A good deal of discouraging data is offered here:
The possibility that fraud may well be responsible for a significant proportion of the false positives reported in the scientific literature is suggested by a couple of new Dutch studies. Both studies are preprints that report the results of surveys of thousands of scientists in the Netherlands aiming to probe the prevalence of questionable research practices and scientific misconduct.
Summarizing their results, an article in Science notes, “More than half of Dutch scientists regularly engage in questionable research practices, such as hiding flaws in their research design or selectively citing literature. And one in 12 [8 percent] admitted to committing a more serious form of research misconduct within the past 3 years: the fabrication or falsification of research results.” Daniele Fanelli, a research ethicist at the London School of Economics, tells Science that 51 percent of researchers admitting to questionable research practices “could still be an underestimate.”
In June, a meta-analysis of prior studies on questionable research practices and misconduct published in the journal Science and Engineering Ethics reported that more than 15 percent of researchers had witnessed others who had committed at least one instance of research misconduct (falsification, fabrication, plagiarism), while nearly 40 percent were aware of others who had engaged in at least one questionable research practice.
Ronald Bailey, “How Much Scientific Research Is Actually Fraudulent?” at Reason (July 9, 2021)
Here’s the study in Science.
Let’s remember this when we hear science bureaucrats bellyaching that people don’t “trust the science.” In many cases, they just shouldn’t. Increasingly, it is the smarter public that doesn’t trust the science.
Science is a human enterprise. Human beings are fallible creatures, capable of misconduct in any field of endeavor, be it science, politics, industry or religion. If we were designed, we are a flawed design.
If there is widespread scientific misconduct – and this article indicates it can be detected – then a more rigorous application of something like peer-review should weed more of it out.
Still, as this article says in closing,
And just to think that the first complete scientifically rigorous experiment was recorded in the Bible, Daniel chapter 1. As described, Daniel’s experiment in nutrition included the essential components of the scientific method:
• A hypothesis
• A set period of time
• More than one experimental subject
• Both an experimental group and a control group
• Well-defined parameters
• A change in a single variable
• An independent evaluator
• Observation and analysis—subjective in the absence of blood tests
• A written record
This text is astonishing considering that Daniel’s experiment was conducted about 2,600 years ago! As a result, Daniel and his friends received a grant—they were allowed to maintain their vegetarian diet.
-Q
seversky:
We weren’t designed. We are the result of descent with modification, including genetic accidents. And a flawed design is just begging the question.
Querius: And just to think that the first complete scientifically rigorous experiment was recorded in the Bible
The Bible is not “one book”, so more specifically, it was recorded in the book of Daniel. But yes, it is interesting. Given the style and facility of the Hebrew and Aramaic text, whoever wrote Daniel was most likely an educated Jew, which means he would have been familiar with Aristotle’s Prior and Posterior Analytics among other Greek influential thinkers.
“Daniel’s experiment was conducted about 2,600 years ago ”
Most likely Daniel was written 2nd Century B.C.
@ seversky
“Science is a human enterprise. Human beings are fallible creatures, capable of misconduct in any field of endeavor, be it science, politics, industry or religion. If we were designed, we are a flawed design.“
Science is only as good as the person doing it yours was a most reasonable assessment
And true science is one of the best things that we have come up with but it can also be used to do some of the worst
By the way a I don’t think we have any room to judge that we are a flawed design
We don’t even understand quarter of what we are we have no room to say what is poorly designed and what is not until we actually understand what’s going on
Jack,
First of all, I never claimed the Bible was “one book.” It comprises 66 books, 39 of which form the Tanakh (aka “Old Testament”) and 27 of which are the B’rit Chadashah (aka New Testament or more accurately, the New Covenant).
Your information is out-of-date. The renowned Biblical scholar, Roland K. Harrison, maintained that the discovery of the book of Daniel among the Dead Sea scrolls “absolutely precluded” any further consideration by scholars that the book was a second century B.C.E. Maccabean composition.“There can no longer be any possible reason for considering the book as a Maccabean product.” (Harrison 1969:1127, 1979:862).
No, not at all likely since Aristotle’s Prior and Posterior Analytics is thought to be written about 350 B.C.E. and the text in Daniel’s account gives us a date of 539 B. C. E., which is about 189 years earlier than Aristotle’s.
-Q
Querius,
“the book of Daniel among the Dead Sea scrolls”
The Qumran sect had several copies which were no earlier than mid-2nd century BC.
Daniel is not included in the Nevi’im (the prophets) which was closed around 200 BC.
It is mentioned in the Ketuvim (the writings), which has no references earlier than 140 BC.
Daniel is quoted in the Sibylline Oracles dated around middle 2nd century BC.
Wisdom of Sirach, a work dating from around 180 BCE, draws on almost every book of the Old Testament except Daniel.
Parts of Daniel may have based on older stories but there is no evidence that Daniel, as composed, is older than the than mid 2nd-century BC.
And good luck trying to figure out who “Darius the Mede” is.
The prophecies of Daniel are accurate down to the career of Antiochus IV Epiphanes, king of Syria and oppressor of the Jews, but not in its prediction of his death: the author seems to know about Antiochus’ two campaigns in Egypt (169 and 167 BCE), the desecration of the Temple (the “abomination of desolation”), and the fortification of the Akra (a fortress built inside Jerusalem), but he seems to know nothing about the reconstruction of the Temple or about the actual circumstances of Antiochus’ death in late 164 BCE. Chapters 10–12 must therefore have been written between 167 and 164 BCE. There is no evidence of a significant time lapse between those chapters. (Wikipedia)
You may want to check out John J. Collins’s extensive publications on Daniel (and other Hebrew apocalyptic literature.) He’s no slouch and neither are the other academic scholars involved in these studies. Collins’s works (and those included in his editorial works) are top notch scholarly, and pricy, but you can find them to read for free at universities. Highly recommended.
https://divinity.yale.edu/faculty-and-research/yds-faculty/john-j-collins
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_J._Collins
Science is a bastard of an unlawful matrimony between religious thought(love of God and other people) and satanic thought (alchemy, shortcut to material opulence , that forget God and His providence ). We see the results of that bastard : we have an easy life but we become morally worse than wild beasts.
Jack,
All these arguments are from the absence of evidence. The same type of argument was once used to ridicule the Bible for its mention of the “mythical” Hittites . . . that is, until the royal library of the Hittites was discovered. Then the Biblical minimalists stopped talking about it being a myth. Since then, over 50 people mentioned in the Bible have been verified through archaeological artifacts and more have been discovered recently.
There’s a sad reason why some minimalist scholars and others fight so hard against Daniel. Of course Wikipedia is hardly a scholarly reference, but the Biblical minimalists have been using the flimsiest of reasons why Daniel couldn’t have been written when it says it was, based on their ideological rejection that accurate prophecy is possible. Thus, they assume their conclusion. But archaeological discoveries continue to batter their hostile positions.
For example, Daniel’s prophecies are highly accurate, including those relating to the Messiah. The “seventy sevens” prophecy doesn’t indicate that the temple will be “desecrated,” but rather that both Jerusalem and the temple both will be *destroyed* a second time after being rebuilt–this after the Messiah is killed. Jerusalem and the Temple were indeed both destroyed in 70 C.E. Thus, the Messiah came and was killed before 70 A.D. None of these minimalist scholars argue that the Dead Sea Scrolls were written after 70 C.E.
According to archaeological evidence, such an order as mentioned by Daniel that began the “seventy sevens” prophecy was issued by Artaxerxes I of Persia in the late summer or fall of 457 B.C.E. Jesus likely started his three and a half years of teaching 483 years later in 26-27 C.E., and was likely crucified by the Romans in the spring of 30 C.E. About 40 years later, Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed by the Roman general Titus in 70 C.E., fulfilling Daniel’s prophecy. What does it matter that some Jews hostile to Jesus put Daniel in the Ketuvim? They also wrote disparagingly about Jesus in the Talmud (both Jerusalem and Babylonian) and recorded miraculous events around the time of Jesus’ crucifixion. For example in the Jerusalem Talmud, we read
What else happened 40 years before 70 C.E.?
-Q
at 1 Seversky states,
Hmm, that sure sounds very Biblical to me Seversky.
And it is interesting to note that a large motivation for Francis Bacon, a devout Christian, in putting forth the scientific method in the first place was precisely because of the man’s fallen, sinful, nature.
In Emily Morales’s research on Francis Bacon she notes that,,,, “It was the rather low regard for the fallen human mind, besieged as it were by sin, that drove Francis Bacon, the “Father” of the Scientific Method, to formulate a new epistemology”,,,
Emily Morales went on to note that Darwinists, today and even since its inception, have blatantly ignored Bacon’s method of “repeated experimentation”
Seversky goes to state,
Hmm, interesting. Seversky is not claiming that we are not designed. Much less is he citing any scientific evidence that we could possibly be ‘not designed’. Rather Seversky is basically, for all intents and purposes, actually claiming that he can design humans better than God did.
Arrogant is too charitable a word for such an attitude.
Well Seversky, if you think you can do a better job creating humans than God did, then have at it.
And don’t forget to throw free will into the mix so that that ‘perfect human’ can choose to either to love you and do your good and perfect will, or choose to hate you and rebel against your good and perfect will and go into a sinful self-destruct mode.
Oh yeah, don’t forget to create your own universe as well.
We all await your results.
Verse:
Bornagain77,
Worse yet, this arrogance is nestled in an environment of profound scientific ignorance. Nevertheless, the response is that anything we don’t understand must be random junk (such as 100+ so-called “vestigial organs”), or “poorly designed” (such as the so-called “backwards” retina) when as you pointed out the body is a work of outstanding engineering.
Also, as one engineer pointed out here, engineering always involves trade-offs and compromises based on a set of priorities. Always.
Most non-human animals our size are stronger, faster, more robust, better adapted to their environment, better swimmers/runners/jumpers/climbers, more fecund, with better senses, more environmentally friendly, and so on.
Yet here we are.
-Q
Where is Charles when we need him? He can clear up these Daniel dates, pronto.
Anyone know if Charles still comes by?
Bornagain77/10
Doesn’t everything?
So Bacon – the empiricist – accepted the story of the Fall without any experimental or observational evidence whatsoever?
And it is also interesting to note that this founder of the empirical method apparently ignored the obvious inconsistencies and contradictions in the story.
For example, as you have been told before, nothing happens but by God’s will according to your theology. If human beings are capable of sinful, immoral behavior then they must be behaving as they were designed to behave. An omniscient and omnipotent God does not make mistakes. Even if He did, when He observed human behavior deviating from what He intended, He had the knowledge and the power to correct it instantly. Yet He didn’t, so we are left to assume that He wanted it to happen. And if Adam and Eve did what He wanted them to do, how can they be held to blame? The whole “Fall” rationale is nonsense.
As for any “free will” defense, it falls before both doctrine and evidence. First, Christian doctrine holds that God is omnipresent. He exists at every point in space and at every point in time. That means, amongst other things, that He exists in our future and must therefore know what our future holds because He is already there. Thus, if God tells us an event will occur in our future then it will occur and there is nothing we can do to change it. Hence the story of Peter’s triple denial of being associated with Jesus even though he had been warned quite specifically beforehand that it was what would happen. Clearly, he had no free will in the matter.
The imago dei claim is of no help either. If we reject any notion of physical resemblance and spirituality is so vague a concept that it can mean almost anything people want it to mean, then we are left with psychology. And there you may have a point. When Richard Dawkins described the God of the Old Testament as “jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully” he was simply pointing out that the God in the Biblical accounts was behaving just as human beings have shown themselves capable of behaving throughout history. If that is what is meant by being made in God’s image then on that, at least, we are in agreement.
Morales can only make that claim by being blatantly ignorant, either accidentally or deliberately, of all the empirical research conducted in both the laboratory and in the field on the many aspects of evolutionary theory. We have “icons of evolution” such as the peppered moth and finches beaks, the immense body of work in genetics, Richard Lenski’s Long-Term Evolutionary Experiment, the theoretical prediction that led to the discovery of the Tiktaalik fossils right where they were supposed to be. There is much more there for anyone who is interested in learning.
I think I can see ways in which the human “design” could be improved but why not put our engineering friends here on the spot and ask if they can see ways in which the design could be improved?
Dunno, AnimatedDust.
The book of Daniel starts out with the following:
The first chapter of Daniel ends with
As a result, the dates given can be reconciled with those found in other manuscripts and thus this ancient document locks itself in space and time. Bible critics challenge these dates, authorship, and prophecies with objections generally based on the presumption that the accurate prophecies in Daniel musta been written after the fact and they reject the date that’s specified in the manuscript on that basis rather than archaeological and manuscript evidence.
In any case, Daniel was educated in Babylonia, not Greece, and Aristotle’s later Prior and Posterior Analytics is focused on logic and the role of demonstration. It’s not a description of the scientific method as Daniel exemplifies in his dietary experiment.
However as noted in the OP, the concept of independent experimental repeatability seems to have been ignored in many scientific papers. This allows science fraud to be much easier to perpetrate.
Along this line, I should concede that Daniel also did not specify independent experimental repeatability in his description.
-Q
Seversky states, “I think I can see ways in which the human “design” could be improved but why not put our engineering friends here on the spot and ask if they can see ways in which the design could be improved?”
I did not ask you, or engineers, to imagine ways that you think that humans could possibly be improved, I specifically stated, “if you think you can do a better job creating humans than God did, then have at it.”
