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."
I attended one of Behe's presentations. Behe started by discussiong his Christianity; then he made some personal attacks against some computer scientist that had disagreed with him but said he wouldn't address the guy's argument; then he showed a picture of a mousetrap and claimed the parts had no use separately.
No. But your are invited to explain why you feel this must be so.
Define "lame dodge".
*You* invoked the notion of "truth" in your "logical" argument, *you* define it if you're using the word in other than its usual meaning. Don't expect me to fill in the holes in your own argument.
But be sure not to define "truth" in a manner that turns your argument into an example of the fallacy of "begging the question" or "circular argument".
Go for it.
"Verily I say unto you, There be some standing here, which shall not taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in his kingdom." -- Matthew 16:28
Oops.
Oops.
Jesus was speaking to His disciples when He said this, and, indeed, many of those "standing there" when He said it did not die until after they saw Christ risen from death on the cross, having assumed the crown of His Kingdom, which lives on to this day, in The Year of Our Lord 2003... and forevermore.
....Ooops.
;-/
You said:
Eyes easily evolve through the following intermediate stages, each of which is a step up in visual ability from the stage before, and therefore would have obviously benefitted the creature which had them compared to the eyes of its ancestors:
First off - like many evolutionists before you, you make it sound like eyes could have easily evolved. Heck, even your buddy Dawkins suggested that the eye would have had to reinvent itself up to 60 times! If it weren't for the Cambrian explosion when eyes made the radical jump from cups to fully-formed eyes we'd be in big trouble. /sarcasm
You have faith, though, and that's important. Since you don't have any fossils to work from, and there is no research that shows the genetic and biochemical process that takes place for this to happen, you definitely need a lot of it.
Evolutionists try to explain how it could have happened via computer simulation. A simulation that is critiqued on pages 18-20 here:
A few more questions that come to mind:
1) Why two eyes?
2) Why are the eyes positioned where they are? (Note: what are the odds they would be be positioned where they are?)
3) Why are there up to 12 different kinds of eyes, each with their own blueprint?
4) What about the work of Murray Eden at MIT - whose calculations showed that there has not been sufficient time for nucleotide evolution to take place?
5) Who has done work showing the genetic and biochemical process that transforms a "spot, freckle, etc." into an eye? (note: just saying because we have 'variety' of different animals with different eyes does not prove anything. That's like saying: "A" and "B" have differnt eyes - "B" is more complex, so "B" must have evolved from "A"
5) What about the Nautilus fish, who just won't seem to evolve those eyes into something useful?
6) How did vertebrates get their eyes from inverebrates? Vertebrates have an inverted retina.
Time for me to get back to work. I have to give you some kudos for your posts, though - as they always seem to get my wheels turning.
Boolean True = !False;
Yes. And each and every one is irreducibly complex! Therefore ...
</creationism mode>
And where are the alleged transitionals? Which one of the still pictures shows the alleged motion?
And who witnessed these alleged transitions? And why aren't these things being reproduced in the lab? Piltdown man!
</creationism mode>
A staple of this kind of prediction since 1948. 55 years and counting.
2... a period when news of Israel will dominate weekly world news, during which the re-established Israel will "hang like a large stone around the neck of the world..."
55 years and counting on this one, too.
3... a period when men will be racing to and fro across the face of the planet at a rapid pace
How many years on this one? What's "rapid?"
4... a period where Israel will be surrounded on all sides by sworn enemies
55 years and counting.
5... a period where there will not only be many who do reprobate things, but during which the masses will applaud the reprobates
The world's sad today,6... a period when the greatest army in the world will not only have members who are "as women" (woman-like...), but will aslo have members who are women
It's gone bad today,
And black's white today,
And day's night today,
And most guys today
That women prize today
Are just silly gigolos!-- Cole Porter
True when I was in the service, 30 years ago.
7... a period when there is a push for the re-unification of the old Roman Empire
True when the Byzantine Empire tried to reconquer the west (500s AD), true throughout much of the lifetime of the Holy Roman Empire, true when Napoleon I had himself crowned emperor (1800), true when Mussolini proclaimed the rebirth of Italy's empire ... but what's particularly true about it now by comparison? The EEU? Milktoasts! Creampuffs!
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