Further to the story we noted last night, that possibly one-third of biologists now question Darwinism, this might be a good time to bring up Colin Patterson (1933-1998) again. He was a senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History and he offered an awkward question to colleagues one day: “Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true?” He began to sense something amiss over forty years ago and this is the audio and transcript of a lecture he gave before the Systematics Discussion Group at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City in 1981: (two parts, transcript follows, courtesy Access Research Network):
The question is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff in the Field Museum of Natural History, and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar at the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time, and then eventually one person said, “Yes, I do know one thing. It ought not to be taught in high school.”
The show notes:
1981 lecture before the Systematics Discussion Group at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City.
“It’s true that for the last eighteen months or so, I’ve been kicking around non-evolutionary or even anti-evolutionary ideas. I think always before in my life, when I’ve got up to speak on a subject, I’ve been confident of one thing – that I know more about it than anybody in the room, because I’ve worked on it.
Well, this time that isn’t true. I’m speaking on two subjects, evolutionism and creationism, and I believe it’s true to say that I know nothing whatever about either of them. One or the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, or let’s call it non-evolutionary, was last year I had a sudden realization that for over twenty years I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. Then one morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. That’s quite a shock, to learn that one can be so misled for so long.
So either there was something wrong with me, or there was something wrong with evolutionary theory. Naturally, I know there is nothing wrong with me, so for the last few weeks, I’ve tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people.
The question is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff in the Field Museum of Natural History, and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar at the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time, and then eventually one person said, “Yes, I do know one thing. It ought not to be taught in high school.” [laughter]”
Here are some snippets of Patterson’s issues with The Story of Evolution. Also, Patterson’s research works listed.
See also: Biology evolves: One third of biologists now question Darwinism Benjamin Dierker: This dissatisfaction is a matter of public record, even if it lacks public attention, and despite the narrative running contrary.
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as to: “Can You Tell Me Anything About Evolution That Is True?”
Nancy Pearcey: “if Darwin’s theory is true, then it is not true.”
Hmmm. Last time I looked, having true beliefs about the world has some survival value.
Hazel believes that “having true beliefs about the world has some survival value.”
That’s the Darwinian ‘just so story’ at least. But it turns out that in evolutionary theory ‘useful fictions’ have more of a ‘survival value’ than the truth does.
In fact, Donald Hoffman has, through numerous computer simulations, proven that, if Darwinian evolution were actually true, then ALL of our perceptions of reality would be illusory. As he states in astonishment, “Now this is a bit stunning. How can it be that not seeing the world accurately gives us a survival advantage?””
Hoffman assumed that his results applied only to our perceptions, but there is no reason why Hoffman’s results would not also apply to our cognitive faculties as well:
Moreover, ‘truth’ in general, and absolute truth in particular, are abstract immaterial entities that can never be grounded within the Darwinist’s materialistic worldview. In fact, as much as it may irk atheists to know, “Truth” can only ever be properly grounded within Theism:
Secularists tried, and still try, to hold that ‘truth’ in general, and absolute truth in particular can be grounded within mathematics. But, besides the fact that mathematics itself is an abstract immaterial entity that can never be grounded within the Darwinian materialistic world,
,,, besides the fact that mathematics itself is an abstract immaterial entity that can never be grounded within the Darwinist’s materialistic world,,, Kurt Gödel, with his incompleteness theorem, brought the secularist’s dream, (that math alone could ground ‘truth’ in general, and absolute truth in particular), crashing down.
Thus, since ‘truth’ itself is a abstract immaterial entity which is not reducible to some mathematical equation, much less is it reducible to some purely material/natural explanation, then presupposing Materialism and/or Methodological Naturalism as the supposed “ground rule for science”, as the vast majority of American universities do, actually precludes ‘The Truth’ from ever being reached by science!
To reiterate,
Verse:
I know not to walk off a 1000 ft cliff because I will fall and kill myself. Those are some true facts that have survival value! 🙂
The discoveries of modern science have rendered atheism utterly irrational. So why should it continue as the de facto state religion?