Imagining that you might be able create something better, and actually creating something better, are two vastly different things.
Shoot, even given all the requisite parts, no one has a realistic clue how to create even a ‘simple’ cell, much less how to create a human composed of trillions upon trillions of interacting cells.
Tell you what Seversky, I will give you a huge head start. If you, and all the scientists in the world, can create just a single neuron of the human brain, (not an entire human mind you, just a single neuron), I will concede that your conjectures about creating a better human than God did is more than just insane hubris on your part.
Of related note as to just how humbling ‘simple’ life can be for researchers when they just try understand ‘simple’ life. (just understand ‘simple’ life, not create it mind you)
Seversky, since it is clear that you, nor anyone else, can create even a single neuron of a human brain, might I suggest that you take Venter’s attitude of humbleness, (which he got by just trying to understand life), to heart when you imagine that you might be able to create a better human than God did?
Seversky, after learning that a large motivation for Bacon in formulating the scientific method was man’s fallen, sinful, nature, states, “So Bacon – the empiricist – accepted the story of the Fall without any experimental or observational evidence whatsoever?”
LOL, have you looked around you Seversky? Evidence for man’s fallen, sinful, nature is everywhere. If you don’t believe me, just turn on your evening news for about 5 minutes.
Then, instead of proving that man is not in a fallen, sinful, state, Seversky basically concedes my main point that man actually is in a fallen, sinful, state, and , (following in Charles Darwin’s footsteps),
jumps straight into ‘bad’ theology and claims that God’s sovereignty would and/or should have prevented man from ever being in a fallen, sinful, state.
Might it be too obvious to point out that Seversky is severely overestimating his own knowledge of God’s motivation and will for creating humans?
Seversky, once again, in his simplistic, even juvenile, (Darwinian) theology, fails to realize that he is definitely not God, and that God could very well have very valid reasons for allowing man to be in a fallen, sinful, state. Reasons that Seversky does not, indeed can not, fully comprehend (yet).,,, (i.e. Seversky, in his apparently unbridled hubris, is erroneously presupposing that he knows all of God’s possible reasons and motivations for creating humans in the first place).
Edward Feser goes over one very plausible reason God may have had in allowing man to exist in a fallen, sinful, state, in the following article, i.e. the ‘beatific’ vision.
A few related notes:
Of note: the problem of pain/evil, and how we react to tragedy in our lives, was almost central to Dr. Neal’s following talk on her near death experience.
At around the 15:00 – 17:00 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Neal spoke about how she, when in the presence of God, and from being able to see things from that much higher “omniscient’ perspective, finally understood why God allows evil in the world (i.e. she finally ‘got it’) and understood how our limited perspective on ‘evil’ severely clouds our judgments and our reactions to tragedies in our lives. (The take home message is to trust in God no matter what)
Also of note:
Verse:
Q: Jack made date claims about Daniel, above. In another thread, linked below, Charles obliterates the claims Jack made in this thread regarding the dating of the book of Daniel, by dealing with the prophecy in Daniel 9. It’s a 500 plus comment thread, but in those comments, he takes on all comers and nukes them with biblical scholarship. Daniel is much older than 2nd Century BC.
Nice try Jack.
https://uncommondescent.com/atheism/fft-charles-unmasks-the-anti-id-trollish-tactic-of-attacking-god-christian-values-and-worldview-themes/
And finally Seversky claims that Darwinists follow the scientific method and have abundant evidence for Darwinian evolution. His claim is patently false.
He lists these evidences as supposed undeniable proof that Darwinian evolution is based upon the scientific method, (instead of being based on unrestrained imagination as it actually is). i.e. Peppered Moths, Finch beaks, Lenski’s Long-Term Evolutionary Experiment, and Tiktaalik fossils
That list is a sad and pathetic joke. To call Seversky’s examples overblown hype is an understatement. His list is pure and unmitigated poppycock.
As to Peppered Moths, ignoring the fake photographs that were fraudulently displayed in textbooks for years, (where a Darwinist ‘unnaturally’ glued peppered moths to tree trunks), peppered moth coloration is found to be the result of a directed mutation, not a random mutation, as was falsely presupposed by Darwinists
As to finch beaks, Peter and Rosemary Grant of Princeton demonstrated that “beak changes were reversible. This is hardly “evolution”.”
Moreover, the changes in finch beaks are now shown to be due to rapid, environmentally induced, epigenetic variations, not due to random genetic mutations to DNA as was presupposed by Darwinists
As to Lenski’s Long Term Evolution Experiment, Richard Lenski had all but claimed that the citrate adaptation was undeniable proof of speciation, i.e. undeniable proof of Darwinian evolution. Yet, Scott Minnich came along and demonstrated that the citrate adaptation is a ‘programmed’, repeatable, adaptation that is as easy to achieve as falling off a log and is therefore not experimental proof for “Darwinian’ speciation as Lenski had falsely claimed.
As to Tiktaalik fossils.Tetrapod, i.e. “mudskipper’ trackways, were discovered a full 10 million years before Tiktaalik, therefore undermining Shubin’s claim to have found a transitional form in Tiktaalik.
Moreover, ‘mudskippers’ are not a rare evolutionary event as was presupposed by Darwinists but is present in 33 different families of fish
And what is ironically, and inappropriately, called ‘convergent evolution’ directly falsifies a core Darwinian presupposition that Darwinian evolution will not repeat itself.
Stephen Jay Gould himself, who popularised the tape of life metaphor, argued that if it were possible to turn back the clock, the history of life would not repeat itself. The world would be unfamiliar, and most likely lack humans.
Yet that is not what we find.
Moreover, besides all of Seversky’s examples failing to provide any empirical evidence for Darwinian evolution, Darwinists blatantly ignore many lines of empirical evidence that have directly falsified core presuppositions of their theory. Empirical falsifications that overturn core presuppositions that go to the very heart of Darwin’s theory.
Dr. Cornelius Hunter has put together a list of falsified Darwinian predictions,
I put together my own list of falsifications of Darwin’s theory. Core falsifications of their theory that Darwinists simply refuse to ever accept as falsifications of their theory,
Thus in conclusion, Seversky’s list of empirical evidences that supposedly provide undeniable proof for Darwinian evolution falls completely apart with just minimal scrutiny. Whereas the list of empirical evidences that falsify core Darwinian presuppositions is robust and solid. Moreover, the list of falsifications of core Darwinian presuppositions continues to grow in size.
Verse:
You do understand that any verified claims of foreknowledge of the future undermine the claim of free will?
Seversky, and you do realize that foreknowledge does not mean coercion to do what is against free will and thus foreknowledge does not negate free will?
It’s not “Seversky” per se is just one of thousands of bots that repeat the content uploaded by their daddy called Dawkins . 🙂 They don’t seem to have a logical individual thinking , only REPEAT ideas written by somebody else and they think they are smart.
A doctor telling his pacient that s/he will live only few months that means doctor knowing the future undermine the free will of pacient? 🙂
And please note that Seversky did not reference any empirical evidence that his deterministic Darwinian worldview is true and that the Theist’s belief in free will is false, but rather Seversky instead resorted to a faulty, juvenile, theological argument to try to argue against the reality of free will.
Which is just as well, the empirical evidence from science does not support Darwinian determinism but instead support’s the Theist’s contention that free will really does exist.
In Libet’s free will experiments we find that the prior activity of the brain can be suddenly ‘interrupted’ by the free will decision to not do something. i.e. by ‘free won’t’. There is no physical cause, via the four fundamental forces of nature, that can possibly explain this sudden interruption of prior brain activity.
Further work in this area has only strengthened Libet’s contention that we possess ‘free won’t’ which is not reducible to the laws of physics. i.e. not reducible to the prior activity of our brain.
Moreover, in direct contradiction to the atheistic claim that our thoughts are merely the result of whatever prior state our material brain happens to be in, ‘Brain Plasticity’, the ability to alter the structure of the brain from a person’s focused intention, has now been established by Jeffrey Schwartz, as well as among other researchers.
Again, this is inexplicable via ‘the four fundamental forces’. i.e. Determinism.
On top of that, in quantum mechanics Anton Zeilinger and company, as of 2018, have closed the ‘freedom of choice’ loophole.
This is simply devastating to Seversky’s deterministic worldview.
As Steven Weinberg, who is an atheist himself, states in the following article, 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, as the closing of the ‘freedom of choice’ loophole makes clear, could care less how atheists prefer the world to behave.
Humans, as far as the empirical evidence from neuroscience and quantum mechanics is concerned, are certainly NOT mindless automatons, i.e. ‘meat robots’, who are at the complete mercy of nature’s fundamental laws.
Verse:
Of supplemental note: The denial of the reality of free will by Darwinists is self-refuting nonsense.
For prime example of just how self-refuting, and nonsensical, the denial of free will by Darwinists actually is, I give you this self-refuting, nonsensical, quote from none other than Jerry Coyne himself:
That quote should literally be given as the number one example of a self refuting logical fallacy in Philosophy 101 classes. 🙂
AnimatedDust @17,
Thanks for the link! I actually read the entire thread, although at 514 comments, it might better be termed a “rope.” Charles’ comments on Daniel were brilliant and well-researched as are his website topics:
http://theos-sphragis.info/main.html
Independently, I came to the same conclusions about the probable dates for the birth and crucifixion of Jesus in context with Daniel’s seventy sevens (heptads) prophecy. Incidentally, you might notice the parallel/double entendre about forgiving seventy times seven . . .
I also noticed that you’d contributed to that thread as well:
-Q
Lol, Q, I did indeed. Charles slapped down the skeptics much as BA77 did just above to Seversky, who then responded by completely changing the subject. All fun and games, for now. It’s really just trolling, though he’s always polite. BA and others mainly do it for the onlookers, of which I am one. Charles’ exposition of Daniel is not a rope either. More like a steel battleship mooring cable. 🙂
I wish he’d come back and opine some more. And thank you for posting that link to his main page. I had lost that long ago! A treasure of biblical scholarship there. 🙂
Yeah, I liked how Charles refused to be sidetracked from his well-researched points on the evidence for the date and authenticity of the book of Daniel and Daniel’s amazing prophecies!
The skeptics kept trying to change the subject by bringing up new issues, but he kept hammering them on the 483-year prophecy of the appearance and death of Messiah followed by the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple for the second time. This is more amazing since Jerusalem and the temple hadn’t even been rebuilt yet from the Babylonian destruction.
I just started exploring more of the articles on his web page.
-Q
Absense of evidence is still absense of evidence and must be reasonably accounted for esp given claims being made for an old date of Daniel.
I’m not interested in “ridicule.” I’m simply discussing the state of the scholarship.
As for the Hittites, views changed when actual dirt evidence was discovered. That’s how science/scholarship works.
I’ve never met or known any scholar that “fights hard against Daniel.” This is just ridiculous. What they do is follow evidence.
The text I quoted is sourced by two imminent scholars, experts in Daniel and other apocalyptic writing of the era, John Collins and Raymond Hammer.
Mind reading.
If you have evidence that Daniel was written earlier than 2nd century BC, let’s hear it.
Let me know when they find any evidence that attests to an earlier Daniel.
They’re actually not.
Actually, there were several takes on Daniel’s 69/70 week prophesy. Absolutely none of them got it right with respect to anything to do with Jesus or the destruction of the temple. (And they knew Hebrew and Aramaic a lot better than you do.) It wasn’t until after the destruction of the Temple that the first re-calculations took place that considered 28-33.A.D, 70 A.D. etc. to be a possible relevant dates. The Sharpshooter’s Fallacy.
Correct. And irrelevant. I didn’t say they did.
All of the post 70 A.D. interprations rely on the marks placed in the text from the Masoretic text, which was a few centuries later.
Considering that Masoretes were quite superstitious about how they handled what they considered scriptures, it is rather unlikely they would have deliberately mis-categorized Daniel if they considered it to be amongst the Prophets. The fact is, all known copies of the Nevi’im and Ketuvim have Daniel in the Ketuvim and not the Nevi’im. This includes reference to the list of prophets in Sirach, copies of which were found at Qumran.
Irrelevant to the dating of Daniel.
I suggest reading Daniel 9 and the Date of Messiah’s Coming in Essene, Hellenistic, Pharisaic, Zealot and Early Christian Computation by the imminent scholar Roger Beckwith. You can read it for free on JSTOR.
By the way, who was Darius the Mede?
I’ve noticed that Seversky made another claim that I did not address. Seversky also claimed that “the immense body of work in genetics” provided compelling evidence for Darwinian evolution.
Given Winston Ewert’s fairly recent, and impressive, work in this area (Dependency Graph; 2018), it would be a shame if I did not address that particular false claim that Seversky made about the genetic evidence.
Although major problems between the genetic evidence and Darwin’s theory were known about before,
Although major problems between the genetic evidence and Darwin’s theory were known about before, Winston Ewert has now, as of 2018, done a massive study on the genetic evidence. A massive study that has, in no uncertain terms, blown Seversky’s claim that the genetic evidence supports Darwinian evolution completely out of the water.
Here is Dr. Ewert’s paper
And here Dr. Cornelius Hunter comments on the stunning results of Dr. Ewert’s paper.
Thus, not only is the genetic evidence NOT evidence for gradual Darwinian evolution, the genetic evidence is actually overwhelming evidence for Intelligent Design.
Thus, so much for Seversky’s claim that “the immense body of work in genetics” provided compelling evidence for Darwinian evolution. That claim is simply false. Has known to be false for a long while. And, via Ewert’s recent work, now known to be, with apologies to Wolfgang Pauli, ‘not even wrong’ in just how false the claim actually is..
