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But Darwinism is universally accepted among "real" scientists!
|December 30, 2016
|Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Science
To hear lobbyists and pop science mags tell it.
Except, that is, for a lot of insiders over the years. A friend started making a list of books that doubt all or most of modern Darwinism, neo-Darwinism, the slightly elastic Extended Synthesis, and came up with a three-tiered, hardly exhaustive, shelf:
St. George Mivart, On the Genesis of Species (1871)
Charles Hodge, What Is Darwinism (1874)
Samuel Butler, Evolution, Old and New (1879)
Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution (1907/tr. 1911)
Svante Arrhenius Worlds in the Making (1908)
Richard Goldschmidt, The Material Basis of Evolution (1940)
Jacques Barzun, Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage (1941)
Lecomte du Nouy, Human Destiny (1947)
Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution (1959)
Norman Macbeth, Darwin Retried (Delta, 1971)
Pierre Paul Grassé: "L´evolution du vivant" (1973)
Gordon Rattray Taylor, The Great Evolution Mystery (Harper, 1983)
L. Cohen, Darwin Was Wrong: A Study in Probabilities (1984)
Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (1985)
Soren Lovtrup Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth (1987)
Rupert Sheldrake, The Presence of the Past: The Memory of Nature (1988)
R. F. Baum, Doctors of Modernity: Darwin, Marx & Freud (1988)
Robert Wesson, Beyond Natural Selection, MIT (1991)
Dorothy Kurth Boberg, Evolution and Reason – Beyond Darwin (1993)
Remy Chauvin: "Le darwinism où le fin d´un mythe" (1997)
Lynn Margulis, Symbiotic Life: A New Look at Evolution (1998)
Stuart Newman and Gerd Muller (eds.), Origination of Organismal Form" (2002)
David Stove, Darwinian Fairytales (2006)
Etienne Gilson, From Aristotle to Darwin & Back Again : A Journey in Final Causality, Species and Evolution (2009)
Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini, What Darwin God Wrong (2010)
Gerd Muller and Massimo Pigliucci, Evolution: the Extended Synthesis" (2010)
George McGhee, Convergent Evolution: Limited Forms Most Beautiful, MIT (2011)
Thomas Nagel, Mind & Cosmos (2012)
A Lima-de-Faria, Evolution without Selection: Form and Function by Autoevolution (2013)
Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (2015 [updated from 1985])
I (O'Leary for News) would add writer Suzan Mazur's:
The Altenberg 16: An Exposé of the Evolution Industry (2009)
Paradigm Shifters (2015) and
Public Evolution Summit (2016).
These collections of Mazur's interviews with current non-Darwinian evolutionists are a good place to either begin or catch up.
Lobbyists and pop science mags are easy to account for as a roadblock to change in this area. They market virtue signals. You know: The time for debate is over, anyway there is no debate, only the forces of evil doubt… They appeal to people who just need to stay on the PC side. After a mass of ignored, dismissed data builds up (see above), a discreditable system of knowledge must either crumble or reform.
But a question nags: Why is Checkpoint Charlie is still so overstaffed with dogmatists in the field? They have to know something is wrong. Physicist Rob Sheldon kindly writes to say,
Because somebody with resources thinks it is important.
Note that it doesn't have to be a majority. It doesn't have to make sense. It doesn't even mean that there's a threat. Just that somebody finds it important enough to devote resources to it.
My best guess is that there are several completely distinct groups that find it mutually helpful to man the booth:
a) the nouveau athée who still have a bothersome conscience trying to sneak back in
b) the elitist who wants a subservient underclass to unquestionably obey social engineering projects
c) the intelligentsia who want science (and himself) to acquire more power and prestige
d) the communist who hates the church and its diminishing power
e) the youth who covets the privileged life of all the above
f) the jaded, faded, past-middle-age bureaucrat who has trouble sleeping at night
g) the one or two NCSE educrats who find it a very remunerative position for a set of useless skills
Well, in the New Year, let's resolve to keep reading, learning, and thinking. Eventually, a better informed public starts to matter.
See also: "Fast evolution" affects everyone everywhere—provided we are not too particular about what we consider evolution
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25 Responses to But Darwinism is universally accepted among "real" scientists!
Thank you for sharing this important information.
I am currently reading Michael Denton's recent outstanding book, Evolution: Still a Theory in Crisis. An incredible achievement and a must-read for anyone interested in the evolution debate.
Although Darwinists may firmly believe that they are 'real scientists', I hold that if you practice science in the field of biological sciences, and still believe in Darwinian evolution, then you are not a 'real scientist' but are in fact no better than a astrologer, tea-leaf reader, or a crystal ball gazer.
And unlike evolutionists, such as Moran, Myers, wd400, etc.., who will never give you a straight answer, much less empirical evidence, for why they adamantly believe evolution, (Darwinian evolution, neutral evolution, or otherwise evolution), to be a 'real science', (or for why they mercilessly ridicule anyone who disagrees with them), I will give you the precise reasons why Darwinian evolution fails to qualify as a 'real science'.
Tom Wolfe, in his recent book 'Kingdom of Speech', briefly mentioned the five standard tests for a scientific hypothesis:
"There are five standard tests for a scientific hypothesis. Has anyone observed the phenomenon — in this case, Evolution — as it occurred and recorded it? Could other scientists replicate it? Could any of them come up with a set of facts that, if true, would contradict the theory (Karl Popper's "falsifiability" tests)? Could scientists make predictions based on it? Did it illuminate hitherto unknown or baffling areas of science? In the case of Evolution… well… no… no… no… no… and no."
– Tom Wolfe – The Kingdom of Speech – page 17
To flesh these five standard tests out a little bit, in regards to the first test
Has anyone observed the phenomenon — in this case, Evolution — as it occurred and recorded it?
Coyne, Mayr, and Moran have made these following statements in regards to the unobservable, historical, nature of Darwinian 'science':
"In science's pecking order, evolutionary biology lurks somewhere near the bottom, far closer to phrenology than to physics. For evolutionary biology is a historical science, laden with history's inevitable imponderables. We evolutionary biologists cannot generate a Cretaceous Park to observe exactly what killed the dinosaurs; and, unlike "harder" scientists, we usually cannot resolve issues with a simple experiment, such as adding tube A to tube B and noting the color of the mixture."
– Jerry A. Coyne – Of Vice and Men, The New Republic, April 3, 2000 p.27 – professor of Darwinian evolution at the University of Chicago
"Evolutionary biology, in contrast with physics and chemistry, is a historical science — the evolutionist attempts to explain events and processes that have already taken place. Laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques for the explication of such events and processes. Instead one constructs a historical narrative, consisting of a tentative reconstruction of the particular scenario that led to the events one is trying to explain."
Ernst Mayr – Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought – Nov. 2009 – Originally published July 2000
Larry Moran, a professor of Evolutionary Biology, quoting Futuyma: "The theory of genetic drift … includes some of the most highly refined mathematical models in biology."
Me: "can you be kind enough to point us to the exact experiment that verified that those 'highly refined mathematical models' were actually talking about reality instead of just Darwinian pipe dreams?"
Larry Moran: "That's like asking to show how the mathematical models of physics predict the formation of Venus. Do you realize how silly that sounds?"
Me: "Not nearly as silly as you saying that unguided material processes could EVER build a flagellum given all the time in the universe.
Which is still yet orders of magnitude not as silly as you saying unguided material processes created your 'beyond belief' brain.
In regards to the second test
Could other scientists replicate it?
Stephen Jay Gould argued that if it were possible to 'rewind the tape of life', the history of life would not repeat itself. The world would be unfamiliar, and most likely lack humans.
The reason Gould argued that he would expect a totally different outcome for life is because randomness, completely free and unguided randomness, is held to be the driving creative force behind Darwinian evolution.
In fact Richard Lenski himself, in his Long Term Evolution Experiment (LTEE), held that the infamous citrate adaptation was a non-repeatable contingent event and that it was therefore undeniable proof for Darwinian evolution.
Yet, in an experiment Lenski did not take kindly to, Scott Minnich came along and falsified Lenski's claim that it was Darwinian evolution by showing the adaptation was repeatable and that it was not contingent, i.e. that it was therefore not the result of chance as Lenski had presupposed.
Rapid Evolution of Citrate Utilization by Escherichia coli by Direct Selection Requires citT and dctA. – Minnich – Feb. 2016
The isolation of aerobic citrate-utilizing Escherichia coli (Cit(+)) in long-term evolution experiments (LTEE) has been termed a rare, innovative, presumptive speciation event. We hypothesized that direct selection would rapidly yield the same class of E. coli Cit(+) mutants and follow the same genetic trajectory: potentiation, actualization, and refinement. This hypothesis was tested,,,
Potentiation/actualization mutations occurred within as few as 12 generations, and refinement mutations occurred within 100 generations.,,,
E. coli cannot use citrate aerobically. Long-term evolution experiments (LTEE) performed by Blount et al. (Z. D. Blount, J. E. Barrick, C. J. Davidson, and R. E. Lenski, Nature 489:513-518, 2012, http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature11514 ) found a single aerobic, citrate-utilizing E. coli strain after 33,000 generations (15 years). This was interpreted as a speciation event. Here we show why it probably was not a speciation event. Using similar media, 46 independent citrate-utilizing mutants were isolated in as few as 12 to 100 generations. Genomic DNA sequencing revealed an amplification of the citT and dctA loci and DNA rearrangements to capture a promoter to express CitT, aerobically. These are members of the same class of mutations identified by the LTEE. We conclude that the rarity of the LTEE mutant was an artifact of the experimental conditions and not a unique evolutionary event. No new genetic information (novel gene function) evolved.
Besides Minnich falsifying Lenski's supposed proof of 'non-repeatable' Darwinian evolution, there is also the fact that the presumption of supposed "non-repeatable" Darwinian evolution' is falsified by numerous unexpected instances of so called 'convergent evolution'.
