Posted on 08/04/2005 6:47:03 AM PDT by Mr. Silverback
President Bush sent reporters into a tizzy this week by saying that he thought schools ought to teach both evolution and intelligent design. Students ought to hear both theories, he said, so they “can understand what the debate is about.”
Well, the usual critics jumped all over the president, but he’s absolutely right. Considering all competing theories was once the very definition of academic freedom. But today, the illiberal forces of secularism want to stifle any challenges to Darwin—even though Darwin is proving to be eminently challengeable.
Take biochemist Michael Behe’s argument. He says that the cell is irreducibly complex. All the parts have to work at once, so it could not have evolved. No one has been able to successfully challenge Behe’s argument.
In fact, the scientific case for intelligent design is so strong that, as BreakPoint listeners have heard me say, even Antony Flew, once the world’s leading philosopher of atheism, has renounced his life-long beliefs and has become, as he puts it, a deist. He now believes an intelligent designer designed the universe, though he says he cannot know God yet.
I was in Oxford last week, speaking at the C. S. Lewis Summer Institute, and had a chance to visit with Flew. He told a crowd that, as a professional philosopher, he had used all the tools of his trade to arrive at what he believed were intellectually defensible suppositions supporting atheism. But the intelligent design movement shook those presuppositions. He said, however, on philosophical grounds that he could not prove the existence of the God of the Bible.
In the question period, I walked to the microphone and told him as nicely as I could that he had put himself in an impossible box. He could prove theism was the only philosophically sustainable position, but he could not prove who God was. I said, “If you could prove who God was, you could not love God—which is the principle object of life.”
I admitted that I had once gotten myself into the same position. I had studied biblical worldview for years and believed that I could prove beyond a doubt that the biblical worldview is the only one that is rational, the only one that conforms to the truth of the way the world is made. But that led to a spiritual crisis of sorts, when one morning in my quiet time I realized that while I could prove all of this, I could not prove who God was. I began to worry: When this life was over, would I really meet Him?
Some weeks later, as I describe in my new book The Good Life, it hit me that if I could prove God, I could not know Him. The reason is that, just as He tells us, He wants us to come like little children with faith. If you could resolve all intellectual doubts, there would be no need for faith. You would then know God the same way that you know the tree in the garden outside your home. You would look at it, know it is there, and that’s it, as Thomas Aquinas once said.
Faith is necessary because without it you cannot love God. So as I said to Dr. Flew, if you could prove God, you couldn’t love Him, which is His whole purpose in creating you. He later told me that I have raised a very provocative point that he would have to give some thought to.
So, I hope you will pray for Antony Flew—a gentle and courageous man who appears to be seeking God. And we should remember that if this brilliant man can be persuaded out of his atheism by intelligent design, anyone can see it. Those of us contending for the intelligent design point of view, which now includes among our ranks the president of the United States, I’m happy to say, are on increasingly solid ground.
Fester, with your statement you have forfeited any credibility you might have had when it comes to evolutionary science and related posts on this site. You have declared that science is your enemy, and that its methods and results must be destroyed when they do not agree with the voices in your head.
I had hoped to be able to continue discussing these matters with you, but you have shown that our world views are too diverse to communicate. Henceforth I will communicate with you only on other, less contentious subjects, such as the weather.
By the way, it is quite pleasant here, near 80 degrees with a little hint of a cool breeze.
So he was wrong and it was all old news anyway? That some kind of evolution has happened is an older idea, yes. Darwin provided the specifics of the mechanism and made the best argument from the best 1859 evidence for it having occurred. It was a huge advance.
Gawd. How hard is it to predict that there is a range of complexity in the bioshpere.
No. That's a good example of something everyone has always known. The lurker is invited to note the difference between saying "There is a range of complexity in the biosphere" and "As the fossil record of the world becomes better known, a historical branching tree of common descent will become further outlined."
Duh! Naysayers scoffed?
Yep. The fossil record of Darwin's day was indeed very poor. And there was this species of "thinker" at the time, a group of people arguing that holes in the fossil record were real holes in the history of life. Silly, isn't it?
So now we have museums full of forms in various stages between apes and humans, land animals and whales, dinosaurs and birds, reptiles and mammals, fish and amphibians, etc. One might think Darwin would get a lot of credit for an uncanny prediction, since essentially none of that was known in his day and the detractors were all mockingly asking for it at the time.