Jack, wade through that link I posted above on Daniel @17, and then refute it, with evidence. I won’t hold my breath, because you’ll come up with some predictable deflection. Much more difficult to accept that one inescapable conclusion, that Jesus Christ is who he claimed to be, and that won’t change, no matter how long you plug your ears and LALALLALALALALALA to the contrary.
AD,
I made my points and cite my sources after my points are made. If you have points to make, make them. I will be happy to try and see if your points hold up by the sources your cite.
So go ahead and make your points and commit to them.
“some predictable deflection”
Mind reading. A red flag for someone not worthy of interaction.
“Much more difficult to accept that one inescapable conclusion, that Jesus Christ is who he claimed to be, and that won’t change, no matter how long you plug your ears and LALALLALALALALALA to the contrary.”
Irrational religious zealotry on parade. Cringe.
At any rate, I’ll give you a chance. For a minute.
Let the record reflect. Atheist unwilling to do the slightest heavy lifting. Stop the presses!
Glad we’ve never seen that before, here, at UD. Oh, wait…
🙁
Jack,
I’ve researched the evidence personally. Daniel plainly tells us when it was written. It uses language and historical information (later verified) consistent with Babylon. Virtually everything that you asserted above is wrong and you don’t produce any evidence to the contrary, simply unsupported assertions.
You can keep generating assertions if you want, but they’re meaningless without evidence. There are no/none/zero scholars that assert Daniel was written after 70 C.E. And yet the events predicted in Daniel actually occurred and are archaeologically undisputed.
Only one of four similar pronouncements from Babylon that could be the start point of Daniel’s seventy sevens (heptads) that specifies precisely the rebuilding of both Jerusalem and the Temple. That was the pronouncement by Artexerxes I to Ezra in 457-8 BCE. Daniel’s prophecy indicates that Messiah would come and be killed 69 x 7 heptads or 483 years later. Note that there was no 0 C.E. and 1 BCE goes to 1 CE directly. Doing the subtraction yields 26-27 CE, the beginning of the 3 1/2 year ministry of Yeshua of Nazareth, after which Jesus was killed as Daniel said and following this in 70 CE, Jerusalem and the Temple were destroyed as Daniel prophesied.
Nothing of what you claimed is supported by any archaeological or manuscript evidence.
-Q
Irrelevant to when it produced in the final form that exists.
Straw man. No scholar claims that no factural information about Babylon exist in Daniel.
I cited two sources by renown scholars. Did you read them?
Straw man. I didn’t claim Daniel was written after 70. C.E.
Do you actually read what I write?
I suggest reading the sources I cited. Sounds like you may be afraid of what you might find.
By the way, who was Darius the Mede? Still no answer.
AnimatedDust: “Let the record reflect. Atheist unwilling to do the slightest heavy lifting.”
I’m not an atheist.
What are you then, Jack? Also, the Darius question was answered some time back by BA77.
Who is it that isn’t reading opposing viewpoints, again? 🙁
“Recent analysis of Xenophon’s Cyropaedia indicates that Darius the Mede was the throne name of the sixth-century BC Median king Cyaxares II, who headed the Medo-Persian Empire at Babylon’s fall in 539 BC.
Wait, don’t tell me, BA is wrong, and Darius is actually Cardi B.
Bornagain77 @ 19
Evolution is recognized and accepted as a theory in science by those far better qualified than you or I to adjudicate on the matter – biologist themselves. Unfortunately for you, the philosopher Paul Nelson admitted that ID fell short in this respect:
Moving on to your “list of falsifications”, however:
You should at least try to understand the basics. Darwin knew nothing about the genome so had nothing to say about whether mutations were random or directed. And, no, the vast majority of mutations in the genome are not found to be “directed”, certainly not in the sense you are implying.
Darwin’s theory of natural selection offered a naturalistic alternative to creationism which was the only credible explanation for the appearance of design up to that point. It may well be that natural selection is no longer considered to be the primary engine of variation but the much bigger problem for ID/creationists is why we should observe any variation at all in what should be the perfect creations of a perfect creator.
Once again, Darwin knew nothing about DNA. He did not propose that “brand new” species would arise just from mutations. He simply argued that descendent species could arise from natural selection acting on variations in the parent species. That said, plenty of experimental evidence has accumulated subsequently for mutations in DNA having dramatic effects on the phenotype.
Whether or not you agree with it, you should at least be aware that current thinking holds that the majority of mutations are neutral or nearly-neutral in effect, a much smaller number are detrimental and an even smaller number still are beneficial. The theory argues that natural selection will tend to filter out the detrimental leaving only the beneficial to have any long-lasting effect, the neutral mutations being effectively invisible to selection.
Darwin was aware that fossilization was a rare occurrence so gaps were to be expected. The sudden appearance of some species could simply be an artefact of the coarse-grained image preserved in the fossil record. On the other hand, significant environmental changes could allow life to flourish relatively rapidly which could appear as an “explosion” even though it lasted for tens of millions of years. As for transitional fossils, there are plenty to be found in the literature. You could start here if you are actually interested.
Axe’s case is simply another variant of the argument from incredulity. He can’t imagine genetic or protein fold pathways that could lead to complex organs so they could not have happened. But neither Axe’s knowledge nor that of any other researcher in this field is exhaustive. Put another way our ignorance is not evidence of impossibility.
Do you have any examples of an organ formed by one species that is exclusively for the benefit of another species and confers no benefit whatsoever on the species which evolved it. How does Loennig show that all these plant species generated organs purely for the benefit of other species rather than for themselves?
Red herring. Darwin’s theory was about how living things could have varied and diversified over time through natural processes, it says nothing about the origins of “life, the Universe and everything”.
David Chalmers referred to the hard problem of consciousness not the insoluble problem of consciousness. No, we do not have a materialistic explanation for consciousness – yet – but our ignorance does not mean that there isn’t one. Abd the “ugly fact” remains that when the brain stops working the associated consciousness disappears irretrievably.
The theory of evolution is about living organisms. It says nothing at all about the ontology of mathematics or Platonic realms. Another red herring.
Is a map an illusion? It is certainly not a one-to-one representation of all the features of a landscape but, as a model created from the abstraction of salient features, it is nonetheless a very useful tool for navigating around it. As for the existence of objective reality being observer-dependent, that is but one interpretation. And you still haven’t answered the obvious objection of, if nothing exists before it is observed, what is being observed in the first place? In those terms, the idea is absurd.
What is meant by “information” here because it sounds very much like you are equivocating between different usages? What version is being used? You also need to explain how information can be both “immaterial” and a “distinctive physical entity” at one and the same time with out it being a contradiction.
Science does not deal in “truth” but in explanations. In the correspondence theory of “truth” the truth-value of an explanation lies in the extent to which it is observed to correspond to the phenomena for which it is intended to provide an account. If you are working with a different theory of truth you need to explain it.
The difficulty of explaining scientific concepts in non-teleological terms most probably arises from humans, being social animals, having evolved languages originally to explain and describe the activities of purposive agents like human beings and other animals. The need for non-teleological terminology is a much more recent requirement. While it is possible, with some difficulty, to formulate accounts using a non-teleological vocabulary, it is all to easy to revert to default teleological forms.
Your problem is that, while there are still a lot of questions that need to be answered, none of the objections listed above, especially those of more tangential relevance, taken either singly or together, amount to anything like irrefutable falsification of the theory of evolution.
Bornagain77/21
As I think I pointed out before, if your God is omnipresent, in other words present at all points in space and all points in time, He must be present in what is our future. He knows what it holds because He’s been there, He is there. It also means that if He tells us something is going to happen then it will happen because He has seen it happen and there is not a blind thing we can do about it. That is exactly what happened when Peter denied knowing Jesus three times. No coercion required.
Jack/27
By the way, who was Darius the Mede?
Jack,
Complete baloney. Once again, you’re wrong on so many points, it’s apparently a lost cause to convince you of anything when your eyes and ears are tightly shut.
When an ancient manuscript includes detailed information about its writer and when it was written, this is never considered irrelevant. A manuscript could have been written in someone else’s name, but there’s no evidence that this was the case and there’s plenty of internal evidence of a Babylonian origin along with compatible expressions from Persian state documents . . .
It’s become apparent that spending more time responding to your unsupported claims and false statements is a total waste of time. I would guess that’s why you’re here.
-Q
Seversky @38,
Yes that’s exactly right. God, who created space-time, of necessity operates outside of space-time. God, who created natural laws, is not constrained by natural laws (i.e. supernatural). Space-time and natural laws cannot create themselves any more than a woman can give birth to herself as Kirk Durston puts it.
-Q
AD: Also, the Darius question was answered some time back by BA77.
I generally skip over BA77’s copy and paste.
All he said was, “Recent analysis of Xenophon s Cyropaedia indicates that Darius the Mede was the throne name of the sixth-century BC Median king Cyaxares II”
A weakly supported claim.
https://bloggingtheology.com/2018/12/28/was-daniels-darius-the-mede-really-xenophons-cyaxares-ii/
Querius: When an ancient manuscript includes detailed information about its writer and when it was written, this is never considered irrelevant. A manuscript could have been written in someone else’s name, but there’s no evidence that this was the case and there’s plenty of internal evidence of a Babylonian origin along with compatible expressions from Persian state documents . . .
I didn’t claim that Daniel contains no genuine Babylonian elements. I would expect that an author of quasi historical fiction to include elements of stories from the past to bolster the contemporary political/social agenda for which Daniel was apparently written. My original points refer to the dating of Daniel in the form it came to exist. You are unable to defeat those points. There is simply no attestation for a date of the work itself earlier than 200 BCE. Uncomfortable for you I can imagine.
Very strange why Paul and the gospel writers didn’t quote Daniel 9 as evidence for Jesus or the coming destruction of Jerusalem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=96RgQLeOS0Q
Again, read this to understand why nobody in the first and seconds centuries BCE interpreted Daniel 9 along the lines of how Christians interpret it: Daniel 9 and the Date of Messiah’s Coming in Essene, Hellenistic, Pharisaic, Zealot and Early Christian Computation by the emminent scholar Roger Beckwith. You can read it for free on JSTOR. The Christian interpretations are after-the-fact sharpshooter fallacy contortions.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/24607004
“A weakly supported claim.” ,,, Others, who have studied this in detail, disagree
And again, the Conclusion of the paper, a paper which you self admittedly did not bother to read, (i.e. willful ignorance)
At 37 Seversky tries to counter my claim that Darwinists simply ignore many lines of empirical evidence that falsify core Darwinian presuppositions.
In response Seversky states,
Well actually no it is not. Leading figures of science in the 19th century, Adam Sedgwick and Richard Owen, both rejected Darwin’s theory precisely for not being scientific, (i.e. for failing to follow the inductive scientific method that was laid out by Francis Bacon)
As far as being considered a science, things did not improve for Darwin’s theory in the 20th century.
Both Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos, recognized leading figures of the 20th century in the philosophy of science, both found Darwin’s theory to be, to put it mildly, inadequate as a scientific theory.
Popper himself called Darwinian evolution, “not a testable scientific theory but a metaphysical research program.”
And Lakatos In his 1973 LSE Scientific Method Lecture directly stated that “nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin can be described as scientific”.
Not exactly a glowing endorsement of Darwin as a supposedly scientific theory for two leading figures in the philosophy of science in the 20th century.
Hence, so much for Seversky’s false claim that “Evolution is recognized and accepted as a theory in science by those far better qualified than you or I,,,”
Seversky then, via Paul Nelson, tries to claim that ID itself does not qualify as a science.
Yet, by Popper’s gold standard of falsification for determining whether something is a testable/falsifiable science, or whether it is a untestable/unfalsifiable pseudoscience,
,,, by that gold standard of science, ID is easily falsifiable and thus easily qualifies as testable/falsifiable science.
Shoot, there is even a 10 Million dollar prize being offered for the first person, or team, that can falsify ID.
As Perry Marshall stated elsewhere, “All you need is a an example of information that does not come from a mind, all you need is one.”
Thus, since ID can ‘potentially’ be falsified by experimentation, then that, all by its lonesome, qualifies ID as a science and demarcates it from pseudoscience.
On the other hand, nobody can seem to find any rigid falsification criteria within Darwin’s theory that would demarcate it as a testable/falsifiable science, and not as a pseudoscience.
I will try to address some of Seversky’s other false claims later on today if I have the time, but suffice it for now to note that Seversky’s claim that Darwin’s theory is a science, and ID is not a science, is a demonstrably, and patently, false claim.
Shoot, directly contrary to what Seversky presupposes, we can’t even ‘do science’ in the first place without presupposing ID to be true on a deep fundamental level of reality.
Verse
Seversky then moves on to my list of “list of falsifications”
To that specific falsification, Seversky responds
Hold the phones, is Seversky really trying to claim that Darwin’s theory does not hold mutations to DNA to be random? Surely that can’t be right,,
“CHANCE ALONE,” the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Jacques Monod once wrote, “is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, is at the very root of the stupendous edifice of creation.”
If Seversky is really trying to claim that Darwin’s theory does not hold mutations to DNA to be random, Seversky better inform the Darwinian community a large.
