Heresy Against the Church of Darwin Must be Stamped Out!

_{Barry Arrington

March 12, 2013

Intelligent Design}

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Tomás de Torquemada (1420 – 1498) was the first Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition. Steven Pinker has appointed himself as the Grand Inquisitor of the Church of Saint Charles the Bearded.

As reported in these pages (see here and here), atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel’s book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False has caused quite a stir. The New Republic reports that Pinker has taken to cyberspace to stir up the Darwinist mob against Nagel. Every whiff of heresy against the true faith must be ruthlessly stamped out. Torquemada had his Auto-da-fé. Pinker has his Twitter account.

Irony alert. We can be certain that Pinker is horrified by and wholly condemns Torquemada’s efforts to persecute and silence perceived heretics from the Christian faith. Yet he does not hesitate to strike at the slightest whiff of heresy against his secular faith.

Comments

Eric Anderson: Just curious, is this idea that the material cannot become conscious applicable to human beings as intelligent agents, or only to the First Mover/deity/God? It must be a universal law. Otherwise we would need one or more laws within it to account for all the exceptions, laws within laws. Too complicated, in my opinion. There is a much better argument than complexity for believing in the impossibility of materialism to account for consciousness. In other words, does the arrangement of our parts of our physical beings produce consciousness or does our consciousness exist separate and apart from, and perhaps more long term, than our bodies? It pays to take a deeper look at the issues. Even if we do not know exactly what consciousness is, we can still understand a few of its fundamental principles. For example, we can know that consciousness requires two things: a subject and an object, i.e., a knower and a known. The two are complementary opposites by definition. In humans, we can conjecture that certain brain states are the known. Consciousness is something else altogether. Right away, we can see an insurmountable problem with this duality: By definition, the knower cannot be known and the known cannot know. We are forever forbidden to know the knower directly. We can only known what is known. However, since the two are opposites, knowing one is knowing the other. We can know everything about the consciousness just by figuring out the nature of the known. If this sounds convoluted, don't worry about it. It's not all that important. If the latter, is then our consciousness something that was not created by God — did it exist and will it continue to exist separately from the creation of our bodies? Or was it created by God, and if so, out of what? The way I see it, there are two realms, the physical and the spiritual. The first can be created or destroyed and can change. The the second, by contrast, can neither be created nor destroyed and neither can it change. The first realm consists of physical matter and the second consists of all kinds of spirits or consciousnesses. How do I know this? I know because we have already established that consciousness requires a duality. If something as fundamental as consciousness requires a duality, everything else does. So, to return to the first question, am I saying that God must have a physical body? Absolutely. And the same is true for all conscious entities. Of course, it does not have to be made of any known particle but there can be no doubt about its physical nature. Are animals conscious? I seriously doubt it. Our future robots will appear much more conscious than animals, to the point of fooling many, but it will be an illusion nonetheless.Mapou_{March 12, 2013
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As to this verse I quoted:
Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
It is interesting to note:
Schematic illustration - experimental setup that found the human body, especially the face, emits visible light in small quantities that vary during the day. B is one fo the test subjects. The other images show the weak emissions of visible light during totally dark conditions. The chart corresponds to the images and shows how the emissions varied during the day. The last image (I) is an infrared image of the subject showing heat emissions. http://i.livescience.com/images/i/000/006/481/original/090722-body-glow-02.jpg?1296086873 Article http://www.livescience.com/7799-strange-humans-glow-visible-light.html Exodus 34:29-30: "Moses didn't realize as he came back down the mountain with the tablets that his face glowed from being in the presence of God. Because of this radiance upon his face, Aaron and the people of Israel were afraid to come near him." Shroud of Turin - The Historical Trail 2004: Another result of the restoration was the discovery of the Shroud's double face image. Italian scientists, Giulio Fanti and Roberto Maggiolio of Padova University were able to analyze scans of the backside of the Shroud after it was removed from the backing cloth. This had never been done before. The previous backing cloth had been attached since 1534 as part of the restoration following the fire of 1532. Examining the scans revealed faint superficial images of the face and hands. The image occurs only on the top surface of the fibers, similar to the front side of the Shroud but there is no coloring of the threads in between. http://shroud2000.com/FastFacts.html Matthew 17:1-2 After six days Jesus took with him Peter, James and John the brother of James, and led them up a high mountain by themselves. There he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became as white as the light.
Notes:
Cellular Communication through Light Excerpt: Information transfer is a life principle. On a cellular level we generally assume that molecules are carriers of information, yet there is evidence for non-molecular information transfer due to endogenous coherent light. This light is ultra-weak, is emitted by many organisms, including humans and is conventionally described as biophoton emission. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0005086 Are humans really beings of light? Excerpt: "We now know, today, that man is essentially a being of light.",,, "There are about 100,000 chemical reactions happening in every cell each second. The chemical reaction can only happen if the molecule which is reacting is excited by a photon... Once the photon has excited a reaction it returns to the field and is available for more reactions... We are swimming in an ocean of light." http://viewzone2.com/dna.html Scientists say Turin Shroud is supernatural - December 2011 Excerpt: After years of work trying to replicate the colouring on the shroud, a similar image has been created by the scientists. However, they only managed the effect by scorching equivalent linen material with high-intensity ultra violet lasers, undermining the arguments of other research, they say, which claims the Turin Shroud is a medieval hoax. Such technology, say researchers from the National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development (Enea), was far beyond the capability of medieval forgers, whom most experts have credited with making the famous relic. "The results show that a short and intense burst of UV directional radiation can colour a linen cloth so as to reproduce many of the peculiar characteristics of the body image on the Shroud of Turin," they said. And in case there was any doubt about the preternatural degree of energy needed to make such distinct marks, the Enea report spells it out: "This degree of power cannot be reproduced by any normal UV source built to date." http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/scientists-say-turin-shroud-is-supernatural-6279512.html
Music:
Empty (Empty Cross Empty Tomb) with Dan Haseltine Matt Hammitt (Music Inspired by The Story) http://www.godtube.com/watch/?v=F22MCCNU
bornagain77_{March 12, 2013
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Or was it created by God, and if so, out of what?
