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.
Oh well.... Let the dreamers dream, I suppose. It seems one cannot wake them up. They simply prefer to stay asleep.
Takes faith to believe in a God you’ve never seen, actually nobody you know has ever seen..
Takes faith to believe in Darwin’s tale of mystical beliefs too..
They don’t call their believe religion but it is anyway..
They bought Darwins Tale as thoroughly as any christian bought their tale..
Having faith is a virtue I think....
Darwinism is as religious as Buddism, Hinduism, the Tao, or any version of Christianity.. or even the psuedo religion of Islam.. which is basically a scam..
Talking to a Darwinist is as fruitful as talking to a Jehovas Witness.. they both have bought their versions of things completely.. and adjusted everything to it..
I dont think they ARE asleep... thy are awake.. but have bought the narrative of a tale as completely as anyone in any religion..
You gotta believe something.. Darwin is an option..
They believe that is true as completely as any christian believes in Jesus..
Could be “being human” is all about proving what you are willing to accept as reality..
Accusing Darwinist’s of having faith makes for some interesting conversation..
I would only add that faith in Christ is a relationship, beyond just faith, it is faithing, an action word of relationship to a very real being. I personally believe Darwin enumerated an interesting concept of how God does some things. That was no small feat by him. But the human desire to reach some definitive knowledge tempts men to go too far in their speculations, to make assertions before all the data is in. It is to be human, I suppose. I have to catch myself all the time in that regard.
Granted, the number and quality of our opposition has slipped a bit ever since many of our Science friends discovered that not all of us could be drawn off into futile arguments over scientific minutiae, but instead stood our ground, insisting that great philosophic and religious principles are not cast on such minutiae.
“. . . they all left, en masse, in a great huff because “creationists are superstitious morons” and thus not worth their time of day . . . ”
Any port in a storm . . . any excuse in a pinch. A great huff beats admitting that command of facts do not lead to achieving great insights irrelevant to those facts.
So they retreat to insults and denigration (like Liberals).
Same as hitting a hornet's nest with a rock.
It is to be human, I suppose. I have to catch myself all the time in that regard.
True.. we all want to know something...
But when you “know” something “faith” is not required..
WHY? because you know “IT” faith is not required..
Jesus seems to be on vacation and left the “Holy SPirit” in charge of this planet..
Otherwise how and why could he planning on “coming back”.?.
Cause if he’s already here he need not come back..
Unless the new testament is a flawed account and a human look at reality..
Nothing wrong with that, the apostles were by all means human... who could blame them?..
My fav verse of NT lore is... I Cor 2;9
“What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him”
Now thats is quite a mouthful there..
Smacks to me of reality.. things a human could not even “imagine”..
Yes; even the science fiction folks.. Darwinist’s or anybody “into” physics..
-OR- EVEN a “Christian”...
Maybe some did. Maybe some left because they got tired of being called atheists or told their faith was insufficient because they accepted the theory of evolution. Others because they didn't like being called followers of Marx and Mao. Still others because no matter how many times they explained that the theory of evolution does not depend on an explanation of the origin of life, people still demanded they come up with one. And then there are the overt statements that people who accept evolutionary theory don't belong on Free Republic.
It's not exactly a conducive environment for scientific discussion.
Yes, I remember some of those who left saying that, over and over again. Maybe this is the real source of the disagreement between the so-called "Crevos" and the "orthodox" Darwinists.
For my part, any theory of evolution that cannot explain the origin of life (not to mention mind, consciousness) cannot explain what happens once it has "emerged," from presumably lifeless matter. Darwin never heard of DNA; but more recent scientists have. And they realize that DNA is information-intensive. So where does matter get its information from, so that it knows how to "evolve" DNA?
To put it crudely, how does "dumb matter" become "smart matter," such to give rise to the emergence in time of increasingly complex biological organisms? "Random mutation plus natural selection plus sufficient time" hardly seems to cut it. In any case, it is a supposition that cannot be demonstrated by scientific means. It is a groundless assertion which also happens to be anhistorical: The fossil record we have — the history — does not support the assertion. Which is what worried Darwin himself.