Contrary to what Seversky tried to imply, the discovery that mutations, in the vast majority of instances, are found to not be random was quite the surprise to evolutionary biologists,
Since mutations to DNA are now known, in the vast majority of instance, to not be truly random, Darwinists will often respond to this (very) inconvenient falsification of a core presupposition of their theory by claiming that mutations are only held to be random with regard to fitness, i.e. to the needs of the individual, (as if that claim gets them out of the severe jam they have with this core falsification to their theory), but even their claim that mutations are only held to be random with regard to fitness, i.e. to the needs of the individual, is now known to be a false claim in and of itself.
Seversky went on to state that,,,
The first part of that claim is simply false, as I have now referenced, the vast majority of mutations in the genome, directly contrary to what Seversky claimed, ARE found to be “directed”
As to the second part of Seversky’s claim, i.e. “certainly not (directed) in the sense you are implying.”
And exactly what sense is Seversky trying to claim mutations can be ‘directed’? I certainly hope he is not trying to insanely claim they can be ‘randomly directed’. That would be a new level of insanity even for Seversky. 🙂
But anyways, regardless of whatever lame excuse Seversky is trying to find, let me lay it on the line, nobody, and I mean NOBODY to especially include Darwinists, has a realistic clue how it is possible for the cell body to locate a specific sequence in DNA just when it needs to find that sequence. Much less does anyone have a realistic clue how it is possible for the cell body to know exactly where to change the DNA in order to address the specific needs of the individual cell, (and/or organism).
As Stephen Talbott explained, “Hundreds or thousands of DNA sequences move (or are moved) within vast numbers of cell nuclei, and are subjected to extraordinarily nuanced, locally modulated chemical activity so as to contribute appropriately to bodily requirements that are nowhere codified — least of all in those DNA sequences.,,,”,,, “To locate a protein-coding gene of typical size within all that DNA is like homing in on a one-half-inch stretch within those 24 miles.”
So Seversky, since you said that mutations are, “certainly not (directed) in the sense you are implying”, exactly what sense do you mean mutations to be directed?
Many people, other than myself, want to understand exactly how it is even possible for a cell to ‘know’ how to locate a 1/2 inch sequence within 24 miles. Much less, how it is possible to make appropriate ‘directed’ changes to the ‘programming’ of DNA, in just the right places. And to do so in the blink of an eye.
Compared to our computer programs, such a feat is simply ‘science fiction’ as far as our best computer technology is concerned.
So yes Seversky, please do tell us exactly what you mean when you say that the mutations are ‘certainly’ not directed in the sense that I implied.
Jack @ 27
“If you have evidence that Daniel was written earlier than 2nd century BC, let’s hear it. ”
Actually, the Septuagint was copied beginning 3rd century B.C. and contains “Daniel” in its entirety.
Daniel recorded the existence of Belshazzar (Dan 5), a fact known to Daniel, but otherwise lost to history, archaeology, etc. until the discovery in A.D. 1854, by Sir Henry Rawlinson of the Nabonidus Chronicle (cuneiform tablet) and also Nabonidus Stela, and Nabonidus Cylinder (at the British Museum) in which Nabonidus prayed for his son “Belshazzar” and essentially made Belshazzar co-regent of Babylon in Nabonidus’ absence. Since Nabonidus was first in the kingdom and his son Belshazzar was second, then Daniel would logically have had third authority in the kingdom following Belshazzar, exactly as was offered in Dan 5:16.
Daniel knew Belshazzar was second in authority over Babylon, and Cyrus the Great captured Babylon in 539 BC, and Belshazzar’s existence was confirmed in the Nabonidus Cylinder. But that fact was unknown to 3rd century (and 2nd century) BC writers as demonstrated by the absolute lack of any historical evidence outside of “Daniel” until Rawlinson’s discovery 1854 AD. History that later turns out to be true was not fabricated ‘after the fact’ in the first place.
So if “Daniel” had been written by a 3rd (or 2nd) century BC writer, that writer alone had knowledge of Belshazzar’s existence that no one else had in the 2400 years between Cyrus’ capture of Babylon from Belshazzar upto Rawlinson’s discovery. The only person in that 2400 years who knew Belshazzar existed was Daniel himself, and that fact was not known in 3rd (or 2nd) century BC. The author of “Daniel” had to exist when Belshazzar was known around 539 BC and lost Babylon to Cyrus.
Further, “Daniel” is mentioned in Ezekiel, and no one questions that Ezekiel is dated to 592-570 BC.
Thank you once again, Bornagain77 @44 and Charles @47. Beautifully summarized.
It’s too bad that Jack refuses to read your posts for the reason that he isn’t here to gain information but simply to disseminate outdated and falsified theories that he agrees with.
But I’m sure that many other people here have read and appreciated your posts, myself included.
Thank you.
-Q
In response to the falsification of Natural Selection,
In response to the falsification of Natural Selection, Seversky responds thusly,
Huh? What in the world are you talking about Seversky? Natural Selection never was considered the “primary engine of variation”. Random “chance” always was, and still is, considered the “primary engine of variation”.
In fact, the fact that Darwinists hold variations to be completely random, (i.e. completely ‘spontaneous’ and unguided), is what makes it impossible to predict exactly when a particular variation may happen, and is thus what, in and of itself, renders Darwin’s theory completely useless as a scientific theory.
As Wolfgang ‘not even wrong’ Pauli explained, “While they (Darwinists) pretend to stay in this way completely ‘scientific’ and ‘rational,’ they become actually very irrational, particularly because they use the word ‘chance’, not any longer combined with estimations of a mathematically defined probability, in its application to very rare single events more or less synonymous with the old word ‘miracle.’”
Thus, contrary to what Seversky claimed, Natural Selection is not now, nor was it ever, imagined to be the “primary engine of variation”. Completely unguided random “chance” always was, and still is, considered the “primary engine of variation” within Darwinian thought.
Natural Selection, on the other hand, was always falsely imagined to function as some kind of ‘blind’ agent, i.e. as a ‘designer substitute’, with the causal power within itself to scrutinize variations, “even the slightest’.
As Charles Darwin himself put it, “natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good”;
Yet, Charles Darwin was simply completely, and unequivocally, wrong in his claim that Natural Selection can function as some kind of ‘blind’ agent, i.e. a ‘designer substitute’, which is “daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good”.
Natural Selection is now known to be grossly inadequate as the supposed ‘designer substitute’ that Darwin had falsely imagined it to be.
As Ann Gauger pointed out, “In 2007, Durrett and Schmidt estimated in the journal Genetics that for a single mutation to occur in a nucleotide-binding site and be fixed in a primate lineage would require a waiting time of six million years. The same authors later estimated it would take 216 million years for the binding site to acquire two mutations, if the first mutation was neutral in its effect.”
And as John Sanford noted, “the waiting time for the fixation of a “string-of-one” is by itself problematic. Waiting a minimum of 1.5 million years (realistically, much longer), for a single point mutation is not timely adaptation in the face of any type of pressing evolutionary challenge.,,, the fixation of two co-dependent mutations is extremely problematic – requiring at least 84 million years. This is ten-fold longer than the estimated time required for ape-to-man evolution.,,, Certainly the creation and fixation of a string of three (requiring at least 380 million years) would be extremely untimely (and trivial in effect), in terms of the evolution of modern man.
I know of no one who has challenged the calculations of Durrett and Schmidt, or the calculations of John Sanford.,
So again, Natural Selection is now found to be grossly inadequate as the supposed ‘designer substitute’.
And with Natural Selection being mathematically falsified as the supposed ‘designer substitute’, then the explanation for the ‘appearance of design’ that we see in life, or course, reverts back to ‘real’ design as the explanation for the design that we see in life.
As Richard Sternberg explains, “Darwinism provided an explanation for the appearance of design, and argued that there is no Designer — or, if you will, the designer is natural selection. If that’s out of the way — if that (natural selection) just does not explain the evidence — then the flip side of that is, well, things appear designed because they are designed.”
Seversky also made this rather peculiar claim, “but the much bigger problem for ID/creationists is why we should observe any variation at all in what should be the perfect creations of a perfect creator.”
Well, I certainly don’t consider it a ‘much bigger problem.’
Contrary to what Seversky may believe that the Bible says, I, a Christian, never have believed that we will not see any variation whatsoever in animals. On the contrary, I have always believed that creatures will reproduce ‘after their kind’.
For instance, I believe, although there is a tremendous amount of variation in the Dogs of the world, that the tremendous amount of variation witnessed in Dogs will always be ‘bounded’ within the ‘Dog kind’.
How in the world Seversky gets to the idea that we should not “observe any variation at all in what should be the perfect creations of a perfect creator”, I have absolutely no idea.
It is clear that Seversky is actually erecting a straw man theological argument, knocking it down, and then declaring victory.
But I, nor any Christian I know, has ever held that we will not see any variation whatsoever when an animal reproduces ‘after their kind’.
Of supplemental note to the ‘bounded’ variation that we see within the ‘Dog kind’.
Verse:
Seversky then tries to address the insurmountable problem of ‘biological form’ for Darwinian evolution.
I claimed,,
and Seversky responded thusly:
Perhaps Seversky should inform the following researcher that Darwinists have the ‘problem of biological form’ well in hand?
The researcher specifically stated that, “At present, the problem of biological form remains unsolved.”
And although Seversky’s claimed that “plenty of experimental evidence has accumulated subsequently for mutations in DNA having dramatic effects on the phenotype”,,, although Seversky claimed that, that is NOT what I am claiming.
I am NOT claiming that mutations can not have any effect whatsoever on an organism’s phenotype.
What I am claiming is that the ‘blueprint’ for ‘biological form’ is irreducible to DNA,, nor is it reducible to any other material particulars in biology that Darwinists may wish to invoke.
I readily agree that one can get all sorts of phenotypic oddities by mutating DNA. For instance, there are examples of four winged fruit flies, and examples of fruit flies growing legs out of the heads, but there are no examples of mutations to DNA leading to anything other than deformed and defective fruit flies.
As Dr. Jonathan Wells explained, “Studies using saturation mutagenesis in the embryos of fruit flies, roundworms, zebrafish and mice also provide evidence against the idea that DNA specifies the basic form of an organism. Biologists can mutate (and indeed have mutated) a fruit fly embryo in every possible way, and they have invariably observed only three possible outcomes: a normal fruit fly, a defective fruit fly, or a dead fruit fly.”
The ‘blueprint’ for biological form simply does not reside in DNA as Darwinists had falsely presupposed it to.
As Michael Denton remarks in the following article,'”to date the form of no individual cell has been shown to be specified in detail in a genomic blueprint.”
And as Paul Davies stated, “DNA is not a blueprint for an organism,,,, Rather, DNA is a (mostly) passive repository for transcription of stored data into RNA,”
And as Antony Jose stated, “DNA cannot be seen as the ‘blueprint’ for life,”,,, “It is at best an overlapping and potentially scrambled list of ingredients that is used differently by different cells at different times.”,,,
And it is fairly easy to empirically prove that biological form cannot be reduced to DNA, (nor to any other material particulars that Darwinists may try to invoke).
In the following experiment, a bacterium, ‘after shattering of its 3.2 Mb genome into 20–30 kb pieces,,, miraculously reassembles its genome such that only 3 hr later fully reconstituted nonrearranged chromosomes are present, and the cells carry on, alive as normal.,,,’
This ‘miraculous’ ability is not just some freak of nature, but is now shown to be an inherent, and common, feature of e-coli.
As well, in the following study, “researchers implanted human embryonic neuronal cells into a mouse embryo”.,,, Yet, “the human neurons, despite having human DNA, had a mouse morphology”. If DNA really ruled morphology, (as Darwinists have presupposed), we would have expected a human morphology.
Along that same line is this tidbit from a UD blogger
To further drive to point home that the basic form of any particular organism is not reducible to the material particulars of an organism, in the following article it is noted that, Richard Lewontin once described how you can excise the developing limb bud from an amphibian embryo, shake the cells loose from each other, allow them to reaggregate into a random lump, and then replace the lump in the embryo. A normal leg develops. Somehow the form of the limb as a whole is the ruling factor, redefining the parts according to the larger pattern.
As experiments like these have made clear, ‘biological form’ simply cannot be reduced to DNA, nor to any other material particulars that Darwinists may try to invoke.
And since material causes are ruled out as the cause of biological form then we are forced, by necessity, to appeal some ‘non-material’ cause in order to explain biological form.
As Brian Miller noted in the following article, “Thom concluded in his book Structural Stability and Morphogenesis that the process of development should be thought of as being controlled by an “algebraic structure outside space-time itself” (p. 119). Likewise, Robert Rosen argued that life can only be understood as a mathematical abstraction consisting of functional relationships, irreducible to mechanistic processes.”
And at about the 41:00 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Wells, using a branch of mathematics called category theory, demonstrates that, during embryological development, information must somehow be added to the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method.
Just how much ‘non-material’ information is coming into an embryo during development?
In the following video, it is noted that the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000.
Needless to say, that is a massive amount of information that is coming into a developing embryo via some ‘non-material’ method.
And I, as a Christian, just so happen to have beyond space-time cause that I can appeal to so as to be able to give an adequate account for where this massive amount of ‘non-material’ information is coming from.
Moreover, it is a beyond space-time explanation for biological form that has been postulated for thousands of years.
Verse:
Here is a note that I should have included above, (in post 50), with Jonathan Wells’ reference to saturation mutagenesis studies, i.e. “the Law of Recurrent Variation”
Next Seversky tries to address the fact that ‘truly’ beneficial mutations are exceedingly rare to non-existent. (An thus falsifies Darwinian evolution because Darwinian evolution simply doesn’t have any truly beneficial mutations to work with in the first place)
I claimed,
Seversky responded thusly,
I am aware of the ‘current thinking’ and I am also aware that the ‘current thinking’ of Darwinists is falsified.
