Ben Stein Vs. Sputtering Atheists
Townhall | Brent Bozell III | Apr. 18, 2008
Everyone should take the opportunity to see “Expelled” — if nothing else, as a bracing antidote to the atheism-friendly culture of PC liberalism. But it’s far more than that. It’s a spotlight on the arrogance of this movement and its leaders, a spotlight on the choking intolerance of academia, and a spotlight on the ignorance of so many who say so much, yet know so very little.
[...]
I confess that when the producers of Ben Stein’s new documentary “Expelled” called, offering me a private screening, I was less than excited.
It is a reality of PC liberalism: There is only one credible side to an issue, and any dissent is not only rejected, it is scorned. Global warming. Gay “rights.” Abortion “rights.” On these and so many other issues there is enlightenment, and then there is the Idiotic Other Side. PC liberalism’s power centers are the news media, the entertainment industry and academia, and all are in the clutches of an unmistakable hypocrisy: Theirs is an ideology that preaches the freedom of thought and expression at every opportunity, yet practices absolute intolerance toward dissension.
Evolution is another one of those one-sided debates. We know the concept of Intelligent Design is stifled in academic circles. An entire documentary to state the obvious? You can see my reluctance to view it.
I went into the screening bored. I came out of it stunned.
Ben Stein’s extraordinary presentation documents how the worlds of science and academia not only crush debate on the origins of life, but also crush the careers of professors who dare to question the Darwinian hypothesis of evolution and natural selection.
Stein asks a simple question: What if the universe began with an intelligent designer, a designer named God? He assembles a stable of academics — experts all — who dared to question Darwinist assumptions and found themselves “expelled” from intellectual discourse as a result. They include evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg (sandbagged at the Smithsonian), biology professor Caroline Crocker (drummed out of George Mason University), and astrophysicist Guillermo Gonzalez (blackballed at Iowa State University).
That’s disturbing enough, but what Stein does next is truly shocking. He allows the principal advocates of Darwinism to speak their minds. These are experts with national reputations, regular welcomed guests on network television and the like. But the public knows them only by their careful seven-second soundbites. Stein engages them in conversation. They speak their minds. They become sputtering ranters, openly championing their sheer hatred of religion.
PC liberalism has showered accolades on atheist author Richard Dawkins’ best-selling book “The God Delusion.” But when Stein suggests to Dawkins that he’s been critical of the Old Testament God, Dawkins protests — not that Stein is wrong, but that he’s being too mild. He then reads from this jaw-dropping paragraph of his book:
. . . more
Monday 21 Apr 2008 | Blog-Editor | Education, Intelligent design, Junk science, Leftism, Science |
I loved the movie I just wished that he spent more time explaining what Intelligent Design actually is. The viewer can’t go in with the assumption that creationism is interchangeable with ID.
I’m not sure if the conflation here is Bozell’s or the film’s, but the theory of evolution (so-called “Darwinism”) isn’t a theory about how life began; it’s an explanation of speciation.
That’s a good point. Doesn’t intelligent design leave open the identity of the designer? I’m not sure Bozell’s article makes this clear.
Some friendly advice before anyone takes this movie “to the bank.”
A number of web sites, including some by the very atheists/evolutionists interviewed in the movie, have raised some serious questions about the movie, including PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins, both of whom were interviewed in the movie.
The movie producer originally presented this movie as simply a balanced look at the issues involved under the title “Crossroads.” Thus the evolutionists interviewed did not understand that this movie was going to be a critique of evolution and a defense of ID.
This led to some innocent statements being taken out of context. For example, Richard Dawkins explains the “aliens” reference in the Townhall article:
Another problem is that people have investigated the folks who were supposedly “expelled” from their jobs for supporting ID. The stories, upon investigation, deviate considerably from what the movie claims.
The movie actually contradicts the most important claim of ID — that it is a completely scientific, non-religious, non-theistic theory. The Townhall article states that “Stein asks a simple question: What if the universe began with an intelligent designer, a designer named God?” Ok, great question, but that’s completely different from the argument raised in Kitzmiller v. Dover.
But don’t take my word for it. Do the research yourself. There’s a lot of information available. See what you think.
Jim, We all know that your liberal definition of “balanced” really means, “with a predominantly leftist/secularist or radical liberal slant”, so of course the movie will not look “balanced” to you. Thanks for the good laugh!
Chris B. writes: “Thanks for the good laugh!”
Happy to oblige. But the fact is that the scientists who participated in the film were misled about the true purpose of the film. They agreed to be in a film called “Crossroads” that was about evolution and intelligent design. They ended up in a film called “Expelled” that was about people who supposedly lost their jobs because of their view on intelligent design.
As the New York Times reported
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/27/science/27expelled.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin
On top of that, their interviews were often edited to make them appear to be fools. Thus Richard Dawkins is made to appear that he “believes in aliens,” and so on.
Since the domain name for the Expelled film’s web site was purchased before any of the interviews were done, it is clear that true intent of the film was intentionally withheld from the participating scientists from the start.
I think you also would be offended were you interviewed for a movie that supposedly was about examining different religious views, and then you discovered that the movie was made by atheists attacking religion, in which you were made to look like a sputtering fool. Certainly there would be something unfair about that, yes?
But as I said before, there’s plenty of information on the web, so people should feel free to do their own research and come to their own conclusions.
How does one prove “scientifically” the existence of a “designer”? What does that mean, anyhow?
Science concerns itself with the testable and quantifiable (i.e., that which can be “measured”). While I’m personally dissatisfied with much of evolutionary theory (even from a scientific stand point), I’m not sure how one can scientifically approach that which is completely beyond all that is in any way measurable. It’s just not the realm of science any more than a study of physics is useful in critiquing a musical performance.
Philosophy perhaps.
The other thing is that even if philosophy leads us to conclude that there is a First Cause (and this, to me, is not an unreasonable conclusion), I’m not sure that the philosophy can conclude much about that Cause given the state of humanity.
What does Creation say about the designer? I don’t know. You tell me.
Note 6. Jim writes:
I find this a bit far-fetched simply because what I have seen on the trailers (have not seen the film yet) meshes with many public statements these prominent evolutionists have made about religion. The truth is that they are flabbergasted that anyone takes religion at all seriously, and when asked to explain their own views it is clear they have done little serious thinking on the higher questions. For them the “God question” is already closed — precluded by assumptions of the Darwinist narrative (random creation, etc.). What strikes me as particularly ironic is that the notion of a “big bang” (to which they all ascribe) depends solely on linear time — a concept introduced into human culture through Genesis. They are Judeo-Christian in their deep structure thinking (the bedrock categories), but fail to see how science itself is indebted to the religion that they think is outmoded.
Fr. Hans writes: “I find this a bit far-fetched simply because what I have seen on the trailers (have not seen the film yet) meshes with many public statements these prominent evolutionists have made about religion.”
Well, all I can say is that the “expelled” domain name was registered in March 2007, before most of the interview invitations were even sent out. It should have been easy to tell the people being interviewed what the movie was actually about.
But more to your point, why were atheists chosen to represent the “scientific” viewpoint? For many religious people, there is no inconsistency between religious beliefs and an acceptance of evolution. One blog explains this nicely:
http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/the-truth/science-religion
But religious scientists were intentionally excluded from the movie. According to producer Mathis, in his personal opinion including them would have “confused the film unnecessarily.”
http://www.heardworld.com/higgaion/?p=999
Another big problem in the movie is that it inaccurately portrays the situations of the people who were supposedly discriminated against because of their ID-related beliefs.
The following web site details the claims vs. the facts about those who were “expelled.”
http://www.expelledexposed.com/index.php/the-truth
Personally, I don’t worry about what folks in this venue think about the film, or whether they agree with me. All I’m saying is that if especially you want to defend the film in other venues, there is a lot of other contrary material that’s going to come up. My advice is to do the research and then decide if this is a film that you want to go to the barricades over or recommend to others.
Note 7. James writes:
You don’t. Intelligent Design contends that the universe is not a product of chance, that is, science it is proving that the Darwinian hypothesis, particularly random evolution, is untenable. Rather, the universe shows evidence of design which implies the existence of a designer, but no claim is made that science somehow “proves” a designer exists. Conclusions of this sort lie beyond the reach of science.
Rather the Darwinian hypothesis depends on philosophical materialism, a philosophy popular in Darwin’s time that contends that only matter constitutes reality. Darwinian evolution is actually the creation story of the philosophical materialist.
You need to read up on this more, James.
Start here: Evolution and Me
I don’t think that Darwin’s hypothesis is inconsistent with the philosophy that such things as energy and light exist, and their existence was certainly not unknown in his day.
These paragraphs from the “Evolution and Me” article Fr. Hans posted, really cut to the core of the debate and reveal key truths about the Creator and His creation:
Oh come on Phil, matter/energy in physics is a continuum not a dicotomy: different phases of the same ’stuff’ much as ice and steam.
Note 10. Phil writes:
Not really sure what this means but here is a point many armchair Darwinists miss: If Darwin was correct, not only did matter have to randomly arrange itself into sustainable structures, the laws that guided that arrangement had to emerge from the matter as it was arranging itself. IOW, most armchair Darwinists presume the laws pre-existed matter, when in fact a random universe allows no such conclusion to be drawn.
I’m not sure (I don’t know) if Darwin saw this. My hunch is that he did not, steeped as he was in a Christian cosmology.
The parallels between Marxism and Darwinism are uncanny. I know a lot more about Marxism than I do science, but the Marxist superstitions (for example, ideas are emanations of brain matter; they don’t really exist) are very close to Darwinian ideas (for example, physical laws have their source in the matter they govern). If Gilder is correct (Evolution and Me), these Darwinian ideas will be revealed as superstitions, and Darwinian evolution may find itself facing the same ignominious fate as Marxism. Give that both rely exclusively on philosophical materialism (matter is the ground of all reality), this conclusion is highly plausible. It also lends credence to the historical theory that Darwinism helped erode the moral barriers that may otherwise have resisted the murderous barbarism that Marxism (and its bastard step-brother: Nazism) fostered.
