F Rosa Rubicondior: How Creationists Lie To Us - Karl Popper

Thursday 19 July 2012

How Creationists Lie To Us - Karl Popper

"When you show the world you know you need to lie for your faith you show the world you know your faith is a lie".


What they say:



Thus the notion that evolution is a scientific theory while creation is nothing more than religious mysticism is blatantly false. This is being recognized more and more today, even by evolutionists themselves. Karl Popper, one of the world's leading philosophers of science, has stated that evolution is not a scientific theory but is a metaphysical research program. [My emphasis]

Duane Gish, Ph.D, Former Vice-president, Institute for Creation Research
The Nature of Science and of Theories on Origins


The truth:

And yet, the theory is invaluable. I do not see how, without it, our knowledge could have grown as it has done since Darwin. In trying to explain experiments with bacteria which become adapted to, say, penicillin, it is quite clear that we are greatly helped by the theory of natural selection. Although it is metaphysical, it sheds much light upon very concrete and very practical researches. It allows us to study adaptation to a new environment (such as a penicillin-infested environment) in a rational way: it suggests the existence of a mechanism of adaptation, and it allows us even to study in detail the mechanism at work. And it is the only theory so far which does all that.2



When speaking here of Darwinism, I shall speak always of today's theory – that is Darwin's own theory of natural selection supported by the Mendelian theory of heredity, by the theory of the mutation and recombination of genes in a gene pool, and by the decoded genetic code. This is an immensely impressive and powerful theory. The claim that it completely explains evolution is of course a bold claim, and very far from being established. All scientific theories are conjectures, even those that have successfully passed many severe and varied tests. The Mendelian underpinning of modern Darwinism has been well tested, and so has the theory of evolution which says that all terrestrial life has evolved from a few primitive unicellular organisms, possibly even from one single organism.



I still believe that natural selection works in this way as a research programme. Nevertheless, I have changed my mind about the testability and the logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation. My recantation may, I hope, contribute a little to the understanding of the status of natural selection.1,3

Karl Popper

References:
  1. Miller, David. 1985. Popper Selections.
  2. Popper, Karl. 1976. Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography Glasgow: Fontana/Collins.
  3. Popper, Karl. 1978. Natural selection and the emergence of mind. Dialectica 32: 339-355.

Oop!

One is tempted to ask why creation pseudo-scientists need to use these methods if they are so sure the facts support them, but the answer is probably too obvious.

Further reading:
Claim CA211.1 (The TalkOrigins Archive)





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5 comments :

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I appreciate you may be a Christian and so understandably want to remain anonymous, and that you have nothing worthwhile to say, but do you think you could try to conduct yourself in a civilised manner here and resist the temptation to spit your hatred in such an explicit manner from the safety of your bedroom?

      Many thanks.

      Delete
  2. Creationists have the same amount of intellectual integrity as Holocaust deniers.

    ReplyDelete
  3. You know what I really appreciate? I appreciate your friggin diligence in properly sourcing yoru stuff, (some people might not understand the importance of it, or why it's dishonest to fudge it), and your ability to refrain from verbally abusing those people spew stuff like whatever "anonymous" spewed. BTW... Your stuff is awesome. Just awesome. Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  4. All that ever really matters is the truth. Creationism is not the truth. Attributing anything in the real world to spiritual forces of the supernatural is the behavior of a child-like mind. It's 2013 and people ought to know better. Thank you shining the light of reason on some very dark minds.

    ReplyDelete

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