From a review of John Lennox’s Can Science Explain Everything?:
He begins by asking the question whether or not a scientist can believe in God? Particularly he considers whether it is legitimate to do so in modern times, but in order to answer this question, he spends some energy considering the history of the great men and women of science. As he does so, he seeks to destroy two myths. The first is that religion depends on faith but science doesn’t (chapter 3). The second is that science depends on reason but Christianity doesn’t (chapter 4).
Dr. Lennox then considers whether the Bible can be taken seriously in a scientific age such as the present (chapter 5) before considering the seeming contradiction between science and miracles (chapter 6). The book then turns a corner in which Christianity is subjected to a proof text and clearly passes the test before the personal elements of Christianity are considered. The reader is then left with some insightful considerations regarding the truthfulness of Christianity as well as an appropriate plea to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
Throughout this journey, the reader will be struck by some excellent arguments, illustrations and one-liners by Dr. Lennox. They will also, doubtless, be struck by his own personal life story and journey of faith and science.
Nathan Muse, “Book Review: Can Science Explain Everything? by John Lennox” at Apologetics 315
As noted earlier, the scientist who doesn’t believe in God faces much bigger problems: The fundamental one is whether anything is true in the sense that it needs to be true for science to be possible.
See also: Asked at The Scientist: “Does science describe experience or truth?” As it happens, the loss of theism puts science in an impossible position. A traditional monotheist (and probably most deists) would assume that God creates according to logic and reason and that the scientist can indeed find out the truth by “thinking God’s thoughts after him.” But otherwise, why? Loss of the theistic perspective leads directly to the current demands that science credentials and acknowledgements be apportioned on the basis of fairness as if they were public goods of some kind.
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As has often been said, by people much smarter than me, science is not about the search for truth. It is about the search for the best explanation for what we observe.
“As has often been said, by people much smarter than me, science is not about the search for truth. It is about the search for the best explanation for what we observe.”
This was precisely Karl Popper’s view. Theories are evaluated by how thoroughly they answer difficult observations. The more the better. But no theory will ever provide ultimate truth because that is beyond the purview of science. No matter how well a theory is supported by observation, it is always possible that some new observation will be made and the theory replaced by a better one.
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In order to be effective, it would require that one not deliberately and selectively avoid physical evidence as a means to protect one’s personal preferences. You have demonstrated on these pages that you not heed that intellectual requirement. In fact, you cannot even speak the words of contrary evidence.
Acartia Eddie:
Except for the fact that science is the search for the truth. That’s why we conduct investigations- to find the truth behind what it is we are investigating.
“It is sometimes said that science has nothing to do with morality. This is wrong. Science is the search for truth, the effort to understand the world; it involves the rejection of bias, of dogma, of revelation, but not the rejection of morality.” Linus Pauling
“But science can only be created by those who are thoroughly imbued with the aspiration toward truth and understanding.”– Albert Einstein
Clearly Acartia Eddie doesn’t understand science.
truth
Synonyms of reality
I would think that science only cares about that which is in accordance with facts and reality. But I understand why Acartia Eddie doesn’t think that way.
I always scratch my head at why anyone thinks science “explains” anything. Science is a methodology that attempts to explain what it is we observers observe, and/or how we use math to define mathematical laws that describe, say, how an object will act under gravity. But has science “explained” what gravity is? Of course not. Maybe it describes how gravity works in relation to objects of mass, but this does not explain, at all, “why” it is so, or how it came to be, what it is “made of” why it exists, etc. They will make up a word like “gravaton”, or the “force carrier”, the Higgs Boson – but how does it carry force? Why does it carry force? Nobody knows.
Any attempt to explain something past a certain point, ends up in a circular loop of reasoning….i.e. “Because it evolved that way” is no explanation, as first you have to fine what exactly that is. Unless one can show chemical and physical properties, that actually occurred to change something from one things into another, it is simply an idea that most take on faith. They figure it “must” be this way… but as we have learned, the mechanisms of Evolution were never understood, they were assumed to be true. And even new mechanisms like “Horizontal Gene Transfer” (HTG), remain unexplained (you could easily claim that it is re-used code that worked)… but sticking the word “evolution” in front or in back of phrases or words explains nothing as the word itself is so misunderstood… so terms like “convergent evolution” are meant to give them impression there is someone that understands what this means, why it happens, and how: but they don’t.