What did God have available at the time to make individuated consciousness out of? What did god have available to make anything out of? Unless something other than god existed, there was only one "thing" at hand. Which would account for god being "omniscient" and "omnipresent".William J Murray_{March 12, 2013
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Eric, it is probably worthwhile to note that the 'light at the end of the tunnel', reported in many Near Death Experiences(NDEs), is also corroborated by Special Relativity when considering the optical effects for traveling at the speed of light. Please compare the similarity of the optical effect, noted at the 3:22 minute mark of the following video, when the 3-Dimensional world ‘folds and collapses’ into a tunnel shape around the direction of travel as a 'hypothetical' observer moves towards the ‘higher dimension’ of the speed of light, with the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ reported in very many Near Death Experiences: (Of note: This following video was made by two Australian University Physics Professors with a supercomputer.)
Approaching The Speed Of Light - Optical Effects - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5733303/
As well 'eternity' is corroborated by special relativity:
Albert Einstein - Special Relativity - Insight Into Eternity - 'thought experiment' video http://www.metacafe.com/w/6545941/ "The laws of relativity have changed timeless existence from a theological claim to a physical reality. Light, you see, is outside of time, a fact of nature proven in thousands of experiments at hundreds of universities. I don’t pretend to know how tomorrow can exist simultaneously with today and yesterday. But at the speed of light they actually and rigorously do. Time does not pass." Richard Swenson - More Than Meets The Eye, Chpt. 12 'In the 'spirit world,,, instantly, there was no sense of time. See, everything on earth is related to time. You got up this morning, you are going to go to bed tonight. Something is new, it will get old. Something is born, it's going to die. Everything on the physical plane is relative to time, but everything in the spiritual plane is relative to eternity. Instantly I was in total consciousness and awareness of eternity, and you and I as we live in this earth cannot even comprehend it, because everything that we have here is filled within the veil of the temporal life. In the spirit life that is more real than anything else and it is awesome. Eternity as a concept is awesome. There is no such thing as time. I knew that whatever happened was going to go on and on.' Mickey Robinson - Near Death Experience testimony 'When you die, you enter eternity. It feels like you were always there, and you will always be there. You realize that existence on Earth is only just a brief instant.' Dr. Ken Ring - has extensively studied Near Death Experiences 'Earthly time has no meaning in the spirit realm. There is no concept of before or after. Everything - past, present, future - exists simultaneously.' - Kimberly Clark Sharp - NDE Experiencer
Note
The 'Top Down' Theistic Structure Of The Universe and Of The Human Body Excerpt: i.e. Hypothetically traveling at the speed of light in this universe would be, because of time dilation, instantaneous travel for the person going at the speed of light. This is because time does not pass for them at the speed of light, yet, and this is a very big ‘yet’ to take note of, this ‘timeless’ travel is still not instantaneous and transcendent of our temporal framework of time as quantum teleportation and entanglement are, i.e. Speed of light travel, to our temporal frame of reference of time, is still not completely transcendent of our temporal time framework since light appears to take time to travel from our temporal perspective. Yet, in quantum teleportation of information, the ‘time not passing’, i.e. ‘eternal’, framework is not only achieved in the speed of light framework/dimension, but is also ‘instantaneously’ achieved in our lower temporal framework. That is to say, the instantaneous teleportation/travel of quantum information is instantaneous to both the temporal and speed of light frameworks, not just the speed of light framework. Information teleportation/travel is not limited by time, nor space, in any way, shape or form, in any frame of reference, as light is seemingly limited to us in this temporal framework. Thus ‘pure transcendent information’ (in quantum teleportaion experiments) is shown to be timeless (eternal) and completely transcendent of all material frameworks. Moreover, concluding from all lines of evidence we now have (many of which I have not specifically listed here); transcendent, eternal, infinite information is indeed real and the framework in which ‘It’ resides is the primary reality (highest dimension) that can exist, (in so far as our limited perception of a primary reality, highest dimension, can be discerned). https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NhA4hiQnYiyCTiqG5GelcSJjy69e1DT3OHpqlx6rACs/edit
Verse, quote, and music:
John 3:12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." William Shakespeare - Hamlet Breathe - Michael W. Smith http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-0EgzOWkvc
bornagain77_{March 12, 2013
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I recently saw on youtube this Mr Pinker. First he had this thing about Jews being not only superior in intelligence but that this was from genetics. A superior race. This from obscure Jewish peasants from Europe coming to a english civilization. He's even from my country! If Montreal is Canadian!! Then i saw a few other things about his ideas on brains and language etc Leaving aside the racial stuff the whole thing about this person is endless speculation on how things work but not evidence or testing to prove things so. Having him comment on evolution is only a gain for creationists. This guy is a joke and I don't usually say thius about the bad guys. His hair however might be case for evolution by mutations if you ever saw him. This gentleman he's attacking by the way is part of a constant stream of evolutionists , JUMPING SHIP, from a sinking boat! Its as if everyone smells something wrong with old man Darwin! I predict this will increase. Maybe Mr Pinker will soon join. Who needs him!!Robert Byers_{March 12, 2013
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Eric:
Genesis 2:7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.
