3-D Praying Mantis Vision Confounds Evolution

What I'm not is so cluelessly arrogant as to attempt to constrain God's methods and motives to fit some desperate human theistic construct.

That is EXACTLY what you are! (It's really quite ironic that your hubris is so superbly specified by your own words.) You don't even have the intellectual integrity to profess a materialistic atheism, and so by conceding to both sides you win the respect of neither.

"Life" is a "post turtle." We know all we need to know about both fenceposts and turtles to know, beyond a shadow of doubt, if we find a turtle perched on top of a fencepost...he didn't get there on his own.

Your "reply" is nothing but a passive-aggressive attempt at appealing to some heretofore undiscovered quality of fenceposts, or turtles, dressed in an ill-fitting suit of "sanctimony."

"Juramaia was a bullfrog, was a good friend of mine..."

Wow! Well, perhaps a proto-mammal?
"Juramaia was a proto-mammal, was a good friend of mine..."? ;-)

papertyger: "Your bulverism aside...The term (like “Bulverism) was coined by Michael Behe (an evolutionist, by the way)"

Ah, "bulverism", great word, I love it!
But it was coined by CS Lewis, not Michael Behe.
And "bulverism" implies some kind of ad homenim disparagement, which I didn't do.
And, it turns out that Michael Behe is an anti-evolutionist, by the way.
Otherwise, nice try, FRiend.

Further, "bulverism" or no, my argument in post #48 is exactly correct:

"It's the same kind of argument as the media crying, 'Russia, Russia, Russia, collusion, collusion, collusion' and then demanding that people prove to the media's satisfaction they're wrong."

papertyger defining "irreducibly complex": "a functioning mechanism whose constituent parts must be arranged in a specific order for that function to manifest."

But the core essence of it is simply this: "I can't see how this could evolve naturally, therefore it's 'irreducibly complex' until somebody proves otherwise."
And, of course, the speaker with then do his/her best not to be convinced by any explanation presented.
That's "Russia, Russia, Russia" all over again.

Perhaps some of our logisticians can give us a word for that kind of argument?
How about argument from ignorance?

papertyger: "That the term dovetail nicely with Dembski’s 'Intelligent Design' theory is only reinforces the strength of a thesis whose critics chief tactic has been studied ignorance."

Both "irreducibly complex" and "intelligent design" are themselves "studied ignorance", indeed arguments from ignorance:

"because I can't figure this out naturally, and certainly don't want to, therefore it must be irreducibly complex intelligent design."

Well... the Universe itself is irreducibly complex intelligent design, I'm sure.
But most, if not all, of its component parts do yield to natural-science explanations, including many which did not as recently as, say, 50 years ago, now they do.

So the old joke has a serious meaning:

"God was sitting in heaven one day when a scientist said to Him, 'God, we don’t need you anymore.
Science has finally figured out a way to create life out of nothing – in other words, we can now do what you did in the beginning.'
'Oh, is that so? Explain…' replies God.
'Well,' says the scientist, 'we can take dirt and form it into the likeness of you and breathe life into it, thus creating man.'
'Well, that’s very interesting… show Me.'

So the scientist bends down to the earth and starts to mold the soil into the shape of a man.
'No, no, no…' interrupts God, 'Get your own dirt.' "

Point is: regardless of what process God used, whether natural or supernatural, or some combination, the Universe is still His plan, His Creation and His irreducibly complex intelligent design.
And for reasons I don't really understand, He made it possible for us to understand a lot of it through natural-science.

papertyger: "Moreover, how is our 'third grader' better served by 'some pretty amazing stuff going on' than an effort to describe objective reality?"

Our "third grader" will not understand the complexities of science any more than would, say, ancient Israelites and so every explanation will seem like "some pretty amazing stuff" and "irreducibly complex."
But the fact remains that a lot of the physical realm does yield to natural explanations, giving us a vague picture of how nature got from the Beginning to now.

Why, you ask?
Well, just my opinion: because He wants us to know and appreciate the full complexity of His intelligently designed Universe, and our place in it.
You disagree?

papertyger: "What the HELL does the intention of a user have to do with the validity of a term he uses?"

I get it, you call "bulverism", but if we are going to give our false arguments their correct logical name, then "irreducibly complex" is an argument from ignorance.
"Irreducibly complex" means nothing more than this: "I personally cannot figure out how _______ [fill in the blank] could happen naturally, therefore it's "irreducibly complex."

papertyger: "Calling a term 'meaningless' for the reasons you do is nothing but petulance masquerading as sobriety."

Ah, I see that you too know how to wield a mean bulveristic ax.
What would CS Lewis say?

;-)

tomkat: "What I'm not is so cluelessly arrogant as to attempt to constrain God's methods and motives to fit some desperate human theistic construct."

papertyger: "That is EXACTLY what you are!
(It's really quite ironic that your hubris is so superbly specified by your own words.)
You don't even have the intellectual integrity to profess a materialistic atheism, and so by conceding to both sides you win the respect of neither."

Thanks tomkat for a great post.

Sorry papertyger, but now you've lost it -- starting out with a reasoned argument and a great word, "bulverism", you've descended into the pit of throwing cr*p against the wall in hopes some of it might stick.
tsk, tsk...

The fact is, much as you might wish otherwise, nobody here is arguing "materialistic atheism".
The accepted term is "theistic evolutionism" and that can be viewed as a sub-set of the larger scientific enterprise known as "methodological naturalism".
Methodological naturalism must not be confused with, or mistaken for, ideas which go variously by names like, "philosophical naturalism", "ontological naturalism" or "metaphysical naturalism".
All of those latter terms are fancy ways of saying "atheism", but that is not true of Methodological Naturalism.

Methodological Naturalism simply says: for purposes of natural-science we will only consider natural explanations for natural processes and everything else will be outside the realm of science.
Methodological Naturalism does not deny the existence of a non-material realm, but simply defines it as not-science.

tomkat to tomkat: "Your "reply" is nothing but a passive-aggressive attempt at appealing to some heretofore undiscovered quality of fenceposts, or turtles, dressed in an ill-fitting suit of "sanctimony.""

Obviously, you've overheated and blown a circuit or two.
Time to take a break, take a breath and take it a little easier.
Your accusations, regardless of how colorful, are all false and that should give you pause.
Does it?

Well, as you seem to have both me AND all this other stuff figured out, I'll wish you a good day and gracefully withdraw from this pointless circle-jerk .. cheers ; -)

Thanks Bro, and ditto yours in #65.
Cheers, FRiend.

