Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

We used to have a lizard brain in the 1990s but we don’t now

Share
Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Flipboard
Print
Email

Or something. Pop science changes so much.

The “lizard brain” is part of what science used to know about the brain that ain’t so:

Lisa Feldman Barrett, Northeastern University psychology prof and author of Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain (2020), is candid about the way new research has cast doubt on old saws in science: “As a neuroscientist, I see scientific myths about the brain repeated regularly in the media and corners of academic research.”

The myth she targets in a recent article at Nautilus is the “triune brain,” the idea that our brain developed and continues to function in three successive layers.

First developed by neuroscientist Paul D. MacLean (1913–2007) in the 1960s and set out in more detail in his 1990 book The Triune Brain in Evolution, the triune brain theory posited three successive layers of brain:

● the Reptilian Complex (the lizard brain that keeps the body going)

● the Paleo-Mammalian Complex (the early mammal “emotional” brain) and

● the Neo-Mammalian Complex (the late mammal “smart” brain).

It was way too Cool to be false and perfect for pop psychology.Lisa Feldman Barrett dismisses talk of our “ancient” lizard brain as a bygone relic: “Most neurons have multiple jobs, not a single psychological purpose.”

News, “No, you do not have a lizard brain inside your human brain” at Mind Matters News

Such perfect Darwinism, it had to be true. But look what happened…

And so unfair to lizards too.

