Oxford mathematician John Lennox on whether a scientist can believe in God

Ed George

No, my non-response is because I prefer not to engage in discussion with people who are incapable of having a civil discussion without lobbing insults.

Ok, understood. But I hope you will consider the points raised and develop some kind of answer to them, eventually - if not to UB then to someone else who may ask the same questions. Silver Asiatic

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8) when I am forced to examine irrefutable evidence against my personal preferences

And just to be sure, Ed you are not getting a confrontation from me merely because we disagree (that is just another example of your self-serving spin on things). You are getting it because you refuse to acknowledge the facts (i.e. famous fulfilled predictions, well-documented experimental results, and recorded history) of the position you've been constantly attacking for the past year. EDIT: I see Ed returned to change his original post, now trying to tie me to ET (apparently the spin never ceases). Ed, judging by the way you and ET have spat at each other, it appears the two of you have a long history together. I am happy to leave the two of you to it. Upright BiPed

What false accusations have I made? I know that Acartia Eddie has made several against me. Not only that, Acartia Eddie has exhibited a penchant for quote-mining ET

VB

With all due respect this is false .I think you will agree that I have never hurled insults your way and always tried to engage you in a civil manner

Yes, I agree. There are several commenters here who are always (or almost always) civil.

yet there have been numerous times that you never answered questions I posed

There are several reasons why I don’t respond or stop commenting on a thread: 1) when the discussion goes back and forth but there is no new thoughts provided. 2) when someone asks a loaded question. 3) when someone has a history of rude behaviour. 4) when some makes false accusations, as ET does. 5) when I get distracted by real life. 6) when the thread scrolls past what is displayed in the recent comments section. 7) when the comment is too lengthy. Life is too short. But I think that we ultimately agree that none of us are under any obligation to respond to every question directed at them. Ed George

EG “No, my non-response is because I prefer not to engage in discussion with people who are incapable of having a civil discussion without lobbing insults.” With all due respect this is false .I think you will agree that I have never hurled insults your way and always tried to engage you in a civil manner yet there have been numerous times that you never answered questions I posed that would show the deficiencies in your position. In fact your favorite retort when the rubber meets the road so to speak is “thats a loaded question” So no ,even people who engage with you civilly do not get answers when you find the answer to be inconvenient to your world view. UB’s observations have considerable merit. Just saying Vivid vividbleau

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No, my non-response is because I prefer not to engage in discussion with people who are incapable of having a civil discussion without lobbing insults.

Anyone who has been following along on this blog knows (without a doubt) that the real reason you don't engage in earnest on the evidence of design is because you know that you don't have the slightest chance of appearing to hold your own in that engagement. More accurately, your defense of materialism will not suffer well in a fair presentation of physical evidence, and we both know it. You came to this blog just over a year ago under false pretense (openly lying to the people here about your beliefs) in order to tease and taunt and argue with religious design proponents over social and political issues. I did not engage you for the vast majority of those months, simply because those topics are not why I participate here. However, over the course of time you began to challenge the physical evidence of design in biology, which is a subject I will respond to, and that is what the issue is here. You refuse to engage in the evidence for a position that you relentlessly attack. Did you not once say on these very pages: "when we advocate for something we have to address or accept the contradictions that are inherent in our views". If so, then quit whining about being held to your own standards. On a personal level Ed, the issue is about demonstrating a little intellectual integrity -- either address the evidence, stop the attack, leave the field, or continue to demonstrate that you don't have any. If you only intend to do the latter, then don't complain. Upright BiPed

Acartia Eddie:

But I hope that you understand why I choose not to participate in discussions with people like ET or UB who find it necessary to throw insults or accusations at anyone they disagree with.

That is a lie and you are a liar. I have NEVER thrown insults or accusations at anyone for merely disagreeing. And Acartia Eddie will NEVER be able to show otherwise. Moderators, why is it OK for "Ed George", aka William Spearshake, to lie about me and post false accusations? ET

Marfin

Ed George – I don`t believe I have ever insulted you...

No, you haven't, and I thank you for that. But I hope that you understand why I choose not to participate in discussions with people like ET or UB who find it necessary to throw insults or accusations at anyone they disagree with.

why do material atheists not admit that their position is a position of faith (belief) every bit as much as christians like me.

I am not strictly an atheist, agnostic better describes what I am. I agree that some atheists base their worldview more on faith than evidence. Personally, I am agnostic simply because I have not seen any compelling evidence to indicate the existence of a God. I wouldn't call this a "faith", but I admit that my conclusions/views, as is the case for everyone, are affected by biases.

Sure an almighty creator seems unbelievable but I have yet to hear a counter position being more believable , I mean an un-caused universe from nothing without design and purpose is just not believable in my eyes, but if you guys want to believe that go ahead but just know it is a position of faith not fact.

I don't know how the universe was formed, or even that it was uncaused. But having a cause doesn't necessarily equate to a supernatural cause. But, it also doesn't rule it out. My conclusion about the cause of the universe isn't based on faith, simply because I have not drawn any conclusion about it. Ed George

LoL! @ Acartia Eddie- You don't respond because you have nothing to counter what UB posted. The same thing goes for when I expose you are the poseur that you are. We aren't insulting you, Acartia Eddie. We are making astute observations. ET

Ed George - I don`t believe I have ever insulted you , all I have asked for is some honesty , why do material atheists not admit that their position is a position of faith (belief) every bit as much as christians like me. Sure there is evidence on both sides but ultimately it comes down to what you believe, yes believe based on the most reasonable explanation of said evidence. Sure an almighty creator seems unbelievable but I have yet to hear a counter position being more believable , I mean an un-caused universe from nothing without design and purpose is just not believable in my eyes, but if you guys want to believe that go ahead but just know it is a position of faith not fact. Marfin

SA

Given his non-response to your #15 that does seem to be about all there is to it.

No, my non-response is because I prefer not to engage in discussion with people who are incapable of having a civil discussion without lobbing insults. Ed George

Well, Marfin, you have to realize who you are talking to. It's like talking with infants- you have to provide the details and the full context or suffer the consequences. ET

UBP

He simply doesn’t give a damn. That is the strength of his position.

Given his non-response to your #15 that does seem to be about all there is to it. Silver Asiatic

. #27 In Ed's case, he is only here for the rhetoric. Given that he treats physical evidence as a public nuisance, expecting him to acknowledge any inconsistencies in his views is futile. He simply doesn't give a damn. That is the strength of his position. Upright BiPed

Good grief , who here did not think I was talking about humans when I said virgin birth and walking on water( unaided). I was just getting to the crux of the matter that the criteria for not believing in virgin births and walking on water unaided can as readily be applied to life from non life but atheist materialist dont make that application , why not? Marfin

Seversky

On the contrary, knowing what plants or berries or animals are safe to eat, what water is safe to drink, what places are safe to live, which animals are dangerous and which are harmless, knowing that jumping from great heights can injure or kill are just some of the truths that are vital to survival and reproduction.

