Massive early galaxies defy “prior understanding of the universe”

Origenes

Meanwhile, one has to wonder what “rational thought” means for someone who does not accept that 2+2=4.

I’d note that you picked 2+2=4 as a shining example of an absolute, axiomatic truth, that is immune from criticism. How did you come to choose that particular proposition as a candidate for immunity from criticism to use in your comment? Why 2+2=4 instead of, say, 3+4, why not the theorem of Pythagoras? Was it because you decided that proposition would be the best to make your point because it was the most obvious, unambiguous truth of all you considered using? critical rationalist

Popper....

The question about the sources of our knowledge . . . has always been asked in the spirit of: ‘What are the best sources of our knowledge—the most reliable ones, those which will not lead us into error, and those to which we can and must turn, in case of doubt, as the last court of appeal?’ I propose to assume, instead, that no such ideal sources exist—no more than ideal rulers—and that all ‘sources’ are liable to lead us into error at times. And I propose to replace, therefore, the question of the sources of our knowledge by the entirely different question: ‘How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?’

Origenes

Let’s examine: 1.) “No ideal sources of knowledge exist.” 2.) A universal and affirmative claim requires an ideal source of knowledge. 3.) “No ideal sources of knowledge exist” is a universal and affirmative claim. Therefore 4.) If (1.) is true, then Ideal sources of knowledge exist.

You continually seem to selectively ignore aspects of each excerpt when it suits your purpose. Then you add assumptions that are nowhere to be found in the quote, along with adding assumptions that are in conflict with the author, like "A universal and affirmative claim requires an ideal source of knowledge." But that's precisely what the author criticizes. It's like a game of wack-a-mole. When corrected in one area, you switch to a misrepresentation in another area, and when corrected there, you switch back to some previous misrepresentation. For example, Popper uses the words "propose" and "assume", which you proceed to leave out of your "examination". Here's a thought experiment: imagine someone claims a bank robbery was thwarted by Superman, who is now in the hospital due to gunshot wounds from a conventional hand gun and is a woman. Do I have to believe Superman actually exists to point out that Superman is supposedly a man and is supposedly impervious to conventional non-Kryptonian weapons? No, I do not. Regardless if Superman actually exists or not, we have good criticism that he would not be person that thwarted the bank robbery. IOW, I do not need to actually believe Superman exists to take that proposition (theory) seriously, _as if_ it were true in reality, and that all observations should conform to it, _for the purpose of criticism_. If superman existed, there would be necessary consequences of that being true. The person in the hospital would be a man. And the person shouldn't have injuries due to conventional weapons. Those observations conflict with that theory. This goes back to the idea of knowledge as justified, true, belief.

“The gods did not reveal, from the beginning, All things to us, but in the course of time Through seeking we may learn and know things better. But as for certain truth, no man has known it, Nor shall he know it, neither of the gods Nor yet of all the things of which I speak. For even if by chance he were to utter The final truth, he would himself not know it: For all is but a woven web of guesses” - Xenophanes

01. We start out with a problem. Some new observation or idea seems to conflict with some theory we have tentatively adopted. 02. We conjecture explanatory theories about how the world works, in reality, for the explicit purpose of solving that problem 03. We take those theories seriously, for the purpose of criticism, as if it was true in reality, and that all observations should conform to it, in the hope of finding errors It contains. 04. Goto 01. That's it. Everything is held open with the possibility of criticism. Again, going back to a previous misrepresentation, previously addressed....

When fallibilism starts to seem paradoxical, the mistakes begin. We are inclined to seek foundations—solid ground in the vast quicksand of human opinion—on which one can try to base everything else. Throughout the ages, the false authority of experience and the false reassurance of probability have been mistaken for such foundations: “No, we’re not always right,” your parents tell you, “just usually.” They have been on earth longer and think they have seen this situation before. But since that is an argument for “therefore you should always do as we say,” it is functionally a claim of infallibility after all. Moreover, look more closely: It claims literal infallibility too. Can anyone be infallibly right about the probability that they are right?

IOW, you seems incapable of taking fallibilism seriously long enough to make it though to the next comment, then bringing up the same misconceptions. critical rationalist

PM1 @

We can take logic in the very broad sense to mean the rules of good reasoning — avoiding informal and formal fallacies, and so on. Would a fallibilist need to say that even the rules of good reasoning are fallible? Perhaps, but even so, what does that mean?

It would mean that reasoning ends. There would be nothing left to say. It seems that fallibilists do not realize that. They want to go on talking about varying criticisms or whatever. And when you ask what their continued talk is based on, since they have destroyed the foundation of reasoning not only for others but also for themselves, they look at you as if it's your fault. The larger point is perhaps that, in line with Slagle, there is no outside of the circle. You cannot draw a circle around logic, step outside that circle, and proceed with making all sorts of arguments. Origenes

@104

Suppose that an attempt at correcting by “rational thought”, would imply stating that something is illogical, then it would be based on logic.

We can take logic in the very broad sense to mean the rules of good reasoning -- avoiding informal and formal fallacies, and so on. Would a fallibilist need to say that even the rules of good reasoning are fallible? Perhaps, but even so, what does that mean? Fallible does not mean unreliable or untrustworthy -- it means that they have broken down, stopped working, in some specific context. For example, we usually regard eyewitness testimony as reliable -- but we also know that it's far from perfect. If I tell you that I saw a gorgeous hummingbird yesterday, you'll be inclined to believe me -- unless it turns out that some other factor is intervening (it was far away, I wasn't wearing my glasses, I don't know what hummingbirds look like, my neighbor was playing with a new drone, etc.). So eyewitness testimony is reliable and also fallible. Likewise, we could take the rules of good reasoning as reliable guides -- unless we had some specific reason, in some specific context, to think that they had ceased to function. (In this context, I find it salutary to reflect on both why quantum logic failed and whether it could have succeeded.)

What do you make of post #65?

It's an interesting exercise about what we might say about a world in which experience does not conform to the a priori truth "2+2=4", which is different from denying that "2+2=4" is an a priori truth of arithmetic. I quite agree that it's difficult to imagine what it would take to show that the axioms of arithmetic are so blatantly inconsistent that "2+2=4" makes no sense. (Deutsch mentions "Dark Integers" by Egan. A more humorous take is "bistromathics" in Life, the Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams.) PyrrhoManiac1

PM1

I am not clear at all on what you are asking for: what would it mean to say that “substantive criticism”, “error correction” and “rational thought” must be based on something in order to be valid?

Suppose that an attempt at correcting by "rational thought", would imply stating that something is illogical, then it would be based on logic.

Does he deny that 2+2=4?

