What? Cosmologist Sean Carroll doesn’t freak out when Darwin is doubted?

Chuchdarwin, since he has no evidence that Darwinian processes can produce even a single protein, (much less does he have any evidence that Darwinian processes can produce a immaterial mind capable of reasoning), resorts to his usual ad hominem attacks of anyone who disagrees with his atheistic Darwinian worldview. This time he disparages Alvin Plantinga for Plantinga pointing out, in his EAAN, that Natural Selection is incapable of producing reliable cognitive faculties.. Yet, Chuchdarwin is apparently unaware that leading Darwinists themselves have honestly admitted as much.

Why Evolutionary Theory Cannot Survive Itself – Nancy Pearcey – March 8, 2015 Excerpt: An example of self-referential absurdity is a theory called evolutionary epistemology, a naturalistic approach that applies evolution to the process of knowing. The theory proposes that the human mind is a product of natural selection. The implication is that the ideas in our minds were selected for their survival value, not for their truth-value. But what if we apply that theory to itself? Then it, too, was selected for survival, not truth — which discredits its own claim to truth. Evolutionary epistemology commits suicide.,,, Philosopher John Gray writes, “If Darwin’s theory of natural selection is true,… the human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth.”,,, Another example comes from Francis Crick. In The Astonishing Hypothesis, he writes, “Our highly developed brains, after all, were not evolved under the pressure of discovering scientific truths but only to enable us to be clever enough to survive.” ,,, Of course, the sheer pressure to survive is likely to produce some correct ideas. A zebra that thinks lions are friendly will not live long. But false ideas may be useful for survival. Evolutionists admit as much: Eric Baum says, “Sometimes you are more likely to survive and propagate if you believe a falsehood than if you believe the truth.” Steven Pinker writes, “Our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes the truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not.” The upshot is that survival is no guarantee of truth. If survival is the only standard, we can never know which ideas are true and which are adaptive but false. To make the dilemma even more puzzling, evolutionists tell us that natural selection has produced all sorts of false concepts in the human mind. Many evolutionary materialists maintain that free will is an illusion, consciousness is an illusion, even our sense of self is an illusion — and that all these false ideas were selected for their survival value. So how can we know whether the theory of evolution itself is one of those false ideas? The theory undercuts itself.,,, A few thinkers, to their credit, recognize the problem. Literary critic Leon Wieseltier writes, “If reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? … Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it.” On a similar note, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks, “Is the [evolutionary] hypothesis really compatible with the continued confidence in reason as a source of knowledge?” His answer is no: “I have to be able to believe … that I follow the rules of logic because they are correct — not merely because I am biologically programmed to do so.” Hence, “insofar as the evolutionary hypothesis itself depends on reason, it would be self-undermining.”,,, Kenan Malik, a writer trained in neurobiology, writes, “If our cognitive capacities were simply evolved dispositions, there would be no way of knowing which of these capacities lead to true beliefs and which to false ones.” Thus “to view humans as little more than sophisticated animals …undermines confidence in the scientific method.”,,, Of course, the atheist pursuing his research has no choice but to rely on rationality, just as everyone else does. The point is that he has no philosophical basis for doing so. Only those who affirm a rational Creator have a basis for trusting human rationality. The reason so few atheists and materialists seem to recognize the problem is that, like Darwin, they apply their skepticism selectively. They apply it to undercut only ideas they reject, especially ideas about God. They make a tacit exception for their own worldview commitments. - per evolution news

Perhaps Chuckdarwin, since he finds Plantinga to be so contemptible, will, at least, respect Eugene Wigner’s observation that our reasoning power is, by all rights, a ‘miracle’?

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences – Eugene Wigner – 1960 Excerpt: ,,certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin’s process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.,,, It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here, quite comparable in its striking nature to the miracle that the human mind can string a thousand arguments together without getting itself into contradictions, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html

Moreover, Donald Hoffman, who believes in Darwinian evolution himself, basically, confirmed Plantiga’s EAAN with numerous computer simulations based on population genetics that proved that, if Darwinian evolution were true, then ALL of our visual perceptions would be illusory,,.

