, whose to say God didn’t cause that ‘big bang’ to take place, so that aspect of it can be ignored.
The non-intelligent evolution theory though we can look at, as if that is indeed true it would certainly throw a monkey wrench into Christian belief as the Bible does say that God designed the earth and everything in it, including humans.
The first problem I have with the argument is stating that they are ‘undisputed facts’.
Right off the hop, saying they are ‘undisputed’ is blatantly untrue and it’s not difficult to prove that. There is no shortage of disputing theories and concepts in the science community, and the origins of the earth/universe and development of it is no exception. While creationist or intelligent design theories may not be as popular as non-intelligent theories, they certainly still exist. Taking into consideration that there are significantly more non-religious individuals involved in the scientific community than there are religious, it absolutely makes sense that this would be the case. So saying the theories are ‘undisputed’ is not correct. Saying they are the ‘commonly accepted’ or ‘most popularly believed’ would be far more accurate.
Lets look at what a ‘fact’ is: a fact is a truth known by actual experience or observation, something known to have existed or to have happened. So, unless you or another scientist is claiming to have been around for the ‘big bang’ and watched the development of life from the beginning of time, you nor anyone else can say they know any of these theories as ‘fact’.
I’ve had people attempt to tell me these theories are as ‘proven’ as the theory of gravity is, and as such are ‘fact’. That doesn’t work for me. Gravity can be physically experienced and observed, as such we know it exists and is fact. Saying that the theory of gravity is the same as a theory of non-intelligent evolutionary design is nonsense, and I don’t understand how anyone, much less someone involved in the scientific community who should have a better understanding of it, could make that statement.
You or a scientist might argue: “Okay, so they may not be ‘undisputed fact’ as such, but the theories and concepts against intelligent design have been investigated and developed and the evidence found supports these theories to the point where the bulk of scientists have accepted them as ‘fact’. Modern scientific understanding has been developed and based on these theories and there is no reason to investigate other theories that might oppose it as we already have perfectly valid ones.”
This is do agree with. After all, why would someone who doesn’t believe in God bother investigating a different theory when they have one already that coincides with their beliefs and they have scientific support and evidence for? However, this also goes to show that there is a bias in the scientific community towards non-intelligent design theories, even if simply based on the fact that non-intelligent design theories have been researched far more than intelligent design theories.
I’ve also had people tell me if scientists start investigating intelligent design theories as much as they have non-intelligent design theories, it just becomes a ‘seeing faces in the clouds’ type of thing, aka, if you look hard enough you can find whatever you want to.
I completely agree with that, however this also applies to non-intelligent design. Scientists can formulate theories and look at data and evidence they choose to in order to support and validate their theories, but that is no different from anything else.
Here is a link to an article about a ‘scientific study’ that found eating chocolate promoted weight loss. The data and evidence in the study are not falsified, nor are the results, however the fact of the matter is that eating chocolate does NOT promote weight loss, yet the data and evidence showed otherwise. My point being, that formulating theory based on the study of data and evidence is all well and good, but that doesn’t mean you have found the truth, especially when you have bias, which we all (both religious and non-religious) do.
If the bulk of scientists had focused their efforts on proving we were designed and created by aliens instead of non-intelligent evolution theories, the commonly accepted scientific ‘fact’ of the day would be that we were designed and created by aliens. Now, I get that is an extreme example, however the concept is valid.
My idea of ‘science’ is proving theories with facts. So when someone tells me that: “Science has disproved Christianity.” I want to see the factual evidence that was discovered or the experiments done that prove specific theories and the data looked at. I want to see the meat-and-potatoes evidence examined and conclusions made, not ‘commonly accepted’ theory.
The typical response I get from people involved in the scientific community is: “Well, you don’t have enough knowledge to understand the data and concepts used to prove these theories, and there is just way to much information for me to give you regarding this.” And yet none of them have even given me a single link to a scientific study or paper detailing theories or any facts of any kind regarding this topic.
Here and here are a couple of great, brief videos regarding science disproving Christianity that I found worth listening to and watching as well.
I’ve had a few recommend me some books that ‘explain’ the theories, one was The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins. However these books don’t discuss data or factual evidence, again they are just talking about theory. There is also no shortage of articles refuting the scientific validity of the concepts talked about in these books. Here for example is one regarding The Blind Watchmaker.
But lets take a look at the actual facts regarding this topic to get a better overview:
1. The majority of the scientific community is composed of people who do not believe in God.
2. Theories supporting non-intelligent design have been researched and developed to much greater extents than theories supporting intelligent design. (This only makes sense, as why would someone who doesn’t believe in God investigate a theory that would support God?)
3. The majority of people in the scientific community (again, these individuals don’t believe in God) have accepted that theories supporting non-intelligent design are for all intents and purposes true based on the data they have examined and evaluated. (Again, this stands to reason, as theories supporting intelligent design have not been researched nearly as much as the ones that do not support it.)
4. We, the non-scientific people, are advised by the scientific community that these theories are ‘undisputed, proven facts’ and are expected to accept this, and allow our children to be taught as such in our schools, etc. (Sort of like in the middle ages when the scientific authority at that time stated that the ‘fact’ was the earth was flat.)
I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this… However you nor any other scientist can argue with the above facts with any validity.
I can certainly appreciate that the theories of non-intelligent design are more popular and accepted than others in the scientific communities, however making the claim that ‘Science has disproved Christianity’ due to that fact is completely erroneous. This kind of goes back to the whole ‘it cannot be proven that God exists‘ argument.
I would also point out, that we as humans are extremely young in our scientific knowledge and understanding, and claiming we know for a ‘fact’ how things all started seems incredibly foolish. We don’t even know a huge portion of what’s in our oceans, nor have we even discovered all the species or creatures on the surface of our planet yet.
We don’t even understand the human body that well (take the appendix for example). I’ve had people who are involved in the scientific community attempt to tell me that design shortcomings in the human body (the recurrent laryngeal nerve was his specific point) show that we were not intelligently designed. A quick google search of ‘recurrent laryngeal nerve intelligent design’ shows a horde of articles providing data and insight refuting that claim.
It was scientific ‘fact’ not too many years ago that the world was flat. It was scientific ‘fact’ not too many years ago that a grain of sand was the smallest particle in the universe and was indivisible. Then it was the atom that was the smallest, and then the neutron, electron and proton, and finally now we have the quark, all of which are/were considered indivisible as scientific ‘fact’…
The bottom line here, is that there is nothing in science that ‘proves’ against God or the Bible or intelligent design. There are certainly ideas and theories and data and evidence that can be compiled and looked at that might support non-intelligent design, but there is just as much that can support intelligent design as well. Combine that with the ‘fact’ that our scientific knowledge is extremely limited and undeveloped, and it should be obvious that taking scientific theory and claiming it’s ‘fact’ is extremely foolish.
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