This following video interview of a Harvard Neurosurgeon, who had a Near Death Experience (NDE), is very interesting. His NDE was rather unique from typical NDEs in that he had completely lost brain wave function for 7 days while the rest of his body was on life support. As such he had what can be termed a ‘pure consciousness’ NDE that was dramatically different from the ‘typical’ Judeo-Christian NDEs of going through a tunnel to a higher heavenly dimension, seeing departed relatives, and having a life review. His NDE featured his ‘consciousness’ going outside the confines of space/time, matter/energy altogether to experience ‘non-locally’ what he termed ‘the Core’, i.e to experience God. It is also interesting to note that he retained a ‘finite sense of self-identity’, as Theism would hold, and did not blend into the infinite consciousness/omniscience of God, as pantheism would hold.
A Conversation with Near Death Experiencer Neurosurgeon Eben Alexander III, M.D. with Steve Paulson (Interviewer) - video http://www.btci.org/bioethics/2012/videos2012/vid3.html A neurosurgeon confronts the non-material nature of consciousness - December 2011 Excerpted quote: To me one thing that has emerged from my experience and from very rigorous analysis of that experience over several years, talking it over with others that I respect in neuroscience, and really trying to come up with an answer, is that consciousness outside of the brain is a fact. It’s an established fact. And of course, that was a hard place for me to get, coming from being a card-toting reductive materialist over decades. It was very difficult to get to knowing that consciousness, that there’s a soul of us that is not dependent on the brain. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/he-said-it-a-neurosurgeon-confronts-the-non-material-nature-of-consciousness/
Here is a 'typical' NDE where the consciousness remains with the soul:
Near Death Experience – The Tunnel, The Light, The Life Review – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4200200/ “I was in a body, and the only way that I can describe it was a body of energy, or of light. And this body had a form. It had a head, it had arms and it had legs. And it was like it was made out of light. And it was everything that was me. All of my memories, my consciousness, everything.”,,, “And then this vehicle formed itself around me. Vehicle is the only thing, or tube, or something, but it was a mode of transportation that’s for sure! And it formed around me. And there was no one in it with me. I was in it alone. But I knew there were other people ahead of me and behind me. What they were doing I don’t know, but there were people ahead of me and people behind me, but I was alone in my particular conveyance. And I could see out of it. And it went at a tremendously, horrifically, rapid rate of speed. But it wasn’t unpleasant. It was beautiful in fact. I was reclining in this thing, I wasn’t sitting straight up, but I wasn’t lying down either. I was sitting back. And it was just so fast. I can’t even begin to tell you where it went or whatever it was just fast!" – Vicki’s NDE – Blind since birth - quote taken from first part of the following video Near Death Experience Tunnel - Speed Of Light - Turin Shroud - video http://www.vimeo.com/18371644
As well, the brain has a very unique type of non-local quantum entanglement (being more 'spread out') that is markedly different than the rest of the body, thus giving a Dr. Eben Alexander's 'pure consciousness' NDE a completely viable mechanism as to explaining its difference from 'typical' NDE's of consciousness staying with the soul:
Quantum Entangled Consciousness (Permanence of Quantum Information)- Life After Death - Stuart Hameroff - video https://vimeo.com/39982578 “Wolf Singer Director of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research (Frankfurt) has found evidence of simultaneous oscillations in separate areas of the cortex, accurately synchronized in phase as well as frequency. He suggests that the oscillations are synchronized from some common source, but the actual source has never been located.” James J. Hurtak, Ph.D. Brain ‘entanglement’ could explain memories - January 2010 Excerpt: In both cases, the researchers noticed that the voltage of the electrical signal in groups of neurons separated by up to 10 millimetres sometimes rose and fell with exactly the same rhythm. These patterns of activity, dubbed “coherence potentials”, often started in one set of neurons, only to be mimicked or “cloned” by others milliseconds later. They were also much more complicated than the simple phase-locked oscillations and always matched each other in amplitude as well as in frequency. (Perfect clones) “The precision with which these new sites pick up on the activity of the initiating group is quite astounding – they are perfect clones,” says Plen https://uncommondescent.com/mind/mind-quantum-mechanics-provides-clues-to-human-thinking/comment-page-1/#comment-399098
Whereas 'normal' quantum entanglement for the rest of the body/soul is much 'tighter' than the quantum entanglement in the brain:
Quantum entanglement between the electron clouds of nucleic acids in DNA - Elisabeth Rieper, Janet Anders and Vlatko Vedral - February 2011 http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1006/1006.4053v2.pdf Coherent Intrachain energy migration at room temperature - Elisabetta Collini and Gregory Scholes - University of Toronto - Science, 323, (2009), pp. 369-73 Excerpt: The authors conducted an experiment to observe quantum coherence dynamics in relation to energy transfer. The experiment, conducted at room temperature, examined chain conformations, such as those found in the proteins of living cells. Neighbouring molecules along the backbone of a protein chain were seen to have coherent energy transfer. Where this happens quantum decoherence (the underlying tendency to loss of coherence due to interaction with the environment) is able to be resisted, and the evolution of the system remains entangled as a single quantum state. http://www.scimednet.org/quantum-coherence-living-cells-and-protein/
Footnote:
Heaven Is Real: A Doctor’s Experience With the Afterlife - Dr. Eben Alexander - Oct 8, 2012 Excerpt: One of the few places I didn’t have trouble getting my story across was a place I’d seen fairly little of before my experience: church. The first time I entered a church after my coma, I saw everything with fresh eyes. The colors of the stained-glass windows recalled the luminous beauty of the landscapes I’d seen in the world above. The deep bass notes of the organ reminded me of how thoughts and emotions in that world are like waves that move through you. And, most important, a painting of Jesus breaking bread with his disciples evoked the message that lay at the very heart of my journey: that we are loved and accepted unconditionally by a God even more grand and unfathomably glorious than the one I’d learned of as a child in Sunday school. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2012/10/07/proof-of-heaven-a-doctor-s-experience-with-the-
bornagain77_{March 12, 2013
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Serious question for BA77 and anyone else interested: BA77 said @41:
Yet despite the fact that Pinker has ZERO scientific evidence that material can become conscious, there are many lines of evidence that consciousness precedes, and effects, material.
