Posted on 09/25/2010 9:47:50 AM PDT by spirited irish
Today all people whose faith in God the Father is genuine face a seemingly insurmountable problem with what seems like an overwhelming weight of evidence that evolutionism is true and the Genesis account of creation is false. Mockers and scoffers abound, scornfully accusing the faithful of believing in “an invisible being in the sky and that a dead guy from 2000 years ago is coming back soon…instead of believing in reality,” as one scofflaw said recently.
However, the real issue here is not “superstitious, backward Christianity” vs. “enlightened reason and science” but about one creation account (Genesis) vs. another creation account (Darwinian evolution). The truth of this claim can be seen in the following quotes:
“…one belief that all true original Darwinians held in common, and that was their rejection of creationism, their rejection of special creation. This was the flag around which they assembled and under which they marched… The conviction that the diversity of the natural world was the result of natural processes and not the work of God was the idea that brought all the so-called Darwinians together in spite of their disagreements on other of Darwin’s theories. (One Long Argument ,1991, p.99, Ernst Mayr (1904 – 2005) Professor of Zoology at Harvard University)
“We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.” (“Billions and Billions of Demons” Richard Lewontin (b. 1929) PhD Zoology, Alexander Agassiz Research Professor at Harvard University)
In other words, terrible-willed evolutionists have a Cosmic Authority problem, and this is why they rally around Darwinism and force its absurd, counterintuitive teachings upon gullible, misinformed Americans while simultaneously ridiculing and otherwise psychologically terrorizing creationists, among whose numbers are many of the defenders of America's founding traditions. Commenting on the Cosmic Authority problem of many atheists, Thomas Nagel, professor of philosophy and law at New York University confesses:
"I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind." (The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me To Faith, Peter Hitchens, pp. 149-150)
Just what is Darwinism anyway?
At bottom, Darwinism is a Gnostic myth notes Dr. Wolfgang Smith, physicist and mathematics professor at Oregon State University:
“…As a scientific theory, Darwinism would have been jettisoned long ago. The point, however, is that the doctrine of evolution has swept the world, not on the strength of its scientific merits, but precisely in its capacity as a Gnostic myth. It affirms, in effect, that living things created themselves, which is in essence a metaphysical claim….Thus…evolutionism is a metaphysical doctrine decked out in scientific garb….it is a scientistic myth. And the myth is Gnostic, because it implicitly denies the transcendent origin of being; for indeed, only after the living creature has been speculatively reduced to an aggregate of particles does Darwinist transformism become conceivable. Darwinism, therefore, continues the ancient Gnostic practice of deprecating “God the Father Almighty, Creator of Heaven and earth.” It perpetuates…the venerable Gnostic tradition of “Jehovah bashing.” (From Old Gnosticism to New Age I, Alan Morrison, SCP Journal Vol. 28:4-29:1, 2005, pp. 30-31)
Gnostics
Historically, Gnostics have always been notorious God-haters to the extent of consigning Him to hell. The early Church Fathers called them the "lawless ones," as they were idolizers of their own minds, rebels against all authority, immoralists, hedonists, and builders of alternative realities (utopian fantasies) requiring the death of God, for the heart of Gnosticism is "man is god."
While the infamous Tower of Babel was history's first Gnostic project, the Soviet Union and Socialist Germany are modern versions. In his book, "Science, Politics, & Gnosticism," esteemed political philosopher Eric Voegelin (1901-85) identifies progressivism, positivism, Hegelianism, Marxism, and the "God is dead" school as modern Gnostic movements. All of these movements are firmly grounded on the Gnostic myth of Darwinism.
In their rage against God the Father, modern Gnostics refuse to be created in His spiritual image, thus they conceptually 'uncreate' themselves through reductionism, which in the words of Wolfgang Smith, means that they speculatively reduce themselves to “aggregates of particles". Reductionism is a tenet of the philosophy of materialism.
Materialist philosophy is neither new nor scientific, but one of the most ancient superstitious beliefs in the world. The ancient version held that matter has always existed and everything that exists consists of matter. According to the modern version, invisible dead-matter spontaneously generated itself from nothing, and then by way of evolution magically produced everything else. To believe this is to believe that the nothingness within the magician’s hat spontaneously generated the bunny.
