Posted on 07/16/2013 11:44:20 AM PDT by Heartlander
Darwin’s Doubt, the brand new New York Times bestseller by Cambridge-trained Ph.D., Stephen Meyer, is creating a major scientific controversy. Darwinists don’t like it.
Meyer writes about the complex history of new life forms in an easy to understand narrative style. He takes the reader on a journey from Darwin to today while trying to discover the best explanation for how the first groups of animals arose. He shows, quite persuasively, that Darwinian mechanisms don’t have the power to do the job.
Using the same investigative forensic approach Darwin used over 150 years ago, Meyer investigates the central doubt Darwin had about his own theory. Namely, that the fossil record did not contain the rainbow of intermediate forms that his theory of gradual evolutionary change required. However, Darwin predicted that future discoveries would confirm his theory.
Meyer points out that they haven’t. We’ve thoroughly searched the fossil record since Darwin and confirmed what Darwin originally saw himself: the discontinuous, abrupt appearance of the first forms of complex animal life. In fact, paleontologists now think that roughly 20 of the 28 animal phyla (representing distinct animal “body plans”) found in the fossil record appear abruptly without ancestors in a dramatic geological event called the Cambrian Explosion.
And additional discoveries since Darwin have made it even worse for his theory. Darwin didn’t know about DNA or the digital information it contains that makes life possible. He couldn’t have appreciated, therefore, that building new forms of animal life would require millions of new characters of precisely sequenced code—that the Cambrian explosion was a massive explosion of new information.
For modern neo-Darwinism to survive, there must be an unguided natural mechanism that can create the genetic information and then add to it massively, accurately and within the time allowed by the fossil record. Is there such a mechanism?
The answer to that question is the key to Meyer’s theory and entire book. Meyer shows that the standard “neo-Darwinian” mechanism of mutation and natural selection mechanism lacks the creative power to produce the information necessary to produce new forms of animal life. He also reviews the various post-Darwinian speculations that evolutionary biologists themselves are now proposing to replace the crumbling Darwinian edifice. None survive scrutiny. Not only is there no known natural mechanism that can create the new information required for new life forms, there is no known natural mechanism that can create the genetic code for the first life either (which was the subject of Meyer’s previous book Signature in the Cell).
When Meyer suggests that an intelligent designer is the best explanation for the evidence at hand, critics accuse him of being anti-scientific and endangering sexual freedom everywhere (OK, they don’t explicitly state that last part). They also claim that Meyer commits the God of the gaps fallacy.
But he does not. As Meyer points out, he’s not interpreting the evidence based on what we don’t know, but what we do know. The geologically sudden appearance of fully formed animals and millions of lines of genetic information point to intelligence. That is, we don’t just lack a materialistic explanation for the origin of information. We have positive evidence from our uniform and repeated experience that another kind of cause—namely, intelligence or mind—is capable of producing digital information. Thus, he argues that the explosion of information in the Cambrian period provides evidence of this kind of cause acting in the history of animal life. (Much like any sentence written by one of Meyer’s critics is positive evidence for an intelligent being).
This inference from the data is no different than the inference archaeologists made when they discovered the Rosetta Stone. It wasn’t a “gap” in their knowledge about natural forces that led them to that conclusion, but the positive knowledge that inscriptions require intelligent inscribers.
Of course, any critic could refute Meyer’s entire thesis by demonstrating how natural forces or mechanisms can generate the genetic information necessary to build the first life and then massive new amounts of genetic information necessary for new forms of animal life. But they can’t and hardly try without assuming what they are trying to prove (see Chapter 11). Instead, critics attempt to smear Meyer by claiming he’s doing “pseudo science” or not doing science at all.
Well, if Meyer isn’t, doing science, then neither was Darwin (or any Darwinist today). Meyer is using the same forensic or historical scientific method that Darwin himself used. That’s all that can be used. Since these are historical questions, a scientist can’t go into the lab to repeat and observe the origin and history of life. Scientists must evaluate the clues left behind and then make an inference to the best explanation. Does our repeated experience tell us that natural mechanisms have the power to create the effects in question or is intelligence required?
Meyer writes, “Neo-Darwinism and the theory of intelligent design are not two different kinds of inquiry, as some critics have asserted. They are two different answers—formulated using a similar logic and method of reasoning—to the same question: ‘What caused biological forms and the appearance of design in the history of life?’”