The scoffing is well deserved if you or Darwin think science can definitively prove all life is descended from a common biological form.
Why? He was right. They were wrong. He was uncanny, unless you accept that he was just applying a correct theory in a straightforward way. If he wasn't doing that, he was the luckiest charlatan in the history of the world. How did he know we'd find a chain of whale ancestors that starts out terrestrial but with increasingly aquatic adaptations over time?
The first assumption is that it [cytochrome C] actually DID yield the same tree of life.
Why is this an assumption? Do you have a scoop? Are the science journals of the world full of lies?
The consilience of independent phylogenies we have observed would be astronomically improbable without the assumption of a single underlying tree of life.
I liked it too. Can't believe he's in such a cooperative mood today.
Hehe. It's not as if I have lost something when the person who rejects my credibility accepts virtually any cretion story as viable. Besides, science continues to uncover God's creation just as intended.
I'm not quite sure why you think I would need to read anything Fester writes more than once, although, I could express a sigh and an implication...but what good would that do really.
I happen to think Fester brings a level of wisdom to the table that is sadly missing, and he doesn't clothe it in pride and arrogance, although, I'm sure you or others might disagree...which may say more for your pride and arrogance, rather than his....but why get locked into a philosophical dilemma of relative perspective here, when we have much bigger objective fish to fry, eh...
What you, and a lot of people fail to acknowledge, is that both philosophy and science are built upon self evident propositions that may or may not be true (if such an objective point of view does exist within our boundaries to even ascertain that statement within a logical framework)
In fact, I think you'll find that well known scientists throughout history, right up to the present, speak more like philosphers, than they do mathematicians and physicists...and that can not solely be attributed to the concept that because of knowledge disparity, people like this must speak in analogies to the masses.
Science, in principle, can not ever discover or dismiss God, because it works on a limited self evident proposition of cause and effect, and it's corollary, that which affects anything in objective reality (or that which effects the physical) must by definition be physical itself.
Even if God were to extend his proverbial hand into our affairs, science would never recognize it as such. As someone said here or on another thread, physics would most likely just posit a new particle.
Only subjective experience would be aware of potential truth in the above....doesn't that give you pause for thought Vade.......
Essentially, yes. The notion that all species are derivative of a common ancestor predates Darwin by millennia. His notions are hardly worth considering in a strictly scientific sense. They involve little, if any, testing, direct observation, and repeatabilty. They rely chiefly upon the interpretation of a static record. They entail 99% conjecture. They conveniently allow for pigeon-holing the evidence so that it supports the overall assumption of descent based upon morphological similarities. Those who call this "scientific advancement" have low standards as to what constitutes science.
The fossil record of Darwin's day was indeed very poor.
It still is. It only supports evolutionists thought if it is arranged accordingly. It supports creationist thought as is, for it amply demonstrates a world-wide deluge as attested in the biblical texts (which in turn denote the eyewitness testimony of Noah and those who came after him and his family).
So now we have museums full of forms in various stages between apes and humans, land animals and whales, dinosaurs and birds, reptiles and mammals, fish and amphibians, etc.
One should expect as much, since the biblical texts also attest to a Creator creating all living creatures after their kind, and then subjecting those creatures at some point in time to a world-wide deluge. (Even in the present day, the degree of variation among and between humans is substantial.) The best way to make fossils is with water, earth, and a biological being. The simplest explanation for the volume of fossils we have (perhaps large but by no means scratching the surface in terms of exhaustion), is a world-wide deluge at some point in time.
The consilience of independent phylogenies we have observed would be astronomically improbable . . .
Shame on you arguing from retro-astonishment like that. You know all such arguments are reserved only for creationists, who aptly point out the absurdity of self-organization when it comes to molecular and biological entities. Numbers are not the friend of those who would like to produce the history of life apart from an intelligent agent.
Apparently in many cases he still is. At any rate, you summarize the story of evolution well. Keep it out there and maybe it will grow legs. Er, never mind. It already has! I gather evolutionists have each their own story at some point or another since they have no text or authority other than their own reason and experience to guide them.
I guess what you consider major is subject to opinion.
Just be aware that the biblical texts also state that God has hidden certain things so that man might find them out.
Exactly. Including evolution.