Just curious, is this idea that the material cannot become conscious applicable to human beings as intelligent agents, or only to the First Mover/deity/God? In other words, does the arrangement of our parts of our physical beings produce consciousness or does our consciousness exist separate and apart from, and perhaps more long term, than our bodies? If the latter, is then our consciousness something that was not created by God -- did it exist and will it continue to exist separately from the creation of our bodies? Or was it created by God, and if so, out of what?Eric Anderson_{March 12, 2013
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In re: Eric Anderson @ 39 OK, that's a bit helpful -- thank you. I had only the first and second senses in mind -- the third sense is not, in my view, a proper part of evolutionary theory, since materialism is a metaphysical view. While there are materialists who are enthusiastic supporters of evolutionary theory -- Dawkins being the most notorious -- I see materialism as a separate issue. I think that evolutionary theory is in much better shape than design theory, but I'm neither a materialist nor a theist. In fact, I think that something like Nagel's "natural teleology" is closer to the truth. But I also think he made some mistakes in his book, and Leiter and Weisberg were right to call him out on them. I also think that Nagel would have been on firmer ground if he'd realized that Schelling and Peirce got there long before he did -- but, like most analytic philosophers of his generation, he probably doesn't think that anything written before he started grad school is worth reading.Kantian Naturalist_{March 12, 2013
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It's funny that Pinker would rail against Nagel so hard since Pinker agrees with Plantinga's basic premise that evolution cannot account for our ability to perceive truth:
Scientific Peer Review is in Trouble: From Medical Science to Darwinism - Mike Keas - October 10, 2012 Excerpt: Survival is all that matters on evolutionary naturalism. Our evolving brains are more likely to give us useful fictions that promote survival rather than the truth about reality. Thus evolutionary naturalism undermines all rationality (including confidence in science itself). Renown philosopher Alvin Plantinga has argued against naturalism in this way (summary of that argument is linked on the site:). Or, if your short on time and patience to grasp Plantinga's nuanced argument, see if you can digest this thought from evolutionary cognitive psychologist Steve Pinker, who baldly states: "Our brains are shaped for fitness, not for truth; sometimes the truth is adaptive, sometimes it is not." Steven Pinker, evolutionary cognitive psychologist, How the Mind Works (W.W. Norton, 1997), p. 305. http://blogs.christianpost.com/science-and-faith/scientific-peer-review-is-in-trouble-from-medical-science-to-darwinism-12421/
i.e. if Pinker, as he himself has acknowledged, cannot be certain that he can know the truth for certain (if he even grants that there is a 'truth' to be known for certain) why does he pretend that his perception of any truth that there may be is better than Nagel's perception?,, Pinker is not the only evolutionary psychologist to note this problem for Darwinism:
Evolutionists Are Now Saying Their Thinking is Flawed (But Evolution is Still a Fact) - Cornelius Hunter - May 2012 Excerpt: But the point here is that these “researchers” are making an assertion (human reasoning evolved and is flawed) which undermines their very argument. If human reasoning evolved and is flawed, then how can we know that evolution is a fact, much less any particular details of said evolutionary process that they think they understand via their “research”? http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2012/05/evolutionists-are-now-saying-their.html
The following interview is sadly comical as a evolutionary psychologist realizes that neo-Darwinism can offer no guarantee that our faculties of reasoning will correspond to the truth, not even for the truth that he is purporting to give in the interview, (which begs the question of how was he able to come to that particular truthful realization, in the first place, if neo-Darwinian evolution were actually true?);
Evolutionary guru: Don't believe everything you think - October 2011 Interviewer: You could be deceiving yourself about that.(?) Evolutionary Psychologist: Absolutely. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128335.300-evolutionary-guru-dont-believe-everything-you-think.html
Compared to the outlandish claim of Pinker is defending, that matter can become 'conscious',,,
Darwinian Psychologist David Barash Admits the Seeming Insolubility of Science's "Hardest Problem" Excerpt: 'But the hard problem of consciousness is so hard that I can't even imagine what kind of empirical findings would satisfactorily solve it. In fact, I don't even know what kind of discovery would get us to first base, not to mention a home run.' David Barash - Materialist/Atheist Darwinian Psychologist Neuroscientist: “The Most Seamless Illusions Ever Created” - April 2012 Excerpt: We have so much confidence in our materialist assumptions (which are assumptions, not facts) that something like free will is denied in principle. Maybe it doesn’t exist, but I don’t really know that. Either way, it doesn’t matter because if free will and consciousness are just an illusion, they are the most seamless illusions ever created. Film maker James Cameron wishes he had special effects that good. Matthew D. Lieberman - neuroscientist - materialist - UCLA professor David Chalmers on Consciousness ('Zombie' argument for consciousness) - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NK1Yo6VbRoo
,, Nagel's claim is fairly mild:
Nagel Asks, Is the World Really Knowable? - Joshua Youngkin - October 26, 2012 Excerpt: science even at its best could never offer a complete picture of the world. That is, science as science will necessarily lack the vocabulary to capture and express the myriad private worlds of subjective, conscious experience. To take Nagel's famous example, science could tell you everything you want to know about bats except what it is like to be a bat, to "see" via echolocation. Similarly, brain scientists could in principle learn every objective fact about your brain and how it works yet they wouldn't by virtue of this knowledge know what sugar tastes like to you. In the final chapter of the book, Nagel sums the matter up this way: "In attempting to understand consciousness as a biological phenomenon, it is too easy to forget how radical is the difference between the subjective and the objective, and to fall into the error of thinking about the mental in terms taken from our ideas of physical events and processes." http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/10/nagel_asks_is_t065761.html
And indeed the fact that we are conscious is the most sure thing we can know about ourselves. In fact, there is a very strong tradition in philosophy that holds that the most concrete thing that you can know about reality is the fact that you are indeed conscious:
"Descartes remarks that he can continue to doubt whether he has a body; after all, he only believes he has a body as a result of his perceptual experiences, and so the demon could be deceiving him about this. But he cannot doubt that he has a mind, i.e. that he thinks. So he knows he exists even though he doesn’t know whether or not he has a body." http://cw.routledge.com/textbooks/philosophy/downloads/a2/unit4/descartes/DescartesDualism.pdf "Descartes said 'I think, therefore I am.' My bet is that God replied, 'I am, therefore think.'" Art Battson - Access Research Group
And it is fairly strange to note how Decartes' old argument has now been played out in modern cosmology:
BRUCE GORDON: Hawking's irrational arguments - October 2010 Excerpt: What is worse, multiplying without limit the opportunities for any event to happen in the context of a multiverse - where it is alleged that anything can spontaneously jump into existence without cause - produces a situation in which no absurdity is beyond the pale. For instance, we find multiverse cosmologists debating the "Boltzmann Brain" problem: In the most "reasonable" models for a multiverse, it is immeasurably more likely that our consciousness is associated with a brain that has spontaneously fluctuated into existence in the quantum vacuum than it is that we have parents and exist in an orderly universe with a 13.7 billion-year history. This is absurd. The multiverse hypothesis is therefore falsified because it renders false what we know to be true about ourselves. Clearly, embracing the multiverse idea entails a nihilistic irrationality that destroys the very possibility of science. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/1/hawking-irrational-arguments/
Yet despite the fact that Pinker has ZERO scientific evidence that material can become conscious, there are many lines of evidence that consciousness precedes, and effects, material. The following recent experiment is perhaps the most unambiguous as to communicating that fact: Here’s a recent variation of Wheeler’s Delayed Choice experiment, which highlights the ability of the conscious observer to effect 'spooky action into the past', thus further solidifying consciousness's centrality in reality. Furthermore in the following experiment, the claim that past material states determine future conscious choices (determinism) is falsified by the fact that present conscious choices effect past material states:
Quantum physics mimics spooky action into the past - April 23, 2012 Excerpt: The authors experimentally realized a "Gedankenexperiment" called "delayed-choice entanglement swapping", formulated by Asher Peres in the year 2000. Two pairs of entangled photons are produced, and one photon from each pair is sent to a party called Victor. Of the two remaining photons, one photon is sent to the party Alice and one is sent to the party Bob. Victor can now choose between two kinds of measurements. If he decides to measure his two photons in a way such that they are forced to be in an entangled state, then also Alice's and Bob's photon pair becomes entangled. If Victor chooses to measure his particles individually, Alice's and Bob's photon pair ends up in a separable state. Modern quantum optics technology allowed the team to delay Victor's choice and measurement with respect to the measurements which Alice and Bob perform on their photons. "We found that whether Alice's and Bob's photons are entangled and show quantum correlations or are separable and show classical correlations can be decided after they have been measured", explains Xiao-song Ma, lead author of the study. According to the famous words of Albert Einstein, the effects of quantum entanglement appear as "spooky action at a distance". The recent experiment has gone one remarkable step further. "Within a naïve classical world view, quantum mechanics can even mimic an influence of future actions on past events", says Anton Zeilinger. http://phys.org/news/2012-04-quantum-physics-mimics-spooky-action.html
In other words, if my conscious choices really are just merely the result of whatever state the material particles in my brain happen to be in in the past (deterministic) how in blue blazes are my choices instantaneously effecting the state of material particles into the past?,,, Moreover, due to advances in science, the argument for God from consciousness can now be framed like this:
1. Consciousness either preceded all of material reality or is a 'epi-phenomena' of material reality. 2. If consciousness is a 'epi-phenomena' of material reality then consciousness will be found to have no special position within material reality. Whereas conversely, if consciousness precedes material reality then consciousness will be found to have a special position within material reality. 3. Consciousness is found to have a special, even central, position within material reality. 4. Therefore, consciousness is found to precede material reality. Four intersecting lines of experimental evidence from quantum mechanics that shows that consciousness precedes material reality (Wigner’s Quantum Symmetries, Wheeler’s Delayed Choice, Leggett’s Inequalities, Quantum Zeno effect): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1G_Fi50ljF5w_XyJHfmSIZsOcPFhgoAZ3PRc_ktY8cFo/edit
