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Christian Darwinists must now backtrack re Adam and Eve

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Why were they so determined that humanity could not have originated with a single pair? Casey Luskin, who has been reviewing In Quest of the Historical Adam by William Lane Craig notes,

In the previous installment of my review of William Lane Craig’s In Quest of the Historical Adam we saw that many evangelical intellectuals had accepted arguments that Adam and Eve could not have existed. These arguments, in particular the claim that human genetic diversity is too great to have been reduced to a single pair, were forcefully promoted by theistic evolutionists aka evolutionary creationists (TE/ECs) affiliated with BioLogos. Prominent among these critics was Dennis Venema, a biologist at Trinity Western University, who compared modern-day belief in Adam and Eve with adhering to the long-refuted geocentric model of the solar system. But the arguments turned out to be wrong, as even BioLogos and Venema now admit.

To his credit, William Lane Craig is among those evangelicals who have been willing to question arguments against a historical Adam and Eve. In his book he cites the work of Ann Gauger, Ola Hössjer, and Joshua Swamidass who performed analyses showing that humanity could have originated from a single pair at least 500,000 years ago. Gauger and Hössjer noted that Adam and Eve could have lived even more recently if additional evolutionary assumptions are questioned.

When I was reading the rhetoric used by evangelical elites who advocated abandoning a historical Adam and Eve, I was struck by how much of it seemed driven by fear — fear of looking foolish before the world because you challenged evolution and were shown to be wrong. As I discussed, the lesson from this story is that it should not be taboo for evangelicals to challenge evolutionary arguments. We need not live in fear that doing so is “anti-science” or will “bring disrepute on the Christian faith” or “shame upon the name of Jesus Christ” — as some evangelical elites have argued.

Casey Luskin, “Lessons Not Learned from the Evangelical Debate over Adam and Eve” at Evolution News and Science Today (November 23, 2021)

As he goes on the show, some in the Christian evangelical elite are just slow learners in these matters. Maybe being right, sticking with their tradition, would have been a bigger problem for them.

You may also wish to read: William Lane Craig on Adam and Eve as less intelligent than us Whatever else Craig’s view is, as Luskin notes, it is a far cry from the Scriptural traditional assumption that the unfallen Adam and Eve were our betters and that we have all deteriorated as a result of sin. Adopting Craig’s view is bound to have worldview consequences.

Casey Luskin: The mytho-history of Adam, Eve, and William Lane Craig. Long a defender of orthodoxy, Craig seems to want to prune the orthodoxies he is expected to defend. But the pruning process in which he is engaged can never really stop. The “sensible God” is most likely the one looking back at us from our medicine cabinet mirrors.

and

Why did the evangelical Christian world go nuts for Christian Darwinism a decade ago? Contra Trendy Christians: It makes sense that all humans would descend from a single couple. If you had to account for something like, say, human consciousness, isn’t it easier to address if we all belong to the same family of origin? Would you prefer to explain the development of human consciousness assuming that we come from multiple different ones? Darn good thing if someone can prove its true genetically.

36 Replies to “Christian Darwinists must now backtrack re Adam and Eve”

  1. 1
    zweston says:
    November 28, 2021 at 9:29 pm

    I feel as though this is the darkness before the dawn. Covid and government overreach has affected so many people. Our freedom has been threatened and our peace and comfort to live in our bubble has been popped. But, If we will but hold on, Gandalf and the riders of Rohan will show themselves on the horizon to wipe out the enemies. (and I don’t mean in a violent way in this case). Civil war would be a terrible idea.

    Science doesn’t have the greatest track record, particularly regarding darwinistic predictions…. “vestigial” organs? “Junk” DNA?

    I think people just get battle fatigued. The facts haven’t changed recently in favor of Darwin…people are just wore down from being bludgeoned with the same thing over and over again. A bunch of theologians are capitulating at just the wrong time. We don’t like being called fools, but that is what we are called to be… fools for Christ. It is folly to others, and the Bible said it would be.

    As with most things, it isn’t that people have looked too much into something, it’s that they haven’t taken the time to deeply investigate it. How in the world do random mutations and natural selection “build” anything? How in the world did scales turn into feathers? Which came first… respiratory, nervous, circulatory systems?

    Again, I enjoy hearing WLC talk on the resurrection and philosophy, but I’m not a fan of his theology work.

  2. 2
    bornagain77 says:
    November 29, 2021 at 5:42 am

    At to “if additional evolutionary assumptions are questioned.”

    By all means, let’s question evolutionary assumptions!

    Venema, and other Theistic Darwinists, believes, or has believed in the past, that the Darwinian models in the mathematics of population genetics have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Adam and Eve could not possibly have existed as real historical figures.

    Yet, in so far as those Darwinian models in the mathematics of population genetics have been able to be compared to the empirical evidence itself, the empirical evidence itself disagrees with those Darwinian models of the mathematics of population genetics.

    For instance, the fossil record, when viewed in its entirety, and/or just for humans in particular, is VERY antagonistic to the Darwinian belief that humans gradually morphed into who they are from some chimp-like common ancestor.

    November 2021 – Human evolution? – the evidence from the fossil record refutes Darwinian evolution
    https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/evangelical-scientists-getting-it-wrong/#comment-740239

    The same can be said for the empirical evidence from genetics. i.e. the evidence from genetics, when viewed in its entirety, instead of just piecemeal as Darwinists are prone to do, actually falsifies, instead of supports, the Darwinian claim that humans evolved some chimp-like ancestor.

    November 2021 – Human evolution? – the evidence from genetics, (as well as the mathematics of population genetics itself), when viewed in its entirety, instead of just piecemeal as Darwinists are prone to do, actually falsifies, instead of supports, the Darwinian claim that humans evolved some chimp-like ancestor.
    https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/evangelical-scientists-getting-it-wrong/#comment-740245

    Likewise, and perhaps the most devastating of all, the empirical evidence from, and for, human exceptionalism is simply completely devastating to the materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists,

    November 2021 – Human exceptionalism refutes Darwinian evolution
    https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/evangelical-scientists-getting-it-wrong/#comment-740249

    Moreover, and perhaps the most salient feature of all that needs to be explained in any account of human origins, the materialistic presuppositions of Darwinian evolution are simply at a complete loss to explain ‘personhood’, i.e. to explain why we should have ‘subjective experience’ of existing as individual human persons.

    November 2021 – Moreover, after pointing out the fact that the Darwinian claims for human evolution are contradicted at every turn by the empirical evidence itself, it began to dawn on me, (as bad as the empirical evidence itself contradicts Darwinian claims for human evolution), that Darwinists have no earthly clue whatsoever as to how individual persons might come into being.
    Which is to say, although Darwinists offer endless ‘just-so stories’, and/or ‘narratives’, as to how humans, as a species, might have come into existence ‘gradually’, via the unguided processes of natural selection and random mutation, Darwinists, (in what makes the ‘problem’ of explaining the origin of the human species pale in comparison), have no clue whatsoever why I, as an individual person within the human species, should come into existence as a unique individual.
    https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/casey-luskin-the-mytho-history-of-adam-eve-and-william-lane-craig/#comment-740568

    But as bad as the empirical evidence itself falsifies the Darwinian models in the mathematics of population genetics,

    “Now I’m going to discuss how we would look for a new law. In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we guess it (audience laughter), no, don’t laugh, that’s the truth. Then we compute the consequences of the guess, to see what, if this is right, if this law we guess is right, to see what it would imply and then we compare the computation results to nature or we say compare to experiment or experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works.
    If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are who made the guess, or what his name is … If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.”
    – Feynman
    – Richard Feynman Teaches you the Scientific Method

    ,,, but as bad as the empirical evidence itself falsifies those Darwinian models in the mathematics of population genetics, when scrutinized in detail, the mathematics itself within population genetics falsifies Darwinian evolution.