Simon Conway Morris has a website documenting hundreds, if not thousands, of examples of unexpected 'convergent evolution':
Map Of Life – Simon Conway Morris
In reality, the appeal to 'convergent evolution' by Darwinists, instead of being a realistic 'scientific explanation', reflects the unscientific nature of Darwinian evolution in that unexpected empirical findings are never allowed to falsify the supposed 'scientific' theory of Darwinian evolution:
Problem 7: Convergent Evolution Challenges Darwinism and Destroys the Logic Behind Common Ancestry – Casey Luskin February 9, 2015
Excerpt: Whenever evolutionary biologists are forced to appeal to convergent evolution, it reflects a breakdown in the main assumption, and an inability to fit the data to a treelike pattern. Examples of this abound in the literature,,,,
Biochemist and Darwin-skeptic Fazale Rana reviewed the technical literature and documented over 100 reported cases of convergent genetic evolution.126 Each case shows an example where biological similarity — even at the genetic level — is not the result of inheritance from a common ancestor. So what does this do to the main assumption of tree-building that biological similarity implies inheritance from a common ancestor? With so many exceptions to the rule, one has to wonder if the rule itself holds merit.,,,
Darwinism Versus the Octopus: An Evolutionary Dilemma – Eric Metaxas – September 08, 2015
Excerpt: What's the difference between evolutionary theory and an octopus? Well, one is a slippery, color-changing escape artist that can get out of any tough situation and the other is an aquatic invertebrate.,,,
The key to this uncanny intelligence is the octopus' so-called "alien" nervous system, brain, and eyes. But these features are not alien to the animal kingdom at all. In fact, they're quite common in higher vertebrates. The octopus genome shares key similarities with ours, including the development of high-powered brains and "camera eyes" with a cornea, lens, and retina.
Now here's the problem for evolution: according to Neo-Darwinists, we're not related to octopi—at least not within the last several hundred million years. That means all of these genes, complex structures, and incredible capabilities came about twice.
The researchers who sequenced the octopus genome call this "a striking example of convergent evolution," or the supposed tendency of unrelated creatures to develop the same traits in response to environmental pressures. Isn't that just a fancy way of saying a miracle happened twice?
But the octopus isn't the only such miracle. "Convergent evolution" is all over nature, from powered flight evolving three times to each continent having its own version of the anteater. Think about that. As one delightfully un-self-conscious "Science Today" cover put it, convergent evolution is "nature discover[ing] the same design over and over." Well, good for nature!
But as Luskin argues, there's a better explanation for a tentacled mollusk having a mammal's brain and human eyes. And that explanation is common design by an intelligent Engineer. And like all good engineers, this this one reused some of His best designs.
Now that explanation isn't going to satisfy Darwinian naturalists. And they'll probably keep on invoking "convergent evolution" when faced with impossible coincidences in nature.
But hopefully knowing a more straightforward explanation leaves you forearmed—or should I said "eight-armed"?
In regards to the third test
Could any of them come up with a set of facts that, if true, would contradict the theory (Karl Popper's "falsifiability" tests)?
The primary reason why Darwinian evolution is more properly classified as a unfalsifiable pseudo-science instead of as a real science is because Darwinian evolution has no rigid mathematical basis, like other overarching physical theories of science have. A rigid mathematical basis to test against in order to potentially falsify it.
"On the other hand, I disagree that Darwin's theory is as `solid as any explanation in science.; Disagree? I regard the claim as preposterous. Quantum electrodynamics is accurate to thirteen or so decimal places; so, too, general relativity. A leaf trembling in the wrong way would suffice to shatter either theory. What can Darwinian theory offer in comparison?"
– Berlinski, D., "A Scientific Scandal?: David Berlinski & Critics," Commentary, July 8, 2003
Evolution is Missing a Mathematical Formula
Excerpt: Virtually all scientists acknowledge that mathematics is the real language of science. Every theory uses words to describe and postulate the theory, but the true test of a theory is numbers and mathematics. It is numbers and mathematical formulae that distinguish true science from hocus-pocus.,,,
Every scientific theory that has been promoted to the status of being a scientific law has been quantified and/or embodied into one or more mathematical formulae that make accurate predictions.
But no scientist has been able to derive any working formula from the Theory of Evolution and no one has been able to quantify its dictums. Millions of scientists have tried to quantify the Theory of Evolution and they have all failed to do so.
Deeper into the Royal Society Evolution Paradigm Shift Meeting – 02/08/2016
Suzan Mazur: Peter Saunders in his interview comments to me said that neo-Darwinism is not a theory, it's a paradigm and the reason it's not a theory is that it's not falsifiable.
Peter Saunders is Co-Director, Institute of Science in Society, London; Emeritus professor of Applied Mathematics, King's College London.
Peter Saunders has been applying mathematics in biology for over 40 years, in microbiology and physiology as well as in development and evolution. He has been a critic of neo-Darwinism for almost as long.
Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist Wolfgang Pauli on the Empirical Problems with Neo-Darwinism – Casey Luskin – February 27, 2012
Excerpt: While they (Darwinian Biologists) pretend to stay in this way completely 'scientific' and 'rational,' they become actually very irrational, particularly because they use the word 'chance', not any longer combined with estimations of a mathematically defined probability, in its application to very rare single events more or less synonymous with the old word 'miracle.'"
Wolfgang Pauli –
The main reason why no scientist has been able 'quantify its dictums' is because there are no known laws of nature for Darwinists to appeal to to base their math on. In other words, there simply is no known 'law of evolution', such as there is a 'law of gravity', within the known physical universe for Darwinists to build a rigid mathematical basis on:
"It is our contention that if 'random' is given a serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological."
Murray Eden, "Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory," Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, editors Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan, June 1967, p. 109.
The Evolution of Ernst: Interview with Ernst Mayr – 2004
Excerpt: biology (Darwinian Evolution) differs from the physical sciences in that in the physical sciences, all theories, I don't know exceptions so I think it's probably a safe statement, all theories are based somehow or other on natural laws. In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences.
WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Evolution is True – Roger Highfield – January 2014
Excerpt:,,, Whatever the case, those universal truths—'laws'—that physicists and chemists all rely upon appear relatively absent from biology.
Little seems to have changed from a decade ago when the late and great John Maynard Smith wrote a chapter on evolutionary game theory for a book on the most powerful equations of science: his contribution did not include a single equation.
In fact, not only does Evolution not have any known universal law to appeal to, in order to rigidly base its math on, as other overarching theories of science have, the second law of thermodynamics, i.e. Entropy, a law with great mathematical explanatory power in science, almost directly contradicts Darwinian claims that increases in functional complexity/information can be easily had:
Why Tornados Running Backward do not Violate the Second Law – Granville Sewell – May 2012 – article with video
Excerpt: So, how does the spontaneous rearrangement of matter on a rocky, barren, planet into human brains and spaceships and jet airplanes and nuclear power plants and libraries full of science texts and novels, and supercomputers running partial differential equation solving software , represent a less obvious or less spectacular violation of the second law—or at least of the fundamental natural principle behind this law—than tornados turning rubble into houses and cars? Can anyone even imagine a more spectacular violation?
The Common Sense Law of Physics Granville Sewell – March 2016
Excerpt: (The) "compensation" argument, used by every physics text which discusses evolution and the second law to dismiss the claim that what has happened on Earth may violate the more general statements of the second law, was the target of my article "Entropy, Evolution, and Open Systems," published in the proceedings of the 2011 Cornell meeting Biological Information: New Perspectives (BINP).
In that article, I showed that the very equations of entropy change upon which this compensation argument is based actually support, on closer examination, the common sense conclusion that "if an increase in order is extremely improbable when a system is isolated, it is still extremely improbable when the system is open, unless something is entering which makes it not extremely improbable." The fact that order can increase in an open system does not mean that computers can appear on a barren planet as long as the planet receives solar energy. Something must be entering our open system that makes the appearance of computers not extremely improbable, for example: computers.
Moreover, empirical evidence and numerical simulations tell us that "Genetic Entropy", i.e. the tendency of biological systems to drift towards decreasing complexity, and decreasing information content, holds true as an overriding rule for biological adaptations over long periods of time:
"The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution": Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain – Michael Behe – December 2010
Excerpt: In its most recent issue The Quarterly Review of Biology has published a review by myself of laboratory evolution experiments of microbes going back four decades.,,, The gist of the paper is that so far the overwhelming number of adaptive (that is, helpful) mutations seen in laboratory evolution experiments are either loss or modification of function. Of course we had already known that the great majority of mutations that have a visible effect on an organism are deleterious. Now, surprisingly, it seems that even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,, I dub it "The First Rule of Adaptive Evolution": Break or blunt any functional coded element whose loss would yield a net fitness gain.
Can Purifying Natural Selection Preserve Biological Information? – May 2013 –
Paul Gibson, John R. Baumgardner, Wesley H. Brewer, John C. Sanford
In conclusion, numerical simulation shows that realistic levels of biological noise result in a high selection threshold. This results in the ongoing accumulation of low-impact deleterious mutations, with deleterious mutation count per individual increasing linearly over time. Even in very long experiments (more than 100,000 generations), slightly deleterious alleles accumulate steadily, causing eventual extinction. These findings provide independent validation of previous analytical and simulation studies [2–13]. Previous concerns about the problem of accumulation of nearly neutral mutations are strongly supported by our analysis. Indeed, when numerical simulations incorporate realistic levels of biological noise, our analyses indicate that the problem is much more severe than has been acknowledged, and that the large majority of deleterious mutations become invisible to the selection process.,,,
Genetic Entropy – references to several peer reviewed numerical simulations analyzing and falsifying all flavors of Darwinian evolution,, (via John Sanford and company)
Here is another particularly interesting reference that, (in spite of Darwinian evolution failing to have a rigid mathematical basis that is based on a known law of the universe to test against), falsifies Darwinian evolution anyway using math.
The waiting time problem in a model hominin population – 2015 Sep 17
John Sanford, Wesley Brewer, Franzine Smith, and John Baumgardner
Excerpt: The program Mendel's Accountant realistically simulates the mutation/selection process,,,
Given optimal settings, what is the longest nucleotide string that can arise within a reasonable waiting time within a hominin population of 10,000? Arguably, the waiting time for the fixation of a "string-of-one" is by itself problematic (Table 2). Waiting a minimum of 1.5 million years (realistically, much longer), for a single point mutation is not timely adaptation in the face of any type of pressing evolutionary challenge. This is especially problematic when we consider that it is estimated that it only took six million years for the chimp and human genomes to diverge by over 5 % [1]. This represents at least 75 million nucleotide changes in the human lineage, many of which must encode new information.
While fixing one point mutation is problematic, our simulations show that the fixation of two co-dependent mutations is extremely problematic – requiring at least 84 million years (Table 2). This is ten-fold longer than the estimated time required for ape-to-man evolution. In this light, we suggest that a string of two specific mutations is a reasonable upper limit, in terms of the longest string length that is likely to evolve within a hominin population (at least in a way that is either timely or meaningful). Certainly the creation and fixation of a string of three (requiring at least 380 million years) would be extremely untimely (and trivial in effect), in terms of the evolution of modern man.
It is widely thought that a larger population size can eliminate the waiting time problem. If that were true, then the waiting time problem would only be meaningful within small populations. While our simulations show that larger populations do help reduce waiting time, we see that the benefit of larger population size produces rapidly diminishing returns (Table 4 and Fig. 4). When we increase the hominin population from 10,000 to 1 million (our current upper limit for these types of experiments), the waiting time for creating a string of five is only reduced from two billion to 482 million years.
