Posted on 12/19/2003 7:47:15 AM PST by Mr. Silverback
G. K. Chesterton once told a story about "an English yachtsman who slightly miscalculated his course and discovered England under the impression that it was an island in the South Seas."
The yachtsman "landed (armed to the teeth and speaking by signs) to plant the British flag on that barbaric temple which turned out to be the pavilion at Brighton." Expecting to have discovered New South Wales, he realized "that it was really old South Wales."
Chesterton was talking about the way in which we cast off the truths we learned as children, only later, if we are fortunate, to rediscover them as adults. What we dismissed as "simple" often turns out to be far more profound than we ever imagined.
According to Stephen M. Barr, a theoretical particle physicist at the University of Delaware, what's true about people is also true about science. In his new book, MODERN PHYSICS AND ANCIENT FAITH, Barr tells us that after the "twists" and "turns" that science took in the twentieth century, it, like Chesterton's yachtsman, wound up in "very familiar surroundings": a universe that "seems to have had a beginning . . . [and is] governed by laws that have a grandeur and sublimity that bespeak design."
Instead of man being merely the result of a "fortuitous concourse of atoms," we now know that the "universe and its laws seem in some respect to balance on a knife's edge" -- exactly what is needed for the possibility of life. A slight deviation here or there, and we wouldn't exist -- the anthropic principle.
These and other "recent discoveries have begun to confound the materialist's expectations and confirm those of the believer in God," writes Barr.
Notice, he said "materialist's," not "scientist's." As Barr makes clear, sciences like modern physics can and must be separated from materialism. Materialism is the belief that nothing exists besides matter, and it is a philosophical opinion. It may have, as Barr puts it, "[grown] up alongside science," but it's not science. Remember that, a critical point.
The assumption that you have to take a materialist worldview in order to do science is simply wrong. There's nothing about physics, for example, that assumes, much less demands, that view of the universe. In fact, many of the greatest scientists, like Newton, Galileo, and Copernicus, were religious believers.
Despite these facts, philosophical materialism has become so identified with science that scientists, and the general public, often have trouble telling them apart, which is why the discoveries that Barr describes come as a surprise, and their implications are resisted by many within the academy.
These implications aren't inconsistent with science, but rather with their dogmatic materialist worldview. Resisting these implications has required ingenious, almost fanciful, attempts to interpret the evidence in a way consistent with the materialist worldview.
Tomorrow I'll tell you about some of these discoveries and how they have "damaged the credibility of materialism." It's an important story about how science, far from being the enemy of faith, is only at war with those who, against the evidence, insist that England is "Tahiti."
Which one of his examples is this from?
The people who start a thread as "secular skeptics of evolution" usually discard all pretense and are thumping away with the YECs within a few dozen posts. There have been more real sightings of sasquatch than of secular skeptics of evolution.
Totally. Cosmologists know that, but it seems to be a response to laymen who insist on knowing what the universe came from. Why this and why that, why is the cosmological constant nearly 1? 1.00000... . Abracadabra anthropic. I suppose you can plug other values into your matrices and watch them implode or explode, but it's going to be a short workday.
I'm sure you believe that, but it doesn't make it true.
Actually, it does. Even by Behe's definition (in particular, *especially* by Behe's definition), evolution is perfectly able to produce "irreducible complexity".
Furthermore, most of Behe's "examples" of irreducibly complex systems are provably *not* "IC".
Behe's either a fool, or a huckster making bucks selling comforting books to creationists grasping for "proof" design. And neither option inspires confidence.
The fossil record indicates morphological stasis in species, in contradiction to the theory of evolution.
Horse manure. The fossil record indicates *BOTH* morphological stasis *AND* morphological change in species (contrary to what many creationists will try to tell you). And that's exactly what one would expect to find if evolution were responsible for modern life.
And this has been recognized since 1859. A little behind on your science reading?
Evolution simply lacks explanatory power.
ROFL! Yeah. Sure. Whatever you say.