What do you make of post #65? Origenes

The correcting is done, according to CR, by “substantive criticism”, “error correction” and “rational thought.” I have asked him what they are based on, and what makes them valid. His answer is that they are not justified in the sense that I “seem to be implying.”

I am not clear at all on what you are asking for: what would it mean to say that “substantive criticism”, “error correction” and “rational thought" must be based on something in order to be valid?

Meanwhile, one has to wonder what “rational thought” means for someone who does not accept that 2+2=4.

Does he deny that 2+2=4? PyrrhoManiac1

PM1 @101

To conceive of knowledge as an error-driven self-correcting feedback system (which is perhaps not Popper) is to reject the assumption that knowledge must be based on axioms.

The correcting is done, according to CR, by “substantive criticism”, “error correction” and “rational thought.” I have asked him what they are based on, and what makes them valid. His answer is that they are not justified in the sense that I "seem to be implying." Meanwhile, one has to wonder what "rational thought" means for someone who does not accept that 2+2=4. Origenes

@100

Every position toward knowledge has to be based on axioms. They have to pay the notice like everyone else.

I don't understand this, perhaps because I don't quite understand what you mean by "pay the notice". A deductive system that is based on axioms is a system that takes those axioms as given. They are not themselves justified, because they are the basis for all justification in that system. In mathematics and logic, we usually do not worry about what grounds or justifies the axioms themselves. The Peano axioms of arithmetic or Euclid's axioms in geometry are simply given -- assumptions that must be granted in order to prove anything else in those systems. To conceive of knowledge as an error-driven self-correcting feedback system (which is perhaps more Peirce than Popper?) is to reject the assumption that knowledge must be based on axioms. PyrrhoManiac1

PM1 @ My larger argument against fallibilism is expressed by Kairosfocus in #96. Every position toward knowledge has to be based on axioms. They have to pay the notice like everyone else. Hyper-skepticism wants to burn every other position down to the ground and remain unscathed. Although this is doubtlessly inspired by the noblest of intentions, it cannot be done. "The beliefs of others are all nonsense, but mine is not because mine is a 'metacontext'" is simply not acceptable. Origenes

98

If so, then the empirical survey must be flawless in order to flawlessly observe “that none of them are completely error-free.” IOW the empirical survey must be an “error-free source of justification.”

Well, suppose you're right: suppose that the observation and induction used in this survey were themselves flawed. That allows for the possibility that there really is an error-free source of justification, but one that the fallibilist has simply failed to notice. In that case, I think the fallibilist response would be to say, "ok, show it to me!" PyrrhoManiac1

PM1 @97

You would be right if the claim “there are no error-free sources of justification” itself presupposed an error-free source of justification. But it does not. Rather, it is based on empirical survey of actually existing sources of justification and observing that none of them are completely error-free.

If so, then the empirical survey must be flawless in order to flawlessly observe "that none of them are completely error-free." IOW the empirical survey must be an "error-free source of justification." Origenes

@95 You would be right if the claim "there are no error-free sources of justification" itself presupposed an error-free source of justification. But it does not. Rather, it is based on empirical survey of actually existing sources of justification and observing that none of them are completely error-free. Now, you might be in better shape, arguing against Critical Rationalist's Popperianism, if you were to point out that if fallibilism is based upon induction across actually existing epistemic resources, that would be in tension with Popper's own avowed rejection of induction with regard to the methodology of science, since his falsificationism comes out of his belief that Hume's "problem of induction" cannot be solved and therefore we must rationally reconstruct scientific reasoning on deductivist terms. This is, incidentally, why my philosophy of science is basically that of Peirce and Dewey -- especially with regard to Peirce's insight that scientific reasoning requires the feedback and feed-forward loops between abductive, inductive, and deductive reasoning. Each makes its own unique contribution; we cannot hope to understand science on the basis of only one or even two of them. PyrrhoManiac1

Origenes, self referentiality will get you every time. They need to pay it notice. KF kairosfocus

CR

Ori: This does not anticipate or address the issue that “no position can be positively justified” is a self-defeating statement.

CR: Can you walk me through that? IOW, I’m suggesting that, at some point, you’ll make an assumption that reflects a false dilemma.

Here is my argument again. Tell me which premise is addressed by the text you quoted. 1.) No position can be positively justified 2.) “No position can be positively justified” is a position. From 1.) and 2.) 3.) It cannot be positively justified that “no position can be positively justified.”

CR: Popper, from the essay on fallibilism… “I propose to assume, instead, that no such ideal sources exist—no more than ideal rulers …”

Let’s examine: 1.) “No ideal sources of knowledge exist.” 2.) A universal and affirmative claim requires an ideal source of knowledge. 3.) “No ideal sources of knowledge exist” is a universal and affirmative claim. Therefore 4.) If (1.) is true, then Ideal sources of knowledge exist. Thus self-defeating. Here is Nicholas Dykes on Popper:

More pointedly, the proposition “all knowledge remains conjectural” is a contradiction in terms. The objection gathers strength when one notices that Popper’s proposition is itself not conjectural. Universal and affirmative, it states that “All knowledge remains conjectural” – which is a claim to knowledge. The proposition thus asserts what it denies and is self-contradictory on a second count. [Nicholas Dykes, ‘Debunking Popper: A. Critique of Karl Popper’s Critical Rationalism’.]

CR: Criticism is itself fallible.

Then you have nothing to criticize from.

CR: That process is itself a metacontext which is part of the best explanation for how knowledge grows.

Out of nowhere, there is a holy “metacontext” that, unlike everything else, is beyond criticism. And suddenly there is also a “best explanation” for how knowledge grows. What are they based on? Where does certainty, this access to truth, come from? Origenes

This does not anticipate or address the issue that “no position can be positively justified” is a self-defeating statement.

Can you walk me through that? IOW, I'm suggesting that, at some point, you'll make an assumption that reflects a false dilemma. Popper, from the essay on fallibilism...

The question about the sources of our knowledge . . . has always been asked in the spirit of: ‘What are the best sources of our knowledge—the most reliable ones, those which will not lead us into error, and those to which we can and must turn, in case of doubt, as the last court of appeal?’ I propose to assume, instead, that no such ideal sources exist—no more than ideal rulers—and that all ‘sources’ are liable to lead us into error at times. And I propose to replace, therefore, the question of the sources of our knowledge by the entirely different question: ‘How can we hope to detect and eliminate error?’

Criticism is itself fallible. We lack infallible access to every criticisms that could be applied to find possible errors in an idea. Errors could go undetected for months, years, decades or even never. This includes the idea that knowledge grows via conjecture and criticism. That process is itself a metacontext which is part of the best explanation for how knowledge grows. For example, your criticism regarding the justification of x would be applicable equally to all ideas, so it's unclear how it can be used in a critical way. How can God justify or provide a firm foundation for something unless he too is justified by something else? This is a problem of infinite regress. So, you've simply decided to stop seeking justification at some arbitrary point. critical rationalist

CR @92

Ori: What is “substantive criticism”, “error correction” and “rational thought” based on? What makes it valid?

