In an otherwise conventional “mildly disapproving” review of Why Science Does Not Disprove God by University of Oregon mathematician Amir D. Aczel, physicist Alan Lightman observes,
In his foray into biology, Aczel says the theory of evolution is flawed. In particular, he points out that it does not explain altruistic behavior with no apparent survival benefit to the genes of the do-gooder. He cites a recent example of a Mount Everest climbing expedition in which an Israeli climber was well on his way to the top when he discovered a fallen Turkish climber who had lost his face mask and oxygen supply. At the cost of his own fingers and toes to frostbite, and sacrificing the glory of reaching the summit, the Israeli stopped and saved the life of the Turkish fellow. Why did he do it? “Human decency and goodness,” Aczel writes, with the implication that such qualities come from religion and spirituality. (In another chapter, he explains how a code of morality developed in early religions.)
Weird.
Lightman just says that and doesn’t launch into a diatribe against Aczel for the sin of Darwin doubt. It’s like he thinks you can discuss evolution intelligently.
Recall that we live in a time when this stuff is commonplace: “Moderator for science mag [Nautilus] article on how DNA studies shake tree of life bans discussion of ‘whether evolution is true.’” The point of her mag’s article was that Darwin’s Tree of Life is matchwood. So the mag runs an article like that and then bans discussion of what it might mean? Yup.
Are times changing? Do people no longer need to make ritual obeisance before Darwin, just to record some fact or make some point or other? Wow.
Has Alan Lightman ever attempted to climb Everest?
Science is not possible without God, whereas naturalism leads to the epistemological failure of science. This is true at bot the ‘local level’ of trying to explain the origin of our own consciousness and at the universe level of trying to explain the origin of the universe. i.e. Naturalism is ‘anti-science’ through and through:
In the following video clip, Dr. Craig, in his usual crisp and clear style, explains just how insane the Naturalist’s worldview is to undermining the reliability of our cognitive faculties:
The same epistemological failure for science is inherent when atheists try to ‘explain away’ the fine tuning of this universe with the ‘random multiverse’
Supplemental note: Dr. Gordon has recently applied this much the same criticism to unconstrained ‘random’ gravity waves in the inflationary model:
Some good argument on this point.
I would however caution against overly optimistic scenarios. In the political sphere it is an old dictum that empires are most dangerous in their dotage. In its own paroxysms of brutal suppression, the Church grew ever more brutal as the challenges to its dogma multiplied around it, immediately prior to the loss of the majority of its power in Europe.
The more strident calls for suppression of dissent, emanating from atheists & materialists, can be viewed in a positive light. It is true that their recent hold on claims to truth are being increasingly exposed as not merely weak but insupportable by their own logic.
But we should expect that, before the end, these strident calls will become louder, and the actions they encourage will actually be put into effect.
That would be the historically and rationally consistent conclusion.
‘Excerpt: Theism, with its vision of an orderly universe superintended by a God who created rational-minded creatures in his own image, “is vastly more hospitable to science than naturalism,” with its random process of natural selection, he (Plantinga) writes. “Indeed, it is theism, not naturalism, that deserves to be called ‘the scientific worldview.’”
The sad thing is that what Professor Plantinga writes here is not a wonderfully compelling hypothesis, but the sum total of any number of ‘cold, hard’ facts of physics, in respect of which the materialists, ipso facto, simply CANNOT offer a rebuttal.
The only parallel I can think of are audience-participation televised debates in the UK, before a panel of experts, and on occasions, just a member of the public. The most famous of these shows is called Question Time.
Not to put too fine a point on it, it is pure infotainment. If, as happens, someone makes a compelling point, but it diverges from the kind of pap generated by the politico-media ‘noise-machine’, it is swiftly passed over by he anchor-man.
Now, supposing the two sides to the debate were the very protagonists concerning whom and whose views, Uncommon Descent is all about. And instead of verbal exchanges, a chart setting forth the progress of the discovery of empirical truths is constantly updated, with each new unambiguous finding.
