Here: And from the excerpt:
My own interest in what scientific discoveries show about the possible existence of God germinated over thirty years ago when I attended an unusual conference. At the time, I was working as a geophysicist doing seismic digital signal processing for an oil company in Dallas, Texas. In February 1985, I learned of a Harvard historian of science and astrophysicist, Owen Gingerich, who was coming to town to talk about the unexpected convergence between modern cosmology and the biblical account of creation as well as the theistic implications of the big bang theory. I attended the talk on a Friday evening and found that Gingerich had come to Dallas mainly to speak to a much larger conference the next day featuring leading theistic and atheistic scientists. They would be discussing three big questions at the intersection of science and philosophy: the origin of the universe, the origin of life, and the origin and nature of human consciousness.
Fascinated, I attended the Saturday conference at the Dallas Hilton. The organizers had assembled a world-class lineup of scientists and philosophers representing two great but divergent systems of thought. I was not surprised to hear outspoken atheists or scientific materialists explaining why they doubted the existence of God. What shocked me was the persuasive talks by other leading scientists who thought that recent discoveries in their own fields had decidedly theistic implications.
Here’s the site: The Return of the God Hypothesis
Steve Meyer is also the author of Darwin’s Doubt.
Hat tip: Philip Cunningham
Since Atheists have no real scientific evidence to support their belief in Darwinian evolution, or to support their belief that the universe spontaneously arose, ‘elite’ atheistic scientists are stuck with fallacious philosophical arguments against God that, upon close inspection, fall apart.
Two of these fallacious philosophical arguments against God, that Atheists are dependent on, are the ‘God of the gaps argument’, and the ‘argument from evil’.
Although Theists are often accused by atheists of making ‘God of the Gaps’ style arguments, the fact of the matter is that, as science has progressed, the shoe is squarely on the other foot and it is the Atheist himself who has had to retreat further and further into ‘Materialism/Naturalism of Gaps’ style arguments. i.e. into “Science will figure a materialistic answer out to that mystery someday” style argument.
To clearly illustrate the ‘materialism of the gaps’ style argument that the Atheistic Materialist is now forced to make, the materialistic and Theistic philosophy make, and have made, several contradictory predictions about what type of scientific evidence we will find.
These contradictory predictions, and the evidence that we now have found by our modern science, can be tested against one another to see if either Atheistic materialism or Theism is true.
Here is a brief list of the contradictory predictions of each philosophy compared to the scientific evidence that we have now found.
And here are my (recent) defenses of all 16 claims from an atheist’s counter claims,
Thus the Atheist’s ‘God of the gaps’ argument fails in a rather dramatic fashion. As John Lennox remarked, “God is not a “God of the gaps”, he is God of the whole show.”
Likewise, besides the ‘God of the gaps’ argument turning out to be a fallacious argument for the atheist, the argument from evil also collapses in on itself.
Specifically, in order for the ‘argument from evil’ to work for the atheist, the atheist is forced to presuppose the existence of objective morality. Yet the Atheist’s materialistic worldview denies the existence of objective morality. As Richard Dawkins succinctly put it, Atheistic material entails, “no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”
Yet, by the Atheist declaring that some things are inherently evil in and of themselves, (and that God (supposedly) would not allow such evil things to happen), then, in his ‘argument from evil’, the atheist is necessarily conceding that there is an objective moral standard for him to judge by.
As Dr. Egnor noted, “Even to raise the problem of evil is to tacitly acknowledge transcendent standards, and thus to acknowledge God’s existence. From that starting point, theodicy begins. Theists have explored it profoundly. Atheists lack the standing even to ask the question.,,,”
Thus, like his ‘God of the gaps’ argument, the atheist’s ‘argument from evil’ also collapses in on itself and is also found to be a fallacious philosophical argument for the atheist.
And there is one more fallacious philosophical argument that atheists have used that I would also like to touch on.
