Posted on 01/04/2009 5:39:47 AM PST by PurpleMountains
All across the country, archeologists, paleontologists and biologists are taking part in what is perhaps the greatest example of political correctness in history – their adherence to Darwinism and their attempts to ostracize any scientist who does not agree with them. In doing so, they are not only ignoring the vast buildup of recent scientific discoveries that seriously undermines the basics of Darwinism, but they are also participating, due to politically correctness, in a belief system that indirectly resulted in the deaths of millions of people – those slaughtered by the Stalins, the Hitlers, the Maos, the Pol Pots and others who took their cue from Darwinism’s tenets.
(Excerpt) Read more at forthegrandchildren.blogspot.com ...
Comes to mind; A "perfect" love can cast out all fear.. replaced with respect and gratitude.. and even a kind of JOY...
I think that they are more than capable of thinking for themselves. Are you implying that they're not?
Nor can someone else who knows to be Truth something that may well be entirely contradictory to it.
All I can do is ask what you can objetively demonstrate to be true, and evaluate it with an open mind.
What constitutes an "open mind" "objectivity" and "demonstrability" are completely different between people who do not agree on how they know what they know and how sure they are that they know it.
I aver that it is impossible for any creature traveling a worldline in space and time to obtain objective truth. All such creatures suffer from the observer problem. Objective truth requires seeing "all that there is" all at once and therefore the only possible source for objective truth is God Himself.
Conversely, those who admit only sensory perception and reasoning cannot conceive of objectivity beyond those space/time constraints. So, for them, objectivity is relative to the observer and whatever limitations might attend, e.g. the sensory perception limitation of vision and mind to three dimensions of space and one of time.
However, things — real or otherwise — that cannot be studied by the methods of science, will never be anything more than personal experience and personal testimony.
I’m not going to argue that personaly testimony is automatically false of worthless, but I will point out that it is the kind of knowledge that is used to rationalize feuds and wars.
If you cannot study, for example, the diffence between Christianity and Islam in way that is convincing to everyone, you will have endless strife.
The findings of science are limited in scope, but they are found the same by everyone who applies the methods of science, regardless of race, religion, nationality or politics.
Yet there are things we all agree on. Among these, the common denominator is observable, empirical evidence.
Global warming.....
I'll repeat your basic problem:
Though unqualified to do so, you pass judgment on a scientific theory -- evolution -- on grounds that it does not match your theological beliefs.
But then you claim your theological beliefs are "scientific," while saying the scientific theory of evolution is just a "religion."
Well, here's the real deal: if you can devise a new scientific theory which better explains all the known evidence, then you might begin to make your case.
But there's nothing scientific about "intelligent design," it explains nothing scientifically, predicts nothing and is COMPLETELY unprovable.
Sorry pal, but you just can't replace a scientific theory with a theological assertion.
Finally, for what it's worth, let me repeat that I agree with the THEOLOGICAL statement that God created the heavens, earth and all it's creatures. But I think His methods include science and the processes of evolution.
Indeed, He left us so much evidence of that, it's clear He wants us to admire his scientific handiwork. Praise God!
For that to be an objective measure of the methods of science, you'll have to assume that it hasn't been corrupted by money and political pressure.
"Global warming" is about as objective measure of science as Jim Jones is of religion.
Is that what you want the discussion to look like?
I did specify applying the methods of science.
And that applies to both sides of the issue. I'm not going to forcast doom and gloom, but I will note that 90 percent of the crap science is on the side of the deniers. The other ten percent is just a matter of overselling when and how much.
I'm not the one that stated that the findings of science are found the same by all.
Global warming is one example.
Granted it was abused by politics, but while most meteorologists didn't agree with it, there were some who did.
The same for the ToE. There's the gradualism and punctuated equilibrium schools of thought.
There's no consensus about the origins of life.
Cosmology is pretty controversial stuff.
Even gravity isn't what was once thought.
There are limited applications where that can be true. Physical properties of substances are consistent worldwide. Laws of nature seem to be pretty consistent as well. In the hard sciences like physics and chemistry, sure, some results will always be the same.
But to say that all the findings of science are going to be the same everywhere all the time, is more than a bit of a stretch.
90% of the crap science is on the side of the global warming deniers? Where have you been?
What expertise do you have in meteorology that puts you in a position of being able to evaluate the science behind it?
The same as your background in evolution?
Indeed, Raycpa — any thoughtful person willing to investigate the matter would understand how a presumption — I prefer the word presupposition — actually can and does affect, and may actually determine, investigational outcomes.
And you’re absolutely right — we all have presuppositions about the nature of reality, whether we’re scientists, philosophers, or just your average man on the street. The Socratic instruction to “Know thyself” is specifically addressed to this problem; for a wrong presupposition ineluctably leads to untruth….
A presupposition is an assumption made in advance that is taken for granted — i.e., is regarded as “self-evident” — which is required or involved necessarily as an antecedent condition of the analysis that follows from it.
It happens that NeoDarwinism has a whole raft of presuppositions, none of which appear self-evident to me. The most obvious one is that “Nature,” not a Supreme Being, is exclusively responsible for the emergence and speciation of life on this planet, from purely “natural” (i.e., physico-chemical) processes, all subject to, and structured by, the rather simple algorithm of random mutation and replication in the face of limited resources.