Moreover, besides being falsified by math, Darwinian evolution is further falsified by empirical observation coupled with math
"In light of Doug Axe's number, and other similar results,, (1 in 10^77), it is overwhelmingly more likely than not that the mutation, random selection, mechanism will fail to produce even one gene or protein given the whole multi-billion year history of life on earth. There is not enough opportunities in the whole history of life on earth to search but a tiny fraction of the space of 10^77 possible combinations that correspond to every functional combination. Why? Well just one little number will help you put this in perspective. There have been only 10^40 organisms living in the entire history of life on earth. So if every organism, when it replicated, produced a new sequence of DNA to search that (1 in 10^77) space of possibilities, you would have only searched 10^40th of them. 10^40 over 10^77 is 1 in 10^37. Which is 10 trillion, trillion, trillion. In other words, If every organism in the history of life would have been searching for one those (functional) gene sequences we need, you would have searched 1 in 10 trillion, trillion, trillionth of the haystack. Which makes it overwhelmingly more likely than not that the (Darwinian) mechanism will fail. And if it is overwhelmingly more likely than not that the (Darwinian) mechanism will fail should we believe that is the way that life arose?"
Stephen Meyer – 46:19 minute mark – Darwin's Doubt – video
Michael Behe – Observed (1 in 10^20) Edge of Evolution – video – Lecture delivered in April 2015 at Colorado School of Mines
25:56 minute quote – "This is not an argument anymore that Darwinism cannot make complex functional systems; it is an observation that it does not."
Waiting Longer for Two Mutations – Michael J. Behe
Excerpt: Citing malaria literature sources (White 2004) I had noted that the de novo appearance of chloroquine resistance in Plasmodium falciparum was an event of probability of 1 in 10^20. I then wrote that 'for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, we would have to wait 100 million times 10 million years' (1 quadrillion years)(Behe 2007) (because that is the extrapolated time that it would take to produce 10^20 humans). Durrett and Schmidt (2008, p. 1507) retort that my number 'is 5 million times larger than the calculation we have just given' using their model (which nonetheless "using their model" gives a prohibitively long waiting time of 216 million years). Their criticism compares apples to oranges. My figure of 10^20 is an empirical statistic from the literature; it is not, as their calculation is, a theoretical estimate from a population genetics model.,,,
The difficulty with models such as Durrett and Schmidt's is that their biological relevance is often uncertain, and unknown factors that are quite important to cellular evolution may be unintentionally left out of the model. That is why experimental or observational data on the evolution of microbes such as P. falciparum are invaluable,,,
In addition, Darwinian evolution is further empirically falsified by the finding of 'quantum information' in molecular biology.
Molecular Biology – 19th Century Materialism meets 21st Century Quantum Mechanics – video
(Of related note: Classical information is now shown to be a subset of quantum information)
A few notes on the physical reality of 'immaterial' information: (December. 2016)
Thermodynamic Content, Erasing Classical Information with Quantum Information, Quantum Teleportation
That 'non-local' quantum entanglement, which conclusively demonstrates that 'information' in its 'quantum form' is completely transcendent of any time and space constraints (Bell, Aspect, Leggett, Zeilinger, etc..), should be found in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every DNA and protein molecule, is a direct empirical falsification of Darwinian claims, for how can the 'non-local' quantum entanglement 'effect' in biology possibly be explained by a material (matter/energy) cause when the quantum entanglement effect falsified material particles as its own causation in the first place? Appealing to the probability of various 'random' configurations of material particles, as Darwinian evolution does, simply will not help since a timeless/spaceless cause must be supplied which is beyond the capacity of the material particles themselves to supply!
Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012
Excerpt: "Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,"
Quantum correlations do not imply instant causation – August 12, 2016
Excerpt: A research team led by a Heriot-Watt scientist has shown that the universe is even weirder than had previously been thought.
In 2015 the universe was officially proven to be weird. After many decades of research, a series of experiments showed that distant, entangled objects can seemingly interact with each other through what Albert Einstein famously dismissed as "Spooky action at a distance".
A new experiment by an international team led by Heriot-Watt's Dr Alessandro Fedrizzi has now found that the universe is even weirder than that: entangled objects do not cause each other to behave the way they do.
In regards to the fourth test
Could scientists make predictions based on it?
Actually scientists have made predictions based on Darwinian theory. Unfortunately for Darwinists, all the major predictions of Darwinian evolution have turned out to be false.
Following in Imre Lakatos footsteps of 'predictability' being a major falsification criteria for science, Dr. Cornelius Hunter has compiled a list of some of the major false predictions generated by evolutionary theory. False predictions that are fundamental to evolutionary theory, i.e. go to the 'core' of the theory as it were, and falsify it from the inside out.
Darwin's (failed) Predictions – Cornelius G. Hunter – 2015
This paper evaluates 23 fundamental (false) predictions of evolutionary theory from a wide range of different categories. The paper begins with a brief introduction to the nature of scientific predictions, and typical concerns evolutionists raise against investigating predictions of evolution. The paper next presents the individual predictions in seven categories: early evolution, evolutionary causes, molecular evolution, common descent, evolutionary phylogenies, evolutionary pathways, and behavior. Finally the conclusion summarizes these various predictions, their implications for evolution's capacity to explain phenomena, and how they bear on evolutionist's claims about their theory.
Why investigate evolution's false predictions?
Responses to common objections
*Early evolution predictions
The DNA code is not unique
The cell's fundamental molecules are universal
*Evolutionary causes predictions
Mutations are not adaptive
Embryology and common descent
Competition is greatest between neighbors
*Molecular evolution predictions
Protein evolution
Histone proteins cannot tolerate much change
The molecular clock keeps evolutionary time
*Common descent predictions
The pentadactyl pattern and common descent
Serological tests reveal evolutionary relationships
Biology is not lineage specific
Similar species share similar genes
*Evolutionary phylogenies predictions
Genomic features are not sporadically distributed
Gene and host phylogenies are congruent
Gene phylogenies are congruent
The species should form an evolutionary tree
*Evolutionary pathways predictions
Complex structures evolved from simpler structures
Structures do not evolve before there is a need for them
Functionally unconstrained DNA is not conserved
Nature does not make leaps
Cell death
What false predictions tell us about evolution
Why investigate evolution's false predictions?
Excerpt: The predictions examined in this paper were selected according to several criteria. They cover a wide spectrum of evolutionary theory and are fundamental to the theory, reflecting major tenets of evolutionary thought. They were widely held by the consensus rather than reflecting one viewpoint of several competing viewpoints. Each prediction was a natural and fundamental expectation of the theory of evolution, and constituted mainstream evolutionary science. Furthermore, the selected predictions are not vague but rather are specific and can be objectively evaluated. They have been tested and evaluated and the outcome is not controversial or in question. And finally the predictions have implications for evolution's (in)capacity to explain phenomena, as discussed in the conclusions.
In regards to the fifth test
Did it illuminate hitherto unknown or baffling areas of science?
This is a particularly interesting failure of Darwinian evolution to think about. Scientific theories have a history of deepening man's understanding of Nature, and thus providing man with beneficial technological breakthroughs because of that deepened understanding of nature (For instance, Newton's theory of Gravity was 'good enough' to land men on the moon). Evolution, unlike those other scientific theories, has completely failed on this account to foster research or to deliver technological breakthroughs:
"Certainly, my own research with antibiotics during World War II received no guidance from insights provided by Darwinian evolution. Nor did Alexander Fleming's discovery of bacterial inhibition by penicillin. I recently asked more than 70 eminent researchers if they would have done their work differently if they had thought Darwin's theory was wrong. The responses were all the same: No.
I also examined the outstanding biodiscoveries of the past century: the discovery of the double helix; the characterization of the ribosome; the mapping of genomes; research on medications and drug reactions; improvements in food production and sanitation; the development of new surgeries; and others. I even queried biologists working in areas where one would expect the Darwinian paradigm to have most benefited research, such as the emergence of resistance to antibiotics and pesticides. Here, as elsewhere, I found that Darwin's theory had provided no discernible guidance, but was brought in, after the breakthroughs, as an interesting narrative gloss.
Darwinian evolution – whatever its other virtues – does not provide a fruitful heuristic in experimental biology."
Philip S. Skell – (the late) Emeritus Evan Pugh Professor at Pennsylvania State University, and a member of the National Academy of Sciences. – Why Do We Invoke Darwin? – 2005
"Truth be told, evolution hasn't yielded many practical or commercial benefits. Yes, bacteria evolve drug resistance, and yes, we must take countermeasures, but beyond that there is not much to say. Evolution cannot help us predict what new vaccines to manufacture because microbes evolve unpredictably. But hasn't evolution helped guide animal and plant breeding? Not very much. Most improvement in crop plants and animals occurred long before we knew anything about evolution, and came about by people following the genetic principle of 'like begets like'. Even now, as its practitioners admit, the field of quantitative genetics has been of little value in helping improve varieties. Future advances will almost certainly come from transgenics, which is not based on evolution at all."
(Jerry Coyne, "Selling Darwin: Does it matter whether evolution has any commercial applications?," reviewing The Evolving World: Evolution in Everyday Life by David P. Mindell, in Nature, 442:983-984 (August 31, 2006).)
"In fact, over the last 100 years, almost all of biology has proceeded independent of evolution, except evolutionary biology itself. Molecular biology, biochemistry, and physiology, have not taken evolution into account at all."
Marc Kirschner, Boston Globe, Oct. 23, 2005
"While the great majority of biologists would probably agree with Theodosius Dobzhansky's dictum that "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution", most can conduct their work quite happily without particular reference to evolutionary ideas. Evolution would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superflous one."
A.S. Wilkins, editor of the journal BioEssays, Introduction to "Evolutionary Processes" – (2000).
"Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved. It might be thought, therefore, that evolutionary arguments would play a large part in guiding biological research, but this is far from the case. It is difficult enough to study what is happening now. To figure out exactly what happened in evolution is even more difficult. Thus evolutionary achievements can be used as hints to suggest possible lines of research, but it is highly dangerous to trust them too much. It is all too easy to make mistaken inferences unless the process involved is already very well understood."
Francis Crick – What Mad Pursuit (1988)
In fact, instead of fostering discovery, it can be forcefully argued that Darwinian evolution has hindered scientific discovery, and has also led to medical malpractice, by falsely predicting both junk DNA and vestigial organs
Junk DNA RoundUp (and Rebuttal): How Neo-Darwinism Creates Junk-Hypotheses, Then Resists Their Demise – Casey Luskin – June 5, 2009
Excerpt: Although catchy, the term 'junk DNA' for many years repelled mainstream researchers from studying noncoding DNA. Who, except a small number of genomic clochards, would like to dig through genomic garbage? However, in science as in normal life, there are some clochards who, at the risk of being ridiculed, explore unpopular territories. Because of them, the view of junk DNA, especially repetitive elements, began to change in the early 1990s. Now, more and more biologists regard repetitive elements as a genomic treasure."
