Posted on 02/01/2005 7:12:16 PM PST by gobucks
People believe in evolution for a variety of reasons. As we will see later, one reason is so they can reject the Christian faith. And, as we also observe later, the theory of evolution bears great responsibility for people’s loss of faith, intentional or not.
Like most people during his era, Charles Darwin was raised in a Christian environment. At one point he made half-hearted attempts toward a call to the ministry and becoming a clergyman.1 Eventually, however, he lost whatever "faith" he had, concluding that, "The Old Testament was no more to be trusted than the sacred books of the Hindoos [sic]" and "I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation."2 As he stated in Life and Letters, Vol. 1, pp. 277-278, "Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress."3 In fact, it seems Darwin was determined not to believe; for example, to rationalize his unbelief he continued to raise the level of evidence required to sustain faith.4
Unfortunately, Darwin’s loss of faith had more serious repercussions than he was willing to admit.5
It seems that Darwin could not live with God but neither could Darwin escape God. The battle endured throughout his life and it not only made him physically ill, it also cost him, to some degree, his mental health. Most biographers of Darwin acknowledge his rejection of Christian faith. What they don’t usually do is reveal the consequences. James Moore’s definitive biography: Charles Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist is a notable exception as well as the volume by Clark and Bales (Why Scientists Accept Evolution) and that of Sunderland (Darwin’s Enigma).
Dr. Robert E. D. Clark (Ph.D., Cambridge) shows how tortured Darwin’s life was because of his rejection of God. Darwin even referred to his theory as "the devil’s gospel." T. H. Huxley was Darwin’s most committed and vocal supporter. On August 8, 1860 in a letter to Huxley, Darwin referred to him as "my good and kind agent for the propagation of the Gospel—i.e., the devil’s gospel."6
In Darwin: Before and After Dr. Clark points out that it was from the beginnings of Darwin’s unbelief that the first important instances of physical illness began. Fitting a typical pattern, as his faith in God faded, his consecration to science became almost religious. Nothing was physically wrong with Darwin, "but his illnesses became worse and worse"7 in spite of his "normal" health.
Yet he was a chronic invalid. Unfavorable reviews of his books gave him continuous headaches; even half an hour’s discussion with a fellow naturalist about scientific matters would render him incapable of work for hours. If he met people in society, anxiety afflicted him. "My health almost always suffered from the excitement, violent shivering and vomiting being thus brought on," he wrote. His constant preoccupation became one of protecting himself from anticipations and conflicts while his chronic anxiety brought on the usual digestive and nutritional troubles.
In addition, Charles Darwin was morbid and self critical to an extreme. His letters abound with the typical language associated with a feeling of guilt. A letter "was vilely written and is now vilely expressed," his manuscript was a "foul copy," [etc.]; "Psychologically there can be little doubt as to the meaning of these symptoms. Charles Darwin was suffering from a feeling of guilt. But what was worrying him?"8
What concerned Darwin was not the initial critical response to his Origin of Species. Even after the battle was won and his reputation assured, his psychological suffering and physical symptoms continued. In other words, Darwin was dealing with a much deeper and fundamental feeling of guilt. As far as the Christian faith was concerned, he had not only banished God from his own life, but, it seemed, the entire universe as well.
Darwin’s real problem lay with the suppression of his religious needs: "His life was one long attempt to escape from Paley [i.e., his Natural Theology], to escape from the church, to escape from God. It is this that explains so much that would otherwise be incongruous in his life and character."9
It is clear both scripturally and psychologically that those who "suppress the truth in unrighteousness" (Rom. 1:18) will pay the price. God tells everyone, "Do not be deceived; God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows he will reap" (Gal. 6:7). The truth about God is evident to all men through the creation because God Himself made it evident:
The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. (Rom. 1:18-20)
We documented this perceptual and intuitive knowledge of God in some detail in our Knowing the Truth About Salvation: Is Jesus the Only Way to God? (Harvest House, 1996).