Donald Hoffman: Do we see reality as it is? – Video – 9:59 minute mark Quote: “fitness does depend on reality as it is, yes.,,, Fitness is not the same thing as reality as it is, and it is fitness, and not reality as it is, that figures centrally in the equations of evolution. So, in my lab, we have run hundreds of thousands of evolutionary game simulations with lots of different randomly chosen worlds and organisms that compete for resources in those worlds. Some of the organisms see all of the reality. Others see just part of the reality. And some see none of the reality. Only fitness. Who wins? Well I hate to break it to you but perception of reality goes extinct. In almost every simulation, organisms that see none of reality, but are just tuned to fitness, drive to extinction that perceive reality as it is. So the bottom line is, evolution does not favor veridical, or accurate perceptions. Those (accurate) perceptions of reality go extinct. Now this is a bit stunning. How can it be that not seeing the world accurately gives us a survival advantage?” https://youtu.be/oYp5XuGYqqY?t=601 The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality – April 2016 The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman uses evolutionary game theory to show that our perceptions of an independent reality must be illusions. Excerpt: “The classic argument is that those of our ancestors who saw more accurately had a competitive advantage over those who saw less accurately and thus were more likely to pass on their genes that coded for those more accurate perceptions, so after thousands of generations we can be quite confident that we’re the offspring of those who saw accurately, and so we see accurately. That sounds very plausible. But I think it is utterly false. It misunderstands the fundamental fact about evolution, which is that it’s about fitness functions — mathematical functions that describe how well a given strategy achieves the goals of survival and reproduction. The mathematical physicist Chetan Prakash proved a theorem that I devised that says: According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness. Never.” https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160421-the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality/

And although Hoffman, a Darwinist, tried to limit his argument to just our visual perceptions, there is no reason why his argument would not also apply to our cognitive faculties as well,

The Case Against Reality – May 13, 2016 Excerpt: Hoffman seems to come to a conclusion similar to the one Alvin Plantinga argues in ch. 10 of Where the Conflict Really Lies: we should not expect — in the absence of further argument — that creatures formed by a naturalistic evolutionary process would have veridical perceptions.,,, First, even if Hoffman’s argument were restricted to visual perception, and not to our cognitive faculties more generally (e.g., memory, introspection, a priori rational insight, testimonial belief, inferential reasoning, etc.), the conclusion that our visual perceptions would be wholly unreliable given natural selection would be sufficient for Plantinga’s conclusion of self-defeat. After all, reliance upon the veridicality of our visual perceptions was and always will be crucial for any scientific argument for the truth of evolution. So if these perceptions cannot be trusted, we have little reason to think evolutionary theory is true. Second, it’s not clear that Hoffman’s application of evolutionary game theory is only specially applicable to visual perception, rather than being relevant for our cognitive faculties generally. If “we find that veridical perceptions can be driven to extinction by non-veridical strategies that are tuned to utility rather than objective reality” (2010, p. 504, my emphasis), then why wouldn’t veridical cognitive faculties (more generally) be driven to extinction by non-veridical strategies that are tuned to utility rather than objective reality? After all, evolutionary theory purports to be the true account of the formation of all of our cognitive faculties, not just our faculty of visual perception. If evolutionary game theory proves that “true perception generally goes extinct” when “animals that perceive the truth compete with others that sacrifice truth for speed and energy-efficiency” (2008), why wouldn’t there be a similar sacrifice with respect to other cognitive faculties? In fact, Hoffman regards the following theorem as now proven: “According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness” (Atlantic interview). But then wouldn’t it also be the case that an organism that cognizes reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that cognizes none of reality but is just tuned to fitness? On the evolutionary story, every cognitive faculty we have was produced by a process that was tuned to fitness (rather than tuned to some other value, such as truth). http://www.gregwelty.com/2016/05/the-case-against-reality/