If evolutionism was a gas-powered generator, then spontaneous generation would be its indispensable fuel, admits Ernst Haeckel, pantheist mystic and ardent defender of Darwinism. In the following quote, observe that Haeckel confesses that spontaneous generation is not scientific but rather metaphysical. Furthermore, this metaphysical doctrine is the essential replacement for creation Ex Nihilo—-the miracle of creation in other words:
“…spontaneous generation appears to us as a simple and necessary event in the process of the development of the earth. We admit that this process, as long as it is not directly observed or repeated by experiment, remains a pure hypothesis. But I must again say that this hypothesis is indispensable for the consistent completion of the non-miraculous history of creation, that it has absolutely nothing forced or miraculous about it, and that certainly it can never be positively refuted. It must also be taken into consideration that the process of spontaneous generation, even if it still took place daily and hourly, would in any case be exceedingly difficult to observe and establish with absolute certainty as such. This is also the opinion of Naegeli, the ingenious investigator, and he, in his admirable chapter on Spontaneous Generation, maintains that “to deny spontaneous generation is to proclaim miracles.” (The History of Creation v.1, 1892, p.422)
Ray Comfort quotes evolutionist Stephen Hawking who in essence affirms that "the nothingness within the magician’s hat spontaneously generated the bunny:"
“According to professor Stephen Hawking, God didn’t create the universe. Instead, nothing created everything. However, Hawking has violated the basic laws of science. In an extract of his latest book, The Grand Design...published in Eureka magazine in The Times, the professor said: 'Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.'”
“It is embarrassingly unscientific to speak of anything creating itself from nothing,” remarked Comfort. “Common sense says that if something possessed the ability to create itself from nothing, then that something wasn’t nothing, it was something–a very intelligent creative power of some sort. ”
Comfort concludes:
“Hawking has violated the unspoken rules of atheism. He isn’t supposed to use words like 'create' or even 'made.' They necessitate a Creator and a Maker. Neither are you supposed to let out that the essence of atheism is to believe that nothing created everything, because it’s unthinking.” (Hawking Breaks Atheists Rules, Comfort, www.worldviewweekend.com)
So as it turns out, spontaneous generation is yet another “just-so” story. However, the importance of this particular fairytale is that it is the irreplaceable metaphysical foundation of the larger Gnostic myth of Darwinism. Without spontaneous generation, Darwinism...indeed all evolutionism…falls apart, leaving only the miraculous creation Ex Nihilo.
Furthermore, the respected scientist Louis Pasteur definitively disproved spontaneous generation just three years after Darwin published his book, “On the Origin of Species:”
“… Darwin’s celebrated tome On the Origin of Species, which had been published just three years before Pasteur’s experiments, sought to discredit the need for God to create the species by showing how one species can transmute into another. But Darwin’s account left open the problem of how the first living thing came to exist. Unless life had always existed, at least one species — the first — cannot have come to exist by transmutation from another species, only by transmutation from nonliving matter. Darwin himself wrote, some years later: “I have met with no evidence that seems in the least trustworthy, in favour of so-called Spontaneous Generation.” Yet, in the absence of a miracle, life could have originated only by some sort of spontaneous generation. Darwin's theory of evolution and Pasteur’s theory that only life begets life cannot both have been completely right. (The Fifth Miracle,1999, p.83, Paul Davies (b. 1946) Director of BEYOND: Center for Fundamental Concepts in Science)
The Darwinian Deception
Colin Patterson writes that after studying evolutionary theory for many years, he finally “woke up and realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way.” Patterson goes on to say:
“One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, or let’s call it a non- evolutionary view, was last year I had a sudden realization for over twenty years I had thought I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up and something had happened in the night and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it. That’s quite a shock to learn that one can be so misled so long. Either there was something wrong with me or there was something wrong with evolutionary theory. Naturally, I know there is nothing wrong with me, so for the last few weeks I’ve tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people….Question is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, “I do know one thing – it ought not to be taught in high school.” “Evolutionism and Creationism” November 5, 1981 p.2 Colin Patterson (1933 – 1998) Senior Paleontologist at British Museum of Natural History
When C.S. Lewis pointedly observed that the entire edifice of the so-called 'science' of Darwinian naturalism has but one purpose, to keep the supernatural Creator out, he was merely confirming admissions made by Lewontin and many other Darwinists. In sum, Darwinism is a deception perpetrated by self-worshipping swindlers who have been 'pulling the wool' over the eyes of the uninitiated masses, to use Lewontins' own words. (The Oxford Socratic Club, 1944)