The other day I took issue with David Hume’s ‘stealing’ of the laws of nature from the Christian founders of modern science who, via their Christian presuppositions, first discovered the laws of nature.
David Hume, without warrant, argued that laws of nature should be considered completely ‘natural’, instead of being considered ‘miraculous’ as the Christian founders of modern science had originally presupposed.
Yet, as I went on to point out in the preceding post, David Hume, nor any other atheist, has any right to presuppose that the laws of nature are completely natural.
Atheistic materialists simply have no clue why there should even be laws of nature in the first place. Much less why there should be laws of nature that are exquisitely fine-tuned for life.
Atheistic Materialists ultimately seek to explain everything, i.e. the origin of the universe, and all life in it, via ‘bottom-up’ materialistic processes. Yet the laws of nature tell the material particles what to do. The material particles do not ever tell the laws of nature how to be. The relationship is purely a one way street type of relationship
Atheists, via the bottom up materialistic explanations, will simply never be able to give an adequate scientific explanation for why the laws of nature exist.
As the old joke goes, ‘you can’t get there from here’.
Moreover, this obvious and common sense fact has now been born out with the extension of Godel’s incompleteness theorem into physics.
Specifically, is now proven that “even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,,” and that “the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.”,
Thus, contrary to what David Hume assumed back in the 1700s, atheists simply have no right to presuppose that the laws of nature are completely ‘natural’ with no need of God to explain their existence.
Hume is hardly the only atheist that has falsely presupposed that the laws of nature are completely natural. Richard Lewontin stated that, “To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.”
Yet, like their other philosophical arguments, we find that this criticism is much more aptly directed towards the Atheist’s own worldview, not towards Theism.
Specifically, as Dr. Bruce Gordon pointed out in the following article, in regards to explaining the origin of the universe, (and the origin of the laws that govern the universe), “Anything else, (besides Theism), invokes random miracles as an explanatory principle and spells the end of scientific rationality.,,”
And if brains spontaneously popping into existence, i.e, ‘Boltzmann brain”, does not entail for the Atheist’s worldview “that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen” then nothing ever will. 🙂
In short, and as Dr. Gordon goes on to more fully explain in the following video, in trying to explain the origin of this universe, “the materialist is forced to believe in random miracles as an explanatory principle.”
Thus once again, like the ‘God of the gaps’ argument, and the ‘argument from evil’, we find that the atheist’s argument against God, via the regularities of the laws of nature, also collapses in on itself.
It is only within Theism that we can have complete confidence that the laws of nature will not be ‘ruptured’ and that ‘random’ and inexplicable miracles may happen. As Dr. Gordon explained, in the Theist’s worldview, “Miracles are therefore intelligently directed deviations from divinely maintained regularities, and are thus expressions of rational purpose.”
In short, and as far as I can tell, the atheist can muster no rationally coherent argument against God that is able to withstand even a modest amount of scrutiny.
Seversky has just said Darwin and his ideas are passé amongst current scientists. So maybe we should just claim a win here and go on to examining what they are supposedly proposing today.
Aside: how does one get the discount on the video course? I preordered the Kindle version. But see nothing about discount for course.
Bornagain77/1
Nothing wrong with some good copypasta, is there?
If something exists then, since you cannot get something from nothing, something must always have existed.
The current age of the universe is estimated to be around 13.8 bn years. The Big Bang theory is the most widely-accepted theory of the origins of our Universe although there appears to be data which are calling it into question.
Neither theism nor deism alone predict only the Christian creator God. There are many theistic and deistic faiths that incorporate creation/origins stories.
Some Christian scholars have estimated the Universe to be just a few thousand years old based on passages from the Bible. That differs hugely from the current scientific estimate.
Theism covers a number of faiths and denominations. Not all of them hold that God is sustaining the entire universe from second-to-second.
Non-locality in quantum mechanics (a nat/mat theory) does not necessarily imply that the universe is dependent on something outside itself for continued existence. It is one possible interpretation but it may also be that they are evidence of an additional dimension to physical reality, something we do not observe in our everyday experience yet still part of the natural order.