The reason Darwinists and Meyer arrive at different answers is not because there’s a difference in their scientific methods, but because Meyer and other Intelligent Design proponents don’t limit themselves to materialistic causes. They are open to intelligent causes as well (just like archaeologists and crime scene investigators are).
So this is not a debate about evidence. Everyone is looking at the same evidence. This is a debate about how to interpret the evidence, and that involves philosophical commitments about what causes will be considered possible before looking at the evidence. If you philosophically rule out intelligent causes beforehand—as the Darwinists do—you will never arrive at the truth if an intelligent being actually is responsible.
Since all evidence needs to be interpreted, science doesn’t actually say anything—scientists do. So if certain self-appointed priests of science say that a particular theory is outside the bounds of their own scientific dogma, that doesn’t mean that the theory is false. The issue is truth—not whether something fits a materialistic definition of science.
I’m sure Darwinists will continue to throw primordial slime at Meyer and his colleagues. But that won’t make a dent in his observation that whenever we see information like that required to produce the Cambrian Explosion, intelligence is always the cause. In fact, I predict that when open-minded people read Darwin’s Doubt, they’ll see that Dr. Meyer makes a very intelligently designed case that intelligent design is actually true. It’s just too bad that many Darwinists aren’t open to that truth—they aren’t even open minded enough to doubt Darwin as much as Darwin himself was.
I’m glad you’re feeling better.
Somebody ping me when they come up with the experiment that will test the existence of God.
Which God?..... A designer God, a perceived God, the christian God, a generic God; a nebulous God?
There could a thread on just what God is and/or isn’t..
The very term “God” has not been identified yet...
Mumbling the word God is done quite easily..
It could be “God” is still in the closet..
Unless the bible lore is true.. which seems to generate the very controversy..
When I look around I see a plethora of Gods..
If there is a God it may not be a He or a She it may be an “IT”..
What is... “IS”.... and what ain’t..... “AIN’T”...
The God “thing” maybe be Un-describable.. in language..
Tempting some primate to ignore the subject completely..
It makes their heads hurt.. dealing with it..
I expect not. They figured out a long time ago no such test or experiment could ever be devised.
Outstanding observation, dear sister in Christ! And, oh so very true.
He doesn't need to explain it, because Borde-Guth-Vilenkin themselves not only don't claim any such thing, they actually wrote:
"What can lie beyond the boundary? Several possibilities have been discussed, one being that the boundary of the inflating region corresponds to the beginning of the Universe in a quantum nucleation event."
Vilenkin himself suggested one such possibility. http://mukto-mona.net/science/physics/a_vilinkin/universe_from_nothing.pdf
There are others. There is the possibility, for example, that time is finite but has no boundary. Another possibility is that time has only recently become time-like (in the sense of Lorentz invariance) and at the boundary was actually a space-like dimension. The authors you cite actually don't talk in the absolute terms you're suggesting; and they certainly don't rule out a uniquely quantum beginning to the universe.
The abiogenesis does not imply the Standard model, evolution does not imply abiogenesis, and neither does the chain of implication go in the opposite direction. None of these things argue against intelligent design, under certain definitions, but all of them argue against Young Earth Creationism, a "theory" which is actually sillier than the idea that the Earth is flat.
If you're arguing that it's really cool that it was low enough to make life possible, we are in agreement. If you're arguing that this somehow proves there's a creator, you're wrong.
It could have been even lower at the beginning, in which case even cooler things would have been possible (and even better arguments for your God might be made.) But those things -- now unknown and forbidden by the laws of physics -- didn't happen. Does the fact that it might have been even lower, allowed even more possibilities, and certainly a longer-lived universe prove there is no God? Nope. Doesn't say one thing about Him either way.
It's a big ball of fire in the sky called "the Sun." You may have heard of it. It's even in the Bible...
Well, I suppose it would have been nice to have another degree under one's belt. But you eschewed that pursuit, and it would seem on reasonable grounds.