Deceptions Have Consequences
Long before Darwinian Gnostics systematically liquidated in excess of 200,000,000 men, women, and children on behalf of communist and socialist utopian fantasies, George Romanes sought to warn the world of the coming catastrophe:
“Never in the history of man has so terrific a calamity befallen the race as that which all who look may now behold advancing as a deluge, black with destruction, resistless in might, uprooting our most cherished hopes, engulfing our most precious creed, and burying our highest life in mindless desolation . . The flood-gates of infidelity are open, and Atheism overwhelming is upon us.” (George Romanes, A Candid Examination of Theism ,1878)
More recently, H. Enock wrote:
“No wonder that Brig. General F.D. Frost stated in the Fundamentalist, January, 1950, p. 21: ‘There is no doubt about it that the doctrine of evolution is the greatest curse in our educational system.’ Whether we read Ward’s Dynamic Sociology, or Russell’s Code of Morals, or Briffalt’s Immoralism or some other book written by the Behaviorist School,—they all seem to endeavour to justify and base their conclusions on the bestial nature of man. This philosophy seeks to.... reduce man to the level of animal nature. The surging unrest, the broken homes, the frustrated lives, the increasing divorce cases, the multiplied number of criminals are but the inevitable outcome of the acceptance and practice of this evolutionary doctrine." (H. Enock, Evolution or Creation ,1966, pp. 1146-1147)
Evolutionism “should not be taught in high school.” Indeed. Gnosticism is the spiritual disorder of our age and Darwinism and spontaneous generation are its toxic roots. Conceptual murderer of God the Father, inverter of reality, hater of humanity, uplifter of Satan as the first 'free thinker,' destroyer of truth and all that is good, normal, and decent; bringer of chaos, blasphemy, hedonism, pathological lying, genocide and other evils too many to be listed, Gnosticism has all but destroyed America and the West.
In his book, "The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me To Faith," Peter Hitchens, brother of the infamous atheist Christopher writes:
"...the Bible angers and frustrates those who believe that the pursuit of a perfect society justifies the quest for absolute power. The concepts of sin, of conscience, of eternal life, and of divine justice under an unalterable law are the ultimate defense against the utopian's belief that ends justify means and that morality is relative. These concepts are safeguards against the worship of human power." (Rage Against God, p. 135)
The Western civilized nations rose to greatness on the wings of just one spiritual faith ...Christianity. Unalienable rights come from the transcendent Creator and not from weak, easily corrupted men. Through abandonment of its’ spiritual roots, the West---which today is a Gnostic-West---is moving inexorably toward its death.
America is the West's last best hope, observed Mark Steyn. Yet America is itself pathologically infected by Gnosticism and near death. Gnosticism must be destroyed. To do this we must tear it out by the roots. This means Darwinism must be uprooted and exposed for what it really is: a Gnostic myth.
copyright 2010 Linda Kimball
Evolution Quotes:
http://bevets.com/equotesh.htm
Related Essays:
The Materialist Faith of Communism, Socialism, and Liberalism
Cultural Marxism
Evolutionism: The Dying West's Science of Magic and Madness
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This is only an "either-or" issue for folks whose indoctrination or intellectual equipment renders them incapable of comprehending relativistic time.
Without tethering one's (mis)interpretation of Genesis to the fallacious concept that "God's yom (MUST!!) = one revolution of this (created) planet", Divine creation makes perfect sense -- Scripturally and scientifically.
No condemnation of scientific study is needed...
Nor is denial of the fact that our Creator -- in His own good time -- caused all to things to be, and to develop according to His plan, and under His control.
I never cease to be amazed at how many otherwise faithful folks insist on "downsizing" the full majesty of our God and His Creation in order to cram them into their miniscule mindspace... :-(
“yeah but the Catholic church “has no problem” with it.” ~ the invisible hand
I’m not Roman Catholic, but even I know better than that:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2596051/posts?page=147#147
That is what bugs me. Even when one reads Genesis 1 and believes that it is God's idea of a day at work (i.e. not 24 hours) there is nothing in the Bible that states that evolution could not have happened.
Those people who would posit that the Bible disallows evolution might want to realize the Bible also does not say that 2+2=4 either, but they do accept that.
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Another triple play by Linda Kimball. It is clear that there are two religions of the world:
1. Belief in the Supreme Being, Lord of all, who created everything in existence, both within our perception and experience and beyond our perception. Serving Him in eternity is the goal of life, and we are eternal souls. Perfect happiness cannot be found denying His existence and trying to enjoy separate from His will and love but is only found by serving Him in obedience and love.
