The Ottawa Citizen’s David Warren‘s birthday greeting to Darwin is
“I oppose Darwinism because it is an intellectual & scientific fraud. I have opposed it all my adult life on that account alone; as I’ve told you before, I opposed it as crap science when I was an atheist. But I oppose it today with greater & greater passion, because I see that it provides the cosmological groundwork for real evil.”
He offers a link to a discussion of what it means to say that humans are unique.
Here are some further reflections from his column of today:
Darwin was an honest, capable, plodding man. Alas, of his great hypothesis of “the origin of species, by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life,” it must be said that what was true in it was not original, and what was original was not true.
The basic notion of evolution — that all living creatures are related, and that man himself descends from the primordial slime as the product of purely material forces — is an ancient one, going back at least to Anaximander in the 6th century B.C. Likewise, the notion that creatures may be altered by selective breeding goes back as long as humans have bred animals.
Darwin’s contribution was the mechanism of natural (and later, sexual) selection. This mechanism was simultaneously proposed by Alfred Russel Wallace, a true genius who made many other signal observations and discoveries; but Darwin alone became obsessed with this one, and insisted that it could carry us beyond adaptation within a species, across natural barriers to the creation of entirely new forms, over eons of time. Wallace was not so sure, and to this day, Darwin’s notion exists merely as a surmise. It has never been proven.
Which is its great strength. For what cannot be proven can never be disproven, either. The Darwinian account is merely belied by the fossil record, which has provided none of the inter-species “missing links” that Darwin anticipated, and which instead yields only sudden radical changes.
I would add that when Darwinists claim that their theory is overwhelmingly confirmed, what they mean is that it must be true because otherwise atheist materialism (or liberal Christianity?) would not be true. Can’t help that, I am afraid.
I also suspect that they would dump it in a minute if they could think of an alternative satisfactory to atheist materialism or liberal Christianity.
Also just up at The Post-Darwinist:
Twitter account for the Post-Darwinist
Polls: Slight majority of Britons are okay with intelligent design
Teaching evolution: A note from The Cranky Professor
Mark Steyn’s testimony on the Ontario Human Rights Commission’s misdoings is here.)
Denyse,
Darwinists claim their theory is overwhelmingly confirmed because bacteria can gain resitance to anti-biotics, the beak of the finch varies, stickle-back fish vary due to ocean to lake adaptation and viruses also vary enough to elude our intervention.
Now if THAT isn’t enough to convince you then you have to introduce us to the designer(s) before we will even take a look at your position.
And remember, methodological naturalism has given us knowledge.
What knowledge I am unable to say, but I am asured it has.
I like this:
I’ve been following google news headlines, and the last few days, every headline has either been about the stimulus package or Darwin’s b-day. The Darwin articles always go something like “he was a genius ahead of his time. his theory has withstood the test of time and scientific scrutinity. Creationists have tried and failed and tried and failed to overturn him. But evolution has been proven right.”
Some type of evolution has most certainly occurred. But basically every article builds up a strawman ID and ignites it in flames with “evolution happened”. Too bad I.D. doesn’t necessarily conflict with evolution. But what DOES conflict with the apruptness of the fossil record, the incredible specified complexity of molecular machinery and the mutiplicity and meta-information of the genome is neo-Darwinian evolution. That’s not to mention the supposed fact that Einstein’s mind descended from apes in an evolutionary instant just because of natural selection.
If neo-Darwinian evolution happened, there would have been countless successful evolution simulations at this point. Unfortunatetly, the simple mechanisms of random variation and natural selection are incapable of developing the information found in nature; they are only good at preserving/decaying it.
uoflcard,
That is all part of the propaganda:
ID = Creation = fixation of species = anti-evolution
Organizations such as the NCSE cannot allow people to understand that “evolution” is NOT being debated.
Once we clear that hurdle, public support will grow even more than it is.
Frankly, I’m of the mind that evolution – mutation, drift, selection, HGT, etc – doesn’t do much to ‘confirm’ atheist materialism. It’s a scenario vastly more preferable to, say, one which directly comports with a strict, literal creation narrative. But the idea that evolution as we know it provides even marginal support for atheist materialism seems like bunk to me.
Atheists cling to evolution for the same reason some people drink nothing but the cheapest beer available. It usually isn’t because they think it’s great – it’s because they really don’t have any other options.
From David Warren:
From p221 of The Demon-Haunted World by the late Carl Sagan”
So even if a miracle is investigated by the church and the lourdes medical bureau and is confirmed to have no scientific explanation, we can be confident there are no miracles unless they occur at a certain rate?
Yeesh. There’s skepticism, and then there’s silliness. Not that I’m saying miracles obviously occurred, but the burden implied here is ridiculous.
Seversky
Carl Sagan repeats the myth that there have been only 65 or so miraculous cures at Lourdes. That’s an under-estimate, based on very stringent Church requirements that in order for a cure to be certified as a miraculous, the patient must not have undergone any conventional medical treatments, such as drugs or therapy – a very rare thing in today’s day and age, when people usually go to Lourdes after those avenues have been exhausted. Here’s a quote from the 1909 Catholic encyclopedia, to set that figure in perspective:
(Source: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09389b.htm )
By the way, if you want a real miracle, try this one: the cure of Pierre de Rudder, which converted his atheist doctor.
http://www.ewtn.com/library/mary/lourbern.htm
http://www.grantchronicles.com/astro116.htm
nullasus [7]
So even if a miracle is investigated by the church and the lourdes medical bureau and is confirmed to have no scientific explanation, we can be confident there are no miracles unless they occur at a certain rate?