    Dr. John Sanford, whose credentials in genetics are impeccable, has analyzed the mathematics of population genetic inside and out, and, time and time again, Dr. Sanford and company have found that the mathematics of population genetics, (coupled with real time empirical evidence), falsifies Darwin’s theory rather than confirming it.

    Dr. John Sanford – Links to Selected Papers
    https://www.logosresearchassociates.org/john-sanford

    John Sanford Gives Lecture At NIH On Mutations And Human Health – 2018
    https://uncommondescent.com/evolution/john-sanford-gives-lecture-at-nih-on-mutations-and-human-health/

    For instance, natural selection itself, Charles Darwin main claim to scientific fame, has been thrown under the bus by the mathematics of population genetics,

    The waiting time problem in a model hominin population – 2015 Sep 17
    John Sanford, Wesley Brewer, Franzine Smith, and John Baumgardner
    Excerpt: The program Mendel’s Accountant realistically simulates the mutation/selection process,,,
    Given optimal settings, what is the longest nucleotide string that can arise within a reasonable waiting time within a hominin population of 10,000? Arguably, the waiting time for the fixation of a “string-of-one” is by itself problematic (Table 2). 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. This is especially problematic when we consider that it is estimated that it only took six million years for the chimp and human genomes to diverge by over 5 % [1]. This represents at least 75 million nucleotide changes in the human lineage, many of which must encode new information.
    While fixing one point mutation is problematic, our simulations show that the fixation of two co-dependent mutations is extremely problematic – requiring at least 84 million years (Table 2). This is ten-fold longer than the estimated time required for ape-to-man evolution. In this light, we suggest that a string of two specific mutations is a reasonable upper limit, in terms of the longest string length that is likely to evolve within a hominin population (at least in a way that is either timely or meaningful). 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.
    It is widely thought that a larger population size can eliminate the waiting time problem. If that were true, then the waiting time problem would only be meaningful within small populations. While our simulations show that larger populations do help reduce waiting time, we see that the benefit of larger population size produces rapidly diminishing returns (Table 4 and Fig. 4). When we increase the hominin population from 10,000 to 1 million (our current upper limit for these types of experiments), the waiting time for creating a string of five is only reduced from two billion to 482 million years.
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm.....MC4573302/

  3. 3
    bornagain77 says:
    November 29, 2021 at 5:47 am

    As well, when realistic rates of detrimental to beneficial mutations are taken into consideration, Dr. Sanford and company have now shown that the mathematics of populations genetics falsifies Fisher’s erroneous assumption that fitness must always increase:

    Geneticist Corrects Fisher’s Theorem, but the Correction Turns Natural Selection Upside Down – December 22, 2017 | David F. Coppedge
    A new paper corrects errors in Fisher’s Theorem, a mathematical “proof” of Darwinism. Rather than supporting evolution, the corrected theorem inverts it.
    Excerpt: The authors of the new paper describe the fundamental problems with Fisher’s theorem. They then use Fisher’s first principles, and reformulate and correct the theorem. They have named the corrected theorem The Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection with Mutations. The correction of the theorem is not a trivial change – it literally flips the theorem on its head. The resulting conclusions are clearly in direct opposition to what Fisher had originally intended to prove.,,,
    The authors of the new paper realized that one of Fisher’s pivotal assumptions was clearly false, and in fact was falsified many decades ago. In his informal corollary, Fisher essentially assumed that new mutations arose with a nearly normal distribution – with an equal proportion of good and bad mutations (so mutations would have a net fitness effect of zero). We now know that the vast majority of mutations in the functional genome are harmful, and that beneficial mutations are vanishingly rare. The simple fact that Fisher’s premise was wrong, falsifies Fisher’s corollary. Without Fisher’s corollary – Fisher’s Theorem proves only that selection improves a population’s fitness until selection exhausts the initial genetic variation, at which point selective progress ceases. Apart from his corollary, Fisher’s Theorem only shows that within an initial population with variant genetic alleles, there is limited selective progress followed by terminal stasis.,,,
    The authors observe that the more realistic the parameters, the more likely fitness decline becomes.
    https://crev.info/2017/12/geneticist-corrects-fishers-theorem/

    Moreover, the mathematics of population genetics also proves that, if Darwinian evolution is assumed to be true, then ALL of our observations of reality would be illusory.

    Donald Hoffman: Do we see reality as it is? – Video – 9:59 minute mark
    Quote: “fitness does depend on reality as it is, yes.,,, Fitness is not the same thing as reality as it is, and it is fitness, and not reality as it is, that figures centrally in the equations of evolution. So, in my lab, we have run hundreds of thousands of evolutionary game simulations with lots of different randomly chosen worlds and organisms that compete for resources in those worlds. Some of the organisms see all of the reality. Others see just part of the reality. And some see none of the reality. Only fitness. Who wins? Well I hate to break it to you but perception of reality goes extinct. In almost every simulation, organisms that see none of reality, but are just tuned to fitness, drive to extinction (those organisms) that perceive reality as it is. So the bottom line is, evolution does not favor veridical, or accurate perceptions. Those (accurate) perceptions of reality go extinct. Now this is a bit stunning. How can it be that not seeing the world accurately gives us a survival advantage?”
    https://youtu.be/oYp5XuGYqqY?t=601

    The problem for Darwinian evolution in holding all our perceptions of reality are illusory is that it undermines the scientific method itself. Which is to say, reliable observation is a necessary cornerstone of the scientific method.

    Steps of the Scientific Method
    Observation/Research
    Hypothesis
    Prediction
    Experimentation
    Conclusion
    http://www.sciencemadesimple.c.....ethod.html

    In short, if Darwinian evolution were actually true, and thank God it isn’t, it would undermine the scientific method itself.

    Moreover, empirical science itself could care less that Darwinists are forced to believe, via the mathematics of population genetics, that ALL of our perceptions of reality are illusory.

    Specifically, advances in quantum mechanics have now proven that our observations of reality are far more integral to reality, and therefore, far more reliable of reality than Darwinists are forced to believe because of the mathematics of population genetics.

    As the following article states, “Leggett’s inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it.”

    Quantum physics says goodbye to reality – Apr 20, 2007
    Excerpt: Many realizations of the thought experiment have indeed verified the violation of Bell’s inequality. These have ruled out all hidden-variables theories based on joint assumptions of realism, meaning that reality exists when we are not observing it; and locality, meaning that separated events cannot influence one another instantaneously. But a violation of Bell’s inequality does not tell specifically which assumption – realism, locality or both – is discordant with quantum mechanics.
    Markus Aspelmeyer, Anton Zeilinger and colleagues from the University of Vienna, however, have now shown that realism is more of a problem than locality in the quantum world. They devised an experiment that violates a different inequality proposed by physicist Anthony Leggett in 2003 that relies only on realism, and relaxes the reliance on locality. To do this, rather than taking measurements along just one plane of polarization, the Austrian team took measurements in additional, perpendicular planes to check for elliptical polarization.
    They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell’s thought experiment, Leggett’s inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we’re not observing it. “Our study shows that ‘just’ giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics,” Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. “You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism.”
    http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640

    And as the following article states, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”

    New Mind-blowing Experiment Confirms That Reality Doesn’t Exist If You Are Not Looking at It – June 3, 2015
    Excerpt: The results of the Australian scientists’ experiment, which were published in the journal Nature Physics, show that this choice is determined by the way the object is measured, which is in accordance with what quantum theory predicts.
    “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” said lead researcher Dr. Andrew Truscott in a press release.,,,
    “The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence,” he said.
    Thus, this experiment adds to the validity of the quantum theory and provides new evidence to the idea that reality doesn’t exist without an observer.
    http://themindunleashed.org/20.....at-it.html

    Moreover, and perhaps the ‘coup de grace’ against the claim that the mathematics of population genetics proves that humans evolved from chimp-like ancestor, mathematics itself is profoundly immaterial in its foundational essence.

