Posted on 09/20/2001 8:46:10 AM PDT by aculeus
The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism
by Phillip E. Johnson
InterVarsity Press, 192 pp., $17.99
Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong
by Jonathan Wells
Regnery, 338 pp., $27.95
Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution
by Michael J. Behe
Touchstone, 307 pp., $13.00 (paper)
Mere Creation: Science, Faith and Intelligent Design
edited by William A. Dembski
InterVarsity Press, 475 pp., $24.99 (paper)
Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science and Theology
by William A. Dembski
InterVarsity Press, 312 pp., $21.99
Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism
by Robert T. Pennock
Bradford/MIT Press, 429 pp., $18.95 (paper)
Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution
by Kenneth R. Miller
Cliff Street Books/HarperCollins,338 pp., $14.00 (paper)
1. It is no secret that science and religion, once allied in homage to divinely crafted harmonies, have long been growing apart. As the scientific worldview has become more authoritative and self-sufficient, it has loosed a cascade of appalling fears: that the human soul, insofar as it can be said to exist, may be a mortal and broadly comprehensible product of material forces; that the immanent, caring God of the Western monotheisms may never have been more than a fiction devised by members of a species that self-indulgently denies its continuity with the rest of nature; and that our universe may lack any discernible purpose, moral character, or special relation to ourselves. But as those intimations have spread, the retrenchment known as creationism has also gained in strength and has widened its appeal, acquiring recruits and sympathizers among intellectual sophisticates, hard-headed pragmatists, and even some scientists. And so formidable a political influence is this wave of resistance that some Darwinian thinkers who stand quite apart from it nevertheless feel obliged to placate it with tactful sophistries, lest the cause of evolutionism itself be swept away.
As everyone knows, it was the publication of The Origin of Species in 1859 that set off the counterrevolution that eventually congealed into creationism. It isn't immediately obvious, however, why Darwin and not, say, Copernicus, Galileo, or Newton should have been judged the most menacing of would-be deicides. After all, the subsiding of faith might have been foreseeable as soon as the newly remapped sky left no plausible site for heaven. But people are good at living with contradictions, just so long as their self-importance isn't directly insulted. That shock was delivered when Darwin dropped his hint that, as the natural selection of every other species gradually proves its cogency, "much light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history."
By rendering force and motion deducible from laws of physics without reference to the exercise of will, leading scientists of the Renaissance and Enlightenment started to force the activist lord of the universe into early retirement. They did so, however, with reverence for his initial wisdom and benevolence as an engineer. Not so Darwin, who saw at close range the cruelty, the flawed designs, and the prodigal wastefulness of life, capped for him by the death of his daughter Annie. He decided that he would rather forsake his Christian faith than lay all that carnage at God's door. That is why he could apply Charles Lyell's geological uniformitarianism more consistently than did Lyell himself, who still wanted to reserve some scope for intervention from above. And it is also why he was quick to extrapolate fruitfully from Malthus's theory of human population dynamics, for he was already determined to regard all species as subject to the same implacable laws. Indeed, one of his criteria for a sound hypothesis was that it must leave no room for the supernatural. As he wrote to Lyell in 1859, "I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of Natural Selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent."
Darwin's contemporaries saw at once what a heavy blow he was striking against piety. His theory entailed the inference that we are here today not because God reciprocates our love, forgives our sins, and attends to our entreaties but because each of our oceanic and terrestrial foremothers was lucky enough to elude its predators long enough to reproduce. The undignified emergence of humanity from primordial ooze and from a line of apes could hardly be reconciled with the unique creation of man, a fall from grace, and redemption by a person of the godhead dispatched to Earth for that end. If Darwin was right, revealed truth of every kind must be unsanctioned. "With me the horrid doubt always arises," he confessed in a letter, "whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind...?"
[snipped. Go to site for the balance.]
Answer: HeeHee.
What a fantastic refutation of his statements! How can anyone argue with such a thoughtfull, scientific response!
Post the refutations here instead of sliming the man. I have been on these threads a long time and have not read a refutation, just slander and slime.
They never do, the title is the slime. You know they do not prove your point, you just want to make people think that your slimes have substance to them.
Thanks, It was rather easy, actually.
No, that would be an example of "g3k" logic.
A slime, but then you pull back your attack. You are attacking Christians for what the Taliban are doing. First of all the Taliban are anti-Christian. Second of all they do not derive their beliefs from anything that Christians do. They deny the divinity of Christ. In fact, you are blaming Christians for the sins of their enemies, their opponents. It shows quite clearly how totally decrepit and false evolution is that you have to go to such absurd lengths to slime Christians.