2. There is no God, matter is all, humans are mere collections of chemicals, sacks of meat, and there is no Supreme Authority, Intelligence, Will or design. Each person can "create" his own reality.
The second is as much a "religion" as the first in the sense of "religion" meaning a world view or system of belief. An interesting factor of leading adherents of the second religion - the worship of mammon, or in Sanskrit "maya" - illusion, or "that which is not" - is that they are fuelled by the strong desire to dominate everything and everyone, find no problem in lying to achieve this dominance, and love Death. Their foundation is utter rebellion against the very idea of God.
I would posit that there is an ancient history of theism in India, and that many of the same truths expressed in the Bible are expressed in the ancient Vedas. But the main point is that belief in God is one one side, and hatred of Him fuelling disbelief is on the other side. And if one refuses to believe in Him, upon what does such a person place belief? Why, on one's own mind and desires.
"I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that. My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind." (The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me To Faith, Peter Hitchens, pp. 149-150)
The entire concept of a day is relative and is based on the observer. An ‘day’ on earth is different than a day on Mars, is different than even a day on the moon. If the Bible is the Word of God- then He would be the observer and we have no idea what basis the ‘day’ was based on, especially as this was written from the perspective of before humans were created, thus their point of view would yet to have existed.
Linda Kimball writes ‘way too far beyond her capability to comprehend...
Spirited: Rather than doing the hard work of thinking analytically and deductively, many people simply issue indictments meant to belittle, which is what you have done. So how about telling everyone exactly what you believe Linda Kimball does not comprehend?
>> Even when one reads Genesis 1 and believes that it is God’s idea of a day at work (i.e. not 24 hours) there is nothing in the Bible that states that evolution could not have happened.<<
“and the morning and the evening was the first day”. They were approx. 24 hr days or the change in the earths rotation would have had to have been very drastic. If you don’t accept the 24hr day and try to extend the time you will end up with some rather severe problems.
First, days on Earth were not always 24 hours. How do the authors of the account in Genesis know that when these events occurred (after all, they were NOT a firsthand account) were 24 hour days or not?
Second, the Hebrew word that was translated as "day" in the story in Genesis itself has different meanings and there is disagreement over the interpretation.
How about the way that the English translations handle the word that translates to eonian?
>>First, days on Earth were not always 24 hours. How do the authors of the account in Genesis know that when these events occurred (after all, they were NOT a firsthand account) were 24 hour days or not?<<
So if the days of creation were longer then 24hr days did they change immediately after Adam was created to make the number of years he lived correct? Or is the Bible wrong as to how long he lived?
I could not tell you but I would imagine that distracting ourselves with such details detract from us learning about the consequence of Adam not stopping Eve from being tempted.
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I thought I did exactly that in my #21: She ignores the fact that the Genesis account of creation was related by and from the viewpoint of God (specifically since neither man nor earth existed until well after-the-fact of Creation to serve as a time reference).
God's story; God's timescale.
Not Man or Earth's timescale...
It is the most absurd of arrogance for (created) man to insist that the spin rate of [created] earth -- after the fact -- defined the "day" of Almighty God -- before and while He created either.
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Without the artificial (and erroneous) limitation of an earth-timed Creation, the efforts of scientists to describe how God developed ("evolved") life to its present state (after He Created it from nothing) make sense and do not disagree with Scripture. Kimball starts off accepting the ignorant mind-barfs of Bishop Ussher -- and further degrades her argument by calling honest attempts to understand God's work "devilish".
Linda Kimball neither understands nor accepts the fact of relativistic time.
lIMHO, that justifies my statement.
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For a good paraphrase of the above, see mnehring's # 26...
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To paraphrase one of my very favorte posters on the subject:
(Nor am I -- nor are you - nor any other creature on this ball of mud...)
>>I could not tell you but I would imagine that distracting ourselves with such details detract from us learning about the consequence of Adam not stopping Eve from being tempted.<<
But not understanding what the Bible teaches concerning the coexistence of science and creation DOES affect our being able to relate to educated scientists or people who are college educated. They know that the world is much older then the 6-7000 years since Adam.
BTW. You can’t make a statement that the days were longer during the creation then not be able to not explain what happened after that. You end up being dismissed as not knowing what you were talking about in the first place.
But again, why does the age of the Earth matter if one wants to be a good Christian? Is God really going to ask us that question when we go for judgment and send us to Hell if we get it wrong?