    What Does It Mean to Say That Science & Religion Conflict?
    By M. Anthony Mills – April 16, 2018
    Excerpt: In fact, more problematic for the materialist than the non-existence of persons is the existence of mathematics. Why? Although a committed materialist might be perfectly willing to accept that you do not really exist, he will have a harder time accepting that numbers do not exist. The trouble is that numbers — along with other mathematical entities such as classes, sets, and functions — are indispensable for modern science. And yet — here’s the rub — these “abstract objects” are not material. Thus, one cannot take science as the only sure guide to reality and at the same time discount disbelief in all immaterial realities.
    https://www.realclearreligion.org/articles/2018/04/16/what_does_it_mean_to_say_that_science_and_religion_conflict.html

    ,,, And thus, since mathematics itself is profoundly immaterial in its foundational essence, then our (unique) ability to ‘do mathematics’, in and of itself, proves that man cannot possibly be a purely material being, as Darwinists hold, but that humans must possess and immaterial mind and/or soul in order for humans to even be able to ‘do mathematics’ in the first place.

    As Dr. Michael Egnor noted, and as far as our ‘immaterial intellect’ is concerned, “We are more different from apes than apes are from viruses.”

    The Fundamental Difference Between Humans and Nonhuman Animals
    Michael Egnor – November 5, 2015
    Excerpt: “Human beings have mental powers that include the material mental powers of animals but in addition entail a profoundly different kind of thinking. Human beings think abstractly, and nonhuman animals do not. Human beings have the power to contemplate universals, which are concepts that have no material instantiation. Human beings think about mathematics, literature, art, language, justice, mercy, and an endless library of abstract concepts. Human beings are rational animals.
    Human rationality is not merely a highly evolved kind of animal perception. Human rationality is qualitatively different — ontologically different — from animal perception. Human rationality is different because it is immaterial. Contemplation of universals cannot have material instantiation, because universals themselves are not material and cannot be instantiated in matter.,,,
    A human being is material and immaterial — a composite being. We have material bodies, and our perceptions and imaginations and appetites are material powers, instantiated in our brains. But our intellect — our ability to think abstractly — is a wholly immaterial power, and our will that acts in accordance with our intellect is an immaterial power. Our intellect and our will depend on matter for their ordinary function, in the sense that they depend upon perception and imagination and memory, but they are not themselves made of matter. It is in our ability to think abstractly that we differ from apes. It is a radical difference — an immeasurable qualitative difference, not a quantitative difference.
    We are more different from apes than apes are from viruses. Our difference is a metaphysical chasm. It is obvious and manifest in our biological nature.
    – Michael Egnor
    https://evolutionnews.org/2015/11/the_fundamental_2/

    Thus in conclusion, far from the mathematics of population genetics proving that humans must have evolved from some chimp-like ancestor, the mathematics of population genetics, in rather dramatic fashion, actually falsifies the materialistic presuppositions of Darwinian evolution instead of validating them.

    Verse:

    Genesis 1:27
    So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.

  4. 4
    ET says:
    November 29, 2021 at 8:54 am

    People cannot wrap their heads around evolution by means of intelligent design. Evolution by means of intelligent design can easily account for the observed genetic diversity amongst humans from a starting couple. It’s the same as Dawkins’ weasel program reaching its target in 43 generations.

  5. 5
    chuckdarwin says:
    November 29, 2021 at 9:00 am

    Do you honestly think that God gives one whit whether someone believes in a literal versus figurative Adam and Eve? While these “researchers” are at it, maybe they could figure out the angels dancing on a pin problem–I think the jury’s still out on that one too. What a monumental waste of time…

  6. 6
    zweston says:
    November 29, 2021 at 9:49 am

    As usual CD adds no value at all to anything. A literal waste of time of a post. As you probably know, A literal Adam And Eve is kind of important if you believe the Bible to be the word of God. And it undermines its credibility if it isn’t.

    Using modern mutation rates, mitochondrial eve would be about 6000 years old… just saying. You can look it up. Genesis matters.

  7. 7
    JVL says:
    November 29, 2021 at 9:49 am

    ET: People cannot wrap their heads around evolution by means of intelligent design.

    Perhaps that’s because there is no clear, generally agreed upon statement about how and when design was implemented.

    Sure, a lot of people think design in nature has been discovered but there’s nothing past that point that gives an outsider something to examine and test. A scientific hypothesis should be able to be falsified on its own terms, not showing that some other explanation is better. And that requires there to be some specifics that can be considered.

  8. 8
    chuckdarwin says:
    November 29, 2021 at 10:27 am

    #6 Zweston

    Using modern mutation rates, mitochondrial eve would be about 6000 years old… just saying. You can look it up.

    Setting aside all of the other misconceptions about mtMRCA, other than creationist websites, such as the Institute for Creation Research, I have never seen an age for mtMRCA younger that 180,000 years ago, which, not surprisingly, closely coincides with the current estimates of the appearance of Homo sapiens.

    A literal Adam And (sic) Eve is kind of important if you believe the Bible to be the word of God. And it undermines its credibility if it isn’t.

    I would agree that it is irrelevant to non-believers. But my point is that it should not matter to believers because literal interpretations of Genesis are not universal among Christians, have never been part of the Christian creed, and in fact, did not become a big issue until evolution started to threaten the literal Genesis time-line.

  9. 9
    zweston says:
    November 29, 2021 at 10:50 am

    The independent data on mitochondrial eve stands (no matter how much you don’t like the origin of the information, which is ad-hominem really…and irrelevant)… If mutation rates have always been the same, then mitochondrial eve is at around 6k years old. That is a problem for the current narrative, and most know it is a problem. The data doesn’t match the narrative. Assumed Ages are baked into the conclusion using “multiple lines of evidence.” Yes, but this line of evidence standing on its own is a problem. Finding radiocarbon in diamonds is a problem, so is finding soft tissue in dinosaur bones… but again it is hand waved due to “other lines of evidence”…..

    It all comes down to worldview and adopted paradigm. Uniformitarianism is useful…until it contradicts the story-telling

  10. 10
    JVL says:
    November 29, 2021 at 11:15 am

    Zweston: If mutation rates have always been the same, then mitochondrial eve is at around 6k years old.

    That is not consistent with the latest research or data.