You may also wish to read: Your mind vs. your brain:
Ten things to know

and

Do we really have free will? Four things to know

Comments
Moreover, if the brain created the mind as Darwinists believe then it would be impossible for the mind to ever have causal power over the brain. That is to say, it would be impossible for the mind to exert its intentions and will onto the material brain. That is precisely why Darwinists, and materialists in general, constantly claim that free will is merely an illusion and that it does not really exist.
Free Will: Weighing Truth and Experience - Do our beliefs matter? - Mar 22, 2012 Excerpt: If we acknowledge just how much we don’t know about the conscious mind, perhaps we would be a bit more humble. 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. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/social-brain-social-mind/201203/free-will-weighing-truth-and-experience Matthew D. Lieberman – neuroscientist – materialist – UCLA professor
Yet free will is NOT an illusion. The mind, as Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz has shown, IS able to exert its intentions onto the material brain in order to produce physiological alterations to the brain..
Jeffrey Schwartz: You Are More than Your Brain - Science Uprising Extra Content https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rFIOSQNuXuY&list=PLR8eQzfCOiS1OmYcqv_yQSpje4p7rAE7-&index=9
This would simply be impossible if "your brain creates your mind" as Dr. Barrett falsely believes. Moreover, the belief that "your brain creates your mind", as Darwinists presuppose, leads to the catastrophic failure for any epistemological theory of knowledge that we may have. As J.B.S. Haldane and C.S. Lewis noted,
“It seems to me immensely unlikely that mind is a mere by-product of matter. For if my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true. They may be sound chemically, but that does not make them sound logically. And hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms. In order to escape from this necessity of sawing away the branch on which I am sitting, so to speak, I am compelled to believe that mind is not wholly conditioned by matter.” - J.B.S. Haldane - “When I am dead,” in Possible Worlds: And Other Essays [1927], “Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.” - C.S. Lewis
Simply put, without the mental attribute of free will existing in some real and meaningful sense, then all hope is lost for us ever making logically coherent arguments in the first place. This fact is clearly established by the fact that the denial of free will is a blatantly self refuting argument. Perhaps no better example exists for this than this blatantly self refuting statement that Jerry Coyne made about free will, ""Free will is an illusion so convincing that people simply refuse to believe that we don’t have it."
THE ILLUSION OF FREE WILL - Sam Harris - 2012 Excerpt: "Free will is an illusion so convincing that people simply refuse to believe that we don’t have it." - Jerry Coyne - professor emeritus at the University of Chicago in the Department of Ecology and Evolution https://samharris.org/the-illusion-of-free-will/
That statement should literally be the number one example of a self-refuting argument that is given in philosophy 101 classes. The denial of free will is simply insane. As Dr. Michael Egnor noted, "Someday, I predict, there will be a considerable psychiatric literature on the denial of free will. It’s essentially a delusion dressed up as science. To insist that your neurotransmitters completely control your choices is no different than insisting that your television or your iphone control your thoughts. It’s crazy."
Michael Egnor: Jerry Coyne Just Can’t Give Up Denying Free Will - April 27, 2020 Excerpt: Someday, I predict, there will be a considerable psychiatric literature on the denial of free will. It’s essentially a delusion dressed up as science. To insist that your neurotransmitters completely control your choices is no different than insisting that your television or your iphone control your thoughts. It’s crazy. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/michael-egnor-jerry-coyne-just-cant-give-up-denying-free-will/
Thus in conclusion, the false Darwinian belief that "your brain creates your mind" is refuted by evidence from quantum mechanics, evidence from neuroscience, and also by simple logic. As they say in baseball, "three strikes and you're out!" How much moreso should that be considered true in science?
Isaiah 1:18 “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
bornagain77
March 10, 2021
March
03
Mar
10
10
2021
01:30 PM
1
01
30
PM
PDT
Another false Darwinian belief that Dr. Barrett harbors is the false Darwinian belief that the brain creates the mind. In her article she states, "Under the hood, however, your brain creates your mind while it regulates the systems of your body." First off, there is not one shred of scientific evidence that anything material is remotely capable of generating conscious experience:
"Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious. So much for the philosophy of consciousness." - Jerry Fodor - Rutgers University philosopher [2] Fodor, J. A., Can there be a science of mind? Times Literary Supplement. July 3, 1992, pp5-7. “Every day we recall the past, perceive the present and imagine the future. How do our brains accomplish these feats? It’s safe to say that nobody really knows.” - Sebastian Seung - Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscientist - “Connectome”: "Those centermost processes of the brain with which consciousness is presumably associated are simply not understood. They are so far beyond our comprehension at present that no one I know of has been able even to imagine their nature." - Roger Wolcott Sperry - Nobel neurophysiologist As quoted in Genius Talk : Conversations with Nobel Scientists and Other Luminaries (1995) by Denis Brian "We have at present not even the vaguest idea how to connect the physio-chemical processes with the state of mind." - Eugene Wigner - Nobel prize-winner – Quantum Symmetries "Science's biggest mystery is the nature of consciousness. It is not that we possess bad or imperfect theories of human awareness; we simply have no such theories at all. About all we know about consciousness is that it has something to do with the head, rather than the foot." - Nick Herbert - Contemporary physicist "No experiment has ever demonstrated the genesis of consciousness from matter. One might as well believe that rabbits emerge from magicians' hats. Yet this vaporous possibility, this neuro-mythology, has enchanted generations of gullible scientists, in spite of the fact that there is not a shred of direct evidence to support it." - Larry Dossey - Physician and author
And there are very good reasons for believing that it is impossible for anything material to ever generate consciousness. Many properties of mind are simply irreducible to materialistic explanations. Dr. Michael Egnor, who is a neurosurgeon as well as professor of neurosurgery at the State University of New York, Stony Brook, states six properties of immaterial mind that are irreconcilable to the view that the mind is just the material brain. Those six properties are, “Intentionality,,, Qualia,,, Persistence of Self-Identity,,, Restricted Access,,, Incorrigibility,,, Free Will,,,”
The Mind and Materialist Superstition – Michael Egnor – 2008 Six “conditions of mind” that are irreconcilable with materialism: – Excerpt: Intentionality,,, Qualia,,, Persistence of Self-Identity,,, Restricted Access,,, Incorrigibility,,, Free Will,,, http://www.evolutionnews.org/2008/11/the_mind_and_materialist_super013961.html
Likewise, J. Warner Wallace has a very similar list, (but not an exact match to Dr. Egnor’s list), of six properties of immaterial mind that are irreconcilable with reductive materialism.
Six reasons why you should believe in non-physical minds – 01/30/2014 1) First-person access to mental properties 2) Our experience of consciousness implies that we are not our bodies 3) Persistent self-identity through time 4) Mental properties cannot be measured like physical objects 5) Intentionality or About-ness 6) Free will and personal responsibility http://winteryknight.com/2014/01/30/six-reasons-why-you-should-believe-in-non-physical-minds/
For example of one property of the immaterial mind that is forever irreconcilable with reductive materialism, with the ‘Persistence of Self-Identity through time’, (and/or ‘the experience of ‘the Now”), Stanley Jaki states that, “There can be no active mind without its sensing its existence in the moment called now.,,, ,,,There is no physical parallel to the mind’s ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. The mind remains identical with itself while it lives through its momentary nows.”
The Mind and Its Now – Stanley L. Jaki, May 2008 Excerpts: There can be no active mind without its sensing its existence in the moment called now.,,, Three quarters of a century ago Charles Sherrington, the greatest modern student of the brain, spoke memorably on the mind’s baffling independence of the brain. The mind lives in a self-continued now or rather in the now continued in the self. This life involves the entire brain, some parts of which overlap, others do not. ,,,There is no physical parallel to the mind’s ability to extend from its position in the momentary present to its past moments, or in its ability to imagine its future. The mind remains identical with itself while it lives through its momentary nows. ,,, the now is immensely richer an experience than any marvelous set of numbers, even if science could give an account of the set of numbers, in terms of energy levels. The now is not a number. It is rather a word, the most decisive of all words. It is through experiencing that word that the mind comes alive and registers all existence around and well beyond. ,,, All our moments, all our nows, flow into a personal continuum, of which the supreme form is the NOW which is uncreated, because it simply IS. http://metanexus.net/essay/mind-and-its-now
In fact, Einstein's conflict with the mental attribute of the ‘Persistence of Self-Identity through time’, (and/or ‘the experience of ‘the Now”), is precisely why Albert Einstein never received a Nobel Prize for special relativity,
Einstein vs Bergson, science vs philosophy and the meaning of time – Wednesday 24 June 2015 http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/philosopherszone/science-vs-philosophy-and-the-meaning-of-time/6539568
