Posted on 12/16/2013 3:23:41 PM PST by Politically Correct
Taking the publication of Stephen Meyer's bestseller Darwin's Doubt as his news hook, our colleague the University of Texas, El Paso, mathematician Granville Sewell smartly answers a good question: What do you have believe if you're NOT a proponent of intelligent design? Writes Dr. Sewell in an El Paso Times op-ed:
So what do ID proponents believe?
Perhaps the best way to answer this question is to state clearly what you have to believe to not believe in intelligent design. Peter Urone, in his 2001 physics text "College Physics" writes, "One of the most remarkable simplifications in physics is that only four distinct forces account for all known phenomena."
The prevailing view in science today is that physics explains all of chemistry, chemistry explains all of biology, and biology completely explains the human mind; thus physics alone explains the human mind and all it does. This is what you have to believe to not believe in intelligent design, that the origin and evolution of life, and the evolution of human consciousness and intelligence, are due entirely to a few unintelligent forces of physics.
Thus you must believe that a few unintelligent forces of physics alone could have rearranged the fundamental particles of physics into computers and science texts and jet airplanes.
Contrary to popular belief, to be an ID proponent you do not have to believe that all species were created simultaneously a few thousand years ago, or that humans are unrelated to earlier primates, or that natural selection cannot cause bacteria to develop a resistance to antibiotics.
If you believe that a few fundamental, unintelligent forces of physics alone could have rearranged the basic particles of physics into Apple iPhones, you are probably not an ID proponent, even if you believe in God. But if you believe there must have been more than unintelligent forces at work somewhere, somehow, in the whole process: congratulations, you are one of us after all!
The great point Granville makes is that far from ID proponents being the ones who should be on the defensive, it's really design deniers who are saddled with a heavy load of presumptive error. The real burden of proof lies on them. Poor guys!
If evolution were ever proven beyond any doubt it would not affect my faith in God. Not one bit. I never really understand why this is an issue for the faithful as if their faith hinged on all of these little details.
God is bigger than a bunch of little details.
If a boulder on the top of the hill needs to be in the valley does god just give it a nudge and let it roll down the hill, or does he pick it up and carry it down the mountain one step at a time?
It's actually in philosophy that the theology would play out: if (a) evolution were true, and (b) man was proved to have evolved, then there is no special creation of man. If there is no special creation of man, then man does not bear the image of God. If man does not bear the image of God, then there is no moral imperative against murder, or rape, or respecting property. Therefore, if evolution applies to man then morality does not.
You said ... “God is bigger than a bunch of little details.”
God is certainly bigger than details, but that doesn’t do away with the details and neither does it mean that God is not about exacting - very exacting - detail.
If God wasn’t about VERY EXACTING DETAIL ... even far beyond all the detail we’re able to comprehend — then this universe could not even exist or us in it.
I”t’s actually in philosophy that the theology would play out: if (a) evolution were true, and (b) man was proved to have evolved, then there is no special creation of man. If there is no special creation of man, then man does not bear the image of God. If man does not bear the image of God, then there is no moral imperative against murder, or rape, or respecting property. Therefore, if evolution applies to man then morality does not.”
Perfect explanation.
More importantly, it is a clear case for the abandonment of all research and study that may question or discredit Creation Science. Additionally. the more people may buy into this so called theory of evolution, the more the society and large and families will fall apart.
If we are just descended from monkey in the zoo who throws poop at other monkeys, then those who have been brainwashed into believing that creation stuff will have little option but to be violent.
Glynn was an physicist and atheist. Eventually he became a believer. His book can get a little technical and uses a lot of scientific terminology and equations that made my eyes cross but overall, shows concrete evidence of ID.
Some scientists believe that lightning struck a primordial soup in ammonia-rich oceans, producing the complex molecules that formed the precursors to life. Others believe that chemical reactions at deep-sea hydrothermal vents gave rise to cell membranes and simple cellular pumps.
In other words, the massively sophisticated molecular machinery of single-cell organisms simply arose spontaneously as a fully functional unit after bombarding mud puddles with lightening for a few hundred million years.
If you believe that, then you should have no problem at all with believing that a Panasonic CF-53 laptop computer with Windows 7 would arise spontaneously if we filled a beaker full of the elemental powders from which it is formed, put some sea water in, and then bombarded the laptop soup in the beaker with lightening for a few hundred million years.
Eventually, we may obtain only a single integrated circuit chip forming in the beaker, but the chip should eventually EVOLVE all by itself into the laptop (with operating system) after being bombarded by cosmic rays for a long time after that.
If organic life formed by accident in a similar scenario, then certainly there should be no problem with obtaining the laptop and operating system in a like fashion, because after all, the laptop and OS are a few thousand trillion times simpler than, say, the Homo Sapiens species. In fact, we should obtain the laptop and OS much much faster because they are so much simpler.
Right?
(BTW, someone recently claimed the fallacy in my logic was that there were possibly billions of mud puddles, not just one, so I was forced to amend my thought experiment to include, not one, but billions of beakers. There. Fixed it.)
Your “logical” deduction shows that you understand none of the following:
Reasoning
Evolution
Faith
God
Science
Creation
Morality
Thus, it is not surprising that your conclusion (if evolution applies to man, then morality does not) is pure, unadulterated crap.
Many years ago the scientist that basically wrote the definitive book on “Chemical, Origins of Life”, I forget his name, trashed his own theory.
He was an honest scientist that found the flaws in his work and later said “It could not have happened”.
He also, became very upset as many of his peers continued to use his original (flawed work) to promote the idea of Chemical origins of life.
LOL! If you think that’s the problem with your thinking, you are naive.
I don’t agree with that at all. I think that what distinguishes man from other animals is our understanding of right from wrong. Whether God made man from a lump of clay or worked through eons in evolution: at some point a human became self-aware. With that knowledge came responsibilities.
Although I do not believe in a literal reading of Genesis, I think the story of the Fall is a perfect metaphor for when man set himself apart from the rest of the animals.
Your “logical” deduction shows that you understand none of the following:
Reasoning
Evolution
Faith
God
Science
Creation
Morality
Thus, it is not surprising that your conclusion (if evolution applies to man, then morality does not) is pure, unadulterated crap.
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The logic is sound.
There is a difference between “Objective Morality” and “Subjective Morality”
The statement assumes “Objective Morality”
Evolutionists love to suggest some “evolved social morality” but they cannot escape their own logic.
According to the evolutionist’s logic, “Objective Morality” is not a necessity, and does not exist.
They fail into a rat hole of relativism.
“Objective morality” is an oxymoron.
Bingo. Evolution in its totality obviates the need for a Creator.
“Objective morality” is an oxymoron.
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That’s funny since you are making my point.
“The prevailing view in science today is that physics explains all of chemistry, chemistry explains all of biology, and biology completely explains the human mind; thus physics alone explains the human mind and all it does. This is what you have to believe to not believe in intelligent design”
That’s nonsense.
One can believe that and also believe in intelligent design, or a lot of other things.
I think perhaps the better litmus test is the inability to use commas correctly.
Right on Bro!
Dang I wished I had written that!
BTTT.
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