As a result, Darwin's theory has "evolved" into Neo-Darwinism, whose practitioners seem grudgingly aware that it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to explain the quandary of life and mind on the basis of "matter in its motions" according to natural law. (Where did the natural law come from?)
Actually, the fly in the ointment is a physical cosmology premised in monist materialism. This is the worldview of the regnant scientific method.
Trying to shed some light on these issues, let me point out the argument of Thomas Nagel, University Professor in the Department of Philosophy and the School of Law at New York University, in his recent book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinisan Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly Wrong:
[The] failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind ... is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology.As the book jacket points out, "Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief [Nagel is a self-professed atheist] or on a belief in any definite alternative.... [H]e does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic."
Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such.... In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement.
In sum,
The existence of consciousness is both one of the most familiar and one of the most astounding things about the world. No conception of the natural order that does not reveal it as something to be expected can aspire even to the outline of completeness. And if physical science, whatever it may have to say about the origin of life [e.g., the "natural process" of Abiogenesis, a/k/a biopoiesis], leaves us necessarily in the dark about consciousness, that shows that it cannot provide the basic form of intelligibility for this world. There must be a very different way in which things as they are make sense, and that includes the physical world, since the problem cannot be quarantined in the mind.In dialoguing with Darwinists, these were the issues that I always tried to raise, not whether my correspondent was an atheist or a Marxist or a Maoist, or fit to be a member of FR.
As an atheist, Nagel is seeking purely naturalistic answers to such questions. One proposal he offers is to say that matter itself "reduces" to an entity that bears within itself the "seeds" of a later emergence of life and mind, as teased out over the time of the world under the influence of natural law. (I'm putting this crudely to make the point clear.) This view comes pretty close to a philosophical theory called panpsychism. But then, he grudgingly admits that "proving the theory" would be just as difficult (if not impossible) as proving the theory of reductionist materialism as THE explanation of the natural world and of the living organisms bearing consciousness that constitute it.
Nagel's final paragraph makes me feel very sad for him:
It is perfectly possible that the truth is beyond our reach, in virtue of our intrinsic cognitive limitations, and not merely beyond our grasp in humanity's present stage of intellectual development. [I have often wondered about this myself.] But I believe we cannot know this, and that it makes sense to go on seeking a systematic understanding of how we and other living things fit into the world. In this process, the ability to generate and reject false hypotheses plays an essential role. I have argued patiently against the prevailing form of naturalism, a reductive materialism that purports to capture life and mind through its Neo-Darwinian extension. But ... I find this view antecedently unbelievable — a heroic triumph of ideological theory over common sense. The empirical evidence can be interpreted to accommodate different comprehensive theories, but in this case the cost in conceptual and probabilistic contortions is prohibitive. I would be willing to bet that the present right-thinking consensus will come to seem laughable in a generation or two — though of course it may be replaced by a new consensus that is just as invalid. The human will to believe is inexhaustible. [itals added.]In conclusion, it seems to me Nagel is an honest man — or at least as honest as a man who rejects God out-of-hand can be.
Just some thoughts, FWTW.
Thanks for writing, Ha Ha Thats Very Logical! (Haven't seen you in a while....)
I’m itching to chime in, but I’ll wait until HHTVL responds since he/she was the pingee.
Suddenly, under our powerful, imaginary microscope, we see Ferdie the fungus, furtively floating like a phantom! He is a tiny free-floating fungus spore. He is hanging suspended in the air. We don't know where he came from, for there are no other fungi in the whole world as yet [remember! He had to come from SOMEWHERE, for there had to be a very FIRST fungus!], but there he is. What is he, we wonder? Looking closely, we think he may resemble the spores (which do not yet exist) from a mushroom. But there are no mushrooms, yet. Fungi is the Latin word for "mushroom." Next time you go to an Italian restaurant, you might notice some of Ferdie's offspring offered with your food. You see, it makes scientists sound much more intelligent to use Latin, and Greek, than English. Besides, "mushroom" is a bit confusing. What does it mean? A room filled with mush? Or a room where one eats corn meal mush? So they use Latin, or Greek.
We find that there are many, many kinds of fungi, which are slime-like, algae-like, watery, like mildew, blue and green molds, powdery mildews, spherical fungi, cup and club fungi, and many others.
