April 2011

Over the past several months, Dr. Edward Feser has been engaged in debate with various ID proponents, most recently Jay Richards and Vincent Torley, over the relationship between two types of argument for God’s existence:  on the one hand, arguments from design such as are found in Paley and in the writings of some ID proponents, and on the other hand, philosophical arguments of the sort proposed by Thomas Aquinas.  Whereas ID proponents tend to see Paley-type arguments and Thomistic arguments as different but compatible, Feser sees them as incompatible.  He thinks that the Paley/ID type of argument implies a wrong picture (i.e., a heretical picture) of God, and a wrong understanding (i.e., a heretical understanding) of the relationship between creator and creation.  He thinks that Paley/ID sorts of argument lead to belief in a mere mechanic-God, a God unlike the God of what he calls “classical theism,” and hence a god unworthy of worship by Christians.

I am unconvinced that Paley/ID lines of argument produce a mere “mechanic” God, since I’m unconvinced that arguments that choose to focus on what we might call the mechanics of creation necessarily exclude other (i.e., metaphysical) aspects of creation.  However, in this post I am not going to try to defend Paleyan or ID arguments, or to criticize Feser’s interpretation of Aquinas on creation, or to raise objections to what Feser calls “Thomistic-Aristotelian” thought or “classic theism.”  I leave such detailed arguments to people such as Vincent Torley who have made a special study of Aquinas and of the Aristotelian tradition.  Rather, I want to make sure that I fully understand Feser’s general position regarding design, creation, and the Christian God.  To this end, I am going to ask Professor Feser for clarification by conceding, for the sake of argument, much of what he has said, and then posing a question for him. Read More ›

The way Darwin lobbyists don’t.

California-based Caroline Crocker, Expelled and now the director of an integrity in science institute and author of Free to Think, offers some reflections on how to teach science as if it wasn’t a cult:

…biological systems are a complex mixture of chemical and electrical reactions controlled by application of many levels of information, not to mention the environment, so that predicting the outcome of changing one parameter can be almost impossible. The complexity, and thus the impossibility of drawing absolutely accurate conclusions and predicting the effect of a change in one parameter, further increases as one progresses into psychology, sociology, ecology and the like.To illustrate this principle, we can consider the work of Dr. Carolyn Nersesian of the University of Sydney. This ecologist used a technique from chemistry (titration) to understand the feeding behavior of eight brushtail possums. Basically, she slowly increased the concentration of a poison in the food in a sheltered area (tree) while offering the animals untainted food in a less sheltered area that had been pre-treated with fox urine and feces The goal was to see what concentration of poison would cause the animals to risk exposure to predators by moving from the sheltered to the unsheltered area. Read More ›

Always used to attack any traditional assumption, never used to attack nonsense, no matter how scofffable, talked in Darwin’s name.

Western Michigan University philosopher Tim McGrew offers some thoughts on evidence, forthcoming in an anthology from Routledge: Read More ›

Neuron tangle 1: Okay then, if I don’t have a self, do you have a self? If so, why are you talking to me?

Neuron tangle 2: No, I don’t have a self either. This here prof is quoted in New Scientist (Liz Else, “Your brain creates your sense of self, incognito”, 19 April 2011), and he knows more than the two of us put together: Read More ›

At CNN, we are informed by Biologos vice prez Karl Giberson that a busted Vit C gene in humans, chimps, orangutans, etc., is

… but one of many, many evidences that support the truth of evolution – that make it a “sacred fact” that Christians must embrace in the name of truth. And they should embrace this truth with enthusiasm, for this is the world that God created.

Here’s my problem (Toronto-based Canuck hack): I dunno.

First, the amount of sheer nonsense talked in the name of evolution is appalling, and even a founder of the discipline of evolutionary psychology has just abandoned his big theory (none too soon, I would say).

Second, practically no one who is not on autopilot believes Darwinism any more, and that is the principal theory of evolution. It is the only theory of evolution our culture recognizes, the one courts enforce, for which taxes are collected, on behalf of which inquisitors snoop, sneak, snipe, and snitch.

If all this is “sacred”, everyone who could benefit civilization must prefer the profane. And, historically, everyone who has benefited civilization has, under these circumstances, preferred the profane. That’s why we keep running into non-Darwinian atheists.

For a traditional believer in any type of ethical monotheism, the logic is simple: Read More ›

In “Jesus would believe in evolution and so should you” (CNN, April 10, 2011) Christian Darwinist Karl Giberson, BioLogos vice-prez, enlightens: Science is not a sinister enterprise aimed at destroying faith. It’s an honest exploration of the wonderful world that God created. We are often asked to think about what Jesus would do, if he lived among us today. Who would Jesus vote for? What car would he drive? To these questions we should add “What would Jesus believe about origins?” And the answer? Jesus would believe evolution, of course. He cares for the Truth. Here’s Southern Baptist seminary prez Albert Mohler’s response.