The connections between Naziism and evolution are quite direct through Darwin's own belief in eugenics and through his good friend Haeckel. Marx thoroughly praised Darwin and called him an inspiration. Your slime is false, my statement that evolution is directly connected to mass murdering ideologies is well documented.
Slimes instead of refutations, that is all that evos are good for.
Guess you consider your quote from Darwin a refutation but it just proves my point. Are you saying that the words I bolded are the morality of evolution? It is indeed worse than what I said, he exalts death, famine, and war as the agents of evolutionary progress. Seems exactly what the Nazis and the Communists used as an excuse for their barbarities.
Your statement is absolutely incorrect. Science is always concerned about how. The evolutionists here certainly seem to think they have the ultimate answer to the why and consider evolution to be it. It is interesting that when you are put on the spot, you pull back your claims. Evolution cannot even give a consistent explanation of the how because it is not science.
Your statement is absolutely incorrect. Science is always concerned about how.
Your refutation does not address the issue. Science is concerned about the how of a thing, or anything else about a thing, when sciences' tools of analytical reasoning have something to chew on.
The evolutionists here certainly seem to think they have the ultimate answer to the why and consider evolution to be it.
No working scientist, that I know of, thinks they have the ultimate answer to anything. I cannot vouch for what every one here thinks, but I rather doubt that you have accurately characterized it
It is interesting that when you are put on the spot, you pull back your claims.
That you mischaractarize, or don't bother to read my claims with your brights on, thereby forcing me to expand my explanations, is hardly "pulling back my claims", oh, rude one.
Evolution cannot even give a consistent explanation of the how because it is not science.
The evolutionary sciences are quite used to being told they aren't science because they won't jump thru any particular hoop some non-scientist critic with an axe to grind holds up. Darwinian evolution is an attempt to explain the overall consistencies in the fossils we observed in the geological column. Opinions about the origins of life do not enter into this question. Darwin specifically made clear that Darwinian evolution has no opinion about the origins of life. What scientific enthusiasts believe or don't believe about this subject has no impact on that.
Evolutionary micro-biology has some tentative opinions reaching back earlier in time than the appearance of fossils; not it largest stretches of the imagination would anyone charactarize them as finished and irrefutable.
Post the refutations here instead of sliming the man. I have been on these threads a long time and have not read a refutation, just slander and slime.
I am fairly used to your tactic of making claims contrary to common scientific and worldly knowledge, and then demanding an encyclopedia of in-line, expanded references when someone objects. Only to have you tap-dance off to another subject, either with no acknowledgement, or some zany, irrelevant illogical nonsense I can't even decipher. I have taken this bait 1/2 dozen times or so, since you started posting, and I'm tired of it. I posted a reference to a currently published, popular book, which will extensively point you to the specific references in "The Journal of Evolutionary Micro-biology".
It is fairly common knowledge in scientific circles that Behe nailed his own feet to the floor by failing to research his claims, at least one of which had already been refuted before his book was published. I gave you a reference that will take you to the exact articles in the journal. Read it or don't, it's up to you, but you have used up the principal of charity on this subject with your very extra-ordinary demands of scholarship without recourse to reference, followed by what I can reasonably assume is faked obtuseness, and I have no further scholarly obligation to you beyond what a scholar normally owes anyone, and which I've provided.
I did no such thing. I observed that ICR and fundie Muslims share common goals. I said NOTHING about Christians in general, let alone "blame them" for what the Taliban is doing.
That you would make such a bold-faced allegation is corroboration of my charge that you lack the reading comprehension to even understand what I wrote.
Your slime is false, my statement that evolution is directly connected to mass murdering ideologies is well documented.
The connection between nuclear physics and the dropping of the Atom Bomb of Japan is well documented. By your logic, nuclear physicists are all mass murders.
Thus, in addition to being unable to comprehend what I wrote, you are also unable to reason logically. You are, by all accounts, the reigning "Fallacy King" of FR. I admire your diligence; it is a crown that is not earned easily.
BTW, I predicted that you would respond to my previous rebuttal by claiming I was sliming you. Thank you for proving once again that your behave like some sort of stimulus/response machine.
BTW, how many people used the "Gore300" screen name while posting to FR this past summer? Inquiring minds want to know..... ;-)
A stitch in time saves nine.
Million Man Math says 10. :^)
Oooops.
Meant to write: screen name "Gore3000" not "Gore300".