To suppress this truth is to live in unreality and this is never psychologically or physically healthy. As noted existentialist psychologist Rollo May pointed out in The Art of Counseling, unbelief does have its consequences: "I had been startled by the fact that practically every genuine atheist with whom I have dealt has exhibited unmistakable neurotic tendencies. How [do we] account for this curious fact?"10
Thus, whatever else it may be, even Darwin’s prized theory of natural selection appears to be an emotional tool to comfort his unbelief. Dr. Clark explains that Darwin went to great pains to prove to the world that he had discovered the truth of natural selection only after two decades involving a painful collection of facts that was carefully analyzed over and over. Darwin thus presented himself as a defender of truth and truth alone; it was only his passionate desire for truth that now compelled him to make his theories public. But in fact:
That is what Darwin wished the outer world to believe. No one today accepts his story. He had thought of natural selection 20 years before and had long since made up his mind on the subject. Moreover, the evidence shows that Charles was not primarily interested in the truth or otherwise of natural selection at all, but he was very much interested in the possibilities of using it to avoid the force of Paley’s Natural Theology.11
As Francisco Ayala of the University of California says natural selection "exclude[s] God as the explanation accounting for the obvious design of organisms."12
In essence, natural selection became a kind of substitute for God.13 Darwin did his level best to escape God, but God was uncooperative:
For year after year, Darwin carried on a discussion with various friends on the subject of design in nature. Throughout he showed the same vacillation. One moment he thought he could do without design; the next, his reason told him that the evidence for design by a personal God was overwhelming. He was forever seeking an escape from theology but never able to find it.14
This is exactly what Romans 1 teaches. Thus, despite his faith in evolution, in other moments, Darwin was
…deeply conscious of his ignorance. Indeed, he did not really know anything about the origins of things, and certainly made no pretense of having discovered how species had come into existence. He very much regretted his misleading title, the Origin of Species: if only he had been more thoughtful at the time he would have chosen a different title, but now it was too late. In revising the Origin he felt he had gone too far in his rejection of theology and more than once he added the telling words "by the Creator" when referring to the original creation of the first forms of life. But again, he could not make up his mind.15
At one point in Darwin’s life, a letter from botanist J. D. Hooker brought the force of Paley’s Natural Theology back upon him. Darwin realized that Paley could not be disposed of so easily:
No wonder Darwin was disturbed. He had sought to escape from God: now he found his old enemy waiting for him in a new hiding place. His confusion can scarcely be exaggerated. In letter after letter he made the lamest excuses for his inability to think clearly. Intellectually, he said, he was in "thick mud."16
Darwin’s own reasoning processes became increasingly strained because "Darwin was determined to escape from design and a personal God at all costs."17 Not surprisingly, Darwin’s letters "exhibit a resolution not to follow his thoughts to their logical conclusion."18 Of course, there were exceptions. For example, he spoke of the "impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity of looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity."19 But then, because his mind was really descended from lower life forms and more kin to a monkey’s mind, how could its reasoning processes really be trusted? Darwin wondered, "But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? ...Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"20
As Clark and Bales observe:
Reason led Darwin to God, so Darwin killed reason. He trusted his mind when reasoning about evolution, but not about God? What a warning from the author to the reader this discrediting of reason would have made as a preface to the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man! …[But] How [then] could he trust his mind when it thought on the theory of evolution? As Arnold Lunn put it: "A clear thinker would never have been guilty of such inconsistent reasoning. If Darwin was not prepared to trust his mind when it drew the ‘grand conclusion’ that God existed, why was he prepared to trust it when it drew the depressing conclusion that a mind of such bestial origin could not be trusted to draw any conclusion at all?"21
In other words, it would appear that Darwin rejected God not from reason, but "because of some violent prejudice" against God22—itself an unreasonable reaction. In the end, "Darwin’s determination not to believe cost him his mind."23
It also cost him good science.
Having adopted logical positivism with its exclusion of the metaphysical, Darwin was hardly unbiased in his scientific methodology. Robert Kofahl, Ph.D., argues that Darwin’s particular philosophy of science was intended to invoke naturalism and accomplish something heretofore unthinkable—to remove the concept of divine intervention from the category of scientific endeavors—a feat that if successful would have profound consequences:
It is this author’s opinion that Charles Darwin had a hidden agenda for science. There is much evidence for this in his writings. Neal Gillespie (1979) of Georgia State University in his important book, Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation, established the fact that Darwin espoused logical positivism as his philosophy of science. His hidden agenda, then, was to remove from the thinking of all scientists any concepts of special creation, divine intervention, or divine teleology in the natural world. That this agenda has been achieved with almost total global success in the spheres of science, education and scholarly disciplines is obvious to any informed observer.24
Professor Marvin L. Lubenow comments on this issue are important enough to cite in detail:
Not only was Darwin’s contribution primarily philosophical, it was a philosophy bent on a specific mission: to show that creation is unscientific. The most extensive research into Darwin’s religious attitudes and motivations has been done by historian Neal C. Gillespie (Georgia State University). He begins his book with this comment: "On reading the Origin of Species, I, like many others, became curious about why Darwin spent so much time attacking the idea of divine creation."
