Dark Matter and Evolution

One argument creatonists (and yes I am including ID in this category) make is that their ideas critical of evolution and Charles Darwin's theory are suppressed and thus cannot gain traction in mainstream science. This has been shown false many times. Well, now we have concrete proof that this argument is nothing more than whining and a plea for attention, but hollow otherwise. So how can we draw conclusions about the vacuity of creationist complaints from an article about dark matter in a galaxy cluster 3 billion light years away? Jason Rosenhouse, in his CSICOP article, gives us the answer, and this news about dark matter is just another example.

The Jonathon Wells, Philip Johnsons, and William Dembskis all make the same claim, that the scientific elite suppress their criticisms and their proofs of "alternatives" to evolution. Jason points out that science works in just the opposite way, that big breakthroughs are strived for in science, not suppressed. Thus we come to dark matter.

Consider this passage:

"While the theoretical existence of dark matter has been broadly embraced for years -- and has now been further endorsed by some of the most prominent researchers and institutions in the field -- a strong countertheory has also grown, contending that the laws of gravity established by Newton and Einstein need modification. The group supporting this theory believes that a relatively limited tweaking of those laws, especially as they pertain to the massive nature of faraway galaxies, could explain the missing gravity better than could undetectable dark matter. [emphasis mine]"

We see that an older and more established theory, Newtonian gravity, was being challenged by physicists in order to explain away the possibility of dark matter, a very new theory on the block. In both camps, the dark matter scientists and gravity-tweaking scientists, they were racing to get their ideas proven. Creationists, on the other hand, do no science whatsoever, produce nothing to add to the theoretical (Dembski's Complex Specified Information is a useless tool able to detect nothing, and Behe's Irreducible Complexity has been shown false for every example he has provided). In spite of the fact nothing has been produced in support of Intelligent Design, they bemoan the out-of-hand rejection of their "theory."

Creation Scientists, such as Ken Ham and Jonathan Sarfati of AiG, fare no better. They only claim to take the known evidence, fossils, geology, physics, etc. and twist it to fit their theory (young earth creationism). They make the same claim that their ideas are being ignored. Dark Matter foils them as well. We see that because alternative views to dark matter (the gravity tweakers) put up an alternative view of the facts, and tried to change a well-established theory, Newtonian and Einsteinian gravity, but failed to produce evidence supporting their side. (I should state here that this particular debate is not over yet, we may still find that not enough dark matter exists to account for our observations, requiring a change to the theories of gravity.) Like gravity, the debate over evolution is not over; but a serious blow to the side of the gravity tweakers.

The problem we find is that unlike the physics community, the creationists refuse to admit defeat, and continue to toss out the same tired, debunked, vacuous ideas time after time. Only each time they repeat their old assertions, they simply look more and more desperate.

Maybe it is time for the creationists to take heed of Shakespeare

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
[Hamlet, act 1, sc. 5]

and realize that their philosophies have given up their ghosts, and accept the truth that more exists than are willing to acknowledge.