Colin Patterson: Can you tell me anything about evolution that is true?

_{Denyse O'Leary

May 12, 2019

Evolution, Intelligent Design}

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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.”

Transcript.

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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Comments

BB - thanks. That's a lot of fun, but I'm not showing it to my wife, it'll give her ideas.Bob O'H_{May 16, 2019
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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'.Axel_{May 15, 2019
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Bob O'H
[citation needed]
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=umLla23DYBQBrother Brian_{May 15, 2019
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BB at 25 that is such a ridiculous statement ,and shows you have no interest in knowing what might be right.Marfin_{May 13, 2019
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"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,,
The Intersection of Science and Religion – Craig Hazen, PhD – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xVByFjV0qlE#t=746s
also of note:
Of final note, besides quantum information providing direct empirical falsification of neo-Darwinian claims that say information is emergent from a material basis, the implication of finding 'non-local', beyond space and time, and ‘conserved’, quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious. That pleasant implication, or course, being the fact that we now have direct physical evidence strongly indicating that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. As Stuart Hameroff notes in this following video, “the quantum information,, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed.,,, it's possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.” “Let’s say the heart stops beating. The blood stops flowing. The microtubules lose their quantum state. But the quantum information, which is in the microtubules, isn’t destroyed. It can’t be destroyed. It just distributes and dissipates to the universe at large. If a patient is resuscitated, revived, this quantum information can go back into the microtubules and the patient says, “I had a near death experience. I saw a white light. I saw a tunnel. I saw my dead relatives.,,” Now if they’re not revived and the patient dies, then it's possible that this quantum information can exist outside the body. Perhaps indefinitely as a soul.” - Stuart Hameroff - Quantum Entangled Consciousness - Life After Death - video (5:00 minute mark) https://youtu.be/jjpEc98o_Oo?t=300
bornagain77_{May 13, 2019
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BA77
Yet the computer sitting right in front of BB’s face refutes BB’s claim...
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.Brother Brian_{May 13, 2019
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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.
Science and Theism: Concord, not Conflict* – Robert C. Koons IV. The Dependency of Science Upon Theism (Page 21) Excerpt: Far from undermining the credibility of theism, the remarkable success of science in modern times is a remarkable confirmation of the truth of theism. It was from the perspective of Judeo-Christian theism—and from the perspective alone—that it was predictable that science would have succeeded as it has. Without the faith in the rational intelligibility of the world and the divine vocation of human beings to master it, modern science would never have been possible, and, even today, the continued rationality of the enterprise of science depends on convictions that can be reasonably grounded only in theistic metaphysics. http://www.robkoons.net/media/69b0dd04a9d2fc6dffff80b3ffffd524.pdf The Threat to the Scientific Method that Explains the Spate of Fraudulent Science Publications - Calvin Beisner | Jul 23, 2014 Excerpt: It is precisely because modern science has abandoned its foundations in the Biblical worldview (which holds, among other things, that a personal, rational God designed a rational universe to be understood and controlled by rational persons made in His image) and the Biblical ethic (which holds, among other things, that we are obligated to tell the truth even when it inconveniences us) that science is collapsing. As such diverse historians and philosophers of science as Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Duhem, Loren Eiseley, Rodney Stark, and many others have observed,, science—not an occasional flash of insight here and there, but a systematic, programmatic, ongoing way of studying and controlling the world—arose only once in history, and only in one place: medieval Europe, once known as “Christendom,” where that Biblical worldview reigned supreme. That is no accident. Science could not have arisen without that worldview. http://townhall.com/columnists/calvinbeisner/2014/07/23/the-threat-to-the-scientific-method-that-explains-the-spate-of-fraudulent-science-publications-n1865201/page/full Several other resources backing up this claim are available, such as Thomas Woods, Stanley Jaki, David Linberg, Edward Grant, J.L. Heilbron, and Christopher Dawson. No False Gods Before Me: A Review of Rodney Stark’s Work by Terry Scambray (December 2018) Excerpt: Informed by Jewish wisdom and Greek reason, the Christian God was “not only eternal and immutable but also conscious, concerned, and rational.” Jesus Christ is the embodiment of this rational principle as “the Word (logos) made flesh,” reason incarnate.,,, “The early Christians fully accepted this image of God,” Stark writes and then reasonably deduced “the proposition that our knowledge of God and his creation is progressive.” For example, even though the Bible does not condemn