CR: You’ll have to be more specific. It’s sounds like you’re asking how are they justified. To which I would reply, they are not in the sense you seem to be implying.

Then tell me, in what sense are they valid? Based on what?

Ori: “No position can be positively justified” is a position.

CR: It is? But that was anticipated and addressed in the quote. You seemed to have missed it.

I‘ve read it, there is nothing there. But let’s have a second look anyway:

First, the stance of critical preference is not a position, it is a metacontext ...

"Metacontext" is a nonsense term, invented as an attempt to escape the unavoidable self-referentiality.

… and as such it is not directed at solving the kind of problems that are solved by adopting a position on some issue or other.

Here it is assumed that something is only a “position” when it is directed at solving problems. Where does this holy truth come from? Clearly “no position can be positively justified” is a position on positions. The position, the stance, on positions is that none of them can be positively justified.

Ori: It cannot be positively justified that “no position can be positively justified.” Yet another self-defeating proposition by Deutsch.

CR: Again, anticipated and addressed… “Second, Bartley does provide guidance on adopting positions; we may adopt the position that to this moment has stood up to criticism most effectively.”

This does not anticipate or address the issue that “no position can be positively justified” is a self-defeating statement.

Origenes

What is “substantive criticism”, “error correction” and “rational thought” based on? What makes it valid?

You’ll have to be more specific. It’s sounds like you’re asking how are they justified. To which I would reply, they are not in the sense you seem to be implying.

2.) “No position can be positively justified” is a position.

It is? But that was anticipated and addressed in the quote. You seemed to have missed it.

This type of rationality holds all its positions and propositions open to criticism and a standard objection to this stance is that it is empty; just holding our positions open to criticism provides no guidance as to what position we should adopt in any particular situation. This criticism misses its mark for two reasons. First, the stance of critical preference is not a position, it is a metacontext and as such it is not directed at solving the kind of problems that are solved by adopting a position on some issue or other. It is concerned with the way that such positions are adopted, criticised, defended and relinquished.

It cannot be positively justified that “no position can be positively justified.” Yet another self-defeating proposition by Deutsch.

Again, anticipated and addressed…

Second, Bartley does provide guidance on adopting positions; we may adopt the position that to this moment has stood up to criticism most effectively. Of course this is no help for dogmatists who seek stronger reasons for belief, but that is a problem for them, not for exponents of critical preference.

So, this is problematic for you. You’re projecting your problem on me. Again, this is a false dilemma. Also, did you actually read the essay? Here’s a hint. That was not Deutsch. critical rationalist

CR

Deutsch: Which is why they both abhor institutions of substantive criticism and error correction, and denigrate rational thought as useless or fraudulent.

What is “substantive criticism”, “error correction” and “rational thought” based on? What makes it valid? - - -

Deutsch: According to the stance of critical preference no position can be positively justified

Let's see: 1.) No position can be positively justified 2.) “No position can be positively justified” is a position. From 1.) and 2.) 3.) It cannot be positively justified that “no position can be positively justified.” Yet another self-defeating proposition by Deutsch. - - - - - - -

CR: I’m not the disappointed dogmatist you seem to painting me as.

Perhaps not, but you are a self-defeating hyper-skeptic. Origenes

So, as a fallibilist, you have reason to doubt fallibilism, that is, you have nothing.

That's a false dichotomy. From the article...

The theory of knowledge is a tightrope that is the only path from A to B, with a long, hard drop for anyone who steps off on one side into “knowledge is impossible, progress is an illusion” or on the other side into “I must be right, or at least probably right.” Indeed, infallibilism and nihilism are twins. Both fail to understand that mistakes are not only inevitable, they are correctable (fallibly). Which is why they both abhor institutions of substantive criticism and error correction, and denigrate rational thought as useless or fraudulent. They both justify the same tyrannies. They both justify each other.

From this essay....

In the light of Bartley's ideas we can discern a number of possible attitudes towards positions, notably those of relativism, dogmatism (called “fideism” in the scholarly literature) and critical preference (or in Bartley's unfortunately clumsy language, “pancritical rationalism”.) Relativists tend to be disappointed dogmatists who realise that positive confirmation cannot be achieved. From this correct premise they proceed to the false conclusion that all positions are pretty much the same and none can really claim to be better than any other. There is no such thing as the truth, no way to get nearer to the truth and there is no such thing as a rational position. Fideists are people who believe that knowledge is based on an act of faith. Consequently they embrace whatever they want to regard as the truth. If they stop to think about it they may accept that there is no logical way to establish a positive justification for their beliefs or any others, so they insist that we make our choice regardless of reason: ”Here I stand!”. Most forms of rationalism up to date have, at rock bottom, shared this attitude with the irrationalists and other fundamentalists because they share the same 'true belief' structure of thought. According to the stance of critical preference no position can be positively justified but it is quite likely that one, (or some) will turn out to be better than others are in the light of critical discussion and tests. This type of rationality holds all its positions and propositions open to criticism and a standard objection to this stance is that it is empty; just holding our positions open to criticism provides no guidance as to what position we should adopt in any particular situation. This criticism misses its mark for two reasons. First, the stance of critical preference is not a position, it is a metacontext and as such it is not directed at solving the kind of problems that are solved by adopting a position on some issue or other. It is concerned with the way that such positions are adopted, criticised, defended and relinquished. Second, Bartley does provide guidance on adopting positions; we may adopt the position that to this moment has stood up to criticism most effectively. Of course this is no help for dogmatists who seek stronger reasons for belief, but that is a problem for them, not for exponents of critical preference.

I'm not the disappointed dogmatist you seem to painting me as. critical rationalist

Whatever CR, gobbledygook is NOT empirical science.

That's incredibly vague, BA. And so is your appeal to "empirical science", as you seem to be confused about what the role of what empirical observations plays. Anyone can merely call anything gobbledygook. That's applicable to all ideas, so it's unclear how it can be used in a critical way. I can do it to.... "Your comment is gobbledygook, BA. so I'm going to ignore it." See how that works? Or should I say, how it doesn't work? Again, your claim makes a prediction. That paper should contain "gobbledygook" and be "useless". At a minimum it predicts that the biological replication cannot be be reformulated in constructor theory (which tasks are possible, which tasks are impossible, and why) So, why not put your money where your mouth is? That would be a necessary consequence of your claim. You take your own claim seriously, right? First, we can start with my question: If the design of biological replicators do not need to be present in the laws of physics, at the outset, then why would they need to be present in some designer, at the outset?