First, the widespread Darwinian belief that mutations can be perfectly neutral is an absurd belief.
As Dr. John Sanford explained,
Secondly, the Darwinian belief that “natural selection will tend to filter out the detrimental (mutations) leaving only the beneficial (mutations) to have any long-lasting effect,” is also now shown to be a false claim.
Specifically, Darwinists have claimed that “As the load of deleterious mutations grows over time, the pool of possible beneficial mutations also grows with it. This eventually leads to an equilibrium, preventing fitness decline beyond a certain point.,,,,”
Yet Darwinists have no basis for presupposing that.
As Dr. John Sanford stated in 2020, ’This argument is: 1) merely dismissive, 2) categorically wrong, and 3) without a rational or data-driven basis. Obviously, rapidly accumulating deleterious mutations do not lead to more and more beneficial mutations. Rather, the much more abundant deleterious mutations effectively overwhelm and negate the fitness effects of the extremely rare beneficial mutations.”
And Dr. John Sanford further stated, “We have done thousands of numerical simulations showing this. Even given the most generous parameter settings, the near-neutral bad mutations consistently accumulate about 1000 times faster than the beneficial mutations.”
Moreover, it is also interesting to note that virtually all, (if not all), of the mutations that Darwinists have classified as being beneficial are only beneficial in a very narrow sense of increasing reproduction and/or fitness, but, in reality, that these supposedly beneficial mutations gain their beneficial effect by breaking something at the molecular level, (i.e. by losing information).
In other words, Darwinists are being, (either purposely or ignorantly), deceptive in their claims about the true nature of the supposedly beneficial mutations.
As Dr. Michael Behe notes, it is now found that “even the great majority of helpful mutations degrade the genome to a greater or lesser extent.,,”
And as Dr. Spetner noted, “there is no example of a random mutation that adds heritable information to the genome,”
And as if all that was not bad enough for Darwinists, it is now found that supposedly ‘beneficial mutations’ will, when combined together, be antagonistic towards each other, and not be beneficial towards each other.
Needless to say, this is far short of the type of evidence that Darwinists need just to prove that their theory is scientifically feasible, (not to prove that their theory is true mind you, but just to prove that their theory is scientifically feasible!).
As Lee Spetner quipped elsewhere, “Whoever thinks macroevolution can be made by mutations that lose information is like the merchant who lost a little money on every sale but thought he could make it up on volume.”
Of supplemental note, it is also interesting to note that Dr. John Sanford recently demonstrated that ‘current thinking’ in Darwinian theory, (as to the realistic rate of beneficial to detrimental mutations), is severely outdated in regards to the experimental evidence that we now have in hand..
Next, Seversky tries to address the falsification of Darwin’s theory by the fossil record,
I claimed,
Seversky responded thusly,
The ‘artefact hypothesis’, as it is termed, is falsified by a couple of different lines of evidence.
First , Darwinists hypothesized that we can’t discover the numerous transitional fossils that are hypothesized to have existed prior to the Cambrian Explosion because the conditions simply were not right for fossilization. Yet that claim is falsified by the fact that we find fossilized sponge embryos prior to the Cambrian Explosion. And obviously, if conditions were right for the fossilization of something as delicate as a sponge embryo, then they were as right for the fossilization of anything else that would have existed alongside sponges.
As Jonathan Wells explained, “The truth is that (finding) “exceptionally preserved microbes” from the late Precambrian actually deepen Darwin’s dilemma, because they suggest that if there had been ancestors to the Cambrian phyla they would have been preserved.”
While we are on the Cambrian Explosion, and to make the dilemma of the Cambrian Explosion even more antagonistic for Darwinists, the available time window for the Cambrian explosion to occur has now been dramatically shortened from approximately 13 million years to only 410 thousand years!
As paleontologist Günter Bechly quipped, “The Cambrian Explosion Has Just Gone Nuclear”,,
Another line of evidence that falsifies the Darwinian claim that the fossil record conflicts with Darwinian predictions because it is ‘an artifact of undersampling of an incomplete fossil record’ is what is termed the collectors curve.
With the ‘collector’s curve’, we find that the more fossils that we collect, the more they fall into preexisting groups, and the less they ‘surprise’ us. Thus strongly suggesting that we have a fairly complete picture of the fossil record, since the discovery of outliers are few and far between
As the following study, via the ‘collector’s curve’ found, “we find that completeness (of the fossil record) is rather high for many animal groups.”
In short, the longer we study the fossil record, and the more fossils that we discover, the worse the problem Darwinists have with the fossil record becomes.
As Luther D. Sunderland explained, “The gaps between major groups of organisms have been growing even wider and more undeniable. They can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection of the fossil record.”
Moreover, as if all that was not bad enough for Darwinists, the fossil record itself also turns out to be ‘upside down’ from what Darwin predicted,
Charles Darwin predicted that minor differences (diversity) between species would gradually appear first and then the differences would grow larger (disparity) between species as time went on. i.e. universal common descent as depicted in Darwin’s tree of life. What Darwin predicted should be familiar to everyone and is easily represented in the following graph.,,,
But that ‘tree pattern’ that Charles Darwin predicted is not what is found in the fossil record. The fossil record reveals that disparity (the greatest differences) precedes diversity (the smaller differences), which is the exact opposite pattern for what Darwin’s theory predicted.
Moreover, this top down pattern in the fossil record, which is the complete opposite pattern as Darwin himself predicted for the fossil record, is not only found in the Cambrian Explosion, but this ‘top down’, disparity preceding diversity, pattern is found throughout the fossil record subsequent to the Cambrian explosion as well.
Needless to say, this is NOT what Darwin predicted.
And finally, Seversky also linked to a TalkOrigins” website claiming that it provided undeniable proof of many transitional fossils. The website lists a few dozen examples of supposed transitional fossils.
But as I stated in my claim, “Of the few dozen or so fossils claimed as transitional, not one is uncontested as a true example of transition between major animal forms out of millions of collected fossils.”
For instance, here is a website that challenges every single example on Seversky’s list from the “TalkOrigins” website,,,
Simply put, and as Colin Patterson himself honestly admitted, “I will lay it on the line—there is not one such (transitional) fossil for which one could make a watertight argument.”
And still today, there simply is no transitional fossil on which Darwinists can make a watertight argument. All the supposed transitional fossils that Darwinists put forth, (at least all the ones that they have presented to me personally), fall apart upon scrutiny.
In short, I have found all purported examples of transitional fossils to be, merely, figments of overactive Darwinian imaginations.
Seversky wrote:
So, the full title of Darwin’s book is “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” or just “On the Origin of the Species” for short.
You’re of course correct that Darwin knew nothing about DNA. He proposed that all new species formed by small increments. In his discussion of the “Tree of Life,” Darwin wrote
Thus, he believed ALL living organisms (even “brand new” species) resulted from Nature as the ultimate breeder, and certainly believed that chihuahuas could be bred from chipmunks given enough time.
This is essentially what Darwinists such as yourself still believe today, although they prefer not to put it into those terms. They prefer to refer to mutations, genetic drift, and natural selection over vast amounts of time to accomplish this miracle. The absence of fossil evidence is convenient–a sort of “Darwin of the gaps,” as he admitted.
In Darwinism, EVERY organism on earth is potentially a parent species of butterflies, giraffes, redwood trees, and the salt marsh harvest mouse. All you need is time and gullibility.
-Q
seversky:
And yet those very same biologists can’t formulate a scientific theory of evolution.
DNA doesn’t determine biological form. The only thing DNA determines is if the determined biological form will develop properly or not. There aren’t any known naturalistic processes capable of producing the diversity of life starting from some unknown populations of prokaryotes.
The whole problem is that evos have drank the DNA kool-aid. They are all in on DNA being the do-all, magical molecule. Too bad science has refuted that nonsense.
Darwin failed. And everyone since Darwin has suffered the same fate. They don’t have any idea what produced the diversity of life. They don’t know of any mechanism capable of such a feat. They cling to DNA because they have nothing else. Yet DNA can’t do what they need.
How pathetic is it that they continue with that nonsense?
Then Seversky tries to address the falsification of Darwin’s theory from Axe’s work on the rarity of protein folds.
I claimed,
And Seversky responded thusly,
Axe’s argument, which he made in this following video,
Yet Axe’s argument, directly contrary to what Seversky implied, was not an argument that was based on incredulity and ignorance, but was instead an argument based on experimental work and knowledge. i.e. it was based on what we know, not on what we don’t know.
Moreover Dr. Axe’s experimental work on the rarity of protein folds is not an outlier, but Dr. Axe’s work falls in line with all other studies trying to ascertain the rarity of functional proteins.
The following article studying the rarity of quantum criticality in proteins, (and other biomolecules), is particularly interesting to look at.
In the following 2015 paper entitled, “Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules” it was found that “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” and the researchers further commented that “finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,,
To drive this point home, this follow up 2018 article stated that “There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,,”
Thus, although Seversky claimed that Dr. Axe was being incredulous, the fact of the matter is that the shoe is squarely on the other foot. It is the Darwinist himself who is being incredulous towards what the experimental evidence itself is telling us about the rarity of functional proteins. i.e. Darwinists simply refuse to believe that proteins are as rare as all the experimental, (and mathematical), work has thus far indicated.
Seversky, if he is to remain ‘scientific’ in his arguments, is free to try to experimentally prove this body of experimental work on the rarity of proteins wrong, but he is not free to be completely incredulous of this body of experimental work.
Verse:
Then Seversky tries to address Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig’s falsification of Charles Darwin’s claim that “any part of the structure of any one species (could not have) been formed for the exclusive good of another species,”
I claimed,
Seversky responded thusly,
Perhaps Seversky, besides being incredulous, even gullible, now also has a reading comprehension issue?
I specifically stated that, as Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig pointed out, “in thousands of plant species often entirely new organs have been formed for the exclusive good of more than 132,930 other species, these ‘ugly facts’ have annihilated Darwin’s theory as well as modern versions of it.”
Did Seversky really not understand that sentence?
Perhaps Seversky just believes that Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig is being overly hyperbolic in his claim?
Hardly, Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig worked for 25 years as a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne, Germany, and from 1992 to 2008 Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig was group leader and senior scientist at that prestigious institute.
Thus, Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig is certainly not given to overly hyperbolic claims, especially when it comes to scientific claims about plants.
And in his paper Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig specifically claimed, (via the science), that, “galls,,, are formed at the exclusive expense of the plant host, i. e. without any useful return by the animals (“fremddienliche Zweckmäßigkeit” (Erich Becher) – not easy to translate, but something like ‘extrinsic usefulness’, ‘disinterested suitability’, ‘well-directed extraneous utility’, closely akin to altruism; cf. p. 16).”
And as Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig further pointed out, this meets the falsification criteria that was laid out by Charles Darin himself for his theory, i.e. “… If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection.”
Thus whether Seversky was being stubbornly incredulous, or whether he has a reading comprehension issue, or whether he believes Dr. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig was being overly hyperbolic, the scientific fact remains that Darwin’s claim that “any part of the structure of any one species (could not have) been formed for the exclusive good of another species” has been precisely falsified.
Moreover, if we were to expand our scope and include altrustic behavior in general, (i.e. self sacrificial behavior, i.e. behavior which is completely antithetical to the central ‘survival of the fittest’ presupposition of Darwin’s theory), this particular altruistic, i.e. ‘for the good of others’, falsification of Darwin’s theory becomes much more widespread and acute for Darwin’s theory. Altruistic, ‘for the good of others’, behavior exist literally everywhere we look in the biological kingdom, from bacterial cells, to multicellular organisms. Altruistic behavior is ubiquitous in biology!
Next Seversky tries to address the falsification of Darwin’s theory from the existence of consciousness.
I claimed,
Seversky responded thusly,
The existence of consciousness, and/or ‘our conscious selves’, is hardly a ‘red herring’. Seversky himself claimed that “Darwin’s theory was about how living things could have varied and diversified over time through natural processes,”
And, supposedly, according to Darwin’s theory, consciousness came into being at some point in the history of life as living things “varied and diversified over time through natural processes”.
Yet, consciousness itself simply refuses to ever be reduced to any reductive materialistic explanation of Darwinian evolution.
Consciousness is profoundly immaterial in its foundational nature. Thus, as far as materialistic explanations go, and as the old joke goes, ‘You can’t get there for here”.
Dr. Michael Egnor, who is a neurosurgeon as well as professor of neurosurgery at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, states six properties of immaterial mind that are irreconcilable to the Darwinian view that the mind is just the material brain. Those six properties are, “Intentionality,,, Qualia,,, Persistence of Self-Identity,,, Restricted Access,,, Incorrigibility,,, Free Will,,,”
You can read more in-depth definitions of each of the six properties of immaterial mind in Dr. Egnor’s article.
Likewise, J. Warner Wallace has a very similar list, (but not an exact match to Dr. Egnor’s list), of six properties of immaterial mind that are irreconcilable with reductive materialism.
The most famous of these defining properties of the immaterial mind, (properties that are irreducible to the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwin’s theory), is ‘qualia’.
David Chalmers is fairly well known for clearly explaining the ‘hard problem of consciousness’, i.e. qualia, in an easy to understand manner for the general public.
Materialists simply do not have any realistic clue how anything material could ever possibly generate the inner subjective consciousness experience of qualia. Here are a few quotes that make this point clear.