It also implies that our everyday perceptions are but a partial representation of what is actually out there.
Consciousness is not observed to exist apart from a physical substrate. A living brain exhibits consciousness, a dead brain does not. The signs of consciousness that were once exhibited by a dead brain have so far proven to be unrecoverable in all cases.
Researchers are still arguing over how to understand the “observer effect” in quantum physics. It certainly doesn’t support the simplistic notion that consciousness is what holds reality together.
It doesn’t answer the obvious question which is that, if nothing exists until it is being observed, what is being observed in the first place?
It also doesn’t answer the next question which is why we all apparently observe the same thing when we look. If there are an infinite number of possible observations then when one person sees a red car why doesn’t another person see a brown cow?
Both Newtonian mechanics and relativity are nat/mat theories.
None of the theistic faiths that I’m aware of make specific predictions about the rate at which time passes.
Psalm 90:4 – “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.” refers to God’s perception of time.
2 Timothy 1:9 – “Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began,” concerns salvation not time.
And neither make any prediction concerning the speed of light.
Observations and calculations have shown that, if certain fundamental physical (nat/mat) constants varied from their observed values by even a small amount, the universe in which we live could not exist. That does not necessarily mean this Universe was designed specifically for us.
We live in a thin film of atmosphere on the surface of a planet that is only partially shielded against threats from outside. Even within that shielding there are many things that are dangerous or lethal for human life. Outside that protection the vast majority of this universe is unremittingly hostile to organic life such as ourselves. It is a huge and unwarranted leap of faith from those observations to the absurd conclusion that this entire universe was created just for us.
Nat/mat estimates concerning the prevalence of life in the universe vary considerably. Our planet could be unique, not just “extremely unique” (is that like being ‘a bit pregnant’) in the sense that there is no other exactly like it that we know of.
On the other hand, astronomers are finding plentiful evidence of planets around nearby stars so it’s certainly possible that there are other planets similar to Earth which bear life.
Any theistic prediction that the Earth is unique as a home for life is in serious danger of being proved wrong.
Nat/mat observations find evidence of life stretching far into deep time, tailing off billions of years ago and completely at odds with a special creation event 6000 years back.
One creation story – that of Christianity – refers to life appearing after water. Unfortunately, it also refers to day and night existing before light was created – just one of a number of inconsistencies in the faith.
The simplest life found on earth so far is not necessarily the earliest life ever to appear on Earth. Its relative complexity does not contradict the hypothesis that much simpler forms existed earlier or support a claim that they were necessarily created by a god.
The nat/mat theory of evolution predicted that the “unfolding” of life would proceed in small, incremental steps but allowed that the rate at which it could happen could vary considerably. The 13-25 mn year Cambrian Explosion (a rather slow “explosion”) was a period when it happened a lot more rapidly but there is evidence of life preceding it. It was not the original creation event described in Genesis.
Nat/mat theory holds that fossilization is a very rare event but even so transitional fossils have already been found.
Theism makes no predictions whatsoever about the existence let alone the frequency of fossils, transitional or otherwise, in the geological record.
It is estimated that new species are being discovered by science at the rate of 15000 – 20000 per year. The rate of speciation can vary hugely, new species of large animals taking hundreds of thousands of years to appear while new bacteria or viruses can emerge in just a few years. One study cataloged some 1400 human pathogens of which 87 were characterized as “novel” (now including COVID-19). If evolution occurs, there is no reason to think it has stopped now.
Imago dei is a Christian not just a theistic concept and its meaning is conveniently vague. Does it mean that God is a bipedal humanoid with a head, two arms, two legs, genitals, etc? Does it mean we resemble Him psychologically so He is also capable of rage, jealousy, vindictiveness? That, at least, would be consistent with some of His behavior as described in the Bible.
“Information” appears to have become the modern-day equivalent of the “luminiferous aether”. Treating it as some fundamental ‘stuff’ of which everything else is made is a misconception which commits the fallacy of reification or misplaced concreteness.