And believing you are endlessly splitting into a veritable infinity of new David Deutschs every time an electron and/or photon is simply measured is insane. That you try to defend such insanity says more about you than it does about the science.

What's insane about it BA? We've been over this. Many worlds is just taking Schrödinger's wave function of quantum mechanics seriously. That's it. To avoid it, you need to add something to the theory that proposes / explains why observers do not evolve according to the wave function like everything else. IOW, collapse cannot happen unless observers do not evolve according to the wave function, so they can, well, observe the transition. So, by all means, fill in the gap that must exist in quantum mechanics. If not according to Schrödinger's wave function, then how do observers evolve? What the BA "observer function"? Why does it only apply to observers and not everything else? Explain it to us. To use a different perspective, you've appealed to "empirical science." Ok, let's go there. Empirically speaking, the wave function is incredibly accurate at predicting how systems will evolve. So, empirically speaking, why do you think it would be wildly and abruptly inaccurate in regards to observers? That's just what the MWI does. It says the predictions of the wave function extremely accurate in regards to observers as well. We become entangled with the rest of the multiverse. Empirically speaking, predictions of what we observe in regards to the many worlds, vs other interpretations, are empirically indistinguishable. From our perspective, what we would observe would be identical. IOW, in the MWI, breaking the wave function into pieces that appear to us as what we consider individual worlds is merely a convenience for us. There is just the wave function. See this video, which answers many of the questions and confusion about many worlds. critical rationalist

Deutsch is a fool:

Deitsch: Paradoxes seem to appear when one considers the implications of one’s own fallibility: A fallibilist cannot claim to be infallible even about fallibilism itself. And so, one is forced to doubt that fallibilism is universally true.

So, as a fallibilist, you have reason to doubt fallibilism, that is, you have nothing.

For instance, can it be true that absolutely anything that you think is true, no matter how certain you are, might be false?

No, that cannot be true Deutsch. The statement is incoherent and self-defeating, which shows that fallibilism, like all hyper-skeptical positions, is self-defeating. If the statement is true, then it is not the case that absolutely everything is false. So, if the statement is true, then it is false. Origenes

Whatever CR, gobbledygook is NOT empirical science. And believing you are endlessly splitting into a veritable infinity of new David Deutschs every time an electron and/or photon is simply measured is insane. That you try to defend such insanity says more about you than it does about the science. This is my last post on the subject. I've got much better things to do today than exchange comments with someone who refuses to be at least semi-rational. bornagain77

@BA77

Whatever CR,

Yes. Whatever indeed. You seem unwilling to put your money where your mouth is. If what you're saying is true, that would have implications regarding the question I asked, the paper I referenced, etc. Yet, you still haven't addressed it. What gives?

(And he believes this insanity simply to avoid the inference to God!)

Why couldn't God have decided to create the multiverse? This doesn't follow. Of course, this isn't just limited to BA. I wouldn't want to exclude anyone else from joining in on the "fun." critical rationalist

PM1 at 83, Theories need testing. Math needs testing in actual use. In real life, we see particles accelerated to near the speed of light but not getting heavier along the way. "The Large Hadron Collider is the most powerful accelerator in the world. ... Accelerated to a speed close to that of light, they collide with other protons." Protons have mass. relatd

I stand corrected. Cosmic ray photons have no intrinsic mass. Other components of cosmic rays do have mass. This still doesn't reflect actually traveling faster than Einstein's speed limit as indicated by PyrrhoManiac1. But, again, that's irrelevant to my point. "Observations" of neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light did not falsify Einstein's speed limit. Mere observations negating a theory do not reflect a replacement theory. Any replacement would need to need to explain everything the current theory does, in addition to explaining why neutrinos would travel faster than light in the OPERA experiment, but not every other experiment. No such theory was presented. As such it did not replace the existing theory. critical rationalist

Einstein did math but could conduct no experiments.

Yet his mathematics entailed predictions which were experimentally confirmed, such as stellar parallax.

So, you are saying high energy particles from space actually speed up when striking Earth’s atmosphere?

Of course I'm not saying that -- I'm saying that the light slows down as it passes through atmosphere, which is why the speed of cosmic rays is faster than that of light that is passing through atmosphere.

The more energy it uses the more equivalent mass it has. Again, I don’t think so.

So you're denying that energy is equal to mass times the square of the speed of light? PyrrhoManiac1

Whatever CR, until you have empirical evidence, you've got nothing but gobbledygook from a delusional man who believes he is endlessly splitting into a veritable infinity of new David Deutschs every time an electron and/or photon is simply measured. (And he believes this insanity simply to avoid the inference to God!) If this is the man who you want to hang your scientific hat on, then, by all means, go for it. But I am, nor is anyone else, obligated to follow you two guys into insanity. bornagain77

PM1, Another one. Einstein did math but could conduct no experiments. So, you are saying high energy particles from space actually speed up when striking Earth's atmosphere? I don't think so. The more energy it uses the more equivalent mass it has. Again, I don't think so. relatd

@75

Then explain Cosmic Rays traveling faster than light.

Cosmic rays travel faster than the speed of light in Earth's atmosphere. Passing through air, water, or any other medium slows down how fast light travels. That's consistent with the assumption that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light in a vacuum, which is what Einstein actually said. More specifically, general relativity says that no object with mass can accelerate up to the speed of light in a vacuum -- because the more energy it uses, the more equivalence in mass that it has, which requires more energy, etc. In fact, I think this entails that given infinite energy, any body with mass that was accelerating up to the speed of light in a vacuum would turn into a black hole. PyrrhoManiac1

Who are you trying to kid? "These high-energy particles arriving from outer space are mainly (89%) protons – nuclei of hydrogen, the lightest and most common element in the universe – but they also include nuclei of helium (10%) and heavier nuclei (1%), all the way up to uranium." relatd

@Relatd #75 You might want to brush up on your physics. Cosmic rays do not have mass. Even then, some things with mass can exceed that speed limit because the universe is expanding faster than the speed of light. However, that's not the same as something with mass traveling though actual space at faster than the speed of light, which is what Einstein was referring to. But that's irrelevant to my point. Neutrinos has mass. And in every other experiment we've performed, neutrinos did not exceed the speed of light. So, why didn't those observations in the OPERA experiment immediately invalidate Einstein's speed limit? Because we didn't have a good explanation as to why neutrinos were "observed" traveling faster than speed of light in the OPERA experiment, but not every other experiment designed to determine the speed of neutrinos. Observations are theory laden. critical rationalist

@BA77

Specially, the paper refers to the question of whether biological replicators perform replication so accurately that their design had to be already present, at the outset, in the laws of physics.