Gillespie goes on to demonstrate that Darwin’s purpose was not just to establish the concept of evolution. Darwin was wise enough not to stop there. Darwin went for the jugular vein. Darwin’s master accomplishment was to convince the scientific world that it was unscientific to believe in supernatural causation. His purpose was to "ungod" the universe. Darwin was a positivist. This is the philosophy that the only true knowledge is scientific knowledge; no other type of knowledge is legitimate. Obviously, to accept that premise means to reject any form of divine revelation. Darwin accomplished one of the greatest feats of salesmanship in the history of the world. He convinced scientists that it was unscientific to deal with God or creation in any way. To be scientific, they must study the world as if God did not exist....
In all of this, it is important to realize that Darwin was not an atheist. He did not exterminate God. He just evicted God from the universe which God had created. All that God was allowed to do was to create the "natural laws" at the beginning. From then on, nature was on its own. With God out of the picture, evolution fell into place rather easily, since evolution seemed to be the only viable alternative to Special Creation....
We are now getting down to basics. The real issue in the creation/evolution debate is not the existence of God. The real issue is the nature of God. To think of evolution as basically atheistic is to misunderstand the uniqueness of evolution. Evolution was not designed as a general attack against theism. It was designed as a specific attack against the God of the Bible, and the God of the Bible is clearly revealed through the doctrine of creation. Obviously, if a person is an atheist, it would be normal for him to also be an evolutionist. But evolution is as comfortable with theism as it is with atheism. An evolutionist is perfectly free to choose any god he wishes, as long as it is not the God of the Bible. The gods allowed by evolution are private, subjective, and artificial. They bother no one and make no absolute ethical demands. However, the God of the Bible is the Creator, sustainer, Savior and judge. All are responsible to him. He has an agenda that conflicts with that of sinful humans. For man to be created in the image of God is very awesome. For God to be created in the image of man is very comfortable.
Evolution was originally designed as a specific attack against the God of the Bible, and it remains so to this day. While Christian Theistic Evolutionists seem blind to this fact, the secular world sees it very clearly.25
Darwin further had the "notorious habit of jumping to conclusions without adequate evidence" and "of stubbornly maintaining his theories regardless of the valid arguments and evidence that could be brought against them."26
Historian Jacques Barzun, Provost and Dean of the Graduate Faculties at Columbia University, further observes that the common view of Darwin as an intellectual and a lover of truth needs qualification.
The phrase "Newton of biology" now appears as a very loose description indeed. Darwin was not a thinker and he did not originate the ideas that he used. He vacillated, added, retracted, and confused his own traces. As soon as he crossed the dividing line between the realm of events and the realm of theory, he became "metaphysical" in the bad sense. His power of drawing out the implications of his theories was at no time very remarkable, but when it came to the moral order it disappeared altogether, as that penetrating Evolutionist, Nietsche, observed with some disdain.27
Darwin himself appeared to have serious doubts about how distinctive his theory of evolution was; in at least 45 instances between 1869 and the final edition of the Origin, Darwin deleted the word "my" before the word "theory." As noted earlier, Darwin hardly invented the idea of evolution, he merely systematized a certain amount of data allegedly in favor of it.28 Regardless:
To the end of his life, the old warfare continued in Darwin’s mind. Try as he would, he could not escape from God. Gradually his emotional life atrophied under the strain of the battle. Religious feeling disappeared and with it much else beside. Shakespeare was "intolerably dull." He no longer took pleasure in pictures, in poetry, or even in music. The beauty of nature no longer thrilled him. The world became cold and dead. As we have already seen, even his reasoning powers became distorted when he dwelt upon subjects even remotely concerned with his conflict. Finally the time came for Charles Darwin to die with the conflict still unresolved.29
In the end, Darwin had simply got a taste of his own medicine. He had deprived the universe of meaning and paid the price. As Leslie Paul observes in The Annihilation of Man (New York: Harcourt-Brace, 1945, p. 154), "The final result of the application of the theory of The Origin of Species to the whole material universe is to deprive it completely of meaning." Cambridge scholar John Burrow observes in his introduction to The Origin of Species: "Nature, according to Darwin, was a product of blind chance and a blind struggle, and man a lonely, intelligent mutation, scrambling with the brutes for his sustenance. To some the sense of loss was irrevocable; it was as if an umbilical cord had been cut, and men found themselves part of ‘a cold passionless universe.’"30 What Darwin had wrought for modern man is, in the eyes of many, hardly worth the meager scientific validation it has encountered.
