by Casey Luskin
Evolution News and Views
Recently the Christian Post interviewed me about comments by astronaut John Glenn on whether evolution is compatible with religion, and whether evolution should be taught in public schools. Although the vast majority of the interview was about science education policy, I was quoted as saying only one thing: “Some definitions of evolution are completely compatible with a belief in God and others aren’t. That is a key aspect of evolution we need to remember.”
Which is true, but there’s so much more to talk about than that.
The article did quote extensively from Josh Rosenau of the National Center for Science Education. And that’s fine. I have no objection to him presenting his viewpoint on evolution, but it’s too bad readers missed the other side of the discussion. Intelligent design theorists have potent scientific arguments and rebuttals to many evolutionary claims. Those deserve to be heard as well.
Rosenau said one thing that calls for a specific response since you hear it all the time. He claimed that “how well we understand evolution is critical to how we understand the human person and advances in medicine.” What about that? Is evolutionary theory “critical” to medicine?
Well, there are many in the sciences who would disagree with Josh Rosenau. David Klinghoffer wrote about this last week, explaining that many doctors feel evolution is not relevant to practicing medicine. In fact, a poll of doctors from 2006 (reported by the Christian Post, no less) found that at least 34 percent of U.S. physicians think intelligence played a role in the origin of humans. That’s a very significant portion of doctors who support intelligent design.
On the flipside, evolutionary science has hindered medical research by promulgating the now-defunct concept of “junk DNA”. That’s the evolution-based idea that most of the DNA in human cells is useless junk. It’s now known that the vast majority of our DNA has function, but evolution discouraged research into “junk DNA.” In this regard, with its faulty understanding of “the human person” as being the result of strictly blind physical mechanisms, evolution has obstructed “advances in medicine.”
Many other examples could be given. For another, evolutionary science has wrongly assumed that many organs are “vestigial” and thus unnecessary or unimportant. Those organs include the appendix, tonsils, coccyx, and thyroid. It’s now known that each of those organs plays an important role in human physiology. By presuming nonfunctionality or reduced functionality in these organs, evolutionary science did great medical damage to many patients.
Want to know more? We discuss these topics in the curriculum Discovering Intelligent Design. See Chapter 12, titled “Poorly Designed Arguments.” Now, we’ve made a new online component of our curriculum available as well, and it’s free.
Read the Full Article here.