While not directly targeting at ID, would you agree that if the design of replicators need not be present in the laws of physics, at the outset, then they wouldn’t need to be present in some designer at the outset, either?

[Crickets] If it's true that constructor theory is meaningless, then it shouldn't be capable of formulating this question in terms of possible an impossible physical tasks. Specifically, in regards to the appearance of design, what is physically necessary for replicators to, well, replicate, a network of construction tasks, etc. So, if you actually have any confidence in your claim, why not answer my questions? In fact, it seems to me you would already have an answer to my question, if you're confident. IOW, wouldn't an having an answer, one way or the other, be a necessary consequence of your claim? Why are you afraid of trying to poke holes in your own claim? critical rationalist

"It’s odd how BA describes constructor theory as being useless, despite actual papers that target questions about biology. Specifically, the supposed necessity of the existence of the design of replicators in the laws of physics," Tell you what CR, you guys make some unique predictions from your 'theory', do some experiments to validate those unique predictions, and thus validate Constructor theory to over 5 sigma level, (which is the minimum level required to be achieved for a new theory to be considered valid), then get back to me with your experimental proof. Until then, I regard constructor theory as nothing more than a delusion arising from the fevered imagination of David Deutsch who, last time I checked, (and simply in order to avoid God), believes he is endlessly splitting into a veritable infinity of new David Deutschs every time an electron and/or photon is simply measured.

Too many worlds - Philip Ball - Feb. 17, 2015 Excerpt:,,, You measure the path of an electron, and in this world it seems to go this way, but in another world it went that way. That requires a parallel, identical apparatus for the electron to traverse. More – it requires a parallel you to measure it. Once begun, this process of fabrication has no end: you have to build an entire parallel universe around that one electron, identical in all respects except where the electron went. You avoid the complication of wavefunction collapse, but at the expense of making another universe.,,, http://aeon.co/magazine/science/is-the-many-worlds-hypothesis-just-a-fantasy/ Atheist Physicist Sean Carroll: An Infinite Number of Universes Is More Plausible Than God - Michael Egnor - August 2, 2017 Excerpt: as I noted, the issue here isn’t physics or even logic. The issue is psychiatric. We have a highly accomplished physicist, who regards the existence of God as preposterous, asserting that the unceasing creation of infinite numbers of new universes by every atom in the cosmos at every moment is actually happening (as we speak!), and that it is a perfectly rational and sane inference. People have been prescribed anti-psychotic drugs for less. Now of course Carroll isn’t crazy, not in any medical way. He’s merely given his assent to a crazy ideology — atheist materialism —,,, What can we in the reality-based community do when an ideology — the ideology that is currently dominant in science — is not merely wrong, but delusional? I guess calling it what it is is a place to start. https://evolutionnews.org/2017/08/atheist-physicist-sean-carroll-an-infinite-number-of-universes-is-more-plausible-than-god/ A Hand-Waving Exact Science - Sheldon Glashow Excerpt: Arthur Fine: There is, I think, no sense at all to be made of the splitting of worlds.3 John Bell: The many worlds interpretation seems to me an extravagant, and above all an extravagantly vague hypothesis.4 Murray Gell-Mann: Everett’s ideology that there are many worlds that are equally real is operationally meaningless.5 Steven Weinberg: I find the many worlds interpretation repellent.6 http://inference-review.com/article/a-hand-waving-exact-science A Critique of the Many Worlds Interpretation - (Inspiring Philosophy - 2014) - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_42skzOHjtA&list=PL1mr9ZTZb3TViAqtowpvZy5PZpn-MoSK_&index=7

Verse:

2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

bornagain77

CR at 70, "The 2011 OPERA experiment “observed” neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light didn’t immediately falsify Einstein’s speed of light. Why? Because we didn’t have a good explanation as to why neutrinos only traveled faster than light in the OPRA experiment, but not any other. Later we explained this with a loose networking cable and a timer that was out of calibration." Then explain Cosmic Rays traveling faster than light. "Cosmic rays, which are ultra-high energy particles originating from all over the Universe, strike... [+] The fast-moving charged particles also emit light due to Cherenkov radiation as they move faster than the speed of light in Earth's atmosphere, and produce secondary particles that can be detected here on Earth." relatd

CR @71, @65 If a position does not make truth claims, then it makes no claims at all. So, here is my question: What does fallibilism claim to be true? And what is it based on? Some specific questions, based on the article on fallibilism that you linked to: Is it certain that “nothing can infallibly tell you what is infallible, nor what is probable”? Is it certain that ”a fallibilist cannot claim to be infallible even about fallibilism itself”? Is it certain that it makes no difference “whether the idea was originally suggested to you by a passing hobo or a physicist”? If one of the claims (from the article) above is certain. What is the certainty based on? Origenes

No one can explain Constructor theory. Marletto certainly can’t. Until the time when someone can explain it, we will have assume it’s nonsense. Sorry, no links. In your own words. Links have been gobbledygook. Deutsch’s own words have been nonsense. My guess, is you cannot.

While not directly targeting at ID, would you agree that if the design of replicators need not be present in the laws of physics, at the outset, then they wouldn’t need to be present in some designer at the outset, either?

This is saying that any potential designer can have no thought process that would lead to a specific design. But yet that is not our experience through out history. Every time an intelligence intervenes in nature, this action is not a subset of the laws of physics. Yet, the capacity was there before the action. Such processes intervene in nature to produce something that nature by itself could never produce. And to something the designer didn’t originally contemplate. Why should anyone read what you are saying? So far I haven’t found anything that isn’t nonsense. Take your best shot at something that is relevant and true. Just one. jerry

@BA77 Why don't you start with the paper on the Constructor theory of life: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1407.0681.pdf Specially, the paper refers to the question of whether biological replicators perform replication so accurately that their design had to be already present, at the outset, in the laws of physics.

In the biosphere self-reproduction is approximated to various accuracies. There are many poor approximations to self-reproducers - e.g., crude repli- cators such as crystals, short RNA strands and autocatalytic cycles involved in the origin of life [11]. Being so inaccurate, they do not require any further explanation under no-design laws: they do not have appearance of design, any more than simple inorganic catalysts do.(4) In contrast, actual gene-replication is an impressively accurate physical transformation, albeit imperfect. But even more striking is that living cells can self-reproduce to high accuracy in a variety of environments, reconstruct- ing the vehicle afresh, under the control of the genes, in all the intricate details necessary for gene replication. This is prima facie problematic under no-design laws: how can those processes be so accurate, without their design being encoded in the laws of physics? This is why some physicists - notably, Wigner and Bohm, [12], [13] - have even claimed that accurate self-reproduction of an organism with the appearance of design requires the laws of motion to be “tailored” for the purpose – i.e., they must contain its design [12].

