Posted on 07/22/2005 4:46:53 AM PDT by Nicholas Conradin
In a recent TCS essay ("Darwin and Design: The Evolution of a Flawed Debate") I attacked what I regarded as the excesses of both sides of the evolution-creationism debate. There were angry responses in the mail and the blogosphere from both the creationist and the evolution sides, which pleased me, since there were clearly oxen on both sides that felt they had been gored, and caps in my piece that were felt to have, uncomfortably, fit. The angry evolutionists were especially interesting, as they often wound up admitting implicitly that their real agenda was atheism -- while denying that there was any social policy message in that agenda.
In the essay I did state flatly that the theory of evolution had been proved. I wanted it to be clear where I stood. Much of the mail I received protested about that statement. I hold to it, and hold to it not as my own opinion, but as a fact, like the existence of Australia, which is not my opinion but a fact. But I do know that there are many who sincerely, and given their range of knowledge, rationally, do not believe in the theory of evolution.
By the theory of evolution I mean the origination of new species from common ancestral forms by an iterated process of genetic mutation, natural selection, and hereditary transmission, whereby the frequencies of newly altered, repeated, and old genes and introns in a given lineage can cross ecological, structural, and behavioral thresholds that radically separate one species from another. In one sense, this can be summed up in a syllogism, which must be true if we make the basic and essential act of faith that logic itself is true: survivors survive. Given enough time, variation among the genes of individuals, variations in habitat in space and time, the process by which genes translate into proteins, tissues, and organs, and the thresholds that define biological species, all of which can be observationally verified, the principle of the "survivors survive" syllogism must bring about a huge branching of different kinds of life.
The above summary statement of the theory will not convince opponents, who will be able to pick philosophical holes in it (which holes have been sewn up by countless scientists and philosophers in the last 150 years). But what opponents of evolution do not perhaps realize is what they are up against in terms of sheer human and civilizational achievement based on the evolutionary paradigm. This is not a proof of evolution, any more than the four-thousand year history of the survival of the Jewish people is a proof of Judaism or the worldwide congregation of Christianity is a proof of that religion; but it is an indication of the kind of scholarship that would be needed to refute it.
There are at least 50 major journals in the academic field of biology. All accept without question the theory of evolution as I outlined it above. They are not attempting even to prove the theory, any more than math journals attempt to prove that the sum of the internal angles of a plane triangle is 180 degrees, or engineering journals revisit the existence of gravity. But they would be nonsense without the theory of evolution, just as engineering would be nonsense without gravity. Each of those journals is published about four times a year; several of them have been in existence for over a hundred years. Each journal contains at least ten articles of about 2-20 pages, and each of those articles represents several months' or years' work by a team of trained biologists whose most compelling material and moral interest would be to disprove the work of all their predecessors and to make an immortal name by doing so. The work of the biological teams is required to be backed up by exhaustive experiment and observation, together with exact statistical analysis of the results. There is a continuous process of search through all these articles by trained reviewers looking for discrepancies among them and demanding new experimental work to resolve them. Since every one of these articles relies on the consistency and truth of the theory of evolution, every one of them adds implicitly to the veracity of the theory. By my calculation, then, opponents of evolution must find a way of matching and disproving, experiment by experiment, observation by observation, and calculation by calculation, at least two million pages of closely reasoned scientific text, representing roughly two million man-years of expert research and perhaps trillions of dollars of training, salaries, equipment, and infrastructure.
But the task of the opponent does not end here. For biology is not the only field for which the theory of evolution is an essential foundation. Geology, physical anthropology, agricultural science, environmental science, much of chemistry, some areas of physics (e.g. protein folding) and even disciplines such as climatology and oceanography (which rely on the evolutionary history of the planet in its calculations about the composition of the atmosphere and oceans), are at least partially founded on evolution. Most important of all for our immediate welfare, medicine is almost impossible as a research discipline without evolutionary theory. So perhaps the opponent must also throw in another 4 million pages, four million man-years, and ten trillion dollars -- and be prepared to swallow the billions of human deaths that might follow the abandonment of the foundations of medical, mining, environmental, agricultural, and climatological knowledge.