What an animal eats or drinks, where an animal lives, how it acts - all of these things are determined (in the evolutionary view) by the chemical processes that created the organism. There's no question of truth at all here. Bacteria are attracted to food sources not through a rational decision-making process that separates truth from falsehood, but because evolution causes them to eat certain things and avoid others.

We can demonstrate certain processes exist which must be there for evolution to happen at all, for example, antibiotic resistance, bacteria which can digest the by-products of nylon manufacture, moths in which the dominant coloration changes as a result of industrial pollution

A significant group of people, including some credentialed scientists, do not think these examples give strong-enough support for the wide-reaching claims of evolutionary theory.

Have you also read criticisms of his book from evolutionary biologists? Has he won fellow scientists over with his arguments or are they being rejected on various grounds?

Behe is looking for the limits of what evolution can do. I have read criticisms of his book from scientists who said that he was wrong about where he set the limit. However, I have never read one criticism that stated where the correct limit to evolution should be placed. In all the cases I've read, the critics were happy to simply ignore the problem. This does not say much for their criticism and it tells me that they are afraid of the project that Behe undertook. I did communicate with one Behe-critic who claimed that "there is no edge to evolution". As absurd as that is, he claimed basically, that "evolution can do anything". Again, that just tells me that Behe was correct.

Are you saying that the only sense of purpose worth having is what is assigned to you by some other being?

Well, you cannot explain your own existence without reference to at least two other beings. To understand your purpose, you would have to understand your own origin. Since you are a contingent being, that received existence from somewhere else, the answer to your purpose cannot lie within yourself. You did not create your own life - you received it.

Put your self in God’s place. What is His purpose? Can the only worthwhile purpose for God come from the mind of an even greater God?

' No, it can't work that way. We are contingent beings - a mixture of potentiality and actuality. We are empowered with certain aspects of being. That power does not come from ourselves. We have potential that is unrealized. Potential can only be actualized by that which is actual. So God is a being that is purely actual - no potential. There can only be one such being. There cannot be a greater being. There cannot be two beings that are purely actual, since if there would be two, then there would be a difference in the two, and that difference would be a defect, or some potential being unactualized. So, there can only be one purely actual being, with no potential to actualize - so there can only be one God, and there could not be a "greater God". Silver Asiatic

And as the following 2010 article stated about the preceding experiment, “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,”

Demonic device converts information to energy – 2010 Excerpt: “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,” says Christopher Jarzynski, a statistical chemist at the University of Maryland in College Park. In 1997, Jarzynski formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information2; the work by Sano and his team has now confirmed this equation. “This tells us something new about how the laws of thermodynamics work on the microscopic scale,” says Jarzynski. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=demonic-device-converts-inform

In the following 2011 paper, researchers have shown that classical sequential information (such as what is on DNA) is a subset of 'quantum positional information' by the following method ,,, Specifically they show that when the bits (in a computer) to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer's state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,, In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that (in quantum information theory) an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object's entropy is always dependent on the observer.

Quantum knowledge cools computers: New understanding of entropy - June 1, 2011 Excerpt: Recent research by a team of physicists,,, describe,,, how the deletion of data, under certain conditions, can create a cooling effect instead of generating heat. The cooling effect appears when the strange quantum phenomenon of entanglement is invoked.,,, The new study revisits Landauer's principle for cases when the values of the bits to be deleted may be known. When the memory content is known, it should be possible to delete the bits in such a manner that it is theoretically possible to re-create them. It has previously been shown that such reversible deletion would generate no heat. In the new paper, the researchers go a step further. They show that when the bits to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer's state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,, In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object's entropy is always dependent on the observer. Applied to the example of deleting data, this means that if two individuals delete data in a memory and one has more knowledge of this data, she perceives the memory to have lower entropy and can then delete the memory using less energy.,,, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110601134300.htm

And as the following 2017 article states: James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,, quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,, Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,

The Quantum Thermodynamics Revolution – May 2017 Excerpt: the 19th-century physicist James Clerk Maxwell put it, “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.” In recent years, a revolutionary understanding of thermodynamics has emerged that explains this subjectivity using quantum information theory — “a toddler among physical theories,” as del Rio and co-authors put it, that describes the spread of information through quantum systems. Just as thermodynamics initially grew out of trying to improve steam engines, today’s thermodynamicists are mulling over the workings of quantum machines. Shrinking technology — a single-ion engine and three-atom fridge were both experimentally realized for the first time within the past year — is forcing them to extend thermodynamics to the quantum realm, where notions like temperature and work lose their usual meanings, and the classical laws don’t necessarily apply. They’ve found new, quantum versions of the laws that scale up to the originals. Rewriting the theory from the bottom up has led experts to recast its basic concepts in terms of its subjective nature, and to unravel the deep and often surprising relationship between energy and information — the abstract 1s and 0s by which physical states are distinguished and knowledge is measured.,,, Renato Renner, a professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, described this as a radical shift in perspective. Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantum-thermodynamics-revolution/

Again to repeat that last sentence, “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,, That statement is stunning! To continue on, quantum information and/or quantum entanglement is found to be ubiquitous within life: In the following more recent 2015 paper entitled, “Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules” it was found that “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” and the researchers further commented that “finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,,

Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules – Mar. 6, 2015 Excerpt: “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” they say. That’s a discovery that is as important as it is unexpected. “These findings suggest an entirely new and universal mechanism of conductance in biology very different from the one used in electrical circuits.” The permutations of possible energy levels of biomolecules is huge so the possibility of finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,, “what exactly is the advantage that criticality confers?” https://medium.com/the-physics-arxiv-blog/the-origin-of-life-and-the-hidden-role-of-quantum-criticality-ca4707924552

This follow up article goes even further and states, "There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,,"

Quantum Critical Proteins – Stuart Lindsay – Professor of Physics and Chemistry at Arizona State University – 2018 Excerpt: The difficulty with this proposal lies in its improbability. Only an infinitesimal density of random states exists near the critical point.,, Gábor Vattay et al. recently examined a number of proteins and conducting and insulating polymers.14 The distribution for the insulators and conductors were as expected, but the functional proteins all fell on the quantum-critical distribution. Such a result cannot be a consequence of chance.,,, WHAT OF quantum criticality? Vattay et al. carried out electronic structure calculations for the very large protein used in our work. They found that the distribution of energy-level spacings fell on exactly the quantum-critical distribution, implying that this protein is also quantum critical. There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,, http://inference-review.com/article/quantum-critical-proteins Gábor Vattay et al., “Quantum Criticality at the Origin of Life,” Journal of Physics: Conference Series 626 (2015); Gábor Vattay, Stuart Kauffman, and Samuli Niiranen, “Quantum Biology on the Edge of Quantum Chaos,” PLOS One 9, no. 3 (2014)

Moreover, it is also important to point out that quantum entanglement and/or quantum information requires a non-local, beyond space and time, cause to explain its effect. As the following paper entitled “Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory” stated, ““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,”

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,” http://www.quantumlah.org/highlight/121029_hidden_influences.php

These experiments completely blow the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinian evolution, (presuppositions about information being merely ’emergent’ from some material basis), out of the water. In other words, contrary to the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists, information, particularly this ‘thermodynamic positional information’, is now experimentally shown, via quantum information theory, to be its own distinct physical entity that, although it can interact with matter and energy, is its own independent, ‘non-local’ beyond space and time, entity that is separate from matter and energy. On top of all that, this ‘thermodynamic positional information’ is found, via quantum information theory, to be “a property of an observer who describes a system.” In other words, Intelligent Design, and a direct inference to God as the 'observer who describes the system' of life has, for all intents and purposes, finally achieved experimental confirmation. Of course, since this entire line of reasoning is based on just 'following the evidence where it leads', don't expect Atheists to accept it anytime soon. Verse:

John 1:1-4 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

bornagain77

Are miracles possible? “In his essay, Hume defines a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature.”

