Asks Wintery Knight: Can a person believe in both God and Darwinian evolution?

_{Denyse O'Leary

April 23, 2018

Intelligent Design, theistic evolution}

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Here is the PR / spin definition of theistic evolution:

Evolutionary creation is “the view that all life on earth came about by the God-ordained process of evolution with common descent. Evolution is a means by which God providentially achieves his purposes in creation.” This view, also called theistic evolution, has been around since the late nineteenth century, and BioLogos promotes it today in a variety of religious and educational settings.

And here is the no-spin definition of theistic evolution:

As Dr. Stephen Meyer explains it, the central issue dividing Bio-Logos writers from intelligent design theorists is BioLogos’s commitment to methodological naturalism (MN), which is not a scientific theory or empirical finding, but an arbitrary rule excluding non-material causation from the outset. “Unfortunately,” Meyer writes, methodological naturalism is a demanding doctrine. The rule does not say “try finding a materialistic cause but keep intelligent design in the mix of live possibilities, in light of what the evidence might show.” Rather, MN tells you that you simply must posit a material or physical cause, whatever the evidence.

What this means, according to BioLogos’s own epistemology, is that God is objectively undiscoverable and unknowable—a tenet that sits squarely at odds with Christian orthodoxy, which has for centuries held that God is clearly discernible in the natural world (e.g., Romans 1:20).

…

And for the record, I am an enthusiastic supporter of the standard Big Bang cosmology, and a 4.5 billion year Earth. My problem with evolution is not Bible-based, it’s science-based. If the science shows the need for intelligent causes, and I think it does, then I think that the naturalists need to adjust their assumptions and pre-suppositions to match the evidence. We have blog posts and computer science code, that’s evidence for a programmer. We have DNA and proteins and sudden origin of body plans, that’s evidence for a programmer, too. More.

We hope no one deludes himself that, in a contest of this type, orthodoxy is going to prevail.

File under: Church closers.

See also: Tyler O’Neil: Three views on origins supported by the text of the Bible