If what is at stake is a proposition in the theology of biblical interpretation that is not shared by a large minority or possibly a majority of Christians and Jews, perhaps it might be more prudent to check the accuracy of the theology, which, after all, is a human creation even if scripture itself is conceded to be divinely inspired. Might not God's intentions be revealed better in the actual history and process of nature, his creative expression, than in the discrepancies we might hope to find in its self-consistency and coherent development?
And you have evidence of this where?
That, of course, is NOT the question (which you seek to avoid).
The question is how can YOU justify the 30 YEAR actions of Reiner Protsch being glossed over by the so-called 'bastions of scientific veracity' of peer-review.
We'll deal with Mr. Harrub only after you respond. Unless, of course, you're one of those whom Dimensio is constantly disparaging with regards to dishonesty.
And we would have to pay to view his wisdom.
Hmm.. For some reason I was under the impression that you were a Calvinist. The Calvinist god is a dualist god who enacts both good and evil. I have no logical dispute with that formulation, aside from the absence of evidence that a god exists in the first place. The only thing we'd really have to debate is whether we can call him a "dualist" god or whether we can only describe him precisely as a "dualist" god would be described but without using that term..
If you are an Arminian, then that's different. The Arminian god must be a self-limited god much as Ichneumon described. The problem is that Mike rejected that premise out of hand. You haven't yet (and neither do the Christian scriptures). I have no logical dispute with that formulation either, except for the same as above. Shall we argue whether we may properly call said god "self-limited" or if we shall only describe him in that way?
Sorry to barge in but your post caught my eye. You are touching on some heavy aspects of theology that are difficult for anyone to address. C. S. Lewis dealt with this in his "the problem with Pain" and others has written about it. Why does God allow man to suffer, why does he allow evil to exist, etc? Why does he allow Satan to exist, futile as it is, since Christ has already conquered him via the cross? But why does God allow satan to wreak havoc on this earth? These are all related questions.
By allowing evil, you say God commits evil. This would make sense if that was all there was to it. But there are many aspects. God allows man free will and apparently did not want to create goody-good robots which he could have. Sinful man with his free will will commit evil. God could stop every act of evil and intervene but why allow man to be sinful in the first place if he is spending all his time intervening. He allowed man free will because robots cant truly love. He wanted his creatures, at least some of them, to love God of their own free will. I know I want my own children to love me of their own free will.
Also, as humans we have a limited view of cause and effect. We do not understand how good things can come out of evil because we can't always see these relationships throughout the world. How someone's suffering for an instant (in terms if infinity) may bring someone else perhaps to Christ and to infinite life. I'm not saying thats why it happens I'm just suggesting a God-centered view takes into account a much broader view that we can't see.
God loves us but it's not about us, its about Him and his glory. We often look at logic from a man-centered view and not a God-centered view. I offer all this not to suggest I have it figured out but to to simply suggest we don't have all the facts to be able to check God's logic.
you don't really believe gravity sprung up out of nowhere do you?
No Does gravity exist eternally or was there a beginning? What caused its being?
Don't know.
Quite the opposite. I'm suggesting that our free will results in actions that may surprise God -- without violating either his omnipotence or omniscience.
No it isn't. See my follow up post.
It was not conditional and hence the same rule would apply to the parents as to God.
Yes, it was conditional. You made it so with your premise that God must be totally omniscient. And therefore no, the same rule would obviously not apply to the parents, unless they are also equally cognizant of the results of their action before they enact it.
Moreover, the omnipotent God - remember you said he's omnipotent - retains total control over the murderer's ability to act. The parents do not have any such control.
Willful inaction is an action.
So, you believe that evil is nothing more than breaking an arbitrary rule as opposed to a state of being?
My belief is irrelevant to this debate. But, fwiw, my view is that evil is defined by the properties of existence. If existence is dependent on an omnipotent god, then evil is defined by that.
Was Charles Manson evil or just a breaker of an arbitrary rule commanded by God?
From a Christian perspective he was both. All men are evil in Christian theology and he also violated several arbitrary rules explicitly commanded by God.
I agree. Identifying intelligence is more of a know-it-when-you-see-it sort of thing, not easily quantifiable. ID, therefore, properly belongs in the field of philosophy/religion, rather than scientific inquiry. However, it is equally true that atheists cannot somehow test for a lack of intelligent intervention, so their assertions of such similarly belong outside of real science.