“In his essay, Hume defines a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature.” Dr. Timothy McGrew – Do miracles break the laws of nature, as David Hume claimed? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPf6jsmeU4E

It is obvious with his claim that a miracle would violate the laws of nature, that David Hume would have been a very vocal advocate for what is now termed to be ‘methodological naturalism’. One can almost here Lewontin echoing Hume when he states, “we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door,,, to appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.”

“Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.” – Richard Lewontin

Methodological Naturalism is defined as such

Methodological naturalism Methodological naturalism is the label for the required assumption of philosophical naturalism when working with the scientific method. Methodological naturalists limit their scientific research to the study of natural causes, because any attempts to define causal relationships with the supernatural are never fruitful, and result in the creation of scientific “dead ends” and God of the gaps-type hypotheses. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Methodological_naturalism

The Achilles’ heel with the atheist’s a-priori assumption of methodological naturalism is that agent causality is ruled out of bounds before any scientific investigation has even begun, As Paul Nelson explains,

Do You Like SETI? Fine, Then Let’s Dump Methodological Naturalism Paul Nelson – September 24, 2014 Excerpt: Assessing the Damage MN Does to Freedom of Inquiry Epistemology — how we know — and ontology — what exists — are both affected by methodological naturalism. If we say, “We cannot know that a mind caused x,” laying down an epistemological boundary defined by MN, then our ontology comprising real causes for x won’t include minds. MN entails an ontology in which minds are the consequence of physics, and thus, can only be placeholders for a more detailed causal account in which physics is the only (ultimate) actor. You didn’t write your email to me. Physics did, and informed you of that event after the fact. “That’s crazy,” you reply, “I certainly did write my email.” Okay, then — to what does the pronoun “I” in that sentence refer? Your personal agency; your mind. Are you supernatural?,,, You are certainly an intelligent cause, however, and your intelligence does not collapse into physics. (If it does collapse — i.e., can be reduced without explanatory loss — we haven’t the faintest idea how, which amounts to the same thing.) To explain the effects you bring about in the world — such as your email, a real pattern — we must refer to you as a unique agent. https://evolutionnews.org/2014/09/do_you_like_set/

And since agent causality is ruled out of bounds in science by the artificial restriction of methodological naturalism, and since we are in fact causal agents ourselves, then demonstrating a miracle becomes as easy as falling off a log. Dr. Craig Hazen, in the following video at the 12:26 minute mark, relates how he performed, for an audience full of academics at a college university, a ‘miracle’ simply by raising his arm,,

The Intersection of Science and Religion – Craig Hazen, PhD – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xVByFjV0qlE#t=746s

Moreover, as William Dembski and others have shown, the universal limit for the creation of new information, via all the probabilistic resources in the entire universe, is 500 bits, To clarify how the 500 bit universal limit is found for the creation of ‘structured, functional information’:

Dembski’s original value for the universal probability bound is 1 in 10^150, 10^80, the number of elementary particles in the observable universe. 10^45, the maximum rate per second at which transitions in physical states can occur. 10^25, a billion times longer than the typical estimated age of the universe in seconds. Thus, 10^150 = 10^80 × 10^45 × 10^25. Hence, this value corresponds to an upper limit on the number of physical events that could possibly have occurred since the big bang. How many bits would that be: Pu = 10-150, so, -log2 Pu = 498.29 bits Call it 500 bits (The 500 bits is further specified as a specific type of information. It is specified as Complex Specified Information by Dembski or as Functional Information by Abel to separate it from merely Ordered Sequence Complexity or Random Sequence Complexity; See Three subsets of sequence complexity) Three subsets of sequence complexity and their relevance to biopolymeric information – Abel, Trevors http://www.tbiomed.com/content/2/1/29

This short sentence, “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” is calculated by Winston Ewert, in this following video at the 10 minute mark, to contain 1000 bits of algorithmic specified complexity, (i.e. functional information), and thus to exceed the Universal Probability Bound (UPB) of 500 bits set by Dr. Dembski

Proposed Information Metric: Conditional Kolmogorov Complexity – Winston Ewert – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm3mm3ofAYU

Thus every sentence ever created by man that contains over 500 bits of information, such as “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” is proof of a miracle in that man has exercised the free will of his immaterial mind and created immaterial information over and above what the material universe, via the laws of nature, is ever capable of explaining. To go a bit further into the 'miracle' of the origin of life. Dr James Tour, (who is regarded as one of the top ten synthetic chemists in the world), states the insurmountable problem for the Origin of Life (OOL) as such:

“We have no idea how to put this structure (a simple cell) together.,, So, not only do we not know how to make the basic components, we do not know how to build the structure even if we were given the basic components. So the gedanken (thought) experiment is this. Even if I gave you all the components. Even if I gave you all the amino acids. All the protein structures from those amino acids that you wanted. All the lipids in the purity that you wanted. The DNA. The RNA. Even in the sequence you wanted. I’ve even given you the code. And all the nucleic acids. So now I say, “Can you now assemble a cell, not in a prebiotic cesspool but in your nice laboratory?”. And the answer is a resounding NO! And if anybody claims otherwise they do not know this area (of research).” – James Tour: The Origin of Life Has Not Been Explained – 4:20 minute mark https://youtu.be/r4sP1E1Jd_Y?t=255

What Dr. Tour briefly touched upon in that preceding comment is the fact that having the correct sequential information encoded in DNA is not nearly enough in order to explain life. Besides the sequential information in DNA there is also a vast amount of ‘positional information’ that must be accounted for as well. The amount of positional information that is found to be in a simple one cell bacterium, when working from the thermodynamic perspective, is found to be on the order 10 to the 12 bits,,, which is several orders of magnitude more information than the amount of sequential information that is encoded on the DNA of a ‘simple’ bacterium.

Biophysics – Information theory. Relation between information and entropy: – Setlow-Pollard, Ed. Addison Wesley Excerpt: Linschitz gave the figure 9.3 x 10^12 cal/deg or 9.3 x 10^12 x 4.2 joules/deg for the entropy of a bacterial cell. Using the relation H = S/(k In 2), we find that the information content is 4 x 10^12 bits. Morowitz’ deduction from the work of Bayne-Jones and Rhees gives the lower value of 5.6 x 10^11 bits, which is still in the neighborhood of 10^12 bits. Thus two quite different approaches give rather concordant figures. http://www.astroscu.unam.mx/~angel/tsb/molecular.htm

10^12 bits is the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. i.e. ‘In comparison,,, the largest libraries in the world,, have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.”