Another example…we know many plants, when hit by sunlight on one side, respond by sending a chemical “messenger” to the opposite side which causes more vertical growth, and thus bends the plant toward the sun. The reason it does this is obvious- it bends to get more sunlight… but how did this develop and why, nobody knows (especially evolution). If you ask a neo-Darwinist why a plant does this, they are forced to say, it was a fortunate “adaptation”, one lucky break after another that made up an complete system to help a plant bend toward the light – I have a feeling if we could have seen the first deciduous plants that grew on the earth, they would already be bending toward the light, and the why is, because plants what more sunlight.. 🙂
@1 Ed George “As has often been said, by people much smarter than me, science is not about the search for truth. It is about the search for the best explanation for what we observe.”
This is true in that science is not able to determine whether something is true or not. Experiments that can be repeated over and over again provide a very high level of certainty and therefore, for all practical purposes, it can be said to validate or invalidate a hypothesis, but theoretically, it cannot prove anything to be true. This is actually a huge problem because there are probably many things that we currently believe to be true, but one day might very well be shown to be false. And we have no way of knowing. Just go back and read science textbooks from 5-10 years ago to see illustrations of this. No sooner has a new textbook been published than some new “fact” or aspect of “settled science” has been shown to be false. This is especially true when it comes to historical science where experiments, in the traditional sense, are not possible.
The other very interesting and important word in the above statement is the word “best”. How do we determine what is the “best” explanation? Sounds a bit subjective to me! But wait, aren’t we supposed to be doing science here? How is it that subjectivity plays a role in science? I personally think that the “best” explanation for the origin of life is a supernatural one, but many would disagree with me. I know that does not qualify as a “scientific” explanation, but that doesn’t mean it is any less valid. It makes far more sense than the silly ideas that scientists are forced to believe in or offer up for consideration. At any rate, there is no guarantee that the consensus or “best explanation” is true – when it comes to historical science especially – and that is a big problem with science.
Let me go against the main gist of this thread that seems to basically state that ‘the ultimate truth can never be reached by science’.
Even Laszlo seemed to agree with E.G.’s overall sentiment
And indeed Popper’s falsification criteria is a very powerful tool in science. And is one of the main reasons why we know that Darwinian evolution is not the ‘truth’ about how life originated and diversified on this planet. Darwinists simply refuse to accept any empirical observation that falsifies their theory and therefore Darwinian evolution simply fails to quantify as a testable science in the first place.
But anyways, aside from the fact that Darwinian evolution is more properly classified as a pseudoscience, even a religion for atheists, rather than it is being classified as a real and testable science, aside from that we do have several theories in science that have survived repeated attempts at falsification. These theories are Quantum Mechanics, Quantum Electrodynamics, General Relativity and Special Relativity. These theories have survived falsification and are confirmed to be true descriptions of reality to almost absurd levels of precision.
For instance, the quantum mechanical assertion that reality does not exist if you are not observing it,,,
,, is confirmed to be true to “120 standard deviations”,,,
The following references give us a glimpse of just how insanely precise the measurement of 120 standard deviations is for Leggett’s Inequality,,,
Although the preceding is practically beyond human comprehension as to just how insanely precise that measurement actually is, General Relativity, Quantum Electrodynamics and Special Relativity have also survived repeated attempts at falsification and are also now verified to be true descriptions of “reality”, (whatever “reality” may now be given that Leggett’s Inequality has now falsified “realism” 🙂 ), to almost absurd levels of precision,
Moreover, aside from the fact, (since these theories have survived falsification and are confirmed to almost absurd levels of precision), that we can have a extreme level of confidence that these theories are true descriptions of reality, aside from that fact, I would also argue that the entire enterprise of science is predicated on the belief that “The Truth”, i.e. the ultimate truth about reality, can be reached by science.
