Brian Pollard’s editorial is breathtaking in the scope of its errors. His comprehension of Darwin’s Origin of the Species is incomplete at best. Firstly, it makes no claims as to the origin of life. It is simply describing how so many different life forms have come about. Today, the Theory of Evolution has little to say about the origin of life, but claims that all organisms are descended from a common ancestor. Where that common ancestor came from is cause for speculation, but no convincing theories of yet.

Secondly, his argument as to a causal source of everything in the universe, this is a sloppy philosophical argument, and his understanding of it is crude at best. He is right, that everything in the universe has a cause. From there, he stumbles, and suggests that all causes are supernatural or intelligent in origin. Would he claim that the falling rain outside my window is caused by God crying? I choose to think that rain falling is caused by the humidity in clouds reaching saturation point, and the water condensing and falling to the earth.

Science is the province of material explanations for the way the world works. The day that we as scientists claim that a problem (such as the origin of species) is too difficult for us to tackle, then we should stop spending money trying to cure cancer. After all, if God is the cause for us existing, why can we not claim that God is the cause of tumours? No point trying to cure Alzheimer’s, because God wanted it to happen. But, all of these things have material causes that can be discovered, much like the origin of species. And it is a scientists role to discover these causes.

God’s spark started the world. He set into place a universe with rules, and those rules resulted in us having the brains to decipher them. 3000 years ago, men wrote Genesis with their best understanding of the rules that God set up. Isn’t it time that we updated our understanding of how the universe works?

"all the species alive today (a tiny fraction of those that have lived) are the sucessfull ones, the ones who out fought, out competed, and literally out ate their competition, everything else is dead. "

You forgot out-reproduced. That's the most important one (and as an aside, the most fun one).

Big Al, I am totally with you, dude, except that you forgot to mention an equally valid theory that should in all fairness be given equal time with ID and Darwinism. I'm talking of course about the Flying Spaghetti Monster Theory, wherin the FSM, in his noodly splendor, created the universe 5 minutes ago, complete with false memories in our brains, and fake evidence to make scientists think that the Earth is 4.5 billion years old and species evolved naturally.

Oh, and there's Miraculous Mathematics that should get equal time with Algebra, Geometry, Calculus and all that dogmatic stuff. The best thing about MM is that whenever you get to a really "irreducibly complex" part of a proof, you just say "and then a miracle happens", and voila -- the proof is done. QED. I came up with a simple MM proof of the Riemann Hypothesis! It's easy, you can too! The masses will love it! We could get some rich dude to fund us an MM "research institute"...

Good article Brian, You summed up the basic problems as I see it.

A theory is defined as 'A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena'.

Lets define macroevolution as 'Billions of genetic mutations which have occurred over time to give a species a natural selective advantage over the other'. Simplistic definition, but viable for this discussion.

So the silly thing is that we have NEVER demonstrated a net gain of information from a mutation that has led to positive benefits.

Sure I can quote you some "losses" of information which happen to in certain environments confer a selective advantage. Heterozygous Sickle Cell Anaemia in certain places of Africa lowers the risk of contracting the deadly disease malaria, and the group with sickle cell are acutally conferred a selective advantage. However it is important to recognise that there has still been a net loss of information through the mutation which has led to a deformaty of the red blood cells (e.g. If I amputate my limbs, I have less chance of bleeding to death).

So if we cannot really repeatedly test these mutations, how can we accept it as a theory? Unless someone can demostrate to me in a laboratory, (which they have tried many times; by exposing rats to high levels of radiation to cause mutations, just led to lots of dead rats) to me it is not a theory. It is just another religion, where a person believes this due to faith rather than reproducable facts.

The irony is that it is often not the scientific community who are the biggest champions of this religion. It has become the school teachers, the politicians, whose theoretical knowledge is often simplistic and outdated (In school I was taught about evolution of the horse, which had been disproven 20 years before). Lets not pretend evolution attains any superiority over other 'origin of life' theories. They are all really just interpretations of the left-overs.

Brian Pollard's argument is an argument from ignorance: Just because we don't have a full or complete explanation for something, he assumes a supernatural creator. And then has the arrogance to call the supernatural explanation the "truth".

Yeah, well, the truth is out there but to promote ID as a valid thesis is a dead-end for the education of our children.

The following is from the ABC science website

"Science requires that any theory meet four criteria:
• Hypothesis - the theory should be founded on clearly identified (and preferably distinctive) assumptions.
• Testability - the hypothesis should be able to be tested for validity, either directly or indirectly by experiment or by observation of regularities in past events.
• Reproducibility - others can reproduce the results claimed.
• Explanatory power - the theory should be able to explain extant data and observations and should be able to predict outcomes in at least some novel situations
Intelligent design does not meet any of these criteria. The Australian Academy of Science said in a recently released statement that intelligent design "is not a scientific idea. That is, it is not open to empirical test."
The statement goes on to say that in contrast, "The theory [of evolution] has attracted enormous empirical testing and remains one of the most powerful of scientific ideas."

ID is simply a tool for the seriously religious to attempt to usurp a logical, rational and systematic search for meaning. An attempt to put in place a single fundamentalist Christian version of the world with no room for freedom of thought or expression.

We need to protect our children from such narrow thinking.

I'm Christian.
I believe the Big Bang Theory.
I believe that the Big Bang was caused by God. As well, I believe the theory of evolution- being guided by God.
Is there an atheist here who can propose a law which prevents the occurence of a Second Big Bang?
Why was there no Big Bang since this one?
Why didn't another one happen yesterday in your back yard?
Basically, what caused the Big Bang (If you think the Big Bang happened, like I do, as science supports).