Thus, it is not as if the differences between the mental attribute of the 'experience of the now' and with reductive materialism can be easily brushed under the rug.,, If they could be easily reconciled, then Einstein would have received a Nobel prize for Special Relativity. In fact, according to recent advances in quantum theory, ‘the experience of ‘the Now” is a defining feature of reality and is therefore a powerful, (evidence based), argument that we live in a mental universe, and not in a materialistic universe (as Darwinists presuppose). For instance, the following delayed choice experiment with atoms demonstrated that, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”
Reality doesn’t exist until we measure it, (Delayed Choice) quantum experiment confirms – Mind = blown. – Fiona MacDonald – 1 Jun 2015 Excerpt: “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,” lead researcher and physicist Andrew Truscott said in a press release. http://www.sciencealert.com/reality-doesn-t-exist-until-we-measure-it-quantum-experiment-confirms
Likewise, the following violation of Leggett's inequality stressed the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we're not observing it.
Quantum physics says goodbye to reality - Apr 20, 2007 Excerpt: They found that, just as in the realizations of Bell's thought experiment, Leggett's inequality is violated – thus stressing the quantum-mechanical assertion that reality does not exist when we're not observing it. "Our study shows that 'just' giving up the concept of locality would not be enough to obtain a more complete description of quantum mechanics," Aspelmeyer told Physics Web. "You would also have to give up certain intuitive features of realism." http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/27640
And as Professor Scott Aaronson of MIT once quipped, “Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists,,, But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!”
“Look, we all have fun ridiculing the creationists who think the world sprang into existence on October 23, 4004 BC at 9AM (presumably Babylonian time), with the fossils already in the ground, light from distant stars heading toward us, etc. But if we accept the usual picture of quantum mechanics, then in a certain sense the situation is far worse: the world (as you experience it) might as well not have existed 10^-43 seconds ago!” – Scott Aaronson – MIT associate Professor quantum computation – Lecture 11: Decoherence and Hidden Variables
There are many more lines of evidence from quantum mechanics that establish that we do indeed live in a Theistic universe where consciousness is held to be primary and material is held to be derivative, and not the other way around as Darwinists believe.
How Quantum Mechanics and Consciousness Correlate - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f0hL3Nrdas
bornagain77
March 10, 2021
March
03
Mar
10
10
2021
01:29 PM
1
01
29
PM
PDT
As to Dr. Barrett's claim that "all mammal brains (and most likely, all vertebrate brains as well) are built from a single manufacturing plan using the same kinds of neurons." Well the claim of "a single manufacturing plan using the same kinds of neurons" is, if not an outright false claim, at the very least a severely misleading claim.
The Human Brain Is Something New - Ann Gauger - September 18, 2018 Excerpt: Physically a human brain is three times the size of a chimpanzee brain, and uses considerably more energy. Our brain represents 2 percent of our body weight but uses 20 percent of the oxygen we breathe. However, our brains are not merely enlarged ape brains — there are other differences. Our brains contain neural structures, enhanced wiring, and forms of connectivity among nerve cells not found in any animal.1 Our neurons continue dividing well into adulthood and have a 10-fold higher density than chimps. The human brain is something new, something different, as can be seen by the things we do that animals don’t.,,, David Premack, the late psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania said: "In examining claims of similarity between animals and humans, one must ask: What are the dissimilarities? This approach prevents confusing similarity with equivalence. We follow this approach in examining eight cognitive cases — teaching, short-term memory, causal reasoning, planning, deception, transitive inference, theory of mind, and language — and find, in all cases, that similarities between animal and human abilities are small, dissimilarities large.2" Our brains have vastly more ability than is needed for survival, most notably the capacity for language and abstract thought. We are orders of magnitude beyond anything animals can do. https://evolutionnews.org/2018/09/beyond-adapation-the-human-brain-is-something-new/ Neurons constantly rewrite their DNA - Apr. 27, 2015 Excerpt: They (neurons) use minor "DNA surgeries" to toggle their activity levels all day, every day.,,, "We used to think that once a cell reaches full maturation, its DNA is totally stable, including the molecular tags attached to it to control its genes and maintain the cell's identity," says Hongjun Song, Ph.D.,, "This research shows that some cells actually alter their DNA all the time, just to perform everyday functions.",,, ,,, recent studies had turned up evidence that mammals' brains exhibit highly dynamic DNA modification activity—more than in