After a bit of googling, I found an interview of Metropolitan Kyrill (Der Spiegel Online, Jan 10, 2008.) Here’s a portion:
…
SPIEGEL: How do you feel about Orthodox priests who want to remove Darwin’s theory of evolution from the curriculum, because it contradicts the story of creation in the Bible?
Kyrill: The study of the physical world should not be the subject of religion, and for this reason the church should not misappropriate any scientific theories. The Catholic Church made this mistake when it preached geocentrism. When scientists later discovered that it was not the earth but the sun that was at the center of our system, they were considered heretics. Copernicus was also a priest, and the Catholic Church of the day also saw itself as a community of science. The Orthodox Church never did this.
SPIEGEL: How would you approach Darwin’s theories if you were a teacher?
Kyrill: I would say that the theory has many adherents, but also a few unanswered questions. For instance, no one has provided precise proof of the transition from one species to another. It would be wrong to treat Darwin’s theory as the only correct one. It is the leading theory today, but it could be replaced by another theory tomorrow. There was also a time when Marxism considered itself the only correct and scientifically justified theory…
SPIEGEL: But you cannot equate these two theories. Besides, Darwin’s theory is now largely undisputed.
Kyrill: For the sake of objectivity, allow me to add that Darwin was a devout man…
SPIEGEL: The fact of the matter is that Darwin, as a scientist, questioned his faith.
Kyrill: Under no circumstances should Darwin’s theory be misused to fight religion. On the other hand, the Bible is not a textbook on cosmology.
…
Reading assignment
Go to Borders (B&N might have it too), buy a cup of coffee, find the latest issue of Commentary Magazine (April, 2008) and read God of the Gaps.
If that’s too much of a hassle, you kind find the article here (very unusual for Commentary; usually you can never find their articles except on their site). Interesting, provocative, compelling.
Father, thank you for the reading assignment. I’ve gone through it once, will read it a few more times. Here are a few initial reflections…
Materialists demand too much when they insist that natural selection implies there is no God. But that’s to be expected of them. More significantly, anti-evolutionists concede far too much when they agree to the same point. I think this concession is the saddest and most overlooked aspect of the controversy. I guess you’d have to put me down as an evolutionary theist. Tentative evolutionary. Definite theist.
I suppose that if someone is determined to take a literal reading of scripture, natural selection presents a real problem. Interestingly, most of the fundamentalists I know interpret at least some parts of scripture allegorically or figuratively. The battle, of course, is over just which parts.
I wonder if one motivation for biblical literalism is the idea that “if we interpret this point less than literally, then who knows what will fall next.” I can understand that concern and I share it. But one problem with that particular concern is that it’s an example of pragmatism — belief that the truth of a statement is found in the utility of its consequences. Pragmatism is not enough.
On the one hand, I’ve lost long-standing friends due to their astonishment that I had any skepticism or reservation, any scientific tentativeness and detachment, about the theory of evolution. On the other, I would risk expulsion from many churches if I expressed much willingness to consider natural selection as a viable scientific theory.
I think anyone who is genuinely concerned with the debate, ragged as it is, should look at Copernicus — then and now. I think in analogies, myself. So I wonder if Copernicus and his controvery are the forerunners of today’s evolution fracas. With the advantage of hindsight, I am thankful that Christians did not concede that a heliocentric cosmology implied there is no God. After all, heliocentrism seemed to contradict scripture. But if they had conceded that implication for very long (and it would have been a big concession — to the devil I’d say) there wouldn’t be very many Christians today. After all, there aren’t very many anti-heliocentric people around these days.
Actually I’m rather confused about why Christians would have any interest at all in intelligent design. Materialism is often denounced here, but it seems to me that intelligent design is ultimately a materialistic view of a spiritual concept.
Michael Bauman always says that people have to read Athanasius on the Incarnation. So I did.
According to Athanasius, out of love the Word brought all of creation into existence, and after the Transgression redeemed it from death and spiritual decay through His death and resurrection. As Athanasius said “He manifested Himself by means of a body in order that we might perceive the Mind of the unseen Father.”
In other words, one understands the divine nature of creation through the revelation of the Word made flesh. As Athanasius said “the renewal of creation has been wrought by the Self-same Word Who made it in the beginning,” and “as Word He was sustaining the life of the universe.” The Word sustains the creation, not only has a whole, but also in all of it’s details: “He sustains in one whole all things at once, being present and invisibly revealed not only in the whole, but also in each particular part.”
Thus the fundamental reality is not matter, but Mind — the Word that created it, redeemed it, and sustains it, and who is continuously present in all of it.
This is a spiritual understanding of the creation that has absolutely nothing to do with science. There is nothing in science that could lead to it nor is there anything in science that could detract from it. No appearance of “design” helps it. No alternative explanation of perceived design takes away from it.
In other words, for the Christian, the divine nature of creation is something that is understood through revelation, not science. The assumption behind intelligent design is that the divine nature of creation can be demonstrated through science. In effect it is a materialistic argument for something that can only be understood through revelation.
Since Christians already have a spiritual understanding of the world that cannot be helped or harmed by science, it is beyond me why they would want to pick a fight with science. One might argue that evolution leads to atheism. I would argue that when Christians go to the barricades over evolution that they lose that argument, and when they lose that argument they create atheists.
This is a problem not just with ID but with all rationalistic arguments for the existence of God. They assume that the existence of God can be rationally demonstrated. The unbeliever then says “great, if it can be demonstrated, then demonstrate it.” And when the argument fails or turns out to be inconclusive, the unbeliever concludes that there’s no God.
But a greater problem is that when the Christian argues from a materialistic or rationalistic viewpoint, he is arguing from a point of view that is actually contrary to faith. He’s using materialism and rationalism in order to persuade people not to be materialists and rationalists. That doesn’t work now, nor has it ever worked, nor will it work with ID. The proper response to the evolutionist is to say “you believe in evolution? That’s fine. Now, let me tell you about most important fact about the universe, which, by the way, you will never get to through science.”
This is true, but if someone made a claim like “ice is made of steam,” it would be wise to clarify to make sure you’re both on the same page.
I think this statement highlights some of the issues that beset the evolution/intelligent design discussion. First, it’s a mistake for anyone, scientist or non-, to present Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection as some kind of disproof of the existence of God or a supreme being. It’s simply an explanation for the behavior of existing matter. It’s based on observable evidence, but it does extrapolate far into the past.
When you talk about “the laws that guided that arrangement,” are you referring specifically to the combining and recombining of DNA, or are you talking about all the laws that govern matter?–physics, gravity, etc.? One reason that scientific theories lack the grandeur of, say, religious beliefs is because they tend to be smaller, and have beginning and endpoints where other disciplines take over. Darwin just assumed that physical laws existed, he did not first prove their existence, then their pre-existence, and then hypothesize about the behavior of matter.
Are you saying that _all_ scientific theories that rely on discussing the behavior of matter will be disproven, or only the ones that are politically controversial? I’m hard-pressed to think of a scientific theory that isn’t based in philosophical materialism. The theories of gravity, quantum mechanics, the speed of light, the spread of viruses–all of these rely on a materialist understanding of the behavior of matter and energy, and none of them has anything to say about love, or supreme beings, or transcendence.
It’s not clear from your post how “Darwinian evolution” is somehow more materialistic than any other scientific theory, except that both materialists and non-materialists are misappropriating the theory as if it serves as evidence for or against the existence of the divine.
Rudy writes:
I am talking about both. If matter is the ground of reality (notions of a random universe operate by this philosophical assumption), the laws that govern the arrangement of matter must arise from the matter itself. The laws cannot preexist the arrangement of matter into structures. If they did, then that arrangement would not be random.
So, yes, I think Darwin must have assumed that physical laws just existed. Neo-Darwinists certainly do, but this assumption draws from a cosmology other than that which posits a random universe. It seems to me the neo-Darwinists have it only partly right. There is energy, matter, and logos. They assume the logos (the logic, the information, the intelligence, the agency of organization and hierarchy) exists in the matter, not apart from it — an assumption not logically, and increasingly not scientifically, tenable.
No, I am arguing that Darwinism (neo-Darwinism more accurately) at bottom isn’t a scientific theory but a cosmology.
Jim writes:
No. ID is a challenge to the philosophical underpinnings of the Darwinian hypothesis, ie: philosophical materialism. The most interesting part of the debate btw, comes from the scientists themselves who argue that the influence of philosophical materialism on the development of science (Darwinism is one example) actually hinders scientific understanding. That’s the thesis of Gilder’s piece Evolution and Me.
No. One understands the the divine purpose of creation. Material creation cannot have a “divine nature” unless you are a polytheist in which case no distinction between creators and their creation is possible. (The distinction between Creator and creation creates the distinction between divine and created natures. IOW, this distinction is only possible in a mono-theistic cosmology. This distinction is a major reason why the scientific method arose only in monotheistic cultures, BTW. No method or system of discovery can be developed without first presuming that the material creation is orderly.)
The substance of the material creation is matter. It contains nothing of the nature, the substance, of God. However, this is not the same thing as saying that the non-material constitutents of human experience (love, beauty, syntax, logic, etc.) have their source and origin in matter (the position of philosophical materialists). But neither is this saying that these constituents operate independent of matter.
Your presumption is that religion and science are polar opposites. But this presumption is increasingly seen as a prejudice (again, see Gilder), as scientists themselves throw off the shackles of philosophical materialism, that is, recognize that science has little to say about cosmology.
I’m going to post an explanation of ID on the main page. It should help dispel some of the false notions I see in your reply.
May a Christian accept that natural selection may be the physical means through which God has chosen to bring species, including the human species, into being?