“No, it was a perfectly good example which you chose to distort for reasons...? That term ‘modern horse’ could mean any horse, or even horse ancestor, in the past, say, million years. You will not find any such horse, or any horse-like creature in the Jurassic period, circa 175 million years ago.”

Supposing that the earth is billions of years old, the idea that life could have survived and thrived for billions or even hundreds of millions of years with no cataclysmic events that destroyed all life, would be MIRACULOUS.

A billion years. 175 million years. These numbers are deceptively simple because we know how to perform math on very large numbers. But this ability often distorts our perspective of reality.

Invoking numbers of this size for time and distance is akin to invoking God. These numbers give a false sense of confidence to those relying on them for interpreting prehistoric data. In practicality, they are incomprehensibly large and, from the perspective of a lifetime that is rarely more than a century, they are essentially infinite.

People, scientists in particular, feel comfortable working with approximations and extrapolations that can not be accurate within any degree of meaningful precision.

Just to prove a point, try doing an approximation of say a billion light years (or use parsecs if you prefer) by triangulating from the annual stellar parallax of the earth’s orbit around the sun (at the max of 6 months).

Let’s even pretend momentarily that there is no gravitational lensing caused by the gravity of stars and dark matter which we can not pinpoint. And pretend for a moment that we can effortlessly position our angle of view and exact position relative to the sun with greater than atomic precision.

It is still practically impossible to assert with any degree of confidence that we are detecting starlight from billions of lights years away.

And, yes, there are some creative and clever techniques to increase precision, but keep in mind that the claim of seeing starlight from billions of light years away has been made long before such techniques were invented.

Same applies to strata dating. “Jurassic era strata” is dated with these incredibly huge numbers that have no basis in reality. You simply cannot use radiometric dating to determine this because there is no absolute point or frame of reference. Radiometric dating does not even accurately measure rocks that have recently formed with known ages. Cataclysmic events, which are 100% certain to happen of spans of time this large, will completely alter such measurements.

In other words, even if we have a high degree of precision for measuring radioactive decay, it can not be used to accurately date the so-called Jurassic era strata.

More specifically, we can measure mass, volume, pressure, force, weight, and composition by DIRECT observation. But age can not be measured this way except for things that are very, very young.

There seems to be some confusion among TToE advocates when it comes to fact versus theory. Theories are explanations of facts. When such theories are very well supported and can be represented precisely with math, we call them laws. But neither theories nor laws are facts any more than saying the best ice cream flavor is chocolate fudge brownie. It may be a fact that it is MY favorite, but it is a categorical error to describe an opinion as a fact. Likewise, it is categorically wrong to conflate theory and fact. Facts are the observable data. And it might be appropriate to refer to a mathematic fact but, in actuality, math is only true if the axioms are true. That is, the real world is not necessarily bound to operate by mathematical models.

And what we call the “real” world is actually an abstraction of the mind. Scientific inquiry is limited to helping us more precisely understand that abstraction. As an example, we do not understand that the material world around us is made up of mostly empty space by merely looking at a coffee table with the naked eye. To our eyes it appears solid. Science helps us to understand that the materials of which the table is comprised are made of molecules, atoms, subatomic particles, etc. and empty space.

Science is not merely observing and interpreting data. John Wheeler, a Nobel physicist, said, “No phenomenon is a real phenomenon until it is an observed phenomenon.” TToE can not explain abiogenesis OR the existence of the mind. Up until recently science had no theory of the mind at all. There are now two similar theories that are scientifically rigorous, testable, and falsifiable: biocentrism and conscious realism.

It is highly offensive that TToE advocates constantly slander creationists over the a priori assumption of a supernatural Creator, something even a child understands intuitively, yet they religiously affirm the validity of a theory that hinges on these two unsupported pillars: 1) abiogenesis and 2) mind being supposedly an emergent property of matter. I would personally consider billions of years to be in the same category, but at least there is a reasonable basis to assert such apparently long time spans. Time itself is an abstraction. We see this in the question of simultaneity. We see it in quantum entanglement. Because time is relative (time moves at different rates due to factors such as velocity, acceleration, and gravitation), the actual age of the universe is the age of what is the youngest rather than oldest. In other words, a young universe may contain an immense amount of time. This is not playing semantic games. In practical terms, the earth can only literally be billions of years old if it has traversed the sun billions of times.

In the evolution vs. creation debate, TToE has morphed from evolutionary theory to theory of everything. It’s ridiculous. It turns useful principles of science like natural selection into a multi-level-marketing-like Ponzi scheme. Nomenclature is not the same as explanatory power. Applying the concept of predictive power of a theory to prehistoric data turns the whole theory into a massive, non-stop shell game. Everything either “supports” the theory or nudges it slightly in a different direction. That’s not falsifiability, “modern horses” in the Jurassic notwithstanding.

+1

“Nothing comes from nothing and nothing ever will.”

- Maria, The Sounf of Music (TSoM)

Thanks, unlerner, for an interesting essay.
I'll take it as your own work, likely copied & pasted from previous efforts, which would explain why so much of it, however interesting, seems to have nothing to do with the subject under discussion.

unlerner: "Supposing that the earth is billions of years old, the idea that life could have survived and thrived for billions or even hundreds of millions of years with no cataclysmic events that destroyed all life, would be MIRACULOUS."

Of course it's miraculous, the entire Universe is miraculous, intelligently designed and, in a sense, irreducibly complex.
And one of the biggest miracles, imho, is that the Universe was created in such a manner that we, feeble minded as we are, can understand many, if not all, of its natural processes.
In other words, the assumptions of methodological naturalism provide us with a large and growing body of explanations with great predictive and utilitarian powers.

unlerner: "A billion years. 175 million years. These numbers are deceptively simple... "

If we were talking about dollars in your bank account, you'd be less cavalier about the differences in such numbers.

unlerner: "Just to prove a point, try doing an approximation of say a billion light years (or use parsecs if you prefer) by triangulating from the annual stellar parallax of the earth’s orbit..."

That's the wrong tool for such large distances.
It would be like trying to measure the distance from New York to LA with a yardstick.

unlerner: "It is still practically impossible to assert with any degree of confidence that we are detecting starlight from billions of lights years away."

Sure, using your little yardstick.
Fortunately there are other tools which work better at longer distances.

unlerner: "And, yes, there are some creative and clever techniques to increase precision, but keep in mind that the claim of seeing starlight from billions of light years away has been made long before such techniques were invented."