    As of 2013, estimates for the age Y-MRCA are subject to substantial uncertainty, with a wide range of times from 180,000 to 580,000 years ago[6][7][8] (with an estimated age of between 120,000 and 156,000 years ago, roughly consistent with the estimate for mt-MRCA.)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrial_Eve

  11. 11
    bornagain77 says:
    November 29, 2021 at 11:20 am

    CD: “I have never seen an age for mtMRCA younger tha(n) 180,000 years ago,”

    Mitochondrial Eve and Y-Chromosome Adam, and Adam and the Genome – February 27, 2018
    Excerpt: Darwin-skeptics Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe (RTB), an old-earth creationist organization, think they could have lived concurrently. They write in their book Who Was Adam?:

    “Corrections to mitochondrial-DNA mutation rates that factor in heteroplasmy place mitochondrial Eve perhaps as recently as 50,000 years ago — squarely within the range predicted by the RTB model (between 10,000 and 100,000 years ago)….
    These later studies used much more expansive regions of the Y chromosome. Their findings indicate that humanity’s male lineage originated around 40,000 to 60,000 years ago. They also verify that humanity’s origin traces to one location and to a small population. The results fall in line with yet another study that placed humanity’s origin between 35,000 and 47,000 years ago.
    As with the studies on genetic diversity and mitochondrial DNA, Y-chromosome analysis of humanity’s history fully concurs with predictions made by RTB’s model for humanity’s origin.
    (Who Was Adam?, pp. 64, 66)
    https://evolutionnews.org/2018/02/mitochondrial-eve-and-y-chromosome-adam-and-adam-and-the-genome/

    Well now you can say you have seen younger estimates,

  12. 12
    chuckdarwin says:
    November 29, 2021 at 11:25 am

    #9 Zweston
    #10 JVL
    Zweston–if you claim there is “independent” data on the age of mtMRCA, give us a cite and not a bunch of gobbledygook about “worldviews” and dinosaur fossils…

  13. 13
    chuckdarwin says:
    November 29, 2021 at 11:36 am

    Bornagain
    Fazale Rana and Hugh Ross of Reasons to Believe are not “independent.” Rana is a chemist and Ross is a physicist. RTB is another creationist website, I listen to their podcasts quite frequently. And even their “model” has a 90,000-year range as to mtMRCA which does not overlap with Zweston’s 6000 year-ago claim. Why don’t you go back to the original debate between Huxley and Wilberforce….

  14. 14
    zweston says:
    November 29, 2021 at 11:52 am

    “Your sources have bias toward a paradigm that isn’t mine, so you can’t use it”. “They need to be independent”. Independent=predisposed to write off anything that big science/materialism/atheism disagrees with. Why don’t you define independent? Would the critics of all major scientific findings have faced the same things? I’d venture to say so.

    CD reads/listens to RTB… interesting! If you do that too long, you won’t be a deist. 🙂

    When darwinism is rightly refuted, do I get to call all of your assertions “gobbeldygook”? Maybe it was just a short list of data that runs counter to the common narrative that is written off…

    I wonder why science journals wouldn’t publish ideas about mitochondrial eve possibly being 6000 years old… or why they wouldn’t publish things that put holes into their narrative? Maybe funding? Credibility? Or in Fauci’s case…power. All hail man’s ability to gain knowledge based on assumptions! All hail “science!” If what the creationist websites are saying is false, then refute their calculations or data, don’t just label them and dismiss it.

    The “mainstream science” credibility bucket has its bottom rusted out, and there isn’t much water left. Black knight of the Holy Grail strikes again.

    CD, while you are here… if someone challenged your deism…what would you say to them to affirm your belief?

  15. 15
    ET says:
    November 29, 2021 at 12:40 pm

    JVL:

    Perhaps that’s because there is no clear, generally agreed upon statement about how and when design was implemented.

    That has absolutely NOTHING to do with what you responded to. You have serious issues.

    Sure, a lot of people think design in nature has been discovered but there’s nothing past that point that gives an outsider something to examine and test.

    You clearly don’t understand science. The design is testable. The claims for design are testable. We cannot test the ability of peoples from thousands of years ago. We infer their abilities by what they left behind.

    A scientific hypothesis should be able to be falsified on its own terms, not showing that some other explanation is better.

    Your ignorance is not an argument. ID makes specific claims. One being that blind and mindless processes are incapable of producing what we say was intelligently designed. And that is how it works in archaeology, forensic science and SETI.

    And that requires there to be some specifics that can be considered.

    We have provided the specifics. You and yours just provide your usual lies and ignorant nonsense.

    Again, Dawkins’ weasel program is an example of evolution by means of intelligent design. It shows how fast such a process can achieve specific feats. That means only willfully ignorant fools would apply blind watchmaker mutation rates to a design scenario.

  16. 16
    bornagain77 says:
    November 29, 2021 at 1:31 pm

    CD, not only are you wrong about there not being any estimates younger than 180,000 years ago, mitochondrial DNA, in and of itself, and when looking at the ‘big picture’, is simply devastating to your Darwinian presuppositions.

    Specifically, comparing the mitochondrial DNA of 100,000 species revealed that “species have very clear genetic boundaries, and there’s nothing much in between.”,,,
    “If individuals are stars, then species are galaxies,”,,, “They are compact clusters in the vastness of empty sequence space.”

    Animals have two kinds of DNA.
    The one we are most familiar with, nuclear DNA, is passed down in most animals by male and female parents,,
    But all animals also have DNA in their mitochondria, which are the tiny structures inside each cell that convert energy from food into a form that cells can use.
    Mitochondria contain 37 genes, and one of them, known as COI, is used to do DNA barcoding.,,,
    In analysing the barcodes across 100,000 species,,,,
    And yet—another unexpected finding from the study—species have very clear genetic boundaries, and there’s nothing much in between.
    “If individuals are stars, then species are galaxies,” said Thaler. “They are compact clusters in the vastness of empty sequence space.”
    The absence of “in-between” species is something that also perplexed Darwin, he said.
    https://phys.org/news/2018-05-gene-survey-reveals-facets-evolution.html

    Why should mitochondria define species? – 2018
    Excerpt: The particular mitochondrial sequence that has become the most widely used, the 648 base pair (bp) segment of the gene encoding mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI),,,,
    The pattern of life seen in barcodes is a commensurable whole made from thousands of individual
    studies that together yield a generalization. The clustering of barcodes has two equally important features: 1) the variance within clusters is low, and 2) the sequence gap among clusters is empty, i.e., intermediates are not found.,,,
    Excerpt conclusion: , ,The simple hypothesis is that the same explanation offered for the sequence variation found among modern humans applies equally to the modern populations of essentially all other animal species. Namely that the extant population, no matter what its current size or similarity to fossils of any age, has expanded from mitochondrial uniformity within the past 200,000 years.,,,
    https://phe.rockefeller.edu/news/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/Stoeckle-Thaler-Final-reduced.pdf

    Thus ChuckyD, mitochondrial DNA is not nearly as friendly to your Darwinian presuppositions as you have, apparently, falsely imagined it to be. In fact, the reality of the situation is that mitochondrial DNA is, (to repeat myself), simply devastating to your Darwinian presuppositions.