As the science writer Philip Ball put it, the diversification and complexification of species are “boosted by the fact that every evolutionary step broadens and modifies the landscape in which subsequent steps are taken: evolution does not simply have to respond to a preordained landscape, but to itself.” That is, the evolutionary process is relentlessly self-recursive.
A closely related presupposition is that biology is, “from moment to moment, surely quite blind.” Note the word “surely”: This is an appeal to us to accept the claim as self-evident. But if we do, then we have to take the next step and acknowledge that living beings cannot exhibit goal-directed behavior. There is no “teleology” in nature other than the illusion of it imposed by Darwinist evolutionary theory itself.
But jeepers, even the humble bacterium has been shown to demonstrate behavior that can only be understood as “goal-directed” and purposeful, indicating the presence of intelligence, and degrees of freedom to choose “endpoints” that are conducive to its survival and well-being.
Against Ball, Attila Grandpierre, astrophysicist and senior researcher at the Konkoly Observatory of the Hungarian Academy of Science, argues:
Recently, it has become clear that simple bacteria can exhibit rich behavior, have internal degrees of freedom, informational capabilities, and freedom to respond by altering itself and others via emission of signals in a self-regulated manner (Ben-Jacob, E. 2003…). Each bacterium is, by itself, a biotic autonomous system, having a certain freedom to select its response to the biochemical messages it receives, including self-alteration, self-plasticity, and decision making, permitting purposeful alteration of its behavior (Ben Jacob, Aharonov and Shapira, 2005…). Bacteria are able to reverse the spontaneous course of entropy increase and convert high-entropy inorganic substances into low-entropy life-sustaining molecules (ibid.). Similarly, di Primio, Müller, and Lengeler (2000 …) have demonstrated that bacteria and other unicellular organisms are autonomous and social beings showing cognition in the forms of association, remembering, forgetting, learning, etc., activities that are found in all living organisms. It is widely recognized recently that biochemical reactions are regulated by complex conditions involving practically the whole cell, governed possibly by a yet unknown principle (see Ben Jacob, Shapira and Tauber, 2006...).NeoDarwinism cannot demonstrate the origin of intelligence in nature, just as it cannot demonstrate the origin of life from inert matter.
But Ball simply dismisses the problem thusly: “To my mind, ‘intelligence in Nature’ here becomes another God of the gaps, an expression for what we do not yet understand (and what therefore astounds us) about the capacity of the physical world to generate richness and complexity.”
The point is, NeoDarwinism as presently constituted has no means to engage this problem, let alone understand it. The problem is, evolutionary theory is not a theory capable of describing the most basic, general laws of motion (behavior) of all living organisms. It does not deal with individuals, only the evolution of species in this biosphere; i.e., the biosphere present here on the Earth.
Grandpierre writes, “The theory of evolution has quite a different character from theoretical physics. The fundamental laws of physics are the most general laws of physical phenomena, while the theory of evolution considers only a special phenomenon, the evolution of species, and only within special conditions present in the Earth, and so it fundamentally lacks due generality. Biology will reach the position of a mature natural science only if it finds the most general laws of biological behavior. Once theoretical biology will develop, finding its first principle, it will be a more fundamental theory than the theory of evolution.”
I could go on, but I’ve run on long enough for now. (I’m writing a more elaborated piece for posting here later.) My point is that it is the presuppositions of NeoDarwinism that have been coming under scrutiny in recent times. And, oddly enough, from the side of the physicists, not the biologists — who are as happy as clams, insolated in the happy world of doctrinaire NeoDarwinism....
But if you attack the presuppositions, you likely will never be published in the prestigious professional journals, such as the Journal of Theoretical Biology.... The "gatekeepers of orthodoxy" will not permit it!
Thank you so very much, for your excellent essay/post and vital insights, Raycpa!
Will making the perfect the enemy of the good help the situation?
If you could replace the current scientific method, which relies on methodolical naturalism, with some other methodology what exactly would it be?
Thanks, well put.
Humpty Darwin sat on a Wall
Humpty Darwin took a great Fall
All the Kings Scientists and
All the Kings Men
Couldn’t put Darwin together again
Pray for W, America and Our Freedom Fighters
Your controversies are mostly in your mind. None of these controversies have a side compatible with a literal reading of Genesis.
"What I object to is people who cannot present a clear definition of evolution demanding to have an influence over how it’s taught.
I have yet to see an evolution critic who could argue the affirmative for evolution — a simple prerequisite for engaging in debate.
It would be fun to see a thread where the usual suspects switched sides."
Actually, one of the confusing things here is that we may be seeing that happen.
I keep seeing earnest individuals promoting the idea that their belief system is provable in some way, with allusions to logical points and supposed scientific studies.
Then others will assert that the so-called Darwinists are not to be believed because their conceptual framework is "a religion". One might be led to the supposition that they thought it was a bad thing to have a religion as one's conceptual framework.
In this manner of "switching sides", it is immensely confusing to those observers who may not have been issued a scorecard, so as to know which players are on which teams.
What I don't understand is the tactic of using "guilt by association" arguments to link science to eugenics, Naziism, Communism, etc. while simultaneously trying to portray it as a "religion".
It seems to met that religion and theology ought to deserve better, particularly from people who profess to be dedicated proponents.
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