Not that I know of, but let's consider something closer, the Andromeda galaxy:

In 1785 William Hershel guessed at the distance to Andromeda as 2,000 times the distance to Sirius.
That would make it 180,000 light-years, short by a factor of 100.
In 1917, Huber Curtis estimated the distance at 500,000 light-years based on the relative brightness of observed novae in Andromeda.
He was only short by a factor of 5.
In 1922, Ernst Opik estimated 1.5 million light years based on the velocities of Andromeda stars.
He was still short by a million light years.
In 1925, Edwin Hubble settled the debate at 2.5 million light years, based on the brightness of Cepheid variable stars.
Hubble's calculation remains the accepted distance today.

My point is: over time new methods were found to calculate distances, each being effective under its own circumstances, but not necessarily others.

unlerner: "Same applies to strata dating. “Jurassic era strata” is dated with these incredibly huge numbers that have no basis in reality.
You simply cannot use radiometric dating to determine this because there is no absolute point or frame of reference."

Nonsense.
First of all, there are dozens of different methods for dating ancient materials, some of which involve radiometrics, others don't.
Some are as relatively simple as counting tree rings, or ice cores, or layers of minerals deposited on stalactites in caves.
Others are more complex, but when multiple methods are available for the same materials, and those methods produce similar results, then confidence increases.

unlerner: "Radiometric dating does not even accurately measure rocks that have recently formed with known ages. "

Only if the radiometric dating labs are provided with false or incomplete data about the materials to be dated.

"A young-Earth research group reported that they sent a rock erupted in 1980 from Mount Saint Helens volcano to a dating lab and got back a potassium-argon age of several million years.
This shows we should not trust radiometric dating."

No it only shows that science can be tricked by dishonest people.

unlerner: "In other words, even if we have a high degree of precision for measuring radioactive decay, it can not be used to accurately date the so-called Jurassic era strata."

Pure nonsense, especially when dozens of different methods are used to reconfirm datings of many geological strata.
When the same results come back time & again, confidence increases.

unlerner: "More specifically, we can measure mass, volume, pressure, force, weight, and composition by DIRECT observation.
But age can not be measured this way except for things that are very, very young."

But age can be measured directly by such things as tree rings, ice cores and mineral deposits in caves.
And when these direct measurements match up nicely with radiometric datings of similar materials, then confidence increases.

unlerner: "TToE can not explain abiogenesis OR the existence of the mind. "

Darwin's basic theory of evolution had nothing whatever to do with either abiogenesis or existence of mind.
So why are you rambling on incoherently?

unlerner: "It is highly offensive that TToE advocates constantly slander creationists over the a priori assumption of a supernatural Creator..."

Evolution theory says nothing about your a priori assumptions.
People who do slander religion generally are usually atheists pursuing political or social agendas, and whose knowledge of science is often woefully lacking.

unlerner: "they religiously affirm the validity of a theory that hinges on these two unsupported pillars: 1) abiogenesis and 2) mind being supposedly an emergent property of matter."

Again, nothing in Darwin's basic evolution theory says anything about either of those so I repeat: why are you rambling incoherently?

unlerner: " a young universe may contain an immense amount of time.
This is not playing semantic games."

Of course it is. Get a grip, focus, make your point.

unlerner: "In the evolution vs. creation debate, TToE has morphed from evolutionary theory to theory of everything.
It’s ridiculous."

What's ridiculous is your claim that "evolutionary theory" "morphed" to "theory of everything".
What are you drinking?
What are you smoking?
Get rid of it right now!

unlerner: "Everything either “supports” the theory or nudges it slightly in a different direction.
That’s not falsifiability, “modern horses” in the Jurassic notwithstanding."

What's falsifiable is just what I said in the beginning: you will not find any kind of horse fossils from the Jurassic era, about 175 million years ago.
Indeed, the first pre-horse-like fossils do not appear until millions of years after dinosaurs disappeared 65 million years ago.

Joe, Joe, Joe...(sigh). You really are the poster-child for gainsaying and gratuitous assertion. It's like you think you appear logical by affecting a "Spock-like" demeanor.

Unfortunately for you, such qualifications are determined by those who know using indicators completely outside your realm of competence and/or experience.

You can't fool a frenchman by affecting a french accent.

But it was coined by CS Lewis, not Michael Behe.

While I freely admit the horrid grammar I used (after posting) to make this point, I think you get the point that neologisms are nothing new, and gain wide acceptance by those needing a term to descibe uncatagorized phenomena. (C.f. Jeff Cooper's term "hoplophobe.")

So your disparagment of the term "irreducable complexity" is rather petty and pedantic, as it describes a perfectly legitimate concept I've already elaborated on. If you have a problem with it, simply demonstrate it's self contradiction instead of pompously asserting the term has no validity, because those who don't like it don't use it.

And "bulverism" implies some kind of ad homenim disparagement, which I didn't do.

And there's the gainsaying. My post #57 demonstrates "ad hominem disparagement" is EXACTLY what you did. Your denial does not change the FACT of what you wrote.

And, it turns out that Michael Behe is an anti-evolutionist, by the way. Otherwise, nice try, FRiend.

It's not a "try." Behe says so himself in "The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism." I can not provide a proper reference as I own the audiobook, and it's not worth 13 dollars to me to fully document your false assertion.

Nevertheless, that Behe is not a "Darwinist," has no bearing on his being an evolutionist; the fact of which I'm sure escapes you.

Further, "bulverism" or no, my argument in post #48 is exactly correct:

"Exactly correct?" Dear Joe, the assertion you refer to ISN'T EVEN AN ARGUMENT! It's a gratuitous assertion (which according to the rules of logic can be just as gratuitously be denied). You provide no premise justifying, let alone connecting, your conclusion, whatsoever. It is only by the variant definition of "disagreement" that your assertion can be called anything approaching an "argument" in the Aristotelean sense.

Both "irreducibly complex" and "intelligent design" are themselves "studied ignorance", indeed arguments from ignorance:
"because I can't figure this out naturally, and certainly don't want to, therefore it must be irreducibly complex intelligent design."

Not at all! Aside from your continued dependence on gratuitous assertions, forensics is a universally respected field of scientific inquiry, the sole exception being when it's applied to evolutionary theory. And while your side loves to hoodwink its novice devotees, such as yourself, by falsely claiming intelligent design is an "argument from ignorance," it fails to point out the inescapable truth that claiming evolution can do something they can't demonstrate is EXACTLY THE SAME ignorance as claiming evolution can't, except with forensics as a guide, there's far more reason to side with "can't" than there is with conjectural "can."

At this point, i think i have adequately DEMONSTRATED to any fair minded observer the vapid nature of your rhetorical complaints (i just can't bring myself to credit you for an "argument"), and so will forgo further point-by-point refutation of your prattle.

papertyger: "At this point, i think i have adequately DEMONSTRATED to any fair minded observer the vapid nature of your rhetorical complaints (i just can't bring myself to credit you for an "argument"), and so will forgo further point-by-point refutation of your prattle. "

But you've demonstrated nothing -- zero, zip, nada demonstrated -- all you've really done in gainsaid & bulverized whatever you dislike.

