Popper

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Karl Popper was a philosopher of science who is best known for his extension of David Hume's 'problem of induction' and for his work on the demarcation of science.

Popper argued that observation is selective and theory-laden and that there can be no pure or theory-free observations. He further argued that it is possible to select amongst observable data in such a way as to support personally favoured yet invalid theories.

(So-called creation 'science' and ‘intelligent [sick] design theory’ are not science, and provide clear examples of the misinterpretation and misrepresentation of facts to fit a prior insistence on the existence of a creator. Here, I use prior to indicate that belief in a creator comes prior to the manipulation of the data to support the belief. Creation myths are the invention of humans in almost every culture and are initially invented because of a psychological need for an a posteriori explanation of the natural world. Continuation of such creation mythologies are ensured by post-invention indoctrination.)

Regarding Karl Popper on the topic of the demarcation of science from non-science:"Formally, then, Popper's theory of demarcation may be articulated as follows: where a ‘basic statement’ is to be understood as a particular observation-report, then we may say that a theory is scientific if and only if it divides the class of basic statements into the following two non-empty sub-classes: (a) the class of all those basic statements with which it is inconsistent, or which it prohibits — this is the class of its potential falsifiers (i.e., those statements which, if true, falsify the whole theory), and (b) the class of those basic statements with which it is consistent, or which it permits (i.e., those statements which, if true, corroborate it, or bear it out).

"Thornton, Stephen, "Karl Popper", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2006 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL

Darwin and Great Accomplishments

"It was Darwin’s greatest accomplishment to show that the complex organization
and functionality of living beings can be explained as the result of a
natural process—natural selection—without any need to resort to a Creator or
other external agent."


(Francisco J. Ayala, "Darwin’s greatest
discovery: Design
without designer," Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences USA, Vol.
104:8567–8573 (May 15, 2007).)

(It has been my almost invariable observation that those who write on behalf of evolutionary biology exhibit far superior grammar and wordpower to creationists. The author of the brief article surrounding this quote is an exception to the rule and writes well.)

The quote is from Francisco Ayala, "Renaissance Man of Evolutionary Biology," says “Darwin’s greatest discovery: Design without designer”. Since the original was published on the "Discovery" Institute's website and we have decided to refuse to lend authority to any creationist institution by providing backlinks, this post is published without a url. Googling will pull up the original.

The DI purports to have the aim that, "The misreporting of the evolution issue is one key reason for this site. Unfortunately, much of the news coverage has been sloppy, inaccurate, and in some cases, overtly biased. Evolution News & Views presents analysis of that coverage, as well as original reporting that accurately delivers information about the current state of the debate over Darwinian evolution.".

I would agree with DI that "much of the news coverage has been sloppy, inaccurate, and in some cases, overtly biased", though the vast bulk of bias has appeared on Christian websites. If a reporter were educated and unbiased then he or she would know that there is absolutely no place for anti-science and pseudoscientific "debate over Darwinian evolution". In other words, any supposedly fair presentation of the facts on DI is merely a sham that is *designed* to bestow legitimacy on DI's pretentious, pseudoscientific, creationist aims. Calls for "debate" are merely an attempt to support ID demands that thinly disguised religious views be promulgated in science classrooms.

While evolutionary biology has moved far beyond Darwinian (natural selection) concepts in explaining the fact of biological evolution, natural selection remains one of the key mechanisms in biological evolution. Science has moved well beyond accepting Darwinian principles. Religion, on the other hand, denies well-established facts of science in a vain attempt to support disproven claims in Genesis.