“a one-celled bacterium, e. coli, is estimated to contain the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Expressed in information in science jargon, this would be the same as 10^12 bits of information. In comparison, the total writings from classical Greek Civilization is only 10^9 bits, and the largest libraries in the world – The British Museum, Oxford Bodleian Library, New York Public Library, Harvard Widenier Library, and the Moscow Lenin Library – have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.” – R. C. Wysong – The Creation-evolution Controversy ‘The information content of a simple cell has been estimated as around 10^12 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopedia Britannica.” Carl Sagan, “Life” in Encyclopedia Britannica: Macropaedia (1974 ed.), pp. 893-894

And again, in comparison, the sequential information encoded on DNA of ‘simple’ bacterial life is merely around 10^6 bits. Thus that is a huge, ‘orders of magnitude’, disparity between the positional information and sequential information in a ‘simple’ cell. And remember, this vast amount of positional information contained within a ‘simple’ bacterium was derived from purely thermodynamic considerations. In regards to this vast amount of ‘thermodynamic’ positional information that must somehow be accounted for in order to explain the Origin of Life, in the following 2010 experimental realization of Maxwell’s demon thought experiment, it was demonstrated that knowledge of a particle’s location and/or position converts information into energy.

Maxwell’s demon demonstration turns information into energy – November 2010 Excerpt: Scientists in Japan are the first to have succeeded in converting information into free energy in an experiment that verifies the “Maxwell demon” thought experiment devised in 1867.,,, In Maxwell’s thought experiment the demon creates a temperature difference simply from information about the gas molecule temperatures and without transferring any energy directly to them.,,, Until now, demonstrating the conversion of information to energy has been elusive, but University of Tokyo physicist Masaki Sano and colleagues have succeeded in demonstrating it in a nano-scale experiment. In a paper published in Nature Physics they describe how they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a “spiral-staircase-like” potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information. http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-maxwell-demon-energy.html

bornagain77

I was just clarifying Acartia Eddie's answer for Marfin. I get the feeling that Marfin was referring to humans but failed to clarify that. Acartia Eddie saw the loophole- gigantic opening- and walked through. Bravo (golf clap) ET

ET

Marfin- Parthenogenesis has been observed in many different species. Walking on water has been observed in different species. Life arising from non-life has never been observed.

It's a Christmas miracle. ET and I have agreed on something. I'm going out to buy a lottery ticket. Ed George

Marfin- Parthenogenesis has been observed in many different species. Walking on water has been observed in different species. Life arising from non-life has never been observed. ET

Marfin

Ed George , whats the difference if any between a virgin birth, walking on water, and life arising from non life.

Two are common occurrences and one has never been observed. Ed George

seversky:

Have you also read criticisms of his book from evolutionary biologists?

I have. They amount to nothing but whining. Not one critic of Behe's has offered up any science nor evidence that refutes him.

Are you saying that the only sense of purpose worth having is what is assigned to you by some other being?

LoL! It isn't assigned to us, duh. It just is. If we were intelligently designed their is a higher purpose to our existence ET

Silver Asiatic @ 14

Science is impossible without an adherence to and search for the truth of things. From the materialist viewpoint, the truth really cannot exist, since it is an abstract, immaterial object.

I would agree but it seems to me that there are two meanings of "truth" in play here. The first means the actual nature of the objective reality we assume to be out there. The second - the correspondence theory - refers to how closely our descriptions or explanations of what we can observe of that reality correspond to it. How true they are depends on how closely they fit. It may be that we can never know the full truth. All we can hope for is an ever closer approximation of the truth in our models.

In evolutionary terms, the truth is unnecessary. Survival and reproduction do not require truth of anything. Eating and leaving offspring can occur with lies and falsehoods as well as truths.

On the contrary, knowing what plants or berries or animals are safe to eat, what water is safe to drink, what places are safe to live, which animals are dangerous and which are harmless, knowing that jumping from great heights can injure or kill are just some of the truths that are vital to survival and reproduction. It is true that some false beliefs can be advantageous, the obvious examples being religions. Most, if not all, must be false, yet their prevalence suggests they have survival value, most probably in terms binding a society together and make it more resilient in the face of serious challenges to its existence.

But science is the search for the truth of things, obviously. Does an albino squirrel live in that environment? Yes or No? It’s true or false

If you propose that an albino squirrel lives in a certain environment, that is a claim about one aspect of the nature of reality. You can test that claim by observing that environment to see if there any albino squirrels there. if you observe albino squirrels then the claim is found to be true. Does the albino coloration have any bearing on why the squirrels are observed in that environment is a different question requiring a different tentative explanation which is capable of being tested against what is observed.

We challenge Darwinism to show us the truth about what evolution can produce.

We answer that what evolution can produce is all around you in the natural world. We can show that living things change over time, descent with modification. We can demonstrate certain processes exist which must be there for evolution to happen at all, for example, antibiotic resistance, bacteria which can digest the by-products of nylon manufacture, moths in which the dominant coloration changes as a result of industrial pollution

Michael Behe has revealed what the Edge of Evolution really is and how limited its power is. That’s a truth that we learn from science.

Behe offers a thesis not gospel. Have you also read criticisms of his book from evolutionary biologists? Has he won fellow scientists over with his arguments or are they being rejected on various grounds?

Even statistical analysis relies on truth statements, and scientific papers give the truth of what they find (unless the papers are fraudulent)

Scientific papers offer arguments and data which they claim support those arguments. The authors may believe that they have discovered some truth but their work needs to be replicated by others before we can be reasonably sure. If the original researchers have actually hit on some truth it should be true for anyone else who tries it.

But if science is not a search for truth, then anything can be given a subjective “spin”. Lies are just as good as truths in that case. And that’s the point here.

While there will always be a few black sheep, for most scientists their reputation for integrity is one of their most valuable assets. Once lost, it can never be recovered and their scientific career is effectively at an end. Trying to brush aside results that you don't like for some reason as scientific fraud is mostly just another way of resorting to a conspiracy theory.

If there is no God and we’re all merely chemical compounds determined by natural/material processes, then the question of a search for truth is irrelevant and actually meaningless

Are you saying that the only sense of purpose worth having is what is assigned to you by some other being? You can't work out one for yourself? Put your self in God's place. What is His purpose? Can the only worthwhile purpose for God come from the mind of an even greater God? And we're back to that infinite regress again. Seversky

seversky:

I lean towards abiogenesis as an explanation for the existence of life because such hypotheses and evidence as we have is marginally more compelling …

It is non-existent. And guess what? Abiogenesis posits life arising from non-life. And you said:

If you want to persuade me that any of them actually happened, you would need to provide at least a coherent model of how they might have happened and, ideally, a demonstration that the model works in practice.

Your side can't even produce biologically relevant molecular replicators. There isn't anything compelling with the concept of codes produced by nature. ET

Marfin @ 13

Ed George , whats the difference if any between a virgin birth, walking on water, and life arising from non life.