Darwin’s Origin is today much less convincing. As an illustration, we may cite the esteemed entomologist, W. R. Thompson, who penned the introduction to the Origin of Species for the "Every Man Library" No. 811 edition (1956). Thompson reveals not only severe problems with Darwin’s basic thesis, especially descent by natural selection, he also shows how the manner in which Darwin argued appeared to give his theory more credibility than it deserved.
But in a manner of this kind a great deal depends on the manner in which the arguments are presented. Darwin considered that the doctrine of the origin of living things by descent with modification, even if well founded, would be unsatisfactory unless the causes at work were correctly identified, so his theory of modification by natural selection was, for him, of absolute major importance. Since he had at the time the Origin was published no body of experimental evidence to support his theory, he fell back on speculative arguments. The argumentation used by evolutionists, said de Quatrefages, makes the discussion of their ideas extremely difficult. Personal convictions, simple possibilities, are presented as if they were proofs, or at least valid arguments in favor of the theory. As an example, de Quatrefages cites Darwin’s explanation of the manner in which the tit mouse might become transformed into the nutcracker, by the accumulation of small changes in structure and instinct owing to the effect of natural selection; and then proceeded to show that it is just as easy to transform the nutcracker into the tit mouse. The demonstration can be modified without difficulty to fit any conceivable case. It is without scientific value, since it cannot be verified; but since the imagination has free rein, it is easy to convey the impression that a concrete example of real transmutation has been given. This is the more appealing because of the extreme fundamental simplicity of the Darwinian explanation. The reader may be completely ignorant of biological processes yet he feels that he really understands and in a sense dominates the machinery by which the marvelous variety of living forms has been produced.
This was certainly a major reason for the success of the Origin. Another is the elusive character of the Darwinian argument…. The plausibility of the argument eliminates the need for proof and its very nature gives it a kind of immunity to disproof. Darwin did not show in the Origin that species had originated by natural selection; he merely showed, on the basis of certain facts and assumptions, how this might have happened, and as he had convinced himself he was able to convince others. But the facts and interpretations on which Darwin relied have now ceased to convince.31
It is worthy to note that Dr. Thompson penned the above words nearly 50 years ago. In subsequent years, recent developments and discoveries throughout the sciences have made belief in evolution more and more difficult. So much so that some scientists have now abandoned the theory while others, although continuing to exercise faith that evolution is true, concede that convincing evidence for it may never be forthcoming.
In the end, Darwin also continued to exercise faith in evolution because he had little choice. He found the theory an emotional necessity and had convinced himself as to its plausibility, despite innumerable problems.
Darwin may have succeeded in convincing himself about evolution, but as we will see in Part 3, it was another story entirely for the scientific community.
Since when was a belief in God necessary to become an Anglican clergyman, anyway?
Note to the humorless; in the UK, the C of E is the butt of humor in the same vein as used about the UUs in America. The Anglican clergy was archetypically where the upper classes stowed those sons who were too stupid to be active in public life and without the physical attributes necessary for the military.
As someone once said, we used to know nothing about everything. Now we know everything about nothing.
Yes, I know RightWhale. And so is extraterrestrial life. Which i think is funny in a way: We seek out other universes before we even understand our own, and extraterrestrials when we haven't got any evidence that they really exist.
I have an astrophysicist friend who insists the Big Bang was the result of a vacuum fluctuation, meaning that the vacuum pre-existed the space-time continuum of the physical universe. No "ex nihilo creation" for my friend! Of course, his observation is totally unfalsifiable, and therefore would not qualify as a "scientific statement."
But cosmology is a ton of fun anyway. :^)
Thanks so much for writing!
But "direct consultation with reality" is the sort of thing that ideologues ever seek to avoid -- like a vampire avoids garlic, crucifixes, mirrors, and silver stakes....
You're in good company:
The negative vacuum pressure will produce equal amounts of bosons and fermions in several stages, which will exist for a while {a few trillion years in our solution state} and then collapse only to start over. Kind of like breathing.