Southern Baptist seminary prez Al Mohler’s response (April 19, 2011) to Giberson’s CNN Belief blog, “Jesus would believe in evolution and so should you” (April 10, 2011) is here:

… he throws the Bible under the bus. In language hauntingly reminiscent of Reverend Clarence Arthur Wilmot [novelist John Updike’s classic liberal reverend], Professor Giberson describes the human authors of the Old Testament as “ancient and uncomprehending scribes.”In his new book, The Language of Science and Faith:, written with Francis S. Collins, readers will find this strange paragraph: Read More ›

Yes, righties predominated overwhelmingly even back then. Or longer? (ScienceDaily, Apr. 19, 2011):

Now, David Frayer, professor of anthropology at the University of Kansas, has used markings on fossilized front teeth to show that right-handedness goes back more than 500,000 years. He is the lead author (with colleagues in Croatia, Italy and Spain) of a paper published this month in the British journal Laterality. His research shows that distinctive markings on fossilized teeth correlate to the right or left-handedness of individual prehistoric humans.

“The patterns seen on the fossil teeth are directly and consistently produced by right or left hand manipulation in experimental work,” Frayer said.

There are some issues around handedness, especially the putative problems of left-handed or ambidextrous people. One difficulty is that because most human are right-handed, “right” tends to mean good or dexterous but “left” tends to mean bad or sinister. And “ambidextrous” easily translates to: ambivalent. Read More ›

Sources note that, while Darwin stalwart Jerry Coyne has his hands full critiquing the Catechism of the Catholic Church, his colleague Eric Davidson … dismisses Coyne’s view of macroevolution as a “lethal error” and neo-Darwinism as “erroneously” assuming things, in E. Davidson, “Evolutionary bioscience as regulatory systems biology,” Developmental Biology 2011, in press: Of the first of these approaches (e.g., Hoekstra and Coyne, 2007), I shall have nothing to say, as mechanistic developmental biology has shown that its fundamental concepts are largely irrelevant to the process by which the body plan is formed in ontogeny.  In addition it gives rise to lethal errors in respect to evolutionary process.  

Intelligent design theorist Bill Dembski and and Christian Darwinist Karl Giberson at Patheos. Some of Giberson’s views are featured here and here. Details to come.

Recently, I observed a thread at a Christian apologetics site, CARM, “Francis *******g Beckwith”/”most snaky Christian theologian,” which really did not reflect well on the site’s goals.

jpark320, a thoughtful CARM volunteer, wrote to point out that

First the link to the “trolled’ CARM site is on their forums, not an official article that was posted from the staff.Second there is not enough manpower to keep watch over every single forum people can make. It is the double of sword of allowing people to freely express their thoughts (the side of the sword that hurts…)

So it should be easy to monitor “flame wars” and “trolling” here given the limited number of post and that only official UD people can make those posts.

I replied at 5:

jpark320, thanks for clarification. However, I am not sure that the service CARM is providing in hosting “FB/snaky” needs doing.

Anyone can start a blog at Blogger for free in five minutes and start trashing just about anyone from there, and get all their friends to do it too.

So why facilitate – and in some measure, take responsibility for – what happens anyway with no intervention?

Incidentally, one needn’t be “official UD people” to post here, just Read More ›

Well, I seem to have done it again, inspiring much debate concerning the philosophical and theological implications of materialistic Darwinism versus design and theism. Disclosure: I am a former militant, Dawkins-style atheist, but now one of those dreadful born-again Christians who attends a semi-charismatic church every Sunday, plays keyboards in the praise band with much joy and fulfillment, and is actively engaged in Christian apologetics. ID was a major factor in my conversion, but it was by no means the only one. I earn my living as a software engineer in aerospace R&D. My professional specialties include designing guidance, navigation and control software for precision-guided airdrop systems, and finite-element analysis of nonlinear dynamic systems. One my hobbies for many years Read More ›

Some of the biggest names in textbooks. For example, the standards passed two years ago that permit keeping one’s brain in gear while listening to tales of evolution garnered: Biology Pre-Adoption Samples Chemistry Pre-Adoption Samples IPC Pre-Adoption Samples Physics-Pre-Adoption Samples Look ma!: No broomstick.

After a laundry list of stuff in nature that is bad for humans (so?), we are told, “We must not, of course, ascribe the origin of these sinister features of the natural world to God.” (P. 133). Instead, Science has shown with remarkable clarity that nature has built-in creative powers. (P. 134) But if nature exists by the will of God, how exactly does that get God off the hook? (quotations from: Karl W. Giberson and Francis S. Collins, The Language of Science and Faith: Straight Answers to Genuine Questions (InterVarsity Press, 2011.)

Following up his comments on the stunning half billion years of changelessness (stasis) demonstrated by the pterobranch, David Tyler now addresses the unchanging cricket, one of whose fossils was found from 100 million years ago: He comments on howthe fact that many life forms seem motionless in time is handled in the science literature: It is of interest to note how living fossils are described. Sometimes, they are “some of evolution’s greatest survivors”, and the splay-footed cricket is “obviously doing something right”. The Economist reporter says that the insect illustrates the “first rule of natural selection”: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” LiveScience took a different view, making the point that the animal has been “stuck in time for the Read More ›