Is it accurate to say that Darwin’s theory posited a random universe? I think that’s a stretch.
You present a false dichotomy. A person need not choose between “being” a materialist and being a non-materialist. To say that someone finds the theory of evolution plausible does not mean that said person must therefore deny the existence of love, beauty, and logic. You seem to be someone who would describe himself as “not a philosophical materialist” and yet you clearly don’t deny the _existence_ of matter.
So, what is your view on the rest of science? Are all scientific theories underpinned (to coin a phrase) by philosophical materialism, or is there some criteria that separates the theory of evolution from every other scientific theory of the past few centuries?
Fr. Hans writes: “No. One understands the the divine purpose of creation. Material creation cannot have a “divine nature” unless you are a polytheist in which case no distinction between creators and their creation is possible.”
Let me substitute “aspect” for “nature.” In my reading of Orthodoxy, there is always an emphasis on understanding the “reality behind the reality” — that there is a spiritual reality behind the physical reality, and that one has to see (in a spiritual, not physical sense) beyond the surface of things in order to comprehend the spiritual reality. For example, an icon isn’t just a painted board, marriage isn’t just a way to propagate the species, Jesus wasn’t just some guy walking around, and the universe isn’t just all about matter and energy. In other words, there is a sacred aspect to life that cannot be apprehended only by looking at the surface of things.
Fr. Hans: “Your presumption is that religion and science are polar opposites. But this presumption is increasingly seen as a prejudice (again, see Gilder), as scientists themselves throw off the shackles of philosophical materialism, that is, recognize that science has little to say about cosmology.”
It’s not that they are polar opposites, but that they involve different realms of knowledge and experience. There’s nothing in science that can tell us if a painting is great, or if a book is profound. That does not mean that art and literature are the opposite of science, but that they are all about different things.
There’s nothing about any physical aspect of the universe that necessarily constitutes an argument for or against the existence of God. For example, many centuries ago it was believed that the universe was very young, that all species were created at the same time, that the earth was the center of the universe, that the universe was relatively “small,” that stars were lights hung in the “firmament,” that heaven was “above” and hell “beneath.” Through science we know that that kind of thinking is completely wrong. But that didn’t entail that those errors in thinking somehow meant that God didn’t exist. To the extent that the church did actively try to defend geocentrism it was wrong, and ended up looking foolish.
The same thing is going to happen to ID, and in fact has already happened. Specific examples by ID proponents of “irreducible complexity” have already been refuted in detail by scientists. So if you go to the barricades over ID, I think you’re eventually going to be very disappointed.
Rudy writes: “First, it’s a mistake for anyone, scientist or non-, to present Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection as some kind of disproof of the existence of God or a supreme being.”
Yes, exactly. The mistake is not the belief in evolution, but extrapolating a false conclusion from it.
Phil asks:
You’ve got it backwards. Darwinism is wholly dependent on philosophical materialism (matter is the ground of reality; only matter has concrete existence). Philosophical materialism posits a random universe since no logos (intelligence; agency of ordering and hierarchy) apart from matter exists.
Again, you’ve got it backwards. Philosophical materialism denies the concrete existence of non-material human experiences and constitutents (love, beauty, joy, logic, wisdom, etc.). It’s not that people do not experience these things (they do), but that their ultimate reality has to be denied. (This led to pseudo-sciences like “scientific materialism” [Marxism] in the social realm, and, dare I say it? — Darwinism in the biological realm.)
So yes, I do not deny the existence of matter at all. I affirm the existence of matter, but deny the assertion that only matter has concrete existence. Like I wrote above, the materialists have it only partly right. There is matter, energy, and logos. Read Gilder again.
Learn to separate the legitimate findings of science from cosmology. If you can distinguish between the two, then you will understand the difference between science and philosophy/religion. The trouble with Darwinism is philosophy, not science.
Note 23. Jim writes:
Are they? I’m not so sure. Speech requires more than vocal cords (or lung and brain function, etc.) but it still requires vocal cords (or lung and brain function). I still see that old shibboleth at work here: religion cannot speak to science, science cannot speak to religion. I just don’t buy it anymore.
Take addictions for example. We know that addiction therapies require both a scientific understanding of the brain response to a drug and and a volitional dimension in order for healing to occur. (Ever watch “Intervention” on late Sunday night? It’s the love of the family that compels many addicts to finally abandon dependence on the drug, but it takes trained therapists who understand the biological and volitional dynamics to lead a person to recovery.)
So sure, the material dimension of a good novel (the type and paper) is different than the non-material constituents (meaning, beauty, logic, wisdom, syntax, etc.) that make that novel “good”. But one cannot really exist without the other and still be called a “good novel.” This separation strikes me as completely artificial, albeit one that many people believe is true. Again, I point to the Marxists. If the non-material constituents of human experience have their source and grounding in matter, then matter, being maleable, could be refashioned to create new constituents and ultimately a “new man.” This is the logic behind eugenics, Marxist “rehabilitation,” Lenin’s New Economic Policy (NEP), and other devastating social “reengineering” projects of the last century. It drives some of the transhumanist thinking today.
This is a confused statement. The universe does not deliver arguments, people do. So this brings us right back to the issues we are discussing: philosophical materialism; the distinction between material and non-material realities.
Now if you really meant to say that science cannot prove the existence of God, I agree. But this is due to the necessary limits of science where, contra Darwin, cosmological claims lie beyond its purview.
Or perhaps you meant to say that philosophy cannot deliver an argument for the existence of God. I would agree here too. But this does not limit the poet: “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmanent proclaims his handiwork.” If you argue however that poetry is somehow an illegitimate way of knowing (”non-scientific”), I’d argue that you’ve crawled back into the materialist box that houses the questionable assertion that only matter constitutes reality. (Read William Barrett’s “Death of the Soul” on how philosophy hit the materialist dead-end and blinded man to the constituents of the soul. I’m sure you know of Barrett (”Irrational Man”).)
I’d be interested in reading some of these refutations. But remember, given the dependence of the Darwinian hypothesis on philosophical materialism, the issue here is whether or not the philosophy will hold. I don’t think it will. (Marxism has already collapsed.) And no, no one is “going to barricades” over ID, except perhaps the Darwinists who increasingly rely on the courts to enforce the dogma.
I think our language choices are getting in the way. Are all evolutionary biologists “Darwinists,” in your book?
It’s safe to say that the theory of evolution would have been suggested even if Darwin had never been born. He actually published early because he heard that a competitor was working on a similar theory.
The data was leading scientists in a similar direction.
Your reasoning is circular here: you’re saying that Darwin’s theory of evolution is a cosmology because it relies (wholly, or to a large extent) on philosophical materialism. Then you say that other scientific theories, all of which rely on a materialist view of the way the universe works, are different from the theory of evolution because they are not cosmologies.
I think I agree with you that, from a social/religious/political standpoint, it is foolish for a scientist to point to the theory of evolution and say, “There! There is evidence that nothing but matter actually exists!” But you go further and claim that no one, scientist or layperson, can examine the available evidence and conclude, “The theory of evolution is the best explanation for speciation on the planet Earth,” without then believing that nothing that matter exists. I disagree. I think it’s possible for people who are strict materialists to find evolution plausible, but it’s also entirely possible for someone who believes in a higher power to believe that higher power set the events of evolution in motion (as many Catholics do), and it’s entirely possible for someone with no opinion about whether anything besides matter exists to find evolutionary theory compelling.
In other words, yes, there are plenty of people who attach religious and sociopolitical significance to the theory of evolution. But it’s not inherent in the theory, and I don’t think anyone has illustrated either a) the criteria which causes the theory (not the use of the theory) to be a cosmology, or b) the difference between the way that the theory of evolution relies on materialism and the way that all scientific theories rely on materialism.
I think this is where you’ve either got it wrong or are using the term “Darwinism” to equivocate. I should ask you to clarify what a “Darwinist” is before I disagree. For example, I find the theory of evolution to be a plausible explanation of the way that the variety of species occurred on the planet earth. My friend Dave, with a Harvard PhD in evolutionary biology, tends to agree. Are we “Darwinists,” or is there some other class of people who constitute “Darwinists?”
Augie, IMO a Christian cannot accept natural selection as anything more than a mechanism for adaptation within species. It is not related to creation at all. God creates ‘ex-nihilo’. Much as a master musician He uses variations upon themes. There is no mechanism by which God creates. “And God said….and there was” We put it in the past tense only because we lack the ability to express an infinite reality. We are too linear.
Christ is Risen! Rejoice in the resurrection of your King!
Yes, yes. I am eager to see these, even though I don’t subscribe to ID.
Actually, I have already seen these, and they are supremely embarrassing to the Darwinist cause. If that’s all the better they can do the gig is up.
The “irreducible complexity” problem of the “chaos and randomness create super-complexity and reason” Cult Followers has never been dealt with. It’s a whopper of a lie to claim it has been. Either the studies show something else or the posters here have no idea what they’re talking about.
As I wrote in my book review of “Uncommon Dissent” http://www.orthodoxnet.com/articles/Banescu/Review_Uncommon_Dissent_2004.php
Let me be clear, there is NOT ONE shred of evidence or scientific proof (verifiable and documented) that “irreducible complex” organisms can instantly come into existence fully formed via random processes. In the history of science, there is no verifiable theory or experiment that has ever shown how this can happen or that it has ever happened spontaneously, without the influence and power of a Designer or Creator.
Fr. Hans writes: “I’d be interested in reading some of these refutations.”
There are many web sites that address this issue. Do a search on “irreducible complexity” or “intelligent design” and you will find them. The arguments are really too extensive to do them justice here.
Chris B. writes: “Let me be clear, there is NOT ONE shred of evidence or scientific proof (verifiable and documented) that “irreducible complex” organisms can instantly come into existence fully formed via random processes.”