Typical.

Now that I have more time, let's look at your many gratuitous assertions, one by one, shall we?

papertyger: "Joe, Joe, Joe...(sigh)"

Paper, paper, paper {sigh}

papertyger: "You really are the poster-child for gainsaying and gratuitous assertion."

Says Ms. Gainsayer G. Assertion.

papertyger: "It's like you think you appear logical by affecting a 'Spock-like' demeanor. "

Nothing Spock-like about me, but I do have an exercise to test your ability to think logically, if any. See below.

papertyger: "Unfortunately for you, such qualifications are determined by those who know using indicators completely outside your realm of competence and/or experience."

So first you fantasize Dr. Spock, now you imagine rejecting him.
Makes me wonder which Spock is the real man of your dreams?

tablets, better than nothing, but just barely...

If you care to consider further, I took the time to expound a bit more on my views. This is not my field of expertise, but we all have our opinions, right? It’s a bit longer than even I (the windbag) usually post, so I understand if it is more than you care to explore. I didn’t start off to write a tome this evening, but it kind of snowballed. In fact, I’ve got some time constraints that require me to limit my further contributions to this subject over the next several days. But if you have any other comments I will read them even if I do not have time to give you a thorough response.

“likely copied & pasted from previous efforts”

Nope. Just took a few minutes to jot down some random thoughts on the subject. And I don’t keep any such resources for the purpose for debate. And I don’t plagiarize; I cite.

“And one of the biggest miracles, imho, is that the Universe was created in such a manner that we, feeble minded as we are, can understand many, if not all, of its natural processes.”

And more specifically the miracles of thought, mind, and self-awareness—the very idea of being able to learn. Not only does the Universe operate in an ordered way, we have a built-in desire and ability to learn by observation. The moon, for example, was clearly designed to perfectly align with the sun during an eclipse to appear as the same relative size. Not bigger. Not smaller. The result is that we are able to perform interesting experiments to learn about the nature of how gravity affects light and space. Even the fact that we have an atmosphere that allows the observation into the heavens is itself part of a design meant to facilitate learning. And of course life itself being preserved is part of those things necessary to learn.

But where does MIND originate? It has, until recently, merely been assumed to be an emergent property of the matter of the brain. But new scientific theories show that matter itself may be an emergent property of mind, or more properly conscious agents. (In other words, matter does not depend on OUR perception of it, but of the perception of some conscious agents which behave similarly in property to all intelligences.)

“If we were talking about dollars in your bank account, you’d be less cavalier about the differences in such numbers.”

It is not me who is being cavalier. I am pointing out that these things are being invoked in a casual, nonchalant way (i.e. cavalier) as if we really comprehended what billions of years, or even millions, look like. We don’t and we can’t. Not literally. Only in an abstract manner.

This is why I compare the invocation of millions and billions of years to invoking God. A human can learn to describe the nature of numbers that large, but we can not truly comprehend them experientially. We may live to be billions of seconds old (in our 63rd year of life when we reach 2 billion, and 3 billion only applies to centenarians, if my quick use of maths serves me), but we do not know what this means by direct experience.

So, no, I am denouncing the cavalier treatment of such large numbers. Treat them, rather, like high power electrical current. Useful. Dangerous.

“It would be like trying to measure the distance from New York to LA with a yardstick.”

A yardstick might have some success with enough effort. It is more like trying to measure color saturation in numbers of hamsters. The degree of precision is so bad that it renders all of the data completely meaningless. Horoscopes would be better sources of guidance because they could be accidentally right more often.

“[Triangulation is] the wrong tool for such large distances... Fortunately there are other tools which work better at longer distances.”

From https://lco.global/spacebook/parallax-and-distance-measurement/:

“Limitations of Distance Measurement Using Stellar Parallax
Parallax angles of less than 0.01 arcsec are very difficult to measure from Earth because of the effects of the Earth’s atmosphere. This limits Earth based telescopes to measuring the distances to stars about 1/0.01 or 100 parsecs away. Space based telescopes can get accuracy to 0.001, which has increased the number of stars whose distance could be measured with this method. However, most stars even in our own galaxy are much further away than 1000 parsecs, since the Milky Way is about 30,000 parsecs across. The next section describes how astronomers measure distances to more distant objects.”

Methods other than parallax (triangulation) are less precise and also rely on the data from parallax. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume there are bodies whose distance from us can be reliably measured as billions of light years away. This is a measure of distance rather than absolute time.

“let’s consider something closer, the Andromeda galaxy: In 1785 William Hershel guessed at the distance to Andromeda as 2,000 times the distance to Sirius.”

You will also need to multiply your degree of precision.

“Hubble’s calculation remains the accepted distance today.”

As compared to what? Yes, I know you’ve shown how science has attempted a guess at these distances to achieve what is thought to be greater precision. But we can not really verify this. We can not get in our car and drive to Andromeda and check our mileage (after adjusting for proper tire pressure) can we?

I’m just going to ask you to take a step back for a moment. It is very important that we know what we mean when we describe “time”. Time has units of measure. For example, we can measure years by the position of earth relative to the sun. Billions of years using this mechanism would mean the earth “literally” (you’ll see later why I use quotes for literal things) traversed the path around the sun for billions of repetitions. Today we might want to use an atomic clock the measure time.

When dealing with vast amounts of time, we are actually dealing with spacetime. It is not time in the conventional, ordinary sense we think of it like what time I’m going to eat dinner. Not at all. Time is relative. And time has a similar relationship with space as does energy with matter. They can be converted from one to the other in certain relativistic comparisons.

In context, how do we define the “age of the universe”? If we assume that the universe and time began from a single point (big bang) and expanded (it appears to still be expanding and actually accelerating), then different objects or particles have traveled different distances in space for different amounts of time. Remember, velocity, acceleration, and gravity all affect the comparative rate of time. Things occurring simultaneously is only a real phenomenon within an absolute frame of reference.

With this in mind, the age of the universe is the smallest amount of spacetime that exists along the rectilinear path of any object or particle since this “big bang”. I say spacetime rather than merely time because objects that are further from this point of origin have traveled at greater average velocities and have thus experienced less time elapsing.

For this reason, if we only consider the time component without the space, the universe might only be one second old (with a frame of reference to a particular particle), because there may be particles that have traveled at near light speed since their inception.