While not directly targeting at ID, would you agree that if the design of replicators need not be present in the laws of physics, at the outset, then they wouldn't need to be present in some designer at the outset, either? But I don't want to leave anyone out. This question is open to everyone, not just BA77. critical rationalist

#69 Origenes, what certainly are you referring to? This this article on fallibilism: https://nautil.us/why-its-good-to-be-wrong-234374/. critical rationalist

One perspective referenced multiple times by Anderson is a “reductionist perspective” and predictions. But this is precisely the problem with the current conception of physics, as it excludes aspects that have no room in the current conception. This is one of the motivations of constructor theory. It’s odd how BA describes constructor theory as being useless, despite actual papers that target questions about biology. Specifically, the supposed necessity of the existence of the design of replicators in the laws of physics, etc. Yet, I haven’t seen BA address the papers themselves. Given that those links were broken, I’ve posted updated links that work. So, this is in your court, BA. As for Anderson’s three points… 01. Probability theory / statistical mechanics First, see this criticism of the probability calculus: Physics Without Probability. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfzSE4Hoxbc The role of probability is criticized in each of these fields. * Theory of experimental error * Actual science * Biology (Evolution by random variation and natural selection) * Foundations of (classical and quantum) statistical mechanic (principle of equal a priori probability). * Brownian motion * Quantum theory (Born rule) * General decision theory * Information theory (Classical, then quantum) * "Bayesian" philosophy of science (aims to increase credences which are supposedly probabilities) * Pricing of derivative securities (Black-Scholes equation etc. Second, Anderson on thermodynamics…..

One of the problems I see with constructor theory attempts to “redesign” thermodynamics is that statistical physicists have already done this. The “laws” of thermodynamics are two centuries old, and everyone knows what the problems with them are. Fluctuation theorems, non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, and Markov processes predate the constructor theory. So, nobody working in the field needs a new theory to fix problems that have already been fixed and would be unlikely to want to replace common mathematical tools with unfamiliar terminology.?

And…

Constructor theorists argue that statistical mechanics is vague about what constitutes a “macroscopic scale” but that isn’t really true. While classical statistical theories are subject to the law of large numbers, meaning that they get more accurate the more atoms or molecules you have, more recent statistical mechanical theories have focused on state transitions for arbitrary numbers of molecules. A state transition is, of course, much like a constructor task but has a more definite relationship to dynamics in a probabilistic form. These theories have enabled the study of very small statistical systems composed of only handfuls of molecules. Notions common in classical statistical mechanics like “equilibrium” vanish at these scales of course. These ideas are a lot like constructor theory but were invented much earlier.

Thermodynamics is already somewhat constructor theoretic, as it refers to principles. CT is a more formalized approach. From this paper on thermodynamics: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2399-6528/ac70a7/meta

Microscopic dynamical laws are time-reversal symmetric. Hence the second law of thermodynamics, intended as mandating the irreversibility of certain dynamical trajectories, is ruled out at the microscopic scale. This tension is usually tackled with statistical mechanics: Boltzmann's and Gibbs' ensemble theories, [1], and their quantum-mechanical generalizations in the hotly investigated area of quantum thermodynamics [2–4]. These powerful methodologies derive the second law from classical or quantum reversible dynamics supplemented with additional assumptions. Despite their tremendous success in many regimes, these schemes have problems at their foundations. First, some such schemes traditionally rely on approximations such as ensembles and coarse-graining, which make the ensuing second laws scale-dependent, [1], and only applicable at a certain macroscopic scale, which is never exactly defined. Examples of scale-dependent laws are those about ferromagnetic phase transitions, which become exact only in the thermodynamic limit (and are not even intended to be exact for realistic systems). I shall designate as 'scale-independent' any law whose applicability to a system does not depend on the system's scale. Most fundamental laws are scale-independent, e.g. conservation laws or Einstein's equations. Furthermore, some formulations of the second law are tied to a particular class of dynamical laws: for instance, quantum thermodynamics is formulated within quantum theory. Hence, they are less general than traditional thermodynamics, which consists of a set of meta-laws largely independent of the details of the dynamical laws they constrain. I shall call laws which can be expressed without reference to the details of any particular dynamics, 'dynamics-independent'. 1 The power of dynamics-independent principles has long been known in fundamental physics. They can be used in lieu of specific dynamical laws, for instance when solving the dynamical equations is an intractable problem—e.g., to study the behaviour of a complex system. They can also be used to make predictions when known laws of motion may not apply to a given regime: e.g. consider Bekenstein's derivation of black hole entropy formula, [5]; and the Bondi-Wheeler's derivation of redshift from conservation of energy, [6, 7], where thermodynamics principles are used instead of a particular theory of coupled matter and gravity. In this paper, I propose a new information-theoretic characterization of work, based on distinguishability, which is independent of scale (hence it refers to no particular length or time or complexity) and of dynamics (i.e. refers to no particular equations of motion). The aim here is to conjecture a new definition of work, which must be formulated independently of particular dynamical formalisms. I shall however use examples from classical and quantum theory to illustrate the concepts I shall introduce. This result expands the reach of current approaches to thermodynamics, putting them on more general and secure foundations. Such advancement is also useful to employ thermodynamics principles to conjecture future laws of motion that will supersede current ones. The key result will be obtained by relying on a set of general principles (which I will discuss in detail later), some of which are part of the recently proposed constructor theory of information […] This work provides the foundation for formulating thermodynamics in an information-theoretic, dynamics-independent and scale-independent way: hence, it can inform new experimental schemes to test this proposed scale- and dynamics-independent reformulation of the second law, see e.g. [15]. It is also a first step towards a theory of programmable constructors in quantum theory, which will generalize the theory of quantum computation to general tasks, in a way already envisaged in von Neumann' theory of the universal constructor [30]. The full development of this theory will require one to merge the theory of classical and quantum computation with thermodynamics, in a dynamics-and scale-independent way.

It’s unclear how this isn’t novel or useful. 02. Physics is mainly useful in as far as it can make predictions

Constructor theory, so far, has not yielded much predictive ability. That may change as more work is done, but it is hard to figure out exactly how it would then differ from ordinary physics.

Yet, suppose I want to predict something that is not easily reductionist, like how a bacterium or a mouse will behave. Would constructor theory give me that power? I wouldn’t think so.