As I said, you do not take either their authorship or their authority seriously. They are subject to your reason first, as as such they are outside of your grasp.
Once again, you're making assumptions about what I believe. Science is only one philosophy of looking at life, I realize that. Its applicability is different than that of religion.
Evolutionism has no text, and no basis upon which to assume or conclude that all biological entities are derived from a common ancestor.
That's because evolution is not dogma. No science follows a dogmatic text. Its basis is observational and well-grounded in evidence (both static and dynamic).
You are not subject to the same Authority, so of course you will allow your own reason and experience to trump both the biblical texts and their Author.
No. I just I allow my interpretation of Scripture to be consistent with reality. I also believe the natural world is another revelation of God's. Any belief in Scripture must be consistent with what we observe in the natural world; if not, then it is not on a very strong foundation.
Case in point: The notion that all biological entities are derived from a common ancestor
You've demonstrated through your past posts that you don't appear to properly understand the theory of evolution, the strength and relevance of its supporting evidence, or its implications. You've also openly admitted that you wouldn't believe the theory no matter what evidence was proposed. I would change my mind, for example, if fossils of humans and dinosaurs were ever found together in the same strata. Evolution is falsifiable. Evolution thus is science. Evolution should be thus be taught as science.
The nearly unanimous consensus of those best trained in the field disagrees with you. I'm not sure whether you're suggesting that the scientific community is either grossly incompetent or grossly dishonest (or both?); but those of us who DO understand the theory of evolution (and all the other theories that you reject ad hoc, i.e. radiometry) understand its importance in the scientific framework. Science is not well-served by removing theories that don't serve one's preconceived notion of the universe; Galileo would say so much.
Anyway, pardon me if I do not continue to respond to your posts (life's other obligations call-you can have the last word). I apologize if the tone of some of my posts was a bit harsh (I optimally try to avoid this; though sometimes my more human tendencies to come out - as a teacher I always tried to remain sensitive to students whose beliefs were different than mine when teaching science deemed controversial.) Good luck on your spiritual journey & God bless.
But is it empirically testable? Does it make specific predictions, like mainstream evolutionary theory does? That's the problem with ID from a strictly scientific standpoint, particularly the second point.
The Theory of Evolution is like attributing the production of a sandcastle to the ocean because you observed the water creating the mote.
Not a very great analogy; it fails because the castle is not a good allegory of the natural world. You have foreknowledge before telling the allegory that certain parts of the castle were definitively not shaped by the water (i.e. the drawbridge). In nature, there are no allegories to the drawbridge; no specific components that we definitively can't attribute to natural selection. Granted, there are many mechanisms for which there is no theory of evolution - the theory is not complete (no scientific theory is ever complete in the regard that it has been tested on everything). However, there are many mechanisms once thought to be irreducibly complex, such as the vertebrate eye and human blood clotting biochemistry, for which there now are testable theories of evolution. Also, for many of the complex entities you did mention, we know a lot more about their evolution than most people realize; complexity is not necessarily an argument against evolution. Irreducible complexity remains a premature conclusion with today's scientific knowledge.
An attempt at denying God is making fools of our scientists.
Good science does not deny or confirm God, as God is not a testable entity. God is too powerful a concept to be tested by the scientific method; as many scientists who accept evolution but do have faith will tell you. Some scientists are indeed making fools of themselves by saying that science proves there is no God; they are stepping beyond the bounds of accepted science when they do so. (I've never seen any peer-reviewed scientific literature that ever had anything to say about God, pro or con.)
They involve little, if any, testing, direct observation, and repeatabilty. They rely chiefly upon the interpretation of a static record. They entail 99% conjecture.
Fingers-in-the-ear reassertion. Dealt with it.
It still is. [The fossil record is still poor.]
It has filled in exactly along the lines Darwin predicted.
It only supports evolutionists thought if it is arranged accordingly.
Fingers-in-the-ear reassertion even after we have already on this thread established that you claim to accept geological superposition in dating sediment layers and the fossils they contain. Thus we have the phenomenon that you will theoretically accept a thing but disallow even the most trivial reasoning from the thing if said reasoning supports evolution. And there's no question now that this is absolutely and exactly what is going on with you.
It supports creationist thought as is, for it amply demonstrates a world-wide deluge as attested in the biblical texts (which in turn denote the eyewitness testimony of Noah and those who came after him and his family).