Nat/mat still predicts that much of our DNA is ‘junk’. How else do you explain that the humble onion has a much larger genome than that of human beings? The ENCODE researchers were heavily criticized for overstating their case and using a far too elastic understanding of “function”.
Theism said nothing at all about the existence of DNA, let alone how much of it night be ‘junk’
More mutations are going to be detrimental rather than beneficial if for no other reason than that there are many more ways for something to go wrong than to go right.
With the advent of neutral theory, the majority of mutations are held to be neutral or nearly so, a much smaller number are detrimental and a much smaller number still are positively beneficial. But whether a mutation is detrimental or beneficial depends on the environmental circumstances in which it occurs. Furthermore, detrimental mutations will tend to be the ones filtered out by evolution leaving the beneficial to proliferate.
As noted before, theism made no predictions whatsoever concerning the existence of DNA, let alone the relative frequencies of neutral, detrimental or beneficial mutations.
Nat/mat argues that there is no way to get from ‘is’ to ‘ought’, no way to derive moral prescriptions from our observations of material reality. So they can only be subjective, and that includes any that come from a deity.
Theistic faiths simply argue that the morality dispensed by their chosen deity overrides all others. That doesn’t make it objective, just an illegitimate attempt to stake out a claim to the moral high ground.
The claim that morality is somehow embedded in our genes or in the fabric of the universe is an entirely unsubstantiated claim.
As noted above, quantum theory is a nat/mat theory. It just deals with nat/mat reality on the very smallest scales. It lends no support to the concept of a transcendent soul which at best is poorly-defined and at worst is incoherent.
Furthermore, in his The Life of Samuel Johnson James Boswell recounts the following episode:
The reality is that, if you kick a stone hard now, it will hurt your foot just as much as it did in Johnson’s day. Quantum theory has not changed that one jot. What has changed profoundly is our understanding of the nature of matter right down to the quantum scale. And quantum theory and the phenomena it describes do not appear in any theology. It is entirely a product of naturalistic science. If we had relied on religion to guide us in these matters we would still be entirely ignorant about the quantum domain.
You do not know this If you are talking about material existence.
But something had to always exist. Just what always existed? Existence is the greatest mystery of all.
I have never seen any conflict between religion and science. There are mysteries in both of them though.
They are two different areas of knowledge. If there are several religions, then they cannot all be right. Just as if there are several hypothesis for a physical phenomenon they cannot all be correct. Maybe they all are incorrect.
Seversky, if you would have bothered to actually read my post, instead of just rushing to copy and paste what you wrote the other day, you would have noticed that I linked to a site where I addressed all your counter claims that you had made the other day in some detail.
The link takes you to this
And there’s more …
How else would you describe the laws of nature other than as “natural”?
And what right does the theist have to presuppose they are anything else?
Neither does the theist. Maybe they just invented their god to fill a pretty big gap?
Unless theists can provide better evidence for their God then the laws of nature are just “natural”.
In Christianity, God exists for no reason at all.
In other words, the theist offers God as an explanatory principle in spite of having no idea how or why He breaches natural law to create miracles.
In a theistic Universe, God is without a reason,
Presupposing an omnipotent god who can upend the natural order on a whim would make the scientific enterprise impossible as well as being epistemically self-defeating. Atheistic materialism is the only rational and historically productive approach.
In short, and as far as I can tell, the theist can muster no rationally coherent argument for God that is able to withstand even a modest amount of scrutiny.
Jerry/2
Only in the sense that the theory of evolution has moved on since Darwin’s original work. Natural selection still plays a role in evolution but perhaps no longer the leading role.
Seversky at 8,
I will gladly let unbiased readers judge for themselves who is being fair to the evidence and who is just uttering nonsense.
Where has it moved to? The modern synthesis was just Darwin’s ideas updated and was popular a short time ago. So what replaced the modern synthesis?