The primary problem for atheists in trying to ground reasoning in their materialistic worldview is that they deny the existence of free will. As Jerry Coyne stated. “You are robots made out of meat. Which is what I am going to try to convince you of today”,,

“You are robots made out of meat. Which is what I am going to try to convince you of today” Jerry Coyne – No, You’re Not a Robot Made Out of Meat (Science Uprising 02) – video https://youtu.be/rQo6SWjwQIk?list=PLR8eQzfCOiS1OmYcqv_yQSpje4p7rAE7-&t=20

Yet, as should be needless to say, the denial of free will by Jerry Coyne, and by other Darwinian atheists, directly undermines our ability to reason in a rational fashion,

Sam Harris’s Free Will: The Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex Did It – Martin Cothran – November 9, 2012 Excerpt: There is something ironic about the position of thinkers like Harris on issues like this: they claim that their position is the result of the irresistible necessity of logic (in fact, they pride themselves on their logic). Their belief is the consequent, in a ground/consequent relation between their evidence and their conclusion. But their very stated position is that any mental state — including their position on this issue — is the effect of a physical, not logical cause. By their own logic, it isn’t logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order. - per evolution news 1) rationality implies a thinker in control of thoughts. (2) under materialism a thinker is an effect caused by processes in the brain. (3) in order for materialism to ground rationality a thinker (an effect) must control processes in the brain (a cause). (1)&(2) (4) no effect can control its cause. Therefore materialism cannot ground rationality. per Box UD

The denial of free will is ‘self defeating’ in the most fundamental way possible in that you are not responsible for anything you may do, or for any argument you may make, but your actions and arguments are, as C S Lewis put it, the “unintended by-product of mindless matter” And as C.S. Lewis further noted, “unless Reason is an absolute, all is in ruins.”

“One absolutely central inconsistency ruins [the popular scientific philosophy]. The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears… unless Reason is an absolute, all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based.” —C.S. Lewis, Is Theology Poetry (aka the Argument from Reason) “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, The Case for Christianity, p. 32 THE ARGUMENT FROM REASON – John M. DePoe Excerpt: (CS) Lewis closes the third chapter of Miracles with this conclusion: Reason is given before Nature and on reason our concept of Nature depends. Our acts of inference are prior to our picture of Nature almost as the telephone is prior to the friend’s voice we hear by it. When we try to fit these acts into the picture of nature we fail. The item which we put into that picture and label “Reason” always turns out to be somehow different from the reason we ourselves are enjoying and exercising as we put it in. [. . .] But the imagined thinking which we put into the picture depends—because our whole idea of Nature depends—on thinking we actually doing, not vice versa. This is the prime reality, on which the attribution of reality to anything else rests. If it won’t fit into Nature, we can’t help it. We will certainly not, on that account, give it up. If we do, we should be giving up Nature too. http://www.reasonsforgod.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/DePoe-The-Argument-from-Reason.pdf

Verse and quote:

What is the Logos? Logos is a Greek word literally translated as “word, speech, or utterance.” However, in Greek philosophy, Logos refers to divine reason or the power that puts sense into the world making order instead of chaos.,,, In the Gospel of John, John writes “In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). John appealed to his readers by saying in essence, “You’ve been thinking, talking, and writing about the Word (divine reason) for centuries and now I will tell you who He is.” https://www.compellingtruth.org/what-is-the-Logos.html “Atheists can give no reason why they should value reason, and Christians can show how anyone who believes in reason must also believe in God.” Cogito; Ergo Deus Est – by Charles Edward White – Philosophy Still Lives Because God Isn’t Dead

bornagain77

August 21, 2020

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Natural selection is an incoherent argument when used as a designer mimic.ET

August 21, 2020

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Chuchdarwin, since he has no evidence that Darwinian processes can produce even a single protein, (much less does he have any evidence that Darwinian processes can produce a immaterial mind capable of reasoning), resorts to his usual ad hominem attacks of anyone who disagrees with his atheistic Darwinian worldview. This time he disparages Alvin Plantinga for Plantinga pointing out, in his EAAN, that Natural Selection is incapable of producing reliable cognitive faculties.. Yet, Chuchdarwin is apparently unaware that leading Darwinists themselves have honestly admitted as much.