and

Faith and Science — the Confused View of the United Methodist Church

Comments

Allan Keith after being shown this evidence,,,
Darwinists have no clue where even a single neuron came from,,, “Complexity Brake” Defies Evolution – August 8, 2012 Excerpt: Consider a neuronal synapse — the presynaptic terminal has an estimated 1000 distinct proteins. Fully analyzing their possible interactions would take about 2000 years. Or consider the task of fully characterizing the visual cortex of the mouse — about 2 million neurons. Under the extreme assumption that the neurons in these systems can all interact with each other, analyzing the various combinations will take about 10 million years…, even though it is assumed that the underlying technology speeds up by an order of magnitude each year. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/08/complexity_brak062961.html ,,, Moreover, the human brain is constructed on a level of complexity that defies human comprehension The Human Brain Is ‘Beyond Belief’ by Jeffrey P. Tomkins, Ph.D. * – 2017 Excerpt: The human brain,, is an engineering marvel that evokes comments from researchers like “beyond anything they’d imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief”1 and “a world we had never imagined.”2,,, Perfect Optimization The scientists found that at multiple hierarchical levels in the whole brain, nerve cell clusters (ganglion), and even at the individual cell level, the positioning of neural units achieved a goal that human engineers strive for but find difficult to achieve—the perfect minimizing of connection costs among all the system’s components.,,, Vast Computational Power Researchers discovered that a single synapse is like a computer’s microprocessor containing both memory-storage and information-processing features.,,, Just one synapse alone can contain about 1,000 molecular-scale microprocessor units acting in a quantum computing environment. An average healthy human brain contains some 200 billion nerve cells connected to one another through hundreds of trillions of synapses. To put this in perspective, one of the researchers revealed that the study’s results showed a single human brain has more information processing units than all the computers, routers, and Internet connections on Earth.1,,, Phenomenal Processing Speed the processing speed of the brain had been greatly underrated. In a new research study, scientists found the brain is 10 times more active than previously believed.6,7,,, The large number of dendritic spikes also means the brain has more than 100 times the computational capabilities than was previously believed.,,, Petabyte-Level Memory Capacity Our new measurements of the brain’s memory capacity increase conservative estimates by a factor of 10 to at least a petabyte, in the same ballpark as the World Wide Web.9,,, Optimal Energy Efficiency Stanford scientist who is helping develop computer brains for robots calculated that a computer processor functioning with the computational capacity of the human brain would require at least 10 megawatts to operate properly. This is comparable to the output of a small hydroelectric power plant. As amazing as it may seem, the human brain requires only about 10 watts to function.11 ,,, Multidimensional Processing It is as if the brain reacts to a stimulus by building then razing a tower of multi-dimensional blocks, starting with rods (1D), then planks (2D), then cubes (3D), and then more complex geometries with 4D, 5D, etc. The progression of activity through the brain resembles a multi-dimensional sandcastle that materializes out of the sand and then disintegrates.13 He also said: We found a world that we had never imagined. There are tens of millions of these objects even in a small speck of the brain, up through seven dimensions. In some networks, we even found structures with up to eleven dimensions.13,,, Biophoton Brain Communication Neurons contain many light-sensitive molecules such as porphyrin rings, flavinic, pyridinic rings, lipid chromophores, and aromatic amino acids. Even the mitochondria machines that produce energy inside cells contain several different light-responsive molecules called chromophores. This research suggests that light channeled by filamentous cellular structures called microtubules plays an important role in helping to coordinate activities in different regions of the brain.,,, https://www.icr.org/article/10186
After being shown that evidence, Allen Keith has the audacity to state:
"I think that evolution, at present, is the best explanation for the human brain."
No Allen. The human brain most certainly did not evolve by the random accumulation of serendipitous accidents. Not even close. That answer is not even in the ballpark of sanity. It is not even "maybe if you look at it the right way the human brain could appear to maybe have been intelligently designed". Again, not even close. The human brain is 'beyond belief' designed... 'beyond anything we imagined' designed!!! The apparent design of the human brain is so overwhelming that it is literally screaming in our face "I AM INTELLIGENTLY DESIGNED!!!". ,,, The conclusion that the human brain is designed is so overwhelming that I hold it to be a conclusion that is even more sure, and rock solid, to us than our intuitive grasp of the fact that 2+2=4 Moreover, I hold that the only reason anyone in their right mind would even try to deny such an obvious conclusion for design is because, as you yourself have given abundant evidence for, they are apparently leading lifestyles in which they do not want to be personally accountable to God. As John stated:
John 3:19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.
And here is the full context of Romans 1:20 which I often cite
Romans 1:18-28 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles. Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen. Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error. Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done.
Allan Keith, In your irrational denial of God, because of whatever imagined reason you may try to conjure up, you have apparently, in the 'bargain' of denying God, lost your mind in the deal. That 'bargain' of losing your mind for the supposed 'privilege' of forsaking God makes all the other worst trade deals in history pale in comparison:
What are some of the worst deals in history? https://www.quora.com/What-are-some-of-the-worst-deals-in-history Mark 8:37 Is anything worth more than your soul?
If I were you AK, since it was such a horrendously bad trade deal for you, I would try to get my soul and/or mind back by any means possible.
1 Corinthians 6:20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's.
bornagain77_{April 29, 2018
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Origenes
God cannot make a square triangle & he cannot use a random process to achieve a specified result.
That is correct.StephenB_{April 29, 2018
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StephenB: ... it is logically impossible to achieve a specified result using a random evolutionary process.
I agree. What is logically impossible to us is also logically impossible to God. God cannot make a square triangle & he cannot use a random process to achieve a specified result.Origenes_{April 29, 2018
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Allan
I would disagree. What would seem random to us would surely not be random to an all knowing god. If he had humans in mind as the ultimate goal (which I doubt) surely he could create the initial conditions under which this will happen, even with no intervention along this long process.
If God had humans in mind, he could create the initial conditions to serve that purpose, in which case it is a planned process and not a random process.
I am not saying this is what happened, because I don’t.
I understand. We are discussing only what is possible and what is not possible.
But if it were true, the actual evolution of life for three plus billion years would follow a process that is not incompatible with modern evolutionary theory.
It would be incompatible. Modern evolutionary theory says that the end result of evolution was unplanned. Only a planned process can produce a specified result. An unplanned process can produce only indeterminate results. That is why I presented the example of using fair dice (unplanned outcome) and loaded dice (planned outcome).
Mutations would still appear to be random. Disasters would still occur. Drift would still occur. Selection would still occur. The fact that god would know the ultimate outcome doesn’t really matter.
What God *knows* is irrelevant because it is not the reason for the outcome. The outcome is produced by what God *does.* TEs are terribly confused about that point.StephenB_{April 29, 2018
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Allan, Your position has nothing but the hope of the biased. You can't even muster testable hypotheses of how something evolved and your position is supposed to be all about the how. Can you link to this alleged "modern evolutionary theory"? I ask because I know that there isn't any scientific theory of evolution. How can there be without those testable hypotheses which are supposed come first?ET_{April 29, 2018
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SB,
God knows that it is logically impossible to achieve a specified result using a random evolutionary process.
I would disagree. What would seem random to us would surely not be random to an all knowing god. If he had humans in mind as the ultimate goal (which I doubt) surely he could create the initial conditions under which this will happen, even with no intervention along this long process. I am not saying this is what happened, because I don’t. But if it were true, the actual evolution of life for three plus billion years would follow a process that is not incompatible with modern evolutionary theory. Mutations would still appear to be random. Disasters would still occur. Drift would still occur. Selection would still occur. The fact that god would know the ultimate outcome doesn’t really matter.Allan Keith_{April 29, 2018
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Allan:
I think that evolution, at present, is the best explanation for the human brain
There isn't any evidence for that claim. You brand of evolution can't even produce eukaryotes. We don't need to know how a designer did something before we can determine something was designed. You clearly don't understand how science works. Yours is the position that says it can explain the how, not ID. Yet your position can't explain the how. There isn't anything that supports materialism and never will be.ET_{April 29, 2018
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BA77,
Allan Keith, I consider it very disingenuous of you to try to explain away the ‘knee jerk’ studies when I specifically asked you this in post 104:
What is disingenuous about directly responding to what you consider to be compelling evidence of a higher purpose in life? You want me to answer your pointless question? I think that evolution, at present, is the best explanation for the human brain. And I think that the brain is the best explanation for consciousness. I have seen no compelling evidence that our mind/consciousness exists without the brain. Nobody has presented and tested a hypothesis as to how this designer managed to design biological life and realize this design. Nobody has proposed and tested a hypothesis as to how the designer designed and created the billions of disembodied consciousnesses and subsequently fixed them to individual designed bodies. All we have been provided with is that because we don’t yet know how something happened, it must require god. Maybe, at the end of the day, we may discover that god exists and that he is responsible for the design of all life. But, given the magnitude and speed with which our increased knowledge narrows the gaps where god may fit, I wouldn’t bet on it.Allan Keith_{April 29, 2018
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Allan Keith
If god is the all powerful, all knowing being that he is portrayed to be, then he would know all of the outcomes of all random mutations, reproductive fitness, natural disasters, chemical reactions and orbit of every electron in the universe.
God's knowledge has nothing to do with it. It is solely a question of what God causes to happen. God knows that it is logically impossible to achieve a specified result using a random evolutionary process. The only way God can guarantee a specific outcome is to use a non-random process. God's knowledge of the outcome is not the reason for the outcome. It is God's actions that are the cause of the outcome. The point can be better understood using the example of fair dice vs loaded dice. ____________________________________________________________ God Guided Evolution. [a] In this case, God throws a pair of loaded dice so that 7 is the guaranteed outcome. Obviously, he has left nothing to chance because He has closed off all other outcomes (numbers between 2 and 12). By virtue of using the loaded dice (non random), he is guaranteed to get the outcome he wants. Unguided Darwinian Evolution. [b] In this case, God uses a pair of fair dice (random) so that any number between 2 and 12 has an equal chance of coming up. He will probably not get a 7, although he may. In any case, he cannot guarantee a 7 by using this random process. Thus, he can only use a pair of loaded dice (guided evolution) to achieve that end. It would be impossible to guarantee that outcome using fair dice (random evolution)StephenB_{April 29, 2018
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Allan:
If god is the all powerful, all knowing being that he is portrayed to be, then he would know all of the outcomes of all random mutations, reproductive fitness, natural disasters, chemical reactions and orbit of every electron in the universe.
Nice straw manET_{April 29, 2018
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Allan Keith, I consider it very disingenuous of you to try to explain away the 'knee jerk' studies when I specifically asked you this in post 104: "Now AK, I can already anticipate that you are feverishly trying to think of a way you can ‘suppress’ these studies that say you have a ‘knee jerk’ reaction to see things as designed,,,, But before you do that, I want you to honestly answer the following question,,, Is the apparent design of the human brain best explained by Intelligent Design or by unguided materialistic processes?" and then this question at the end of post 104,,, "So Allan, what is your answer? Do you rightly say that the human brain is obviously the product of very, very, advanced Intelligent Design or do you, against all reason and common sense, (and your very own “knee jerk” reaction), say, for all the readers on UD to see, that the awe inspiring complexity of the human brain is merely the result of purely accidental materialistic processes cobbling things together? Basically Allan, the question boils down to, do you choose sanity or insanity?" Please quit disingenuously dodging the question AK!bornagain77_{April 29, 2018
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SB,
If there is no predetermined plan, or no goal, then the outcome of the process is obviously an accident. Yet the TEs claim that the outcome of this same process was God’s original intent.. That is a clear contradiction.
If god is the all powerful, all knowing being that he is portrayed to be, then he would know all of the outcomes of all random mutations, reproductive fitness, natural disasters, chemical reactions and orbit of every electron in the universe. Any being with this much power and knowledge could surely create the first life form and sit back for four billion years until the species he knows will be the inevitable outcome, crawls out of Africa. None of this would be in conflict with evolution as we know it. At least, no more so than his knowing everything you will do violates your free will.Allan Keith_{April 29, 2018
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Allan Keith
That’s why I said that it depended on your flavour of god.
We are discussing God, as creator, and the one responsible for the origin and development of life. That is the God the TEs claim to believe in, and that is the God which they fail to reconcile with their model.
