World-renowned science fiction author Orson Scott Card is an evolutionist. No surprise there.
But he's no Darwinist.
In fact, Card takes Darwinists to task in a recent (January 2006) essay that exposes their lack of scientific objectivity, and appeals for an open dialogue:
Orson Scott Card: Creation and evolution in the schools
The Darwinist answer was immediate. Unfortunately, it was also illogical, personal, and unscientific. The main points are:
1. Intelligent Design is just Creation Science in a new suit (name-calling).
2. Don't listen to these guys, they're not real scientists (credentialism).
3. If you actually understood science as we do, you'd realize that these guys are wrong and we're right; but you don't, so you have to trust us (expertism).
4. They got some details of those complex systems wrong, so they must be wrong about everything (sniping).
5. The first amendment requires the separation of church and state (politics).
6. We can't possibly find a fossil record of every step along the way in evolution, but evolution has already been so well-demonstrated it is absurd to challenge it in the details (prestidigitation).
7. Even if there are problems with the Darwinian model, there's no justification for postulating an "intelligent designer" (true).
That Card believes firmly in evolution is easily evident from passages such as this:
The fossil record is very clear in showing the divergence of species, with old ones going extinct and new ones arising over a long period of time. And the general progression is from simpler to more-complex organisms. The fact that evolution takes place is obvious. You don't have to find some improbable fossil graveyard where each generation conveniently lay down next to their parents' bodies when it came time to die.
Still, all it takes is a suggestion like the following for him to be denounced as a dyed-in-the-wool ID proponent:
Evolution happens and obviously happened in the natural world, and natural selection plays a role in it. But we do not have adequate theories yet to explain completely how evolution works and worked at the biochemical level.
Although Card lends too much credence to evolutionary theory, he's performed a great service by delineating problems in Darwinist rhetoric, and by issuing a fresh call for open debate.
April 6, 2006 at 5:21 pm |
What’s the difference between Darwinian evolution and evolution per se?
April 6, 2006 at 7:51 pm |
That’s what I find so interesting about Orson Scott Card. He says there’s no question that evolution occurred, he just doesn’t believe the mechanism that caused it has been determined yet.
Unlike Intelligent Design theorists, he believes a perfectly naturalistic mechanism is responsible for evolution, and that science will (may?) one day discover it.
But unlike Darwinists, he doesn’t believe that natural selection and genetic mutation alone can account for the appearance of life, and credits Intelligent Design theorists for pointing out their insufficiency.
April 7, 2006 at 2:44 am |
Is this what you mean: “Darwinisms insists that genetic mutation and natural selction are the sole source of evolution”?
I’m almost a Darwinist, then. I’ll try not to use rhetoric! I think I did at one point where I went of on an alliterative thing when we were talking about the infinite monkeys, but we can make that kind of text flash, or strobe or something!
The difference between me and a Darwinist in the simplest sense is that I want to acknowledge the role of the changing environment, and migration between niches. This doesn’t change my impression that the mutation/selection thing is the mechanism causing variation and success.
But also, I acknowledge that since it took us a while to recognize evolution, there may be some other fundamental process we haven’t recognized. Was there long enough for our scientific approaches to evolve sufficiently to have worked this out? Or was it an intelligently designed theory. I would say it was intelligently designed by a particular – and very rare – example of a wonderfully intelligent organism that was capable of thinking of it. The *theory* was intelligently designed.
You and yours said “God made this, so whatever anyone thinks they’ve worked out, or might be able to work out, actually it was God”, and you’re happy with that. I come along and say “You think God did everything, and that’s a cop out because it’s easy to say that, and all these counter arguments you come up with against evolution insist that, because we haven’t explained everything, it’s a pointless/wrong/blasphemous theory.”
My weakness (crime?) in your eyes is denial of God. Your weakness in my eyes is worship. Your strength in your heart comes from God. My strength comes from love.