any other area of the body,,, http://medicalxpress.com/news/2015-04-neurons-constantly-rewrite-dna.html The brain’s stunning genomic diversity revealed - Sept. 9, 2016 Multi-institutional collaboration led by the Salk Institute shows that half of our healthy neurons contain huge insertions or deletions in DNA Excerpt: Our brains contain a surprising diversity of DNA. Even though we are taught that every cell in our body has the same DNA, in fact most cells in the brain have changes to their DNA that make each neuron a little different.,,, The findings, published September 12, 2016 in the journal Nature Neuroscience, may help explain what makes us each unique—why even identical twins can be so different from one other, for example,,,, http://www.salk.edu/news-release/brains-stunning-genomic-diversity-revealed/ NIH Director: Each Neuron is Different - July 11, 2015 Excerpt: Things are astronomically more complicated in the brain, as its “wires” are not merely a conduit of electrical charge but an incredibly complex cell called a neuron. And each neuron does not merely attach to two distant connectors, but rather to hundreds or thousands of connectors. And each connection is nothing like a simple soldering attachment. In the brain they are called synapses and with thousands of molecular-scale switches researchers compare them to microprocessors. But on top of all that, each neuron is different. A hundred billion different, unique neurons, each having a different, unique function. Each forming a different, unique set of synapses. We have not even begun to understand all of this neural circuitry, let alone how to design or build anything like it. And yet (Darwinists) insist it all must have arisen spontaneously, as a result of random mutations. That is not science, that is absurdity. http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2015/07/nih-director-each-neuron-is-different.html Evolution by Splicing – Comparing gene transcripts from different species reveals surprising splicing diversity. – Ruth Williams – December 20, 2012 Excerpt: A major question in vertebrate evolutionary biology is “how do physical and behavioral differences arise if we have a very similar set of genes to that of the mouse, chicken, or frog?”,,, A commonly discussed mechanism was variable levels of gene expression, but both Blencowe and Chris Burge,,, found that gene expression is relatively conserved among species. On the other hand, the papers show that most alternative splicing events differ widely between even closely related species. “The alternative splicing patterns are very different even between humans and chimpanzees,” said Blencowe.,,, http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view%2FarticleNo%2F33782%2Ftitle%2FEvolution-by-Splicing%2F Widespread Expansion of Protein Interaction Capabilities by Alternative Splicing - 2016 In Brief Alternatively spliced isoforms of proteins exhibit strikingly different interaction profiles and thus, in the context of global interactome networks, appear to behave as if encoded by distinct genes rather than as minor variants of each other.,,, Page 806 excerpt: As many as 100,000 distinct isoform transcripts could be produced from the 20,000 human protein-coding genes (Pan et al., 2008), collectively leading to perhaps over a million distinct polypeptides obtained by post-translational modification of products of all possible transcript isoforms (Smith and Kelleher, 2013). http://iakouchevalab.ucsd.edu/publications/Yang_Cell_OMIM_2016.pdf
bornagain77
March 10, 2021
March
03
Mar
10
10
2021
06:03 AM
6
06
03
AM
PDT
I certainly enjoyed her article debunking the false Darwinian belief in a 'lizard brain'. But I could not help noticing that Dr. Barrett still harbors some rather major false Darwinian beliefs herself. First off, in her article Dr. Barrett correctly holds that "Being wrong is a normal and inevitable part of the scientific process". And also correctly holds that new discoveries lead to "major course corrections in our understanding of how the world works". But, (while correctly stating that quantum physics was a major course correction in science), she then falsely assumes that natural selection was also a major course correction in science.
That Is Not How Your Brain Works Forget these scientific myths to better understand your brain and yourself. - Lisa Feldman Barrett - March 3, 2021 Excerpt: "Being wrong is a normal and inevitable part of the scientific process. We scientists do our best with the tools we have, until new tools extend our senses and let us probe more deeply, broadly, or precisely. Over time, new discoveries lead us to major course corrections in our understanding of how the world works, such as natural selection and quantum physics. Failure, therefore, is an opportunity to discover and learn. https://nautil.us/issue/98/mind/that-is-not-how-your-brain-works
Contrary to what Dr. Barrett apparently falsely believes, Natural Selection was certainly not a 'major course correction' in science. If anything, Natural selection has grossly misled science down the wrong scientific path. Prior to the widespread acceptance of Darwin's theory of natural selection, the default assumption in science was that life was, obviously, the product of Intelligent Design. To this day the impression of Intelligent Design is simply overwhelming, As Francis Crick explained, "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved."
"Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved." Francis Crick - What Mad Pursuit - Pg. 138 - 1990
And indeed there is good reason for Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA, to have said what he said. Just looking at a cross section of DNA is enough for most fair minded people to see that life, obviously, must have been Intelligently designed:
Cross section of DNA https://live.staticflickr.com/5253/5482750446_75cbc5cfa2_z.jpg
And here is a humorous example of just how hard it was for one young atheist to fight off the impression of "extraordinary design" that he was seeing in biology.
“I remember how frustrated I became when, as a young atheist, I examined specimens under the microscope. I would often walk away and try to convince myself that I was not seeing examples of extraordinary design, but merely the product of some random, unexplained mutations.” - Rick Oliver (‘Designed to Kill in a Fallen World.’)
And therefore, (since the default impression was, (and still is), that life was obviously Intelligently Designed), Natural Selection was envisioned by Charles Darwin to function as a 'Designer substitute' to try to explain the obvious design that we see in life. As Richard Dawkins explained in his book "The Blind Watchmaker", "Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning."
"Yet the living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the illusion of design and planning." - Richard Dawkins - "The Blind Watchmaker" - 1986 - page 21
And as Francisco J. Ayala stated in his article entitled 'Design without designer', "Darwin’s theory of natural selection accounts for the 'design' of organisms, and for their wondrous diversity, as the result of natural processes,",,, Darwin's focus in The Origin was the explanation of design.’
Darwin's greatest discovery: Design without designer - Francisco J. Ayala - May 15, 2007 Excerpt: "Darwin’s theory of natural selection accounts for the 'design' of organisms, and for their wondrous diversity, as the result of natural processes,",,, Darwin's Explanation of Design Darwin's focus in The Origin was the explanation of design, with evolution playing the subsidiary role of supporting evidence. http://www.pnas.org/content/104/suppl_1/8567.full
And as Ernst Mayr stated in 2009 'Every aspect of the “wonderful design” so admired by the natural theologians could be explained by natural selection.'
Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought By Ernst Mayr - November 24, 2009 Excerpt: Every aspect of the “wonderful design” so admired by the natural theologians could be explained by natural selection. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/darwins-influence-on-modern-thought/
Yet, Natural Selection is now found, via the mathematics of population genetics, to be grossly inadequate of the supposed 'Designer substitute' that Darwinists falsely envisioned it to be.
The waiting time problem in a model hominin population – 2015 Sep 17 John Sanford, Wesley Brewer, Franzine Smith, and John Baumgardner Excerpt: the waiting time for the fixation of a “string-of-one” is by itself problematic (Table 2). Waiting a minimum of 1.5 million years (realistically, much longer), for a single point mutation is not timely adaptation in the face of any type of pressing evolutionary challenge. This is especially problematic when we consider that it is estimated that it only took six million years for the chimp and human genomes to diverge by over 5 % [1]. ,,, While fixing one point mutation is problematic, our simulations show that the fixation of two co-dependent mutations is extremely problematic – requiring at least 84 million years (Table 2). This is ten-fold longer than the estimated time required for ape-to-man evolution.,,, Certainly the creation and fixation of a string of three (requiring at least 380 million years) would be extremely untimely (and trivial in effect), in terms of the evolution of modern man. ,,, When we increase the hominin population from 10,000 to 1 million (our current upper limit for these types of experiments), the waiting time for creating a string of five is only reduced from two billion to 482 million years. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4573302/
And with natural selection, (i.e. the 'designer substitute'), being tossed to the wayside by the mathematics of population genetics itself, then, of course, the default assumption that life is Intelligently designed comes to the forefront once again. As Richard Sternberg stated in the following video, "if that (natural selection) just does not explain the evidence — then the flip side of that is, well, things appear designed because they are designed.”
“Darwinism provided an explanation for the appearance of design, and argued that there is no Designer — or, if you will, the designer is natural selection. If that’s out of the way — if that (natural selection) just does not explain the evidence — then the flip side of that is, well, things appear designed because they are designed.” Richard Sternberg – Living Waters documentary Whale Evolution vs. Population Genetics – Richard Sternberg and Paul Nelson – (excerpt from Living Waters video) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0csd3M4bc0Q