Surely god could simply have created the first bacteria over thee billion years ago and allowed evolution to proceed without any further intervention. No goal, no predetermined plan. Just let the universe he created act on his new life form according to the physical laws that he created. This god would not conflict with evolution as we currently understand it.
If there is no predetermined plan, or no goal, then the outcome of the process is obviously an accident. Yet the TEs claim that the outcome of this same process was God's original intent.. That is a clear contradiction.StephenB_{April 29, 2018
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Allan Keith, #1, you failed to even touch upon the question I asked you about the human brain. # 2, all your counter examples, when examined in detail, support Theism. For instance, you mentioned magnetism. I think that both Michael Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell, who were both committed Christians, would be very surprised that you thought that magnetism was anything other than the work of a divine lawgiver. i.e. God
The Genius and Faith of Faraday and Maxwell - Ian H. Hutchinson Excerpt: What Faraday and Maxwell, in their study of nature, were committed to most fundamentally was the discovery of lawfulness and coherence: the conceptual unification of apparently distinct phenomena, such as electricity and magnetism and light. Lawfulness was not, in their thinking, inert, abstract, logical necessity, or complete reducibility to Cartesian mechanism; rather, it was an expectation they attributed to the existence of a divine lawgiver. These men’s insights into physics were made possible by their religious commitments. For them, the coherence of nature resulted from its origin in the mind of its Creator. https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/the-genius-and-faith-of-faraday-and-maxwell
bornagain77_{April 29, 2018
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Allan:
Surely god could simply have created the first bacteria over thee billion years ago and allowed evolution to proceed without any further intervention.
Your equivocation is duly noted and there isn't any non-telic process that can produce eukaryotes from populations of prokaryotes. So in your scenario we wouldn't existET_{April 29, 2018
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The evidence says there is a purpose, a higher purpose, to our lives. The evidence is in all it took to get us here, including the planet and solar system. But to you it was all just an accident. But unfortunately that isn't scientific as it is untestable. BTW homosexuality is unnatural and demonstrates the effects of genetic entropy.ET_{April 29, 2018
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SB,
There is a conflict if the mechanism is random, and Darwin’s mechanism is clearly random.
That’s why I said that it depended on your flavour of god. Surely god could simply have created the first bacteria over thee billion years ago and allowed evolution to proceed without any further intervention. No goal, no predetermined plan. Just let the universe he created act on his new life form according to the physical laws that he created. This god would not conflict with evolution as we currently understand it.Allan Keith_{April 29, 2018
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BA77@104, you provide articles that suggest that we have a knee-jerk feeling that there is purpose to life. I don’t think that anyone would disagree with this. How is that compelling evidence that life was designed? We also have a knee-jerk feeling that our opinions are correct, that the sky is actually blue. We have a knee-jerk feeling that others perceive colour the same way that we do. We perceive movement but our eyes do not record movement. Our knee-jerk reaction to magnetism is that it is supernatural. Our knee-jerk reaction to homosexual acts is usually revulsion. Science is about looking beyond these knee-jerk beliefs. Acknowledging bias and examining them objectively. Just because I feel that my life has a higher purpose doesn’t mean that it does.Allan Keith_{April 29, 2018
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Jack, your comment in 11 stands as a joke. So yes it would be wise for you to just leave it alone.ET_{April 28, 2018
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Thanks for the short discussion, Stephen. I think I'll just let my post at 11 stand as my explanation of TE, and not try to dig deeper here about these issues.jdk_{April 28, 2018
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jdk
Did he cause it to come up 6? Was it according to his will that it be 6? Are these different questions?
No, God’s laws and human agency caused it to come up 6, unless, of course, you include God’s role as the one who sustains the laws and the human agents.
If God had desired it to come up 5, could he have changed the course of events which led to it coming up 6?
It would depend on God’s willingness to interfere will human free agency. As a general rule, God prompts, but doesn’t intrude.
In the case of 3, would it be correct that it looked like a chance event to us, but was not because God actively chose to have it be a 5?
Yes, I think so. God could always fool us if he wanted to. However, I don’t think you can build a “science” of Darwinian evolution on the assumption that God is really doing the mutating, even though it seems to us that nature, acting alone, is doing the mutating. If so, what would be the point of studying science since it would be providing exactly the wrong answers about the observable world? Besides, if God is really doing the mutating (and the selecting) then Darwin has left the building.StephenB_{April 28, 2018