As Professor of Psychology David Barash honestly admitted in the following article, (an article which happens to be entitled “the hardest problem in science?”), “But the hard problem of consciousness is so hard that I can’t even imagine what kind of empirical findings would satisfactorily solve it. In fact, I don’t even know what kind of discovery would get us to first base, not to mention a home run.”
Moreover, the Christian Theist does not have to rely solely on the Atheist’s complete lack of empirical evidence to support his views, but the Christian Theist can also appeal to positive scientific evidence from quantum mechanics to support his belief that ‘Consciousness precedes material reality’ and that consciousness is, therefore, forever irreducible to the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinists.
First off, quantum mechanics has not been kind to the reductive materialistic presupposition of Darwinists in the least.
Secondly, Quantum Mechanics has now falsified realism itself, which is the belief that a material reality can exist apart from our conscious observation of it.
Specifically, the following violation of Leggett’s inequality stressed the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it.
The Mind First and/or Theistic implications of quantum experiments such as the preceding are fairly obvious. As Professor Scott Aaronson of MIT once quipped, “Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists,,, But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!”
In fact, because of such experiments as the preceding, the argument for God from consciousness can now be framed as such,
And here are eight intersecting lines of experimental evidence from quantum mechanics that shows that consciousness must precede material reality
(Double Slit experiment,
Wigner’s Quantum Symmetries,
Wigner’s friend experiment,
Wheeler’s Delayed Choice,
Leggett’s Inequalities,
Quantum Zeno effect,
Advances in Quantum Information theory,
Closing of the Free Will loophole.)
Thus the Christian Theist, unlike the Darwinian Materialist, can appeal directly to many lines of scientific evidence from quantum mechanics to support his belief that Consciousness must precede material reality. Whereas materialists, such as Seversky are left holding the bag with their vacuous ‘materialism of the gaps’ excuses, i.e. Seversky himself stated, “No, we do not have a materialistic explanation for consciousness – yet – but our ignorance does not mean that there isn’t one.”
Of supplemental note: There is now found to be a VERY strong correlation between defining attributes of the immaterial mind, (i.e. free will, and ‘the experience of the now’), and many of the ‘spooky’ actions that we are witnessing in quantum mechanics.
Verse:
Next Seversky tries to address the falsification of Darwin’s theory by mathematics.
I claimed,
Seversky, shortly and sweetly, responds thusly,
It is understandable why Seversky would try to distance Darwin’s theory from the ‘ontology of mathematics or Platonic realms’. (i.e. Mathematics is profoundly immaterial in its foundational nature, and Darwinian evolution is inextricably wedded to reductive materialism).
But, it is also interesting to note that Seversky did not even try to dispute the fact that the mathematics of probability, and the mathematics of population genetics itself, have both falsified Darwinian evolution.
Which is just as well, for that line of mathematical evidence does not end well for him either.
Moreover, it is interesting that Seversky denied that Darwinian evolution says anything “at all about the ontology of mathematics or Platonic realms.”
Being a dogmatic Darwinist, Seversky should have said that Darwinists hold mathematics to be an abstract invention of man that does not have an objectively real existence. Many prominent Atheistic Naturalists have no problem whatsoever claiming that mathematics is not objectively real but is merely an invention of man. (It is a patently wrong claim, but that is what they claim)
But anyways, despite Seversky’s denial, and to move on,,,
As stated previously, Darwinian evolution is inextricably wedded to reductive materialism, which holds that life, consciousness, and all our thoughts, are reducible to purely materialistic explanations.
Yet, as also stated previously, mathematics is profoundly immaterial in its foundational nature.
As Dr. Michael Egnor put it, “Mathematics is entirely about concepts, which have no precise instantiation in nature,,,”
Which is to say that mathematics, in its foundational nature, is immaterial, i.e. transcendent of space, time, matter and energy.
This immaterial realm of mathematics has traditionally been referred to as the ‘Platonic Realm’ of mathematics:
The existence of this immaterial, beyond space and time, realm of mathematics creates an insurmountable difficultly for Darwinian materialists who, via their theory, are forced to try to reduce everything to purely materialistic explanations.
To even do science in the first place, you have to be able to ‘do mathematics’. Yet the materialistic explanations of Darwinian evolution are forever separated from being able to give us an adequate account of our mathematical intuition. As the old joke goes, “You can’t get there from here.”
And hey, you don’t have to take my word for it. In 2014, a group of prominent Darwinists, who are leading experts in this area of research, authored a paper in which they honestly admitted that they have, “essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved.”
Please note that the recently departed Richard C. Lewontin, (July 4, 2021), is also on that list of leading experts.
Although that finding by leading Darwinists created quite a shock when it came out in 2014, in reality, and given the profoundly immaterial nature of mathematics, that finding should have surprised no one!
Again, “You can’t get there from here.”
As to the materialistic claim that mathematics is merely an abstract invention of man that does not have an objectively real existence, well, that specific atheistic claim is easily disproven.
As George Ellis pointed out, non-material ‘logical’ entities are shown to be objectively real in that they bring about ‘real’ effects in the physical world.
This simply would not be possible If mathematics, (and logic), were merely abstract inventions of man that had no ‘real’ and objective existence:
As George Ellis himself states, “Definition 2: Existence
If Y is a physical entity made up of ordinary matter, and X is some kind of entity that has a demonstrable causal effect on Y as per Definition 1, then we must acknowledge that X also exists (even if it is not made up of such matter).
This is clearly a sensible and testable criterion; in the example above, it leads to the conclusion that both the data and the relevant software exist. If we do not adopt this definition, we will have instances of uncaused changes in the world; I presume we wish to avoid that situation.,,, 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.”
Indeed, our most stunning, almost ‘miraculous’, modern technological innovations simply would not even be possible if it were not for the ability of ‘immaterial’ mathematics to bring about ‘real’ effects in the material/physical world. (i.e. Mathematics, though being immaterial, must be real is some objectively meaningful sense, for our ‘miraculous’ modern inventions to even be possible!)
Moreover, the fact that man himself has access to, (and can even implement), this transcendent, beyond space and time, immaterial world of mathematics, to bring about ‘real’ effects’ in the material world, offers compelling evidence, in and of itself, that man in not a purely material being, as Darwinists dogmatically hold, but that man must, of necessity, also possess a transcendent, beyond space and time, immaterial mind and/or soul.
We simply could never discover, or use, these ‘eternal’ truths about mathematics unless we ourselves first possessed a transcendent, and ‘eternal’, component to our being,, i.e. a immaterial soul and/or mind that is not reducible to the material constituents of our material bodies, (as Darwinists presuppose).
As Charles Darwin’s contemporary, Alfred Russel Wallace himself stated, “Nothing in evolution can account for the soul of man. The difference between man and the other animals is unbridgeable. Mathematics is alone sufficient to prove in man the possession of a faculty unexistent in other creatures. Then you have music and the artistic faculty. No, the soul was a separate creation.”
And again, Darwinists simply have no clue why we should have access to this immaterial realm of mathematics. As Dr. Michael Egnor pointed out, because of our unique ability to think abstractly among all creature on earth, “We are more different from apes than apes are from viruses. Our difference is a metaphysical chasm.”
Moreover, since our own immaterial minds came into being and are therefore contingent, and are not eternally existent, and yet we can discover, and think about, eternal mathematical truths with our immaterial minds, then it necessarily follows that “there must exist an eternal mind in which these eternal (mathematical) truths reside.”
And please note that this argument for our immaterial minds, and for God, from the existence of mathematics is perfectly consistent with what we now know to be true about mathematics from Godel’s incompleteness theorem. Namely, that mathematics itself has a contingent existence and does not have a necessary existence,
Thus, mathematics itself offers us compelling proof that we ourselves must possess immaterial minds and/or souls, and also offers us compelling proof that God must exist.
And despite to how badly atheists may want God, (and our eternal souls), to not exist (for whatever severely misguided reason), the fact the matter is that, since we are all destined to die here on this earth, the undeniable fact that we must have eternal minds/souls in order to even ‘do mathematics’ in the first place, is extremely good news for us the hear personally,,, I know that I myself am personally very happy to know that it is undeniably true, that I have a immaterial mind/soul, and that therefore death does not have the final say in regards to my own life, and/or in regards to the lives of my loved ones, and that I, and my loved ones, (i.e. our eternal souls and minds), will continue to live, even though our material, temporal, bodies may perish,,
Verses:
Next Seversky tries to address the falsification of Darwin’s theory by the fact that, if Darwin’s theory were true, then all of our observations of reality would be illusory, yet reliable observation is a necessary cornerstone of the scientific method. Therefore, via its undermining of the scientific method itself, Darwin’s theory disqualifies itself as a being a real ‘science’. (i.e. it is a scientific “Own Goal”)
I claimed,
Seversky responds thusly
Seversky doesn’t seem to grasp just how bad his predicament actually is.
Hoffman is claiming, via population genetics, that the ‘map’ has no correspondence whatsoever with the real world. i.e. ALL of our perceptions are illusory!
Specifically Hoffman states, “perception of reality goes extinct,,,”,,, “the bottom line is, evolution does not favor veridical, or accurate perceptions “,, and,, “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.”,,,
No matter how much Seversky may try to play this off with his hand waving allusion to ‘maps’, this finding is simply completely devastating to the claim that Darwinian evolution is based on the scientific method.
Simply put, since Darwinian evolution denies ‘reliable observation’, which is a necessary cornerstone of the scientific method itself, (if fact, it is the very first step of the scientific method)
,,, then that, of necessity, precludes Darwinian evolution from ever being based upon the scientific method.
Moreover, completely contrary to what Hoffman found for Darwin’s theory, it turns out that accurate perception, i.e. conscious observation, far from being unreliable and illusory, is experimentally found to be far more integral to reality, i.e. far more reliable of reality, than the mathematics of population genetics predicted. In the following experiment, it was found that reality doesn’t exist without an observer.
Apparently empirical science itself could care less if atheists are forced to believe, because of the mathematics of population genetics, that ALL of their observations of reality are illusory!
Of supplemental note: It is also very interesting to note that Hoffman’s work meshes extremely well with Alvin Plantings previous work that found that, if Darwinian evolution we true, we would not have reliable cognitive faculties. (which, again, undermines the claim that Darwinian evolution can be based on the scientific method)
Perhaps Seversky may personally think that it is not that big of a deal that, if his Darwinian worldview were actually true, ALL of our perceptions would be illusory, and that we could not trust our ability to reason properly.
He could not be more wrong. It IS a VERY big deal, as it prevents his worldview from ever being based on the scientific method in the first place.
This is NOT a minor problem for him, (no matter how much he tries to ignore it).
Bornagain77,
I suspect that Seversky fled the thread in terror when he encountered your reference to “fremddienliche Zweckmäßigkeit,” if not before. As I said
I restate my challenge to him:
Can a chihuahua be selectively bred from a chipmunk, given enough time and mutations?
Seversky? Hello?
-Q
Next Seversky tries to address the falsification of Darwin’s theory from the fact that immaterial information is now shown to be its own distinctive physical entity that is not ’emergent’ from a material, i.e. matter/energy, basis as is presupposed in Darwin’s theory.
I claimed,
Seversky responds thusly,
I’m am including, via ‘quantum information theory’, all definitions of classical information that have been put forth. (i.e. Shannon Information, Functional Information (Szostak), CSI, (Dembski), etc…),
Specifically, in quantum information theory, ‘classical’ sequential information, (such as what is encoded on a computer program and DNA, and which lies at the basis of Dembski’s definition of Complex Specified Information (CSI),), is held to be a subset of quantum information.
On the following site entitled “Quantum Information Science”, (a site where Charles Bennett, of quantum teleportation and reversible computation fame, himself is on the steering committee),,,,
On the preceding site, (as their very first illustration), they have this following illustration which shows classical information, (i.e. all definitions of classical information), to be a subset of quantum information
To clearly get their point across, below that illustration they have this caption,
To establish the fact that the classical information encoded on a computer is actually a subset of quantum information, in the following video entitled “Information is Quantum” Charles Bennet states, “A classical communications channel is a quantum communication channel with an eavesdropper (maybe only the environment)… A classical computer is a quantum computer handicapped by having eavesdroppers on all its wires.”
The fact that the classical information that is encoded along the spine of DNA is itself a subset Quantum information is a bit more easier to establish than it was/is for computers.
In the following video, at the 22:20 minute mark, Dr Rieper shows why the high temperatures of biological systems do not prevent DNA from having quantum entanglement and then at 24:00 minute mark Dr Rieper goes on to remark that practically the whole DNA molecule can be viewed as quantum information with classical information embedded within it.
It is also interesting to note that Darwinists have a history of denying the ‘independent’ physical reality of information in life. Right here on UD, just a few short years ago, I myself have debated Darwinists who have denied that life is even based on information, (as it obviously is and as ID advocates hold), but they have instead held, (unreasonably so I might add), that life was based on quote-unquote ‘complicated chemistry’. They even claimed that ‘information’, as it was applied to life, was ‘just a metaphor’ and that they could get along just as well without even using the word ‘information’.
Hubert P. Yockey himself, (who worked under Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project), had to defend against the unreasonable Darwinian claim that information, as it is applied to life, is ‘just a metaphor’
Likewise, in computer science, we find that Rolf Landauer himself, although he did not claim that information was ‘just a metaphor’, (like Darwinists unreasonably did), Landauer did claim that ‘information is physical’.