So I would describe an apparent age of the universe being “billions of years” old as meaning more literally and practically that our vast universe contains billions of years.

That being said, I do not believe for one second that our earth has traveled around the sun, literally, billions of times. Only a few thousand. The earth runs the gauntlet as it flies around the sun. If you or I were running from an armed gunman shooting at us with an assault rifle (and not shooting back), there are some reasonable odds for us to escape. If, however, there is an army of people surrounding and shooting at us like we are fish in a barrel, sooner or later we will take a fatal impact. The earth is going to have near misses every once in a while from colliding with other celestial objects that will shatter it to pieces. Except through divine intervention, such collisions are certain to happen during such immense time spans.

Consider our first known interstellar visitor sighted last year: Oumuamua. What are the odds for such an event to occur in our lifetimes? Considering how vast empty space is, how can we possibly be encountering this? How many significantly larger (i.e. earth-killer-size) objects have travelled through our solar system in the past century? Millennium? The odds of this event should be so tiny that we never see them in a multitude of lifetimes, if the earth has survived billions of trips around the sun.

“First of all, there are dozens of different methods for dating ancient materials, some of which involve radiometrics, others don’t.
Some are as relatively simple as counting tree rings, or ice cores, or layers of minerals deposited on stalactites in caves.”

Counting tree rings can only provide ages in the centuries at best, with any degree of precision worth considering. Same for ice cores, except less precise even for smaller amounts of time. The earth’s axis has not even been tilted for more than about five thousand years. Seasons as we now know them did not exist prior to that. We do not have a historical record of weather patterns to compare for a frame of reference. Cataclysms blow these concepts completely out of the water. And anyone who believes the earth has travelled around the sun for even millions of trips would be completely insane to deny that this would necessitate a practically limitless supply of data-destroying cataclysms.

“Pure nonsense, especially when dozens of different methods are used to reconfirm datings of many geological strata. When the same results come back time & again, confidence increases.”

Self-referential “methods” do not reconfirm what was never confirmed. Confidence is a bad thing when combined with mind-staggering incompetence.

“Darwin’s basic theory of evolution had nothing whatever to do with either abiogenesis or existence of mind.”

You might be a good candidate for Steve Martin’s method to riches: he says, “First, take a million dollars...”

We know through divine revelation that the variety of life on this planet came about from a divine creation during which a variety was created from the beginning. Natural selection is useful and observable just as artificial selection is useful and observable. Claims that common morphologies, etc. support ALL life, or even MOST life having a common ancestor contradicts the factual record provided by the eye-witness account of the most honest witness of history: God Himself.

But it is silly and pretentious to pretend that the origin of life (or matter for that matter) is unimportant to the study of the origin of species.

It is likewise a fundamentally flawed approach to not take into account the glaring absence of any scientific explanation for the existence of the mind. As I’ve already pointed out, mind is NOT an emergent property of matter. Matter is an emergent property of mind.

This is an incredibly hard concept for most people to wrap their brains around. Everything we know experientially about the natural world comes through our interface with the world using our five senses and the reasoning abilities of our minds.

But science supports that the persistence of objects, for example, is a mental construct. We learn somewhere in early childhood that we can return to a toy or pacifier or something, and it is still there. But in reality, the material universe we experience is a construct of the mind. It is not “literally” there. It is an interface our own mind constructs to explain properties of the reality of our personal experience.

Some people react to this viscerally because it goes against the grain of a natural inclinations toward what we perceive as “real”. As I said before, there are now two similar theories that are scientifically rigorous, testable, and falsifiable: biocentrism and conscious realism.

“No it only shows that science can be tricked by dishonest people.”

Or honest but misguided people with a religious fervor and devotion to the truth. In case it is not clear, I’m not talking about Christians or creationists. I’m talking about evolutionists with a religious devotion to their views. Yes, evolution advocates as well as Christians both care about the truth and are devoted to it. But, if the methodology is wrong, the outcome is still error, regardless of intent or the ethical behavior.

“Evolution theory says nothing about your a priori assumptions.”

Starts with the assumption that the divine record is false or at least irrelevant. If we were going to do an autopsy of Abraham Lincoln to revisit his assassination, we would NOT consult science to ascertain the historicity and factuality of Abraham Lincoln. His existence and assassination are historical facts, not scientific ones. We can not recreate his existence in the lab (cloning notwithstanding). Science would merely be called upon to support the historical record and attempt to determine if scientific inquiry could add any useful information.

In other words, science does not operate in a vacuum. This is why the distinction between operational science and historical applications of science are real. And it is why we can never seem to settle the evolution debate because we can’t take its claims into a lab and settle them once and for all. I wish it were that easy. And I would be happy to abandon my misgivings with the bad parts of TToE if they could be confirmed in this manner.

“What’s ridiculous is your claim that ‘evolutionary theory’ ‘morphed’ to ‘theory of everything’.”

http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/sci_cult/evolit/s05/web1/amnuskin.html

From the article: “The world of quantum mechanics is very much like the randomness of natural selection that drives evolution. These tiny and random particles that exist in a world of chance do make up the well ordered world of stars, planets and galaxies; just as the random fluctuations of natural selection make up the order of evolved species.”

Evolution advocates also attempt to use the explanatory power of their pet theory to provide reasons why religious belief exists. Of course these do not include that a tendency to an awareness of the spiritual and supernatural is innate, built-in, and by design. Nor does it allow for the possibility that real people have had first-hand, eye-witness accounts of God showing up. He has intervened in history. He has spoken to people. In fact, I personally have had Him speak to me more than once and revealed information that was absolutely impossible for me to have remotely guessed. So, while I can forgive the skeptics who have NOT experienced this, it would be unreasonable for the skeptics to expect me to abandon the reality of the things I have seen and heard.

By the way, this means that empirical evidence of the divine exists. The resurrection of Christ was verified by hundreds of eye witnesses. This event, along with hundreds of others, was prophesied centuries before it occurred, along with a detailed description of His crucifixion before crucifixion was invented. Christ’s birth and death were both marked by heavenly signs. Eye-witness testimony records that the sun was eclipsed for hours during Christ’s crucifixion. This cannot be a lunar eclipse, which only lasts for a few minutes. There must have been some other object that came between the earth and the sun that day. And based on the tendency of heavenly bodies to follow elliptical trajectories, it is likely this object will return and become a threat in the future. There are several prophecies about the end of the world that indicate this will happen and force the entire population of earth to seek underground shelter. It is part of God’s plan.

“What’s falsifiable is just what I said in the beginning: you will not find any kind of horse fossils from the Jurassic era, about 175 million years ago.”