Why Evolutionary Theory Cannot Survive Itself - Nancy Pearcey - March 8, 2015 Excerpt: An example of self-referential absurdity is a theory called evolutionary epistemology, a naturalistic approach that applies evolution to the process of knowing. The theory proposes that the human mind is a product of natural selection. The implication is that the ideas in our minds were selected for their survival value, not for their truth-value. But what if we apply that theory to itself? Then it, too, was selected for survival, not truth — which discredits its own claim to truth. Evolutionary epistemology commits suicide.,,, Philosopher John Gray writes, "If Darwin’s theory of natural selection is true,… the human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth.",,, Another example comes from Francis Crick. In The Astonishing Hypothesis, he writes, "Our highly developed brains, after all, were not evolved under the pressure of discovering scientific truths but only to enable us to be clever enough to survive." ,,, Of course, the sheer pressure to survive is likely to produce some correct ideas. A zebra that thinks lions are friendly will not live long. But false ideas may be useful for survival. Evolutionists admit as much: Eric Baum says, "Sometimes you are more likely to survive and propagate if you believe a falsehood than if you believe the truth." Steven Pinker writes, "Our brains were shaped for fitness, not for truth. Sometimes the truth is adaptive, but sometimes it is not." The upshot is that survival is no guarantee of truth. If survival is the only standard, we can never know which ideas are true and which are adaptive but false. To make the dilemma even more puzzling, evolutionists tell us that natural selection has produced all sorts of false concepts in the human mind. Many evolutionary materialists maintain that free will is an illusion, consciousness is an illusion, even our sense of self is an illusion — and that all these false ideas were selected for their survival value. So how can we know whether the theory of evolution itself is one of those false ideas? The theory undercuts itself.,,, A few thinkers, to their credit, recognize the problem. Literary critic Leon Wieseltier writes, "If reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? … Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it." On a similar note, philosopher Thomas Nagel asks, "Is the [evolutionary] hypothesis really compatible with the continued confidence in reason as a source of knowledge?" His answer is no: "I have to be able to believe … that I follow the rules of logic because they are correct — not merely because I am biologically programmed to do so." Hence, "insofar as the evolutionary hypothesis itself depends on reason, it would be self-undermining.",,, Kenan Malik, a writer trained in neurobiology, writes, "If our cognitive capacities were simply evolved dispositions, there would be no way of knowing which of these capacities lead to true beliefs and which to false ones." Thus "to view humans as little more than sophisticated animals …undermines confidence in the scientific method.",,, Of course, the atheist pursuing his research has no choice but to rely on rationality, just as everyone else does. The point is that he has no philosophical basis for doing so. Only those who affirm a rational Creator have a basis for trusting human rationality. The reason so few atheists and materialists seem to recognize the problem is that, like Darwin, they apply their skepticism selectively. They apply it to undercut only ideas they reject, especially ideas about God. They make a tacit exception for their own worldview commitments. https://evolutionnews.org/2015/03/why_evolutionar/

Perhaps Chuckdarwin, since he finds Plantinga to be contemptible, will, at least, respect Eugene Wigner's observation that our reasoning power is, by all rights, a 'miracle'?

The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences - Eugene Wigner - 1960 Excerpt: ,,certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin's process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.,,, It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here, quite comparable in its striking nature to the miracle that the human mind can string a thousand arguments together without getting itself into contradictions, http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html

Moreover, Donald Hoffman, who believes in Darwinian evolution himself, basically, confirmed Plantiga's EAAN with numerous computer simulations based on population genetics that proved that, if Darwinian evolution were true, then ALL of our visual perceptions would be illusory,,.