    Of further note. This ‘anti-Darwinian’ finding is not something that just recently came along. But it is something that Darwinists have, basically, completely ignored for at least 35 years now. Specifically, the preceding study, in over the top fashion, confirmed what Michael Denton had found over 35 years ago in his book “Evolution: A Theory in Crisis”. Specifically, Michael Denton found, “However, the most striking feature of the matrix is that every identifiable subclass is isolated and distinct. Every sequence can be unambiguously assigned to a particular subclass. No sequence or group of sequences can be designated as intermediate with respect to other groups. All the sequences of each subclass are equally isolated from the members of another group. Transitional or intermediate classes are completely absent from the matrix. 4”

    Cytochrome C
    Excerpt: If the existence of cytochrome C in “higher forms” of animals is the result of evolution from a common ancestor, then one would expect to see a logical progression. That is, the cytochrome C of an invertebrate (like a worm) would be slightly different from a bacteria. A “primitive” vertebrate (like a fish) would have those same differences, plus a few more. As you progress along the presumed evolutionary path to amphibians, reptiles, mammals, primates, ending with humans, you should see the changes in cytochrome C accumulate.
    On the other hand, if cytochrome C is a commonly used component employed by a designer, you will not see that logical progression. You will just see minor differences which optimize cytochrome C for that kind of creature.,,,
    There is a way to distinguish evolution from design at the molecular level. Molecular biologist Michael Denton examined the molecular evidence in detail. He said,,,
    “,,,Where the fossils had failed and morphological considerations were at best only ambiguous, perhaps this new field of comparative biochemistry might at last provide objective evidence of sequence and of the connecting links which had been so long sought by evolutionary biologists.
    However, as more protein sequences began to accumulate during the 1960s, it became increasingly apparent that the molecules were not going to provide any evidence of sequential arrangements in nature, but were rather going to reaffirm the traditional view that the system of nature conforms fundamentally to a highly ordered hierarchic scheme from which all direct evidence for evolution is emphatically absent.”,,
    Dr. Denton then produced several tables and diagrams that show this. He showed, for example, that the cytochrome C in bacteria is 64% different from horses and pigeons, 65% different from tuna and silkmoths, 66% different from wheat, and 69% different from yeast. 2 He left it to the reader to realize that, according to evolutionary theory, one would expect the cytochrome C of a bacterium to be closer to the cytochrome C of a tuna (fish) than a horse (mammal). Furthermore, the horse should have the same mutations as the tuna, plus a few more. This is not what the molecular data shows.,,,
    Dr. Denton’s Figure 12.1, “The Cytochromes Percent Sequence Difference Matrix” 3, is an abridged version of the 1972 Dayhoff Atlas of Protein Structure and Function Matrix of nearly 1089 entries showing the percent difference between 33 species. Denton’s abridged matrix shows that molecular biologists can easily recognize which cytochrome C sample came from a fish and which came from a mammal.
    “However, the most striking feature of the matrix is that every identifiable subclass is isolated and distinct. Every sequence can be unambiguously assigned to a particular subclass. No sequence or group of sequences can be designated as intermediate with respect to other groups. All the sequences of each subclass are equally isolated from the members of another group. Transitional or intermediate classes are completely absent from the matrix. 4”
    If evolution were true, and creatures gradually evolved from one to another, there should be intermediate forms. Intermediate forms should be found in living creatures, in the fossil record, and in proteins. It should, in at least some cases, be hard to classify things because the boundaries are blurred. (But the boundaries are distinct as would be expected under the Design presupposition)
    http://scienceagainstevolution.info/v7i10f.htm

  17. 17
    JVL says:
    November 29, 2021 at 1:49 pm

    ET: The design is testable. The claims for design are testable.

    But your tests are always in reference to another paradigm. What internal to design hypothesis tests can we apply?

    ID makes specific claims. One being that blind and mindless processes are incapable of producing what we say was intelligently designed. And that is how it works in archaeology, forensic science and SETI.

    But those are negative claims; i.e. you’re asking your detractors to prove a negative. You’re asking your opponents to show or prove that something else could do it. And when they come up with plausible pathways you just say: but you don’t know that’s what happened.

    We have provided the specifics. You and yours just provide your usual lies and ignorant nonsense.

    In general ID has provided no specifics. You know this. In fact you’ve complained about being asked for when and where and how specifics.

    Face it, ID is not about specifics or particulars or details.

    Again, Dawkins’ weasel program is an example of evolution by means of intelligent design. It shows how fast such a process can achieve specific feats. That means only willfully ignorant fools would apply blind watchmaker mutation rates to a design scenario.

    Dr Dawkins was very, very clear about what his weasel program was illustrating. It’s easy to see.

    What you have consistently failed to show or provide or even guess is: when was design implemented, how was design implemented. ID isn’t really a scientific theory because it does not address the when and how let alone the why.

  18. 18
    bornagain77 says:
    November 29, 2021 at 2:00 pm

    JVL: “In general ID has provided no specifics.”

    Apparently said with no sense of the irony that is literally dripping off every word he wrote.

    Atheist and Darwinian Science and Story Telling, part 1 of 9
    Excerpt: (Darwinists) must deal with the fact that abiogenesis (abiotic synthesis) is not observed anywhere and is not producible in any experiments (and if it was it would be evidence of intelligent design).,,,
    What is their answer? They can imagine a time, long, long ago in the Earth’s past, when everything happened just so and abiogenesis was possible.
    What about filling the various gaps in our knowledge? They can imagine a time in the distant future when their beliefs will be proven true: in other words they think that eventually material causes will be discovered for all material effects including the universe itself.,,
    Herein lies the fallacies: they merely regress to an unknown past in which they can imagine thing occurring that do not occur today (what happened to uniformitarianism?) and they can project into an equally unknown future at which time we will discover that absolute materialism is true. Atheists of this sort appeal to inaccessible, unobserved, un-experimented upon, ideal and self-service concepts and replace evidence for imagination.
    As long as they can imagine it, it must be true: this appears to be what Richard Dawkins meant by being an intellectually fulfilled atheist.
    https://truefreethinker.com/atheist-and-darwinian-science-and-story-telling-part-1-of-9/

  19. 19
    JVL says:
    November 29, 2021 at 2:21 pm

    Bornagain77:

    You haven’t provided any specifics for IDs assertions regarding when and where design was implemented.

  20. 20
    bornagain77 says:
    November 29, 2021 at 2:43 pm

    JVL: “You haven’t provided any specifics for IDs assertions regarding when and where design was implemented.”

    Again, “Apparently said with no sense of the irony that is literally dripping off every word he wrote.”

    Pauli’s ideas on mind and matter in the context of contemporary science – Harald Atmanspacher
    Excerpt: “In discussions with biologists I met large difficulties when they apply the concept of ‘natural selection’ in a rather wide field, without being able to estimate the probability of the occurrence in a empirically given time of just those events, which have been important for the biological evolution. Treating the empirical time scale of the evolution theoretically as infinity they have then an easy game, apparently to avoid the concept of purposesiveness. While they 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.’”
    Wolfgang Pauli (pp. 27-28)
    https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/234f/4989e039089fed5ac47c7d1a19b656c602e2.pdf

  21. 21
    JVL says:
    November 29, 2021 at 2:47 pm

    Bornagain77:

    You still have not provided any specifics for when and where design was implemented. No matter what you think about other hypotheses ID has not come up with anything specific.

  22. 22
    Fasteddious says:
    November 29, 2021 at 3:17 pm

    ID is quite falsifiable:
    – show a credible pathway by which the flagella could evolve via Darwinian means
    – show a credible evolutionary sequence for whales that obeys population genetics
    – show any mechanism for how unguided Darwinian means can produce a truly novel protein
    – demonstrate a credible natural pathway for the origin of life – anywhere in the Universe
    – find a physical law or natural explanation for ALL of the fine tuning in the Universe.
    Evolutionists and atheists have been going at those (and others) for a long time, with negligible success so far. Hopeful claims of such falsifications have fallen far short upon close inspection. If even one of those could be truly shown, then ID would suffer a major blow – i.e. be falsified. Meanwhile, Darwinism has been roundly falsified in numerous different ways, but true believers ignore the evidence or cling to thin or negligible possibilities to shore up their beliefs.