Sounds like BS to me. There is nothing there.
The perfect analogy is the Visa Check card commercial.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11EwyJ5fcBI
Jerry states “The perfect analogy is the Visa Check card commercial.”
🙂 ,,, Ha, Ha, Ha,, 🙂
Thanks for making my day a little brighter.
Meyer, after keeping us in suspense for over a decade since publication of “Signature in the Cell,” is now prepared to reveal that God is the intelligent designer. What a shocker….
Bornagain77/10
Fine by me.
Jerry/11
From somebody who knows more about the subject than either of us:
Seversky wrote:
In order to properly hold the belief that the laws of nature are natural, then a bottom-up explanation for the laws from the level of matter, let’s say fermions, must at least be conceivable. However, if an X-amount of fermions would give rise to law A, then an Y-amount of fermions would give rise to law B, and so on. In other words, if the laws of nature arise from matter, then there are countless ever-changing laws.
But this is not what we find.
Paul Davies: “Physical processes, however violent or complex, are thought to have absolutely no effect on the laws. There is thus a curious asymmetry: physical processes depend on laws but the laws do not depend on physical processes. Although this statement cannot be proved, it is widely accepted.”
From what you selected it appears certain that the author of your post left out the only mechanism that can explain the fact of evolution. Guess what that mechanism is? All of the other mechanisms mentioned only explain small changes in evolution. Actually the quote from Wikipedia I posted explains more than your author has and it’s still BS. So combining the two do we get BS squared?
You are endorsing ID with this post and so is the author of your piece.
Seversky: the theist offers God as an explanatory principle in spite of having no idea how or why He breaches natural law to create miracles.
Why? Maybe “he” wants to tweak the system to go in a certain direction sometimes after the initial conditions have been set up. How? What difference would that make, but one obvious path would be thru quantum superposition reduction. Although I imagine “God” would not be limited to that.
If I made a virtual reality with interesting things going on, I may want to tweak the state of information sometimes (which would constitute “miracles” in the system) to effect a desired outcome.
Even lowly human engineers do that sort of thing when using genetic algorithms to get efficient designs: set up some rules, let the system run, then override occasionally to guide the effects in a certain direction after the algorithms have run for a while. We call those “heuristics.” It’s fun. And can be profitable.
Of related note:
Bornagain77: And thus, that makes Intelligent Design just as scientifically valid as any other scientific theory is that is based solely on a law of nature.
IF there was an intelligent designer around at . . . what time was it again? Who is capable of doing . . . what was it again? And not leaving any detected trash or machinery or living quarters or tools. Oh, by the way, would this be a tinkerer intelligent designer who continues to tweak things without leaving behind any other trace of their existence? Or would it be one that did their thing (whatever it was, whenever it was) and then skeddadled back to ID world wherever that is.
Why don’t we discuss the when bit first? You’ve all had lots of time to ‘study the design’ by now; what conclusions can you draw about when design was implemented? ET seems to think that biological systems on earth were designed to evolve which could mean that design was implemented many moons ago and then left which does help explain the lack of other evidence an intelligent designer was present. But Dr Behe seems to think that the invisible hand of the invisible designer is still active on occasion. So, which best explains the data and evidence? Is there some experiment that could be done to determine if we’re talking about a front-loaded system or one that’s getting upgrades once in a while?
JVL asks, “IF there was an intelligent designer around at . . . what time was it again?”
If JVL would have bothered to click on, read, and actually comprehend, the link I posted, he would have realized that the ‘Exactly when,,,” question that he poses is far more problematic for Darwin’s theory than it is for Intelligent Design.
That is to say, Darwinists have no clue when anything will ever happen within their theory, Whereas, in ID we know that information will be created when an Intelligence wills it, whenever that might be.
To clip from my link,,, As Wolfgang Pauli noted, “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.’”