I was with you until the final line:
"However, it is equally true that atheists cannot somehow test for a lack of intelligent intervention, so their assertions of such similarly belong outside of real science."
One cannot prove a negative. The burden of proof must therefore lie with the people making assertions of an intelligent designer, not with those who deny one.
Or: "theists don't want to talk about the origin of God because its the biggest fault of their entire theory and they have no answer for it".
Accordingly (again, according to your post) "Protsch was forced to retire in disgrace after a Frankfurt University panel ruled he had 'fabricated data and plagiarized the work of his colleagues.'"
Indeed, his fabrications were uncovered by (again, according to your post) evolutionists, for whom Mr. Protsch’s results were "too good to be true." Sounds to me like the system worked, even if belatedly. Mr. Protsch was disgraced and forced to resign as a consequence of his fraud, as he rightly should have been.
Now, I’ll ask again. What have the "creationist peer reviewers" done about "Brad Harrub, Ph.D."?
You see, that's the difference between science and "creation science."
No one has ever claimed that scientists are incapable of lying or incapable of fraud. That's one of the reasons for peer review. And when a scientist is caught fabricating results, the punishment is severe.
But with "creation science," the lies are routine, they are repeated again and again even after revealed, and they are never punished.
Indeed, it is readily apparent that the "scientists" manning the ramparts of creationism cannot be punished for their fraud by the "creation science" establishment. There aren't enough of them. If there was ever a decision made to actually weed out the frauds, there wouldn't be any more soldiers on the ramparts.
I don't there is any argument that dogs and wolves -- different species that they are -- share a common ancestor. I think the argument starts with claims that the dog shares an acestor with a cat -- much less fish, dragonfly or oak tree.
The burden of proof is on anyone who makes an assertion either way.
Add omnibenevolent, too. Omnipotence and omniscience alone would still permit God to create and/or condone evil.
I'm just a free thinker who has spent a fair amount of time trying to understand God, based on scripture.
"Hmm.. For some reason I was under the impression that you were a Calvinist. The Calvinist god is a dualist god who enacts both good and evil."
I think along those lines. God creates all things. Therefore, He creates infinite variety. He also creates Free Will, the opportunity to choose evil, and opportunity for Eternal Life. He knows exactly how we are going to choose. Yet there is an aspect of God, sometimes found in the scriptures, that is amazed, that marvels, that is surprised. So one consciousness of God may not be able to foresee all things.
Jesus, quite clearly, was not able to foresee absolutely everything, such as when He asked the Bitter Cup to be passed from Him. Seems to me He felt doubt. He also chided his followers for sleeping that night, as though he wanted them to keep watch. That would not be needed if Jesus knew absolutely everything.[But He did know everything He was required to know.] Also, when He allowed Legion to enter the pigs, it's not clear He wanted them to run off the cliff and thus, He was alienated from that area.
But the Heavanly Father, I often wonder if His consciousness is not completely merged with the Son's. Just as we have a subconscious, perhaps the Father communicates with the Son in a similar, even more sophisticated way. And it is obvious to me that the Father is capable of incredible ruthlessness. Just look at this world of death that we were cast into for being sinners.
"I have no logical dispute with that formulation, aside from the absence of evidence that a god exists in the first place."
Note that in the book of Daniel, Alexander the Great was predicted, and if that doesn't grab you, Daniel also predicted the increase of travel and knowledge. Peter predicted that one day the entire surface of the earth would dissolve. Revelations predicted a World Court that would pass judgement over the entire earth. And BTW, the sun was not created on the first day, so I'm not a hardcore believer that the earth was created in six solar days. And Revelation spoke of 200 million 'dragons' one day crossing the Euphrates, which will one day dry up. [Think China.]
"The only thing we'd really have to debate is whether we can call him a "dualist" god or whether we can only describe him precisely as a "dualist" god would be described but without using that term.."
I tell you, He is what He is. My main concern is how to be His friend. It's a good idea, believe me. Our knowledge of God is, quite obviously flawed. We, with our puny, limited minds, can't figure out our own subconscious minds, let alone the mind of God. Trying to understand Him before meeting Him is much like trying to understand an elephant before seeing it, only worse.
"If you are an Arminian, then that's different. The Arminian god must be a self-limited god much as Ichneumon described."
God does limit Himself through promises.
FRegards....
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