That is to say, the practice of science itself is not only a search for various truths about reality but is also, ultimately, primarily a search for ‘the truth’ about reality.
The search for the ultimate truth about reality in science today takes the form of trying to find the hypothetical final mathematical ‘theory of everything’. Indeed much money and research has been dedicated to this endeavor.
In its present form this search entails trying to mathematically unify general relativity and quantum field theory (QED), (which is the unification quantum mechanics and special relativity), into a single mathematical ‘theory of everything’. It is hoped that this hypothetical final ‘theory of everything’ will be ‘capable of describing all phenomena in the universe.’
As the following article states, “The first attempt at unifying relativity and quantum mechanics took place when special relativity was merged with electromagnetism. This created the theory of quantum electrodynamics, or QED. It is an example of what has come to be known as relativistic quantum field theory, or just quantum field theory. QED is considered by most physicists to be the most precise theory of natural phenomena ever developed.”
Interestingly, “Although quantum field theory is fully compatible with the special theory of relativity, a relativistic treatment of quantum measurement has yet to be formulated.”, i.e. conscious observation was dropped by the wayside in QFT!
In what should be needless to say, since ‘conscious observation’ itself was dropped by the wayside in QFT , then that necessarily precludes QFT from being the correct step towards the final ‘theory of everything’ that supposedly “is capable of describing all phenomena in the universe.” Specifically, “our knowledge of the external world is the content of our consciousness and that the consciousness, therefore, cannot be denied.”
Richard Feynman (and others) were only able to unify special relativity and quantum mechanics into Quantum Electrodynamics by quote unquote “brushing infinity under the rug” with a technique called Renormalization.
And whereas special relativity, by ‘brushing infinity under the rug’, has been semi-successfully unified, (i.e. save of course for quantum measurement), with quantum theory to produce Quantum Electrodynamics and/or Quantum Field Theory, no such mathematical ‘sleight of hand’ exists for unifying general relativity with quantum mechanics.
General relativity, as the following articles show, simply refuses to be mathematically unified with quantum mechanics in any acceptable way. In technical terms, Gravity has yet to be successfully included into a theory of everything since the infinities that crop up in that attempt simply are not renormalizable as they were in Quantum-Electrodynamics.
This mathematically‘infinite’ divide to there ever being a purely mathematical ‘theory of everything’ should have, somewhat, been foreseen. Godel’s incompleteness theorem implies exactly that. There simply never will be a purely mathematical ‘theory of everything’. As Hawking himself conceded, “Kurt Gödel halted the achievement of a unifying all-encompassing theory of everything”
In fact, Gödel’s incompleteness theorem has now been extended to physics and is not just some abstract mathematical limit that prevents there from ever being a purely mathematical ‘theory of everything’ but is now shown to be, in actuality, a defining feature of reality:
In the following article entitled ‘Quantum physics problem proved unsolvable: Gödel and Turing enter quantum physics’, which studied the derivation of macroscopic properties from a complete microscopic description, the researchers remark that even a perfect and complete description of the microscopic properties of a material is not enough to predict its macroscopic behaviour.,,, The researchers further commented that their findings challenge the reductionists’ point of view, as the insurmountable difficulty lies precisely in the derivation of macroscopic properties from a microscopic description.”
Simply put, despite how much mathematicians and physicists may believe that there simply must be a single mathematical ‘theory of everything’ that exist out there somewhere, there, in fact, never will be a single mathematical theory of everything that links the microscopic world of quantum mechanics to the macroscopic world of General Relativity.
All hope is not lost though,,,,
,,, All hope is not lost though, basically and succinctly, allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics, as the Christian founders of modern science originally envisioned,,,, (Isaac Newton, Michael Faraday, James Clerk Maxwell, and Max Planck, to name a few of the Christian founders),,, and as quantum mechanics itself now empirically demands (with the closing of the free will loophole by Anton Zeilinger and company), by rightly allowing the Agent causality of God ‘back’ into physics then that provides us with a very plausible resolution for the much sought after ‘theory of everything’ in that Christ’s resurrection from the dead provides an empirically backed reconciliation, via the Shroud of Turin, between quantum mechanics and general relativity into the much sought after ‘Theory of Everything”. Here are a few posts where I lay out and defend some of the evidence for that claim:
To give us a small glimpse of the power that was involved in Christ’s resurrection from the dead, the following recent article found that, ”it would take 34 Thousand Billion Watts of VUV radiations to make the image on the shroud. This output of electromagnetic energy remains beyond human technology.”