astrology, Augustine reasoned that if human destiny was determined by the stars, humans would lack one of Christianity’s indispensable features, free will; therefore, practicing astrology was sinful. So also slavery was normative in all ancient societies and rationalized even by many Christians; yet slavery clearly violated Jesus’ revolutionary concept that individuals are created in God’s image and thereby possess inherent value of immeasurable worth. As Paul wrote, “All are one in Christ Jesus.” From this theocentric faith in reason and progress, Christendom ventured forward to establish freedom and capitalism, organize universities, invent science, abolish slavery while at the same time bestowing virtue on physical labor all of which drove the incomparable advances in Western technology. And finally, Christendom spread these gifts around the world. Stark distances this version of progress from the meme of “Enlightenment progress,” sometimes called “Whig history.” With his usual deftness, he calls this claim, as well as other Enlightenment disinformation, “nonsense.” And that’s because progress was inherent in Jewish and Christian millenarianism, the idea that “history has a goal and humanity a destiny,” as the peerless historian, Paul Johnson puts it.,,, The basis for much of the antipathy toward Christianity is the image of the medieval Catholic Church fostered by “distinguished bigots,” as Stark calls Edward Gibbon and Voltaire among other Enlightenment notables. Stark, relying on primary source historians like the renowned Marc Bloch, shows, on the contrary, that medieval Catholicism was the breeding ground for modernity. Most, if not all, ancient societies believed in fate. However, Yahweh gave humans the wondrous and terrifying attribute of free will, freedom. Individual freedom in the West then merged with the legacy of Athenian democracy and the Roman republican tradition to form “the new democratic experiments in the medieval Italian city-states,” as Stark reminds us. These rival polities organized the first universities in a unique tradition of institutional learning and discourse which began at Bologna then spread to Oxford, Paris and elsewhere in Europe. From the medieval university science was born. The distinguished philosopher and mathematician, Alfred North Whitehead, astonished a Harvard audience in 1925 when he said that science is a “derivative of medieval theology [since it arose] from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher.” Whitehead’s thesis was but another bolt from out of the blue because the notion that medieval philosophy, scholasticism, led to the development of science was astonishing! Though it should not have been, since scholasticism was complex, diverse, penetrating and devoted to reasoning from the two books that undergird Christianity: the book of God, Scripture, and the book of nature, Creation. As Stark writes, “Not only were science and religion compatible, they were inseparable—the rise of science was achieved by deeply religious, Christian scholars.”,,, So Christianity, then and now, never was antithetical to science. And this is because European Christians believed in a rational God whose imprint could be discovered in nature; thus, they confidently looked for and found natural laws. As Johannes Kepler, the venerable 17th century cosmologist, wrote, “The chief aim of all investigations of the external world” is to discover this harmony imposed by God in the language of mathematics. Stark concludes, “That the universe had an Intelligent Designer is the most fundamental of all scientific theories and that it has been successfully put to empirical tests again and again. For, as Albert Einstein remarked, the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible” which Einstein called a “miracle.” And this “miracle” confirms the fact that creation is guided by purpose and reason. https://www.newenglishreview.org/custpage.cfm?frm=189497&sec_id=189497
bornagain77_{May 13, 2019
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Marfin
Brother Brian , Given what we know about the laws of thermodynamics give us your best explanation of a natural origin for the universe.
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.Brother Brian_{May 13, 2019
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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,,,
The Trouble with Quantum Mechanics – Steven Weinberg – January 19, 2017 Excerpt: The instrumentalist approach,, (the) wave function,, is merely an instrument that provides predictions of the probabilities of various outcomes when measurements are made.,, In the instrumentalist approach,,, humans are brought into the laws of nature at the most fundamental level. According to Eugene Wigner, a pioneer of quantum mechanics, “it was not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to the consciousness.”11 Thus 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. It is not that we object to thinking about humans. Rather, we want to understand the relation of humans to nature, not just assuming the character of this relation by incorporating it in what we suppose are nature’s fundamental laws, but rather by deduction from laws that make no explicit reference to humans. We may in the end have to give up this goal,,, Some physicists who adopt an instrumentalist approach argue that the probabilities we infer from the wave function are objective probabilities, independent of whether humans are making a measurement. I don’t find this tenable. In quantum mechanics these probabilities do not exist until people choose what to measure, such as the spin in one or another direction. Unlike the case of classical physics, a choice must be made,,, http://quantum.phys.unm.edu/466-17/QuantumMechanicsWeinberg.pdf
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”.