Little did phantom Ferdie the free-floating fungus know that he would "evolve" from an original free-floating fungus into a whole new world of incredible organisms that help break down and decay dead organic matter (and therefore could not have survived unless there was dead organic matter about before they "evolved"). Little did Ferdie realize that some of his less desirable offspring would become parasitic fungi, which can blight crops and trees, and become a disastrous disease, costing countless dollars to agriculture! Had he known this, he might well have drifted in the air until, running out of whatever it was he was feeding upon, he starved to death, or, failing to find a comfortable mate (we're coming to this) simply fell on a hard piece of granite and died.
But forgetting for the moment all his future difficulties, let's get back to Ferdie, our furtive, free-loading, free-floating, phantom fungus of the forest. (Can't you just hear the little animals saying, "Oh no! There is a fungus among us"?).
Somehow, though he has no brain, Ferdie knows he must find an alga and link up with it (or her, perhaps?), or he cannot survive. A chance puff of wind carries his microscopic little body directly into the clutches of the only alga to ever have evolved, which just "happens" to be in the immediate vicinity. Think of it! A tiny, microscopic alga—the ONLY ONE IN THE UNIVERSE—had to "evolve" SEPARATELY, in order to link up with Ferdie!
But the alga could not have survived separately! Notwithstanding this impossible difficulty; notwithstanding the possibility that the little alga COULD have popped into existence 8 or 9,000 miles away, perhaps in the Atlas Mountains in Africa, THERE SHE WAS!
Thankfully, they both evolved together, suddenly, and within a few feet or yards of each other! Wow! Isn't evolution wonderful? The incredible planning of evolution; the design of evolution; the carefully thought-out, intricately developed creative ability of "evolution" is mind-boggling, indeed, isn't it? Of course, when one worships "nature," always called "mother" instead of "father," and endows blind chance with all this power and design, one does not need to worry about any God or His laws which regulate all life—much less worry about the punishments for sin.
But back to our fanciful story--er--our scientific investigation of Ferdie's fanciful flight to find his future friend and fellow-survivor, Alice, the alga!
Immediately, the little alga we shall call "Alice," clutches the phantom fungus Ferdie to her green, ugly body, and the two begin (blush!) happily surviving together.
What luck! think of the billions of years it must have taken for Ferdie to evolve in the first place—to become the very first fungus spore! Then think of the difficulty for Alice the alga to have evolved separately, and to have done so not just within a few million years, or even ten years, but on the same afternoon the thermals in the forest bore little Ferdie to her bosom! Instantly, the two became twitterpated.
One would think the opposite. One would assume Alice would say, "Ugh! An ugly spore, and he's looking at me!" Then, she would attempt to slowly creep away. One would think Ferdie would say, "Ugh! An ugly piece of green, slimy, something or other. No way she's getting her clutches on me!" and stay airborne for another few hours, looking for some other alga to help him survive. But there weren't any other algae about! They hadn't evolved yet.
But no, evolution requires that it was love at first sight—er, clutch.
Soon, tiny, coral-like growths called "isidia" begin growing around the rim of the "fruiting body" which is what Phantom Ferdie the fungus and Alice the alga have formed. Each little bud which breaks off is a complete lichen, composed of both fungus and alga, and capable of reproduction after their own kind. Wow! What a major miracle Ferdie and Alice have wrought. Neither could have come into existence without the other. But, suddenly, there they were! And their very first attempt was successful! They produced little Alfred, and little Ferdie, Junior. Except they had to name them Alfreda and Alferda, because each were created possessing both sexes! What a problem for evolution! No wonder they would like students who read their text books to dismiss lichens as "poor trash" and "anomalies," and go on to something more interesting, like how dolphins and whales used to be four-footed quadrupeds who could climb trees. (Really! — this is what evolutionists say!).
You see, a lichen is composed of a fungus and an alga. Each of these microscopic, living organisms live in close association with each other. The special kind of lichen fungi never live alone, like other fungi do. They can only live in close association with lichens. The alga and the fungus contribute to the welfare of each other by storing water, sending "roots" down into the porous holes in rocks, or into tree bark, producing food through photosynthesis, and by "feeding" upon the decaying organic material.