Personally, I would say none. If you want to persuade me that any of them actually happened, you would need to provide at least a coherent model of how they might have happened and, ideally, a demonstration that the model works in practice. I lean towards abiogenesis as an explanation for the existence of life because such hypotheses and evidence as we have is marginally more compelling than postulating some sort of creator, although I cannot rule out the possibility. Seversky

.

With regard to the origin of life I think all we can say is that we don’t have anything that approaches a good (let alone best) explanation for it.

Question 1: On what grounds are we expected to ignore the historical fact that a symbol system and a multi-referent language structure were predicted to be the core material requirements of an autonomous open-ended self-replicator? Question 2: On what grounds are we expected to ignore the historical fact that a symbol system and a multi-referent language structure were indeed discovered in the gene system, and have been carefully and thoroughly described as such in the scientific literature? Question 3: On what grounds are we expected to ignore the demonstration (through experiment) that the cell uses a system of discontinuous association in order to specify the organization of living things, using quiesent encoded memory to circumvent (side-step, escape, overcome) the invariable constraints of physical law? Question 4: On what grounds are we expected to ignore the fact that not one single soul on the surface of this planet (particularly those at the very forefront of materialistic abiogenesis research) can produce even a conceptually-viable pathway from dynamics to semantic closure? Question 5: On what grounds are we expected to turn our heads away from the culmination of 100% universal physical and logical evidence against a purely-dynamic origin of life -- and simply ignore the cognitive dissonance that naturally arises from doing so? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Saying "we don't have anything" is an insult to science, reason, and well-recorded history. For all your nauseating bluster, it appears that you merely want curious people to shut up about science and reason on these matters, and leave you to your personal preferences. Let there be no mistake, it is you who is avoiding the physical evidence and documentation, not those to whom you lecture. Upright BiPed

Science is impossible without an adherence to and search for the truth of things. From the materialist viewpoint, the truth really cannot exist, since it is an abstract, immaterial object. In evolutionary terms, the truth is unnecessary. Survival and reproduction do not require truth of anything. Eating and leaving offspring can occur with lies and falsehoods as well as truths. But science is the search for the truth of things, obviously. Does an albino squirrel live in that environment? Yes or No? It's true or false. We challenge Darwinism to show us the truth about what evolution can produce. Michael Behe has revealed what the Edge of Evolution really is and how limited its power is. That's a truth that we learn from science. Even statistical analysis relies on truth statements, and scientific papers give the truth of what they find (unless the papers are fraudulent). But if science is not a search for truth, then anything can be given a subjective "spin". Lies are just as good as truths in that case. And that's the point here. If there is no God and we're all merely chemical compounds determined by natural/material processes, then the question of a search for truth is irrelevant and actually meaningless. Does science really want to sign-on to that kind of project? Silver Asiatic

Ed George , whats the difference if any between a virgin birth, walking on water, and life arising from non life. Marfin

Acartia Eddie conflates artificial with supernatural. And clearly science is all about the truth, which is contrary to what Acartia Eddie said ET

Tjguy, I don’t disagree with anything you have said other than your statement that this is a problem for science. In the last relatively short period of time we have greatly increased the median life-span, we have greatly reduced infant mortality, etc. All the result of the iterative process of science. Of constantly trying to improve the best explanation for our observations. With regard to the origin of life I think all we can say is that we don’t have anything that approaches a good (let alone best) explanation for it. And that includes the supernatural. Ed George

To give us a small glimpse of the power that was involved in Christ's resurrection from the dead, the following recent article found that, ”it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology.”

Astonishing discovery at Christ’s tomb supports Turin Shroud – NOV 26TH 2016 Excerpt: The first attempts made to reproduce the face on the Shroud by radiation, used a CO2 laser which produced an image on a linen fabric that is similar at a macroscopic level. However, microscopic analysis showed a coloring that is too deep and many charred linen threads, features that are incompatible with the Shroud image. Instead, the results of ENEA “show that a short and intense burst of VUV directional radiation can color a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin, including shades of color, the surface color of the fibrils of the outer linen fabric, and the absence of fluorescence”. ‘However, Enea scientists warn, “it should be noted that the total power of VUV radiations required to instantly color the surface of linen that corresponds to a human of average height, body surface area equal to = 2000 MW/cm2 17000 cm2 = 34 thousand billion watts makes it impractical today to reproduce the entire Shroud image using a single laser excimer, since this power cannot be produced by any VUV light source built to date (the most powerful available on the market come to several billion watts )”. Comment The ENEA study of the Holy Shroud of Turin concluded that it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology. http://westvirginianews.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-study-claims-shroud-of-turin-is.html

Verses and Christmas music:

John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Colossians 1:15-20 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. A King is Born - Choral arrangement https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHe1Hf3z238

bornagain77

Interestingly, “Although quantum field theory is fully compatible with the special theory of relativity, a relativistic treatment of quantum measurement has yet to be formulated.”, i.e. conscious observation was dropped by the wayside in QFT!

Not So Real – Sheldon Lee Glashow – Oct. 2018 Review of: “What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics” by Adam Becker Excerpt: Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and their contemporaries knew well that the theory they devised could not be made compatible with Einstein’s special theory of relativity. First order in time, but second order in space, Schrödinger’s equation is nonrelativistic. Although quantum field theory is fully compatible with the special theory of relativity, a relativistic treatment of quantum measurement has yet to be formulated. https://inference-review.com/article/not-so-real

In what should be needless to say, since ‘conscious observation’ itself was dropped by the wayside in QFT , then that necessarily precludes QFT from being the correct step towards the final ‘theory of everything’ that supposedly “is capable of describing all phenomena in the universe.” Specifically, “our knowledge of the external world is the content of our consciousness and that the consciousness, therefore, cannot be denied.”

“The principal argument against materialism is not that illustrated in the last two sections: that it is incompatible with quantum theory. The principal argument is that thought processes and consciousness are the primary concepts, that our knowledge of the external world is the content of our consciousness and that the consciousness, therefore, cannot be denied. On the contrary, logically, the external world could be denied—though it is not very practical to do so. In the words of Niels Bohr, “The word consciousness, applied to ourselves as well as to others, is indispensable when dealing with the human situation.” In view of all this, one may well wonder how materialism, the doctrine that “life could be explained by sophisticated combinations of physical and chemical laws,” could so long be accepted by the majority of scientists." – Eugene Wigner, Remarks on the Mind-Body Question, pp 167-177.

Richard Feynman (and others) were only able to unify special relativity and quantum mechanics into Quantum Electrodynamics by quote unquote “brushing infinity under the rug” with a technique called Renormalization.