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I am using "random" in the probabilistic sense of one of 6 equally probable events. If we assume the wind blows the dice off the table, you have described a completely deterministic outcome (unless you want to back up and say all the exact forces of that particular gust of wind were determined.) But I think that is missing the point. These are all natural processes working themselves out, from our point of view, in a deterministic fashion to produce, from our point of view, one of six equally probable, random outcomes. My question is how was God involved? Was he only involved deistically in that he has set all these natural forces in motion? Is he actively involved in the upholding and manifestation of those laws in every event? Could he cause a particular outcome, or is he just watching a six come up? What is your theological understanding of God's presence in the unfolding of this event? Can you explain some about what you believe?jdk_{April 28, 2018
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jdk
Let’s leave evolution out of it: I am trying to investigate how you, and others, see the presence of God on a daily moment-by-moment basis.
We are discussing the incompatibility of Darwinian evolution with a purposeful, mindful God, so I can hardly leave evolution "out of it."
I also don’t see why a human throwing the dice makes a difference, but suppose a gust of wind blows the dice on the floor, and it comes up six.
From the point of view of physics, the outcome is not random at all. If a pair of dice is thrown at a certain angle, with a certain force, and under certain conditions, the number that comes up has been determined solely by the physical conditions. It is only the variety of human ways of throwing the dice that makes it a random event.
I am trying to investigate how you, and others, see the presence of God on a daily moment-by-moment basis.
You will have to be more precise about what you are asking since that question can be answered in a hundred ways. Example: Even when humans are the only causal agents involved (throwing dice) God is involved not only as the one who sustains the physical laws that determine the outcome, but also the one who sustains the existence of the causal agents themselves.StephenB_{April 28, 2018
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jdk:
Lecture 11: Decoherence and Hidden Variables - Scott Aaronson - MIT associate Professor (Quantum Computation) Excerpt: "Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists who think the world sprang into existence on October 23, 4004 BC at 9AM (presumably Babylonian time), with the fossils already in the ground, light from distant stars heading toward us, etc. 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!" http://www.scottaaronson.com/democritus/lec11.html Double Slit, Quantum-Electrodynamics, and Christian Theism- video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AK9kGpIxMRM Quantum Mechanics, Special Relativity, General Relativity and Christianity - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKggH8jO0pk Albert Einstein vs. Quantum Mechanics and His Own Mind – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxFFtZ301j4
Supplemental note:
‘Many modern philosophers believe that metaphysics is impossible. Most classical philosophers disagree. They hold, commonsensically, that the basic “laws of thought” are laws of being., of reality; they tell us not only how we all have to think but how all being has to be. The universe and everything in it, and also the self, (1) can’t ever be what it isn’t (the Law of Non-contradiction), (2) always must be what it is (the Law of Identity), and (3) always either is or isn’t (the Law of Excluded Middle). Also, (4) all that comes into being – i.e., all changing being – has a cause (the Principle of Causality), and (5) everything that is has a sufficient reason why it is and what it is (the Principle of Sufficient Reason).’ Peter Kreeft. Socratic Logic. p. 359
bornagain77_{April 28, 2018
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jdk:
Let’s leave evolution out of it: I am trying to investigate how you, and others, see the presence of God on a daily moment-by-moment basis.
Take your straw man and go home, Jack.ET_{April 28, 2018
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Allan Keith
If god set things in motion, including the mechanisms necessary for evolution, and didn’t intervene after that, then there is no conflict with the modern understanding of evolution.
There is a conflict if the mechanism is random, and Darwin's mechanism is clearly random.
If he set it in motion with a single immutable direction, purpose, outcome, then there is a conflict.
Correct. That is my point.StephenB_{April 28, 2018
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Let's leave evolution out of it: I am trying to investigate how you, and others, see the presence of God on a daily moment-by-moment basis. I also don't see why a human throwing the dice makes a difference, but suppose a gust of wind blows the dice on the floor, and it comes up six. What are your answers to my questions?jdk_{April 28, 2018
