We live in what we like to refer to as a modern world, but 
certainly the experience of being human never seems to 
change. Despite our evolving informational, technological and 
material environments, our interactions with each other (and 
ourselves) remain as they have since the dawn of recorded 
history.

One of the most obvious aspects of being human that has 
withstood the process of time is our intellect. Call it intelligence, 
smarts, sentience, sapience, whatever you wish... our mental 
inclination toward abstraction and conceptualization far exceeds 
any other observable living creatures on this planet.

For perhaps this reason alone, the idea arose at some point in 
our history that we must be the final result of a mindless and 
inexorable process of development; a process of development 
that Charles Darwin is typically credited for discovering. We call 
this process Evolution, and although evolution as an algorithm 
can be successfully applied to much more than the 
development of life on this planet, it is most frequently 
associated with Darwin's "world shattering" idea.

But is there really such a process in regard to the origin of all 
biological life, and if so, are we truly the final result?

I've done my share of Internet surfing, seeking out both sides 
of this stalemated argument. It can't be expressed effectively 
enough that the arduous fervor of both sides is ultimately 
not a proof of either concept: God or Random Chance 
as the originator of life as we know it.

The simplistic view of this debate is that only the Science side 
has all the documented and researched facts, and the 
Creationist side merely has conjecture, wishful thinking and 
"bad science." Proponents of the Scientific view never seem to 
run out of examples of facts that refute the "deceptive, 
ungrounded objections" of the Creationist view.

I have looked over reams of bulleted, detailed counter-
arguments designed to drive home the "truth" of the matter: 
that Creationists never know what they're talking about. 
Science insists that if these Creationists have the ignorant 
audacity to refute the BodhiDarwin, they're only begging to be 
exposed as populist charlatans with a hidden agenda to send us 
all back to the dark ages.

We're informed that Jonathan Wells has cherry-picked the 
examples in his book Icons of Evolution, and that his 
arguments are "intellectually dishonest." But while the arbiters 
of truth are busy trying to drown Wells's assertions with a flood 
of facts, they're not spending very much time explaining why 
these inaccuracies are still present as seminal examples of 
evolution in modern textbooks. The best explanation Wells's 
critics can muster is that these textbooks are mostly used at 
the high school level. Apparently, high school students don't 
deserve the same access to scientific accuracy as college 
students.

We're expected to accept the proclamation that Michael Behe's 
argument regarding irreducible complexity in his book 
Darwin's Black Box is just plain silly, because we're 
told that gradual evolution can do more than just add parts.

To sum up for those reading this who aren't as familiar with 
this particular debate, Behe points out (correctly) that certain 
structures vital to life (biological cells), contain such intricate 
and complex interdependence between their constituent parts 
that the entire cell can't function with any one of 
those myriad parts removed. Thus, Behe asserts that gradual 
evolution could not have produced those structures, since the 
cell can't perform its principle functions with only part of its 
contents.

The Scientific detractors of this argument claim that Behe's 
observation is invalid: the simple version of their counter-
assertion is that it only seems like a cell couldn't 
survive and function without its myriad interacting parts.

What the Scientific fact spewers are actually doing here is 
vending faith, not science. They maintain the presupposition 
that because the origin and development of all life on this 
planet had to be congruous with Darwin's theory, 
that of course the cells must have found some way to 
develop myriad, intricately cohesive functions one 
unique interdependent part at a time, never missing a step.

These same statistically miraculous and ingeniously evolving 
cells never failed to continue existing and replicating 
during this multi-million year process. And furthermore, these 
aimless yet resilient microscopic entities never failed 
the larger organisms they eventually became a part of, despite 
their non-existent ability to engineer their own future 
structures.

Regardless of what you or I choose to believe, and no matter 
how strong the urge to call the other side wrong, try to 
remember this:

Facts are never truly self-evident when it comes to matters of 
theoretical controversy; they are merely subjective tools of the 
persons manipulating them, as any litigator or marketing 
analyst can attest.