More Than One Reality Exists (in Quantum Physics) By Mindy Weisberger – March 20, 2019 Excerpt: “measurement results,, must be understood relative to the observer who performed the measurement”. https://www.livescience.com/65029-dueling-reality-photons.html
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:
Closing the ‘free will’ loophole: Using distant quasars to test Bell’s theorem – February 20, 2014 Excerpt: Though two major loopholes have since been closed, a third remains; physicists refer to it as “setting independence,” or more provocatively, “free will.” This loophole proposes that a particle detector’s settings may “conspire” with events in the shared causal past of the detectors themselves to determine which properties of the particle to measure — a scenario that, however far-fetched, implies that a physicist running the experiment does not have complete free will in choosing each detector’s setting. Such a scenario would result in biased measurements, suggesting that two particles are correlated more than they actually are, and giving more weight to quantum mechanics than classical physics. “It sounds creepy, but people realized that’s a logical possibility that hasn’t been closed yet,” says MIT’s David Kaiser, the Germeshausen Professor of the History of Science and senior lecturer in the Department of Physics. “Before we make the leap to say the equations of quantum theory tell us the world is inescapably crazy and bizarre, have we closed every conceivable logical loophole, even if they may not seem plausible in the world we know today?” https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140220112515.htm
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.
Cosmic Bell Test Using Random Measurement Settings from High-Redshift Quasars – Anton Zeilinger – 14 June 2018 Abstract: In this Letter, we present a cosmic Bell experiment with polarization-entangled photons, in which measurement settings were determined based on real-time measurements of the wavelength of photons from high-redshift quasars, whose light was emitted billions of years ago; the experiment simultaneously ensures locality. Assuming fair sampling for all detected photons and that the wavelength of the quasar photons had not been selectively altered or previewed between emission and detection, we observe statistically significant violation of Bell’s inequality by 9.3 standard deviations, corresponding to an estimated p value of ? 7.4 × 10^21. This experiment pushes back to at least ? 7.8 Gyr ago the most recent time by which any local-realist influences could have exploited the “freedom-of-choice” loophole to engineer the observed Bell violation, excluding any such mechanism from 96% of the space-time volume of the past light cone of our experiment, extending from the big bang to today. https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.121.080403
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).
Challenging local realism with human choices – A. Zeilinger – 20 May 2018 Abstract: A Bell test, which challenges the philosophical worldview of local realism against experimental observations, is a randomized trial requiring spatially-distributed entanglement, fast and high-efficiency detection, and unpredictable measurement settings. While technology can perfect the first two of these, and while technological randomness sources enable device-independent protocols based on Bell inequality violation, challenging local realism using physical randomizers inevitably makes assumptions about the same physics one aims to test. Bell himself noted this weakness of physical setting choices and argued that human free will could rigorously be used to assure unpredictability in Bell tests. Here we report a suite of local realism tests using human choices, avoiding assumptions about predictability in physics. We recruited ~100,000 human participants to play an online video game that incentivizes fast, sustained input of unpredictable bits while also illustrating Bell test methodology. The participants generated 97,347,490 binary choices, which were directed via a scalable web platform to twelve laboratories on five continents, in which 13 experiments tested local realism using photons, single atoms, atomic ensembles, and superconducting devices. Over a 12-hour period on the 30 Nov. 2016, participants worldwide provided a sustained flow of over 1000 bits/s to the experiments, which used different human-generated bits to choose each measurement setting. The observed correlations strongly contradict local realism and other realist positions in bi-partite and tri-partite scenarios. Project outcomes include closing of the freedom-of-choice loophole, gamification of statistical and quantum non-locality concepts, new methods for quantum-secured communications, a very large dataset of human-generated randomness, and networking techniques for global participation in experimental science. https://arxiv.org/abs/1805.04431
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."