Thus JVL, it looks like you are, very much, suffering from the ‘pot calling the kettle black’ syndrome. ,,, Even more so, since you don’t even have any empirical evidence that unguided material processes are ever capable of producing immaterial information. i.e. You, as a Darwinist, are trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat, and you don’t even have a hat to pull it out of. 🙂
Here the response I have given to these stupid remarks over the years. The first time was 12 years ago.
———–
The following is a reply I have made more than once to this ridiculous question starting with another ridiculous question by a frequent anti ID commenter here at UD
Answer: All the time from my experience. It is just when there is no credible naturalistic process that it looks for other alternatives. Stephen Meyer goes over dozens of possible naturalistic explanations in his books.
A: Yes, but before one gets to what caused, one has to consider what could have caused and then eliminate the improbable ones. Which is exactly the process ID uses.
I answered the silliness of the question about the designer with sarcasm over 11 years ago.
Some of the original commenters here will recognize who Mark is. Maybe he reappears here occasionally under a different name.
https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/from-barren-planet-to-civilization-in-four-easy-steps/#comment-666216
Bornagain77: If JVL would have bothered to click on, read, and actually comprehend, the link I posted, he would have realized that the ‘Exactly when,,,” question that he poses is far more problematic for Darwin’s theory than it is for Intelligent Design.
My point is that ID proponents are adamantly against even trying to suggest a time when design was implemented. You may disagree with the current consensus of evolutionary theory (and, let’s be honest, the dates do change sometimes) but at least evolutionary biologists offer and opinion as to when. You don’t. Why is that?
That is to say, Darwinists have no clue when anything will ever happen within their theory, Whereas, in ID we know that information will be created when an Intelligence wills it, whenever that might be.
Why don’t you have some idea of when that happened? Why aren’t you even trying to suggest times? Is ID science or not?
Thus JVL, it looks like you are, very much, suffering from the ‘pot calling the kettle black’ syndrome. ,,, Even more so, since you don’t even have any empirical evidence that unguided material processes are ever capable of producing immaterial information. i.e. You, as a Darwinist, are trying to pull a rabbit out of a hat, and you don’t even have a hat to pull it out of. ?
No designer means no design. Propose to me a sensible suggestion of a designer that was around . . . when exactly? Who did what exactly? And I’ll have another think about what you propose. At the moment it’s hard to even know what you are supporting. Design happened . . . sometime, we’re not sure when.
Jerry: Answer: All the time from my experience. It is just when there is no credible naturalistic process that it looks for other alternatives. Stephen Meyer goes over dozens of possible naturalistic explanations in his books.
So, you think the ‘designer’ is tweaking the system frequently? Can you give us an example of a moment when you think design was definitely imposed?
Otherwise, you seem very good at dodging some basic questions. Why is that?
Most of the comments here are at best superficial. This is an example of one. This comment is anything but serious.
I have made thousands of content full comments over the years. I don’t dodge anything serious. I have been extremely consistent. That is anything but dodging.
Creation of humans.
JVL, I hold God, specifically Jesus, to be the author of life.
Isn’t it interesting that the Bible ‘predicted’ that life had an author two thousand years before the information in DNA was even discovered?
Shoot, Darwinists tried to deny that information was even in DNA for decades after it was discovered.,,, I myself, right here on UD, debated Darwinists who tried to deny that information was even in DNA.
But, on the other hand, lest you be accused of blatant hypocrisy, can you tell me exactly when unguided Darwinian processes will ever be capable of producing information? ANY information?
To repeat Pauli,
Again, your criticism as to when information might be created is much more aptly directed towards your own Darwinian worldview than it is towards intelligent Design. We know for fact that intelligent minds are capable of creating information whenever they so desire. Whereas nobody has EVER witnessed unguided material processes creating immaterial information. EVER!
So again JVL, exactly when did unguided material processes create immaterial information? And exactly what were these unguided material processes that created immaterial information? Please be explicit in your answer.
Jerry: Creation of humans.