(Wojciech Makalowski, "Not Junk After All," Science, Vol. 300(5623):1246-1247 (May 23, 2003).)
Evolution's "vestigial organ" argument debunked
Excerpt: "The appendix, like the once 'vestigial' tonsils and adenoids, is a lymphoid organ (part of the body's immune system) which makes antibodies against infections in the digestive system. Believing it to be a useless evolutionary 'left over,' many surgeons once removed even the healthy appendix whenever they were in the abdominal cavity. Today, removal of a healthy appendix under most circumstances would be considered medical malpractice" (David Menton, Ph.D., "The Human Tail, and Other Tales of Evolution," St. Louis MetroVoice , January 1994, Vol. 4, No. 1).
"Doctors once thought tonsils were simply useless evolutionary leftovers and took them out thinking that it could do no harm. Today there is considerable evidence that there are more troubles in the upper respiratory tract after tonsil removal than before, and doctors generally agree that simple enlargement of tonsils is hardly an indication for surgery" (J.D. Ratcliff, Your Body and How it Works, 1975, p. 137).
The tailbone, properly known as the coccyx, is another supposed example of a vestigial structure that has been found to have a valuable function—especially regarding the ability to sit comfortably. Many people who have had this bone removed have great difficulty sitting.
Of supplemental note:
Since Intelligent Design is mathematically based on the 'law of conservation of information' (Dembski, Marks, etc.. etc..), then that makes Intelligent Design very much testable and potentially falsifiable, and thus makes Intelligent Design, unlike Darwinism, a rigorous science instead of an unfalsifiable pseudo-science:
All in all, Darwinian evolution does not qualify as a 'real science' in any meaningful sense of the term 'real science', but is more realistically classified, (at least how Darwinists treat it), as a unfalsifiable pseudo-science. An unfalsifiable pseudo-science that is supported solely by widespread propaganda in the media, by intimidation and censorship in academia, and most importantly, by unrestrained imagination in the 'art of story telling' in the literature.
Sociobiology: The Art of Story Telling – Stephen Jay Gould – 1978 – New Scientist
Excerpt: Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. He called his answers "Just So stories". When evolutionists study individual adaptations, when they try to explain form and behaviour by reconstructing history and assessing current utility, they also tell just so stories – and the agent is natural selection.
Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.
Why Evolutionary "Just So" Stories Fail – September 28, 2016
Excerpt: it was during this study that I began to understand the concept of a "just-so" story, and it has stuck with me ever since. Essentially, to save the Darwinian paradigm, Darwinists sometimes come up with logically possible, but evidentially unsubstantiated stories to account for some recalcitrant feature in the natural world,,,
In his excellent book The Experience of God, David Bentley Hart offers a helpful illustration for how naturalist just-so stories fail to explain key features in reality, such as consciousness:
"If I should visit you at your home and discover that, rather than living in a house, you instead shelter under a large roof that simply hovers above the ground, apparently neither supported by nor suspended from anything else, and should ask you how this is possible, I should not feel at all satisfied if you were to answer, 'It's to keep the rain out'—not even if you were then helpfully elaborate upon this by observing that keeping the rain out is evolutionary advantageous."[i]"
Hart is exactly right. Offering a positive benefit of why a hovering house protects from rain does not explain how such a feature originated. Similarly, explaining how consciousness benefits mankind does not to explain how consciousness first emerged. An explanation that merely explains why such a feature is beneficial leaves the mystery unexplained.,,,
Unless it can successfully explain these features, Darwinism itself is merely a "just-so" story.
– Sean McDowell, Ph.D.
2 Corinthians 10:5
Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;
2 Peter 1:16
For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty.
But Darwinism is universally accepted among "real" scientists!
Really? I'm just not sure what makes one a real scientist…
Is it the acceptance of Darwinism that makes one a real scientist?
Wouldn't it rather be the work and achievements in the specific science (s) that would make him a real scientist?
Would Larry Moran fit into this category? He hasn't achieved anything in the experimental science. He is neither an evolutionary biologist nor a Darwinist-by his own admission…
Does it mean Larry Moran is not a scientist?
BTW: I hope Larry reads this post as he does read this blog everyday. I'd like to see someone like Larry to take another; a third stand on this issue…I know he can…
That's one of the many reasons I respect professor Moran. Unlike Coyne, he is not afraid of criticism. He is very patient with the opposite opinions…Coyne's blog is going to die soon unlike Larry's blog. I may know why…Larry doesn't have a cat… and if he did it would not be talking to him…So…Larry if you have a cat and your cat talks to you or talks back, you let Jerry Coyne know as he became the world most famous "cat whisperer"….
Impressive work, BA77. Thank you.
8Dean_from_OhioDecember 30, 2016 at 8:02 pm
Impressive work, BA77. Thank you.
P.S. My daughter and son have school assignments in Darwinian evolution in January, one in a public high school and the other in a Christian middle school. I will print this article and BA77's excellent comments and will draw from them as I help them do these assignments.
Thanks, DfO
I figure it is because once your livelihood depends on it being true, you don't want to be critical of the hand that feeds you. Simple economics and job security.
10mike1962December 31, 2016 at 1:34 am
Not sure that "Darwinism" matter any more. The cause du jour is "climate change." Nobody I know cares about "Darwinism", and it's a pretty sure bet that no massive political and economic shifts will occur due to it.
Fight "climate change" alarmism. That's where it's at, man.
Is it relevant to wonder what a comparison between the number of books doubting the Bible vs. number of books doubting evolution might look like?
12john_a_designerDecember 31, 2016 at 9:42 am
Not sure that "Darwinism" matter any more. The cause du jour is "climate change." Nobody I know cares about "Darwinism", and it's a pretty sure bet that no massive political and economic shifts will occur due to it.
Whatever you call it, the secular-progressive world view, which currently dominates our culture and politics, is grounded upon some form of atheistic naturalism. This is the foundation for the secularist's ontology, epistemology and moral philosophy. However, despite its "scientific" pretensions, it is completely insufficient foundation because it provides no basis metaphysically, epistemologically or morally for any kind of real or "objective" truth. All you end up with is a number of relativistic, contradictory and subjective opinions trying to dominate each other– sometimes ruthlessly. Without belief in truth or justice civilized society cannot persist– indeed, ultimately it cannot exist.
Understanding our philosophical and historical roots it essential to understanding our current circumstances. Darwin, Darwin's theory and "Darwinism" is a crucial, though not the only, part of understanding that history.
The climate change nonsense has grown out of this cultural milieu.
john_a_designer rightly observes that,
"the secular-progressive world view, which currently dominates our culture and politics, is grounded upon some form of atheistic naturalism,,,
The climate change nonsense has grown out of this cultural milieu."
Indeed, in the secular-progressive mindset, the idea that God created this world, created man in His image, and is ultimately in control of the Earth's weather, is antithetical to their entire worldview.
One particular damning piece of evidence to the presuppositions inherent in the Atheistic worldview is the fact that the Earth's atmosphere is fine-tuned for human life in particular.
Yet atheists, despite all their 'chicken little fears' of catastrophic global warming, have no reason, based on their worldview, to presuppose that the Earth's atmosphere would be advantageous for humans in particular.
Yet, an atmosphere that is advantageous to humans in particular is exactly what we find.
Michael Denton, who needs no introduction on UD, has a paper, video, and interview, on exactly this 'privileged species' subject:
The Place of Life and Man in Nature: Defending the Anthropocentric Thesis – Michael J. Denton – February 25, 2013
Summary (page 11)
Many of the properties of the key members of Henderson's vital ensemble —water, oxygen, CO2, HCO3 —are in several instances fit specifically for warm-blooded, air-breathing organisms such as ourselves. These include the thermal properties of water, its low viscosity, the gaseous nature of oxygen and CO2 at ambient temperatures, the inertness of oxygen at ambient temperatures, and the bicarbonate buffer, with its anomalous pKa value and the elegant means of acid-base regulation it provides for air-breathing organisms. Some of their properties are irrelevant to other classes of organisms or even maladaptive.
It is very hard to believe there could be a similar suite of fitness for advanced carbon-based life forms. If carbon-based life is all there is, as seems likely, then the design of any active complex terrestrial being would have to closely resemble our own. Indeed the suite of properties of water, oxygen, and CO2 together impose such severe constraints on the design and functioning of the respiratory and cardiovascular systems that their design, even down to the details of capillary and alveolar structure can be inferred from first principles. For complex beings of high metabolic rate, the designs actualized in complex Terran forms are all that can be. There are no alternative physiological designs in the domain of carbon-based life that can achieve the high metabolic activity manifest in man and other higher organisms.
Privileged Species – video
Dr. Michael Denton Interview
Excerpt Question 14: 14. Q: ,,,you also detail that nature isn't fine-tuned for just any kind of life, but life specifically like human life. Would you expound on this for our readers?
A: there are certain elements of the fine-tuning which are clearly for advanced being like ourselves.
We are warm-blooded, terrestrial aerobes; we use oxidation to get energy, we're warm-blooded and we breathe air. We get our oxygen from the air. First of all, a warm-blooded organism needs to maintain a constant temperature. To do that we are massively assisted by the high specific heat of water, which buffers our body against rapid changes in temperature. In getting rid of excess heat, we utilize the evaporative cooling of water. That's why dog's pant, we sweat, etc. Warm-blooded organisms have to get rid of excess heat, and the evaporative cooling of water is the only way you've really got to get rid of heat when the temperature reaches close to body temperature. When it's hot you can't radiate off body heat to the environment.
These critical thermal properties are obviously of great utility to air breathing, warm-blooded organisms like our self. But what relevance do they have to an extremophile living in the deep ocean, or a cold-blooded fish living in the sea? It's obvious that these are elements of fitness in nature which seem to be of great and specific utility to beings like us, and very little utility to a lot of other organisms. Of course it is the case that they are playing a role in maintaining the constancy of global climate, the physical and chemical constancy of the hydrosphere and so forth. No doubt the evaporative cooling of water plays a big role in climatic amelioration; it transfers heat from the tropics to the higher latitudes and this is of utility for all life on earth. But definitely water's thermal properties seem particularly fit for advanced organisms of biology close to our own.
And even the freezing of water from the top down rather than the bottom up, which conserves large bodies of fresh water on the earth, is again relevant to large organisms. Bacterial cells can withstand quite well periodically freezing. And for unicellular organisms living in the hot sub surface rocks its pretty well irrelevant. In other words the top down freezing and the consequent preservation of liquid water is of much more utility for a large organism, but of far less relevance for microbial life.