A Professor's Journey out of Nihilism: Why I am not an Atheist - University of Wyoming - J. Budziszewski Excerpt page12: "There were two great holes in the argument about the irrelevance of God. The first is that in order to attack free will, I supposed that I understood cause and effect; I supposed causation to be less mysterious than volition. If anything, it is the other way around. 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. The other hole in my reasoning was cruder. If my imprisonment in a blind causality made my reasoning so unreliable that I couldn't trust my beliefs, then by the same token I shouldn't have trusted my beliefs about imprisonment in a blind causality. But in that case I had no business denying free will in the first place." http://www.undergroundthomist.org/sites/default/files/WhyIAmNotAnAtheist.pdf
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,"
Divine Action and the World of Science: What Cosmology and Quantum Physics Teach Us about the Role of Providence in Nature - Bruce L. Gordon - 2017 Excerpt page 295: In light of this realization, the rather startling picture that begins to seem plausible is that preserving and explaining the objective structure of appearances in light of quantum theory requires reviving a type of phenomenalism in which our perception of the physical universe is constituted by sense-data conforming to certain structural constraints, but in which there is no substantial material reality causing these sensory perceptions.,,, [T]he reality of a substance must include something intrinsic and qualitativeover and above any formal or structural features it may possess.117 When we consider the fact that the structure of reality in fundamental physical theory is merely phenomenological and that this structure itself is hollow and non-qualitative, whereas our experience is not, the metaphysical objectivity and epistemic intersubjectivity of the enstructured qualitative reality of our experience can be seen to be best explained by an occasionalist idealism of the sort dvocated by George Berkeley (1685-1753) or Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). In the metaphysical context of this kind of theistic immaterialism, 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, for as Plantinga emphasizes: [T]he connection between God’s willing that there be light and there being light is necessary in the broadly logical sense: it is necessary in that sense that if God wills that p, p occurs. Insofar as we have a grasp of necessity (and we do have a grasp of necessity), we also have a grasp of causality when it is divine causality that is at issue. I take it this is a point in favor of occasionalism, and in fact it constitutes a very powerful advantage of occasionalism. 118 http://jbtsonline.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/JBTS-2.2-Article-7.compressed.pdf
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”
(April 2019) Overturning the Copernican principle Thus in conclusion, the new interactive graph by Dr. Dembski provides a powerful independent line of evidence, along with several other powerful lines of evidence, that overturns the Copernican principle and restores humanity back to centrality in the universe, and even, when putting all those lines of evidence together, brings modern science back, full circle, to Christianity from whence it originated in the first place. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/bill-dembski-and-colleagues-create-an-updated-magnifying-the-universe-tool/#comment-675730
bornagain77_{May 13, 2019
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In post 11 BB falsely claims that
"the only thing that we have confirmed to be able to interact with the natural world has a natural source,”
Yet the computer sitting right in front of BB's face refutes BB's claim,,,
Recognising Top-Down Causation - George Ellis Excerpt: Causal Efficacy of Non Physical entities: Both the program and the data are non-physical entities, indeed so is all software. A program is not a physical thing you can point to, but by Definition 2 it certainly exists. You can point to a CD or flashdrive where it is stored, but that is not the thing in itself: it is a medium in which it is stored. The program itself is an abstract entity, shaped by abstract logic. Is the software “nothing but” its realisation through a specific set of stored electronic states in the computer memory banks? No it is not because it is the precise pattern in those states that matters: a higher level relation that is not apparent at the scale of the electrons themselves. It’s a relational thing (and if you get the relations between the symbols wrong, so you have a syntax error, it will all come to a grinding halt). This abstract nature of software is realised in the concept of virtual machines, which occur at every level in the computer hierarchy except the bottom one [17]. But this tower of virtual machines causes physical effects in the real world, for example when a computer controls a robot in an assembly line to create physical artefacts. Excerpt page 7: ,,, The mind is not a physical entity, but it certainly is causally effective: proof is the existence of the computer on which you are reading this text. It could not exist if it had not been designed and manufactured according to someone’s plans, thereby proving the causal efficacy of thoughts, which like computer programs and data are not physical entities. http://fqxi.org/data/essay-contest-files/Ellis_FQXI_Essay_Ellis_2012.pdf
In the following article, Dr. Nelson explains how methodological naturalism rules agent causality out of bounds before any scientific investigation has even begun,
Do You Like SETI? Fine, Then Let’s Dump Methodological Naturalism – Paul Nelson – September 24, 2014 Excerpt: “Epistemology — how we know — and ontology — what exists — are both affected by methodological naturalism (MN). 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 (the illusion of) 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.,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/09/do_you_like_set090071.html
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,,
The Intersection of Science and Religion – Craig Hazen, PhD – video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=xVByFjV0qlE#t=746s
bornagain77_{May 13, 2019
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A genetic fallacy is a logical fallacy that occurs when a claim is accepted or rejected based on the source of the evidence, rather than on the quality or applicability of the evidence. It is also a line of reasoning in which a perceived defect in the origin of a claim or thing is taken to be evidence that discredits the claim or thing itself. The fallacy is committed when an idea is either accepted or rejected because of its source, rather than its merit. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Genetic_fallacy
"Is that all you got?"bornagain77_{May 13, 2019
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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?