bornagain77_{March 12, 2013
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KN, All of this reminds me of a recent article about possible 'fossils found in a meteorite', and the statement that was made about those who were skeptical ofg it. "The skeptical response to that article, The Journal of Cosmology's editors wrote, caused them to reminisce about "totalitarian states and theocracies, where defenders of the faith, and Grand Inquisitors, armed with their Bibles, threatened, tortured, and killed those who challenged prevailing dogma." The Journal's editorial statement was posted by David Dobbs for the Neuron Culture blog at Wired." http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2013/03/11/174041948/claims-of-a-meteorites-ancient-aquatic-fossils-spark-debate?ft=1&f=1007PeterJ_{March 12, 2013
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Darwinism, at least as the word is often used, does not entail atheism. (Similarly, ID does not entail theism.) It is of course true that a great many have found the materialist creation myth to be compatible with their atheistic beliefs -- remember Dawkins' comment about evolution allowing the atheist to be "intellectually fulfilled." Part of the problem comes in defining "Darwinism." Certainly at the level of "slight-successive-changes-leads-to-new-species" it does not entail atheism. At the farther end of the spectrum, namely, the idea that "life itself and all the subsequent development and diversity of life on Earth came about through purely natural and material processes," is much closer, but it still does not quite entail atheism. There is a final sense, however, in which it might. Specifically, there are a great many supporters of Darwinism/evolution who hold to the affirmative view that: (i) the physical and the material is all there is, and (ii) everything, essentially all processes that we see, are just a manifestation of purely natural evolution in action over different periods of time. In this strongest sense of materialism, it would seem to entail atheism. So the challenge, then, becomes determining if a person's particular use of the words "Darwinism" or "evolution" includes this far end of the spectrum, the end where everything is asserted as just matter and energy in mindless motion.Eric Anderson_{March 12, 2013
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That rocks are not sentient doesn't really answer the question, "in what sense of 'greater than' is 'intelligence' greater than 'non-intelligence'?" As for the much-vexed question of the relation between science and metaphysics, I'm inclined towards a pragmatist philosophy of science and a scientific metaphysics. A scientific theory contains a set of ontological claims -- just, whatever must exist in order for the theory to be true. Taken in that sense, evolutionary theory is committed to the existence of populations of organisms. Is it committed to much more than that? Possibly, though I remain to be convinced. Certainly it is not committed to materialism. Meaning, there is nothing in evolutionary theory which says that organisms must be reducible to matter (though just what "reducible to" means is itself actually quite problematic, as the Leiter and Weisberg review of Nagel indicates).Kantian Naturalist_{March 12, 2013
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It's been said that atheist regimes could accomplish more murder and mayhem on a quiet afternoon than the inquisition could accomplish in its entire 300 year history. BA's notes above back this up. And besides, the right or wrong of flaming someone literally versus flaming them verbally ultimately comes down to opinion in the atheist worldview. If they really believe we are nothing but opinionated language apes in an indifferent universe why all the emotion over the long gone inquisition? ,steveO_{March 12, 2013
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"In the last few years I have seen a saddening progression at several institutions. I have witnessed unfair treatment upon scientists that do not accept macroevolutionary arguments and for their having signed the above-referenced statement regarding the examination of Darwinism. (Dissent from Darwinism list)(I will comment no further regarding the specifics of the actions taken upon the skeptics; I love and honor my colleagues too much for that.) I never thought that science would have evolved like this. I deeply value the academy; teaching, professing and research in the university are my privileges and joys… " Professor James M. Tour - one of the ten most cited chemists in the world https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/a-world-famous-chemist-tells-the-truth-theres-no-scientist-alive-today-who-understands-macroevolution/bornagain77_{March 12, 2013
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CentralScrutinizer: I’d be interested in knowing how an intelligent entity (Egyptian “god”) could turn a stick into a serpent without a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of all activity going on within cells and the DNA replication system, etc. Well, duplication is not the same as creation. It doesn't necessarily require an understanding of the object to be duplicated. All you need is a duplicator. Besides, one can certainly duplicate a Mona Lisa but the tour de force is to create the Mona Lisa in the first place. That requires a different set of talents. But you knew all that, right? After all, you are the central scrutinizer. :-DMapou_{March 12, 2013
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I recall Dawkins saying that Anthony Flew had comitted apostasy when he abandoned his atheism. The fact that Flew adopted a doctrine that was contrary to the established atheistic doctrine, would suggest he was a heretic. Flew was heavily castigated by the atheistic community when he renounced his atheism.KRock_{March 12, 2013
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Mapou: Egyptian gods could change water into blood and sticks into serpents but that’s a far cry from creating life on earth.