Verses and Christmas music:
Tjguy, I don’t disagree with anything you have said other than your statement that this is a problem for science. In the last relatively short period of time we have greatly increased the median life-span, we have greatly reduced infant mortality, etc. All the result of the iterative process of science. Of constantly trying to improve the best explanation for our observations.
With regard to the origin of life I think all we can say is that we don’t have anything that approaches a good (let alone best) explanation for it. And that includes the supernatural.
Acartia Eddie conflates artificial with supernatural. And clearly science is all about the truth, which is contrary to what Acartia Eddie said
Ed George , whats the difference if any between a virgin birth, walking on water, and life arising from non life.
Science is impossible without an adherence to and search for the truth of things.
From the materialist viewpoint, the truth really cannot exist, since it is an abstract, immaterial object.
In evolutionary terms, the truth is unnecessary. Survival and reproduction do not require truth of anything. Eating and leaving offspring can occur with lies and falsehoods as well as truths.
But science is the search for the truth of things, obviously. Does an albino squirrel live in that environment? Yes or No? It’s true or false.
We challenge Darwinism to show us the truth about what evolution can produce.
Michael Behe has revealed what the Edge of Evolution really is and how limited its power is. That’s a truth that we learn from science.
Even statistical analysis relies on truth statements, and scientific papers give the truth of what they find (unless the papers are fraudulent).
But if science is not a search for truth, then anything can be given a subjective “spin”. Lies are just as good as truths in that case. And that’s the point here.
If there is no God and we’re all merely chemical compounds determined by natural/material processes, then the question of a search for truth is irrelevant and actually meaningless.
Does science really want to sign-on to that kind of project?
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Question 1: On what grounds are we expected to ignore the historical fact that a symbol system and a multi-referent language structure were predicted to be the core material requirements of an autonomous open-ended self-replicator?
Question 2: On what grounds are we expected to ignore the historical fact that a symbol system and a multi-referent language structure were indeed discovered in the gene system, and have been carefully and thoroughly described as such in the scientific literature?
Question 3: On what grounds are we expected to ignore the demonstration (through experiment) that the cell uses a system of discontinuous association in order to specify the organization of living things, using quiesent encoded memory to circumvent (side-step, escape, overcome) the invariable constraints of physical law?
Question 4: On what grounds are we expected to ignore the fact that not one single soul on the surface of this planet (particularly those at the very forefront of materialistic abiogenesis research) can produce even a conceptually-viable pathway from dynamics to semantic closure?
Question 5: On what grounds are we expected to turn our heads away from the culmination of 100% universal physical and logical evidence against a purely-dynamic origin of life — and simply ignore the cognitive dissonance that naturally arises from doing so?
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Saying “we don’t have anything” is an insult to science, reason, and well-recorded history. For all your nauseating bluster, it appears that you merely want curious people to shut up about science and reason on these matters, and leave you to your personal preferences. Let there be no mistake, it is you who is avoiding the physical evidence and documentation, not those to whom you lecture.
Marfin @ 13
Personally, I would say none. If you want to persuade me that any of them actually happened, you would need to provide at least a coherent model of how they might have happened and, ideally, a demonstration that the model works in practice. I lean towards abiogenesis as an explanation for the existence of life because such hypotheses and evidence as we have is marginally more compelling than postulating some sort of creator, although I cannot rule out the possibility.
seversky:
It is non-existent. And guess what? Abiogenesis posits life arising from non-life. And you said:
Your side can’t even produce biologically relevant molecular replicators. There isn’t anything compelling with the concept of codes produced by nature.
Silver Asiatic @ 14
I would agree but it seems to me that there are two meanings of “truth” in play here.
The first means the actual nature of the objective reality we assume to be out there.