BTW. You can’t make a statement that the days were longer during the creation then not be able to not explain what happened after that. You end up being dismissed as not knowing what you were talking about in the first place.
And why not? For all I know what could have prevented God from changing the length of a day as He saw fit? After all, He IS God, and with Him all things are possible.
IMO trying to get a literal reading of the Creation Story to jive with modern science is pointless. Science can never be used to prove the existence of God.
I agree with the basic premise of the article, which everyone seems to be missing (or many, not everyone).
Which is what I stated in my pingout comment. The reason Darwinists/evolutionists embrace their belief system - religion, if you will - is because of rejecting God being the creator. It’s that simple. Some people try to mix the two (God created via evolution) since they (may?) feel looked down upon by those who believe in evolution, but the two do not mix. It’s like trying to straddle two edges of an abyss. You have to jump to one side or the other - God Created the universe (and beyond) or Purposeless Godless Evolution.
Picking apart what a “day” means in the Bible to me is equivalent to how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.
Answer to both: As many angels as God wants can dance anyhow and anywhere He wants them to dance.
And a “day” means whatever He wants it to mean.
Personally my Vedic studies give somewhat different (and more) details about how creation occurred; to me the details are not so important. What is important is if all of existence is a creation by the Supreme Lord for His purposes, or is it all a meaningless accident somehow set into motion by - nothing. Those are the two choices.
Another point is that the leftist run MSM and educational institutions have almost successfully spread the propaganda for so many years - generations - that evolution is FACT so anyone who doesn’t “toe the line” is a snaggle toothed, cousin marrying, knuckle dragging, Bible thumping fool.
I don’t buy that cartoon and neither should anyone else. “Not wanting to look like a fool” is not a valuable motivation, if one indeed wants to know the truth. Especailly when those who are very quick to pin the “fool” label themselves are not - shall we say - pillars of wisdom.
>> What is important is if all of existence is a creation by the Supreme Lord for His purposes, or is it all a meaningless accident somehow set into motion by - nothing. Those are the two choices.<<
Of course those are the two choices. However, you cannot discount science completely out of hand either. God gave us the intelligence to explore, invent, and understand the earth we live on. If the Bible is to believed as the perfect word of God science must fit the information in the Bible. If it does not, one of the two is in error. We believe the Bible to be the infallible word of God so it follows that the Bible is not in error. That does not eliminate the possibility that our understanding or interpretation of the Bible is in error.
If we cannot even explain the length of day during creation or Biblically show that the world is indeed older then the 6-7000 years since Adam is it any wonder we are losing credibility with the College educated crowd?
I say it is important to understand those issues or we do injustice to our mandate to spread the word to all the world. If there is a complete difference between proven science and Biblical text people will follow one or the other but not both. I fear too many have gone with proven science over simple faith.
When we understand the Biblical text completely there is no argument between science and the Bible. The Bible has never been proven wrong.
Evolution as they try to teach it cannot be proven. However, neither can most people explain proven science with their understanding of creation.
BTW: I am a born again Christian.
+1
Much of what is called “fact” in science is not fact. Ever read “Forbidden Archeology”? There is a knowledge filter in much of science - look at globaloney warming? Lies! Hidden data - wrong data, wrong conclusions. Same thing in any field that relates to evolution.
I disagree entirely about whether a “day” means this or that in the Bible. In the Bible there is the sentence “With God, all things are possible”. He can make a “day” be whatever He wants it to be.
Also, according to my study, the world or this entire universe is not all of existence. There is an eternal Kingdom of God that exists far beyond this created realm. “Day” only refers to this universe, this planet, not eternity.
So arguing about what a “day” means in the Bible is to me veering off into a dead end of angels dancing on pins. Why not focus on the lies that are told and evidence hidden by evolutionists? As well as their motives.
Certainly Linda Kimball does not deny the Creator!!! And I do not believe I heard her condemn scientific study.
What I do think I heard was penetrating criticism of Darwinist theory from the psychological/cultural side, not the scientific side. I believe her recognition of Darwinism as "in the type" of the ancient "mindset" of gnosticism, and that gnostic thinking more generally is the source of a great many modern problems, is entirely spot-on. She aptly cites my deeply esteemed "greatest philosopher of the Twentieth Century" [IMHO] Eric Voegelin on points of order. I enjoyed the development of her thesis very much and very much applaud it!