Unsupported and unsupportable assertion. Flood geology is a joke, an oxymoron. Adam Sedgwick gave it up in 1831 when he admitted he couldn't find one big flood anywhere.
One should expect as much, since the biblical texts also attest to a Creator creating all living creatures after their kind, and then subjecting those creatures at some point in time to a world-wide deluge.
Lovely model. Doesn't explain the fossil record we have at all, if you think about it. The geologic column really is layered and the dinosaurs are over the trilobites. Where is the flood? Is it before or after the K-T extinction that marks the last of the dinosaurs? Is it before or after the P-T extinction that marks the end of the trilobites and the larger mammal-like reptiles? If it covers all of them, why do we find terrestrial lavas and not pillow (undersea extrusion) lavas in so many sediments? Why aren't the layers sorted by Stokes's Law as flood sediments usually are?
Color me suspicious. If motivated and knowledgeable (for his day) Adam Sedgwick couldn't make a go of it, I can be sure Fester isn't facing up to the problems.
The simplest explanation for the volume of fossils we have (perhaps large but by no means scratching the surface in terms of exhaustion), is a world-wide deluge at some point in time.
Actually, there are far too many fossils for that. Also, there's far too much fossilized surface area for that. All those fossilized features of tranquil, non-flood, dry-land surface life--things like raindrop imprints in mud, animal tracks, burrows, nests, animal droppings--have to represent the same spot at different times. The planet isn't big enough for all that surface to have been exposed, have the tracks/nests/burrows/droppings/raindrop impressions/etc formed and hardened on it, then reburied, then the next layer exposed and the same thing done to it, all for layer upon layer of surface IN THE MIDDLE OF A GREAT WORLD-WIDE FLOOD. Have you ever even thought about what you're saying with this mind-bending nonsense?
Shame on you arguing from retro-astonishment like that. [The consilience of independent phylogenies]
Another Fester wave-away. Not an explanation. Yes, it is retrospectively astonishing if there's no underlying cause. You don't seem to want to deal with that and thus far haven't.
You see, your explanation for the fossil record is that it's an artifact of the bias of the people recording and categorizing it. So, when we examine the relatedness of things via their molecular makeup and get the same "artifact" even though we are using a 100 percent different technique which take no account of appearance or bones or anatomy of any sort. The picture painted from our study of the fossil record should utterly vanish when we use this new method. It doesn't. We're looking at protiens and DNA here but getting the same old tree of life as we got from the fossils and zoo animals. Something is wrong with your explanation.
Then, still looking at the molecules, there are all the little historical-accident copy errors and viral insertions immortalized by common descent and which make no design sense at all.
Retroactive astonishment? Throw two dice. Whatever you get, you had one chance in 36 of seeing exactly those two faces peering up at you. (There is more than one way to get some numbers and not others, so I'm not going into that.) If it bothers you that what you got seems so improbable, that's the fallacy of retroactive astonishment.
Try shuffling a card deck and dealing it out. Whatever you get, you had one chance in 52 factorial (8.07 x 1067 per my calculator) of getting it. If someone looks at the cards and decides your result is improbable, he's right.
But if every time you deal the cards out the cards are in order by suit and rank, then there really is something going on. If every time you throw the dice you get a three and a four, something non-random is going on.
Every genome we sequence, every time we cross-compare genes or proteins, the picture comes up with that one tree of life. It isn't really astonishing at all. It could hardly be anything else. We've had the evidence since 1859.
Yes, but not without evidence.
That's because evolution is not dogma.
It does not attain to that level, just as it (in the wide sense) does not attain to the level of "theory" or "science." What it does enjoy, however, is a riff-raff of dogmatic adherents who insist it belongs in the science classroom despite the fact that it consists largely, if not completely, of interpretations of a static record. One might say that static record is their "biblical text," of which their interpretation is "infallible" in presenting an amoeba-to-man biological history.
I just allow my interpretation of Scripture to be consistent with reality.
Which has primacy in your case, what the biblical texts say, or your interpretation thereof? Or do you consider both to be of equal value?
The nearly unanimous consensus of those best trained in the field disagrees with you.
I should expect as much, as this also is attested by the biblical texts. Besides, Galileo is a good example of going against the flow of scientific orthodoxy in his day. Meanwhile you seem to be missing the point again. I am not arguing to bring creationism into the science classroom. I am arguing that the philosophy of evolution be kicked out.