[citation needed]Bob O'H_{May 13, 2019
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Brother Brian , Given what we know about the laws of thermodynamics give us your best explanation of a natural origin for the universe.Marfin_{May 12, 2019
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BA77
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!
Are you referring to the link you provided that can’t be opened?Brother Brian_{May 12, 2019
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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!
How Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Correlate - paper https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LMjMgnmp6pEVQXZqKRXqpdrpRxpUt58p7HeeeLyNpt4/edit
bornagain77_{May 12, 2019
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Harry
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.
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?Brother Brian_{May 12, 2019
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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_{May 12, 2019
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Brother Brian @ 13,
Harry: We now know that the natural Universe had a beginning. That which begins to exist has a cause. BB: Why does the cause have to be supernatural? Harry: Because the natural didn’t exist yet. BB: We don’t know that.
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.
Harry: If God wasn’t uncaused He wouldn’t be God. BB: No. He wouldn’t be your version of God.
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.harry_{May 12, 2019
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BA77
Pure ignorance!
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_{May 12, 2019
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Harry
Because the natural didn’t exist yet.
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.
If God wasn’t uncaused He wouldn’t be God.
No. He wouldn’t be your version of God.Brother Brian_{May 12, 2019
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" the only thing that we have confirmed to be able to interact with the natural world has a natural source," Pure ignorance!
How Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Correlate - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f0hL3Nrdas
bornagain77_{May 12, 2019
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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. .Brother Brian_{May 12, 2019
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Brother Brian @7,
Why does the cause have to be supernatural?
Because the natural didn't exist yet.
... what makes the supernatural “cause” (let’s call it God because that is what you are referring to) exempt from having a cause.
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."harry_{May 12, 2019
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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.
What Does It Mean to Say That Science & Religion Conflict? By M. Anthony Mills April 16, 2018 Excerpt: As Barr points out, this implies not only that God does not exist — because God is not material — but that you do not exist. For you are not a material constituent postulated by any of our most fundamental physical theories; at best, you are an aggregate of those constituents, arranged in a particular way. Not just you, but tables, chairs, countries, countrymen, symphonies, jokes, legal contracts, moral judgments, and acts of courage or cowardice — all of these must be fully explicable in terms of those more fundamental, material constituents. In fact, more problematic for the materialist than the non-existence of persons is the existence of mathematics. Why? Although a committed materialist might be perfectly willing to accept that you do not really exist, he will have a harder time accepting that numbers do not exist. The trouble is that numbers — along with other mathematical entities such as classes, sets, and functions — are indispensable for modern science. And yet — here’s the rub — these “abstract objects” are not material. Thus, one cannot take science as the only sure guide to reality and at the same time discount disbelief in all immaterial realities. https://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2018/04/16/what_does_it_mean_to_say_that_science_and_religion_conflict.html
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!”
“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!” - How Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Correlate - video - quoted at the 11:30 minute mark https://youtu.be/4f0hL3Nrdas?t=687
bornagain77_{May 12, 2019
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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 useAaronS1978_{May 12, 2019
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Harry
We now know that the natural Universe had a beginning. That which begins to exist has a cause.