We now know that the natural Universe had a beginning. That which begins to exist has a cause. Yet from nothing, nothing comes. Since the natural (time, space, matter and energy) is what began to exist, something that wasn’t natural must have been its cause. So the something that caused it (it wasn’t caused by nothing) must have been a supernatural reality. Duh!
We now know that it was virtually impossible for the Universe to have been mindlessly and accidentally configured such that it would support life. (See Roger Penrose’s The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe)
We now know that self-replicating life is digital information-based nanotechnology the functional complexity of which is light years beyond anything modern science knows how to build from scratch.
It isn’t like scientists routinely design and create tiny packets that when placed in some soil grow into something the size of, say, a small bush that produces more packets like the one we started with. They have no freaking idea how to do that.
And since they don’t know at least one way to do something like that on purpose, they are in no position to insist things like that can come about mindlessly and accidentally. One has to at least know one way something might happen before one can even begin to explain how that process might occur mindlessly and accidentally.
People who think science has the origin of life all figured out are the victims of atheistic brainwashing.
Contemporary atheism is irrational. Yet it dominates the institutions of society and has become the de facto state religion.
It is long past time to remove these arrogant, irrational jackasses from power and restore America’s Judeo-Christian heritage.
My distain of evo pysch and darwinian evolution comes from the fact that everything and anything can, to some extent, have a survival advantage. Even though in many cases it’s a matter of common sense, anything that has a potential to help something survive for any reason has survival advantage. It almost seems like a game in many case “lets play find the advantage” and if you u can’t think of one at this point it’s an evolutionary artifact (appendix) until further notice (safe house for digestive bacteria finally found the survival advantage) Survival advantage is very broad and very general.
And when you find the advantage if it’s not obvious, that’s exactly why it survived regardless of how it actually survived.
It almost and I mean almost becomes the logic that there is no such thing as an unselfish act. Everything can be Defined as a selfish act to the point where you have to make a distinction between a selfish act and a self motivated act which is not the same as a selfish act in a lot of cases.
But the logic seems way too similar to me.
Furthermore I would like to say that the admin of reality has set things up so that cooperation and doing good things does have a survival advantage which would seem logical, at least in my eyes
That’s just my two cents Fortunately there are a lot of scientist that are going back to the drawing board and doing a lot of spring cleaning
Harry
Why does the cause have to be supernatural? And even if it is, what makes the supernatural “cause” (let’s call it God because that is what you are referring to) exempt from having a cause.
Here’s another take on that too about supernatural and natural.
The idea that it requires something supernatural to bring our universe into existence stems from the fact that if our natural laws didn’t always exist something supernatural (above natural laws or before) Had to of logically make them come into existence.
But if you look at it like this, God, Which came before everything would actually be the natural state of existence. Hence if the universe is artificial and created by the hands of God, We are by our own definition unnatural, and so is our universe.
I’ve always looked at it like that. So I’ve never really needed to make a distinction between supernatural and natural. Another reason is, we really don’t know everything about this universe at all, and the more we study it the more complex and amazing it becomes
PS I really need to start writing these and not use talk text. I have to go back and re-edit these things all the time and I apologize for that but it’s so easy to use
Hazel states:
“I know not to walk off a 1000 ft cliff because I will fall and kill myself. Those are some true facts that have survival value!”
And just who is this “I” that knows anything in her sentence. If the atheistic materialism of Darwinian evolution were true, then there is no immaterial “I” to know anything much less know the truth or falsity of a particular belief.
Hazel needs to get over ‘herself’ since, besides immaterial abstract truth not existing in the Darwinist’s materialistic worldview, Hazel ‘herself’, (since the entire concept of personhood itself is also an abstract immaterial entity), doesn’t exist.
Atheistic materialism simply cannot ground personhood. As Antoine Suarez stated, “it is impossible for us to be ‘persons’ experiencing ‘now’ if we are nothing but particles flowing in space time. Moreover, for us to refer to ourselves as ‘persons’, we cannot refer to space-time as the ultimate substratum upon which everything exists, but must refer to a Person who is not bound by space time. i.e. We must refer to God!”
Brother Brian @7,
Because the natural didn’t exist yet.