Very Buddhist, RightWhale: It postulates an eternal universe (a universe that did not have a beginning), that just always is, waxing and waning forever.
But my point would be this: Everything that we know about in a scientific way, that is, what we can observe, demonstrate, falsify, is an existent of the space-time continuum. As Jeff Barbour writes:
Cosmologists tell us that at one time there was no universe as we know it. Whatever existed before that time was null and void -- beyond all conception. Why? Well there are a couple answers to that question -- the philosophic answer for instance: Because before the universe took form there was nothing to conceive of, with, or even about. But there's also a scientific answer and that answer comes down to this: Before the Big Bang there was no space-time continuum -- the immaterial medium through which all things energy and matter move.
To assert there was some sort of entity (i.e., the universal vacuum) that we associate with existence in space-time existing "prior" to the Big Bang (an event that has been well validated by studies of the cosmic microwave background radiation) effectively boils down to a "faith statement" -- for there is simply no way the statement can be falsified.
What we know about the evolution of the universe we know by "reversing the arrow of time" and going back and back, as close as we can get to the event of the Big Bang itself, and applying the physical laws to explain what we observe in this sort-of "reverse-engineering" process. And what we find is that the physical laws "break down" in the first moment of Planck time immediately following the Big Bang. Thus we have no tools to tell us anything, really, about the exact nature of the Big Bang, e.g., of what it consisted, etc., let alone its source. At best all we can have is a conjecture -- but there would be no way to qualify it as factually true.
To put it another way, the Big Bang is at "time-zero," T0; from T0 to T1 is the "Planck era" -- that first infinitessimally teensy "moment" of spacetime.
Your "Buddhist model" wants to say that there was a T-0 in which the Big Bang was "set up." And then time began to run (to to speak), from T-0 to T0 to T1 to Tn.... But our scientific tools only kick in at T1 and following Ts.
FBO our Lurkers, the Planck length is roughly equal to 1.6 x 10-35 m or about 10-20 times the size of a proton.
The Planck time is the time it would take a photon travelling at the speed of light to travel a distance equal to the Planck length. This is the ‘quantum of time’, the smallest measurement of time equal to 10-43 seconds.
No smaller division of time has any meaning. Within the framework of the laws of physics as we understand them today, we can say only that the universe came into existence when it already had an age of 10-43 seconds.
And so we don't know -- and can't find out -- anything about the "before" Big Bang scenario in principle.
We may conjecture away to our heart's content; but we'd be unable to scientifically demonstrate that conjecture.
Which is why I said earlier that such a conjecture actually does have the character of a "faith statement," every bit as much as "divine creation ex nihilo" has the character of a "faith statement."
It is likely that one or the other is actually true. But science has no way to tell us which.
Well, FWIW. Thanks so much for writing, RightWhale! Neither statement is falsifiable, demonstrable.
I can see why you'd say this. But I'd like to offer this as an alternative explanation (and you don't have to reply, for this is kind of a musing as well):
Modern scientists are punished for 'big picture' thinking. How? Publications and grants, the methods by which scientists are incented, are strictly driving the increasing discretization of scientific disciplines.
Scientists are discredited and scorned if they make declarative statements outside their 'discipline'. Thus, they are dis-incentivized to be broadly educated. This is a fact, and bona fide autodictats w/i science (or any discipline) are rare.
The ignorance of scientists is less a tragedy, and more of an intentional outcome of a cultural decision by cultural decision makers.
It is purposely designed into the system, just like hollywood is very structured, just like the MSM is extremely structured.
I wouldn't be surprised if a manual exists which documents the Cultural Purpose of Credentialing Institutions. Relatively, organizations which produce research, but do NOT also at the same time issue credentials .... virtually non existent. And I think that is by design.
The real product at heart is a 'credentialed' individual, not the research of the supervising scientist. The politics of Credentials are the essence of why 'modern science' is so limited compared to where it could be.
Thus, it is not an accident either when you witness from afar all these seemingly different disciplines result in identical, lock-step, political points of view.
Which makes so many of these evo debates here so suspect to me.
We have self-proclaimed 'conservatives' ardently defending ToE, and ferociously attacking YECs and what not. The party line is that 'we' are hurting the real GOP b/c ordinary folks won't believe what the GOP says b/c Christian creationists sound nutty. Something doesn't make sense regarding this published motive.