At the same time, it seems to me the "cultural attack" may not be the most effective one. As it turns out, Darwinist theory has been criticized with increasing effectiveness from within the scientific community in recent times. Word needs to get out on this.
Although evidently Nobel Laureate biologist Jacques Monod continues to uphold the Darwinist doctrine in all its metaphysical purity. We'll get back to him in a bit; but first we have to define the problem.
Personally, I have absolutely no objection to the idea of "evolution." It seems to me the Creation, the natural world, is a system that progressively "unfolds" in Time. And so it changes, yet evidently along a path of development. This path, to me, is "evolution." And it implies a Final Cause. [More in a minute.]
Darwin had a different idea of what "evolution" is. He was definitely committed to the Newtonian view of science, which tends to reduce the natural world to its material/mechanistic properties.
A couple of things need to be said here. In the first place, the Newtonian "particle" is a total abstraction, although its properties are well specified. But those properties are wholly abstract, too, being needful derivations from the abstraction of the Newtonian particle in the first place.
In Newtonian mechanics, causation, "entailment," occurs only from past to present. I daresay this is the cardinal rule of Jacques Monod's faith. :^)
To put it another way, on the Newtonian view, the present state of any given system can only be causally accounted for by reference to the immediately preceding temporal/spatial state. There can be no "pull from the future" in any way, shape, or form. This is the cardinal rule which may not be violated by persons who account themselves scientists.
And yet on this view, it is absolutely impossible to account for biological function! That is because "function" implies a goal to be realized by nature in the future — a final cause.
Darwinists have absolutely no use for final causes. Indeed, Darwin's evolution theory seems moved entirely by the desire to eradicate final causes from human consideration. Darwinists accord such a status akin to ghosts and goblins....
And yet this Darwinist stricture calling for the eradication of final cause in principle flies in the face of what human beings can observe about the natural world, with their own eyes on a daily basis if they have a mind to.
Two things about Nature that I find totally profound and totally amazing: (1) Observable Nature regularly displays order; (2) that order is conducive to a final cause — or purpose, goal, end [teleology invoked here]....
Darwin's theory has no way to reach to such considerations. And so evidently the strategy is to make final cause illegitimate in principle.
Well they can try to make this, their "vision" true, all day long every day, or nights included if they're desperate. But try as they might, they would be utterly wrong if the universe is, in fact, an ordered system. Which I fully expect it is.
There is nothing in Darwin's theory that can explain the evident "order" of the system. Newton was no help to him in this regard.
But back to Jacques Monod. I'll let the great mathematician Robert Rosen set up the problem for us by simply quoting Monod directly, in his marvelous book, Life Itself:
The strange properties (of organisms) are doubtless not at odds with physics; but the physical forces and chemical interactions brought to light by the study of nonliving systems do not fully account for them. Hence it must be realized that over and above physical principles and adding themselves thereto, others are operative in living matter, but not in non-living systems where, consequently, these electively vital principles could not be discovered. It is these principles — or, to borrow from Elsasser's terminology, these "biotonic laws" — that must be elucidated.... The least one can say is that the arguments of these physicists is oddly lacking in strictness and solidity. [Chance and Necessity, pp. 27–28]To which statement, Rosen adds the following insight:
With this language, then, Monod consigned [Walter] Elsasser to the category of "scientific Vitalism," one of the lower rungs in his scientific Hell. And yet, all Elsasser did to deserve this was to draw an inconvenient conclusion from Monod's own assertion, embodied in the first few sentences of the preface to Chance and Necessity, that "Biology ... (is) marginal because — the living world constitutes but a tiny and very 'special' part of the universe — it does not seem likely that the study of living beings will ever uncover general laws applicable outside the biosphere."THAT is an assertion, plain and simple. And yet Robert Rosen counters this assertion, saying that what counts in science is ultimately the "largest system" model. Rosen imagines that this "largest system model" is the yet-to-be-discovered laws of biology itself; and that all inorganic, nonliving systems [as primarily accounted for by physics] are "special cases" of this more general, dare I say LIVING law?
I find that a most intriguing insight. It certainly has a heritage — going back to Pythagoras at least, ~600 B.C. And from him through Plato and Aristotle....
Open questions are so delightful to contemplate! The premature "closure" implied by Darwinist thinking is to be deplored, IMHO, FWIW.
Thank you ever so much, dear TX, for your wonderfully insightful essay/post!
And thank you ever so much for writing, dear brother in Christ!
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