Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

Remembering Battle of Britain Day, Sunday Sept 15, 1940 . . . when a few stood in the gap [+ lessons on the significance of a force- in- being strategy]

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I looked at the date and thought, quite a lesson from history, and a follow up from those of 9/11.

Summer, 1940, when  The Few in their Hurricanes (mostly!) and Spitfires stood between civilisation, however flawed, and a nightmare of aggressive barbarism, with the peak being Sunday, Sept 15, 1940. (That day and date thing caught my eye.)

Vid:

[youtube Td8bF6Xgb_Y]

(And while the narrator has a point on broader themes, if Fighter Command had been knocked out, the Germans would have been able to dominate the battle from the air, and would have won. More thoughts here.)

A lesson for us as we stand in the gap today, against fairly long odds.

And, coming off a shower, let me add some notes on those lessons.

First, the key victory was a force in being success. As long as Fighter Command was a viable force, Hitler could not invade Britain with confidence. So it is significant that Sept 15 was the original target landing date.

Just so, as long as the design movement has a viable inductive argument and a significant number of competent people able to support it, it provides a base for the overwhelming number of people who recognise from the world that — despite the talking points to dismiss it — there are strong signs of it being designed, long run, we win.

And the objectors know that, they must sweep the field clear of the idea that there are signs in our world that on a reasonable examination in accord with sound inductive reasoning and historically valid scientific methods, point to design.

They obviously cannot overwhelm those signs unless they inject the Lewontinian a priori materialism that Philip Johnson so aptly rebuked:

For scientific materialists the materialism comes first; the science comes thereafter. [[Emphasis original] We might more accurately term them “materialists employing science.” And if materialism is true, then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence. That theory will necessarily be at least roughly like neo-Darwinism, in that it will have to involve some combination of random changes and law-like processes capable of producing complicated organisms that (in Dawkins’ words) “give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.”
. . . .   The debate about creation and evolution is not deadlocked . . . Biblical literalism is not the issue. The issue is whether materialism and rationality are the same thing. Darwinism is based on an a priori commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence. Separate the philosophy from the science, and the proud tower collapses. [[Emphasis added.] [[The Unraveling of Scientific Materialism, First Things, 77 (Nov. 1997), pp. 22 – 25.]

Hence some of the desperation of opponents to dominate institutions and the resort to censorship and smears.

Which, so long as we are not cowed, is ultimately as self defeating as attacking London was for Hitler’s bombers.

And so we come right back to the challenge that science is not properly to be equated to applied materialist ideology, and that on billions of observed cases without effective exception, FSCO/I is best explained by design.

The cosmos is full of signs of complex fine tuning that organises a cosmos supportive of cell based life. When an agnostic like Hoyle is the one who has led the charge on the point, that says something.

Similarly, on the world of life, we have yet to see an actual, non question-begging, observationally warranted reason to accept that blind watchmaker forces of chance and necessity in a warm pond or the like, threw up code using, algorithm using life. Then, onwards, body plans dozens of times over, that require increments in FSCO/I of 10 – 100+ mn bits.

In short, 150 years later, the very first icon of evolution, the tree of life, remains its Achilles heel:

In that context the ongoing resort to smears, deliberate misrepresentations calculated to stir up hostility and trigger legal or administrative actions, career busting and censorship are the strongest — if inadvertent, and painful  — proof that the ideological materialists know the pivotal challenge they face.

Namely, a significant body of scientific evidence and associated cogent inductive reasoning that backs up the intuitive sense that the world around us reeks of design.

So, let us take heart and let us stand. END

PS: Images are giving me a warm time this morning . . .