  23. 23
    bornagain77 says:
    November 29, 2021 at 3:55 pm

    JVL, when it comes to being ‘specific’, wants to take the focus off his Darwinian theory. I don’t blame him. When it comes to being ‘specific’, Darwinian evolution, via its primary postulate of randomness, is the very antithesis of being ‘specific’. In fact, as Murray Eden of MIT pointed out decades ago, it is the randomness postulate, in and of itself, that prevents Darwinian evolution from ever being a true scientific theory in the first place.

    ‘Specifically’, Professor Murray Eden of MIT, in a paper entitled “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory” stated that “the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.”

    “It is our contention that if ‘random’ is given a serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.”
    Murray Eden, “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory,” Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, editors Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan, June 1967, p. 109.
    https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~christos/evol/compevol_files/Wistar-Eden-1.pdf

    And to reiterate Pauli:’s critique of Darwinists “they (Darwinists) 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.’”

    Pauli’s ideas on mind and matter in the context of contemporary science – Harald Atmanspacher
    Excerpt: “In discussions with biologists I met large difficulties when they apply the concept of ‘natural selection’ in a rather wide field, without being able to estimate the probability of the occurrence in a empirically given time of just those events, which have been important for the biological evolution. Treating the empirical time scale of the evolution theoretically as infinity they have then an easy game, apparently to avoid the concept of purposesiveness. While they 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.’”
    Wolfgang Pauli (pp. 27-28)
    https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/234f/4989e039089fed5ac47c7d1a19b656c602e2.pdf

  24. 24
    JVL says:
    November 29, 2021 at 4:54 pm

    Fastedious:

    Again you are saying: you can disprove ID by proving unguided evolution. The reason that will not work is because some ID proponents will only say: yeah but you don’t know for sure that’s what happened. As they have done over and over and over again.

    So, how can ID be falsified sheerly on its own criteria? Nothing to do with any other hypothesis or theory?

  25. 25
    JVL says:
    November 29, 2021 at 4:59 pm

    Bornagain77:

    Not that I agree with Dr Eden but I do note that a) he is only talking about the part of unguided evolutionary theory that creates the genetic variation that natural selection and other forces act on and b) he is not saying that unguided evolutionary theory is incorrect, just that he thinks it needs clarifying.

    Also, his work was published in 1967, do you think the field might have moved on since then?

  26. 26
    ET says:
    November 29, 2021 at 5:15 pm

    JVL:

    Again you are saying: you can disprove ID by proving unguided evolution. The reason that will not work is because some ID proponents will only say: yeah but you don’t know for sure that’s what happened. As they have done over and over and over again.

    Your ignorance of science is still not an argument. And your blatant lies are also duly noted.

    1- that is exactly how it works.

    2- No one has ever provided any support for unguided evolution’s ability to produce life, the genetic code, or any biologically relevant, functional multi-protein complex. That is why the evos lied and bluffed their way through the Dover trial. It is all documented.

    So, how can ID be falsified sheerly on its own criteria? Nothing to do with any other hypothesis or theory?

    Again, your ignorance of science is not an argument. We follow Newton’s four rules of scientific investigation. We don’t even reach a design inference if some stochastic process(es) suffices. The explanatory filter mandates that you follow Newton’s four rules.

    All you are doing is proving that you are ignorant of science. Yet I am sure that you think you have some sort of “gotcha” moment.

  27. 27
    ET says:
    November 29, 2021 at 5:26 pm

    JVL:

    But your tests are always in reference to another paradigm. What internal to design hypothesis tests can we apply?

    The tests are always in reference to our knowledge of cause-and-effect relationships in accordance with Newton’s four rules of scientific reasoning.

    But those are negative claims; i.e. you’re asking your detractors to prove a negative. You’re asking your opponents to show or prove that something else could do it. And when they come up with plausible pathways you just say: but you don’t know that’s what happened.

    Wow. Shear stupidity. By asking YOU to demonstrate a POSITIVE- that blind and mindless processes CAN do it- is not asking you to prove a negative. Are you on dope?

    And AGAIN, you take liberty with the word “plausible”. If it cannot be demonstrated in a lab you cannot say that it is “plausible”. Just cuz someone can imagine something and declare something, doesn’t mean it’s plausible. Grow up.

    In general ID has provided no specifics.

    Liar. ID has provided plenty of specifics relevant to ID. You are just a willfully ignorant troll who thinks that ID needs to something that is outside of ID.

    In fact you’ve complained about being asked for when and where and how specifics.

    Those don’t have anything to do with ID. You lose.

    Dr Dawkins was very, very clear about what his weasel program was illustrating. It’s easy to see.

    Again, you FAILED to respond to what I posted. What is wrong with you?

    ID isn’t really a scientific theory because it does not address the when and how let alone the why.

    You, being a scientifically illiterate troll, don’t get to say. Your position is all about the how and yet can’t say any specifics. Nice own goal.

    ID is NOT about the how or the when. In fact, we don’t even ask about the how and when until AFTER intelligent design has been detected. So thanks again for proving that you are just a willfully ignorant troll as this has been explained to you over and over again.

    Now you should understand why UD bans you.

  28. 28
    ET says:
    November 29, 2021 at 5:32 pm

    1) High information content (or specified complexity) and irreducible complexity constitute strong indicators or hallmarks of (past) intelligent design.
    2) Biological systems have a high information content (or specified complexity) and utilize subsystems that manifest irreducible complexity.
    3) Naturalistic mechanisms or undirected causes do not suffice to explain the origin of information (specified complexity) or irreducible complexity.
    4) Therefore, intelligent design constitutes the best explanations for the origin of information and irreducible complexity in biological systems.

  29. 29
    bornagain77 says:
    November 29, 2021 at 6:56 pm

    at 25 JVL asks, “Also, his (Murray Eden’s) work was published in 1967, do you think the field might have moved on since then?”

    Yes, and the ‘random chance/miracle’ problem, (as Pauli elucidated), has only gotten far worse for Darwinists since Murray Eden first published his work in 1967.

    Specifically, we now know, (via ‘the waiting time problem’ in population genetics, and via empirical evidence itself), that Natural Selection is grossly inadequate as the supposed ‘designer substitute’ that Darwinists falsely imagined it to be.

    The waiting time problem in a model hominin population – 2015 Sep 17
    John Sanford, Wesley Brewer, Franzine Smith, and John Baumgardner
    Excerpt: The program Mendel’s Accountant realistically simulates the mutation/selection process,,,
    Given optimal settings, what is the longest nucleotide string that can arise within a reasonable waiting time within a hominin population of 10,000? Arguably, the waiting time for the fixation of a “string-of-one” is by itself problematic (Table 2). 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. This is especially problematic when we consider that it is estimated that it only took six million years for the chimp and human genomes to diverge by over 5 % [1]. This represents at least 75 million nucleotide changes in the human lineage, many of which must encode new information.
    While fixing one point mutation is problematic, our simulations show that the fixation of two co-dependent mutations is extremely problematic – requiring at least 84 million years (Table 2). This is ten-fold longer than the estimated time required for ape-to-man evolution. In this light, we suggest that a string of two specific mutations is a reasonable upper limit, in terms of the longest string length that is likely to evolve within a hominin population (at least in a way that is either timely or meaningful). 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.
    It is widely thought that a larger population size can eliminate the waiting time problem. If that were true, then the waiting time problem would only be meaningful within small populations. While our simulations show that larger populations do help reduce waiting time, we see that the benefit of larger population size produces rapidly diminishing returns (Table 4 and Fig. 4). When we increase the hominin population from 10,000 to 1 million (our current upper limit for these types of experiments), the waiting time for creating a string of five is only reduced from two billion to 482 million years.
    http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm.....MC4573302/

    With Natural Selection, (Charles Darwin’s main claim to scientific fame I might add), being cast under the bus, Darwinists did not accept this as an outright falsification of their theory as they should have done, but Darwinists are instead now, via ‘neutral theory’, reduced to arguing that chance alone, all by its lonesome, (with natural selection playing a very negligible role if any role at all), is responsible for the ‘appearance of design’ we see pervasively throughout life.