Which, in my honest opinion, is a misleading definition of information In which he actually meant that information is reducible to matter and energy (which is basically the same exact position that Darwinists hold, i.e. information, Darwinists believe, must somehow be ’emergent’ from a matter/energy basis,).
And Landauer specifically held information to be ‘physical’, (i.e. emergent from a matter-energy basis), because it always took energy to erase it from a computer. (i.e. Landauer’s principle). (And while I have issues with that line of reasoning from Landauer, I will leave that aside for the moment).
In fact Landauer went so far as to say that Roger Penrose’s contention that information has an existence independent of matter and energy was a quote unquote ‘quaint notion’.
Specifically, Roger Penrose holds that, “Those devices (computers) can yield only approximations to a structure (of information) that has a deep and “computer independent” existence of its own.”
Yet contrary to what Landauer and Darwinian materialists may believe, there is much evidence that now establishes the ‘physical’, i.e. computer independent, reality of immaterial information,,, i.e. information which is not dependent on matter and energy for its existence.
The easiest way to prove that information is not ‘physical’, i.e. is not reducible to matter and energy as Rolf Landauer held, is with quantum teleportation.
As the following teleportation experiment that was done with atoms found, “scientists have successfully teleported information between two separate atoms in unconnected enclosures a meter apart,,, information,,, is transferred from one place to another, but without traveling through any physical medium.”
And as the following experiment that was done with photons found, “the photons aren’t disappearing from one place and appearing in another. Instead, it’s the information that’s being teleported through quantum entanglement.,,,”
Thus, Landauer’s belief that information cannot have a ‘computer independent’ existence that is separate from matter and energy is empirically shown to be wrong!
Besides these fairly clear cut experiments in quantum teleportation that establish the ‘physical’ reality of information that is independent of information’s representation on a ‘physical’, i.e. matter energy, substrate, Advances in quantum information theory provide even further evidence that falsifies Landauer’s, (and the Darwinist’s), belief that ‘information is physical’, (i.e. ‘physical’ in the sense that they mean information cannot exist independently of matter-energy).
In establishing this fact, it is first important to note that there is a deep connection between entropy and information. In fact, “The equations of information theory and the second law are the same, suggesting that the idea of entropy is something fundamental…”
In fact, “Bertalanffy (1968) called the relation between irreversible thermodynamics and information theory one of the most fundamental unsolved problems in biology.”
Yet now this ‘most fundamental unsolved problem in biology’ appears to finding a successful resolution.
Specifically, in 1997 Christopher Jarzynski, (Professor at University of Maryland’s Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Department of Physics, and Institute for Physical Science and Technology) formulated an equation to define the amount of energy that could theoretically be converted from a unit of information. (In other words, the equations of information theory and the second law were successfully brought together by Jarzynski).
One of the very first experimental verifications of Jarzynski’s equation was the following experiment.
In the experiment, and based solely on knowledge of the particle’s position, “they coaxed a Brownian particle to travel upwards on a “spiral-staircase-like” potential energy created by an electric field solely on the basis of information on its location. As the particle traveled up the staircase it gained energy from moving to an area of higher potential, and the team was able to measure precisely how much energy had been converted from information.”
As Jarzynski himself stated about the preceding experiment, “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,”
Likewise, in the following 2011 paper, “researchers ,,, show that when the bits (in a computer) to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer’s state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,, In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that (in quantum information theory) an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer.”
As well, the following 2017 article stated that: James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,, quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,, Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
Again to repeat that last sentence, “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.,,,”
That statement, for anyone involved the Darwin vs. Intelligent Design debate, should send chills down the scientific spine. That statement is simply completely devastating to the materialistic claims of Darwinists who try to claim that immaterial information is not physically real, but is ‘just a metaphor’.
In short, immaterial information is now shown to have a ‘physical’ existence apart from matter and energy, and this immaterial information is also shown to have a ‘thermodynamic content’. i.e. Information which is the able raise a system out of thermodynamic equilibrium, via an ‘observer’ imparting ‘positional information’ into the system.
Just how far is life out of thermodynamic equilibrium?, And just how much information is required to be inputed into a ‘system of life’ by an ‘observer to explain why it is so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium?
Well, the information content that is found to be in a simple one cell bacterium, when working from the thermodynamic perspective, is found to be around 10 to the 12 bits,,,
,,, Which is the equivalent of about 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. ‘In comparison,,, the largest libraries in the world,, have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.”
Thus since Bacterial cells are about 10 times smaller than most plant and animal cells.
And since there are conservatively estimated to be around 30 trillion cells within the average human body,
Then that gives us a rough ballpark estimate of around 300 trillion times 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. Or about 300 trillion times the information content contained within the books of all the largest libraries in the world.
Needless to say, that is a massive amount of information that is needed to explain why life is so far out of thermodynamic equilibrium.
And as the following article states, the information to build a human infant, atom by atom, would take up the equivalent of enough thumb drives to fill the Titanic, multiplied by 2,000.
On top of all that, in the following video, Dr. Jonathan Wells, who specializes in embryology, using a branch of mathematics called category theory, demonstrates that during embryological development ‘positional information’ must somehow be coming into the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method, in order to explain the transdifferentiation of cells into their multiple different states during embryological development.
To back up Dr. Wells claim that information must be coming into a developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method, I appeal to the fact that quantum information is now found to be ubiquitous within life. I’ve already referenced “Quantum DNA” in this post. But besides DNA, quantum effects are now found to be at play in ‘a wide range of important biomolecules’.
In the following 2015 paper entitled, “Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules” it was found that “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” and the researchers further commented that “finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,,
To drive this point home, this follow up article (2018) stated that “There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,,”
Quantum Critical Proteins – Stuart Lindsay – Professor of Physics and Chemistry at Arizona State University – 2018
Excerpt: The difficulty with this proposal lies in its improbability. Only an infinitesimal density of random states exists near the critical point.,,
Gábor Vattay et al. recently examined a number of proteins and conducting and insulating polymers.14 The distribution for the insulators and conductors were as expected, but the functional proteins all fell on the quantum-critical distribution. Such a result cannot be a consequence of chance.,,,
WHAT OF quantum criticality? Vattay et al. carried out electronic structure calculations for the very large protein used in our work. They found that the distribution of energy-level spacings fell on exactly the quantum-critical distribution, implying that this protein is also quantum critical. There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,,
http://inference-review.com/ar.....l-proteins
Gábor Vattay et al., “Quantum Criticality at the Origin of Life,” Journal of Physics: Conference Series 626 (2015);
Gábor Vattay, Stuart Kauffman, and Samuli Niiranen, “Quantum Biology on the Edge of Quantum Chaos,” PLOS One 9, no. 3 (2014)
What is so devastating to the materialistic presuppositions of Darwinian evolution, with the finding pervasive quantum coherence and/or quantum entanglement, (and/or quantum information), within “a wide range of important biomolecules’, is that quantum coherence and/or quantum entanglement is a ‘spooky’ non-local, beyond space and time, effect that requires a beyond space and time cause in order to explain its existence.
As the following paper entitled “Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory” clearly stated the situation with quantum non-locality, “Our result gives weight to the idea that quantum correlations somehow arise from outside spacetime, in the sense that no story in space and time can describe them,”
It is also important to realize that quantum information, unlike classical information, is physically conserved. As the following article states, “In the classical world, information can be copied and deleted at will. In the quantum world, however, the conservation of quantum information means that information cannot be created nor destroyed.”
The implication of finding ‘non-local’, (beyond space and time), and ‘conserved’, (cannot be created nor destroyed), quantum information in molecular biology on such a massive scale, in every important biomolecule in our bodies, is fairly, and pleasantly, obvious.
That pleasant implication, of course, being the fact that we now have very strong empirical evidence suggesting that we do indeed have an eternal soul that is capable of living beyond the death of our material bodies. As Stuart Hameroff states in the following article, “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.”
So again, these recent experimental findings that prove that quantum information is ubiquitous within molecular biology are of no small importance, in so far as falsifying the materialistic claims of Darwinists, and even offering empirical evidence for a immaterial ‘soul’ that can, very possibly, live beyond the death of our material bodies,
Needless to say, this is VERY good news.
Verses:
Next Seversky tries to address the falsification of Darwin’s theory from the fact that Darwin’s theory cannot ground the abstract, and immaterial, property of truth. i.e. if Darwin’s theory cannot ground the concept of ‘truth’, then it necessarily follows that Darwin’s theory cannot be held as a true concept.
I claimed,
Seversky responded thusly,
Contrary to Seversky’s furious hand-waving exercise, trying to distance science from the search for ‘the truth’, science deals very much in the search for ‘the truth’. The decades long search for the quote-unquote ‘theory of everything’ proves that point in an over the top fashion.
But despite Seversky’s disingenuous attempt to distance science from the search for ‘the truth’, my critique of Darwin’s theory, in regards to the existence of truth, is more fundamental and specific to the irresolvable problem that the existence of ‘truth’ presents to Darwin’s theory in particular.
Specifically, Darwinian evolution is based on the philosophy of reductive materialism. A philosophy which holds that only matter-energy, space-time, are real and that everything in the universe can be explained by reducing them down to their most basic scientific components, i.e., atoms, molecules, photons, etc.. etc..
Yet ‘truth’ itself is profoundly immaterial in its foundational essence and cannot possibly be reduced to atoms, molecules, photons, etc.. etc..
As UD blogger John_a_designer observed,
“Truth” is clearly an abstract property, and/or definition, of the immaterial mind that cannot possibly be reduced to any possible materialistic explanations. i.e. How much does the concept of ‘truth’ weigh? Can you put the concept of ‘truth’ in a test tube? Does the concept of ‘truth’ give off an electromagnetic spectrum? If so, what are its primary colors? Does the concept of ‘truth’ weigh more in English or in Chinese? How long is the concept of ‘truth’ in millimeters? How fast does the concept of ‘truth’ go? Is the concept of ‘truth’ faster or slower than the speed of light? Is the concept of ‘truth’ positively or negatively charged? Or etc.. etc.. ?..
That entire line of questioning is simply nonsensical! Clearly truth is not a material object that we can ever hope to subject to physical measurements. Clearly ‘truth’ is a property that must be ascertained, solely and exclusively, by an immaterial mind !
The entire concept of “Truth” simply can never be grounded within the reductive materialistic framework of Darwinian evolution. And as such, that, of logical necessity, precludes Darwinian evolution from being a ‘true’ worldview. As the old joke goes, “You can’t get there from here”.
Of related note, since our immaterial minds can discover ‘eternal truths’ about being, and yet our own immaterial minds came into being and are, therefore, not eternally existent, then it necessary follows that there must exist an eternal mind in which these eternal truths reside. i.e. for ‘eternal truth’ to exist, God must necessarily exist!
And please note that the preceding argument from the existence of eternal truth meshes extremely well with the fact that mathematics itself, via Godel, is now shown to be ‘incomplete’, i.e. the ‘eternal truths’ of mathematics are now shown to have a contingent existences, not a necessary existence.
Af supplemental note:
Verse:
Next Seversky tries to address the falsification of Darwin’s theory from the fact that it is impossible for Evolutionary Biologists to do their research without constantly, and illegitimately, invoking words that directly imply teleology, (i.e. goal directed purpose). In other words, it is impossible for Darwinists to do biological research without using words that directly imply Intelligent Design.
I claimed,
Seversky responded thusly,
There are a few ‘small’ glitches in Seversky’s belief that the ‘problem’ of Darwinists inadvertently using teleological language is due to humans “having evolved languages originally to explain and describe the activities of purposive agents like human beings and other animals.”
“Small” glitch number one. If Darwinian evolution were actually true, then there can be no “purposive agents like human beings”,,, i.e. if Darwinian evolution were actually true, you are nothing but a ‘meat robot’, a ‘neuronal illusion’, suffering from the illusion that you have the free will that is necessary to direct your life in a meaningful and purposeful way. There simply is no such thing as a ‘purposive agent’ in Darwinian evolution. ‘Agent’ is a fiction. Agent causality is simply denied altogether in Darwinian thought.
Besides ‘purposive agents’ being a fiction in the Darwinian worldview, the second ‘small’ glitch in Seversky’s belief that the ‘problem’ of Darwinists illegitimately using teleological language is due to humans “having evolved languages originally to explain and describe the activities of purposive agents like human beings and other animals”, is that Darwinists have no evidence whatsoever that humans evolved languages gradually.
In 2014, a group of leading “Darwinian’ experts in this area of language research, (a veritable who’s who list of leading Darwinists), authored a paper in which they honestly admitted that they have “essentially no explanation of how and why our linguistic computations and representations evolved.,,,”
In 2019, Noam Chomsky, (Professor of Linguistics (Emeritus) at MIT), went on to say, “The human language faculty is a species-specific property, with no known group differences and little variation. There are no significant analogues or homologues to the human language faculty in other species.5,,,
How far back does language go? There is no evidence of significant symbolic activity before the appearance of anatomically modern humans 200 thousand years ago (kya).22,,,
There is no evidence that great apes, however sophisticated, have any of the crucial distinguishing features of language and ample evidence that they do not.48 Claims made in favor of their semantic powers, we might observe, are wrong.”
The reason why it is impossible for human language to ever evolve gradually is fairly easy to understand. As the following article states, “It is logically impossible even to reverse-engineer anything that would qualify as a proto-language. Every attempt to do so will turn out secretly to rely on the syntactic and semiotic functions of fully developed human language.”,,,
The following article offers a bit more detail on why it is logically impossible to evolve languages gradually.