Oops! Another terrible problem for evolutionists! Lichen fungi, like Ferdie, have no means of photosynthesis and would quickly die unless they were linked with an alga. Good old Ferdie. He found Alice just in time, or there would not be a single lichen about!
Talk about "Alice in wonderland!" Alice the alga—the very first, one of her kind, never before, suddenly "evolved" (suddenly? This is anathema to evolution!), in just the right place, at just the right time, to find, not her prince charming, such as another alga, but this time an ugly, misshapen, "spore" floating around in the breeze! But notwithstanding these insurmountable difficulties, IT HAPPENED! (Well, not really, but for evolution to be true, something like this HAD to happen!).
Alice does all the work. The cells in her body manufactures food for both of them, since Ferdie is incapable of it. But Ferdie does his part too, for he provides the incredibly complex structure which binds both of them together, and serves as a storage tank for water and fat, so that Ferdie and Alice can survive together during the dry season.
Of course, the very first time Ferdie found Alice (neither of whom could have previously existed—so they didn't exist—so there wasn't any possibility of lichens "evolving," so lichens don't exist, today. But they do, so...), neither of them knew anything about any approaching "dry season." Furthermore, they had never had time to reason out and plan for the sneaky maneuver to "infiltrate" the frozen tundra to the North. After all, just how many trillions of generations of lichens did there have to be to drop little "buds" and "fruiting bodies" beside themselves, or to be carried by a chance gust of wind from a temperate zone forest to the Brooks Range or across the Atlantic, down the length of the Mediterranean, across the Mideast, and into Nepal and the Himalayas?
So, when the very first dry season came along, foolish phantom, formerly-free-floating Ferdie, now "married" to ugly Alice, not knowing he should have stored all that water and fat, was happily munching on the food Alice gave him. Along came the dry, hot summer, and they dried up and died. So there are no lichens around today. But there are. Therefore, the very first time either came into existence, they had to somehow "know" (without having any brains) how to store up against the dry season together.
Look closely at Ferdie and Alice, as they exist, we assume happily, together. There is an "apothecium," or "fruiting body" on the surface of the lichen. Without invading their privacy, or delving too deeply into just HOW this is done, suffice it to say Ferdie and Alice are producing tiny, microscopic spores as a result of their chance encounter. They are so light in weight that they hang suspended above the fruiting body in the air; borne aloft by the tiniest changes in temperature, which causes hot air to rise from the forest floor.
How did they get into the air? Well, somehow, Ferdie and Alice "evolved" this cup-shaped "fruiting body," which forcibly ejects the spores into the air. What luck! What good fortune! All about them are deer and elk, forcibly ejecting various substances onto the ground. Why didn't Ferdie and Alice simply drop their spores beneath them? Perchance they did, for the first few millions or billions of years. But as they did, the spores, incapable of putting down roots, simply died. But there couldn't have been any spores, because Ferdie and Alice had already died, millions of years earlier! But, somehow, the very first time a fungus and an alga came together in marital bliss, they joyfully ejected their little spores into the air.
Chance gusts of wind carry them about. Some are carried here and there on the fur of animals (where did they come from?) or birds' feet (same question).
The trouble is, we encounter a myriad different types, sizes, shapes and colors of lichens as we look at the forest floor. Some of them have rows and rows of fruiting bodies. Others have large, saucer-shaped fruiting bodies which ooze slime, instead of eject spores (Alice the alga should counsider herself fortunate—what if she had evolved into a piece of slime, and met "Slippery Simon, the sticky, slick, slithering slime"?). They are black, grey, brown, rust, yellow, orange, ochre, green, bluish, red, and white, and every shade in between.
Then, as the spores are carried about, or as they drop off, or ooze out, they must encounter some algae cells of precisely the correct kind, or they cannot reproduce.
Therefore, evolutionists would tell us, they must have "evolved" at the same time—together. But evolution requires billions and billions of years. Ejecting spores into the air takes place in only a few seconds! Oozing slime is to no avail, unless the slime, with its spores, comes into contact with the exact kind of algae needed to reproduce. Since the algae of this kind cannot reproduce without the slime from the correct kind of lichen, and the lichen slime cannot reproduce without encountering the correct kind of algae, which came first, Slippery Simon the slime, or Ferdie the Phantom Fungus and Alice the Alga?