Perhaps not confident – but we have no reason to suppose miracles unless the rate of remissions exceeds that which would have happened without miracles.
vjtorly [8]
Any quack complementary therapy can produce a similar set of figures and arguments to this. In fact many can give a better impression of being scientific. They can do it because they are not rigorous in their use of statistics and in particular take no account of the placebo effect. They all collapse if required to meet the standards of evidence based medicine.
As a doctor, I imagine Gpuccio will verify this.
Looking at your account in more detail:
* The Catholic Encyclopedia is hardly a neutral source.
* Figures and accounts from the second half of the 19th century need to be treated sceptically and interpreted. For example, what was meant by “conventional medicine” in those days? What was it to be a qualified physician?
However, even if we take the figures as true the quote proves nothing. All these figures are irrelevant unless you can compare them to the rate of remission that would have happened naturally and take into account the placebo effect. We are not told the nature of the conditions that were cured except that they were “bodily diseases” and very few of them were nervous disorders. We are told there were about 5 million pilgrims and 4000 cures. We have no idea how many of these pilgrims had something wrong with them – but let’s assume it is half of them. A natural remission rate of 1 in 600 for unspecified bodily conditions seems unremarkable – we usually recover from most conditions given time.
Congratulations to Mark Frank on his admirable skepticism. That’s just the spirit of open inquiry that we need when looking at the proposition that life can come from that which is not life or that DNA can spontaneously assemble itself into complex information. Forge on, brave Doubter!
IOW, vjtorley, the Church takes such stringent measures to weed out false positives, false negatives are expected 🙂
Mark Frank: The Catholic Encyclopedia is hardly a neutral source.
How about The Demon-Haunted World?
Re [10] – I have no problem with being sceptical about various theories of evolution. In the case of ID I have a problem knowing what to be sceptical about, as it does not include a hypothesis about how evolution happened.
Re [11] – I know nothing about The Demon-Haunted World. It may well also be a biased source.
Mark, the citation from The Demon Haunted World in Post 6 is what started this line of discussion.
Every source is arguably biased. With regard to the Catholic Church and the miracles at Lourdes, the Church recognizes its bias and takes an almost hyper-skeptical position in declaring miracles (and Marian apparitions for that matter).
It’s appropriate to point out that Carl Sagan rather unfairly used the Church’s quite proper reluctance to declare a miracle against it.
Mark Frank [9]
I take your point about the percentage of cures being relatively low, even if thousands were cured as I suggested. However, I cannot take seriously your suggestion that the placebo effect can account for the cures at Lourdes.
Here’s an extract from the Wikipedia article on the placebo effect:
Elsewhere, the article points out that “[a]ll placebo effects eventually wear off, thus making the placebo effect impractical for long term or chronic medical matters.” (All italics are mine.)
It seems to me that the placebo effect is frequently bandied about by Lourdes skeptics as a catch-all explanation for the cures, when in fact it doesn’t explain much at all in medicine.
Mark Frank [9]
You write:
That may be so, but here is one cure, described in Arnold Lunn’s The Third Day (see http://www.ewtn.com/library/answers/thrday.htm ), which should give even the most die-hard sceptic pause: the case of Pierre de Rudder.
Placebo effect, indeed!
Re[15]. That’s interesting. I thought the possibility of a strong placebo effect was firmly established even in clinical trials. Thanks for pointing this out.
Of course, the placebo effect is still a strong candidate to have a large effect on reporting of cures. We are not talking double-blind trials here! But I am content to stick with “would have recovered anyway” as the biggest explanation.
Re #16. I am sorry but I am just not going to take much notice of an anecdote of a single case 150 years ago. I guess we will have to agree to differ on our ideas of what we find plausible.
Mark Frank [17]
Fair enough. Here’s an out-of-print book on Lourdes which you might find interesting as a medical man:
http://books.google.com/books?.....;ct=result
It’s by E. Le Bec, Honorary Surgeon to St. Joseph’s Hospital, Paris.
As a skeptic and a Christian … I have trouble believing in any kind of miracle, and that includes the miracles needed for Darwinian evolution to be true.
Yes, I’m a Christian and a skeptic. On the whole, I think miracles do occur, but very rarely. I don’t assume stories of miracles today are true … I more often assume there are probably natural explanations to most of them. Since Darwinian evolution can’t be explained without an enormous amounts of miracles and a spin of the “god in the gaps” argument, it isn’t very convincing to this skeptic.
Mark, the case of Pierre de Rudder is hardly an “anecdote.” That’s belittling.
I don’t post often (but read and learn a lot) however this discussion may change that, grown adults believing in miracles at Lourdes?
Back to the science please.
GSV — I don’t post often (but read and learn a lot) however this discussion may change that, grown adults believing in miracles at Lourdes?
There are those of us who do. If you believe in God, why think it impossible?
If you don’t believe in God, well the notion that a material cause to the universe is logically inconsistent and it would be much more reasonable to believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran
To tribune7:
Thinking something is impossible is very different to not believing a Catholic marketing scam.
For example I think God is capable of making statues cry milk in India but I do not think He does. Do you?
nullasalus @ 7
The church investigates alleged miracles and I can understand how many people want them to be true but have any of the claimed miracles been evaluated as such by independent investigators.
It reminds me of the claims made for faith healing which seem to evaporate when examined closely:
Some Thoughts about Faith Healing by Stephen Barrett MD