?Which is a “Shut up an calculate.”, instrumentalist view of science. This objection, among others, is addressed in The Philosophy of Constructor Theory: https://arxiv.org/abs/1210.7439

Causation is widely regarded by philosophers as being at best a useful fiction having no possible role in fundamental science. Hume (1739) argued that we cannot observe causation and therefore can never have evidence of its existence. But here I shall, with Popper (1959, 1963), regard scientific theories as conjectured explanations, not as inferences from evidence, and observation not as a means of validating them, but only of testing them. So Hume’s argument does not apply. Nor does the argument (e.g. by Russell 1913) that the fundamental laws of physics make no reference to causes – for that is merely an attribute of a particular way of formulating those laws (namely, the prevailing conception) not of the laws themselves. Moreover, the prevailing conception itself is not consistent about that issue, for the idea of a universal law is part of it too, and the empirical content of such a law is in what it forbids by way of testable outcomes (Popper 1959, §31 & §35) – in other words in what transformations it denies can be caused to happen, including to measuring instruments in any possible laboratories. Explanatory theories with such counter-factual implications are more fundamental than predictions of what will happen. For example, consider the difference between saying that a purported perpetual motion machine cannot be made to work as claimed ‘because that would violate a conservation law’ and that it won’t work ‘because that axle exerts too small a torque on the wheel’. Both explanations are true, but the former rules out much more, and an inventor who understood only the latter might waste much more time trying to cause the transformation in question by modifying the machine.

But this supposed deficiency is shared by all scientific theories: Tests always depend on background knowledge – assumptions about other laws and about how measuring instruments work (Popper 1963, ch. 10 §4). Logically, should any theory fail a test, one always has the option of retaining it by denying one of those assumptions. Indeed, this has been used as a critique of the very idea of testability (Putnam 1974). But scientific theories are not merely predictions. They are, primarily, explanations: claims about what is there in the physical world and how it behaves. And the negation of an explanation is not an explanation; so a claim such as ‘there could be an undetected particle carrying off the energy’ is not a scientific theory. Nor is ‘perhaps energy is not conserved’. Those are research proposals, not explanations. Consequently the methodology of science includes the rule that any proposal to modify a background-knowledge assumption must itself be a good explanation1. So, the only explanatory implication of Pauli’s suggestion had been to save the principle of the conservation of energy, both would have been abandoned (as the principle of parity invariance was abandoned as a result of other experiments on beta decay). In the event, it was soon used to account for other observations and became indispensable in the understanding of nuclear phenomena, while no good explanation contradicting energy conservation was found.

The 2011 OPERA experiment "observed" neutrinos traveling faster than the speed of light didn't immediately falsify Einstein's speed of light. Why? Because we didn't have a good explanation as to why neutrinos only traveled faster than light in the OPRA experiment, but not any other. Later we explained this with a loose networking cable and a timer that was out of calibration. 03. Constructor theory does not solve the problems it claims to solve

?Despite claims that it solves a number of problems in physics such as the connection between quantum and classical systems (hybrid systems) and irreversibility in thermodynamics, it isn’t clear that it solves any of these problems better than reductionist solutions that are more specific to those subfields.

This ignores the advance of having solutions that are not specific to those subfields. It’s a unification. For example, see the above regarding programmable universal constructors. Again, reductionist solutions are limited by being, well, reductionist. That’s the problem. That the current conception of physics has been successful in solving reductionist problems is non-controversial. The motivation of constructor theory is to expand our ability to bring things like information into fundamental physics.

Constructors appear under various names in physics and other fields. For instance, in thermodynamics, a heat engine is a constructor because of the condition that it be capable of ‘operating in a cycle’. But they do not currently appear in laws of physics. Indeed, there is no possible role for them in what I shall call the prevailing conception of fundamental physics, which is roughly as follows: everything physical is composed of elementary constituents such as particles, fields and spacetime; there is an initial state of those constituents; and laws of motion determine how the state evolves continuously thereafter. In contrast, a construction (1) is characterised only by its inputs and outputs, and involves subsystems (the constructor and the substrate), playing different roles, and most constructors are themselves composite objects. So, in the prevailing conception, no law of physics could possibly mention them: the whole continuous process of interaction between constructor and substrate is already determined by the universal laws governing their constituents. However, the constructor theory that I shall propose in this paper is not primarily the theory of constructions or constructors, as the prevailing conception would require it to be. It is the theory of which transformations can be caused and which cannot, and why.

Specially, it would reflect a more fundamental theory that is deeper than all existing theories, including QM and GR. How is this trivial or useless?

The theory of relativity is the theory of the arena (spacetime) in which all physical processes take place. Thus, by its explanatory structure, it claims to underlie all other scientific theories, known and unknown, in that requires them to be expressible in terms of tensor fields on spacetime, and constrains what they can say about the motion of those fields. For example, any theory postulating a new particle that was unaffected by gravity (i.e. by the curvature of spacetime) would contradict the general theory of relativity. Another theory that inherently claims to underlie all others is quantum theory, which requires all observable quantities to be expressible in terms of quantum-mechanical operators obeying certain commutation laws. And so, for example, no theory claiming that some physical variable and its time derivative are simultaneously measurable with arbitrary accuracy can be consistent with quantum theory. Constructor theory would, in this sense, underlie all other theories including relativity and quantum theory. The logic of the relationship would be as follows: Other theories specify what substrates and tasks exist, and provide the multiplication tables for serial and parallel composition of tasks, and state that some of the tasks are impossible, and explain why. Constructor theory provides a unifying formalism in which other theories can do this, and its principles constrain their laws, and in particular, require certain types of task to be possible. I shall call all scientific theories other than constructor theory subsidiary theories.

For example, given a set of laws of motion, what exactly is implied about the initial state by the practical feasibility of building (good approximations to) a universal computer several billion years later may be inelegant and intractably complex to state explicitly, yet may follow logically from elegant constructor-theoretic laws about information and computation.

Anderson’s lack of interest in achieving this doesn’t make constructor theory utterly useless. Again, see the paper on the constructor theory of life, which asks a very specific and relevant question in regards to ID. See post 51, in context to point 10. critical rationalist

CR@

In case this isn’t clear, given the observations of the experiment, we would assume that something was tampering with Tommy’s box, the cupcake, our neurons, etc., rather than conclude that 2+2 doesn’t equal 4. This is because the explanation that 2+2 actually equals 4, in reality, is extremely hard to vary. Nor can we think of a better explanation as to why 2+2=4.

Are you sure that "we would assume that something was tampering with Tommy’s box, the cupcake, our neurons, etc., rather than conclude that 2+2 doesn’t equal 4"? Are you sure that "the explanation that 2+2 actually equals 4, in reality, is extremely hard to vary"? And are you sure that it is not the case that "we can of a better explanation as to why 2+2=4"? If so, what is your certainty based on? My general question is: what makes criticism valid in fallibilism? What is it based on? Origenes

Besides Constructor theory being a superfluous theory that doesn't accomplish anything new, David Deutsch, the main originator of constructor theory, is also an avid proponent of Everett's Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum theory.