THE INFINITY PUZZLE: Quantum Field Theory and the Hunt for an Orderly Universe Excerpt: In quantum electrodynamics, which applies quantum mechanics to the electromagnetic field and its interactions with matter, the equations led to infinite results for the self-energy or mass of the electron. After nearly two decades of effort, this problem was solved after World War II by a procedure called renormalization, in which the infinities are rolled up into the electron’s observed mass and charge, and are thereafter conveniently ignored. Richard Feynman, who shared the 1965 Nobel Prize with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga for this breakthrough, referred to this sleight of hand as “brushing infinity under the rug.” http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/tackling-infinity

And whereas special relativity, by ‘brushing infinity under the rug’, has been semi-successfully unified, (i.e. save of course for quantum measurement), with quantum theory to produce Quantum Electrodynamics and/or Quantum Field Theory, no such mathematical ‘sleight of hand’ exists for unifying general relativity with quantum mechanics. General relativity, as the following articles show, simply refuses to be mathematically unified with quantum mechanics in any acceptable way. In technical terms, Gravity has yet to be successfully included into a theory of everything since the infinities that crop up in that attempt simply are not renormalizable as they were in Quantum-Electrodynamics.

Does quantum mechanics contradict the theory of relativity? Sanjay Sood, Microchip Design Engineer, Theoretical and Applied Physicist – Feb 14, 2016 Excerpt: quantum mechanics was first integrated with special theory of relativity by Dirac in 1928 just 3 years after quantum mechanics was discovered. Dirac produced an equation that describes the behavior of a quantum particle (electron). In this equation the space and time enter on the same footing – equation is first order in all 4 coordinates. One startling by product of this equation was the prediction of anti matter. It also gave the correct explanation for the electron’s spin. Dirac’s equation treats an electron as a particle with only a finite degrees of freedom. In 1940s Dirac’s equation was incorporated into the relativistic quantum field theory that’s knowns as quantum electrodynamics (QED) independently by Feynman, Schwinger and Tomonaga. This is the theory that describes the behavior of electrons and photons and their interactions with each other in terms of relativistic quantum fields that have infinite degrees of freedom. QED allowed extremely precise calculation of anomalous magnetic dipole moment of an electron. This calculated value matches the experimentally measured value to an astonishing precision of 12 decimal places! The integration of Einstein’s general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics has proved to be far more difficult. Such an integration would give a quantum theory of gravity. Even after a sustained effort lasting more than half a century, no renormalized quantum field theory of gravity has ever been produced. Renormalization means a theory that’s free of infinities at zero distance or infinite energy because 2 point particles can interact with each other at zero distance. A non renormalizable theory has no predictive value because it contains an infinite number of singular coefficients. https://www.quora.com/Does-quantum-mechanics-contradict-the-theory-of-relativity Unified field theory Excerpt: Gravity has yet to be successfully included in a theory of everything. Simply trying to combine the graviton with the strong and electroweak interactions runs into fundamental difficulties since the resulting theory is not renormalizable. Theoretical physicists have not yet formulated a widely accepted, consistent theory that combines general relativity and quantum mechanics. The incompatibility of the two theories remains an outstanding problem in the field of physics. Some theoretical physicists currently believe that a quantum theory of general relativity may require frameworks other than field theory itself, such as string theory or loop quantum gravity. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_field_theory#Current_status Quantum Leaps – Jeremy Bernstein – October 19, 2018 Excerpt: Divergent series notwithstanding, quantum electrodynamics yielded results of remarkable accuracy. Consider the magnetic moment of the electron. This calculation, which has been calculated up to the fifth order in ?, agrees with experiment to ten parts in a billion. If one continued the calculation to higher and higher orders, at some point the series would begin to break down. There is no sign of that as yet. Why not carry out a similar program for gravitation? One can readily write down the Feynman graphs that represent the terms in the expansion. Yet there remains an irremediable difficulty. Every order reveals new types of infinities, and no finite number of renormalizations renders all the terms in the series finite. The theory is not renormalizable. https://inference-review.com/article/quantum-leaps Jeremy Bernstein is professor emeritus of physics at the Stevens Institute of Technology.

This mathematically‘infinite’ divide to there ever being a purely mathematical ‘theory of everything’ should have, somewhat, been foreseen. Godel’s incompleteness theorem implies exactly that. There simply never will be a purely mathematical ‘theory of everything’. As Hawking himself conceded, “Kurt Gödel halted the achievement of a unifying all-encompassing theory of everything”

“Gödel’s incompleteness theorem (1931), proves that there are limits to what can be ascertained by mathematics. Kurt Gödel halted the achievement of a unifying all-encompassing theory of everything in his theorem that: “Anything you can draw a circle around cannot explain itself without referring to something outside the circle—something you have to assume but cannot prove”.” – Stephen Hawking & Leonard Miodinow, The Grand Design (2010)

In fact, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem has now been extended to physics and is not just some abstract mathematical limit that prevents there from ever being a purely mathematical ‘theory of everything’ but is now shown to be, in actuality, a defining feature of reality: In the following article entitled ‘Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics’, which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remark that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.”

Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics – December 9, 2015 Excerpt: A mathematical problem underlying fundamental questions in particle and quantum physics is provably unsolvable,,, It is the first major problem in physics for which such a fundamental limitation could be proven. The findings are important because they show that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, “We knew about the possibility of problems that are undecidable in principle since the works of Turing and Gödel in the 1930s,” added Co-author Professor Michael Wolf from Technical University of Munich. “So far, however, this only concerned the very abstract corners of theoretical computer science and mathematical logic. No one had seriously contemplated this as a possibility right in the heart of theoretical physics before. But our results change this picture. From a more philosophical perspective, they also challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.” http://phys.org/news/2015-12-quantum-physics-problem-unsolvable-godel.html

Simply put, despite how much mathematicians and physicists may believe that there simply must be a single mathematical ‘theory of everything’ that exist out there somewhere, there, in fact, never will be a single mathematical theory of everything that links the microscopic world of quantum mechanics to the macroscopic world of General Relativity. All hope is not lost though,,,,

BRUCE GORDON: Hawking’s irrational arguments – October 2010 Excerpt: ,,,The physical universe is causally incomplete and therefore neither self-originating nor self-sustaining. The world of space, time, matter and energy is dependent on a reality that transcends space, time, matter and energy. This transcendent reality cannot merely be a Platonic realm of mathematical descriptions, for such things are causally inert abstract entities that do not affect the material world,,, Rather, the transcendent reality on which our universe depends must be something that can exhibit agency – a mind that can choose among the infinite variety of mathematical descriptions and bring into existence a reality that corresponds to a consistent subset of them. This is what “breathes fire into the equations and makes a universe for them to describe.” Anything else invokes random miracles as an explanatory principle and spells the end of scientific rationality. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/1/hawking-irrational-arguments/

,,, All hope is not lost though, basically and succinctly, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), by rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics then that provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”. Here are a few posts where I lay out and defend some of the evidence for that claim:

November 2019 - despite the fact that virtually everyone, including the vast majority of Christians, now hold that the Copernican Principle is unquestionably true, the fact of the matter is that the Copernican Principle is now empirically shown, (via quantum mechanics and general relativity, etc..), to be a completely false assumption. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/so-then-maybe-we-are-privileged-observers/#comment-688855 (February 19, 2019) To support Isabel Piczek’s claim that the Shroud of Turin does indeed reveal a true ‘event horizon’, the following study states that ‘The bottom part of the cloth (containing the dorsal image) would have born all the weight of the man’s supine body, yet the dorsal image is not encoded with a greater amount of intensity than the frontal image.’,,, Moreover, besides gravity being dealt with, the shroud also gives us evidence that Quantum Mechanics was dealt with. In the following paper, it was found that it was not possible to describe the image formation on the Shroud in classical terms but they found it necessary to describe the formation of the image on the Shroud in discrete quantum terms. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/experiment-quantum-particles-can-violate-the-mathematical-pigeonhole-principle/#comment-673178

bornagain77

Let me go against the main gist of this thread that seems to basically state that 'the ultimate truth can never be reached by science'.