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.Brother Brian_{May 12, 2019
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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 cleaningAaronS1978_{May 12, 2019
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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.harry_{May 12, 2019
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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! :-)hazel_{May 12, 2019
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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.
Should You Trust the Monkey Mind? – Joe Carter Excerpt: Evolutionary naturalism assumes that our noetic equipment developed as it did because it had some survival value or reproductive advantage. Unguided evolution does not select for belief except insofar as the belief improves the chances of survival. The truth of a belief is irrelevant, as long as it produces an evolutionary advantage. This equipment could have developed at least four different kinds of belief that are compatible with evolutionary naturalism, none of which necessarily produce true and trustworthy cognitive faculties. http://www.firstthings.com/onthesquare/2010/09/should-you-trust-the-monkey-mind Is Atheism Irrational? By GARY GUTTING – NY Times – February 9, 2014 Excerpt: GG: So your claim is that if materialism is true, evolution doesn’t lead to most of our beliefs being true. Plantinga: Right. In fact, given materialism and evolution, it follows that our belief-producing faculties are not reliable. Here’s why. If a belief is as likely to be false as to be true, we’d have to say the probability that any particular belief is true is about 50 percent. Now suppose we had a total of 100 independent beliefs (of course, we have many more). Remember that the probability that all of a group of beliefs are true is the multiplication of all their individual probabilities. Even if we set a fairly low bar for reliability — say, that at least two-thirds (67 percent) of our beliefs are true — our overall reliability, given materialism and evolution, is exceedingly low: something like .0004. So if you accept both materialism and evolution, you have good reason to believe that your belief-producing faculties are not reliable. But to believe that is to fall into a total skepticism, which leaves you with no reason to accept any of your beliefs (including your beliefs in materialism and evolution!). The only sensible course is to give up the claim leading to this conclusion: that both materialism and evolution are true. Maybe you can hold one or the other, but not both. So if you’re an atheist simply because you accept materialism, maintaining your atheism means you have to give up your belief that evolution is true. Another way to put it: The belief that both materialism and evolution are true is self-refuting. It shoots itself in the foot. Therefore it can’t rationally be held. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/is-atheism-irrational/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
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?”"
Donald Hoffman: Do we see reality as it is? – Video – 9:59 minute mark Quote: “fitness does depend on reality as it is, yes.,,, Fitness is not the same thing as reality as it is, and it is fitness, and not reality as it is, that figures centrally in the equations of evolution. So, in my lab, we have run hundreds of thousands of evolutionary game simulations with lots of different randomly chosen worlds and organisms that compete for resources in those worlds. Some of the organisms see all of the reality. Others see just part of the reality. And some see none of the reality. Only fitness. Who wins? Well I hate to break it to you but perception of reality goes extinct. In almost every simulation, organisms that see none of reality, but are just tuned to fitness, drive to extinction that perceive reality as it is. So the bottom line is, evolution does not favor veridical, or accurate perceptions. Those (accurate) perceptions of reality go extinct. Now this is a bit stunning. How can it be that not seeing the world accurately gives us a survival advantage?” https://youtu.be/oYp5XuGYqqY?t=601 The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality – April 2016 The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman uses evolutionary game theory to show that our perceptions of an independent reality must be illusions. Excerpt: “The classic argument is that those of our ancestors who saw more accurately had a competitive advantage over those who saw less accurately and thus were more likely to pass on their genes that coded for those more accurate perceptions, so after thousands of generations we can be quite confident that we’re the offspring of those who saw accurately, and so we see accurately. That sounds very plausible. But I think it is utterly false. It misunderstands the fundamental fact about evolution, which is that it’s about fitness functions — mathematical functions that describe how well a given strategy achieves the goals of survival and reproduction. The mathematical physicist Chetan Prakash proved a theorem that I devised that says: According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness. Never.” https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160421-the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality/
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:
The Case Against Reality – May 13, 2016 Excerpt: Hoffman seems to come to a conclusion similar to the one Alvin Plantinga argues in ch. 10 of Where the Conflict Really Lies: we should not expect — in the absence of further argument — that creatures formed by a naturalistic evolutionary process would have veridical perceptions.,,, First, even if Hoffman’s argument were restricted to visual perception, and not to our cognitive faculties more generally (e.g., memory, introspection, a priori rational insight, testimonial belief, inferential reasoning, etc.), the conclusion that our visual perceptions would be wholly unreliable given natural selection would be sufficient for Plantinga’s conclusion of self-defeat. After all, reliance upon the veridicality of our visual perceptions was and always will be crucial for any scientific argument for the truth of evolution. So if these perceptions cannot be trusted, we have little reason to think evolutionary theory is true. Second, it’s not clear that Hoffman’s application of evolutionary game theory is only specially applicable to visual perception, rather than being relevant for our cognitive faculties generally. If “we find that veridical perceptions can be driven to extinction by non-veridical strategies that are tuned to utility rather than objective reality” (2010, p. 504, my emphasis), then why wouldn’t veridical cognitive faculties (more generally) be driven to extinction by non-veridical strategies that are tuned to utility rather than objective reality? After all, evolutionary theory purports to be the true account of the formation of all of our cognitive faculties, not just our faculty of visual perception. If evolutionary game theory proves that “true perception generally goes extinct” when “animals that perceive the truth compete with others that sacrifice truth for speed and energy-efficiency” (2008), why wouldn’t there be a similar sacrifice with respect to other cognitive faculties? In fact, Hoffman regards the following theorem as now proven: “According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness” (Atlantic interview). But then wouldn’t it also be the case that an organism that cognizes reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that cognizes none of reality but is just tuned to fitness? On the evolutionary story, every cognitive faculty we have was produced by a process that was tuned to fitness (rather than tuned to some other value, such as truth). http://www.gregwelty.com/2016/05/the-case-against-reality/
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:
Twenty Arguments For The Existence Of God – Peter Kreeft 11. The Argument from Truth This argument is closely related to the argument from consciousness. It comes mainly from Augustine. 1. Our limited minds can discover eternal truths about being. 2. Truth properly resides in a mind. 3. But the human mind is not eternal. 4. Therefore there must exist an eternal mind in which these truths reside. http://www.peterkreeft.com/top.....nce.htm#11
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,
What Does It Mean to Say That Science & Religion Conflict? – M. Anthony Mills – April 16, 2018 Excerpt: In fact, more problematic for the materialist than the non-existence of persons is the existence of mathematics. Why? Although a committed materialist might be perfectly willing to accept that you do not really exist, he will have a harder time accepting that numbers do not exist. The trouble is that numbers — along with other mathematical entities such as classes, sets, and functions — are indispensable for modern science. And yet — here’s the rub — these “abstract objects” are not material. Thus, one cannot take science as the only sure guide to reality and at the same time discount disbelief in all immaterial realities. https://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2018/04/16/what_does_it_mean_to_say_that_science_and_religion_conflict.html
,,, 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.
THE GOD OF THE MATHEMATICIANS – DAVID P. GOLDMAN – August 2010 Excerpt: we cannot construct an ontology that makes God dispensable. Secularists can dismiss this as a mere exercise within predefined rules of the game of mathematical logic, but that is sour grapes, for it was the secular side that hoped to substitute logic for God in the first place. Gödel’s critique of the continuum hypothesis has the same implication as his incompleteness theorems: Mathematics never will create the sort of closed system that sorts reality into neat boxes. http://www.firstthings.com/article/2010/08/the-god-of-the-mathematicians “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”.” Cf., Stephen Hawking & Leonard Miodinow, The Grand Design (2010)
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,
Nancy Pearcey: “if Darwin’s theory is true, then it is not true.”
Verse:
John 8:32 32 Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 14:6 6 Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. “If you were to take Mohammed out of Islam, and Buddha out of Buddhism, and Confucius out of Confucianism you would still have a faith system that was relatively in tact. However, taking Christ out of Christianity sinks the whole faith completely. This is because Jesus centred the faith on himself. He said, “This is what it means to have eternal life: to know God the Father and Jesus Christ whom the Father sent” (John 17:3). “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). Buddha, before dying, said in effect, “I am still seeking for the truth.” Mohammed said in effect, “I point you to the truth.” Jesus said, “I am the truth.” Jesus claimed to not only give the truth, but to be the very personal embodiment of it.” http://commonground.co.za/?resources=is-jesus-the-only-way-to-god
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