Comments
RB: The mildest thing I could say is do some serious rethinking on some attitudes and perceptions issues.kairosfocus
September 17, 2013
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kairosfocus i don't understand how you saw in my comment any point like this. Nazism was MORE evil then communism as it murdered more people. Simply. The Soviets didn't just murder but instead people dies as a secondary reaction to their actions. Yes they murdered but less so. I don't shec tears because Hitler invaded the soviet union although it put innocent people in danger. But the soviets were evil. In fact another analagy with origin issues could be that YEC are the numerous democratic peoples but having a harder time with winning victories while the ID movement is like the Soviets(I don't mean evil). The evolutionists invaded the ID people or rather said it was not JUST gEnesis that was wrong but any idea of a God/creator. This is now the problem for evolution. It attacks (non YEC) ID people and are being bled. Evolutionists will lose and already I think the future world between YEC and ID in origin issues should be anticipated.Robert Byers
September 16, 2013
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Mr Byers: I think you need to do a fair amount of research on facts and circumstances. Nazism, for instance was fully as evil as Communism, only it did not get a sufficiently long run to rack up as many dead. KFkairosfocus
September 16, 2013
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I really enjoyed how the old war was used for the present origin wars. It was great and true. I watch a lot of ww11 stuff and the old fight in sky there./ Hitler never wanted war with the Brits and didn't want to invade and so the defeat in the air really had a good influence. he rather hit the wicked Soviets and better them then us good guys. The brits fought smart and tough and the Germans were really not so great . Overrated. It was a important fight but even if the Germans had pulled ahead it would not of done that much damage. Only later did they bomb the cities as a last gasp . Intellectually creationism is founded on the intelligent folks who think about these things and are ready to take on evolutionists. So its actually great numbers of YEC and ID people. the few ID people who get the audiences are indeed the agents of influence and the ones evolutionists fear but even surgical strikes on them would not destroy the modern revolution in origin investigation. Anyways tghe bad guys will fail whether or not they invade the Soviet union.Robert Byers
September 15, 2013
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"The great air battle which has been in progress over this Island for the last few weeks has recently attained a high intensity. It is too soon to attempt to assign limits either to its scale or to its duration. We must certainly expect that greater efforts will be made by the enemy than any he has so far put forth.… It is quite plain that Herr Hitler could not admit defeat in his air attack on Great Britain without sustaining most serious injury. If after all his boastings and bloodcurdling threats and lurid accounts trumpeted round the world of the damage he has inflicted, of the vast numbers of our Air Force he has shot down, so he says, with so little loss to himself …if after all this his whole air onslaught were forced after a while tamely to peter out, the Fuhrer's reputation for veracity of statement might be seriously impugned. We may be sure, therefore, that he will continue as long as he has the strength to do so… The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day, but we must never forget that all the time, night after night, month after month, our bomber squadrons travel far into Germany, find their targets in the darkness by the highest navigational skill, aim their attacks, often under the heaviest fire, often with serious loss, with deliberate, careful discrimination, and inflict shattering blows upon the whole of the technical and war-making structure of the Nazi power. On no part of the Royal Air Force does the weight of the war fall more heavily than on the daylight bombers who will play an invaluable part in the case of invasion and whose unflinching zeal it has been necessary in the meanwhile on numerous occasions to restrain… A good many people have written to me to ask me to make on this occasion a fuller statement of our war aims, and of the kind of peace we wish to make after the war, than is contained in the very considerable declaration which was made early in the autumn.… I do not think it would be wise at this moment, while the battle rages and the war is still perhaps only in its earlier stage, to embark upon elaborate speculations about the future shape which should be given to Europe… But before we can undertake the task of rebuilding we have not only to be convinced ourselves, but we have to convince all other countries that the Nazi tyranny is going to be finally broken. The right to guide the course of world history is the noblest prize of victory. We are still toiling up the hill; we have not yet reached the crest-line of it; we cannot survey the landscape or even imagine what its condition will be when that longed-for morning comes. The task which lies before us immediately is at once more practical, more simple and more stern.… For the rest, we have to gain the victory. That is our task." -- Sir Winston Churchill, August 20, 1940kairosfocus
September 15, 2013
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"I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat." We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many long months of struggle and of suffering. You ask, What is our policy? I will say; "It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy." ... Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization. Winston Churchill on the Battle of Britain
scordova
September 15, 2013
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Bottomline: so long as we stand steadfast, we win. And the ideological materialists know this. Hence the intimidation, smear and censorship tactics that are so evident this weekend between BSU and TSZ.kairosfocus
September 15, 2013
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And, Philip Johnson remains on target in his answer to Lewontin.kairosfocus
September 15, 2013
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I have added some remarks on the implications of a force in being strategy, of which the BoB was a capital example, and with that this is no longer off topic at all. A shower can do wonders for your lurking intuitions!kairosfocus
September 15, 2013
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Bandits at 6 o'clock (behind you and able to shoot you down) would be a serious challenge indeed!kairosfocus
September 15, 2013
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Didn't those pilots say such things as, 'Bandits at 6 o'clock!' That's not so wide of the mark is it, today?Axel
September 15, 2013
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For all who find themselves standing in the gap in the face of an apparently overwhelming tide.kairosfocus
September 15, 2013
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