The second – the correspondence theory – refers to how closely our descriptions or explanations of what we can observe of that reality correspond to it. How true they are depends on how closely they fit. It may be that we can never know the full truth. All we can hope for is an ever closer approximation of the truth in our models.
On the contrary, knowing what plants or berries or animals are safe to eat, what water is safe to drink, what places are safe to live, which animals are dangerous and which are harmless, knowing that jumping from great heights can injure or kill are just some of the truths that are vital to survival and reproduction.
It is true that some false beliefs can be advantageous, the obvious examples being religions. Most, if not all, must be false, yet their prevalence suggests they have survival value, most probably in terms binding a society together and make it more resilient in the face of serious challenges to its existence.
If you propose that an albino squirrel lives in a certain environment, that is a claim about one aspect of the nature of reality. You can test that claim by observing that environment to see if there any albino squirrels there. if you observe albino squirrels then the claim is found to be true. Does the albino coloration have any bearing on why the squirrels are observed in that environment is a different question requiring a different tentative explanation which is capable of being tested against what is observed.
We answer that what evolution can produce is all around you in the natural world. We can show that living things change over time, descent with modification. We can demonstrate certain processes exist which must be there for evolution to happen at all, for example, antibiotic resistance, bacteria which can digest the by-products of nylon manufacture, moths in which the dominant coloration changes as a result of industrial pollution
Behe offers a thesis not gospel. Have you also read criticisms of his book from evolutionary biologists? Has he won fellow scientists over with his arguments or are they being rejected on various grounds?
Scientific papers offer arguments and data which they claim support those arguments. The authors may believe that they have discovered some truth but their work needs to be replicated by others before we can be reasonably sure. If the original researchers have actually hit on some truth it should be true for anyone else who tries it.
While there will always be a few black sheep, for most scientists their reputation for integrity is one of their most valuable assets. Once lost, it can never be recovered and their scientific career is effectively at an end. Trying to brush aside results that you don’t like for some reason as scientific fraud is mostly just another way of resorting to a conspiracy theory.
Are you saying that the only sense of purpose worth having is what is assigned to you by some other being? You can’t work out one for yourself?
Put your self in God’s place. What is His purpose? Can the only worthwhile purpose for God come from the mind of an even greater God?
And we’re back to that infinite regress again.
seversky:
I have. They amount to nothing but whining. Not one critic of Behe’s has offered up any science nor evidence that refutes him.
LoL! It isn’t assigned to us, duh. It just is. If we were intelligently designed their is a higher purpose to our existence
Marfin
Two are common occurrences and one has never been observed.
Marfin- Parthenogenesis has been observed in many different species. Walking on water has been observed in different species. Life arising from non-life has never been observed.
ET
It’s a Christmas miracle. ET and I have agreed on something. I’m going out to buy a lottery ticket.
I was just clarifying Acartia Eddie’s answer for Marfin. I get the feeling that Marfin was referring to humans but failed to clarify that. Acartia Eddie saw the loophole- gigantic opening- and walked through.
Bravo (golf clap)
Are miracles possible? “In his essay, Hume defines a miracle as a violation of the laws of nature.”
It is obvious with his claim that a miracle would violate the laws of nature, that David Hume would have been a very vocal advocate for what is now termed to be ‘methodological naturalism’.
One can almost here Lewontin echoing Hume when he states, “we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door,,, to appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen.”
Methodological Naturalism is defined as such
The Achilles’ heel with the atheist’s a-priori assumption of methodological naturalism is that agent causality is ruled out of bounds before any scientific investigation has even begun, As Paul Nelson explains,
And since agent causality is ruled out of bounds in science by the artificial restriction of methodological naturalism, and since we are in fact causal agents ourselves, then demonstrating a miracle becomes as easy as falling off a log.