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Allan Keith, you state that "I have seen no compelling evidence to suggest a god." And yet the fact of the matter, contrary to what you may believe, is not that you have not seen any compelling evidence. It is that you live in constant denial of the evidence for design and purpose that you see all around you. Don't believe me? Well, as usual, I have evidence to, unlike atheists, back my position up. Studies now establish that the design inference is ‘knee jerk’ inference that is built into everyone, especially including atheists, and that atheists have to mentally work suppressing their very own design inference!
Is Atheism a Delusion? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Ii-bsrHB0o Richard Dawkins take heed: Even atheists instinctively believe in a creator says study - Mary Papenfuss - June 12, 2015 Excerpt: Three studies at Boston University found that even among atheists, the "knee jerk" reaction to natural phenomenon is the belief that they're purposefully designed by some intelligence, according to a report on the research in Cognition entitled the "Divided Mind of a disbeliever." The findings "suggest that there is a deeply rooted natural tendency to view nature as designed," writes a research team led by Elisa Järnefelt of Newman University. They also provide evidence that, in the researchers' words, "religious non-belief is cognitively effortful." Researchers attempted to plug into the automatic or "default" human brain by showing subjects images of natural landscapes and things made by human beings, then requiring lightning-fast responses to the question on whether "any being purposefully made the thing in the picture," notes Pacific-Standard. "Religious participants' baseline tendency to endorse nature as purposefully created was higher" than that of atheists, the study found. But non-religious participants "increasingly defaulted to understanding natural phenomena as purposefully made" when "they did not have time to censor their thinking," wrote the researchers. The results suggest that "the tendency to construe both living and non-living nature as intentionally made derives from automatic cognitive processes, not just practised explicit beliefs," the report concluded. The results were similar even among subjects from Finland, where atheism is not a controversial issue as it can be in the US. "Design-based intuitions run deep," the researchers conclude, "persisting even in those with no explicit religious commitment and, indeed, even among those with an active aversion to them." http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/richard-dawkins-take-heed-even-atheists-instinctively-believe-creator-says-study-1505712
"Even Professional Scientists Are Compelled to See Purpose in Nature, Psychologists Find."
Design Thinking Is Hardwired in the Human Brain. How Come? - October 17, 2012 Excerpt: "Even Professional Scientists Are Compelled to See Purpose in Nature, Psychologists Find." The article describes a test by Boston University's psychology department, in which researchers found that "despite years of scientific training, even professional chemists, geologists, and physicists from major universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Yale cannot escape a deep-seated belief that natural phenomena exist for a purpose" ,,, Most interesting, though, are the questions begged by this research. One is whether it is even possible to purge teleology from explanation. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/10/design_thinking065381.html
Simply put, 'design intuition' is, because we are 'made in the image of God' hardwired into each of us from the beginning of our lives.
Children are born believers in God, academic claims - 24 Nov 2008 Excerpt: "Dr Justin Barrett, a senior researcher at the University of Oxford's Centre for Anthropology and Mind, claims that young people have a predisposition to believe in a supreme being because they assume that everything in the world was created with a purpose." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/3512686/Children-are-born-believers-in-God-academic-claims.html
i.e. It is not that Atheists do not see purpose and/or Design in nature, it is that Atheists, for whatever severely misguided reason, live in denial of the purpose and/or Design that they themselves are seeing in nature. I hold the preceding studies to be confirming evidence for Romans1:19-20
Romans 1:19-20 For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.
Now AK, I can already anticipate that you are feverishly trying to think of a way you can 'suppress' these studies that say you have a 'knee jerk' reaction to see things as designed,,,, But before you do that, I want you to honestly answer the following question,,, Is the apparent design of the human brain best explained by Intelligent Design or by unguided materialistic processes? I ask this since, #1, Darwinists have no clue where even a single neuron came from,,,
"Complexity Brake" Defies Evolution - August 8, 2012 Excerpt: Consider a neuronal synapse -- the presynaptic terminal has an estimated 1000 distinct proteins. Fully analyzing their possible interactions would take about 2000 years. Or consider the task of fully characterizing the visual cortex of the mouse -- about 2 million neurons. Under the extreme assumption that the neurons in these systems can all interact with each other, analyzing the various combinations will take about 10 million years..., even though it is assumed that the underlying technology speeds up by an order of magnitude each year. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/08/complexity_brak062961.html