What if the algae "evolved" in Siberia, but the lichen which oozes slime "evolved" in Montana? Problem! Neither could have survived. So they don't exist today. But they do. Therefore, they had to come into existence, in myriad numbers, all over the world at the same precise moment in time!
Lichenologists are not sure how some of them reproduce at all. Some reproduce tiny pieces of lichen, while others produce spores which must unite with algae. Says one authority, "The role that spores play in the propagation of lichens is completely unknown, for no one has ever followed the development of a lichen thallus from a germinated fungal spore...We must admit that the most significant aspect of lichens, their reproduction, is still a mystery" (LICHEN HANDBOOK, A Guide To The Lichens Of Eastern North America, by Mason Hale).
It is at least as much a mystery how anyone who studies lichens can avoid throwing up his hands in despair and admitting, "You know, I think there might be a Creator God who did all this, after all!"
Ferdie and Alice were not only sneakily capable of "infiltrating" the frozen North, but were capable of reproducing, not only after their own kind, but dozens of incredibly complex, intricate lichens and fungi—multiple trillions and quintillions of offspring, and not a clue as to how they could have evolved, when neither could have survived without the other!
Furthermore, they are found from thousands of feet above sea level to three hundred feet beneath the surface of the ocean; the deepest kind of plant life known to exist! How? Why do this? Was it necessary to survive? Did they "migrate" to the depths of the oceans, and to the heights of the Rocky Mountains?
Even a slug can travel faster than a lichen, clinging to a rock. Isn't it all incredible? Evolutionists are like wide-eyed children, sitting in front of a Disney cartoon, assuming all they see is true; that deer talk, and ducks wear only a jacket, but no trousers! They are like fascinated day-dreamers, conjuring up the weirdest fiction, and attempting to pass it on as fact.
Truly, only the fool hath said in his heart, "There is no God!"
Symbiosis is proof of a law in motion; an immutable, immovable absolute which governs many creatures in our environment, including man. Life is only possible because other life forms exist. You and I could not live without eating living plants and various kinds of fish and animal flesh. We could not digest our food, and it could not be carried into our bloodstream to feed our heart, liver, lungs and brain, without our miraculous bloodstream, with its dizzying array of blood cells and chemical compounds which make life possible.
Symbiosis is a PROOF OF GOD! It is absolute proof that life was CREATED AT ONCE; that it had an instantaneous BEGINNING! Whether clown fish and deadly sea anemones which live in symbiotic harmony, or Ferdie and Alice, happily producing spores, all symbiotic life forms prove the existence of an all-wise, all-powerful Creator God!
All about you is LIFE. Microscopic life, and living things which support life! You and I could not live without foods which come from the ground. Those foods could not grow without the bacteria which cause decay, producing rich soil. All life forms complement each other. Nothing lives or dies to itself. A tree falls in the forest, to decompose, and produce fertile soil for its offspring nearby. Your own body is host to many, many forms of life, including little yeast spores, which float about in the air.
If you could, at this moment, take a tiny piece of clean, clear glass, and touch it to your nose, then place it under a powerful microscope, you could identify these little yeast spores, clinging to the oils on your skin. And, who knows? Maybe one of Ferdie and Alice's little offspring would be smiling up at you, hoping you would drop them off on the nearest decaying log! -End-
And no matter how often “they” were told that “they” could not use Science as a shield protecting them from a critical response to their religious, educational and philosophical declarations, “they” still claim immunity. Isn’t going to happen, Pilgrim.
Everyone knows the drill. No one is allowed to make societal assertions under the color of “discussing” Science, and get away with it. Go to DC (either the city or the website) if you want to argue cultural trends and not have to tolerate dispute.
Thanks, boop for your remarks. Spot on.
I've been to DC — the website. That is, before it was closed to non-members. I actually went there several times, even daily, over the course of many weeks. And not once did I ever notice any discussion of science going on there. Not once! Rather, it seemed the site was exclusively dedicated to heaping scorn on people who did not subscribe to the "whole cloth" of orthodox Darwinian dogma.