If God wasn’t uncaused He wouldn’t be God. That is why He identified Himself to Moses as “I Am Who am.” His essence is to be. He is the primary, uncreated reality that just “is.” Note that He didn’t say “I am what is.” God is pure “who.”
AaronS1978@8, well said. I have never thought that the supernatural vs natural arguments made any sense. I hate to say it, but it reeks of God-of-the-gaps.
Using the inverse of the same argument, the only thing that we have confirmed to be able to interact with the natural world has a natural source, therefore all interactions must be natural. Both arguments are fallacious. The only thing we know for sure about unknown causes and unknown sources of interactions is that they are unknown. .
” the only thing that we have confirmed to be able to interact with the natural world has a natural source,”
Pure ignorance!
Harry
We don’t know that. We don’t know what existed before the Big Bang. The proposition that our universe was caused by a galaxy sized collider constructed by intelligent beings from another universe, destroying their universe in the process, is every bit as valid as “it must be supernatural. And by “valid” I mean that they are both completely unsupported speculation.
No. He wouldn’t be your version of God.
BA77
A YouTube video with only 654 views? I just watched a YouTube video about a guy unbagging the things he bought from an aquarium store that had 117,000 views. That’s all you got?
Brother Brian @ 13,
Yes we do know that, unless you are going to inform us of a Universe-causing natural reality that can exist in the absence of time, space, matter and energy.
Why don’t you do a little homework before making comments here that reveal your ignorance? There is of logical necessity an uncaused first cause.
Brother Brian @ 14,
That comment explains a lot about the level of your analytical skills. You judge the veracity of videos on youtube by their view counts. That is laughable.
Harry
No. Generally I judge the veracity of a YouTube video, especially one pretending to be about science, on the body of work and peer review of the past work of the producer of the video. Don’t you?
So the evidence presented by the ‘amateur’ producer in the video does not matter to you. Only the fact that he is an amateur matters?
And this is not blatant bias by you how exactly?
FYI: Unlike your evidence free claims that you constantly make on UD, every claim made in that video is backed up by peer reviewed reference!
BA77
Are you referring to the link you provided that can’t be opened?
Brother Brian , Given what we know about the laws of thermodynamics give us your best explanation of a natural origin for the universe.
[citation needed]
“Is that all you got?”
In post 11 BB falsely claims that
Yet the computer sitting right in front of BB’s face refutes BB’s claim,,,
In the following article, Dr. Nelson explains how methodological naturalism rules agent causality out of bounds before any scientific investigation has even begun,
Moreover, since methodological naturalism rules agent causality out of ‘scientific’ bounds before any investigation has even begun, then demonstrating a ‘miracle’ becomes a rather easy affair.
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, a ‘miracle’ simply by raising his arm,,
Moreover, this ‘supernatural’ agent causality that methodological naturalism has ruled out of bounds before any scientific investigation has even begun, is found to be present in the foundation of quantum mechanics. As Steven Weinberg, an atheist, explains, In the instrumentalist approach (in quantum mechanics) humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level.,,, the instrumentalist approach turns its back on a vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.,,, In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure,,, Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,,
In fact Weinberg, again an atheist, rejected the instrumentalist approach precisely because “humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level” and because it undermined the Darwinian worldview from within. Yet, regardless of how he and other atheists may prefer the world to behave, quantum mechanics itself could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave.
For instance, this recent 2019 experimental confirmation of the “Wigner’s Friend” thought experiment established that “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”.
Moreover, although there have been several major loopholes in quantum mechanics over the past several decades that atheists have tried to appeal to in order to try to avoid the ‘spooky’ Theistic implications of quantum mechanics, over the past several years each of those major loopholes have each been closed one by one. The last major loophole that was left to be closed was the “setting independence” and/or the ‘free-will’ loophole:
And now Anton Zeilinger and company have recently, as of 2018, pushed the ‘free will loophole’ back to 7.8 billion years ago, thereby firmly establishing the ‘common sense’ fact that the free will choices of the experimenter in the quantum experiments are truly free and are not determined by any possible causal influences from the past for at least the last 7.8 billion years, and that experimenters themselves are therefore shown to be truly free to choose whatever measurement settings in the experiments that he or she may so desire to choose so as to ‘logically’ probe whatever aspect of reality that he or she may be interested in probing.