Or consider the generation and utilization of oxygen. We use oxygen, but many organisms don't use oxygen; for a lot of organisms it's a poison. So how do we get our oxygen? When we look at the conditions in the universe for photosynthesis, we find a magical collusion between of all sorts of different elements of fitness. First of all the atmospheric gases let through visual light which has got the right energy for biochemistry, for photosynthesis. And what are the gases in the atmosphere that let through the light? Well, carbon dioxide, water vapor, oxygen, and nitrogen. And what are the basic reactants which are involved in photosynthesis? Well, oxygen, water, and CO2. The same compounds that let through the light are also the main 'players' in photosynthesis.
And then you might wonder what about the harmful radiations? UV, Gamma rays, microwaves? Well to begin with the sun only puts out most of its electromagnetic radian energy in the visual region (light) and near infrared (heat) and puts out very little in the dangerous regions (UV's, gamma rays, X-rays etc.). And wonder on wonder, the atmospheric gases absorb all these harmful radiations. And so on and on and on, one anthropocentric biofriendly coincidence after another.,,,
Now when you consider all these factors necessary for the generation of oxygen via photosynthesis knowing that not all organisms use oxygen implying that all these coincidences are irrelevant to the vast majority of all species (most of the biomass on the planet may well be anaerobic unicellular life occupying the hot deep biosphere in the sub surface rocks) never use oxygen, its clear that the special fitness of nature for oxygen utilization is for us.
"Dr. Michael Denton on Evidence of Fine-Tuning in the Universe" (Remarkable balance, and 'coincidences', of various key elements for life) – podcast
Denton extended this thesis in 2016 with his video 'Fire-Maker'
Fire-Maker – Michael Denton – video
A Reasonable, but Incomplete, Account of How Humans Mastered Fire – Michael Denton – August 4, 2016
In short, the discovery of fire, our subsequent mastery of it, and the road it opened up to an advanced technology were only possible because of our inhabiting a world almost exactly like planet earth, complete with atmospheric conditions exactly as they are, along with the properties of carbon and oxygen atoms (and indeed many of the other atoms of the periodic table), and because we possessed a unique anatomical design (including the hand) uniquely fit for fire-making.
As well, Robin Collins has found that the fine structure constant "is just small enough to allow for open wood fires and just large enough for the light microscope to be able to see all living cells."
The Fine-Tuning for Discoverability – Robin Collins – March 22, 2014
Excerpt: Examples of fine – tuning for discoverability.
,,A small increase in ? (fine structure constant) would have resulted in all open wood fires going out; yet harnessing fire was essential to the development of civilization, technology, and science – e.g., the forging of metals.,,,
Going in the other direction, if ? (fine structure constant) were decreased, light microscopes would have proportionality less resolving power without the size of living cells or other microscopic objects changing.,,,
Thus, it is quite amazing that the resolving power of light microscopes goes down to that of the smallest cell (0.2 microns), but no further. If it had less resolving power, some cells could not be observed alive. The fine – structure constant, therefore, is just small enough to allow for open wood fires and just large enough for the light microscope to be able to see all living cells.
As well, bacteria helped prepare the earth for advanced life by detoxifying the primeval earth and oceans of poisonous levels of heavy metal while depositing them as relatively inert metal ores. Metal ores which are very useful, even essential, for modern man, as well as fairly easy for man to extract (mercury, cadmium, zinc, cobalt, arsenic, chromate, tellurium, iron, and copper to name a few). To this day, various types of bacteria maintain an essential minimal level of these heavy metals in the ecosystem which are high enough so as to be available to the biological systems of the higher life forms that need them yet low enough so as not to be poisonous to those very same higher life forms.
Bacterial Heavy Metal Detoxification and Resistance Systems:
Excerpt: Bacterial plasmids contain genetic determinants for resistance systems for Hg2+ (and organomercurials), Cd2+, AsO2, AsO43-, CrO4 2-, TeO3 2-, Cu2+, Ag+, Co2+, Pb2+, and other metals of environmental concern.,, Recombinant DNA analysis has been applied to mercury, cadmium, zinc, cobalt, arsenic, chromate, tellurium and copper resistance systems.
The Classic Metal Behind the Origins of Life – March 24, 2016
Excerpt: The Metallome
A list of life-supporting metals with illustrative biological functions.*,,,
* This list contains metals that support essential life processes. The list is not meant to be complete for all organisms and not all organisms may require all of the above metals. However, some metallome elements are required by all living cells, such as iron, which is a necessary nutrient for more than 99 percent of all known cells. The metals of the metallome, while they serve specific life enabling functions, can also be toxic if present in the wrong cellular location at the wrong concentration. Hence the metallome, while essential, must be carefully controlled by the genome and proteome in a living system.
Moreover, Hugh Ross notes that metal ores that are essential for man's technologically advanced civilization, are unexpectedly easy to recover for man's use:
The Concentration of Metals for Humanity's Benefit:
Excerpt: They demonstrated that hydrothermal fluid flow could enrich the concentration of metals like zinc, lead, and copper by at least a factor of a thousand. They also showed that ore deposits formed by hydrothermal fluid flows at or above these concentration levels exist throughout Earth's crust. The necessary just-right precipitation conditions needed to yield such high concentrations demand extraordinary fine-tuning. That such ore deposits are common in Earth's crust strongly suggests supernatural design.
Besides the fine-tuning behind fire and metal reflecting supernatural design, we also find that the Earth's mineral riches, which are also necessary for man's technologically advanced civilization, were produced in a unique way, i.e. by the way life was introduced on earth. Moreover, we find Earth's mineral riches are, in all likelihood, unique to Earth alone in the universe:
Earth's mineralogy unique in the cosmos – Aug. 2015
Excerpt: Nearly a decade ago, Hazen developed the idea that the diversity explosion of planet's minerals from the dozen present at the birth of our Solar System to the nearly 5,000 types existing today arose primarily from the rise of life. More than two-thirds of known minerals can be linked directly or indirectly to biological activity, according to Hazen.,,,
,,, statistical analysis of mineral distribution and diversity suggested thousands of plausible rare minerals either still await discovery or occurred at some point in Earth's history,,,
The team predicted that 1,563 minerals exist on Earth today, but have yet to be discovered and described.,,,
"Earth's mineralogy is unique in the cosmos," Hazen said.
To put it mildly, this minimization of poisonous elements, and 'explosion' of useful minerals, as well as the fortuitous concentration of metal ores, is strong evidence for Intelligently Designed terra-forming of the earth that 'just so happens' to be of great benefit to modern man.
None of this makes any sense on the atheistic worldview, but is 'expected' on the Christian worldview.
Moreover, this evidence for the 'terra-forming' of the Earth, that is of particular benefit for advanced human civilization, directly contradicts the presupposition behind global warming alarmism that man ought not have advanced industrialized civilization.
And although I certainly agree that man needs to be a 'good steward' of the Earth, and ought not be reckless in polluting the Earth and such as that, the catastrophic global warming alarmist simply has no evidential basis to presuppose man ought not have any industrialized society whatsoever.
The evidence itself gives us every indication that the Earth was designed particularly with man, and his industrialized society, in Mind.
A few supplemental notes: The long-term stability of the Earth's atmosphere, and the chemical composition of the Earth and its atmosphere, as well as the fine-tuning of the atmosphere, are far more unique in the universe than was originally presupposed.
Extremely Stable, Fine Tuned, and Rare, Atmosphere of Earth contradicts claims for Catastrophic Global Warming (December 2016)
Moreover, the numerous interdependent conditions that enable advanced life to be possible on Earth strongly indicate that the Earth is unique in the universe in its ability to support advanced life.
Life and Earth History Reveal God's Miraculous Preparation for Humans – Hugh Ross, PhD – video (2015)
Linked from Appendix C from Dr. Ross's book, 'Why the Universe Is the Way It Is';
Probability Estimates for the Features Required by Various Life Forms:
Requirements to sustain bacteria for 90 days or less:
Probability for occurrence of all 501 parameters approx. 10-614
dependency factors estimate approx. 10^-303
longevity requirements estimate approx. 10^22
Probability for occurrence of all 501 parameters approx. 10^-333
Maximum possible number of life support bodies in observable universe approx. 10^22
Thus, less than 1 chance in 10^311 exists that even one such life-support body would occur anywhere in the universe without invoking divine miracles.
Requirements to sustain unicellar life for three billion year:
Probability for occurrence of all 676 parameters approx. 10^-859
dependency factors estimate approx. 10^-303
longevity requirements estimate approx. 10^22
Probability for occurrence of all 676 parameters approx. 10^-578
Maximum possible number of life support bodies in observable universe approx. 10^22
Thus, less than 1 chance in 10^556 exists that even one such life-support body would occur anywhere in the universe without invoking divine miracle
Requirements to sustain intelligent physical life:
Probability for occurrence of all 816 parameters approx. 10^-1333
dependency factors estimate approx. 10^-324
longevity requirements estimate approx. 10^45
Probability for occurrence of all 816 parameters approx. 10^-1054
Maximum possible number of life support bodies in observable universe approx. 10^22
Thus, less than 1 chance in 10^1032 exists that even one such life-support body would occur anywhere in the universe without invoking divine miracle
Improbable Planet: How Earth Became Humanity's Home. – Frank Turek interviews Hugh Ross – Sept. 17, 2016
As well, Dr. Ross points out that the extremely long amount of time it took to prepare a suitable place for technologically advanced humans to exist in this universe, for the relatively short period of time that we can exist on this planet, is actually a point of evidence that argues strongly for Theism:
Anthropic Principle: A Precise Plan for Humanity By Hugh Ross
Excerpt: Brandon Carter, the British mathematician who coined the term "anthropic principle" (1974), noted the strange inequity of a universe that spends about 15 billion years "preparing" for the existence of a creature that has the potential to survive no more than 10 million years (optimistically).,, Carter and (later) astrophysicists John Barrow and Frank Tipler demonstrated that the inequality exists for virtually any conceivable intelligent species under any conceivable life-support conditions. Roughly 15 billion years represents a minimum preparation time for advanced life: 11 billion toward formation of a stable planetary system, one with the right chemical and physical conditions for primitive life, and four billion more years toward preparation of a planet within that system, one richly layered with the biodeposits necessary for civilized intelligent life. Even this long time and convergence of "just right" conditions reflect miraculous efficiency.