Dr. Craig Hazen, in the following video at the 12:26 minute mark, relates how he performed, for an audience full of academics at a college university, a ‘miracle’ simply by raising his arm,,
Moreover, as William Dembski and others have shown, the universal limit for the creation of new information, via all the probabilistic resources in the entire universe, is 500 bits,
To clarify how the 500 bit universal limit is found for the creation of ‘structured, functional information’:
This short sentence, “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” is calculated by Winston Ewert, in this following video at the 10 minute mark, to contain 1000 bits of algorithmic specified complexity, (i.e. functional information), and thus to exceed the Universal Probability Bound (UPB) of 500 bits set by Dr. Dembski
Thus every sentence ever created by man that contains over 500 bits of information, such as “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog” is proof of a miracle in that man has exercised the free will of his immaterial mind and created immaterial information over and above what the material universe, via the laws of nature, is ever capable of explaining.
To go a bit further into the ‘miracle’ of the origin of life. Dr James Tour, (who is regarded as one of the top ten synthetic chemists in the world), states the insurmountable problem for the Origin of Life (OOL) as such:
What Dr. Tour briefly touched upon in that preceding comment is the fact that having the correct sequential information encoded in DNA is not nearly enough in order to explain life. Besides the sequential information in DNA there is also a vast amount of ‘positional information’ that must be accounted for as well.
The amount of positional information that is found to be in a simple one cell bacterium, when working from the thermodynamic perspective, is found to be on the order 10 to the 12 bits,,, which is several orders of magnitude more information than the amount of sequential information that is encoded on the DNA of a ‘simple’ bacterium.
10^12 bits is the equivalent of 100 million pages of Encyclopedia Britannica. i.e. ‘In comparison,,, the largest libraries in the world,, have about 10 million volumes or 10^12 bits.”
And again, in comparison, the sequential information encoded on DNA of ‘simple’ bacterial life is merely around 10^6 bits. Thus that is a huge, ‘orders of magnitude’, disparity between the positional information and sequential information in a ‘simple’ cell.
And remember, this vast amount of positional information contained within a ‘simple’ bacterium was derived from purely thermodynamic considerations.
In regards to this vast amount of ‘thermodynamic’ positional information that must somehow be accounted for in order to explain the Origin of Life, in the following 2010 experimental realization of Maxwell’s demon thought experiment, it was demonstrated that knowledge of a particle’s location and/or position converts information into energy.
And as the following 2010 article stated about the preceding experiment, “This is a beautiful experimental demonstration that information has a thermodynamic content,”
In the following 2011 paper, researchers have shown that classical sequential information (such as what is on DNA) is a subset of ‘quantum positional information’ by the following method ,,, Specifically they show that when the bits (in a computer) to be deleted are quantum-mechanically entangled with the state of an observer, then the observer could even withdraw heat from the system while deleting the bits. Entanglement links the observer’s state to that of the computer in such a way that they know more about the memory than is possible in classical physics.,,, In measuring entropy, one should bear in mind that (in quantum information theory) an object does not have a certain amount of entropy per se, instead an object’s entropy is always dependent on the observer.
And as the following 2017 article states: James Clerk Maxwell (said), “The idea of dissipation of energy depends on the extent of our knowledge.”,,,
quantum information theory,,, describes the spread of information through quantum systems.,,,
Fifteen years ago, “we thought of entropy as a property of a thermodynamic system,” he said. “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
Again to repeat that last sentence, “Now in (quantum) information theory, we wouldn’t say entropy is a property of a system, but a property of an observer who describes a system.”,,,
That statement is stunning!
To continue on, quantum information and/or quantum entanglement is found to be ubiquitous within life:
In the following more recent 2015 paper entitled, “Quantum criticality in a wide range of important biomolecules” it was found that “Most of the molecules taking part actively in biochemical processes are tuned exactly to the transition point and are critical conductors,” and the researchers further commented that “finding even one (biomolecule) that is in the quantum critical state by accident is mind-bogglingly small and, to all intents and purposes, impossible.,, of the order of 10^-50 of possible small biomolecules and even less for proteins,”,,,
This follow up article goes even further and states, “There is no obvious evolutionary reason why a protein should evolve toward a quantum-critical state, and there is no chance at all that the state could occur randomly.,,,”
Moreover, it is also important to point out that quantum entanglement and/or quantum information requires a non-local, beyond space and time, cause to explain its effect.
