Sunday, May 08, 2005
Painting Themselves Into a Corner
A number of intelligent design witnesses testified at the Kansas science hearings last week that, in their view, conditions on the early earth would not have allowed life to have evolved out of inanimate matter. In addition, they said, the window of opportunity for life to emerge was too narrow. Perhaps they should catch this article by David Perlman "Mineral evidence paints life-friendly picture of early Earth" which appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle, yesterday.
The dilemma for intelligent design "theorists" is that while science doesn't have all the answers and never will, scientific investigation of the natural world will continue -- inexorably -- to fill the existing gaps in human knowledge. If the ID crowd continues to pin its hopes on those gaps in knowledge it will, in effect, paint itself into a smaller and smaller corner.
"Only a scant 200 million years after Earth was formed, our planet was already a watery world well suited for life to emerge, two scientists have concluded from fresh evidence they found in ancient microscopic minerals."
The dilemma for intelligent design "theorists" is that while science doesn't have all the answers and never will, scientific investigation of the natural world will continue -- inexorably -- to fill the existing gaps in human knowledge. If the ID crowd continues to pin its hopes on those gaps in knowledge it will, in effect, paint itself into a smaller and smaller corner.
