A recent letter-writer in our local paper presented this argument:
Many people believe the evolutionary theory but none practice it. For example, how much is left to chance in the design and assembly of a 747 jet? Nothing is left to chance. Every component is tested to breaking point to find any weakness in design or construction materials. It’s all intelligent design to the highest degree.
I have never seen the design team responsible for my car, but I know it isn’t the result of a chance explosion in a warehouse.
Science is the truth about observable facts. Who would believe that a 747 jet was the result of a whirlwind going through a scrap yard? No normal person would. Yet proponents of evolution say everything in our universe, which is millions of times more complex than a 747, just came about by chance, no design in it.
My response?
Number8Dave says:
And of course there’s Blount, Borland and Lenski’s work on the evolution of beneficial mutations in E. coli (http://pandasthumb.org/archives/2008/06/historical-cont.html)
Matt says:
You could argue that organic matter arranges itself by means of the law of natural selection into more advantatious and “complex” derivations, but inorganic matter, by definition is not infused with these properties. You can’t have it both ways, if you are alive then you go by the rules of Darwinian evolution, if you are not, then you are subject to physical laws and the laws of thermodynamics but not to natural selection. Rocks after all do not evolve, neither do base chemicals. At some point inorganic matter had to somehow (not by means of natural selection) convey iteslf into an astonishingly complex organic molecule. That is the premise of Hoyt’s paradigme … I am neither a creationist nor a Darwinian but simply someone who seeks the truth to things and the slant the above article takes largely misses the point of the original quote.