But that’s not the argument. No one suggests that, for example, a bacteria, or even a bacterial flagellum “instantly comes into existence,” or does so randomly. Rather, physical structures that are used for one purpose can evolve into a very different purpose. For example, check out this article on the “irreducible complexity” of the bacterial flagellum:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/life/dn13663-evolution-myths-the-bacterial-flagellum-is-irreducibly-complex.html
There are hundreds of similar articles available on the web. By the way, is anyone aware of any peer-reviewed article supporting ID? I’ve never heard of one.
Jim, You again offer proof of “D” when we are discussing “G”. Nice try, but again you missed the point and contributed a big fat zero as evidence.
We’re arguing original design and you keep talking about “adaptation to the environment.” You’re using “micro-evolution” (adaptation to environment) studies and claiming they prove “macro-evolution/Grand Darwinism”. They don’t! They never have and never will.
You state:
Correction, specific structures ORIGINALLY DESIGNED by a Creator can adapt and transform (micro-evolution) — while acted upon by a creative force/energy/power beyond our understanding (who is it that drives and activates the code?) — within a limited range of options based on EXISTING biological CODES that were BUILT-IN into those organisms from the start. This says ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about HOW those ORIGINAL structures came into being; obviously designed and created by a super-intelligence (we Christians call that God: Father-Son-HolySpirit). It also says nothing about the force/energy/power that is continuing to fuel-drive-activate the designed codes and make matter “live” and humans REASON. Remember Newton’s Laws? What is the FORCE that is acting on biological matter and continually activates the codes and makes matter be alive, multiply itself, and continually heal itself?
Jim, This comment from you is hilarious:
Look in the mirror. Look at an atom, a bee, a humming-bird, an eagle, a lion, a dolphin, a DNA strand, the human eye, the human brain, the sun, a molecule of water, light itself. When you’re done doing that go ponder why the Universe’s physical and biological environments are GOVERNED by LAWS. While you’re at it ponder how it’s possible that a PERIODIC TABLE of elements even exists and human intelligence forsaw elements before they were discovered and some elements before they were even created. Also go read NOTE 12 above.
Epic poems and Boeing 747s do not come into existence by themselves, no matter how much time is available - and neither do cells, or even proteins.
Chris B. writes: “We’re arguing original design and you keep talking about ‘adaptation to the environment.’”
ID proponents such as Dr. Behe aren’t talking about “original design” either. They are talking about evidence of intelligent design found in the process of evolution through observation of physical structures and biochemical processes that are said to be “irreducibly complex.”
In fact, as far as I can tell, Behe even believes in macroevolution (though not all ID proponents appear to). Where he differs from most evolutionists is that he believes that random mutation cannot account for all evolutionary change. This is where intelligent design comes in.
One review of Behe’s most recent book states that
Chris B.: “Correction, specific structures ORIGINALLY DESIGNED by a Creator can adapt and transform (micro-evolution) — while acted upon by a creative force/energy/power beyond our understanding (who is it that drives and activates the code?) — within a limited range of options…”
Apparently the limited range of options includes the ability to form new species. For example, here’s a web site detailing a number of new species that have arisen in recent times:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB910.html
Chris B.: This comment from you is hilarious:
By the way, is anyone aware of any peer-reviewed article supporting ID? I’ve never heard of one.
I fail to see the humor. If ID is such an important contribution to science that it should be taught in public schools, is it too much to expect that it would have shown up somewhere in the scientific literature?
Jim -
You proved my point far better than I could have by citing this article. Let’s look at exactly what they offer as refutation of intelligent design (which, by the way, I don’t subscribe to):
Oh, I see, “it has been proposed…” and “over time, this system might have been adapted…” and “An ion-powered pump… might then have mutated” and “more spiral filaments evolved”.
This is all hand waving that is, frankly, embarrassing. What the non-technical reader does not understand, is that behind each of these “might have” statements lies vast oceans of improbablilty. For any individual step of what is a highly complex multi-step process, a number of things have to happen that defy reason. Proteins have to undergo random mutations that yield other proteins that have highly synchronous functionality, while at the same time, the cell or organism can suddenly do without the original functionality. But even more staggering, all these components have to be assembled by changes to regulatory regions of the genome that are far removed from the region that codes for the proteins. Yet somehow, the mutations to the regulatory regions don’t seem to adversely effect this organism that is happily building a flagellum.
Invoking vast lengths of time does not solve the problem, because all of these changes that I outlined have to be carried along for millions of years in an essentially useless form until they suddenly come together to enable a new function. This scenario, or course, is directly in contradiction to the supposed “selection” of natural selection. If a mutation does not confer an advantage, it does not get passed on to succeeding generations. Now, apparently the claim is that every mutation gets conserved for a million years or so until it is deemed useful.
Objecting to the Darwinian “mutation/natural selection” scheme, as I am doing here, does not imply rejection of evolution. It is rejection of a proposed mechanism of evolution.
I don’t think the text that you quote concedes that the forms in question were “essentially useless,” however. If an “ion-powered pump” mutated and the mutation caused a flagellum to, well, flagellate, then that would be what the quoted text called the “basis of a rotary motor.” If a mutation creates an advantage, it increases the likelihood that it will be passed along, but if a mutation doesn’t create a disadvantage, there’s no reason to believe it will necessarily be “selected out.”
I agree, in that there is a world of controversy within the study of evolution itself. It’s a fascinating field, even if we assume that a large part of Darwin’s hypotheses were accurate.
Tom,
You’re quite right, the article Jim posted actually supports ID.
This particular sentence says it all (key words bolded for emphasis):
Thanks Jim, for helping to support our ID arguments yet again.
Note 33. Chris writes:
Yes, and probability theory posits that the chances of a single cell emerging from inert matter is greater than a tornado blowing through a factory and assembling a Boeing 747.
The problem with this misuse of statistics is that it presupposes that the end result was predetermined. Certainly, if you were trying to build a cell randomly from inert matter, that would be a nearly impossible burden.
_Any_ arrangement of parts that occurred after a tornado blew through a factory would be incredibly unlikely. That is, if you set a “goal” for the tornado, there is a 99.99999999% chance that you would be disappointed.
After the tornado blew through the factory, however, the parts would be arranged in some kind of sequence. It would be random, of course, and perhaps meaningless, but they would still be there. There was a 99.99999999% chance that those parts wouldn’t be in that sequence–but it happened anyway.
If tornadoes kept blowing through factories, over and over, you would keep getting random arrangements of parts. Each random arrangement would be incredibly unlikely–and yet there it would be, lying on the ground, in trees, in the surrounding area, etc.
It’s like poker: a royal flush is an incredibly unlikely hand. But it is no more unlikely than every other possible arrangement of 5 cards.
Note 27. Phil writes:
Yes, because the theory is culture dependent, not the logical outgrowth of increased scientific knowledge.
You don’t really understand the term “philosophical materialism” nor its epistemological ramifications. Start here Materialism.
Evolution is a cosmology in this sense: because of its dependence on philosophical materialism, evolution posits a random universe. One epistemological ramification is progress (the development of an organism) occurs through random mutation. Yet, this precept is fraught with problems (as Tom C. points out in note 34 above, for example).
Further, there is a world of difference between philosophical materialism and the scientific method. My critique of the philosophy does not deny materiality (your implicit point). There is a difference IOW, between the term “materialism” and “materiality.”
More relevant, and certainly more interesting, are the scientists who find evolutionary theory wholly insufficient. If you are up to it read On the Origins of Life by David Berlinski (occasional contributer to “Commentary Magazine”; your Ph.D. friend will have heard of him), that challenges the notion that the evolutionary paradigm ought to be the organizing epistemological principle in some types of scientific reseach.
Jim, look at the last paragraph of the article:
Built?
Evolution might be more clever than I am, but it certainly contains no room for a builder. Better to speculate about the millions of years need to hew the stone blocks into the same size and weight, the correspondence of the angles of the blocks in the arch, the cataclysmic earthquakes needed to hoist the blocks in place, the symmetry of one side of the arch with the other, the forces needed to hold up the arch until the keystone was placed, etc.
Note 38. Rudy writes:
So what are you saying here, that a cell evolving from inert matter is nearly impossible, or that we cannot apply probability to the assertion that a cell did indeed evolve from inert matter?
Rudy, You’re saying that random actions create unique random patterns. That’s true, we see chaos create chaos in an infinite variety all around us. So? That still does absolutely nothing to prove how complex structures and design appeared in the Universe without a Creator or Intelligent Designer, why matter is governed by laws, how random forces organized atoms so there’s a Periodic Table of elements, and how the super-complex DNA double-helix came to be. Like Jim, we’re arguing “G” and you keep giving us proof of “R”. The arguments offered are nonsensical.
Let’s simplify the problem. Forget the tornado passing through a junk yard a billion times over hundreds of millions of years and eventually leaving behind a fully formed and ready to fly Boeing 747. We’ll lower the bar all the way down. Show us how random actions/forces passing trough a junkyard can leave behind a simple paper airplane, the kind an 8-year-old can fold and make fly. We’ll be waiting…..
I think you illustrate my point here. If we start with the end result, it is always unbelievably unlikely. It will always sound implausible.
But if we assume that there are random forces that can cause paper to fold or unfold along random axes (is that our assumption? It sounds like it), then a basic paper airplane such as this–
http://www.amazingpaperairplanes.com/Basic_Dart.html
–requires one lengthwise fold, one unfold, then two symmetrical angular folds, then two more symmetrical folds at a more acute angle, then a re-fold along the original lengthwise fold, then two symmetrical folds of the edges.
That is a total of 9 “actions.” If our random forces are at work, folding, unfolding, refolding, etc., over and over again, is it really so hard to imagine that eventually something resembling the “basic dart” will occur?
If we start with a set number of pieces of paper–ten? a million? a billion? a googleplex?–and then start our random forces folding and re-folding for an incredibly long amount of time–a year? a thousand years? a billion years?–we could ask ourselves, what is the likelihood that those eight actions will occur, in approximately the right position, in the right sequence?