Moreover the physical and biological conditions necessary to support an intelligent civilized species do not last indefinitely. They are subject to continuous change: the Sun continues to brighten, Earth's rotation period lengthens, Earth's plate tectonic activity declines, and Earth's atmospheric composition varies. In just 10 million years or less, Earth will lose its ability to sustain human life. In fact, this estimate of the human habitability time window may be grossly optimistic. In all likelihood, a nearby supernova eruption, a climatic perturbation, a social or environmental upheaval, or the genetic accumulation of negative mutations will doom the species to extinction sometime sooner than twenty thousand years from now.
As a Christian, I like the metaphor of 'preparing for a wedding' that Dr. Ross uses in the following video to illustrate the disparity that 'The Anthropic Inequality' presents in terms of the short amount of time that the 'habitability window' presents:
Hugh Ross – The Anthropic Principle and The Anthropic Inequality – video (50:24 minute mark)
Thus, in a nutshell, the Christian has ample reason to believe that advanced human civilization was intended by God. Moreover, the Christian, since it is evident that man is ultimately here for a much higher purpose, has ample reason to hope for a much better, brighter, future for mankind.
Whereas the atheist is apparently driven by an irrational fear that man ought not be living in industrialized societies as he does on earth. And further fears that we ought to take draconian measures curtailing industry so as to avoid his imagined scenario of Catastrophic global Warming.
Moreover, the atheist has no solid reason to hope for a much better future for mankind. Indeed, the atheistic worldview is extremely nihilistic in its outlook for the future of mankind.
The Absurdity of Life without God – William Lane Craig
Now I want to make it clear that I have not yet shown biblical Christianity to be true. But what I have done is clearly spell out the alternatives. If God does not exist, then life is futile. If the God of the Bible does exist, then life is meaningful. Only the second of these two alternatives enables us to live happily and consistently. Therefore, it seems to me that even if the evidence for these two options were absolutely equal, a rational person ought to choose biblical Christianity. It seems to me positively irrational to prefer death, futility, and destruction to life, meaningfulness, and happiness. As Pascal said, we have nothing to lose and infinity to gain.
In fact, I hold that it is impossible for an atheist to live out his worldview consistently as if his worldview were actually true and to live as if his life, or his loved ones lives, have no real meaning or purpose:
The Heretic – Who is Thomas Nagel and why are so many of his fellow academics condemning him? – March 25, 2013
Excerpt: Nobody thinks his daughter is just molecules in motion and nothing but; nobody thinks the Holocaust was evil, but only in a relative, provisional sense. A materialist who lived his life according to his professed convictions—understanding himself to have no moral agency at all, seeing his friends and enemies and family as genetically determined robots—wouldn't just be a materialist: He'd be a psychopath.
Darwin's Robots: When Evolutionary Materialists Admit that Their Own Worldview Fails – Nancy Pearcey – April 23, 2015
Excerpt: Even materialists often admit that, in practice, it is impossible for humans to live any other way. One philosopher jokes that if people deny free will, then when ordering at a restaurant they should say, "Just bring me whatever the laws of nature have determined I will get."
An especially clear example is Galen Strawson, a philosopher who states with great bravado, "The impossibility of free will … can be proved with complete certainty." Yet in an interview, Strawson admits that, in practice, no one accepts his deterministic view. "To be honest, I can't really accept it myself," he says. "I can't really live with this fact from day to day. Can you, really?",,,
In What Science Offers the Humanities, Edward Slingerland, identifies himself as an unabashed materialist and reductionist. Slingerland argues that Darwinian materialism leads logically to the conclusion that humans are robots — that our sense of having a will or self or consciousness is an illusion. Yet, he admits, it is an illusion we find impossible to shake. No one "can help acting like and at some level really feeling that he or she is free." We are "constitutionally incapable of experiencing ourselves and other conspecifics [humans] as robots."
One section in his book is even titled "We Are Robots Designed Not to Believe That We Are Robots.",,,
When I teach these concepts in the classroom, an example my students find especially poignant is Flesh and Machines by Rodney Brooks, professor emeritus at MIT. Brooks writes that a human being is nothing but a machine — a "big bag of skin full of biomolecules" interacting by the laws of physics and chemistry. In ordinary life, of course, it is difficult to actually see people that way. But, he says, "When I look at my children, I can, when I force myself, … see that they are machines."
Is that how he treats them, though? Of course not: "That is not how I treat them…. I interact with them on an entirely different level. They have my unconditional love, the furthest one might be able to get from rational analysis." Certainly if what counts as "rational" is a materialist worldview in which humans are machines, then loving your children is irrational. It has no basis
within Brooks's worldview. It sticks out of his box.
How does he reconcile such a heart-wrenching cognitive dissonance? He doesn't. Brooks ends by saying, "I maintain two sets of inconsistent beliefs." He has given up on any attempt to reconcile his theory with his experience. He has abandoned all hope for a unified, logically consistent worldview.
If you can't possibly live as if your worldview is true, then that ought to tell you very clearly that your worldview can't possibly be true.
Existential Argument against Atheism – November 1, 2013 by Jason Petersen
1. If a worldview is true then you should be able to live consistently with that worldview.
2. Atheists are unable to live consistently with their worldview.
3. If you can't live consistently with an atheist worldview then the worldview does not reflect reality.
4. If a worldview does not reflect reality then that worldview is a delusion.
5. If atheism is a delusion then atheism cannot be true.
Conclusion: Atheism is false.
Verse and Music:
Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the plans I have for you," declares the LORD, "plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
My life is in your hands – Kirk Franklin
Jeremiah 29:11. "For surely I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope."
Without stretching a divine law into meaninglessness, the comparative evolutionist time scale of Dr Ross does not correspond to what God wrote in stone at Sinai; clearly, and face to face as with Moses (Num 12:8).
The creation plans of the Holy Trinity, covered six days due to humanities need for a pure and holy Sabbath and as a true datum and a true central point of worship commemorating the matured birth of the universe.
It seems to me, according to Dr Ross and the scientific wedded figures in relation to BA77 which ably prove Darwinism impossible, as does divine law before then, by the same token they prove the word and Testimony of God impossible by the same use of similar data.
Untestable cosmic theory, unless we have a spare cosmos and the power to create a cosmos, cannot be the arbitrator of the word of God.
Bear in mind, the Holy Trinity through Yahweh, gave a public witnessed statement, and which He wrote down; hence, the only scripture ever written by God and in stone, of accuracy for our moral needs and to guide us in a human science which is not even fit to place the shoes on a miracle.
We cannot command that power, except by sound faith and the will of God. If we cannot walk confidently on the waters of six-day creation; divine law, expect some sinking feelings.
Therefore, it seems, from the scriptural citations of Dr Ross and BA77 use against the Holy of Holy scripture set down in divine law, the Holy Trinity should apologise to Judaeo-Christians for stating and making a public witness statement, God created the cosmos and life in six days and on pain of death?
Worse, made out to be a murder is the Holy Trinity by teaching God created not according to clearly articulated divine law.
Difficult though simple to believe creation in six days; yes, but surely that is much preferred to a single divine law of God being elasticated and devalued, unable to stand the test of time which Dr Ross has created in his belief system, a pseudo-belief system against the correct word of God, which Jesus fulfilled?
God/Jesus publicly gave His testimony, the Saturday Sabbath is true. He worshipped in the synagogue every Saturday. His disciples, mother and step-father did the same.
Jesus said, "before Abraham was, I am" (Jn 8:58). If He knew that knowledge from the Father in His Humanity, surely, He knew how long He took to create. For what reason, should God take to create in 13.8 billion years when having the powers to create in six days?
Darwinism has never proved experimentally as true, as fact, as law; that non-intelligent life created non-intelligently from dust any life form. It cannot prove non-fish can become a fish, a non-reptile become a reptile, and to cut the story short, Darwinian science cannot produce a human from a non-human.
At the other end of the cosmic scale, Rossinian hypothesis has never practically produced a star from a non-star, and from an explosion has never proved physically that a theoretical divine linier explosion will converge into spiral galaxies time and time again over 13.8 billion years. No cosmologist has never created a planet from a non-planet, and to cut a long story short as ever created a cosmos in six days to test the reliability of the word of the Creator!
Still, Dr Ross insists our God given divine law is out by billions of year days. The word of God misses by light years the truth, the Bible wrong. No doubt, Dr Ross may like to prove God wrong, producing a little thunder, lightning and with some trumpet blast over some hill, a little cosmos for example in some test area.
Surely, the Holy Trinity through Yahweh placed His formula, His power contained in Word, at will, and instantly, in a 'test area' (the ark) for all time, the test is however for us to simply believe.
The day after Boxing Day, the feast of Stt John the Divine; he saw heaven opened, and the ark of the Testimony of God. Confronted by that testimony of God will be all who wish to enter heaven. A righteous speaking, plain speaking God that a child of six may read and understand.
As God/Jesus said, we err in not knowing scripture or the power of God (Matt 22:29).
Surely, reduced is hope in a God not of plain speech? Speech which revolves around worship on the seventh day because He created in six days, and on the first day arose from the dead. The same day of creation in which an unknown light shone through the cosmos; generated light from God. So, we may believe.
In heaven, that light is our eternal day, again no sun needed, as in the beginning of day one, days fulfilled at Sinai with the public testimony of the Holy Trinity, and again fulfilled by Jesus, on His first public statement on divine law and of his mission in Matthew 5:17-19.
The hypothesis that God did not create in six days, makes out God has broken His own divine law, how can His kingdom last? However, a God written witness statement is above that of any fallen human science.
Dr Ross was not at the creation, against one who was. Dr Ross appears in around about way, to accuse Him of unable to set down creation as He said in plain speech: that God lacks the foresight needed for today to combat Ross and BA77. Or, God/Jesus has led many astray by commanding us to believe the Creation took six days.
"Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool" (Isa 1:14). But first, let's argue that God did not create in six days, as that plan may harm our pride and theory.
A clear and accurate plan is a good intelligent design plan.
