PLOS One, a scientific journal, recently published an article titled, “Biomechanical Characteristics of Hand Coordination in Grasping Activities of Daily Living.” Based on the title you would not think it to be that controversial, but you would be wrong.
The article came under fire for two comments made about the human hand. The article claimed the way muscles in the hand coordinate movement are the “proper design of the Creator,” and those coordinated movements “should indicate the mystery of the Creator’s invention.”
The article passed PLOS One’s criteria for publication, and though many have complained about attributing the complexity of human hand movement to the “Creator,” the observations and scientific data contained in the article have not been disputed.
The theory of evolution regarding the present existence of life in all its diversity and complexity is that life, in whatever form, is the random product of a mindless process that began by accident. Creationism holds that life in all its present diversity and complexity is the result of a creative process of intelligent design, and is neither random, mindless, nor accidental.
Whether one believes in evolution or creation is just that, a matter of belief, because neither one can be proved or disproved scientifically.
What we see in the reactions to this article is the bias in the scientific community to an admission of intelligent design and the possibility of a Creator. No one has questioned the scientific observations in the article. What has been questioned, even vilified, is the idea that the human hand owes its complex and coordinated movement to an intelligent Designer.
Science has often ridiculed some religious beliefs as being mere superstition, an attempt to make sense out of the unexplainable, the mysterious. What scientists are unwilling to admit is their theories without supporting evidence are just modern day superstitions couched in scientific language.
Scientific theories about how the universe and life began are attempts to satisfy our curiosity about those events, but the whole scientific community is not in possession of a single observable fact about either. Their theories are just scientific superstitions and the scientific community is as devoutly faithful to its superstitions as the Christian community is to its beliefs.
Science is the study of the natural order through direct observation in the field and experimentation in the laboratory. Christian faith is the study of man’s relationship with God, lost in the fall and restored in the Atonement. There are subject areas where science and the Scriptures overlap, but I am not aware of a single contradiction between the two.
“The fool has said in his heart ‘There is no God,’” Psalm 14:1. It seems to me the scientific community ought to cut this article some latitude, especially when it cannot disprove the existence of God, a subject entirely beyond its scope of inquiry. It is simply foolish of the scientific community to insist on adherence to its superstition here.
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