I’d guess that it would happen more quickly than you think.
Now, if you deny the existence of random forces that can cause paper to fold and unfold, then we aren’t really discussing probability at all, are we? We’re discussing the mechanism of action, not the probability of it.
Chris B. writes: “Show us how random actions/forces passing through a junkyard can leave behind a simple paper airplane, the kind an 8-year-old can fold and make fly.”
I suppose that would be an argument against the spontaneous origins of life. But with respect to ID, the topic of the article, that’s not a very good example, because it ignores the self-organizing aspect of living things, accomplished through DNA. Individuals show random variation in traits all the time, nonetheless they still exist as the same species and are able to function.
Nonetheless, the argument of traditional evolution is that these small changes can eventually result in a new species that cannot interbreed with the original species (the common definition of a “species.”) From a scientific point of view there’s no reason a priori why such speciation cannot occur. In other words, there’s no reason to conclude that genetic variation can occur only to a certain point, but no further. But the fact that one species can arise from another does not somehow constitute an argument against the existence of God. For example, if one kind of lizard eventually arose from some other kind of lizard, and they could not interbreed, it would be illogical to somehow conclude that “God doesn’t exist.”
Chris B.: “We’ll lower the bar all the way down for you Macro-Evolutionists Cult Followers.”
It appears that Dr. Behe, one of the most prominent advocates of ID, is also a “Macro-Evolutionist Cult Follower.” I have not read his most recent book, but one review summarized his position as follows:
“For a start, let us be clear about what Behe now accepts about evolutionary theory. He has no problem with a 4.5-billion-year-old Earth, nor with evolutionary change over time, nor apparently with its ample documentation through the fossil record–the geographical distribution of organisms, the existence of vestigial traits testifying to ancient ancestry, and the finding of fossil “missing links” that show common ancestry among major groups of organisms. Behe admits that most evolution is caused by natural selection, and that all species share common ancestors. He even accepts the one fact that most other IDers would rather die than admit: that humans shared a common ancestor with chimpanzees and other apes.”
If I am a Macro-Evolutionist Cult Follower, it appears I am in good company.
Tom C writes: “You proved my point far better than I could have by citing this article. ”
Apologies for not providing a better article. But keep in mind that all my posts are moderated, and about half are rejected. That’s fine with me, but that also means that I’m not going to spend a lot of time doing research for a post that may never see the light of day.
#36 Phil
Great. Up until a minute ago the organism depended on an ion-powered pump for its very survival. Now it has a flagellum power source instead. What happened to the critical need for what the ion-powered pump was doing beforehand? You are trying to get me to buy the concept that at the very moment a new structure with a new function was created, the organism no longer needs the very different original structure with a very different function. You are not grasping that a mutation does not just create something new, it by necessity destroys the prior thing as well.
This is not correct. A mutation only occurs in one organism of a population. For the altered genome to eventually dominate the population it has to confer an advantage over the non-mutated genome. This is a demand of Darwinian theory. So, why do the initially non-useful mutations hang around for a million years waiting for the other mutations to fall into place? That is the challenge of ID to Darwinism.
Rudy - you need to read something about irreducible complexity if you intent to argue against ID. Your comments indictate that you don’t understand the concept.
That’s not really true, and we can see it in existing species. Say, some cows have brown spots and some have black spots. They can mate with each other, they’re the same species, and the spots keep getting passed on to their offspring, even though neither one really confers an advantage over the other. This continues until, say, the brown-spotted cows give birth to a red-spotted offspring, which then attracts hummingbirds who clean parasites off of the cow’s hide (or whatever).
The brown spots don’t confer an advantage, but they eventually led to the red spots. So the black spots did not represent a genetic disadvantage until the red spots came along. This is hypothetical, but it illustrates the point. A genetic mutation that doesn’t put an organism at a reproductive disadvantage may or may not die out. Even disadvantageous genetic conditions can last for generations and generations (sickle cell anemia, for example).
That is an example of the logical fallacy of “argument from personal incredulity.” You’re basically saying, “I cannot imagine a way for that to happen, therefore it must be incorrect, therefore, another, unrelated claim must be true.”
Phil, Using Logic and Reason are NOT “argument from personal incredulity”. It is sheer idiocy to claim that random motions created the millions (billions and trillions) of perfect steps needed to occur in exactly the right order within a minimal amount of time (otherwise life cannot exist) that are absolutely required to create even the most basic components of life. No branch of science and no experiment in the history of mankind has ever shown this to be the case.
The materialist claims of chaos and mindless matter creating anything are fantasy and science fiction of the worst kind, not borne out by the observed super-complexity of life, the mystery of matter, and the unchanging laws of the Universe under which matter operates.
Is there a single scientific theory which denies that the “laws of the Universe” exist? If anything, science is about figuring out what those laws are.
#48 Phil
Your example is technically correct, but is so trivial as to be meaningless. The brown spots were useless before the mutation, so there was no disadvantage conferred by their absence. Also, the fact that they turned red was due to a change in only one pigment.
In the scenario cited in Jim’s article, an ion-powered pump was converted in one fell swoop into a flagellum propulsion system. For your analogy to hold water, the organism would have had to develop a highly complex, multicomponent physico-chemical structure, dependent on the coordination of dozens of specialized proteins, but which had no use. Why did the organism bother building this elaborate system, piece by piece, for millions of years, if it was useless and could be assigned another function presto chango?
Your “argument from incredulity” statement bespeaks a philosophy of science peculiar to Darwinian apologists. No matter how improbable the explanation, no matter how little evidence, no matter how violently it sins against common sense, it must be accepted because it fits with the theory. This is all backwards, the burden is on the one promoting a theory to prove it; not on the critic to disprove it.
Let’s say I had a theory of, say, polymer miscibility, that depended on comets being aligned with planets at the same moment that sunspots were produced. I describe it with words like “it has been proposed…” and “over time, this system might have been developed…”. All of it vague, hypothetical, and ill-defined; no evidence produced at any point. Then you say “I don’t think that is a good explanation for polymer miscibility. If I responded that “personal incredulity is a logical fallacy” you would think me at least obtuse, if not insane.
Yet this is what awaits those who question the wild “just-so” stories of the Darwinists.
Phil, You have just agreed that there is in fact an Intelligent Designer (Creator) and all matter is guided by the laws He has created. Thanks for supporting ID! I knew you’d come around.
Chaos, random actions, and a mindless Nature do not and cannot ever create laws. Matter itself did not create the laws it’s governed under. Universal laws require a designer/creator. By acknowledging that laws exist, you have confirmed the existence, power, and immense intelligence of the originator of those laws. This is exactly what Fr. Hans, myself, and many others have been saying all along. You finally got it. Welcome to reality!
Phil writes:
Most armchair Darwinists believe the laws preexisted the creation of matter. But in a Darwinian cosmology (based on philosophical materialism), those laws cannot preexist matter. IOW, the laws that govern the arrangement of matter into structures must exist in the matter itself, not apart or outside of it, and must have evolved/emerged as the matter was self-organizing.
There is no other option. You might argue that the laws spontaneously generated during the big bang but this posits design thereby undermining Darwinism. Spontaneous generation of orderly physical law? (Deus ex machina anyone?)
For the Darwinist it is figuring out where those laws came from.
Well, if, by “Intelligent Designer” you actually meant, “the laws of physics” all along, then, yes, we were in agreement.
But I definitely think that the most plausible explanation for speciation on this planet is evolution by natural selection, which I find entirely consistent with the laws of physics, etc.
It may bother you that the theory of evolution doesn’t really have anything to say about whether there’s a God, but it doesn’t bother me.
If you see commonality in our beliefs that the Universe appears to follow laws, that’s great, because I don’t think that you and I, as men of reason, are so very different. We might disagree on whether anyone exists who can break the laws we’ve observed thus far (whether it be Neo from The Matrix or an omnipotent being), but most of the human beings who’ve existed have disagreed about the specifics.
Jacobse, for your statements to have any meaning, you’re going to have to provide a clear explanation of what a “Darwinist” is. Am I a Darwinist? Is everyone who finds the theory of evolution plausible a Darwinist? What’s the difference between “Darwinism” and “the theory of evolution by natural selection,” in your view?
The impression I get is that the uncertainty of science bothers you. The theory of evolution has nothing to say about whether laws pre-existed matter, any more than does the theory of the speed of light. You’re more comfortable with an all-encompassing worldview, which provides answers based on revealed texts, as opposed to slow, plodding discovery.
That’s fine for you, but then you apply the underpinnings of your worldview (everything must have an answer) to others, such as these elusive “Darwinists.” Science is really about the search for answers; providing those answers is just a byproduct of science.
It’s entirely possible for a person to hold the view that the Universe was created by an omnipotent and omniscient Supreme Being, and that this being allowed evolution to take place on our planet. Millions of people hold that belief. That’s because the theory of evolution doesn’t disprove the existence of such a being. (It doesn’t prove it, either, but that’s science for ya.) Now, if I knew what “Darwinists” were, I might have an opinion about their views.
Note 53. Phil writes:
Let me simplify it then. For the Darwinian evolutionist who believes that life emerged through the random collision of elementary particles, the existence of physical laws present a difficult challenge, i.e.: where did they come from?
Darwinian theory is materialistic, that is, it incorporates the the philosophical precepts of philosophical materialism. Philosophical materialism had profound influence in Darwin’s day, long before the philosophical limits of science were properly understood, and long before the unbridled optimism that science would save humanity started to die on the killing fields of WWI, with the final death blow delivered in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany and the Gulags of the Soviet Union.
Philosophical materialism posits nothing exists beside matter. This means that any “ideal”, that is, non-material constituent of human experience, has a material origin. Darwin believed the same thing, or at least he incorporated the assumption into his hypothesis, i.e.: the universe self-organized through random events. No hierarchy of order, no consistent law, guided the process.