    As Larry Moran quotes in the following article, “Darwinism asserts that natural selection is the driving force of evolutionary change. It is the claim of the neutral theory, on the other hand, that the majority of evolutionary change is due to chance.”

    Austin Hughes and Neutral Theory – Laurence A. Moran – June 19, 2017
    Excerpt: Originally proposed by Motoo Kimura, Jack King, and Thomas Jukes, the neutral theory of molecular evolution is inherently non-Darwinian. Darwinism asserts that natural selection is the driving force of evolutionary change. It is the claim of the neutral theory, on the other hand, that the majority of evolutionary change is due to chance.
    http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2.....heory.html

    To call such a move on the part of Darwinists ‘scientifically disingenuous’ would be a severe understatement. It is, in fact, to be criminally blind to what the evidence is actually telling you.

    Even Richard Dawkins himself finds the claim that chance alone, all by its lonesome, can explain the ‘design’ we overwhelmingly see in biology to be absolutely inconceivable.

    Specifically, In the following video Richard Dawkins himself states that it “cannot come about by chance. It’s absolutely inconceivable that you could get anything as complicated or well designed as a modern bird or a human or a hedgehog coming about by chance.’

    4:30 minute mark: “It cannot come about by chance. It’s absolutely inconceivable that you could get anything as complicated or well designed as a modern bird or a human or a hedgehog coming about by chance. That’s absolutely out.,,, It’s out of the question.,,,
    So where (does the appearance of design)) it come from? The process of gradual evolution by natural selection.”
    Richard Dawkins – From a Frog to a Prince – video
    https://youtu.be/ClleN8ysimg?t=267

    Yet, with Natural Selection being cast under the bus by the mathematics of population genetics, chance, all by it lonesome, is, for all practical purposes, all that Darwinists have left to appeal to in order to try to explain “anything as complicated or well designed as a modern bird or a human or a hedgehog”.

    Yet, as Pauli explained, the way Darwinists use the ‘chance’, (which is “more or less synonymous with the old word ‘miracle”), the Darwinist’s appeal to chance is, in fact, no better than Darwinists appealing to ‘random miracles’ as an explanatory principle.

    As David Berlinski quipped about the falsification of Natural Selection, and with the subsequent Darwinian adoption of ‘neutral theory’ in its place, “By this standard, if the Archangel Gabriel were to accept personal responsibility for the Cambrian explosion, his views would be widely described as neo-Darwinian.”

    “The publication in 1983 of Motoo Kimura’s The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution consolidated ideas that Kimura had introduced in the late 1960s. On the molecular level, evolution is entirely stochastic, and if it proceeds at all, it proceeds by drift along a leaves-and-current model. Kimura’s theories left the emergence of complex biological structures an enigma, but they played an important role in the local economy of belief. They allowed biologists to affirm that they welcomed responsible criticism. “A critique of neo-Darwinism,” the Dutch biologist Gert Korthof boasted, “can be incorporated into neo-Darwinism if there is evidence and a good theory, which contributes to the progress of science.”
    By this standard, if the Archangel Gabriel were to accept personal responsibility for the Cambrian explosion, his views would be widely described as neo-Darwinian.”
    – David Berlinski

    As should be needless to say, if your scientific theory relies on ‘random miracles’, (Pauli), as the primary explanatory principle in the theory, then you don’t have a scientific theory.

    As Stephen Talbott quipped, “at the very least, we have a right to ask, “Can you be a little more explicit here?””

    Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness – Talbott – Fall 2011
    Excerpt: The situation calls to mind a widely circulated cartoon by Sidney Harris, which shows two scientists in front of a blackboard on which a body of theory has been traced out with the usual tangle of symbols, arrows, equations, and so on. But there’s a gap in the reasoning at one point, filled by the words, “Then a miracle occurs.” And the one scientist is saying to the other, “I think you should be more explicit here in step two.”
    In the case of evolution, I picture Dennett and Dawkins filling the blackboard with their vivid descriptions of living, highly regulated, coordinated, integrated, and intensely meaningful biological processes, and then inserting a small, mysterious gap in the middle, along with the words, “Here something random occurs.”
    This “something random” looks every bit as wishful as the appeal to a miracle. It is the central miracle in a gospel of meaninglessness, a “Randomness of the gaps,” demanding an extraordinarily blind faith. At the very least, we have a right to ask, “Can you be a little more explicit here?”
    http://www.thenewatlantis.com/.....randomness

    Of supplemental note:

    * In other words, the materialist is forced to believe in random miracles as an explanatory principle.
    * In a Theistic universe, nothing happens without a reason. Miracles are therefore intelligently directed deviations from divinely maintained regularities, and are thus expressions of rational purpose.
    * Scientific materialism is (therefore) epistemically self defeating: it makes scientific rationality impossible.
    – Dr. Bruce Gordon

  30. 30
    chuckdarwin says:
    November 30, 2021 at 9:37 am

    #14 Zweston

    CD, while you are here… if someone challenged your deism…what would you say to them to affirm your belief?

    Deism is not so much a “belief” as it is a logical conclusion–the universe began and evolved (along with life), thus one can conclude the existence of an entity which created it. Deism is minimalist in that the universe, the laws of nature, and all requisite components for life resulted from one, discreet creative act. No additional tinkering needed…

  31. 31
    zweston says:
    November 30, 2021 at 3:13 pm

    CD, I appreciate you responding to my question! Thank you!!

  32. 32
    jerry says:
    November 30, 2021 at 3:45 pm

    ChuckDarwin is a theistic evolutionist.

  33. 33
    zweston says:
    November 30, 2021 at 5:30 pm

    Deistic Evolutionist*

  34. 34
    bornagain77 says:
    November 30, 2021 at 6:01 pm

    Chuckdarwin claims: “Deism is minimalist in that the universe, the laws of nature, and all requisite components for life resulted from one, discreet creative act. No additional tinkering needed”

    Yet, the Deistic belief that the universe was ‘front-loaded’ by God with the information necessary to explain life, and that God then, basically, ‘walked away’ from the universe to let the universe ‘unwind’ to its own accord has now been shown to be a false belief by quantum mechanics.

    Specifically, the Kochen-Specker theorem, (as well as the falsification of ‘realism’ by Leggett’s inequality), undermines the determinism of atheistic materialists, (and/or of Deists), in the most fundamental way possible in that “it would not even be possible to place the information into the universe’s past in an ad hoc way”,

    The free will theorem of John H. Conway and Simon B. Kochen,,,
    Excerpt: Since the free will theorem applies to any arbitrary physical theory consistent with the axioms, it would not even be possible to place the information into the universe’s past in an ad hoc way. The argument proceeds from the Kochen-Specker theorem, which shows that the result of any individual measurement of spin was not fixed (pre-determined) independently of the choice of measurements.
    http://www.informationphilosop.....eorem.html

    In short, advances in quantum mechanics now show us that not only did God originally create the universe, but that God also actively sustains the universe in its continual existence. Which is a far cry from ChuckyD’s Deistic belief that God created the universe and let it unfold to its own accord.

    Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory – 29 October 2012
    Excerpt: “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,”
    http://www.quantumlah.org/high.....uences.php

    And here are a few more notes that falsify ChuckyD’s Deistic belief in deterministic ‘front loading’

    The Front-loading Fiction – Dr. Robert Sheldon – 2009
    Excerpt: Historically, the argument for front-loading came from Laplacian determinism based on a Newtonian or mechanical universe–if one could control all the initial conditions, then the outcome was predetermined. First quantum mechanics, and then chaos-theory has basically destroyed it, since no amount of precision can control the outcome far in the future. (The exponential nature of the precision required to predetermine the outcome exceeds the information storage of the medium.),,, Even should God have infinite knowledge of the outcome of such a biological algorithm, the information regarding its outcome cannot be contained within the system itself.
    http://procrustes.blogtownhall.....tion.thtml

    How well can information be stored from the beginning to the end of time? – Jan. 13, 2015
    Excerpt: Information can never be stored perfectly. Whether on a CD, a hard disk drive, or a piece of papyrus, technological imperfections create noise that limits the preservation of information over time. But even if you had a perfect storage medium with zero imperfections, there would still be fundamental limits placed on information storage due to the laws of physics that govern the evolution of the universe ever since the Big Bang.,,,
    To do this, they modelled information transmission over a “channel” that is essentially spacetime itself, described by the Robertson-Walker metric. Their model combines the theories of general relativity and quantum information by considering the quantum state of matter (specifically, spin-1/2 particles) as the universe expands. In this model, the evolution of the universe creates noise which, in the context of quantum communication, acts like an amplitude damping channel.
    The physicists’ main result is that, the faster the universe expands, the less well the information can be preserved.,,,
    So to answer the original question of how much information can be stored from the beginning to the end of time, the results suggest “not very much.”
    http://phys.org/news/2015-01-h.....on-be.html

    Conservation of information, evolution, etc – Sept. 30, 2014
    Excerpt: Kurt Gödel’s logical objection to Darwinian evolution:
    “The formation in geological time of the human body by the laws of physics (or any other laws of similar nature), starting from a random distribution of elementary particles and the field is as unlikely as the separation of the atmosphere into its components. The complexity of the living things has to be present within the material [from which they are derived] or in the laws [governing their formation].”
    Gödel – As quoted in H. Wang. “On `computabilism’ and physicalism: Some Problems.” in Nature’s Imagination, J. Cornwall, Ed, pp.161-189, Oxford University Press (1995).
    Gödel’s argument is that if evolution is unfolding from an initial state by mathematical laws of physics, it cannot generate any information not inherent from the start – and in his view, neither the primaeval environment nor the laws are information-rich enough.,,,
    More recently this led him (Dembski) to postulate a Law of Conservation of Information, or actually to consolidate the idea, first put forward by Nobel-prizewinner Peter Medawar in the 1980s. Medawar had shown, as others before him, that in mathematical and computational operations, no new information can be created, but new findings are always implicit in the original starting points – laws and axioms.,,,
    http://potiphar.jongarvey.co.u.....ution-etc/

    Evolutionary Computing: The Invisible Hand of Intelligence – June 17, 2015
    Excerpt: William Dembski and Robert Marks have shown that no evolutionary algorithm is superior to blind search — unless information is added from an intelligent cause,,,
    Any internally generated information is conserved or degraded by the law of Conservation of Information.,,,
    What Marks and Dembski (mathematically) prove is as scientifically valid and relevant as Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem in mathematics. You can’t prove a system of mathematics from within the system, and you can’t derive an information-rich pattern from within the pattern.,,,
    http://www.evolutionnews.org/2.....96931.html

    At about the 41:00 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Wells, (who specializes in embryology), using a branch of mathematics called category theory, demonstrates that, during embryological development, and as cells ‘transdifferentiate’, information must somehow be added to the developing embryo, ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method.

    Design Beyond DNA: A Conversation with Dr. Jonathan Wells – video (41:00 minute mark) – January 2017
    https://youtu.be/ASAaANVBoiE?t=2484

    And just how much information is coming into a developing embryo ‘from the outside’, by some ‘non-material’ method”?

    Well, the following video states that “There are 10^28 atoms in the human body.,, The amount of data contained in the whole human,, is 3.02 x 10^32 gigabytes of information. Using a high bandwidth transfer, that data would take about 4.5 x 10^18 years to teleport 1 time. That is 350,000 times the age of the universe.”

    “There are 10^28 atoms in the human body.,, The amount of data contained in the whole human,, is 3.02 x 10^32 gigabytes of information. Using a high bandwidth transfer that data would take about 4.5 x 10^18 years to teleport 1 time. That is 350,000 times the age of the universe.”
    Will (Quantum) Teleportation Ever Be Possible? – video – 2013
    https://youtu.be/yfePpMTbFYY?t=76

    Verse:

    Psalm 139:13
    For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.

  35. 35
    chuckdarwin says:
    December 1, 2021 at 8:56 am

    Bornagain

    And here are a few more notes that falsify ChuckyD’s Deistic belief in deterministic ‘front loading’. (my emphasis)

    This is the crux of Bornagain’s objection to deism, that it is deterministic. However, in order to do this, Bornaagain must curiously conflate atheism and deism:

    Specifically, the Kochen-Specker theorem, (as well as the falsification of ‘realism’ by Leggett’s inequality), undermines the determinism of atheistic materialists, (and/or of Deists),… (my emphasis)

    Deism does not compel any outcome, unlike Christianity which compels every outcome. Deism simply provides the bats and balls, the ball field and the rules–the outcome of the game is up in the air until the last out.
    One final note. Apropos Bornagain’s treatise on quantum mechanics as proof against deism, I am reminded of the great physicist and ever pithy Richard Feynman: “I think I can safely say that nobody really understands quantum mechanics.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3ZRLllWgHI

  36. 36
    bornagain77 says:
    December 1, 2021 at 10:20 am

    So ChuckyD holds that life was fore-ordained by God at the Big Bang “from one, discreet creative act”, yet ChuckyD, on the other hand, holds that “the outcome of the game (of life?) is up in the air until the last out.”

    And welcome to the world of atheistic/deistic apologetics, where rigid logic is more of an inconvenience to be ignored, than a rule that must be followed in order for your arguments to even make sense.

    As I clearly pointed out, and as ChuckyD blatantly ignored, the information necessary to explain life cannot be ‘front-loaded’ into the space-time of the universe: (see post 34)

    I wonder, besides denying that God had a direct hand in creating life, does ChuckyD also deny the existence of his own immaterial mind? It would seem to follow his reasoning from Deism. If he does deny the reality of his immaterial mind, especially the reality of his free will, then that denial renders ChuckyD’s capacity to reason in a coherent fashion null and void.:

    “There is something ironic about the position of thinkers like Harris on issues like this: they claim that their position is the result of the irresistible necessity of logic (in fact, they pride themselves on their logic). Their belief is the consequent, in a ground/consequent relation between their evidence and their conclusion. But their very stated position is that any mental state — including their position on this issue — is the effect of a physical, not logical cause.
    By their own logic, it isn’t logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order.”
    – Martin Cothran

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