Moreover, here is another recent interesting experiment by Anton Zeilinger, (and about 70 other researchers), that insured the complete independence of the measurement settings in a Bell test by using the free will choices of 100,000 human participants instead of having a super fast randomizer determine the measurement settings (as is usually done in these quantum experiments).
Thus regardless of how Steven Weinberg and other atheists may prefer the universe to behave, with the closing of the last remaining free will loophole in quantum mechanics, “humans are indeed brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level”, and thus these recent findings from quantum mechanics directly undermine, as Weinberg himself stated, the “vision that became possible after Darwin, of a world governed by impersonal physical laws that control human behavior along with everything else.”
Moreover, even for Gravity, which I am certain that BB would consider to be completely ‘natural’, we cannot find a ‘natural source’ for gravity. As Professor Budziszewski explains, “I can perceive a logical connection between premises and valid conclusions. I can perceive at least a rational connection between my willing to do something and my doing it. But between the apple and the earth, I can perceive no connection at all. Why does the apple fall? We don’t know. “But there is gravity,” you say. No, “gravity” is merely the name of the phenomenon, not its explanation. “But there are laws of gravity,” you say. No, the “laws” are not its explanation either; they are merely a more precise description of the thing to be explained, which remains as mysterious as before. For just this reason, philosophers of science are shy of the term “laws”; they prefer “lawlike regularities.” To call the equations of gravity “laws” and speak of the apple as “obeying” them is to speak as though, like the traffic laws, the “laws” of gravity are addressed to rational agents capable of conforming their wills to the command. This is cheating, because it makes mechanical causality (the more opaque of the two phenomena) seem like volition (the less). In my own way of thinking the cheating was even graver, because I attacked the less opaque in the name of the more.”
In short, contrary to BB’s claim that
“the only thing that we have confirmed to be able to interact with the natural world has a natural source”,
,,, contrary to that claim, the fact of the matter is that no one has ever confirmed a ‘natural’ source for anything, not even for gravity.
And again, this fact is made abundantly clear in quantum mechanics. As Bruce Gordon concludes after a detailed examination of quantum mechanics, “the vera causa that brings coherent closure to the phenomenological reality we inhabit is always and only agent causation. The necessity of causal sufficiency is met by divine action,”
So once again, BB is found to have nothing but his usual baseless bluff and bluster, whereas the Christian Theist is, once again, found to be sitting very well in regards to logic and empirical evidence. Especially empirical evidence for agent causality within quantum theory.
Moreover, rightly 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), rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into modern physics 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”
Marfin
I don’t have one. But if we concluded that God was responsible for everything we didn’t know about we would still be living in caves.
You do realize that it was Christianity that gave us modern science in the first place don’t you? So your statement is exactly backwards.
BA77
The data and software are the results of human action. Unless humans are supernatural, the data and software in the computer have a natural source.
“Unless humans are supernatural”
Hmmm, you really think that could be a possibility? That we possibly have a immaterial mind, perhaps even a immaterial soul?
,… since methodological naturalism rules agent causality out of ‘scientific’ bounds before any investigation has even begun, then demonstrating a ‘miracle’ becomes a rather easy affair.
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, a ‘miracle’ simply by raising his arm,,
also of note:
BB at 25 that is such a ridiculous statement ,and shows you have no interest in knowing what might be right.
Bob O’H
Bob asked for a citation about the 117,000 views for a youtube video of a guy showing what he bought at an aquarium store.
It is now up to 162,000 views.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umLla23DYBQ
Another side-splitting, hilarious post – in the good sense. Atheist ‘scientismists’ are appearing more and more like cartoon cardboard cut-outs. ‘Dull as a hedge’, as they say in some parts ; the more animated, more mercurial types, such as Bill Nye, perhaps more aptly described as ‘daft as a brush’.
BB – thanks. That’s a lot of fun, but I’m not showing it to my wife, it’ll give her ideas.