So, again, this raises the question for Darwinists: where did the laws come from? Do they exist in the matter that self-organized? Further, the Darwinian must deny that these laws in any way affected the self-organization of matter. Anything else would deny randomness. Deny randomness and the entire house comes tumbling down.
Thus, when you write:
…it reveals that you still don’t grasp philosophical materialism, particularly in its Darwinian manifestation. Randomness is essential to the hypothesis, and positing an Aristotelean-like “umoved mover” at the top of the process just doesn’t work. Essentially you are arguing that the randomness is contained within hierarchy, but philosophical materialism does not allow this (thus neither does Darwinism) without fatally undermining the materialist thesis. (Aristotle’s thesis “works”, as an epistemological principle anyway, in an ordered universe, not a random one.)
No, Jacobse, you’re failing to grasp the limits of the theory of evolution because you’re loading it up with extra baggage.
The theory of evolution by natural selection is not an explanation for how life came to exist.
Darwin’s theory was about speciation, not the origin of life. You are factually incorrect here. It may be true that there are “evolutionists” who hold that belief about the origin of life, but when you conflate the two, you’re constructing a straw man.
Further, one need not “be” a philosophical materialist to find the theory of evolution plausible, any more than one must be a philosophical materialist to find that modern theories of planetary orbits make sense. An “unmoved mover” could have created the laws of gravity and physics, and an “unmoved mover” could have set the events of evolution in motion.
You’re creating a position that you find logically inconsistent, then you’re attributingit to other people, then you’re arguing against it. That’s now how science, or logic, works.
Phil writes:
It’s called “Origin of the Species.”
Nope. Darwin’s notions of a random universe draw directly from philosophical materialism. I’ve been through this ten times now but you still don’t grasp it.
Don’t bother trying to draw a distinction between Darwin and Neo-Darwinism because all you will discover are differences in details, not underlying philosophy. Both are materialistic (don’t confuse the philosophical definition of materialism with the scientific meaning of the term), that is, both allow for no order or hierarchy in the universe.*
*To the extent that visible order exists, the Darwinist must argue that order emerges from matter itself; order does not exist above or apart from matter; there is no agency of ordering outside of matter, if he is to remain philosophically consistent. Read on.
Phil, you just don’t see the implications of your assertions, and you don’t understand the philosophical ground from which they are drawn.
It occurs to me that you are thinking of evolution in terms of design. IOW, you seem to think that evolution is an orderly process (a kind of contained randomness) put in motion by an unmoved mover. Sorry, but evolution itself precludes this definition. Evolution is random, no design is implied.
Further, you seem to indicate that the process is orderly because of physical law, that is, physical laws guided the evolutionary process. But if physical laws guide the process, then they must also predate it. If so, design, not randomness, is implied, thus relegating evolutionary theory to an epistemological principle, that is, a construct by which scientific data is arranged, and not a theory about origins (contra Darwin).
True evolutionists don’t believe this of course, although many armchair Darwinists do. If physical laws guided the evolutionary process, then design, order, hierarchy, etc. reigns in the universe, and the philosophical underpinnings of the evolutionary theory (a random collision of material particles) are thereby nullified. You can’t claim the universe consists of matter, energy, and design on one hand, and then claim it consists only of matter and energy in your part of it on the other. This is philosophically incoherent.
You really need to read Gilder again, but this time try to comprehend it: Evolution and Me.
Then read Berlinski again: The God of the Gaps.
On the social ramifications of this debate, read Tom Wolfe’s Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died.
It’s hard conceiving of a random universe, isn’t it? Armchair Darwinists simply can’t do it. They think they are Darwinian, but in fact their thinking is just confused. From the opposite direction: Why are true evolutionists such adamant atheists? Because unlike the armchair Darwinist, they understand the philosophical ground and implications of the Darwinian hypothesis.
Fr. Hans writes: “From the opposite direction: Why are true evolutionists such adamant atheists? Because unlike the armchair Darwinist, they understand the philosophical ground and implications of the Darwinian hypothesis.”
A poll of members of the National Academy of Sciences taken in 1998 showed that only 10 percent believed in the existence of God or immortality, and 5 percent of biologists.
http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/55593
As the article notes, such polls have been taken since 1914, and the numbers continue to drop. Thus I would be surprised to see any kind of realignment on this issue.
The proponents of intelligent design have had absolutely no success in convincing other scientists. There’s no research to support it. No papers have been published in peer-reviewed journals. They were shot down in flames in the Dover case. Outside of the religious community ID has little appeal. I just don’t see how there is going to be any kind of major rejection of evolution.
Jim writes:
The NAS is a Darwinian stronghold. I hope you don’t expect us to believe that on issues as contentious as the collapse of philosophical materialism (remember Marx, Freud?), that this snap shot proves anything.
From the Center for Science and Culture:
“Critics of intelligent design often claim that design advocates don’t publish their work in appropriate scientific literature. For example, Barbara Forrest, a philosophy professor at Southeastern Louisiana University, was quoted in USA Today (March 25, 2005) that design theorists ‘aren’t published because they don’t have scientific data.’”
See: Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design (Annotated).
The Marxists didn’t see the collapse of Marxism coming either.
Fr. Hans writes: “See: Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design (Annotated).”
Ok, I concede that there have been articles about ID in “peer-reviewed journals.”
I did some research on the articles. Rather than posting a long essay with multiple links, let me just provide a summary:
One article, S.C. Meyer, “The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories,” Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, 117(2) (2004): 213-239, was later repudiated by the Journal, saying that it had not been properly vetted, and that the content was inappropriate for the Journal.
Other articles talk about complexity, etc., but never actually talk about ID. One article was published in a mathematical journal, not a biological journal. Other articles were actually reviews of articles and books. Few articles actually presented any new data.
One scientist reviewed the list of articles published on the Discovery Institute web site and noted that more articles are published on evolutionary biology in one week than are in the entire publication history of intelligent design:
Even by the most generous criteria, the peer-reviewed scientific output from the intelligent design (ID) movement is very low, especially considering the long history and generous funding of the movement. The list of papers and books above is not exhaustive, but there is not a lot else. One week’s worth of peer-reviewed papers on evolutionary biology exceeds the entire history of ID peer-review.
Even granted that there have been articles related in some way to ID published in peer-reviewed journals, one fellow noted that
“Publishing is not an end in itself. Scientific ideas mean nothing unless they can withstand criticism and be built upon. None of the ‘intelligent design’ publications have led to any productive work. Most have had their main ideas rebutted.”
Concerning the analogy to Marxism — there were in existence other economic theories that predated Marxism by centuries. Marxism collapsed because it didn’t work. In contrast to that evolutionary theory has led to actual discoveries, opened new and fruitful avenues of inquiry, been supported by other branches of science (e.g., genetics and geology), and generated actual verifiable predictions. It would be fair to say that it’s not that there’s biology on the one hand and evolution on the other. Rather, modern biology IS evolutionary biology.
In a sense, ID is the new Marxism: relatively new, competing with a well-established body of knowledge, and thus far without any significant results to its credit. I suspect that, like Marxism, it also will eventually fade into obscurity.
The original title was On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. It’s about how variation in species came to be, not how life originated.
Here’s an article that explains this better:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/feb/09/darwin.myths
Again, you are factually incorrect in your insistence that the theory of evolution, or Darwin himself, provide an answer about the origin of life. This is not a matter of opinion. You can choose to dig in your heels and insist that it is otherwise, but…why do that?
You frequently have insightful things to say, when you have your facts right.
Further, your condescending tone is misplaced:
I haven’t said anything that’s incorrect. The truth is, a scientific theory is a description of the way a process works, or a prediction of what will happen if a process continues, or a description of the way a process occurred. A theory describes the behavior of a set of phenomena.
A theory may be incorrect. A theorist may be influenced by politics, by philosophy, by cosmology. However, these statements are independent of each other. The influence of politics, philosophy, and cosmology do not have an impact on whether or not a theory is correct.
A theory is not a fact, but it describes facts. If species on this earth have common ancestors from which they evolved, then the theory of evolution is correct. If that’s the case, it doesn’t really matter who thought of it. It doesn’t matter what the zeitgeist was at the time the theory was conceived. It doesn’t matter what religion the theory’s adherents follow. These subjective social currents have no influence on the facts that the theory describes, and thus have no bearing on whether it is (or was) correct.
If the facts that Darwin described were correct, then it’s irrelevant whether his notions drew from philosophical materialism.
If you believe that a supreme being was incapable of creating the sequence of events that the theory of evolution describes, then you don’t believe in an omnipotent supreme being.
Additionally, the correctness of a scientific theory has nothing to do with the originator of that theory. Darwin is, himself, irrelevant to the accuracy of the theory of evolution. That’s why modern-day creationists insist on using the term “Darwinism,” as if the facts of evolution are somehow linked to the personality of a single historic figure.
Phil writes:
Let’s try it one more time. Evolution, the notion that live evolved from simple to complex organisms, is a philosophical, not scientific, notion. It presents itself as a scientific theory (indeed, there are indications of natural selection within species), but the notion that the world evolved from a single organism into complexity by random interactions through vast stretches of time is, well, scientifically unsustainable. The evidence is just not there.
So where does the theory come from? The key is in the idea of random interactions. Is the universe really random? This is a philosophical precept, not a scientific one. In fact, we know physical laws exist in the universe, but as I have said twenty times before, these laws must exist in matter itself and emerged concurrently with the random organization of matter into complex structures, lest the entire notion of random chance (a key philosophical component of Darwinian evolution) collapses.
This is the area of your confusion. You think that some kind of law guides chance (your notion that an unmoved mover, that some kind of intelligence set the entire evolutionary process in motion reveals this). In short, you don’t really understand that random means random, not design.