I'll let Hugh Ross defend himself since he is so much better able to do so than I:
Hugh Ross vs. Ken Ham – TBN Debate
and this debate
Hugh Ross and Jason Lisle debate
The Bible and the early church fathers
Jason Lisle
we take Genesis literally
the starting point of YEC is Scripture
the plain meaning of Scripture is that the earth was made in 6 24-hour days
science has to be interpreted in a way that fits a plain reading of Genesis 1
the evidence for an old universe and old Earth must be rejected a priori
Hugh Ross
we take Genesis literally
the Hebrew word for day (yom) can mean 24 hours or a long period of time
there are multiple creation accounts in the Bible
interpreting yom as long periods of time harmonizes all the accounts
the Bible says that the seventh day is not even ended
we believe in a literal Adam and Eve living thousands of years ago
Jason Lisle
there's only 1 account of creation in the Bible: Genesis
the normal view in church history is 6 24-hour days
there are some early church fathers who that the days are long
the other places where creation is discussed are not real accounts
Hugh Ross
the early church did not spend a lot of time talking about the age of the Earth
there is not unanimous agreement about the age of the Earth
there is no definitive statement on the age of the Earth until Isaac Newton
Newton strongly favored an old earth, hundreds of years before Darwin
there are other creation accounts, Job 38-39
Pslam 104 is a creation account
Jason Lisle
a Psalm is not written in the genre of historical narrative
Psalm 104 is not a creation account – it talks about ships, etc
it's talking about the modern era, not a creation account
The evidence from science
Hugh Ross
both of us believe in an absolute beginning of time, space and matter
both of us believe that space is expanding now
stars form as matter coalesces during the expansion of the universe
star formation requires a universe aged on the order of billions of years
Jason Lisle
if you pre-suppose my interpretation of Genesis, then the universe is young
Hugh Ross
the speed of the expansion of the universe proves an old universe
the light emitted from the oldest stars also proves an old universe
Jason Lisle
if you pre-suppose my interpretation of Genesis, then the universe is young
Was the universe made with the appearance of age
Jason Lisle
any evidence for an old universe is wrong
stars didn't form gradually, they were created by God instantly
stars have the appearance of age, but they're actually young
Hugh Ross
God doesn't lie in the Bible or in the book of nature
Scientists can look back in time by looking further out into the universe
Because light takes a long time to travel to the Earth, we can see the past
we can see a time when there were no stars yet
stars formed slowly over time, not instantaneously
we have photos of the universe before stars and after stars
we can see a history of the universe by looking closer and further away
Does nature provide us with knowledge about creation?
They discuss Psalm 19 now, so here's Psalm 19:1-5:
1 The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
2 Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge.
3 There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.
4 Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens he has pitched a tent for the sun,
5 which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion, like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
Jason Lisle
nature isn't a book
nature doesn't provide knowledge about God
Psalm 19 doesn't say that nature communicates to us
verse 3 says "There is no speech nor language"
Hugh Ross
If you read all of verse 3, it says the exact opposite of what you just said it says
Verse 1: "The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands"
Verse 2: "Day after day they pour forth speech; night after night they display knowledge."
Verse 3: "There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard."
Verse 4: "Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world."
Jason Lisle
You can't take the Bible literally all the time
How important is the age of the Earth?
Hugh Ross
it's a non-essential because it has nothing to do with salvation or inerrancy
both sides of the debate affirm the same views of salvation and inerrancy
professional scientists have multiple lines of evidence saying the universe is old
the only reason it matters is that young earth creationism is a barrier to faith
if you have to deny science to be a Christian, then it stops people from being saved
young earth opposition to science has been used by secularists to marginalize Christianity
Jason Lisle
there was no death in the Garden of Eden, animal or human, before the Fall
the Bible says that death was a consequence of Adam's sin
so there was no death before the Fall, according to the Bible
old earth people believe in death before the Fall
Consider Romans 5:12:
12Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned—
Hugh Ross
Romans 5:12 says that Adam's sin caused death to come to all men
old earth people believe that only animal death existed before the Fall, not human death
plant and animal death existed before the Fall – Adam and Eve were eating!
Jason Lisle
I interpret the Bible to say that plants aren't living creatures
What about dinosaurs, the Flood, and Noah's ark?
Jason Lisle
dinosaurs were created on the 6th day
dinosaurs lived alongside humans and were vegetarians before the Fall
dinosaurs were on the Ark – they're not that big – just take baby dinosaurs
it's a global flood
Hugh Ross
dinosaurs were created on the 5th day
they were extinct before before humans ever appeared
nobody in history ever wrote about dinosaurs until 200 years ago
it's a local flood
Of supplemental note. In regards to death preceding the fall, I hold that William Dembski, with PhDs in Theology and Mathematics, successfully reconciled that particular point:
Old Earth Creationism and the Fall, William Dembski – Christian Research Journal, volume 34, number 4(2011).
Excerpt: My solution (to Theodicy) in my book "The End of Christianity" is to argue that, just as the effects of salvation at the cross reach both forward in time (saving present day Christians) and backward in time (saving Old Testament saints), so the effects of the fall reach forward in time as well as backward.,,,
William Dembski Interview – Finding A Good God In An Evil World – (2011) video interview (death preceding fall – 25:30 minute mark)
Seeing that God Himself is outside of time and also seeing that the mind of man is also outside of time, then I find no reason why the spiritual rebellion against God, i.e. 'sin entering the world', should be limited to only one direction in time.
Only a materialistic philosophy, not a Theistic philosophy, would strictly presuppose a one way direction of causation from past to future within space-time for the initial rebellion against God.
A few related notes on 'the now of the mind' and the timeless nature of quantum mechanics
The Mind and Its Now – Stanley L. Jaki, May 2008
Excerpts: There can be no active mind without its sensing its existence in the moment called now.,,,
Three quarters of a century ago Charles Sherrington, the greatest modern student of the brain, spoke memorably on the mind's baffling independence of the brain. The mind lives in a self-continued now or rather in the now continued in the self. This life involves the entire brain, some parts of which overlap, others do not.
,,,There is no physical parallel to the mind's ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. The mind remains identical with itself while it lives through its momentary nows.
,,, the now is immensely richer an experience than any marvelous set of numbers, even if science could give an account of the set of numbers, in terms of energy levels. The now is not a number. It is rather a word, the most decisive of all words. It is through experiencing that word that the mind comes alive and registers all existence around and well beyond.
,,, All our moments, all our nows, flow into a personal continuum, of which the supreme form is the NOW which is uncreated, because it simply IS.
Einstein vs Bergson, science vs philosophy and the meaning of time – Wednesday 24 June 2015
Excerpt: Bergson was fond of saying that time was the experience of waiting for a lump of sugar to dissolve in a glass of water. It was a declaration that one could not talk about time without reference to human consciousness and human perception. Einstein would say that time is what clocks measure. Bergson would no doubt ask why we build clocks in the first place.
'He argued that if we didn't have a prior sense of time we wouldn't have been led to build clocks and we wouldn't even use them … unless we wanted to go places and to events that mattered,' says Canales. 'You can see that their points of view were very different.'
In a theoretical nutshell this expressed perfectly the division between lived time and spacetime: subjective experience versus objective reality.,,,
Just when Einstein thought he had it worked out, along came the discovery of quantum theory and with it the possibility of a Bergsonian universe of indeterminacy and change. God did, it seems, play dice with the universe, contra to Einstein's famous aphorism.
Some supporters went as far as to say that Bergson's earlier work anticipated the quantum revolution of Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg by four decades or more.
Einstein vs. "The Now" of Philosophers and Quantum Mechanics – video
LIVING IN A QUANTUM WORLD – Vlatko Vedral – 2011
Excerpt: Thus, the fact that quantum mechanics applies on all scales forces us to confront the theory's deepest mysteries. We cannot simply write them off as mere details that matter only on the very smallest scales. For instance, space and time are two of the most fundamental classical concepts, but according to quantum mechanics they are secondary. The entanglements are primary. They interconnect quantum systems without reference to space and time. If there were a dividing line between the quantum and the classical worlds, we could use the space and time of the classical world to provide a framework for describing quantum processes. But without such a dividing line—and, indeed, without a truly classical world—we lose this framework. We must explain space and time (4D space-time) as somehow emerging from fundamentally spaceless and timeless physics.
Quantum Mechanics mocking Laplace's French accent, quipping, "Space-Time? I have no need for that hypothesis!"
In further support for Dembski's claim for the effects of rebellion against God 'reaching backwards in time', it is now found that "Quantum physics mimics spooky action into the past"
Quantum physics mimics spooky action into the past – April 23, 2012
Excerpt: The authors experimentally realized a "Gedankenexperiment" called "delayed-choice entanglement swapping", formulated by Asher Peres in the year 2000.,,,
According to the famous words of Albert Einstein, the effects of quantum entanglement appear as "spooky action at a distance". The recent experiment has gone one remarkable step further. "Within a naïve classical world view, quantum mechanics can even mimic an influence of future actions on past events", says Anton Zeilinger.
Experimental delayed-choice entanglement swapping – Oct. 2012
Abstract: Motivated by the question, which kind of physical interactions and processes are needed for the production of quantum entanglement, Peres has put forward the radical idea of delayed-choice entanglement swapping. There, entanglement can be "produced a posteriori, after the entangled particles have been measured and may no longer exist". In this work we report the first realization of Peres' gedanken experiment. Using four photons, we can actively delay the choice of measurement-implemented via a high-speed tunable bipartite state analyzer and a quantum random number generator-on two of the photons into the time-like future of the registration of the other two photons. This effectively projects the two already registered photons onto one definite of two mutually exclusive quantum states in which either the photons are entangled (quantum correlations) or separable (classical correlations). This can also be viewed as "quantum steering into the past".
Thus, in spite mw's continued trollish YEC attacks against me on UD, I find no Theological nor Empirical inconsistency in my Old Earth view.
Psalm 102:24–27
"O my God," I say, "take me not away
in the midst of my days—
you whose years endure
throughout all generations!"
Of old you laid the foundation of the earth,
and the heavens are the work of your hands.
They will perish, but you will remain;
they will all wear out like a garment.
You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away,
but you are the same, and your years have no end.
Bacteria Evolution – Darwinian prediction that form follows function is falsified – December 29, 2016
Excerpt: The shape of bacteria has long been anticipated to correlate with movement. From an evolutionary perspective, form is predicted to follow function – but, had yet to be tested.,,,
,,, "the shape of bacteria does not influence how well they can move – this is the surprising finding… The findings refute long-held theories that there should be a strong link between the evolution of shape in bacteria and their ability to move.",,,
"One clear and recurring [evolutionary] prediction for form and function in microorganisms in general is that shape and motility are correlated.",,,
Contrary to these form and function predictions, however, "Our research," Humphries continued,,,"has produced evidence that these theoretical predictions don't match reality,,,
The team findings ran counter to predictions formulated by the current prevailing theory of evolution – the modern synthesis theory of evolution, also known as neo-Darwinism. "In contrast to clear predictions from [evolutionary] theory," the team reported, "we show that cell shape and motility are not coupled… We find no association between shape and lifestyle [motility], and contrary to recent evidence, no indication that shape is associated with pathogenicity.",,,
"One of the most useful properties of scientific theories," the US National Academy of Science notes, "is that they can be used to make predictions about natural events or phenomena that have not yet been observed." The theory of evolution, therefore by definition,,,, is falsified (yet again) as a scientific theory.
"Thus, in spite mw's continued trollish YEC attacks against me on UD, I find no Theological nor Empirical inconsistency in my Old Earth view."