Then explain to me how transitional stages of development would benefit the creature (increase its ability to survive) in the following cases:
• The woodpecker's tongue that wraps around (over) its head. What would the intermediate stages have looked like (including the supporting biological systems) and how would they have benefitted the bird?
• The human eye. What would the intermediate stages have looked like (including the supporting biological systems) and how would they have benefitted human beings?
Here's why. Assume that materialism is true. Then under a materialist rubric everything must be reduced to matter in motion. Therefore, human thought must also be reduced to matter in motion. Therefore, my thought that "materialism is false" is equally the product of moving atoms as your theory that "materialism is true." Neither assertion can be more or less true than the other. But contradictory ideas cannot both be true, by the law of non-contradiction. Therefore, the conclusion is false. The intermediate propositions are logically valid. Therefore, the premise must be false. The premise is that materialism is true.
Materialism can be shown to be incoherent in another way. Materialism cannot give a coherent explanation for the unified experience of consciousness or the unified sense of self. Is my sense of self reducible to my thoughts? But my thoughts must be strings of chemicals. But if each thought is a discrete set of atoms then there must be as many "selves" as discrete thoughts. Is the self a scanning mechanism in the brain that analyzes these discrete thoughts? If so, then there must be as many selves as discrete acts of scanning, et cetera, ad infinitum.
Empirical science is only possible under a moderate realist epistemology.
Link? Proof? Arguments from authority are weak to begin with, and evolutionary biologists have lost what little authority they may have had.
Moreover, ID does not explain... Why did the designer do that?
I don't know? How should these things have been designed? What would a perfectly designed human being looked like?
[One of the funniest Gouldisms was his suggestion that animals should have been given wheels so they could move faster. But how would they move in mud? In snow? Over uneven terrain? How could they swim and run?
What's the difference between God and evolutionary biologists? God knows that he isn't an evolutinary biologist.]
I don't know whether these examples represent disorder or not. But I will concede that disorder appears to exist in nature. But this apparent disorder in nature does not contradict the idea that Creation is generally if not overwhelmingly good and ordered. First of all, this world is not necessarily the "best of all possible worlds." Secondly, the Fall is generally considered to have introduced disorder into the universe. Certainly this is true regarding human nature. The human will is universally imperfect. Regarding apparent disorder in nature in general, there are several permissible speculations. The natural world may have been corrupted after the Fall, or our natural faculties were so damaged that things which hurt us now (the thorns on a rose) did not hurt us before the Fall. But generally, the universe overwhelmingly bespeaks design, and where there is a design there must be a designer.
So where's the explanatory power?
Apparent disorder in nature does not contradict intelligent design, as shown above. However, intelligent design better explains irreducibly complex systems like the human eye, and Behe's examples, than a theory which posits transitional forms which benefit from incomplete transitional features. Secondly, ID better explains the fossil record than evolutionary theory. Stasis in species is overwhelmingly the rule in the fossil record. Species appear in the fossil record fully formed and disappear in the same way. Transitional forms exist only in artists' depictions.
The whole cannot operate without all of its components in place. Any speculative intermediate stages would not operate and would offer no survival advantage.
His philosophy was pretty weird. But in general, the theory of evolution can be incorporated into a theistic worldview. The problem I have with evolution is the science. Evolutionary theory just doesn't correspond to the available data.
The species remain, but new species arise from them. In some cases, maybe most cases, no new species arise from existing species at all; for the one case, a whole new branch could arise and flower into even more variety than the branch it came from.
This is interesting speculation, but it doesn't conform with the fossil record. The other problem is that when examined carefully this speculation falls apart. Thinking about the staggeringly complex human body, it just seems impossible that it could have developed gradually. Take the eye, for example. How could it have arisen gradually? Not only do all the parts have to be in place for it to operate, which seems impossible through chance, but all of the supporting biological systems (neurological, circulatory, etc.) must also have arisen simultaneously, which is equally implausible.
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