And, #2, the human brain is constructed on a level of complexity that defies human comprehension
The Human Brain Is 'Beyond Belief' by Jeffrey P. Tomkins, Ph.D. * - 2017 Excerpt: The human brain,, is an engineering marvel that evokes comments from researchers like “beyond anything they’d imagined, almost to the point of being beyond belief”1 and “a world we had never imagined.”2,,, Perfect Optimization The scientists found that at multiple hierarchical levels in the whole brain, nerve cell clusters (ganglion), and even at the individual cell level, the positioning of neural units achieved a goal that human engineers strive for but find difficult to achieve—the perfect minimizing of connection costs among all the system’s components.,,, Vast Computational Power Researchers discovered that a single synapse is like a computer’s microprocessor containing both memory-storage and information-processing features.,,, Just one synapse alone can contain about 1,000 molecular-scale microprocessor units acting in a quantum computing environment. An average healthy human brain contains some 200 billion nerve cells connected to one another through hundreds of trillions of synapses. To put this in perspective, one of the researchers revealed that the study’s results showed a single human brain has more information processing units than all the computers, routers, and Internet connections on Earth.1,,, Phenomenal Processing Speed the processing speed of the brain had been greatly underrated. In a new research study, scientists found the brain is 10 times more active than previously believed.6,7,,, The large number of dendritic spikes also means the brain has more than 100 times the computational capabilities than was previously believed.,,, Petabyte-Level Memory Capacity Our new measurements of the brain’s memory capacity increase conservative estimates by a factor of 10 to at least a petabyte, in the same ballpark as the World Wide Web.9,,, Optimal Energy Efficiency Stanford scientist who is helping develop computer brains for robots calculated that a computer processor functioning with the computational capacity of the human brain would require at least 10 megawatts to operate properly. This is comparable to the output of a small hydroelectric power plant. As amazing as it may seem, the human brain requires only about 10 watts to function.11 ,,, Multidimensional Processing It is as if the brain reacts to a stimulus by building then razing a tower of multi-dimensional blocks, starting with rods (1D), then planks (2D), then cubes (3D), and then more complex geometries with 4D, 5D, etc. The progression of activity through the brain resembles a multi-dimensional sandcastle that materializes out of the sand and then disintegrates.13 He also said: We found a world that we had never imagined. There are tens of millions of these objects even in a small speck of the brain, up through seven dimensions. In some networks, we even found structures with up to eleven dimensions.13,,, Biophoton Brain Communication Neurons contain many light-sensitive molecules such as porphyrin rings, flavinic, pyridinic rings, lipid chromophores, and aromatic amino acids. Even the mitochondria machines that produce energy inside cells contain several different light-responsive molecules called chromophores. This research suggests that light channeled by filamentous cellular structures called microtubules plays an important role in helping to coordinate activities in different regions of the brain.,,, https://www.icr.org/article/10186
So Allan, what is your answer? Do you rightly say that the human brain is obviously the product of very, very, advanced Intelligent Design or do you, against all reason and common sense, (and your very own "knee jerk" reaction), say, for all the readers on UD to see, that the awe inspiring complexity of the human brain is merely the result of purely accidental materialistic processes cobbling things together? Basically Allan, the question boils down to, do you choose sanity or insanity?bornagain77_{April 28, 2018
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jdk
What do you think?
I appreciate your questions, but I don’t think we can get at the problem in exactly that way. We must find an example in which God, not a human, is the sole cause of the outcome. So, let’s go back to your example using a pair of dice. Assume that God wants to get a 7 through an evolutionary process that generates numbers with values between 2 and 12. God Guided Evolution. [a] In this case, God throws a pair of loaded dice so that 7 is the guaranteed outcome. Obviously, he has left nothing to chance because He has closed off all other outcomes (numbers between 2 and 12). By virtue of using the loaded dice (non random), he is guaranteed to get the outcome he wants. Unguided Darwinian Evolution. [b] In this case, God uses a pair of fair dice (random) so that any number between 2 and 12 has an equal chance of coming up. He will probably not get a 7, although he may. In any case, he cannot guarantee a 7 by using this random process. Thus, he can only use a pair of loaded dice (guided evolution) to achieve that end. It would be impossible to guarantee that outcome using fair dice (random evolution)StephenB_{April 28, 2018
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Allan:
My first sententence said that I am an atheist because I have seen no compelling evidence to suggest a god.
You don't seem to understand evidence.ET_{April 28, 2018
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