Donald Hoffman: Do we see reality as it is? - Video - 9:59 minute mark Quote: “fitness does depend on reality as it is, yes.,,, Fitness is not the same thing as reality as it is, and it is fitness, and not reality as it is, that figures centrally in the equations of evolution. So, in my lab, we have run hundreds of thousands of evolutionary game simulations with lots of different randomly chosen worlds and organisms that compete for resources in those worlds. Some of the organisms see all of the reality. Others see just part of the reality. And some see none of the reality. Only fitness. Who wins? Well I hate to break it to you but perception of reality goes extinct. In almost every simulation, organisms that see none of reality, but are just tuned to fitness, drive to extinction that perceive reality as it is. So the bottom line is, evolution does not favor veridical, or accurate perceptions. Those (accurate) perceptions of reality go extinct. Now this is a bit stunning. How can it be that not seeing the world accurately gives us a survival advantage?” https://youtu.be/oYp5XuGYqqY?t=601 The Evolutionary Argument Against Reality - April 2016 The cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman uses evolutionary game theory to show that our perceptions of an independent reality must be illusions. Excerpt: “The classic argument is that those of our ancestors who saw more accurately had a competitive advantage over those who saw less accurately and thus were more likely to pass on their genes that coded for those more accurate perceptions, so after thousands of generations we can be quite confident that we’re the offspring of those who saw accurately, and so we see accurately. That sounds very plausible. But I think it is utterly false. It misunderstands the fundamental fact about evolution, which is that it’s about fitness functions — mathematical functions that describe how well a given strategy achieves the goals of survival and reproduction. The mathematical physicist Chetan Prakash proved a theorem that I devised that says: According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness. Never.” https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160421-the-evolutionary-argument-against-reality/

And although Hoffman, a Darwinist, tried to limit his argument to just our visual perceptions, there is no reason why his argument would not also apply to our cognitive faculties as well,

The Case Against Reality - May 13, 2016 Excerpt: Hoffman seems to come to a conclusion similar to the one Alvin Plantinga argues in ch. 10 of Where the Conflict Really Lies: we should not expect — in the absence of further argument — that creatures formed by a naturalistic evolutionary process would have veridical perceptions.,,, First, even if Hoffman’s argument were restricted to visual perception, and not to our cognitive faculties more generally (e.g., memory, introspection, a priori rational insight, testimonial belief, inferential reasoning, etc.), the conclusion that our visual perceptions would be wholly unreliable given natural selection would be sufficient for Plantinga’s conclusion of self-defeat. After all, reliance upon the veridicality of our visual perceptions was and always will be crucial for any scientific argument for the truth of evolution. So if these perceptions cannot be trusted, we have little reason to think evolutionary theory is true. Second, it’s not clear that Hoffman’s application of evolutionary game theory is only specially applicable to visual perception, rather than being relevant for our cognitive faculties generally. If “we find that veridical perceptions can be driven to extinction by non-veridical strategies that are tuned to utility rather than objective reality” (2010, p. 504, my emphasis), then why wouldn’t veridical cognitive faculties (more generally) be driven to extinction by non-veridical strategies that are tuned to utility rather than objective reality? After all, evolutionary theory purports to be the true account of the formation of all of our cognitive faculties, not just our faculty of visual perception. If evolutionary game theory proves that “true perception generally goes extinct” when “animals that perceive the truth compete with others that sacrifice truth for speed and energy-efficiency” (2008), why wouldn’t there be a similar sacrifice with respect to other cognitive faculties? In fact, Hoffman regards the following theorem as now proven: “According to evolution by natural selection, an organism that sees reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that sees none of reality but is just tuned to fitness” (Atlantic interview). But then wouldn’t it also be the case that an organism that cognizes reality as it is will never be more fit than an organism of equal complexity that cognizes none of reality but is just tuned to fitness? On the evolutionary story, every cognitive faculty we have was produced by a process that was tuned to fitness (rather than tuned to some other value, such as truth). http://www.gregwelty.com/2016/05/the-case-against-reality/

