An article came out today saying that a sizeable minority of Americans reject Darwinian evolution (which Canadians accept as established fact. So Canadians are feeling quite smug today. But should we be?
Evolution and Darwinism are not the same thing. Scientists believed in evolution within species prior to Darwin -- and this is what people cite when they say that evolution has been observed and has been "proven".
Darwin lost his faith in God and sought to discover a natural, materialistic explanation for the teeming complexity of life on this planet. His theory arose from this viewpoint. So Darwinian evolution is not really objective science; it is driven by the philosophy of materialism and a desire to disprove the necessity of a Creator. So, when someone says they are a darwinist, they are really making a philosophical statement about themself more than a scientific one.
Even if the evolution of species could be proven, Darwin's central tenet, that random selection (rather than directed design) is the mechanism, would be completely unproveable. So, Darwinism is no more "scientific" than intelligent design, in the sense that neither can be "proven".
To settle the argument, you need to step back and consider the origin of the universe.
For various reasons, we are stuck with the conclusion that the universe -- time and space -- had a definite begininng. And that has us staring face to face with the likelihood, the probability that the world is in fact the product of an eternal Creator who exists outside of it. The design that we see in the present world confirms this. So, intelligent design becomes in fact more likely than random chance as an explanation for how we got to where we are today.
As it turns out, Americans are quite sensible to say that they reject darwinian evolution. Canadians shouldn't be so smug.
And that's the way the Ball bounces.
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