The evolutionary sciences are quite used to being told they aren't science because they won't jump thru any particular hoop some non-scientist critic with an axe to grind holds up. Darwinian evolution is an attempt to explain the overall consistencies in the fossils we observed in the geological column. Opinions about the origins of life do not enter into this question. Darwin specifically made clear that Darwinian evolution has no opinion about the origins of life. What scientific enthusiasts believe or don't believe about this subject has no impact on that.
This is total hypocrisy. As the article on top shows Darwin's intent in formulating evolution was to ban God from creation, from any role in what happens in nature. Clearly that is postulating ultimate causes. Just about every post by the evolutionists here also shows their hatred of religion. To say that evolution is not a life view is totally ludicrous.
As to the science of evolution, the fossil hunt has not and can never prove evolution for the simple reason that the bones of dead species tell us very little about the species itself. 99% of the biological characteristics of a species are not to be found in the bones and any assumptions, conclusions, or theories derived from such bones are necessarily incomplete, inadequate and mere supposition, not science.
Well, since it is such common knowledge, then you should have no problem posting a refutation of intelligent design. As I have told you, I have seen nothing but slimes of it. Your post while sounding reasonable, does not in any way give a refutation of it. It is just an excuse for not giving the proof requested.
As to the proof you gave - the quack Dawkings, is no biologist, he is just a nutcase atheist whose books are full of ridiculous statements such as that natural rock formations show as much design as Mt. Rushmore. Such as that descent is the same as adaptation only more so. He even wrote a phony program to "prove" chance mutation by phonying up the solution.
You have read the book, you say it has a refutation of Behe, post it here. Else, your statements are just a slime. Further if the "proof" against Behe has been given so many times, you should have absolutely no problem in copying and pasting such proof here.
The evolutionists here always claim that the proof is elsewhere or has been given many times before. Give the proof against Behe, give the proof against intelligent design. Do it here - if you have it.
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Looking for survivors.
After all, in '98 alone, in NYC alone, 'Doctors' aborted over 98,000. Therefore the new folks ought to fit into the empty spaces left behind.
[In the light of THESE facts, just WHY are we, as a Nation, so upset over losing over 6k 'grown' people?]
As to the proof you gave
Proof has nothing to do with natural science, and I certainly did not give one.
- the quack Dawkings, is no biologist, he is just a nutcase atheist whose books are full of ridiculous statements such as that natural rock formations show as much design as Mt. Rushmore. Such as that descent is the same as adaptation only more so. He even wrote a phony program to "prove" chance mutation by phonying up the solution.
The book I referenced is not by Dawkins, it is by Ken Miller, one of the authors of our principal introductory college text on micro-biology. Here are three referenced examples from the book:
• In 1997 John M. Logsdon and Ford Doolittle reviewed, in detail, how these same mechanisms could have produced, in strictly Darwinian fashion, the remarkable "antifreeze proteins" of Antarctic fish (JM Logsdon & WF Doolittle (1997) Origin of antifreeze protein genes: A cool tale in molecular evolution. PNAS 94: 3485-3487.). The novelty of this study is that it contained examples of how evolution could recruit introns, the non-coding regions found in the middle of many genes, to produce dramatic changes in the characteristics of proteins.
• In 1998, Siegfried Musser and Sunney Chan (SM Musser & SI Chan (1998) Evolution of the cytochrome C oxidase proton pump. J. Mol. Evol. 46: 508-520.) described the evolution of the cytochrome c oxidase protein pump, a complex, multipart molecular machine that plays a key role in energy transformation by the cell. In human cells, the pump consists of six proteins, each of which is necessary for the pump to function properly. It would, once again, seem a perfect example of irreducible complexity. Take one part away from the pump, and it no longer works. And yet, these authors were able to produce, in impressive detail, "an evolutionary tree constructed using the notion that respiratory complexity and efficiency progressively increased throughout the evolutionary process."
• In 1996, Enrique Meléndez-Hevia and his colleagues published, in the Journal of Molecular Evolution, a paper entitled "The puzzle of the Krebs citric acid cycle: Assembling the pieces of chemically feasible reactions, and opportunism in the design of metabolic pathways during evolution."(J Mol Evol 43: 293-303.) As every high school biology student learns, the Krebs Cycle is a extremely complex series of interlocking reactions that release chemical energy from food. Nonetheless, its evolution by Darwinian mechanisms is now well-understood.
We have been down this track before. You didn't deserve this much help, just as you didn't deserve it the last time we went through this, and, predicting your future requests, I won't be copying Journal articles from JofEMB for you to object to their footnotes in turn.
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