Kind of. What you really mean to say that politics, philosophy, and cosmology cannot speak to the scientific (properly understood) veracity of a theory. But it does not follow that a theory cannot be examined and critiqued on non-scientific grounds, especially when it makes philosophical, cosmological, cultural, etc. assumptions.
Look at Darwinism and eugenics for example. Sure, the eugenic horror that swept the country earlier in the last century does not speak to the scientific veracity of Darwinism. It does, however, speak to the cultural assumptions of Darwinists (not all Darwinists of course), who use the theory as justification for their crimes. It requires as well a hard look at whether these justifications are indeed justified, at least in a philosophical, if not moral, sense.
Thus, it would be wrong to conclude that Darwin was a eugenicist (although there are some writings that indicate he was not unaware of the eugenic implications of his theory), but it would not be wrong to deny that Darwinian thought opened to the floodgates to these crimes (they did). Further, when you examine Darwinian cosmological assumptions (random universe, etc.), ignoring the philosophical basis of these assumptions is an act of historical ignorance.
Now let’s examine some of your assumptions a bit further.
Facts? Above it’s a theory. No, the theory is not divorced from philosophical materialism (you imply as much), and secondly, the fact that it is makes the study of the impact of the evolutionary theory on culture and history all the more relevant.
This statement is nothing more than a rhetorical proposition. Your supreme being is Aristotle’s “unmoved mover”, but your attempt to reconcile Aristotle and Darwin (design and randomness) drains the Darwinian notion of a random universe of all meaning. Dawkins would laugh at your ignorance of the cosmological dimension of the Darwinian hypothesis.
Right. The term “Darwinism” functions as a kind of short-hand for the entire theory. Maybe the term “evolutionary theory” would be better. But then again, since Darwin was the originator of the theory, and he was a man thoroughly steeped in the materialism sweeping the continent at the time (it was no accident that Marx and Freud emerged in the same epoch), separating the man from his theory gets a bit dicey, particularly considering that evolutionary theory is more than a scientific theory.
Note 60. Jim writes:
Actually, no. Marxism collapsed because of spiritual exhaustion — all that spilled blood in the name of “scientific progress” tends to do that. Further, not too sure of what actual discoveries evolutionary theory has led to. Some of the brightest minds in science (Gilder, Berlinksi, there will be others…just watch) argue Darwinism is a hindrance to scientific inquiry.
Darwinism, like Marxism, will fall because philosophical materialism is a dead end. There will be frenetic attempts to keep the ship afloat (aggressive atheism on the part of prominent Darwinists is one example; dragging Design proponents into court is another), but the Darwinist hegemony will continue to erode.
#62
Thus, it would be wrong to conclude that Darwin was a eugenicist (although there are some writings that indicate he was not unaware of the eugenic implications of his theory), …
I think this is understating the case. Just look at the title of his book, quoted by Phil above:
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
This connection is kept scrupulously hidden from the public by Darwin apologists.
Phil, Jim, and Fr. Hans, you are all talking past one another since you are using the key terms here to mean different things. You need to settle on just exactly what is meant by evolution, Darwinism, common descent, etc. Dawkins and Dennet purposely conflate these terms so they can accuse everyone of being a young-earth creationist, but it is not necessary that everyone be so dishonest.
Fr. Hans writes: “…aggressive atheism on the part of prominent Darwinists is one example; dragging Design proponents into court is another…”
Dover showed what happens when ID has to go toe-to-toe with science — not on web sites, but in the light of cross-examination and testimony under oath. The results weren’t pretty. Who was the judge? John E. Jones, a Republican appointed to the bench by George Bush.
Fr. Hans: “…the Darwinist hegemony will continue to erode.”
Other than in the religiously or politically conservative ranks, in what way do you see it eroding?
So, all you’re really saying is that you believe the theory of evolution is an inaccurate description of the facts–that is, it’s not the way things really happened.
But the only thing you’ve said which actually supports that notion is that “the evidence is just not there.”
The rest of your statements–that it’s a philosophical notion, that it draws from materialism, etc.–have nothing to do with the correctness or incorrectness of the theory. It’s just wheel-spinning. You’re pretending that somehow the events of history are impacted by whether a description of them fits into a particular cosmology.
But, in case you were wondering, regarding your contention that the evidence doesn’t support the theory of evolution, I disagree.
Note 65. Jim writes:
You are reading this wrong Jim. Taking ID proponents to court is a political maneuver. Judges are not scientists. You will see more of this happening BTW, as the Darwinian establishment feels increasingly threatened.
I think you will see the hegemony erode. IOW, while conservatives are most likely to make their skepticism of the hypothesis known, at least initially, I think you will see the skepticism increase across the board. It’s inevitable IMO, because the unarticulated faith in materialism is eroding across the board. Freud, Marx, and Darwin. They all drank from the same philosophical well. They were all roundly defended as secular prophets, and their findings as “scientific.” Darwin is the only one left standing — so far.
My hunch is that in the next few years, you will see more prominent scientists walk away from the theory. I would not be surprised if many scientists have already abandoned it but it is still too dangerous to admit it in public. But there are some brilliant thinkers who are brave, some of them posted here like Gilder and Berlinski. More will come. Philosophical materialism (scientific naturalism) is a dead end and a lot of people know it.
Note 66. Phil writes:
You still don’t understand the points about cosmology, randomness, philosophical materialism, etc. Put more simply, the theory draws on philosophy, not science. Even your term “the events of history” reveals a conflation of philosophy and science, yet you still to want to believe the theory is pure science. Then there was trying to put Aristotle on top of Darwin — philosophical incoherence, really.
Here’s an interview with some prominent non-Darwinists I found: The Measure of Design. It might help.
Oh yes, if you think Darwinism has no philosophical or cultural implications, read the last post on this blog: Darwin and Hitler: In Their Own Words. (Implications have antecedents, BTW. If the theory was pure science, why was Darwin using it to morally justify social engineering?)
Fr. Hans writes: “Judges are not scientists.”
Very true, but in this case the judge (a Republican, as I mentioned), was a kind of “man in the street.” He is not a scientist, but was an intelligent layperson evaluating the arguments of scientists and others. By way of analogy consider (Republican and conservative Baptist) Judge Greer and the Schiavo case. Disagree with Greer if you want, but something like 70 percent of the people in the country agreed with him.
Fr. Hans: “It’s inevitable IMO, because the unarticulated faith in materialism is eroding across the board.”
Again, I just don’t see that outside of people who are religiously predisposed to ID in the first place. Numbers? Statistics? Polls? If you have it, bring it on.
Fr. Hans: “My hunch is that in the next few years, you will see more prominent scientists walk away from the theory.”
And if that doesn’t happen? Really, I don’t think it will happen. I don’t see a trend or anything resembling a trend. Quite the opposite.
Tom C writes: “Phil, Jim, and Fr. Hans, you are all talking past one another since you are using the key terms here to mean different things.”
Good point. I think the key term that needs to be defined is “science.” When the vast, overwhelming number of scientists accept a certain theory and use that in a very practical way to guide research, make predictions, etc. — if that’s not science, then what is?
Jacobse,
A “fact” is a thing which is either true or false. The “events of history” are facts, whether we actually know what those events are or not.
Facts are not subject to opinion. Obviously, Darwin’s writings are a text which millions of people can project their own views onto, or draw their own opinions about. Absolutely, both Darwinism and the theory of evolution (we agree that those are two separate things, right?) have cultural implications.
But those cultural implications have no impact on whether the facts described by the theory are true or not.
You seem to believe that there is a two-way flow between the two areas: that somehow, the opinions/cosmologies/philosophies/cultural implications–and all of the possible ways that humans can think about facts–have an impact on whether those facts occurred, and whether a theory that proposes a description of those facts is accurate.
That’s just fallacious, Jacobse. Facts might affect opinions. They might affect philosophies and cosmologies. But do you really believe that opinions, cosmologies, and philosophies have an affect on facts?
(Keep in mind, I’m not saying that a fact is a true thing. A fact is a thing which is either true or false. So “the facts of evolution” refers to the truth or falsity of evolution.)
The cultural implications that stem from the theory of evolution have absolutely no bearing on whether the theory itself is an accurate description of the process of speciation.
Note 69. Jim writes:
Doesn’t matter. A few years ago the consensus was that stress causes ulcers. Bring it into a court and any judge - liberal or conservative - would have agreed. The scientific establishment shunned the Australian researcher arguing differently. Turns out the researcher was right. Bacteria, not stress, cause ulcers.
If you let a courtroom decide complex questions like the veracity of evolution (or whether or not the infirm should be killed), all you will get is a snapshot of prevailing opinion. No light is shed. This should be self-evident.
This is a quote from Louis Agassiz, a contemporary of Darwin and probably the the greatest natural scientist ever. There are several notable points:
* Darwin’s theory was, and still is, one of many possible theories. Propagandists like Richard Dawkins portray this issue as being only Darwin vs. the young earth creationists; but, there are other alternatives, some based on religious understanding, some not. Fred Hoyle, the great astronomer, for example, understood himself as a pagan, somewhat akin to the ancient Greeks, and he thoroughly rejected Darwin’s theory. David Berlinski, who Fr. Hans has referenced, is an agnostic Jew who rejects the theory.
* Agassiz said that the conjecture was not even the best “for the present state of our knowledge”. What is really remarkable, is that every advance in our knowledge since that time has been adverse to Darwin’s theory. Darwin thought cells to be undifferentiated material; cells turn out to be chemical factories of mind-boggling complexity. A consequence of the theory was that if you somehow “played the tape backward” and then let life evolve again, different organisms would result; recent experiments where the tape has been played backward by targeted genetic deletions have led to the same organisms once they were allowed to evolve again. Individual features were thought to result from gradual accretions of gene sequences; in real life fully 60% of the mammalian genome - from every region - somehow regulates the development of the eye.