In short, the main method in evidence there was the ad hominum attack. Certain things said about myself and my dearest sister in Christ Alamo-Girl were scandalous, and I will not repeat them here. (Evidently they didn't like our book.)
I concluded that Darwin Central is nothing more than a "social club" for like-minded co-religionists (to crib from a saying of Eric Voegelin). I'll only add that the use of ad hominum attack is a diversionary tactic designed to conceal the paucity of actual understanding of the issues in dispute, or of any good-faith willingness to engage them at all.
Thanks for your "spot-on" insights, dear YHAOS, and your kind words of support!
For my part, any theory of evolution that cannot explain the origin of life (not to mention mind, consciousness) cannot explain what happens once it has "emerged," from presumably lifeless matter.
I don't see why. To me, that's like saying any theory of disease that cannot explain viruses, cannot explain why vaccination works. Or that any theory of planetary motion that can't explain star formation, can't explain why the planets move the way they do. The question of how something comes into being is separable from the question of how it behaves afterwards. To me.
Trying to shed some light on these issues, let me point out the argument of Thomas Nagel...
I recognize that the theory of evolution is troubling to many philosophers. But looking at the excerpt of Nagel's book available on Amazon, I see that it contains statements like "it is prima facie highly implausible" and "an assumption that things are so remarkable that they have to be explained as non-accidental." In other words, he has trouble believing it. But that difficulty is not an argument against the theory of evolution. Even the idea that the growth of order is teleological is not an argument against evolution. Evolution is a mechanism; the theory of evolution is a way of explaining what we observe. What supplants it--from a scientific standpoint--is a better explanation, with evidence. If researchers who share Nagel's incredulity come up with a better explanation, with evidence--well, great. More power to them.
Unlike (perhaps) some of the other people you've spoken with, I have no problem with the idea that there are things we have yet to discover, forces we don't know how to perceive or measure, that may have been involved in the development of mind and consciousness. But an insistence that we abandon a theory that explains so much--the ToE--because there might be more to it than that seems to me ridiculously shortsighted.
In dialoguing with Darwinists, these were the issues that I always tried to raise, not whether my correspondent was an atheist or a Marxist or a Maoist, or fit to be a member of FR.
And yet above, you wrote "People who refuse to address such questions, preferring to swaddle themselves in their precious materialist dogma, are simply following in the footsteps of Karl Marx." You may argue that that's not the same as calling them a Marxist, but I hope you can see that it's at least a sign of sloppiness with terminology.
(Haven't seen you in a while....)
Nor I you. I don't know if that's because we haven't landed in the same thread or just haven't been around much. I know I was traveling for a little while and working a lot before and after to pay for the trip.
But what if the universe is not itself a "mechanism?" Thus not explicable in such terms? If that is the case, any explanation consistent with the premise of a mechanistic universe will "almost certainly" be false.
Metaphysical naturalism in its present form requires the universe to be "a mechanism."
But even "mechanisms" must have designers; and the ones we know of operate according to a rule (e.g., an algorithm, or a program maybe) which the mechanism did not itself create. The other interesting thing about mechanisms is that they are intended to accomplish a purpose — it is here that teleology intrudes — of which they need not be aware; indeed, of which they are not capable of becoming aware. They just execute their program. If they're any good (i.e., if the designer is skillful), they do so reliably. But in NO sense can we claim that a mechanism is conscious, while all living organisms are, at least in some degree.
As for my earlier statement about Marx's "forbidding of questions," this was a statement about Marx, not a statement that I think a given correspondent is a Marxist. (That would be an ad hominum attack.)
Marx did indeed forbid any question that might cast doubt on any aspect of his "system." To challenge his dogma was "streng verboten." You have to buy the dogma "whole cloth." Those who dare to ask questions about "the system" deserve to be "punished" as enemies....
Forgive me if I see associations between this historical fact and the behavior of some — not all — enthusiasts of Darwinian evolutionary theory.
As for me, I do believe that the universe is an evolutionary development. But I don't just assume that it's a giant machine. Thus, I do not agree with materialists of dogmatic Darwinian persuasion, for — to the extent that Darwin accepts a materialist worldview (which I believe he did) — I doubt that Darwin got the problem right.