As the following paper entitled “Looking beyond space and time to cope with quantum theory” stated, ““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,”
These experiments completely blow the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinian evolution, (presuppositions about information being merely ’emergent’ from some material basis), out of the water.
In other words, contrary to the reductive materialistic presuppositions of Darwinists, information, particularly this ‘thermodynamic positional information’, is now experimentally shown, via quantum information theory, to be its own distinct physical entity that, although it can interact with matter and energy, is its own independent, ‘non-local’ beyond space and time, entity that is separate from matter and energy. On top of all that, this ‘thermodynamic positional information’ is found, via quantum information theory, to be “a property of an observer who describes a system.”
In other words, Intelligent Design, and a direct inference to God as the ‘observer who describes the system’ of life has, for all intents and purposes, finally achieved experimental confirmation.
Of course, since this entire line of reasoning is based on just ‘following the evidence where it leads’, don’t expect Atheists to accept it anytime soon.
Verse:
Seversky
What an animal eats or drinks, where an animal lives, how it acts – all of these things are determined (in the evolutionary view) by the chemical processes that created the organism. There’s no question of truth at all here. Bacteria are attracted to food sources not through a rational decision-making process that separates truth from falsehood, but because evolution causes them to eat certain things and avoid others.
A significant group of people, including some credentialed scientists, do not think these examples give strong-enough support for the wide-reaching claims of evolutionary theory.
Behe is looking for the limits of what evolution can do. I have read criticisms of his book from scientists who said that he was wrong about where he set the limit. However, I have never read one criticism that stated where the correct limit to evolution should be placed. In all the cases I’ve read, the critics were happy to simply ignore the problem. This does not say much for their criticism and it tells me that they are afraid of the project that Behe undertook. I did communicate with one Behe-critic who claimed that “there is no edge to evolution”. As absurd as that is, he claimed basically, that “evolution can do anything”. Again, that just tells me that Behe was correct.
Well, you cannot explain your own existence without reference to at least two other beings. To understand your purpose, you would have to understand your own origin. Since you are a contingent being, that received existence from somewhere else, the answer to your purpose cannot lie within yourself. You did not create your own life – you received it.
‘
No, it can’t work that way. We are contingent beings – a mixture of potentiality and actuality. We are empowered with certain aspects of being. That power does not come from ourselves. We have potential that is unrealized. Potential can only be actualized by that which is actual.
So God is a being that is purely actual – no potential. There can only be one such being. There cannot be a greater being. There cannot be two beings that are purely actual, since if there would be two, then there would be a difference in the two, and that difference would be a defect, or some potential being unactualized. So, there can only be one purely actual being, with no potential to actualize – so there can only be one God, and there could not be a “greater God”.
Good grief , who here did not think I was talking about humans when I said virgin birth and walking on water( unaided). I was just getting to the crux of the matter that the criteria for not believing in virgin births and walking on water unaided can as readily be applied to life from non life but atheist materialist dont make that application , why not?
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#27
In Ed’s case, he is only here for the rhetoric.
Given that he treats physical evidence as a public nuisance, expecting him to acknowledge any inconsistencies in his views is futile.
He simply doesn’t give a damn. That is the strength of his position.
UBP
Given his non-response to your #15 that does seem to be about all there is to it.
Well, Marfin, you have to realize who you are talking to. It’s like talking with infants- you have to provide the details and the full context or suffer the consequences.
SA
No, my non-response is because I prefer not to engage in discussion with people who are incapable of having a civil discussion without lobbing insults.
Ed George – I don`t believe I have ever insulted you , all I have asked for is some honesty , why do material atheists not admit that their position is a position of faith (belief) every bit as much as christians like me. Sure there is evidence on both sides but ultimately it comes down to what you believe, yes believe based on the most reasonable explanation of said evidence.
Sure an almighty creator seems unbelievable but I have yet to hear a counter position being more believable , I mean an un-caused universe from nothing without design and purpose is just not believable in my eyes, but if you guys want to believe that go ahead but just know it is a position of faith not fact.
LoL! @ Acartia Eddie- You don’t respond because you have nothing to counter what UB posted. The same thing goes for when I expose you are the poseur that you are. We aren’t insulting you, Acartia Eddie. We are making astute observations.