Evolution is falsifiable.
As a fundamental view of history relying upon the interpretation of a static record it is not falsifiable. As long as it is possible for dinosaurs to live with humans in the present day or at any time in history, you could interpret their presence at the same time and place as nevertheless supportive of evolution. They just "branched off" at some other point back in history.
Besides, if in the absence of evidence for a continuum of biological forms one can still hold up evolution as true, then, in the absence of evidence for dinosaurs and humans together in the fossil record one could still hold up creationism as true.
I'm not sure whether you're suggesting that the scientific community is either grossly incompetent or grossly dishonest (or both?)
The scientific community is neither. Those who devote themselves to undergirding the notion that man is derivative of primitive life forms have, to that extent, placed themselves outside of the scientific community, just as those who teach man becomes pleasing to God by his good works places himself outside of the Church. Error can be, and is, perpetuated in many ways, both in the scientific and theological disciplines. Let God be true, though every man be a liar.
I apologize if the tone of some of my posts was a bit harsh . . .
No need to apologize. The subject is fundamentally touchy. You've gone more than the extra mile in reading and responding to my posts. I've dished out my share of barbs as anyone who's read my posts can attest. Of this I can assure you: I am in no way embarrassed or distressed in seeing adherents to the philosphy of evolution on my side of the fence in cheering the freedoms we enjoy as citizens of the United States.
Actually, I was only trying (but failing) to express that he writes it more than once and you read it every time.
I happen to think Fester brings a level of wisdom to the table that is sadly missing...
I can be wise too, look!
Mumble mumble mumble evolutionist assumptions mumble mumble mumble!!As far as science not being about God, please explain it to Fester and all the ID-iots trying to sneak creationist nonsense into science classes around the country.
As for dinosaur fossils being found consistently above those of smaller creatures, this is probably due to the fact they a.) were not aqauatic and would have headed for higher ground (whatever aquatic dinosaurs existed at the time would obviously be able to rise above the rest), b.) of larger size and thus inclined to bloat and float as the waters subsided, and 3.) filtered out through the sifting that would take place as sediments settled.
You don't know jack about the world, Jack! You really, really need to take your head out.
Compared with how much there is to know, I believe you are right.
Aren't you well named? Your post is indeed a pack.
Rudoph Virchow, 1821 - 1902. Dying in 1902 would make him a pretty ninteenth-century guy, unless somehow he did all his good work after 1900.
But of course we have Bateson in 1914! Hey! That's a current research paper if there ever was one!
What, no George Gaylord Simpson from 1944? Or are you working your way up to there?
Mosaicing a lie--a complelety false picture--from just tiny selected little pieces of truth, deserves to still be called a lie. And how many of those quotes are even accurate? How many of those characterizations of who those people are would stand up to examination?
Why should anyone place any credence in just another creationist quote salad? The whole enterprise is rotten to the core.
You didn't fail in expresing what you intended, but maybe I did, so let me reiterate. Though I'm aware that he keeps repeating the concept of direct observation many times, I don't think he's doing it for my benefit, or anyone else who understands what he's talking about.
I will say that I find this thread very interesting for one particular reason. It has been my experience, in the four of five years that I've been debating at skeptic forums, that it is usually the nontheist that invokes direct observation, while the theist is left to logical deduction to support his position. Here, it seems those terms are exactly opposite in that it is the theist arguing direct observation, while you are essentially arguing logical deduction.
I find that very interesting indeed.
Oh, I've cracked a few of them before. Among all the texts I've read, the biblical ones have the most credibility. From those I am inclined to judge the other evidence and texts that come before me. It doesn't matter whether it comes from a child or from someone with a PhD, it is still subject to error if it in some way contradicts the biblical texts.
It does not take a whole lot of knowledge to know when one is dealing with a philosophy as opposed to science in the strict sense. Apparently you are incapable of knowing the difference, so it may be helpful for you to study up a little, too. You make a nice parrot for Darwin, but the world has plenty of those already. Why not do something useful with your life?
Otherwise, how is it that you decide which information to accept as true, and which information to reject as false? What is your ultimate authority, or do you have none other than yourself?
In addition to the general picture rendered by phylogenic trees, we have your word: "The geologic column really is layered and the dinosaurs are over the trilobites."
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