What is more interesting still about the fact that humans have a unique ability to understand and create information, (and have even come to ‘master the planet’, not through brute strength, but through our unique ability to infuse immaterial information into material substrates), is the fact that, due to advances in science, both the universe and life itself, are now found to be ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis.
As Vlatko Vedral, Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford, succinctly summarized it, “The most fundamental definition of reality is not matter or energy, but information–and it is the processing of information that lies at the root of all physical, biological, economic, and social phenomena.”
It is hard to imagine a more convincing proof that we are ‘made in the image of God’, than finding that both the universe and life itself are ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis, and that we, of all the creatures on earth, uniquely possess an ability to understand and create information, and have come to ‘master the planet’, not because of brute strength, but precisely because of our unique ability to infuse immaterial information into material substrates.
Seversky, in his response, also pretended as if the illegitimate use of teleological language by Darwinists in their biological research will be resolved one day. I simply note that he is ‘not even wrong’ in his belief.
In fact, it turns out that it is the ‘language of evolution’ itself that can be readily jettisoned from, and/or replaced in, research papers without negatively effecting the scientific research of the papers. As the late Philip Skell pointed out, “In the peer-reviewed literature, the word “evolution” often occurs as a sort of coda to academic papers in experimental biology. Is the term integral or superfluous to the substance of these papers? To find out, I substituted for “evolution” some other word – “Buddhism,” “Aztec cosmology,” or even “creationism.” I found that the substitution never touched the paper’s core.”
Whereas, on the other hand, teleological language cannot be sacrificed from research papers without negatively effecting the research of the papers.
J.B.S. Haldane himself admitted as much, “Teleology is like a mistress to the biologist; he dare not be seen with her in public but cannot live without her.”
In the following article, Stephen Talbott challenges Darwinists to, “pose a single topic for biological research, doing so in language that avoids all implication of agency, cognition, and purposiveness(i.e. teleology)”
Denis Noble also notes that “it is virtually impossible to speak of living beings for any length of time without using teleological and normative language”.
This working biologist agrees with Talbott and Noble’s assessment and states, “in our work, we biologists use words that imply intentionality, functionality, strategy, and design in biology–we simply cannot avoid them.”
And as the following 2020 article pointed out, “teleological concepts cannot be abstracted away from biological explanations without loss of meaning and explanatory power, life is inherently teleological.”
Thus, directly contrary to what Seversky claimed, teleological, i.e. designed based, language is found to be absolutely essential for doing biological research, whereas ‘evolutionary language’ is found to be a superficial narrative gloss that can be readily stripped away from the research papers without negatively effecting the actual science in the papers.
In summary, the very words that Biologists themselves are forced to use when they are describing their biological research falsifies Darwinian evolution.
And finally, Seversky finishes his attempt to address all the falsifications of Darwin’s theory that I have listed with this summation of his position,
Actually, the falsifications of Darwin’s theory are all quite strong individually. En masse they are simply completely devastating.
Moreover, many of the falsifications are from Charles Darwin’s own mouth. And many of the falsifications go to the very core of Darwin’s theory and falsify Darwin’s theory at the very foundation of its naturalistic, theoretical, construct.
Your problem Seversky is that there is simply no criteria of falsification for Darwin’s theory that you are ever willing to personally accept that would ever falsify your ‘beloved’ theory in your eyes. i.e. No matter what the empirical evidence says that contradicts your theory, you will always ignore the empirical falsifications of your theory since the alternative, i.e. God, (as you have falsely conceived Him to be an evil tyrant in your imagination), is simply unacceptable in your book.
In that sense of refusing to listen to reason, and/or to ever accept any falsifying evidence against your naturalistic theory, you are, for all intents and purposes, far more religious, and far more dogmatic in your beliefs, than the most ardent of fundamentalist Christians.
Which is really quite ironic since you rant against fundamentalist Christians quite regularly here on UD.
Don’t take my word for it. The recently departed Richard Lewontin himself, (Harvard), honestly admitted that Darwinists are far more dogmatic, even religious, in their beliefs than they ought to be, (especially considering that Darwin’s theory is a supposedly ‘scientific’ theory that is suppose to be held only tentatively, not dogmatically),
Quote and Song
Seversky? Hello?
-Q
Seversky, I noticed that you did not address this particular falsification of Darwin’s theory that I had listed
Care to try to address it?
Of note:
Since Seversky left this particular falsification of Darwin’s theory unaddressed,,,,
Since Seversky left this particular falsification of Darwin’s theory unaddressed, I am forced to defend it minus any input that he may have provided as to why this should not be considered a major falsification of Darwin’s theory.
As Casey Luskin observed, “the main assumption underlying all phylogenetic trees is that biological similarity is the result of inheritance from a common ancestor.”,,, “Whenever evolutionary biologists are forced to appeal to convergent evolution, it reflects a breakdown in the main assumption, and an inability to fit the data to a treelike pattern. Examples of this abound in the literature,,,,”
And as Günter Bechly noted, “One of the most essential doctrines of Darwinian evolution, apart from universal common descent with modification, is the notion that complex similarities indicate homology and are ordered in a congruent nested pattern that facilitates the hierarchical classification of life.”,,, “,,,We can safely conclude: it is an epic myth, willingly perpetuated by evolutionary biologists, that the similarities between organisms mostly fall in a hierarchic pattern of nested groups and thus suggest common ancestry and indicate phylogenetic relationship. In reality this claim is contradicted by a flood of incongruences and reticulate patterns that shed doubt on fundamental paradigms of evolutionary biology like the notions of homology and common descent.”
And as Bernard d’Abrera bluntly put the situation for Darwinists, “For it to happen in a single species once through chance, is mathematically highly improbable. But when it occurs so often, in so many species, and we are expected to apply mathematical probability yet again, then either mathematics is a useless tool, or we are being criminally blind.,,,”
As Casey Luskin and Gunter Bechly pointed out, ‘convergent evolution’, far from being a (very) rare occurrence, (as would be expected under Darwinian presuppositions), is now found to be a widespread, even a common, occurrence. Here are a few examples of just how widespread this unexpected ‘convergent evolution’ pattern is.
As Gunter Bechly mentioned, convergent evolution directly challenges the ‘hierarchical classification of life” which is the main, core, assumption that lies behind the Darwinian belief in universal common descent.
And Winston Ewert’ used the breakdown in “the hierarchical classification of life” at the genetic level to provide a (very) powerful falsification of Darwin’s theory.
In the following article, Cornelius Hunter explains, for the lay audience, just how devastating Winston Ewert’s results actually are to Darwin’s theory,
Thus in conclusion, although Seversky did not address this particular falsification of Darwin’s theory that I had listed, hopefully, (with the defense that I have now provided for the claim that I had made), the general reader can now easily see for himself that this is indeed yet another powerful falsification of a primary, even a core, presupposition of Darwin’s theory.
Querius- seeing that DNA does not determine biological form, changes to DNA cannot produce different body plans. Evolutionism is still born and evos are too stupid to grasp that fact. They don’t have a mechanism capable of producing the diversity of life. So they ignore the facts and prattle on like a bunch of desperate losers.
Consider the amazing body plan of a sea star for example. Radial symmetry with an open, hydraulic circulatory system that uses sea water for its “blood. It has light sensitive eye spots at the end of each of its arms. It uses its sucker feet in ranks that work or rest to be able to keep up the pressure on its bivalve prey.
Where is its body plan and are its behaviors stored?
-Q
Oh, and Seversky still hasn’t responded to the question in #72:
-Q
Querius/77
I have no idea. My guess is that it’s highly improbable although, given enough time and mutations, not impossible.
So what’s this obsession with chipmunks and chihuahuas all about?
Seversky,
This “obsession” is fundamental to Darwinism.
There’s no difference between a species and its most recent common ancestor–they are both species that have adapted to their environment. But one of them evolved into the other by tiny steps due to slow changes in its original environment.
Since there’s a very broad spectrum of species in our biosphere, what prevents any given species from evolving to any other species given enough time and the necessary changes in environment?
Thus, is it inevitable that starting with chipmunks today, chihuahuas can be made to evolve from them under the right conditions? Or vice versa?
-Q
Bornagain77/74
As usual, both BA77 and Luskin both quietly ignore anything that does not fit in with their anti-evolutionary agenda.
It is not hard to envisage a successful species radiating outwards from their home environment into new and different ones, gradually adapting to these new homes to the point where they become separate species. In other words, we would see divergent evolution.
It is also not difficult to imagine different species at different times, when faced with similar environmental challenges, converging on similar solutions, such as the evolution of wings for flight or fins for moving through water.
I understand that paleontologist Simon Conway Morris, a Christian and theistic evolutionist, is a strong proponent of convergent evolution.
Querius/79
An ancestor species will differ from a descendent species by whatever criteria we use to define species. If there is no difference between ancestral and descendent forms then there is still only one species.
Separate descendent species might split off from the ancestral line which continues unchanged. One or more separate descendent species might split off and follow their separate evolutionary pathways while the ancestral line goes extinct for some reason.
Evolution can only work with the genetic resources available. If whatever is necessary to specify a chihuahua is not in a chipmunk’s genetic toolkit then the change will not happen. If the right mutations occur to give the chipmunk the missing pieces then it would become possible although it would still need the right environment to bring them into play. Although, if a lot of time has passed before that becomes possible, chances are that the chipmunks and chihuahuas in that distant future will not be the same as our present-day chipmunks and chihuahuas.
Like I said, it’s possible, given enough time and the right mutations but not very probable.
seversky is confused as mutations are not the driving force for the evolution of new body plans. It is impossible to get a chipmunk from a chihuahua via genetic modification. Just like you cannot walk to the Moon.
If evolution relies on differential accumulations of genetic changes then universal common descent is still born.
In response to the rather devastating falsification of Darwin’s theory, as laid out in post 74, by what is ironically called ‘convergent evolution’, Seversky offers this following defense,
Given the devastating empirical and mathematical falsifications of Darwin’s theory that have been elucidated on this very thread, (which Seversky has, for the most part, quietly ignored), the irony is literally dripping off of every word that Seversky wrote.
Seversky continues,
Well sure it is not hard imagine ‘unlimited plasticity’ of species to be feasible. When I was boy I could easily imagine myself jumping to the moon. But scientifically proving that it is possible to transmutate one species into another species is another thing entirely.
You simply have no evidence that it is possible,
Seversky goes on,,
And “It is also not difficult to imagine” is exactly your problem.
Darwinists are master story tellers who can imagine any ‘just-so story’ they need to imagine in order to explain any biological structure they wish to explain. What they always forget to do when they are constructing their imaginary ‘just-so-stories’ is to include any actual empirical evidence that what they are imagining to be true has any actual correspondence to reality.
Seversky finishes with this,
Yes, and it also true that Simon Conway Morris is at least honest enough to admit, unlike you, that ‘convergent evolution’ presents a major problem for Darwin’s theory. Specifically, he stated that the “fossil evidence demands a radical rewriting of evolution.,,,”
But alas for Morris, there will never be a ‘radical rewriting of evolution’. And as long as Morris doesn’t make too many waves, and points out that widespread ‘convergent evolution’ actually falsifies Darwinian evolution, Darwinists will be all too willing to tolerate him. (Just like they tolerated Stephen Jay Gould and ‘punctuated equilibrium). That’s the nature of the game. You are allowed to question certain aspects of Darwin’s theory, but you are never allowed to question the validity of Darwin’s theory itself. If you dare cross that line you will be, in all likelihood, “Expelled”.
Seversky,
What I meant was that ANY species can be an ancestor species according to Darwin’s theory, including chipmunks and chihuahuas. But to your point, no. Species found in the fossil record that are identical in phenotype with modern ones are routinely assigned a different species classification by Darwinists, because there musta been other genetic changes over millions of years.
Exactly. So, a chipmunk can be an ancestor of a chihuahua with enough time, small mutations, and certain changes in the environment. Likewise, the chihuahua can be the ancestor of a chipmunk as well.
That’s a good observation, but you’re in disagreement with Darwinism on this point. Any change can happen to a “genetic toolkit” according to Darwinism, even novel body plans by tiny increments.
Yes, exactly. And with exactly the right environment, it would not only be possible, but inevitable according to Darwinism.
Yes, of course. The changes occur over millions of years, tiny increments, and exactly the right environmental changes. But the chipmunk is likely to become extinct (as most species have) and under EXACTLY the right conditions only the fittest survivors will become chihuahuas in the future. Or vice versa, under different conditions.
No, given EXACTLY the right conditions, evolution of chipmunks into chihuahuas is not just possible but inevitable. In fact, if fossils of chipmunks are found, then Darwinists may well come to the conclusion that chipmunks are “living fossils” and that chihuahuas actually evolved from them. They will claim that the fact no one has actually found transitions between chipmunks and chihuahuas doesn’t mean that such transitional forms won’t be found in the future. But until then, Darwinists will remind us that relatively few species have been found in the fossil record.
As I’ve previously noted, Darwinism it extremely flexible—it can be used to explain anything, but it’s not been successful at actually predicting anything. This is why I think it’s a lousy theory.
When you made your point that something (information) needs to be in an organism’s genetic toolkit, it brings up the interesting point of genetic entropy. Information is easily lost from genomes and the lack of genetic diversity dooms many species. That observable fact is significant in that it indicates far more genetic diversity in the past than in the present, which is exactly what the fossil record also indicates.
-Q