Marfin
No, you haven’t, and I thank you for that. But I hope that you understand why I choose not to participate in discussions with people like ET or UB who find it necessary to throw insults or accusations at anyone they disagree with.
I am not strictly an atheist, agnostic better describes what I am. I agree that some atheists base their worldview more on faith than evidence. Personally, I am agnostic simply because I have not seen any compelling evidence to indicate the existence of a God. I wouldn’t call this a “faith”, but I admit that my conclusions/views, as is the case for everyone, are affected by biases.
I don’t know how the universe was formed, or even that it was uncaused. But having a cause doesn’t necessarily equate to a supernatural cause. But, it also doesn’t rule it out. My conclusion about the cause of the universe isn’t based on faith, simply because I have not drawn any conclusion about it.
Acartia Eddie:
That is a lie and you are a liar. I have NEVER thrown insults or accusations at anyone for merely disagreeing. And Acartia Eddie will NEVER be able to show otherwise.
Moderators, why is it OK for “Ed George”, aka William Spearshake, to lie about me and post false accusations?
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Anyone who has been following along on this blog knows (without a doubt) that the real reason you don’t engage in earnest on the evidence of design is because you know that you don’t have the slightest chance of appearing to hold your own in that engagement. More accurately, your defense of materialism will not suffer well in a fair presentation of physical evidence, and we both know it. You came to this blog just over a year ago under false pretense (openly lying to the people here about your beliefs) in order to tease and taunt and argue with religious design proponents over social and political issues. I did not engage you for the vast majority of those months, simply because those topics are not why I participate here. However, over the course of time you began to challenge the physical evidence of design in biology, which is a subject I will respond to, and that is what the issue is here.
You refuse to engage in the evidence for a position that you relentlessly attack. Did you not once say on these very pages: “when we advocate for something we have to address or accept the contradictions that are inherent in our views”. If so, then quit whining about being held to your own standards. On a personal level Ed, the issue is about demonstrating a little intellectual integrity — either address the evidence, stop the attack, leave the field, or continue to demonstrate that you don’t have any.
If you only intend to do the latter, then don’t complain.
EG
“No, my non-response is because I prefer not to engage in discussion with people who are incapable of having a civil discussion without lobbing insults.”
With all due respect this is false .I think you will agree that I have never hurled insults your way and always tried to engage you in a civil manner yet there have been numerous times that you never answered questions I posed that would show the deficiencies in your position. In fact your favorite retort when the rubber meets the road so to speak is “thats a loaded question” So no ,even people who engage with you civilly do not get answers when you find the answer to be inconvenient to your world view. UB’s observations have considerable merit. Just saying
Vivid
VB
Yes, I agree. There are several commenters here who are always (or almost always) civil.
There are several reasons why I don’t respond or stop commenting on a thread:
1) when the discussion goes back and forth but there is no new thoughts provided.
2) when someone asks a loaded question.
3) when someone has a history of rude behaviour.
4) when some makes false accusations, as ET does.
5) when I get distracted by real life.
6) when the thread scrolls past what is displayed in the recent comments section.
7) when the comment is too lengthy. Life is too short.
But I think that we ultimately agree that none of us are under any obligation to respond to every question directed at them.
What false accusations have I made? I know that Acartia Eddie has made several against me. Not only that, Acartia Eddie has exhibited a penchant for quote-mining
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And just to be sure, Ed you are not getting a confrontation from me merely because we disagree (that is just another example of your self-serving spin on things). You are getting it because you refuse to acknowledge the facts (i.e. famous fulfilled predictions, well-documented experimental results, and recorded history) of the position you’ve been constantly attacking for the past year.
EDIT: I see Ed returned to change his original post, now trying to tie me to ET (apparently the spin never ceases). Ed, judging by the way you and ET have spat at each other, it appears the two of you have a long history together. I am happy to leave the two of you to it.
Ed George
Ok, understood. But I hope you will consider the points raised and develop some kind of answer to them, eventually – if not to UB then to someone else who may ask the same questions.