* It is interesting that this contemporary quote speaks of the theory as “an attempt to explain the origin of life”. Note, Phil, that this is not just the narrow goal of explaining speciation.
Jim, in this debate, as in the global warming debate, it is interesting how frequently you appeal to cultural power as the ultimate tribunal. You don’t appear willing to consider reasoned persuasion; it’s all about guilt by association, majority rule, social sanctions, etc.
It’s interesting, too, how the rhetorical strategies of these two debates are so similar. There are now hundreds of highly qualified scientists questioning global warming orthodoxy. They are equated with holocaust deniers, called stooges of the oil industry, and described as flat-earthers. Not even an attempt to engage the arguments. Similarly, there are hundreds of scientists who question Darwinian orthodoxy. They are all (misleadingly) called young-earth creationists.
When you see these dishonest tactics, based on smears more than anything, it’s apparent that cultural power is at stake, and the party in power is teetering.
Phil, Yes, “facts” are needed to PROVE anything. Where are your facts and research that show that chaotic processes and random acts create super-structures? Heck, show us even ONE experiment or research in the history of science that shows that random actions using basic elements create any meaningful or functional structures. We’re still waiting… As I have stated over, and over, and over again the BURDEN of PROOF rests fully on the Darwinist Cult Followers.
Logic and the scientific process REQUIRE that once a Theory is developed by investigation and inferred from the existing evidence, that Theory MUST be PROVED via experimentation that confirms the theory. That experimentation must be ultimately solidified by conclusive proof, it must be consistent, repeatable, and universal. The experiments must support and re-inforce the theory and the final theory must predict the future results of similar experimentation conclusively.
Yet to date, the key element of the Darwinist-Evolutionist-Secularist dogma that: “Random Actions Result in Progressively Complex Structures” has never been shown to occur in any experiment or research anywhere, in any way, shape, or form, on any scale.
All we are left with is what Darwin observed and wrote about and scientists, biologists, and geologists have since confirmed via experiments, research, and the geological record, that: “Originally designed creatures with complex biological structures when subjected to different environmental factors over long periods of time tend to change within a certain prescribed range of biological modifications that either enhance certain beneficial traits or de-emphasize some mutations that are not crucial to survival.” This is simply known as Adaptation to the Environment, a far cry and a universe away from the “universal evolution, random action creates life from non-life and man evolved from amoebas by chance” fantasy that was invented by some and since raised to the level of dogma by those who ignore the very scientific principles and laws that govern all of creation.
The true “religiuos fanatics” (we shall call them “secularist fanatics”) in this debate who have failed miserably to provide us with any verifiable and repeatable experiments to back up their Random Actions Created Order and Reason philosophy are the Darwinists and the Evolutionists after all. Ironic isn’t it!
Lord have mercy. Some FACTS
Facts always have to be interpreted
The interpretation comes from context
One’s philosophy provides the context
Everyone has a philosophy
There is no such thing as objectivity because even carefully designed double-blind research studies show statistically significant experimenter bias
Ideas have consequences and are always connected to other ideas, they do not exist in isolation
Darwin’s grandfather proposed ideas similar to what Darwin himself ultimately articulated and Darwin set out to ‘prove’ his grandfather’s thought, thought that was specifically designed to replace the Christian understanding of man and nature. In other words, Darwin was not an impartial observer who allowed evidence to form his conclusions, he went looking for evidence to support the conclusion he already had. IMO that is not science.
Peer review does weed out some insubstantial work, however, it just as often functions as a method to squash acutal discussion of new thought and protect the elite even when there is actual experimental evidence. Case in point: The outback Australian doctor who discovered that ulcers where most often caused by bacteria and could be treated safely and effectively with anti-biotics was villified for years as a quack and the peer reviewed journals refused to publish his work. His work was refused not because of inadequate science but simply because he challenged the concensus and was only an outback doctor, therefore he could not possibly have anything to contribute.
Interpretation:
The 19th century was a century of rebellion against established authority and order in all of its forms, political, economic and religious. While some of the rebellion was necessary, e.g., the abolishment of the slave trade, much was excessive. Marx, Freud, Darwin and Nietzche are the epitome of excess. Unfortunately, they set the stage for the assault on humanity itself that is the story of the 20th century.
If anyone wants a unique take on the whole thing by a first rate thinker written during the midst of it all I suggest The Degradation of the Democratic Dogma by Henry Adams.
That sounds neat! Do you have a citation so I can read about that?
Hi Banescu! It sounds here like you are agreeing with me: that Jacobse was mistaken, and that “philiosophies,” “cosmologies,” and “cultural implications” do not prove or disprove a theory. As you say, only facts provide evidence as to the correctness or incorrectness of a theory.
My goal in this thread has never been to prove or disprove the theory of evolution (although I do acknowledge that I personally find it plausible.) Read my posts here again, if you wish–I’m talking about the Darwin/evolution/ID debate, but I’m not devoting energy to proving the events of evolution.
About this small matter, it appears we agree.
Phil -
Role of Gene Interaction in Hybrid Speciation: Evidence from Ancient and Experimental Hybrids,” Science 272, 1996
Tom C writes: “There are now hundreds of highly qualified scientists questioning global warming orthodoxy. They are equated with holocaust deniers, called stooges of the oil industry, and described as flat-earthers. Not even an attempt to engage the arguments. Similarly, there are hundreds of scientists who question Darwinian orthodoxy. They are all (misleadingly) called young-earth creationists.”
The two situations are very different. [ed: no they are not, it's exactly the same situation, NO solid proof and no CAUSATION has been shown.] Scientists who are doubters of global warming are citing existing data and research, and suggesting new avenues of research, and more power to them. AGW involves a large number of variables related in complex ways [ed: translation, they have NO idea], in order to create predictions [ed: mostly fantasy] of what might happen decades in the future.
Proponents of ID are basically advocating an “argument from personal incredulity.” [ed: No, we're asking for EVIDENCE and EXPERIMENTS that LOGICALLY show CAUSATION and PROVE the theory] and In other words, “I don’t see how it could have worked that way, therefore it didn’t.” Most of their examples have been refuted [ed: That's a flat out LIE]. Their published works are few, in comparison with those of evolutionary biologists. Evolutionary theory is completely consistent with other bodies of science, including genetics and geology [ed: That's another flat out LIE,]. If I were a betting man, I wouldn’t put my money on ID [ed: You truly are a Darwinist Cult Follower, All you do is EMOTE]. Quite the opposite.
Concerning creationism and ID, I have a lot more I’d like to say. But I just started a new job, and the demands of putting food on the table must take priority.
Note 75. Phil writes:
Sure, if evolution were a scientific theory this would be true. But it’s not. It’s a creation story, a narrative really, with deep moral and cultural implications, as the post about Darwin’s prescriptions for social engineering make clear.
What other “scientific theory” makes such sweeping cosmological assumptions and cultural assertions? None. If one dares to construct such a theory, and then seek cultural legitimization by adding the appellation “scientific” to it, we’d call it dubious at best and crackpot at work (Marxism for example).
The truth is that Darwinism is the creation story of the philosophical materialist. It’s no accident that prominent Darwinists are leading the charge for atheism. Their world view (materialism) is about to crumble.
Having said that, it will be the scientists themselves that deliver the fatal blow, as it should be. And it will fall as its scientific untenability becomes increasingly evident. The philosophical dimension has already suffered a fatal wound, as the fall of Marx and Freud make clear. (Darwin, Marx, and Freud drank from the same philosophical well.)
The straw man here is that you are applying cosmological assumptions and cultural assertions onto a theory that is, if you look at it as a theory, simply a description of processes that may or may not have occurred.
Nothing makes evolution more materialist than the theory of gravity except your opinion that God might have created gravity, whereas he certainly didn’t leave the primordial soup to its own devices to turn into snails and fish and Britney Spears over millennia.
But, it’s clear that people have shared your view in the past about scientific theories. The Vatican certainly felt that the theory of a heliocentric “solar system” made sweeping cosmological assumptions and cultural assertions. Even Einstein was uncomfortable with some of the assumptions of quantum theory.
But the truth or falsity of a theory has nothing to do with the cosmology of its proponents or the cultural implications that fallible humans read into it.
If, for example, subatomic particles really are able to exist in two places at once, provided they are unobserved, then that’s the way it is. My opinion about it doesn’t matter. If the “quantum eraser experiment” means that a photon can change its direction before it is observed, well hey, that might blow our minds, but it doesn’t mean the theory isn’t accurately describing the process.
Phil writes:
Nope. The theory itself holds the cosmological assumption: a random universe. The theory breaks down otherwise. No random universe equals no evolutionary hypothesis. Can’t have one without the other.
I still think you don’t grasp what “random” actually entails. I think you see evolution as the unfolding of biological life in an ordered universe.
Jim, the Fossil Records actually support Creation, NOT evolution. Get your facts straight before posting lies and fabrications. Here we go again setting the record straight and countering your fantasy and dogma with reality and the actual geological record, not the fictional one you keep bringing up. Yet another religious conservative exposing the secularist fanaticism for what it is.
The missing fossil data needed to support evolution is a crucial argument expressed by many of the book’s contributors. If Darwin was correct, then scores of transitional animal forms must exist in the geological record. However, as Phillip E. Johnson points out:
Such evidence simply does not exist. According to Cornelius G. Hunter:
In the face of such convincing evidence, one would expect evolutionary scientists to acknowledge some serious flaws in their theories. After all, science should be about searching for the truth. Unfortunately, Johnson notes:
Instead of admitting the problems and allowing for criticism, the Darwinist establishment ignores the data and muzzles the dissenters, choosing to discredit the messengers rather than face reality. As Dembski observes:
http://www.orthodoxnet.com/articles/Banescu/Review_Uncommon_Dissent_2004.php
Even Darwin himself had serious doubts about his theories and ideas (essentially saying the same thing as Johnson and Hunter (surprise, surprise!):