Why, for instance, has not the out-of-body experience of Pam Reynolds, under the most targeted and comprehensive medical monitoring, been accepted as proof of mind-brain duality?
How can they burble on, pursuant to their materialist world-view, when they have no explanation – can have no explanation, for the non-locality of photons? While it s a clear vindication of the axiom upon which all the major religions are based. Far from having a problem with it, religious folk of every stripe would have expected it.
I don’t know how long a list of such vindications of theism could be drawn up, but can’t see how it could be less than incontrovertible across a wide area.
Every day, here, I see extremely, well, brilliant scientists on here involved in what amounts, intellectually, to a game of Cowboys and Indians. Simply because, their opponents are not incessantly badgered to get a metaphysical handle on the many QUESTIONS they don’t seem to understand – never mind answers! Answers which, UNLIKE EVOLUTION, really ARE established science.
I’ve posted on this subject before, but I’ll summarize here. You cannot have a theory that states both “only the fittest survive” and “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
I take issue with the claim in the OP:
I don’t know what everyone elses level of ‘proof’ is (assuming that there are other minds out there 🙂 ) . But I find our present observational science to falsify neo-Darwinism and to confirm God’s existence to an absurdly high level of certainty.
The falsification of neo-Darwinism is as such. Neo-Darwinism holds that information (and consciousness) ’emerges’ from a material (energy-matter) basis, but it is now shown that material (both energy and matter) reduce to an information basis. Information DOES NOT reduce to a material basis! Here are my references for the claim that “energy and mass both reduce to information”:
Also of note:
Moreover this infinitely fast, beyond space and time, quantum information/entanglement is found to be in molecular biology on a massive scale:
It is very interesting to note that quantum entanglement, which conclusively demonstrates that ‘information’ in its pure ‘quantum form’ is completely transcendent of any time and space constraints, should be found in molecular biology on such a massive scale, for how can the quantum entanglement ‘effect’ in biology possibly be explained by a material (matter/energy) ’cause’ when the quantum entanglement ‘effect’ falsified material particles as its own ‘causation’ in the first place? (A. Aspect) Appealing to the probability of various configurations of material particles, as Darwinism does, simply will not help since a timeless/spaceless cause must be supplied which is beyond the capacity of the material particles themselves to supply! To give a coherent explanation for an effect that is shown to be completely independent of any time and space constraints one is forced to appeal to a cause that is itself not limited to time and space! i.e. Put more simply, you cannot explain a effect by a cause that has been falsified by the very same effect you are seeking to explain! Improbability arguments of various ‘special’ configurations of material particles, which have been a staple of the arguments against neo-Darwinism, simply do not apply since the cause is not within the material particles in the first place!
Supplemental Note:
Science confirms God’s existence by one line of evidence by the following method:
Due to advances in quantum mechanics, the argument for God from consciousness can now be framed like this:
Verse and Music:
Barb @ 5
Good point!
Barb @ 5
Good point. Thanks.
BTW, isn’t the latter known as the positive form of the golden rule? Is it written anywhere else besides the NT? The negative form of that rule appeared in other documents, but what about the positive form?
Doesn’t the law of non-contradiction, associated with the exclusive ‘either-or’, come to mind at this moment?
However, those who adhere to the popular relativistic “both-and” philosophical position would see no conflict between the two opposite rules. To those there’s no absolute truth. Everything is true and nothing is true. Go figure.
Information in biology?
http://link.springer.com/artic.....013-1394-1
if this Israeli was working rather then climbing then americans wouldn’t have vto work and give billions of bucks to israel every year.
helping a person on a mountain is just doing what you should. Saying no to yankee taxpayer money would be a real test of the Israeli’s goodness.
anyways evolution is wrong because its unreasonable and unsupported by scientific evidence.
Sorry AMIR!!!???