BA77, many times I have complimented you on your use of science against Darwinism. Of the Beginning, according to any straight reading of divine law, qualified is one person as an expert on the Creation. That does not include, me, you or Hugh Ross.
Yes, I do disagree with you and Hugh Ross. No, I am not a troll. I am a fellow Christian!
It seems you take the huff very easily? Or I am over sensitive? Cannot I respond occasionally to your dogmatic stance, of which you have every right to believe?
BA77, there is room to believe a direct commandment without having to interfere with it to suit the current theory.
Some people at UD may well read with interest my reasons and logic to believe which is a most difficult stance to take: scripture unadulterated. Are you attacking that? I am not asking you to like what I say, but once again do not accuse me of being a troll. That is not my intent.
In this case an ad hominem attack appears to reflect your stance against clear divine law. Surely, God does not speak in riddles (Num 12:8). If it was plain enough for Moses it should be plain enough for you and me!
Instead, it seems by long ages, God set us a riddle in the Ten Commandments, 'I took to create, 6 days plus or minus 6.9 billion year days'
However, as you make important significant contributions to UD (indeed, in my opinion, UD may be called, "UD according to BA77,") therefore, I ask the administrators to clarify if I have trolled you BA77 and with wilful intent. BA77, when I am simply interjecting to a stance of yours. Heavens above, cannot I not now reply in any shape of form? Such is ridiculous.
However, if deemed I am to be tarred as a troll, I will no longer contribute to UD.
Pity really, I do learn stuff from UD. Besides, surely BA77, this matter is one of the spirit of debate: for the greater glory of the Holy Trinity?
If I am to be classed as an unchristian troll, adios, and my parting reflections.
You say BA77, you will let Ross defend himself.
I will let God speak for Himself, any modification to divine law, Jesus teaches is hypocrisy (Matt 15:3-9).
The word of God as divine law needs no correcting by fallen humanity.
I believe, it is a fact, especially where spoken direct is the word of God, the words stand forever, as Jesus said (Matt 24:35). If it, the word, cannot stand independent of any prevailing theory, it cannot stand.
It matters not how many believe, as God knows from the beginning who wants to be saved or not. A divine law is untouchable and unalterable. Of course, there are varying degrees of belief. Yet we are all of one humankind.
As for the certainty of scripture, or the certainty of any Christian belief, indeed any belief related subject, and that includes the Big Bang theory and Darwinism, the following questions/thoughts also arise:
Many Christians testify against divine law, against God, against the expert Testament of God; witnessed as public Testimony and which He wrote down the same therein, while He showed daily miracles over the Israelites.
Does not God have the goodness and power to create in any manner He wills, how fast or slow He wills: then where is our conclusive evidence to make God a murderer?
Are we, including Hugh Ross, an expert on miracles? Are we truly an expert witness, reliable in a divine court of law to testify against the Almighty?
We cannot testify that we saw God create.
Do we know in the cosmos where the beginning of creation was first cast into the vaults of heaven from?
In the Big Bang Theory, can we testify we have seen God with His finger on the theoretical singularity?
Do we know where in the cosmos heaven where is the seat of God?
Do we know in ourselves where sin resides?
Where we at Sinai?
At our judgement, should we not protest, that the lack of foresight of Yahweh at Sinai contributed to the eclipse of Him relative to the Big Bang Theory and Darwinism? God should have been more truthful, direct and clear. Well, I thought He was truthful, clear and direct: face to face with Moses.
If the Testimony of God in public and between three others, that He has spoken plain, face to face with Moses and not in riddles, is not sufficient, should there not be consequences?
A miracle; can we create a cosmos in six days or 13.8 billion years?
In what space, does God exist? It seems that space is much as a conundrum as God.
If we teach that a divine law is accurate to + or – 6.9 billion years, what then the rest of the Ten Commandments? In total, what then the accuracy of all the words of God?
If we teach the Flood was local, then perhaps we should have a local Jesus, because He stated all perished bar eight people. Perhaps a local judgement?
Do we speak from experience of the flood?
If we teach others it is fine to bring the Testimony of God in line with theory, when Jesus clearly teaches that is wrong, as Christians we teach it is fine to break the law where theory is concerned.
Anyway, thank you for your response BA77.
I await the outcome of the administrators to my request. If none, I take it my reflections may continue.
In the meantime, I am off to the historic city of York with its magnificent cathedral for a few days as it's my wife's birthday.
Happy New Year.
mw, in post 16 you heavily implied that I (and Hugh Ross) are fighting against God and are in sin for holding an Old Earth view.
God lacks the foresight needed for today to combat Ross and BA77. Or, God/Jesus has led many astray by commanding us to believe the Creation took six days.
"Come now, let us argue it out, says the LORD: though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be like snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall become like wool" (Isa 1:14).
I then answered you with a debate summation of Ross that gave an overview of the science and Theology.
IMHO, Ross won the debate hands down on both the scientific and Theological fronts.
As well I cleared up an empirical discrepancy with death preceding the fall.
As with the several other times that I have now answered your charges of 'combating God', you did not answer the science nor the Theology I presented. Instead, you just repeat your own YEC interpretation of scripture as authoritative. Indeed, you claim your own personal YEC interpretation of the Bible is what God actually meant, and then ignore any other interpretation of scripture given to you and consider anyone else as almost a heretic who holds to a different interpretation than you. Needless to say, you cannot rationally debate a person who thinks that he is basically speaking for God in his own personal interpretation of the Bible.
The fact that both science and scripture itself is found to, in many instances, contradict you is totally irrelevant to you. You pretty much believe that you speak for God Himself in your YEC interpretation of scripture and nothing, by golly, NOTHING, can ever tell you otherwise, i.e. nothing can possibly tell you that you may very well be wrong in your YEC interpretation of the Bible. You simply have not left the option of rational discourse open.
Since I have answered you several times now on both science and Theology, and since you keep repeating the same old authoritarian defense of your YEC interpretation of the Bible, instead of defending the science or offering any real defense of scripture other than holding that your view of scripture is above question since, according to you, God said it and that settles it. As such, no matter how holy as you may personally consider you YEC crusade to be, such repetition makes your behavior on UD trollish.
I do not wish for you to be banned from UD or anything like that. I just wish that you would stop repeating the same old argument to me time after time when I have already answered your argument repeatedly.
Just because you can still type on your keyboard does not mean that your arguments have not already been addressed and refuted.
Since YEC is so important for you, might I suggest that perhaps one of the thousands of sites dedicated more to YEC, and less to science, may be more to your liking?
Thanks BA77.
You are correct, nothing will change my conviction. I was once swayed by the BIg Bang theory, then one day it became clear to me, a divine law is a divine law: everything then fitted into place in scripture, but as for me, I did not then fit into the world.
Perhaps I am simply an irritation to you BA77 because I deliberately do not cite much science? It is good you use true science to derail Darwinism. But there is no true science on the Beginning, because no human science can understand miracles. Thus, surely, I am entitled to point that out from time to time.
If the Big Bang theory or Darwinism is needed to prop up the word of God, we are in a sorry state of faith. And we are.
However, thank you for not wishing me to be band from Uncommon Descent.
Still, common descent from the Big Bang, BA77, you make out at Uncommon Descent.
Creation in six days is anything but common. That incorporates true intelligent designed divine descent does it not; instantaneous in the case of every soul, and literally in the case of Jesus/God Man.
Among others, I receive daily updates from creationist and ID sites. To imply creationist science is not true science, that your figures are superior science, needed to disprove divine law, is rich.
A long time ago, I remember the following dream to this day: an unknown person said to me, "the hardest university to get into is the University of Love."
If we have to destroy the perfection of divine law created by Love in order to 'love' it more with theory, have we fully entered that University?
Please take these comments in the spirit of debate.
That's me finished, BA77. We are off.
23SeverskyJanuary 2, 2017 at 12:46 pm
Because somebody with resources thinks it is important.
Note that it doesn't have to be a majority. It doesn't have to make sense. It doesn't even mean that there's a threat. Just that somebody finds it important enough to devote resources to it.
My best guess is that there are several completely distinct groups that find it mutually helpful to man the booth:
a) the nouveau athée who still have a bothersome conscience trying to sneak back in
b) the elitist who wants a subservient underclass to unquestionably obey social engineering projects
c) the intelligentsia who want science (and himself) to acquire more power and prestige
d) the communist who hates the church and its diminishing power
e) the youth who covets the privileged life of all the above
f) the jaded, faded, past-middle-age bureaucrat who has trouble sleeping at night
g) the one or two NCSE educrats who find it a very remunerative position for a set of useless skills
Conspiracy theories are also the last resort of cranks.
mw, "Please take these comments in the spirit of debate."
That's just it. You do not debate. You proclaim your view is above reproach.
mw: "You are correct, nothing will change my conviction."
If I wanted that kind of 'debate' I would just go to Myers atheistic blog.
Since, you admit nothing will ever change your conviction, I politely ask you to desist from bothering me with your pointless 'debates' any further.
Hello BA77 and mw,
In regards to the Old Earth/Young Earth controversy:
For whatever it is worth, here is the perspective on the issue from one who considers himself an orthodox Catholic.
Christ promised the apostles that He would send the Holy Spirit to the Church Who would be with it forever and guide it into the complete truth. The orthodox Catholics believe that where the Early Church Fathers were unanimous on the meaning of the Scriptures that becomes dogma. This does not surprise me because the unanimity of the Fathers would be part of the fulfillment of the promise of Christ that the Holy Spirit would guide the Church into all truth.
The Church Fathers were not unanimous on the creation accounts of Genesis. Augustine was caustic in his criticism of those who insisted that they be taken literally; he accused them of bringing ridicule upon the Church.
So, Catholics are free to take the creation accounts literally, but they are not obliged to do so.
Personally, I believe in an old earth and an old Universe. But I believe the creation of humanity by God was immediate, not through a biological process that took place over billions of years. If we don't believe God would fashion the body of Adam from the dirt, how are we to believe He would, at the resurrection, fashion the bodies of every human being who ever lived and died from the dust to which they had returned. "you are dust, and to dust you shall return." (Gen 3:19)
And besides that, the fossil record points to a series of creative acts by God as Genesis describes, and we now know that the new information required to form another "kind" could have only been obtained by the direct intervention of an intelligent agent. So, I am not ready to write off the creation accounts as a myth. In fact, to do so is forbidden to orthodox Catholics. They are history in some sense, although not history the way it is written today, and in the end we will probably all be amazed at how accurately they described the events of creation, but in a way suited to the understanding of those at the time it was written.
A discussion of subatomic particles and nuclear physics wouldn't have been appropriate. And if God inspired someone to re-write the creation accounts in a way that corresponded to our understanding of science, in ten thousand years people would be scoffing at it because it seemed to reflect a primitive understanding of the Universe.
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