E.G. “As has often been said, by people much smarter than me, science is not about the search for truth. It is about the search for the best explanation for what we observe.”

Even Laszlo seemed to agree with E.G.'s overall sentiment

E.G.: “As has often been said, by people much smarter than me, science is not about the search for truth. It is about the search for the best explanation for what we observe.” Laszlo: This was precisely Karl Popper’s view. Theories are evaluated by how thoroughly they answer difficult observations. The more the better. But no theory will ever provide ultimate truth because that is beyond the purview of science. No matter how well a theory is supported by observation, it is always possible that some new observation will be made and the theory replaced by a better one.

And indeed Popper's falsification criteria is a very powerful tool in science. And is one of the main reasons why we know that Darwinian evolution is not the 'truth' about how life originated and diversified on this planet. Darwinists simply refuse to accept any empirical observation that falsifies their theory and therefore Darwinian evolution simply fails to quantify as a testable science in the first place.

“If, as the commentator seems to imply, we make neo-Darwinism so flexible as an idea that it can accept even those findings that the originators intended to be excluded by the theory it is then incumbent on modern neo-Darwinists to specify what would now falsify the theory. If nothing can do this then it is not a scientific theory.” – Denis Noble “Our theory of evolution has become, as Popper described, one which cannot be refuted by any possible observations. Every conceivable observation can be fitted into it. It is thus “outside empirical science” but not necessarily false. No one can think of ways in which to test it. Ideas, either without basis or based on a few laboratory experiments carried out in extremely simplified systems have attained currency far beyond their validity. They have become part of an evolutionary dogma accepted by most of us as part of our training. The cure seems to us not to be a discarding of the modern synthesis of evolutionary theory, but more skepticism about many of its tenets.” Ehrlich, Paul and L.C. Birch (1967), “Evolutionary History and Population Biology,” Nature, 214:349-352, April 22, p. 352 Here are a few falsifications of Darwinian evolution that Darwinists simply refuse to ever accept as falsifications of their theory: https://uncommondescent.com/education/wealthy-scandinavian-benefactor-gives-us1-6-million-eqv-to-promote-id/#comment-687780

But anyways, aside from the fact that Darwinian evolution is more properly classified as a pseudoscience, even a religion for atheists, rather than it is being classified as a real and testable science, aside from that we do have several theories in science that have survived repeated attempts at falsification. These theories are Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Electrodynamics, General Relativity and Special Relativity. These theories have survived falsification and are confirmed to be true descriptions of reality to almost absurd levels of precision. For instance, the quantum mechanical assertion that reality does not exist if you are not observing it,,,

Quantum physics says goodbye to reality - Apr 20, 2007 Excerpt: They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell's thought experiment, Leggett's inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we're not observing it. "Our study shows that 'just' giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics," Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. "You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism." http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640

,, is confirmed to be true to “120 standard deviations”,,,

Experimental non-classicality of an indivisible quantum system - Zeilinger 2011 Excerpt: Page 491: "This represents a violation of (Leggett's) inequality (3) by more than 120 standard deviations, demonstrating that no joint probability distribution is capable of describing our results." The violation also excludes any non-contextual hidden-variable model. The result does, however, agree well with quantum mechanical predictions, as we will show now.,,, https://vcq.quantum.at/fileadmin/Publications/Experimental%20non-classicality%20of%20an%20indivisible.pdf

The following references give us a glimpse of just how insanely precise the measurement of 120 standard deviations is for Leggett's Inequality,,,

Standard deviation Excerpt: In statistics, the standard deviation (SD) (represented by the Greek letter sigma, ?),,, Particle physics uses a standard of "5 sigma" for the declaration of a discovery.[3] At five-sigma there is only one chance in nearly two million that a random fluctuation would yield the result. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_deviation#Particle_physics SSDD: a 22 sigma event is consistent with the physics of fair coins? - June 23, 2013 Excerpt: So 500 coins heads is (500-250)/11 = 22 standard deviations (22 sigma) from expectation! These numbers are so extreme, it’s probably inappropriate to even use the normal distribution’s approximation of the binomial distribution, and hence “22 sigma” just becomes a figure of speech in this extreme case… https://uncommondescent.com/mathematics/ssdd-a-22-sigma-event-is-consistent-with-the-physics-of-fair-coins/

Although the preceding is practically beyond human comprehension as to just how insanely precise that measurement actually is, General Relativity, Quantum Electrodynamics and Special Relativity have also survived repeated attempts at falsification and are also now verified to be true descriptions of “reality”, (whatever “reality” may now be given that Leggett’s Inequality has now falsified “realism” :) ), to almost absurd levels of precision,

The Most Precisely Tested Theory in the History of Science - May 5, 2011 Excerpt: So, which of the two (general relativity or QED) is The Most Precisely Tested Theory in the History of Science? It’s a little tough to quantify a title like that, but I think relativity can claim to have tested the smallest effects. Things like the aluminum ion clock experiments showing shifts in the rate of a clock set moving at a few m/s, or raised by a foot, measure relativistic shifts of a few parts in 10^16. That is, if one clock ticks 10,000,000,000,000,000 times, the other ticks 9,999,999,999,999,999 times. That’s an impressively tiny effect, but the measured value is in good agreement with the predictions of relativity. In the end, though, I have to give the nod to QED, because while the absolute effects in relativity may be smaller, the precision of the measurements in QED is more impressive. Experimental tests of relativity measure tiny shifts, but to only a few decimal places. Experimental tests of QED measure small shifts, but to an absurd number of decimal places. The most impressive of these is the “anomalous magnetic moment of the electron,” expressed is terms of a number g whose best measured value is: g/2 = 1.001 159 652 180 73 (28) Depending on how you want to count it, that’s either 11 or 14 digits of precision (the value you would expect without QED is exactly 1, so in some sense, the shift really starts with the first non-zero decimal place), which is just incredible. And QED correctly predicts all those decimal places (at least to within the measurement uncertainty, given by the two digits in parentheses at the end of that). http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2011/05/05/the-most-precisely-tested-theo/ "Recent experiments have confirmed, to within one part in one hundred million billion (10^17), that the speed of light does not change when an observer is in motion." Douglas Ell - "Counting To God" - pg. 41 - 2014

Moreover, aside from the fact, (since these theories have survived falsification and are confirmed to almost absurd levels of precision), that we can have a extreme level of confidence that these theories are true descriptions of reality, aside from that fact, I would also argue that the entire enterprise of science is predicated on the belief that “The Truth”, i.e. the ultimate truth about reality, can be reached by science. That is to say, the practice of science itself is not only a search for various truths about reality but is also, ultimately, primarily a search for ‘the truth’ about reality. The search for the ultimate truth about reality in science today takes the form of trying to find the hypothetical final mathematical ‘theory of everything’. Indeed much money and research has been dedicated to this endeavor. In its present form this search entails trying to mathematically unify general relativity and quantum field theory (QED), (which is the unification quantum mechanics and special relativity), into a single mathematical ‘theory of everything’. It is hoped that this hypothetical final ‘theory of everything’ will be ‘capable of describing all phenomena in the universe.’