You wrote in reply (to a statement of mine appearing in italics at the top of your post), "I don't see why. To me, that's like saying any theory of disease that cannot explain viruses, cannot explain why vaccination works."
I disagree. You can't make a vaccine without understanding what a virus is and how it works. A virus is not a machine; it is "alive" (or quasi-alive) in some sense. If you don't understand what a virus is, then associating it with disease is unlikely; and thus the development of a vaccine to kill it so to cure the disease is also unlikely.
I think that many naturalists (i.e., those who tend to metaphysical naturalist persuasion) think that the best way to deal with "wholes" in nature is to isolate and study the "parts" of which they are constituted. The expectation is that if you sum up all the parts, you will have the complete "picture" of the whole. But this certainly doesn't work in biology: If you reduce a living system to its parts, you kill it: As the poet said, "We murder to dissect."
The biggest "whole" of them all in human experience is the universe itself. Planetary motion and star formation are "parts" of that whole. We do not even know how many other "parts" there are. But even if we did, the Universe seems not to be a simple sum of its constituent parts. For the parts only become functional and meaningful when they are brought into dynamic relation with one another; that is, are clearly ordered by something else which is (as Nagel suggests) teleological (purposive, goal-directed), not mechanistic, in its basic operation.
IMHO, this is spectacularly evident in biological systems to the dispassionate analyst/observer.
It's good to see you again, HHTVL. Thank you for sharing your thoughts!
I too used to pursue DC on occasion and scandalous is not a strong enough word to describe some of the things they said about you two and other creationists.
And I too noticed very little discussion on scientific topics. Mostly it was a FR creationist bashing site.
Which simply confirms what we all know to be true. Politics is the endgame of DC, not Science.
“ . . . the main method in evidence there was the ad hominum attack. Certain things said about myself and my dearest sister in Christ Alamo-Girl were scandalous, and I will not repeat them here.”
All in lowest tradition of political calumny. Entirely in keeping the low form of huckstering we’ve come to expect from DC (again, both the website and the city)
“. . . the use of ad hominum attack is a diversionary tactic designed to conceal the paucity of actual understanding of the issues in dispute, or of any good-faith willingness to engage them at all.”
I don’t know that it’s paucity, or if it’s the knowledge the issues you mention cannot be adequately addressed with the limited resources DC brings to the table. I don’t know that it matters. Either way, it is a confession of intellectual poverty.
Thanks for writing. Always enlightening.
I think you must mean "is not itself only a 'mechanism'." Because the universe is certainly a mechanism in many of its aspects. If there were no "if we do this, it'll do that" machinelike predictability, we wouldn't be able to land a spaceship on Mars or use the computers we're typing on right now.
But even "mechanisms" must have designers; and the ones we know of operate according to a rule (e.g., an algorithm, or a program maybe) which the mechanism did not itself create.
I would regard that as an unproven assertion. The mechanism that puts Mars right where we predicted it would be--did its algorithm necessarily have an outside designer?
Forgive me if I see associations between this historical fact and the behavior of some — not all — enthusiasts of Darwinian evolutionary theory.
Fair enough. The same is true, of course, of many of those who are anti-evolution for religious reasons.
As for me, I do believe that the universe is an evolutionary development. But I don't just assume that it's a giant machine. Thus, I do not agree with materialists of dogmatic Darwinian persuasion,...
I think we've been here before. It's confusing, because it often sounds (to me, anyway) like you're framing your statements as a critique of evolution. And certainly many of the other posters who applaud your statements reject evolution. But if you're okay with evolution but think there must be something more than purely mechanistic, materialist evolution, I'm not sure we have much of a disagreement.
You can't make a vaccine without understanding what a virus is and how it works.
Ah, but you can. People were getting vaccinated against smallpox hundreds of years before anyone had any idea viruses existed, much less how they worked. It was the result of another "if we do this, it does that" observation: if we give people a mild dose of smallpox (or cow pox), they don't get sick when exposed to a larger dose later. No understanding required.
Nice to see you, too. And now I must head to the post office before it closes.
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