The primary problem for atheists in trying to ground reasoning in their materialistic worldview is that they deny the existence of free will. As Jerry Coyne stated. “You are robots made out of meat. Which is what I am going to try to convince you of today”,,

“You are robots made out of meat. Which is what I am going to try to convince you of today” Jerry Coyne – No, You’re Not a Robot Made Out of Meat (Science Uprising 02) – video https://youtu.be/rQo6SWjwQIk?list=PLR8eQzfCOiS1OmYcqv_yQSpje4p7rAE7-&t=20

Yet, as should be needless to say, the denial of free will by Jerry Coyne, and by other Darwinian atheists, directly undermines our ability to reason in a rational fashion,

Sam Harris’s Free Will: The Medial Pre-Frontal Cortex Did It – Martin Cothran – November 9, 2012 Excerpt: There is something ironic about the position of thinkers like Harris on issues like this: they claim that their position is the result of the irresistible necessity of logic (in fact, they pride themselves on their logic). Their belief is the consequent, in a ground/consequent relation between their evidence and their conclusion. But their very stated position is that any mental state — including their position on this issue — is the effect of a physical, not logical cause. By their own logic, it isn’t logic that demands their assent to the claim that free will is an illusion, but the prior chemical state of their brains. The only condition under which we could possibly find their argument convincing is if they are not true. The claim that free will is an illusion requires the possibility that minds have the freedom to assent to a logical argument, a freedom denied by the claim itself. It is an assent that must, in order to remain logical and not physiological, presume a perspective outside the physical order. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/11/sam_harriss_fre066221.html 1) rationality implies a thinker in control of thoughts. (2) under materialism a thinker is an effect caused by processes in the brain. (3) in order for materialism to ground rationality a thinker (an effect) must control processes in the brain (a cause). (1)&(2) (4) no effect can control its cause. Therefore materialism cannot ground rationality. per Box UD

The denial of free will is 'self defeating' in the most fundamental way possible in that you are not responsible for anything you may do, or for any argument you may make, but your actions and arguments are, as C S Lewis put it, the "unintended by-product of mindless matter" And as C.S. Lewis further noted, "unless Reason is an absolute, all is in ruins."

“One absolutely central inconsistency ruins [the popular scientific philosophy]. The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears… unless Reason is an absolute, all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based.” —C.S. Lewis, Is Theology Poetry (aka the Argument from Reason) "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, The Case for Christianity, p. 32 THE ARGUMENT FROM REASON - John M. DePoe Excerpt: (CS) Lewis closes the third chapter of Miracles with this conclusion: Reason is given before Nature and on reason our concept of Nature depends. Our acts of inference are prior to our picture of Nature almost as the telephone is prior to the friend’s voice we hear by it. When we try to fit these acts into the picture of nature we fail. The item which we put into that picture and label "Reason" always turns out to be somehow different from the reason we ourselves are enjoying and exercising as we put it in. [. . .] But the imagined thinking which we put into the picture depends—because our whole idea of Nature depends—on thinking we actually doing, not vice versa. This is the prime reality, on which the attribution of reality to anything else rests. If it won’t fit into Nature, we can’t help it. We will certainly not, on that account, give it up. If we do, we should be giving up Nature too. http://www.reasonsforgod.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/DePoe-The-Argument-from-Reason.pdf

Verse and quote:

What is the Logos? Logos is a Greek word literally translated as “word, speech, or utterance.” However, in Greek philosophy, Logos refers to divine reason or the power that puts sense into the world making order instead of chaos.,,, In the Gospel of John, John writes “In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). John appealed to his readers by saying in essence, “You’ve been thinking, talking, and writing about the Word (divine reason) for centuries and now I will tell you who He is.” https://www.compellingtruth.org/what-is-the-Logos.html “Atheists can give no reason why they should value reason, and Christians can show how anyone who believes in reason must also believe in God.” Cogito; Ergo Deus Est - by Charles Edward White - Philosophy Still Lives Because God Isn't Dead

bornagain77

August 21, 2020

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Chuckdarwin, True. Plantinga's argument acronym is EAAN (not EEAN). Auto-correct problem. And while proper names are very important, Plantinga's argument content is even more crucial. Atheists Can Not Trust Reason (Or Anything) https://wmbriggs.com/post/22122/Truthfreedom

August 21, 2020

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To Truthfreedom The acronym is EAAN, not EEAN. It stands for the Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism.chuckdarwin

August 21, 2020

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Chuckdarwin,

You want me to [re]read and take seriously the author of perhaps the single most incoherent and ignorant comment on natural selection...

Well. What about not only reading it, but understanding it? Plantinga's EEAN is not against evolution (via Natural Selection). What he is saying is that: -Evolution (NS) + "naturalism" ("no mind out there") = an irrational couple. You can have one, or the other, BUT YOU CAN NOT HAVE THEM BOTH WHILE YOU WANT TO REMAIN RATIONAL. Now, Chuck, please explain us how natural selection, a blind process, can "see" what Paul is thinking. BECAUSE WHAT CAN NOT BE SEEN, CAN NOT BE SELECTED. Most atheists do not understand the EEAN. Or they hate it because it shows how ridiculous their position is. Atheists Can Not Trust Reason (Or Anything) https://wmbriggs.com/post/22122/Truthfreedom

August 21, 2020

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Chuckdarwin,

You link me to an article on Alvin Plantinga’s infamous EAAN? Seriously?

Yep. But I have not only linked you. There are other members and onlookers here that may enjoy learning something new/ refreshing their already acquired knowledge.

What relevance has EAAN to Carroll’s interview of Stuart Bartlett?

Hmmm. Carroll is a naturalist ("poetic naturalist" to be more precise, lolololol!) Meaning that this man is one of those atheists that pride themselves of being "rational" while at the same time they spouse a philosophy ("naturalism") that literally destroys reasoning/ logical processes. Do not you see the contradiction, Chuckdarwin? YOU CAN NOT HAVE YOUR CAKE ("REASON") AND EAT IT TOO (BEING A "NATURALIST").Truthfreedom

August 21, 2020

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Truthfreedom You link me to an article on Alvin Plantinga's infamous EAAN? Seriously? What relevance has EAAN to Carroll's interview of Stuart Bartlett? You want me to [re]read the "most important" living Christian philosopher, Alvin Plantinga, re natural selection. You want me to [re]read and take seriously the author of perhaps the single most incoherent and ignorant comment on natural selection ever penned by a philosopher where in his "thought experiment" designed to prove EAAN, writes of his hypothetical caveman, Paul, that when confronted by a tiger, "very much likes the idea of being eaten [by a tiger], but when he sees a tiger, always runs off looking for a better prospect, because he thinks it unlikely the tiger he sees will eat him. This will get his body parts in the right place so far as survival is concerned, without involving much by way of true belief.... Or perhaps he thinks the tiger is a large, friendly, cuddly pussycat and wants to pet it; but he also believes that the best way to pet it is to run away from it. ... Clearly there are any number of belief-cum-desire systems that equally fit a given bit of behaviour." Plantinga (1993). "Warrant and Proper Function": 225–226. I'm sorry, but you just can't make this stuff up...chuckdarwin

August 21, 2020

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Earth to evolutionists- How life originated dictates how it subsequently evolved. It is only if blind and mindless processes produced life that we would say those processes produced its diversity. However blind and mindless processes are incapable of producing coded information processing systems and living organisms are ruled by them. That means the OoL was intelligently designed. And given that, life was intelligently designed with the information and ability to adapt and evolve.ET

