Saturday, July 4, 2009

The Evolutionary Five-Step Cycle

The latest findings on solar system stability finish a cycle of evolutionary research that seems to repeat ad nauseam. The five-step cycle goes like this:

1. Initial discovery. In our initial scientific investigation of a natural phenomena we are oblivious to the enormous complexity we have stumbled up. Like an ant trying to understand the dog it is crawling on, the observations are few and unknown variables are many.

2. Religious interpretation. In this early stage we are guided more by our metaphysics than our physics. Our great uncertainties about the problem are resolved with assumptions about what must be true. With an evolutionary mindset we interpret subtleties and nuances of the design as useless leftovers and the findings are chalked up to yet more confirmation that the world designed itself.

3. Scientific understanding. Years later those subtleties and nuances finally begin to be understood for what they are. We slowly are getting a peek at nature's enormous complexity. The new found understanding makes no sense on the evolutionary view but so what, by now evolution is a fact. It is the job of science to explain such quandaries and how they evolved themselves into place.

4. Evolutionary patchwork. Like a Rube Goldberg machine, the evolutionary theories become increasingly circuitous. They are as complex as the phenomena they are trying to explain. Nature is bearing a load it cannot bear as a long sequence of heroic feats are ascribed to its laws and processes.

5. Public relations. The metaphysics continues on its way, mandating strictly naturalistic origins and oblivious to its own failed track record. Evolution is pronounced as fact, results are presented as "just science," adherents are lauded, skeptics are castigated, and our religious sentiment is satisfied. At this point, most evolutionists are oblivious to the religious foundation they rest on.

Religion drives science, and it matters.