There was no such era. Endless extrapolations of extrapolations. Should we find blood and soft tissue remains preserved from Cretaceous strata? Should we find C-14 in these remains? The half-life of C-14 is 5730 years. After even one million years, not a single atom would remain. We do not even need to explore tens or hundreds of millions. The layers of strata do not represent eras. They represent sudden massive changes to the earth’s geological features during the creation and the global flood.

A global flood has far more explanatory power than the speculations of eras of eons. It was the global flood that preserved many fossils from that time period. The flood explains the stratification with layers that are frequently parallel, highly pure, and filled with large numbers of intact specimen. Gradual accumulation over vast time periods does not explain these attributes.

What a deliciously ironic metaphor of your “skills.” Not to mention a monument to my dad’s favorite aphorism: “you can’t argue with performance!”

Then there’s the one about a bad workman blaming his tools...

I’m guessing that Nelson “haha” graphic, along with “Sent From My iPhone,” would be a bit over the top, huh?

Thanks for the laugh.

Will try this again, with my lap-top**:

papertyger: "It's like you think you appear logical by affecting a 'Spock-like' demeanor."

"Spock-like"?
Which Spock? Ben? or S'chn T'gai?

I plead innocence of both "demeanors", though way back in the day, we did use Ben's books to help raise our children (yeh, they turned out great, despite Spock!) and what about S'chn T'gai?
Well, I like the young S'chn T'gai but not as much as the original, Leonard Nimoy.

;-)

papertyger: "Unfortunately for you, such qualifications are determined by those who know using indicators completely outside your realm of competence and/or experience."

Now you are simply fantasizing both a "Spock-like demeanor" and your supposed rejection of my "qualifications".
That's not an argument, it's not even a put-down, it's just silly, FRiend.

papertyger: "While I freely admit the horrid grammar I used (after posting) to make this point, I think you get the point that neologisms are nothing new..."

Actually, you've admitted nothing, because that was not your mistake, or your point in post #53.

" 'Irreducible Complexity' is a perfectly valid, non self contradictory, concept.
The term (like 'Bulverism') was coined by Michael Behe (an evolutionist, by the way) of Lehigh University to describe a concept that was not previously acknowledged or catalogued"

Your mistake was not grammar, it was forgetting that the word "bulverism" was coined by CS Lewis, not Behe.
Your point was to define the term "irreducible complexity", not sing a paean to the value of neologisms in general.
Further, Behe is an anti-evolutionist, another mistake you won't own up to.
And I should note here you put a lot of store in your term: "non self contradictory"
Of course papertyger (or other anti-scientists) would be the sole judge & jury on what is, or is not, "non-self contradictory", right?

papertyger: "So your disparagment of the term "irreducable complexity" is rather petty and pedantic, as it describes a perfectly legitimate concept I've already elaborated on."

No, not "petty and pedantic" but concise & to the point because I think your definition is pure nonsense.
Why? Because it actually defines nothing, tells us nothing about anything except your (argument from ignorance) opinion that such-and-such seems "too complex" to have arisen naturally.
Then you assert, without any physical evidence whatever, that if it's "too complex" it must be "intelligent design".
That's simply ignorance supporting non sequitur.

Apparently you wish, with one term ("irreducible complexity") to require science to describe a natural process for it, which you will call "inadequate" (based on your ignorance) and then triumphally declare: "intelligent design", a non-sequitur.

papertyger: "...simply demonstrate it's self contradiction... "

Obviously, in this case "self contradiction" is in the eyes of the beholder, but I would ask:

Can you precisely define which exact DNA alleles are "irreducibly complex" and which are not? Of course not.
Do you even have decision rules which say: if xyz exists then "irreducibly complex", if anything else then not? Of course not.
Is there some quantifiable threshold for natural-explanations which can move some DNA allele from your "irreducibly complex" category to not? Of course not.

And that's because there's nothing scientific about "irreducible complexity", it's strictly a theological term, intended to point towards God's Creative actions, and discourage natural-science understandings.

papertyger: "And there's the gainsaying.
My post #57 demonstrates "ad hominem disparagement" is EXACTLY what you did.
Your denial does not change the FACT of what you wrote. "

But your gainsaid bulverism in post #57 is nothing more than a primal scream, conveying no actual information beyond: "I disagree and I dislike you."
You do the "ad hominem disparagement" you accuse me of.
But in fact, there's nothing "ad hominem" about my posts, whether disparaging or not, because I've never attacked personally you, or anybody else, in the way you routinely use against other posters on these threads.

papertyger: "that Behe is not a 'Darwinist,' has no bearing on his being an evolutionist; the fact of which I'm sure escapes you."

What escapes me is how you pseudo-science anti-scientists can fantasize a distinction between "evolutionist" and "Darwinist".

"In his 1996 book Darwin's Black Box he called this irreducible complexity and said it made evolution through natural selection of random mutations impossible.[5]"

Sorry, but by any reasonable definition, someone who claims that evolution is impossible cannot be an "evolutionist" or "Darwinist" or even a serious natural-scientist for that matter.

papertyger: "Dear Joe, the assertion you refer to ISN'T EVEN AN ARGUMENT!
It's a gratuitous assertion (which according to the rules of logic can be just as gratuitously be denied)."

It's also an observed fact: "irreducible complexity" is an argument from ignorance, equivalent to the media's "Russia, Russia, Russia" claims meaning: ill-defined and supported by no evidence whatever.
It amounts to claiming: "if you can't prove, to my satisfaction, that I'm wrong, then I'm right."

That makes "irreducible complexity" a theological opinion, not observed fact or even scientific hypothesis.

papertyger: "...forensics is a universally respected field of scientific inquiry, the sole exception being when it's applied to evolutionary theory."

A most curious claim, seemingly apropos of nothing, why is it even here?
Why would forensics be respected for solving crimes, but not for understanding fossils?

papertyger: "And while your side loves to hoodwink its novice devotees, such as yourself, by falsely claiming intelligent design is an "argument from ignorance," it fails to point out the inescapable truth that claiming evolution can do something they can't demonstrate is EXACTLY THE SAME ignorance as claiming evolution can't, except with forensics as a guide, there's far more reason to side with "can't" than there is with conjectural "can." "

So, let me see if I "get" this -- in your mind forensics used to solve crimes is good, forensics used to solve ancient fossils is bad?
Regardless, arguments for natural-evolution theory are far from ignorance.
And, as Behe himself admitted, under oath:

"...during the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, Behe conceded that there are no peer-reviewed papers supporting his claims that complex molecular systems, like the bacterial flagellum, the blood-clotting cascade, and the immune system, were intelligently designed nor are there any peer-reviewed articles supporting his argument that certain complex molecular structures are "irreducibly complex."[111]"

Finally, just so we're clear on this point: I consider the entire Universe to be intelligently designed by God and, in a sense (i.e., "big bang"), irreducibly complex, but I see no evidence suggesting how much of its natural functioning is effected by Divine Interventions and how much is simply part of the Universe's "natural DNA" established at the moment of its "conception", the "big bang".

