Monday, July 18, 2005

Waving the Wand

Here's a good example of what Norman Macbeth once referred to as "waving the wand" in evolutionary biology. Rather than explain what cannot plausibly be explained in naturalistic terms the materialist simply says that nature just waved its magic wand and, poof, there you have it:

Natural selection is simply about genes replicating themselves down the generations. Genes that build bodies that do what's needed - seeing, running, digesting, mating - get replicated; and those that don't, don't. Helena Cronin -- Time

Well, gee, that sounds easy enough. How do we explain the amazing complexity and organization of living things? Our genes just program the construction of a body that does stuff. Start with a little DNA and before you know it you have nervous systems and immune systems and everything else. No problem.

Cronin makes genes sound like clever little engineers instead of just a bunch of mindless nucleic acids all strung together. No matter how hard materialists try to scrub suggestions of intelligence and purpose from their descriptions of living things they just can't seem to pull it off. Wonder why.