More Views on Intelligent Design
MY impression is that many readers are interested in the intelligent design-evolution debate and are following the published letters with anticipation. May I seek to clarify some important points.
True science involves repeated experimentation and observation of events as they happen. This being so, neither intelligent design or evolution can be classed as science.
No human was there at the beginning to observe or repeat and experiment.
Both are therefore theories and must be accepted and believed by faith. The best science can do is to test the theories.
Regarding the so-called missing links, Dr Colin Patterson, who was a senior palaeontologist and evolutionist with the British Museum, was asked why one of his publications did not include photos of transitional forms to show how evolution had progressed. He replied, “I will lay it on the line, there is not one such fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.” Missing links are indeed missing.
Now what about intelligent design? When I see a helicopter hovering when on a difficult rescue mission, I marvel at its design and engineering construction and the skill of the pilot. Then, when I pause to observe a dragon fly which for its size can out-perform our best helicopters and is far more complicated and skillfully designed I can only say here is intelligence and design far greater than man can ever achieve. Neither the helicopter nor the dragon fly could have been designed or built without outside help. Or to put it another way, there is enough information capacity in a human cell to store the Encyclopedia Britannica, all 30 volumes of it. Now if it’s unreasonable to suggest that the encyclopedia could have originated without intelligent help, isn’t it just as unreasonable to assume that the cell and life could have arisen without intelligence? So the question arises. Who or what was there to cause things to happen in the beginning. To say life started in slime or by itself is not a scientific answer.
There has to be a first cause.
Paul Gay, Invercargill THE theory of evolution rests on accepting the world as being millions of years old. This age is derived from Hutton and Lyell’s uniformitarian theory (which lacks evidence) and radioactive dating.
The latter is notoriously unreliable.
Lava from three Mt Ngauruhoe lava flows that were seen erupting in 1949, 1954, and 1975 were variously dated (radioactively) as between 0.27 and 3.5 million years old. A lava flow in Hawaii, documented as being produced in 1801 was dated at 2960 million years.
Further, tree fossils are regularly discovered that sit vertically through several layers of rock (polystrate) said to be several millions of years apart. It is difficult to imagine trees standing vertically for millions of years as they are slowly covered by sediments.
No, there is something very wrong with the dating system. An ancient Earth and evolution are inextricably entwined.
However, there are far too many anomalies (including many so- called living fossils such as our own tuatara and the coelacanth fish from the Indian Ocean) for the theory to be accorded the courtesy of acceptance without question.
The evidence is the same for evolution and intelligent design; the difference is in the interpretation.
An alternative interpretation is that the layers of rock were deposited at much the same time with the sea creatures being buried and preserved at the bottom, followed by land plants and animals as the sediments washed them into the sea, thus reflecting different species coming from different ecosystems all living at the same time, rather than any significant age difference and evolution.
In this scenario, man would have been living with dinosaurs, unlike the millions of years apart demanded by the evolutionary model.
Edward Hutchison, Tapanui