** tablets are inherently more difficult to use and much easier to make mistakes with.
As I said: better than nothing, but just barely.

Thanks again for an interesting essay, well informed and polite, always appreciated.
I read it carefully and think I "get" where you're coming from.
You don't like any scientific explanations which seem to conflict with your traditional Biblical exegeses.

You find most, if not all, of such conflicting explanations in fields of study you label "historical applications of science" as distinguished from more legitimate "operational science".

And you believe there's a lot to be said in trashing "historical applications" as opposed to the Bible's eyewitness accounts of natural history.

In your previous post, and again in this one you mentioned there's no way the Earth could have survived millions, much less billions, of revolutions around the Sun without Divine Intervention to prevent world-wide catastrophes and mass extinctions.
Of course, geology records that's exactly what did happen -- many earth-shaking catastrophes and mass extinctions -- but always, just as in the case of Noah's flood, God spared a few survivors who went on to repopulate the Earth and evolve further into the many forms we see today.

Anyway, my point here is not to shake your faith in the Bible (an impossibility anyway, I'd assume), just the opposite, it's to show you where the correct lines can be drawn between Biblical Truth and scientific hypotheses.
You said it yourself: evolution "Starts with the assumption that the divine record is false or at least irrelevant."
Certainly not necessarily false but irrelevant to the natural-science enterprise.
And not just evolution or "historical sciences", but all of science, every bit of it, begins with the assumption of methodological naturalism, meaning natural-science will consider only natural explanations for natural processes, nothing else.
All of science we see today, every bit, starts with that assumption.

And that's all it is, an assumption, to be used when considering any potential scientific question.
The assumption itself does not deny that other explanations are possible or true -- i.e., supernatural explanations -- but only defines them as "not science".
Supernatural explanations are left by natural-science to theologians and others with expertise in such matters.

So, in the case we're discussing, evolution, natural-science simply says, in effect: "evolution is the answer you get when you only consider natural explanations for natural processes."
If you wish to consider other explanations -- i.e., the supernatural -- then science can't help you with that.

Yes, I "get" that a lot of people believe in what's called "philosophical naturalism" or "ontological naturalism", essentially fancy words for atheism.
But methodological-naturalism does not require such beliefs, merely posits that in science only natural explanations can be considered.

So your theological or philosophical beliefs are what they are, nothing wrong with that, everybody is entitled.
But they are not science, and that's the point I'm making here.

So, as I carefully read your essay and note a number of places where you disagree with science, I say: that's fine, go in peace FRiend -- believe the Bible as you understand it, ignoring science, it's your right.
So long as you don't call your beliefs by the word "science" we'll get along just fine.

But in every case where you disagree with science, I'd also note that so long as we hold the naturalism assumption, then the scientific explanation is a better one, and further, nothing in the Bible requires us to reject natural-science in favor of some pseudo-fake-science.
In other words, the Bible says what it says, but nowhere in the Bible does it say we must believe in "irreducible complexity" of certain DNA alleles!

In sum: if you accept "irreducible complexity" that's your choice, but it's neither Biblical nor scientific.

So, I think with all that said, I'll quit for now, and maybe return later on, if time, to address some of your more specific issues.

Sorry for the delay, I wanted look closer at methods for dating ancient materials -- direct, absolute & relative.

unlearner: "Counting tree rings can only provide ages in the centuries at best, with any degree of precision worth considering."

More than centuries, tree ring patterns overlap allowing older trees to be matched with younger and extending the entire sequence back not just "centuries", but millennium.

"As of 2013, the oldest tree-ring measurements in the Northern Hemisphere are a floating sequence extending from about 12,580 to 13,900 years.[2]...

"A fully anchored and cross-matched oak and pine chronology in central Europe extends back 12,460 years,[20]and an oak chronology goes back 7,429 years in Ireland, and 6,939 years in England.[21]
The consistency of these two independent dendrochronological sequences has been supported through comparison of their radiocarbon and dendrochronological ages.[22]
Another fully anchored chronology that extends back 8500 years exists for the bristlecone pine in the Southwest US (White Mountains of California)."

A key importance of tree-ring counting is that it confirms and calibrates carbon-14 radiometric dating:

"Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses (14C) to determine the age of carbonaceous materials up to about 60,000 years old."

Tree rings confirm carbon-14 and carbon-14 takes us back about 60,000 years.

unlearner: "Same for ice cores, except less precise even for smaller amounts of time."

Many ice-core samples have been taken from different glaciers, including Antarctic:

"The Dome C core had very low accumulation rates, which mean that the climate record extended a long way; by the end of the project the usable data extended to 800,000 years ago.[112]"

Other methods of direct observation of ancient time scales include stalactite layers:

"With the occurrence of a warm period on Earth 120 thousand years ago similar to the present, the researchers of the Geochemistry and Paleoclimate Research Group working in the Hungarian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Geological and Geochemical Research outlined the climate changes of this time based on an analysis of a stalactite from the Baradla Cave in Aggtelek, Hungary.
The stalactite witnessed a fast change in climate which occurred 125 thousand years ago"

And deep sea cores:

"The samples gave further evidence to support the plate tectonics theory, which at the time attempted to explain the formation of mountain ranges, earthquakes, and oceanic trenches.[6]
Another discovery was how youthful the ocean floor is in comparison to Earth's geologic history.
After analysis of samples, scientists concluded that the ocean floor is probably no older than 200 million years.[7][2]"

This site lists dozens of relative and absolute methods, both radiometric & otherwise for determining material ages.
And the key point is that when multiple methods are available and they confirm each other, that's a pretty strong argument.

So for counter-argument, here is a 2004 article which claims all these methods are wrong.
If I understand correctly, it argues that since all the different methods agree or support each other they're all based on common assumptions which makes them not independent and therefore wrong.

I'd call that an exercise in hand waving.

Antarctic ice core data going back 420,000 years:

“More than centuries, tree ring patterns overlap allowing older trees to be matched with younger and extending the entire sequence back not just ‘centuries’, but millennium.”

