Stephen Meyer, author of Signature in the Cell, and Jonathan Wells, author of Icons of Evolution gave a presentation recently at the University of Oklahoma. As is typical of these events there was lots of name-calling from the Darwinians and attempts to abort the program before it got off the ground, but evidently none of these tactics worked. Wells files an interesting report on the proceedings at Evolution News and Views. Here's an excerpt:
Darwinist blogger P.Z. Myers, who had scolded the museum for letting us show the film [Darwin's Dilemma], did not come all the way from the University of Minnesota, Morris, to attend. Yet he wrote afterwards about Steve's September 28 lecture:
"I knew ahead of time exactly what it was going to be: complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, complexity, therefore, DESIGN. It doesn't follow. The logic is nonexistent. It's the kind of thing you'd expect a competent person with a Ph.D. in philosophy to recognize, but no, it's the same ol' thing, trotted out every time they get up to speak."
Of course, Myers is absolutely correct: Complexity, therefore design, doesn't follow. And yes, "you'd expect a competent person with a Ph.D. in philosophy" to know this.
That's why Steve Meyer devoted an entire chapter to it in his book. In fact, it's the chapter from which the book takes its name (Chapter 4.). If Myers had bothered to read Steve's book, he would have known this. Indeed, you'd expect that a competent person with a Ph.D. who's paid by the taxpayers of Minnesota to teach their children would read a book before ridiculing it. But no, it's the same ol' thing, trotted out every time Myers blogs on the subject.
I was particularly interested in this statement made by an evolutionist professor on campus who gave a talk to balance that of Meyer and Wells:
[Professor] Westrop concluded by taking exception to J.B.S. Haldane's claim that finding a fossil rabbit in the pre-Cambrian would prove Darwin's theory wrong. If such a fossil were found, Westrop said, paleontologists would simply revise their reconstruction of the history of life. During the Q&A, one student asked him whether any fossil find could falsify Darwin's theory, and Professor Westrop said "No."
This is revealing inasmuch as Darwinians frequently argue that, unlike Intelligent Design, their theory is genuine science because it can be falsified, that is we can imagine a discovery that would prove their theory false if it were actually made. Often they cite the discovery of a mammal fossil in a layer of rock believed to have formed much earlier than mammals existed. Westrop is saying, however, that such a find would not disprove Darwinism at all. In other words, Darwinism is not falsifiable, at least by the fossil record, and is thus no more "scientific" than is ID.
Wait until Judge Jones hears this.
RLC