We have freeper, self-appointed, angels of "true" right wing thinking swooping down and aggressively attacking the thinking of folks like me - and why? All for the reason of protecting the true ability to 'reason' just so that the GOP itself can be more trustworthy by the 'masses'?
I just don't believe it. Initially, I did. But after the sex stuff, which I initated, came up on the other threads over the last few weeks, and especially the stuff about the movie Dr. Stranglove, which many on the other side cackled about with great hilarity, the issue of false-flagged folks came to mind. The motives of these thoughtful 'right' wingers I am very very suspicious of.
Especially when at least one of them used anti-christ stuff from a Bush-Hating website to defend .... reasonable scientifically-based evolution.
This, according to theoretical physicist Kaku is what has been happening since 1968. The string theory was intuited then {at CERN} from the Euler Beta function, born fully grown in all its 10 or 26 dimensions and perfect, and since then the theory has been back-filled. This the reverse of the way science is supposed to be done and is why it took so long for string theory to get rolling. Now, of course, every academic institution is fully mobilized with young string theorists. Now there are millions of good solutions of which our universe bubble is one.
The smallest length possible. There is nothing smaller.
Or, the physics of lengths greater than the Planck length is matched perfectly by the physics of inverses {1 over} of lengths. Our entire universe might be an inverse and be contained inside a single Planck length. This would encode the entire universe {a google of information bits} in a single Planck length, which we might then play back on a cosmic CD at will.
Schaeffer missed a few hundred people; those who insit the story is incomplete without the Koran, Bhagavad Gita, Navajo creation story, Greek myths, Celtic creation myths....
When it comes down to it, the only one without a missing element that no one else can agree on is the materialist.
The law of noncontradiction would narrow it down a bit, not? Add to that the logical impossibility of more than one First Cause, more than one omnipotent God, and the field becomes very narrow. The existence of personal beings necessitates the existence of a personal Creator which rules out Allah. Guess what? There's only one God left: The One that the ACLU specifies and the only One the materialists loathe. Coincidence?
I certainly agree with you about the degradation of science by political and ideological "correctness". The method of recognition and funding fosters a hive mentality and eschews the out-of-the-box thinkers.
If Darwin or Einstein had to meet today's criteria of peer review to be published they would probably have failed as have a number of Nobel prize winners since their day. Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy?
I also agree that there is little tolerance around here among parties when one side or the other - or both - are making an argument with theological import. And I assert that atheism is a religion, too and would thus include its proponents among those who can become brutal or become brutalized.
IMHO, there are only two solutions - either (a) ignore the provocations and junk posts or (b) forgive them and respond with patience and loving kindness.
Spoken like a true believer. There is no God but God, and Dataman is his prophet.
Indeed, even a pre-Big Bang vaccum cannot exist absent a space/time structure, a geometry. The same is true of all fields - which are defined as existing at all points in space/time. Ditto for strings which current theory suggests may emerge from geometry (Geometry and String Theory).
Likewise, in all multi-verse, cyclic, ekpyrotic (or other branes) and imaginary time models - geometry must precede all else. Thus there is always a beginning! That is the most theological statement ever to come out of science (Jastrow) and the implication of it (IMHO) is why scientists such as Steinhardt consider it to be a failing of all such models.
The only parallel universe model which is closed is the Level IV model proposed by Max Tegmark. It is closed because all existents in four dimensional space/time are actually mathematical structures in higher dimensionality (non spatial, non temporal, non corporeal). It is a radical Platonist view - but it fits the evidence best. All other theories fail to address the unreasonable effectiveness of math (Wigner, Vafa).
" IMHO, there are only two solutions - either (a) ignore the provocations and junk posts or (b) forgive them and respond with patience and loving kindness. "
Yep; totally agree. I'm working on that a good bit still, a as well as b.
Providentially, there are a few folks around here who show the way how, thank goodness.
Dataman,
You'll notice, as I have, that though this thread is rightfully placed in the religion forum, the 'non religious', ha, folks, some of em anyway, have followed.
I think it is a good sign. And fwiw, you are not a bad prophet.
Following, of course, the example of those who wish to introduce religion in biology classes. Fair's fair.
You'll notice RWP, (PhD) prefers not to attempt a rebuttal but to resort to the sophomoric comparison to Islam. Does he really think "many creator claims, therefore no Creator at all?" That is unworthy of a college freshman let alone a PhD.
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