Tree rings form due to weather patterns usually related to the seasons caused by the tilt of the earth’s axis as it traverses the sun. The Bible clearly identifies that the cataclysmic event of Noah’s deluge impacted these seasons:

Genesis 8:20-22
Then Noah built an altar to the Lord, and took of every clean animal and of every clean bird, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled a soothing aroma. Then the Lord said in His heart, “I will never again curse the ground for man’s sake, although the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth; nor will I again destroy every living thing as I have done. While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, winter and summer, and day and night shall not cease.”

It is easily observable that trees growing in climates without annual weather patterns do not have rings that represent years of their lives. Take a look at trees near to the equator today, such as those in tropical rainforests. The earth was probably much more like such rainforests before the flood.

Genesis 2:6
A mist went up from the earth and watered the whole face of the ground.

And it is highly likely that rings from trees older than 5000 years represent time periods greater than one year whereby weather patterns changed gradually over much longer time periods.

“Tree rings confirm carbon-14 and carbon-14 takes us back about 60,000 years.”

Carbon dating is also imprecise before the flood because it relies on a constant ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 in the atmosphere, which one might reasonably expect to dramatically change as a result of the flood. Further, carbon dating is calibrated using tree ring data, for which I have already shown the flaw of treating rings as representing equal time periods before the flood.

The reason the earth and living things do not run out of carbon-14 due to its decay is that carbon-14 is continuously replenished by the bombardment of atmospheric nitrogen by neutrons released by cosmic radiation reaching the atmosphere. It is reasonable to assume that cosmic radiation has been relatively constant over the past few thousand years. However, its penetration into the atmosphere changed, like the other changes mentioned here, at the flood. Before the flood, a large part of the water presently on the earth was then stored ABOVE the atmosphere.

Genesis 1:7
Thus God made the firmament [i.e. sky], and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were ABOVE [emphasis added] the firmament; and it was so.

Genesis 7:11
In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.

Notice flood waters came from below the ground and from above, which presumably is referring to the waters above the sky. These may have even been rings much like Saturn has currently. Peter also mentions these two sources of the flood waters:

2 Peter 3:5-6
For this they willfully forget: that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of water and in the water, by which the world that then existed perished, being flooded with water.

While the flood passages do not explicitly describe the waters above the atmosphere falling at the deluge, it does say they initially were located there, and we can observe that they are not there now. So the most reasonable explanation of the flood passages is that part of the flood waters came from a massive reservoir of water that was originally above the atmosphere when God first formed the earth. And while “windows of heaven” being opened could be figurative language to describe heavy rain, it is far more likely a description of the cataclysmic downpour caused by a total collapse of ice rings around the earth.

“Many ice-core samples have been taken from different glaciers, including Antarctic”

Do I need to point out the impact of pre-deluge climate on these ice cores?

“Other methods of direct observation of ancient time scales include stalactite layers”

Let’s get real. “Direct observation” of present-day subjects does NOT constitute direct observation of the PAST. The exception to this is light from stars. DIRECT OBSERVATION of the past is only and exclusively HISTORICAL records.

Can you imagine trying to recreate the American Civil War using tools of modern science with NO HISTORICAL record? The findings would be a massive uptick in lead poisoning in the 19th century. Of course I’m being a little facetious, but only slightly.

The reckless use of science produces irrational overconfidence with tragic consequences. Think of Nazi eugenics based on misappropriated Darwinian science. Or consider the futile attempts to save President Garfield by locating a bullet lodged in his body using a metal detector. He was cut open by the surgeon in multiple places due to the metal detector detecting the bed springs of the bed being used as the surgery table. Any personal feelings on the idea of carbon tax credits?

“So for counter-argument, here is a 2004 article which claims all these methods are wrong. If I understand correctly, it argues that since all the different methods agree or support each other they’re all based on common assumptions which makes them not independent and therefore wrong. I’d call that an exercise in hand waving.”

When such “science” is used to stifle the free exercise of religion—and it is—then it is no longer being used for scientific inquiry but is encroaching upon areas in which science does not belong.

I do not demand that anyone accept the historical or scientific accuracy of the Bible. However, I do insist that historical eye-witness accounts can not be excluded from the debate as if unscientific by definition.

If the philosophy of science is determined exclusively by naturalism, then it is an outright denial of anything existing which can not be scientifically studied. It is not merely a refusal to include them, it is a denial that they even exist. And this is akin to studying the Civil War and refusing to consider the historical record.

The existence of mind is not a scientific observation or theory. It is a presupposition of all science. We have a mind, therefore we can learn. It’s existence is evident to us individually because we are self-aware. However, we assume (reasonably) that others also have minds and are not merely mimicking our own rational behavior. (How can we know if an AI program is self-aware or simply very adept at mimicry?) Yet we consider the existence of minds (even those beyond our own which we can not directly observe or experience) as OBVIOUS. So much so that, until recently, it was thought that mind is an emergent property of matter (i.e. brain matter). Yet, there has NEVER been ANY scientific theory for how mind possesses this emergent quality. And now testable scientific theories support the opposite: matter is an emergent property of conscious agents.

Why is it ok for science to ASSUME the existence of mind but not the existence of God? Both are obvious. Causality is axiomatic to science. Without it nature would be incomprehensible. Science ASSUMES that nature can be understood through scientific inquiry because nature is comprehensible, events are causal, and minds to understand with do indeed exist. Something or someone MUST be self-existing. And this is self-evident in the same way as Descartes’ foundational philosophic proof of self-awareness informing existence.

Historical records are based on observation. Science has no way to determine the accuracy of these records because history can not be reproduced in a lab, and certainly does not lend itself to controlled experimentation. The decision to accept or reject historical accounts is therefore not within the purview of science but rather is a philosophical choice. Albeit, science can be used to speculate on more outlandish claims of history, whether these be resurrection from the dead or Paul Bunyan’s giant blue ox. Science may presently observe neither. But this must not be treated as scientific PROOF of their non-existence. It is a philosophical choice to treat the first as credible and the second as a tall tale. For me the difference is in the consistency and reliability of the source. Of course, we can sometimes observe in literature that the stories are intended by the author to not be taken literally.

It is high time to get rid of certain logical errors in the evolution and creation debate. The scope of science is to help us make sense of data. The facts of science are what can be observed. The theories and laws are the explanations (with laws having a consistent mathematical model applied). Science can only answer a limited range of questions. It is not the foundation or sole basis of epistemology.

Science can not determine what is science. That is a philosophical choice, not a scientific one.

Science can not determine what is moral.

Science can not answer philosophical questions.

For example, science may be able to tell us what happens when human-animal genetics are combined to form hybrids, but it can not answer if and why this is a wise or moral thing to do.

It is necessary that science be subject to and guided by wise, moral, philosophic choice. For me, the Bible is the foundation for these things.