Whoa... I'd be interested in knowing how an intelligent entity (Egyptian "god") could turn a stick into a serpent without a comprehensive knowledge and understanding of all activity going on within cells and the DNA replication system, etc.CentralScrutinizer_{March 12, 2013
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And much like in totalitarian regimes, atheists in this country, where they are in positions of power to get away with it, have persecuted anyone who dares not toe the neo-Darwinian party line: i.e. Though the evidence against neo-Darwinian evolution is overwhelming to the point of rendering Darwinian explanations ludicrous through and through, anyone who dares question the sufficiency of Darwinism to explain the unfathomed integrated complexity being found in life in the classroom (or lab) is persecuted, as the following clearly points out:
EXPELLED - Starring Ben Stein - Part 1 of 10 - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIZAAh_6OXg Slaughter of Dissidents - Book "If folks liked Ben Stein's movie "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed," they will be blown away by "Slaughter of the Dissidents." - Russ Miller http://www.amazon.com/Slaughter-Dissidents-Dr-Jerry-Bergman/dp/0981873405 Origins - Slaughter of the Dissidents with Dr. Jerry Bergman - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6rzaM_BxBk On the Fundamental Difference Between Darwin-Inspired and Intelligent Design-Inspired Lawsuits - September 2011 Excerpt: Darwin lobby litigation: In every Darwin-inspired case listed above, the Darwin lobby sought to shut down free speech, stopping people from talking about non-evolutionary views, and seeking to restrict freedom of intellectual inquiry. ID movement litigation: Seeks to expand intellectual inquiry and free speech rights to talk about non-evolutionary views. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/09/on_the_fundamental_difference_050451.html "Evolution is the only 'scientific theory' that needs lawyers to protect it!" Author Unknown
Ironically,,
Intelligent Design Supporter Expelled from Civil Liberties Organization - podcast - January 2013 http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2013-01-18T19_01_00-08_00
Casey Luskin points out that the following anti-ID philosopher even goes so far as to publish a paper saying that the bullying tactics of neo-Darwinists, which all who have questioned Darwinism on the internet can testify to, are justified since many ID proponents are Christian!:
Anti-ID Philosopher: "Ad hominem" Arguments "Justified" When Attacking Intelligent Design Proponents - Casey Luskin - June 4, 2012 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/06/anti-id_philoso060381.html
Here is an atheist professor who openly proselytizes his religion in his classroom (Of note they took down the video of him proselytizing atheism through Darwinism to his students personally):
Dr. Will Provine - EXPELLED - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpJ5dHtmNtU "Proselytizing for Darwin's God in the Classroom" (from 2008): John G. West - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEajEwzYwHg Intelligent Design's Implications Don't Discredit Its Scientific Merit: Opposing Views, Part 3 - (Several Quotes from secular humanists who support Darwinism) - podcast http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2012-11-09T16_52_26-08_00 Evolution Is Religion--Not Science by Henry Morris, Ph.D. Excerpt: Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality,,, Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today. Darwinian atheist Michael Ruse - Prominent Philosopher
bornagain77_{March 12, 2013
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An example of a Darwin doubter being persecuted.... Ben CarsonAndre_{March 12, 2013
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KN: I’ve rarely come across a post at Uncommon Descent I disagree with as strongly as this one. So, congratulations! Glad to be of service. In order for Darwinism to entail atheism, it would have to be the case that one cannot believe in God without also being rationally committed to the distinct and separate creation of different species. It is certainly possible that there are gods (we among them) who are neither knowledgeable nor powerful enough to design and create the kinds of complex living organisms that we observe. Egyptian gods could change water into blood and sticks into serpents but that's a far cry from creating life on earth. Those of us who believe in a creator God (the big Kahuna who created everything) do so because the alternative is to join the dirt-did-it religion, aka the nothing-did-it religion. Some of us don't think that being scientific means parking one's brain in a closet. Given a choice between the religions of Cretins (Darwinism) and Voodoo, I would choose Voodoo.Mapou_{March 12, 2013
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KN Don't be so hard on yourself.... Tell me when last did a rock tell you what it was thinking about? Now how did that rock that never told you how it felt even decide to be your great great great great grandaddy? Help me to see how such an illogical religion works please?Andre_{March 12, 2013
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UB, your point at 24 is well taken. At his perch at NCSE Matzek spent years doing everything in his power to stifle dissent from Darwinism. For him of all people to feign outrage at the suggestion that Darwinists have an orthodoxy that they defend by persecuting dissenters is ironic in the extreme. KN, your outrage is noted. Get over it. That Darwinists persecute their opponents and try to ruin the careers of dissenters is well documented.Barry Arrington_{March 12, 2013
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Of related note: Atheists like to point to the Spanish inquisition and witch hunts, etc.. etc.. to try to say that atheism is better than Christianity. Yet atheists forget to 'look in the mirror' at the exponentially worse horror that was visited upon mankind in atheistic regimes: This following video and article are very clear as to pointing the extremely different 'degrees of evil' we are dealing with in atheistic and Christian cultures:
"Christian" Atrocities compared to Atheists Atrocities - Dinesh D'Souza - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmrRC6zD4Zk If You Thought Religion was a Bad Idea … Check Out Atheism - Kirk Durston - June 2012 Excerpt: To summarize why purely atheistic societies are so dangerous, they not only killed for the cause of advancing a purely atheistic society, but their moral guardrail has no grounds. Thus, extraordinary democide can result, because a portable, hand carried moral guardrail is no guardrail at all. http://powertochange.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Religion-and-Atheism-Kills-2012.pdf
The unmitigated horror visited upon man, by state sponsored atheism, would be hard to exaggerate,,, Here's what happens when Atheists/evolutionists/non-Christians take control of Government:
“169,202,000 Murdered: Summary and Conclusions [20th Century Democide] I BACKGROUND 2. The New Concept of Democide [Definition of Democide] 3. Over 133,147,000 Murdered: Pre-Twentieth Century Democide II 128,168,000 VICTIMS: THE DEKA-MEGAMURDERERS 4. 61,911,000 Murdered: The Soviet Gulag State 5. 35,236,000 Murdered: The Communist Chinese Ant Hill 6. 20,946,000 Murdered: The Nazi Genocide State 7. 10,214,000 Murdered: The Depraved Nationalist Regime III 19,178,000 VICTIMS: THE LESSER MEGA-MURDERERS 8. 5,964,000 Murdered: Japan’s Savage Military 9. 2,035,000 Murdered: The Khmer Rouge Hell State 10. 1,883,000 Murdered: Turkey’s Genocidal Purges 11. 1,670,000 Murdered: The Vietnamese War State 12. 1,585,000 Murdered: Poland’s Ethnic Cleansing 13. 1,503,000 Murdered: The Pakistani Cutthroat State 14. 1,072,000 Murdered: Tito’s Slaughterhouse IV 4,145,000 VICTIMS: SUSPECTED MEGAMURDERERS 15. 1,663,000 Murdered? Orwellian North Korea 16. 1,417,000 Murdered? Barbarous Mexico 17. 1,066,000 Murdered? Feudal Russia” This is, in reality, probably just a drop in the bucket. Who knows how many undocumented murders there were. It also doesn’t count all the millions of abortions from around the world. http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/NOTE1.HTM "We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. . . . Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." (Source: John Adams, The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States, Charles Francis Adams, editor (Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. 1854), Vol. IX, p. 229, October 11, 1798.)
bornagain77_{March 12, 2013
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Humor me, Andre. I'm stupid.Kantian Naturalist_{March 12, 2013
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KN The answer is in your question.... look for it.... and I'm not being cryptic see if you can spot it.Andre_{March 12, 2013
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Matzke, You ran the mouthpiece for an organization that deliberately sought to ruin the careers and livelihoods of qualified scientists. This was done without even a second thought about driving someone out of a field that they had dedicated their lives to, and it was done on the flimsiest of reasoning, without any scientific confirmation whatsoever. Michael Behe comes to mind. He proposed a concept of irreducible complexity. In response, your side produced a tie clip and years upon years of sneering remarks. Yet the concept of irreducible complexity can be demonstrated in biology in a way that you cannot refute in any way whatsoever. So instead of feigned outrage over Barry's article, why don't you man-up and give Behe a call. Apologize for umpteen years of grief your side has targeted at the man who was correct all along.Upright BiPed_{March 12, 2013
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Mapou,
Of course, Darwinism entails atheism. Who are you kidding? That was the goal from the beginning. Despite their vehement denials, evolutionists are hellbent on imposing their religion (a system of beliefs) that does away with a creator God. Pointing to a handful of brain-dead Darwinian theists as proof that Darwinism does not deny God is not going to cut it. And insisting that evolution is not about the origin of life is a gutless excuse. Any theory of life that has no beginning is not a theory. It is a religion. And a very superstitious one at that.
I've rarely come across a post at Uncommon Descent I disagree with as strongly as this one. So, congratulations! In order for Darwinism to entail atheism, it would have to be the case that one cannot believe in God without also being rationally committed to the distinct and separate creation of different species.Kantian Naturalist_{March 12, 2013
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Lar @ 20. You persist in your error that heresy is a uniquely Christian (or even religious) phenomenon. I can’t help you when you persist in your error after correction. Sorry.Barry Arrington_{March 12, 2013
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I'm utterly unable to see how Pinker's endorsement of Leiter and Weisberg's criticisms is in any way analogous to any sort of enforcement of orthodoxy or persecution to any degree. Wiseltier is just showing even less critical judgment than usual to suggest otherwise. To do that, he would firstly need to show that the Leiter and Weisberg criticisms are without merit, and he hasn't come even close to showing that. He merely sneers. And, for that matter, no one else here has even come close to showing that the Leiter and Weisberg review lacks merit. To do that, one would need to do at least the following two things: (i) read Mind and Cosmos; (ii) read Leiter and Weisberg's review. As far as this particular topic is concerned, I don't see a point of carrying on a conversation with anyone here who hasn't done those two things.Kantian Naturalist_{March 12, 2013
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Barry, I am talking about history, not lexicography. Concern over heresy, identification of heretics, actions against heretical beliefs: these were all mechanisms that Christianity used in great measure. Maybe there is a Darwinist orthodoxy and party line. What do you think is the official expression of the creed? is there a specific sentence or reference you would cite? I know, for example, if I want to show someone an example of a Christian creed, I can point them to a specific, locatable text, and even specific words/passages that articulate the sponsored beliefs. I look forward to your citation of the credal statement of orthodox Darwinians.LarTanner_{March 12, 2013
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