Perhaps you would agree with an observation from "my friend, the astrophysicist," Attila Grandpierre (in "Fundamental Complexity Measures of Life," in Divine Acton and Natural Selection: Science, Faith, and Evolution, 2008:
It becomes more and more clear that Darwinian theory is so logically flabby that it can "explain" anything by subtly changing the terms of the debate. Evolutionary theory can show only that systems of functions may evolve in a changing environment, but does not explain how the individual cell selects from the astronomically large domain of biological possibilities. Evolutionary theory concerns only the historical life forms appearing on earth. It considers only a part of biological phenomena, instead of working out the general theory of biological processes and deriving the more special phenomena from the more general laws as it is possible [to do] in physics.... These arguments indicate that selection is not the cause but the result of biological organization.BTW, my friend is not a fan of "intelligent design."
Thanks so much for writing, dear brother in Christ!
I expect not. They figured out a long time ago no such test or experiment could ever be devised.
Who knows what EVER could be devised?..
It takes real faith to believe that and that faith should be honored..
Takes humility to say “I don’t know”.. cause if you “know” you no longer need faith..
To the extent this is true, it's a reflection of the multiple senses of the word "faith." Let's say I have the kind of faith in science that you and TS assert that I do. If so, it's because it has worked and continues to work; it produces results that lead to predictions of future results, which then are borne out (or the predictions are revised). It's reliable in that sense--in the sense that my Saturn is a reliable car, and I trust it will get me where I want to go.
Is that really the kind of faith you have in Christ--that He will dispense reliable results if you push the right buttons? I doubt it--if so, I'd call that (to borrow betty boop's term) a "low-quality faith."
Faith in God does not require real-world results and so is an entirely different thing than faith in science. It suits your purposes to elide that difference so you can imply that I've replaced faith in God with faith in science. But in fact, it's why the two can co-exist: one can have faith in a transcendent God who loves us and willed the universe into being, as well as faith that science is able to discover how that universe works.
Seriously? You're going to claim that science is characterized more by its failures than its successes? When we live in a world that science made, for better or for worse? That sounds desparate.
You'd think so, but the idea seems to be they should be castigated and villified for saying they can't theorize about what they can't test for. Go figure.
You’d think so, but the idea seems to be they should be castigated and villified for saying they can’t theorize about what they can’t test for. Go figure.
Much like a primate considering a Rolex watch..
They soon bore of it.. a Rolex don’t “tick”..
Very “shiny” indeed but it don’t tick even though the second hand “moves”..
And you can’t eat it.. or copulate with it.. licking it produces a metallic taste....
What monkey ever considered “God”?..
To a monkey God and a Rolex watch are dalliances between meals.. and copulating..
If you don't like science, don't use it. You have free will.
"Real-world results" are the consequence of God's act in the beginning. That is my "faith." I have known this since I was a small child, even before I started going to school, just from observing the world around me.
I have "faith" in science, too — so long as it is operating within its proper sphere of competence.
What I do not have faith in, however, is any form of materialism or physicalism as an exhaustive explanation for the world we see all around us.
As my friend the astrophysicist puts it,
The central thesis of physicalism proclaims the causal closure of the physical. Ashby's Law and Kahre's Law of Diminishing Information stated that physical systems cannot produce more information at their output than was present at their input. This means that for physical systems, complexity jumps are simply not possible.Or, to put it more crudely, a living system — an "open" system — cannot "emerge" from a causally closed system as defined by physical, material, or mechanical presuppositions. Something else is required for life. And as increasingly recognized these days, that something else is information — which is not a tangible, material thing.
To the extent that Neo-Darwinist theorizing restricts itself to physicalist/materialist presuppositions, it cannot explain the emergence of life. Period. End of story.
This vast and very diverse collection of essays on life and evolution was edited by Joseph Seckbach and Richard Gordon.
” he would know evolution not to be gradual and that every once in a while a rare combination of mutations would lead to the quantum leap”
Then are you saying that all of those years scientist were trying to convince me that it was indeed a fact that we were “randomly mutated from ocean slime to our knuckle-dragging neanderthal long-long lost cousins to our current incarnation was wrong”?
Sounds like just another "just-so story" to me. Blame the primitives. They were ignoramuses. We know better than they did, today. Because we know something they didn't know: That mental phenomena are merely epiphenomena of processes in the physical brain. And as such, can have no value or meaning. Sheesh....
What better way to dismiss the supernatural than to write it off as *hallucinations*?
It sure makes it easier than really trying to address the reality the scientific method is singularly ill equipped to deal with.
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