Yet, many Darwinists who are familiar with the failings of natural selection within the mathematics of population genetics, (instead of embracing Design), are now championing what is termed 'neutral theory'. As Austin Hughs explained, 'Darwinism asserts that natural selection is the driving force of evolutionary change. It is the claim of the neutral theory, on the other hand, that the majority of evolutionary change is due to chance.'
Austin Hughes and Neutral Theory - Laurence A. Moran - June 19, 2017 Excerpt: Originally proposed by Motoo Kimura, Jack King, and Thomas Jukes, the neutral theory of molecular evolution is inherently non-Darwinian. Darwinism asserts that natural selection is the driving force of evolutionary change. It is the claim of the neutral theory, on the other hand, that the majority of evolutionary change is due to chance. http://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2017/06/austin-hughes-and-neutral-theory.html
Thus, with Natural selection being tossed to the wayside by population genetics, (as the supposed explanation for the 'wonderful design' we see in life), Darwinists did not accept such a devastating finding as an outright falsification for their theory, as they rightly should have done, but instead are now reduced to arguing that the 'wonderful design' we see in life is, basically, the result of pure chance with natural selection now playing a very negligible role if any role at all. . Even Richard Dawkins himself finds the claim that chance can build such wonderful design to be 'absolutely inconceivable'. As Dawkins states in the following video, the 'appearance of design', “cannot come about by chance. It's absolutely inconceivable that you could get anything as complicated or well designed as a modern bird or a human or a hedgehog coming about by chance.'
4:30 minute mark: "It cannot come about by chance. It's absolutely inconceivable that you could get anything as complicated or well designed as a modern bird or a human or a hedgehog coming about by chance. That's absolutely out.,,, It's out of the question.,,, So where (does the appearance of design)) it come from? The process of gradual evolution by natural selection.” Richard Dawkins - From a Frog to a Prince - video https://youtu.be/ClleN8ysimg?t=267
To put it even more bluntly than Richard Dawkins did, Jay Homnick states, “Once you allow the intellect to consider that an elaborate organism with trillions of microscopic interactive components can be an accident… you have essentially “lost your mind.”
“It is not enough to say that design is a more likely scenario to explain a world full of well-designed things. It strikes me as urgent to insist that you not allow your mind to surrender the absolute clarity that all complex and magnificent things were made that way. Once you allow the intellect to consider that an elaborate organism with trillions of microscopic interactive components can be an accident… you have essentially “lost your mind.” Jay Homnick – American Spectator 2005
Contrary to what proponents of neutral theory may want to believe, (with natural selection being tossed to the wayside by population genetics as the supposed 'designer substitute' for the overwhelming appearance of design that we see in life), the explanation for the 'extraordinary design' that we see in life does not become, 'well, pure chance must have done it", as Neutral Theory advocates want to believe, but instead the explanation for life reverts back to the original assumption that life is, obviously, the product of Intelligent Design.
Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
One final note, if anything ever gave overwhelming evidence for design, the human brain is certainly it. Perhaps Dr. Barrett would like to try to explain how a single neuron can possibly come about by unguided Darwinian processes?
"Complexity Brake" Defies Evolution - August 8, 2012 Excerpt: Consider a neuronal synapse -- the presynaptic terminal has an estimated 1000 distinct proteins. Fully analyzing their possible interactions would take about 2000 years. Or consider the task of fully characterizing the visual cortex of the mouse -- about 2 million neurons. Under the extreme assumption that the neurons in these systems can all interact with each other, analyzing the various combinations will take about 10 million years..., even though it is assumed that the underlying technology speeds up by an order of magnitude each year. - per ENV
bornagain77
March 10, 2021
March
03
Mar
10
10
2021
03:47 AM
3
03
47
AM
PDT
Darwinists will ignore this as they do everything else that disproves belief. They believe it is true because they want to believe it to be true. How depressing it must be to be a Darwinist? Holding on to the ridiculous notion that man has no real meaning or purpose.BobRyan
March 10, 2021
March
03
Mar
10
10
2021
12:18 AM
12
12
18
AM
PDT
A lot of the notions about rigid division arose after digital thinking became the norm. When most scientists were familiar with analog mechanisms, and used analog meters and devices in physical experiments, holistic notions were much more common. Freud's id, ego and superego were functional modes of the entire brain, not sections of the CPU.polistra
March 9, 2021
March
03
Mar
9
09
2021
11:57 PM
11
11
57
PM
PDT

Leave a Reply