August 21, 2020

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Chuchdarwin claims that,

Sean Carroll is a Harvard educated cosmologist, a class act,,,

Hmmm, 'a class act'? Really??? Given his dishonesty towards the science in a debate with Dr. Craig, others may disagree with that assessment,

Sean Carroll’s Dishonesty: The Debate of 2014 - By Ronald Cram - April 15, 2020 Excerpt: (In his debate with William Lane Craig), Carroll was dishonest on two important points. Carroll claimed BGV theorem does not imply the universe had a beginning. Carroll claimed that quantum eternity theorem (QET) was better than BGV theorem.,,, Carroll,, knows that QET is not really a theorem at all and so cannot honestly be described as better than BGV theorem. Conclusion Uninformed viewers of the 2014 Carroll-Craig debate may think that Carroll won the debate. After all, Carroll is a cosmologist, he’s brilliant, confident and likable. He attacked and undermined BGV theorem, the science upon which Craig often bases his arguments. Carroll even enlisted the help of Alan Guth to undermine his own theorem. Then Carroll sprung the quantum eternity theorem on Craig, who was caught off-guard by the term since it had never appeared in the scientific literature. Informed viewers of the debate came away with a different view. Carroll’s denial that BGV theorem implies the universe/multiverse had an ultimate beginning was shocking and dishonest. Also, informed viewers saw it as rather underhanded for Carroll to claim “quantum eternity theorem” was a recognized theorem that implies the universe is eternal into the past (since the term had not even appeared in the scientific literature at that point). On the basis of the science, Craig was truthful with the audience and Carroll was not. Truth will win out as they say. Carroll’s (dishonest) behavior can only be seen as harmful to science. https://freethinkingministries.com/sean-carrolls-dishonesty-the-debate-of-2014/

bornagain77

August 21, 2020

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. Chuck,

Darwin has nothing to do with origins

Is an origin of something required for Darwinian evolution? Or, does Darwinian evolution have no requirements at all?Upright BiPed

August 20, 2020

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Chuckdarwin,

Sean Carroll is a Harvard educated cosmologist, a class act and his podcast guests are leaders in their fields.

Well, according to your pal Seversky, he is more of a : - prideful hominid inhabiting a tiny, unremarkable speck of dust, full of "hubris", not capable of "grasping reality", who was never "meant/ evolved to understand truth", who also "hallucinates his own existence" and whose reason "can not be trusted". https://wmbriggs.com/post/22122/ But hey, you are evos/ naturalists, which means you are walking, breathing, living contradictions.

As Seversky correctly notes, Darwin has nothing to do with origins.

The barnacle collector (and failed theologian) amused himself (and his 19th century fellow "apes") writing about a "warm, little pond". Have you not read it? (Hush, do it, before he is cancelled due to his racist and misoginistic remarks!).Truthfreedom

August 20, 2020

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Sean Carroll is a Harvard educated cosmologist, a class act and his podcast guests are leaders in their fields. The discussion with Stuart Bartlett was no exception. The headline on this post is stupid insofar as neither was “doubting” Darwin. Rather, they were discussing current limits to origin’s research. As Seversky correctly notes, Darwin has nothing to do with origins. But of course the parishioners over at Discovery Institute have never been able to figure out that distinction. Or, more accurately, they deliberately obfuscate the point to whip up the Bible-belt crowd.chuckdarwin

August 20, 2020

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There isn't a theory of evolution to consider. And the origin of life dictates how the subsequent diversity evolved.ET

August 19, 2020

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What? Cosmologist Sean Carroll Doesn’t Freak Out When Darwin Is Doubted?

Why should he? He's probably well aware that the theory of evolution, whether Darwinian or later, does not address the question of the origin of life.Seversky

August 19, 2020

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