So, how did that happen? Did a couple of precursors sit around waiting for a child who turned out to be a human or was it a slow, step-by-step process with the designer guiding mutations and changes over thousands (or maybe millions) of years, directing the progress towards the ultimate goal?
Bornagain77: JVL, I hold God, specifically Jesus, to be the author of life.
Okay!!
But, on the other hand, lest you be accused of blatant hypocrisy, can you tell me exactly when unguided Darwinian processes will ever be capable of producing information? ANY information?
Gosh, I think it already has.
Again, your criticism as to when information might be created is much more aptly directed towards your own Darwinian worldview than it is towards intelligent Design. We know for fact that intelligent minds are capable of creating information whenever they so desire. Whereas nobody has EVER witnessed unguided material processes creating ingformation.
I think the data is clear, especially since I see no credible evidence of a designer around at . . . what time was it? Who did what exactly?
So again, JVL, exactly when did unguided material processes create immaterial information? And exactly what were these unguided material processes that created immaterial information? Please be explicit in your answer.
I think Dr Dawkins book The Ancestor’s Tale is an excellent introduction to this topic. I’d start with that.
Whatever JVL, I’m not going to play games with you. I’ll let unbiased readers judge for themselves who is being fair with the evidence and who is not.
The process by which the first human appeared is unknown except that it was probably sudden. There is such a wide expanse separating humans from anything else that it could not have happened gradually or else there would be a forensic trail of hundreds or thousands of intermediaries around at various stages of the process.
Since there aren’t, the likelihood that it was unique and sudden is most likely.
I suggest those interested read Stephen Meyers’s books.
Bornagain77: Whatever JVL, I’m not going to play games with you. I’ll let unbiased readers judge for themselves who is being fair with the evidence and who is not.
Fine. But there is something I’d love to hear your opinion on:
Science is about understanding reality and answering questions about reality that we don’t know the answers for. So . . . from an ID perspective . . . what unanswered questions would you be interested in having answered? What ways could your questions be explored and examined? What experiments could be done?
Jerry: The process by which the first human appeared is unknown except that it was probably sudden. There is such a wide expanse separating humans from anything else that it could not have happened gradually or else there would be a forensic trail of hundreds or thousands of intermediaries around at various stages of the process.
Since there aren’t, the likelihood that it was unique and sudden is most likely.
Okay, so the designer figured out that Earth was at the right point for the emergence of humans . . . you’d need a viable breeding population so it would have to be a lot more than two individuals . . . what about this . . . just a suppose . . .
The designer thought: Okay, we’re good now. Let’s release the humans. So they trigger a change/modification in several (maybe a lot of) unborn foetuses so that they all are born as Homo Sapiens? And they’d all have to be in the same tribe/area so that they could create a viable population . . . OR . . .
Maybe most pre-human pregnancies, all over the planet, were tweaked to create humans? What do you think?
Is there some way to check these ideas? Are these hypothesis falsifiable?
How far can the designer go in any given step? Why weren’t humans brought forward a few million years before?
What questions do you have?
Don’t have any.
Jerry: Don’t have any.
Nothing? You understand how everything happened? Or: you don’t care how it all happened?
I find that reaction very strange for someone who is pro-science and clearly has an analytic mind. There’s so much we don’t know, surely there’s something in the ID realm you’d like to have cleared up.
Just received my Kindle copy of Meyer’s new book.
I also purchased the course that goes with it for $27 and so far it is just a rehash of what is commonly known here.
I am uncomfortable with the claim that ID is a theory which Meyer is pushing. I believe it is much more than that. It is a set of conclusions based on reason and evidence. And nearly all if not all of the evidence is supplied by science.
Is ID what Kf (actually Cicero) would call an example of right reasoning?
Jerry: Just received my Kindle copy of Meyer’s new book. I also purchased the course that goes with it for $27 and so far it is just a rehash of what is commonly known here.
Welcome to the world of ID. The Discovery Institute is very good at getting the faithful to spend money on the same old stuff. Perhaps next time you’ll wait ’til you read a review?