Theory of everything Excerpt: a theoretical framework revealing a deeper underlying reality,,,, a single theory that, in principle, is capable of describing all phenomena in the universe. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything

As the following article states, “The first attempt at unifying relativity and quantum mechanics took place when special relativity was merged with electromagnetism. This created the theory of quantum electrodynamics, or QED. It is an example of what has come to be known as relativistic quantum field theory, or just quantum field theory. QED is considered by most physicists to be the most precise theory of natural phenomena ever developed.”

Theories of the Universe: Quantum Mechanics vs. General Relativity Excerpt: The first attempt at unifying relativity and quantum mechanics took place when special relativity was merged with electromagnetism. This created the theory of quantum electrodynamics, or QED. It is an example of what has come to be known as relativistic quantum field theory, or just quantum field theory. QED is considered by most physicists to be the most precise theory of natural phenomena ever developed. In the 1960s and ’70s, the success of QED prompted other physicists to try an analogous approach to unifying the weak, the strong, and the gravitational forces. Out of these discoveries came another set of theories that merged the strong and weak forces called quantum chromodynamics, or QCD, and quantum electroweak theory, or simply the electroweak theory, which you’ve already been introduced to. If you examine the forces and particles that have been combined in the theories we just covered, you’ll notice that the obvious force missing is that of gravity (i.e. General Relativity). http://www.infoplease.com/cig/theories-universe/quantum-mechanics-vs-general-relativity.html Quantum field theory – History Excerpt: ,,, (Quantum field theory) QFT is an unavoidable consequence of the reconciliation of quantum mechanics with special relativity (Weinberg (1995)),,, The first achievement of quantum field theory, namely quantum electrodynamics (QED), is “still the paradigmatic example of a successful quantum field theory” (Weinberg (1995)). per wikipedia

bornagain77

@1 Ed George "As has often been said, by people much smarter than me, science is not about the search for truth. It is about the search for the best explanation for what we observe." This is true in that science is not able to determine whether something is true or not. Experiments that can be repeated over and over again provide a very high level of certainty and therefore, for all practical purposes, it can be said to validate or invalidate a hypothesis, but theoretically, it cannot prove anything to be true. This is actually a huge problem because there are probably many things that we currently believe to be true, but one day might very well be shown to be false. And we have no way of knowing. Just go back and read science textbooks from 5-10 years ago to see illustrations of this. No sooner has a new textbook been published than some new "fact" or aspect of "settled science" has been shown to be false. This is especially true when it comes to historical science where experiments, in the traditional sense, are not possible. The other very interesting and important word in the above statement is the word "best". How do we determine what is the "best" explanation? Sounds a bit subjective to me! But wait, aren't we supposed to be doing science here? How is it that subjectivity plays a role in science? I personally think that the "best" explanation for the origin of life is a supernatural one, but many would disagree with me. I know that does not qualify as a "scientific" explanation, but that doesn't mean it is any less valid. It makes far more sense than the silly ideas that scientists are forced to believe in or offer up for consideration. At any rate, there is no guarantee that the consensus or "best explanation" is true - when it comes to historical science especially - and that is a big problem with science. tjguy

I always scratch my head at why anyone thinks science "explains" anything. Science is a methodology that attempts to explain what it is we observers observe, and/or how we use math to define mathematical laws that describe, say, how an object will act under gravity. But has science "explained" what gravity is? Of course not. Maybe it describes how gravity works in relation to objects of mass, but this does not explain, at all, "why" it is so, or how it came to be, what it is "made of" why it exists, etc. They will make up a word like "gravaton", or the "force carrier", the Higgs Boson - but how does it carry force? Why does it carry force? Nobody knows. Any attempt to explain something past a certain point, ends up in a circular loop of reasoning....i.e. "Because it evolved that way" is no explanation, as first you have to fine what exactly that is. Unless one can show chemical and physical properties, that actually occurred to change something from one things into another, it is simply an idea that most take on faith. They figure it "must" be this way... but as we have learned, the mechanisms of Evolution were never understood, they were assumed to be true. And even new mechanisms like "Horizontal Gene Transfer" (HTG), remain unexplained (you could easily claim that it is re-used code that worked)... but sticking the word "evolution" in front or in back of phrases or words explains nothing as the word itself is so misunderstood... so terms like "convergent evolution" are meant to give them impression there is someone that understands what this means, why it happens, and how: but they don't. Another example...we know many plants, when hit by sunlight on one side, respond by sending a chemical "messenger" to the opposite side which causes more vertical growth, and thus bends the plant toward the sun. The reason it does this is obvious- it bends to get more sunlight... but how did this develop and why, nobody knows (especially evolution). If you ask a neo-Darwinist why a plant does this, they are forced to say, it was a fortunate "adaptation", one lucky break after another that made up an complete system to help a plant bend toward the light - I have a feeling if we could have seen the first deciduous plants that grew on the earth, they would already be bending toward the light, and the why is, because plants what more sunlight.. :) Tom Robbins

truth

also the truth That which is true or in accordance with fact or reality.

Synonyms of reality I would think that science only cares about that which is in accordance with facts and reality. But I understand why Acartia Eddie doesn't think that way. ET

Acartia Eddie:

As has often been said, by people much smarter than me, science is not about the search for truth.

Except for the fact that science is the search for the truth. That's why we conduct investigations- to find the truth behind what it is we are investigating. "It is sometimes said that science has nothing to do with morality. This is wrong. Science is the search for truth, the effort to understand the world; it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality." Linus Pauling “But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding.”- Albert Einstein Clearly Acartia Eddie doesn't understand science. ET

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As has often been said, by people much smarter than me, science is not about the search for truth. It is about the search for the best explanation for what we observe.

In order to be effective, it would require that one not deliberately and selectively avoid physical evidence as a means to protect one's personal preferences. You have demonstrated on these pages that you not heed that intellectual requirement. In fact, you cannot even speak the words of contrary evidence. Upright BiPed

"As has often been said, by people much smarter than me, science is not about the search for truth. It is about the search for the best explanation for what we observe." This was precisely Karl Popper's view. Theories are evaluated by how thoroughly they answer difficult observations. The more the better. But no theory will ever provide ultimate truth because that is beyond the purview of science. No matter how well a theory is supported by observation, it is always possible that some new observation will be made and the theory replaced by a better one. Laszlo

As noted earlier, the scientist who doesn’t believe in God faces much bigger problems: The fundamental one is whether anything is true in the sense that it needs to be true for science to be possible.

As has often been said, by people much smarter than me, science is not about the search for truth. It is about the search for the best explanation for what we observe. Ed George