Constructor theory might be revolutionary but what can you do with it? – Tim Andersen, Ph.D – 2021 Excerpt: In 2012, Oxford professor David Deutsch, famous for his championing of quantum information theory and the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum physics, introduced Constructor Theory with the intent of tearing down Newton’s hegemony.,,, 1 Physics already has ways to reconcile dynamics with possibility,, It’s called probability theory or, more specifically, statistical mechanics.,,, 2 Physics is mainly useful in as far as it can make predictions,, Constructor theory, so far, has not yielded much predictive ability.,,, 3 Constructor theory does not solve the problems it claims to solve Despite claims that it solves a number of problems in physics such as the connection between quantum and classical systems (hybrid systems) and irreversibility in thermodynamics, it isn’t clear that it solves any of these problems better than reductionist solutions that are more specific to those subfields.,, https://medium.com/the-infinite-universe/constructor-theory-may-not-be-the-science-revolution-it-claims-to-be-347ac51311e Tim Andersen, Ph.D. – Principal Research Scientist at Georgia Tech.

To call Everett's Many Worlds interpretation absurd, even delusional, is an understatement.

Atheist Physicist Sean Carroll: An Infinite Number of Universes Is More Plausible Than God - Michael Egnor - August 2, 2017 Excerpt: as I noted, the issue here isn’t physics or even logic. The issue is psychiatric. We have a highly accomplished physicist, who regards the existence of God as preposterous, asserting that the unceasing creation of infinite numbers of new universes by every atom in the cosmos at every moment is actually happening (as we speak!), and that it is a perfectly rational and sane inference. People have been prescribed anti-psychotic drugs for less. Now of course Carroll isn’t crazy, not in any medical way. He’s merely given his assent to a crazy ideology — atheist materialism —,,, What can we in the reality-based community do when an ideology — the ideology that is currently dominant in science — is not merely wrong, but delusional? I guess calling it what it is is a place to start. https://evolutionnews.org/2017/08/atheist-physicist-sean-carroll-an-infinite-number-of-universes-is-more-plausible-than-god/ Why the Many-Worlds Interpretation Has Many Problems - Philip Ball - May 2018 Excerpt: Every scientific theory (at least, I cannot think of an exception) is a formulation for explaining why things in the world are the way we perceive them to be. This assumption that a theory must recover our perceived reality is generally so obvious that it is unspoken.,, But the MWI refuses to grant it. Sure, it claims to explain why it looks as though “you” are here observing that the electron spin is up, not down. But actually it is not returning us to this fundamental ground truth at all. Properly conceived, it is saying that there are neither facts nor a you who observes them. It says that our unique experience as individuals is not simply a bit imperfect, a bit unreliable and fuzzy, but is a complete illusion. If we really pursue that idea, rather than pretending that it gives us quantum siblings, we find ourselves unable to say anything about anything that can be considered a meaningful truth. We are not just suspended in language; we have denied language any agency. The MWI — if taken seriously — is unthinkable. Its implications undermine a scientific description of the world far more seriously than do those of any of its rivals. The MWI tells you not to trust empiricism at all: Rather than imposing the observer on the scene, it destroys any credible account of what an observer can possibly be. Some Everettians insist that this is not a problem and that you should not be troubled by it. Perhaps you are not, but I am. https://www.quantamagazine.org/why-the-many-worlds-interpretation-of-quantum-mechanics-has-many-problems-20181018/

Moreover, Everett's primary motivation for postulating the patent absurdity of MWI was based on his a priori commitment to atheism, and. was not based on any empirical observation, nor compelling logic, that would have warranted him to postulate such an extravagant absurdity as Many Worlds. And Deutsch avidly champions Many Worlds precisely because it is atheistic in its philosophy. and not because of "the elegance of his mathematical model,"

The Atheist War Against Quantum Mechanics - Nov 28, 2021 Excerpt: A dyed-in the-wool nihilist, Everett is known for ordering that his ashes be dumped into a trashcan when he died—a practice that Everett’s daughter later copied upon committing suicide. Everett brought this same dedication to bear in his scientific career. Today, Everett’s disciples praise him for bringing an atheistic scorn of the immaterial back to quantum mechanics. As a graduate student in the 1950s, Everett was alarmed to discover that traditional quantum mechanics did not line up with his materialist commitments. He was repulsed by the fact that the human mind seemed to be given a special role—a conclusion that Everett thought smacked of the supernatural. There seemed to be “a magic process in which something quite drastic occurred, while in all other times systems were assumed to obey perfectly natural continuous laws.”[4] In Jonathan Allday’s words, Everett firmly believed that such a “‘magic process’… should not be considered in quantum physics.” Everett therefore devised the Many Worlds Interpretation of quantum mechanics—perhaps the most widely-known interpretation in contemporary popular culture. The purpose of the interpretation was, in essence, to create a consistent model of quantum mechanics that would preserve Thomas Huxley’s materialistic dismissal of the mind. Everett’s model continues to be extremely influential. David Deutsch, a militantly atheistic contemporary physicist, regards himself as a sort of apostle of Hugh Everett. “Everett was before his time,” says Deutsch. Before Everett, “things were regarded as progress which are not explanatory, and the vacuum was filled by mysticism and religion and every kind of rubbish. Everett is important because he stood out against it.”[5] Deutsch’s words of praise are important: Everett’s greatest achievement is not the elegance of his mathematical model, but that the fact that his model pushed back against “religion,” which is of course false. https://www.staseos.net/post/the-atheist-war-against-quantum-mechanics

Lastly, as far as empirical science itself is concerned, MWI is now experimentally shown to be false. Specifically, In the atheist’s many worlds model, the collapse of the wave function is simply denied as being a real effect. As wikipedia states, in many worlds “there is no wave function collapse.”

Many-worlds interpretation Excerpt: The many-worlds interpretation (MWI) is an interpretation of quantum mechanics that asserts that the universal wavefunction is objectively real, and that there is no wave function collapse.[2] – per wikipedia Quantum mechanics – Philosophical implications Excerpt: Everett’s many-worlds interpretation, formulated in 1956, holds that all the possibilities described by quantum theory simultaneously occur in a multiverse composed of mostly independent parallel universes.[52] This is a consequence of removing the axiom of the collapse of the wave packet. – per wikipedia

Yet, directly contrary to what atheist’s hold to be true in their many worlds model, the collapse of the wave function is now experimentally shown to be a real effect. As the following experiment found, “homodyne measurements, show,, the non-local collapse of a particle’s wave function.,” and, “the collapse of the wave function is a real effect”, and, “”Through these different measurements, you see the wave function collapse in different ways, thus proving its existence and showing that Einstein was wrong.”

Quantum experiment verifies Einstein’s ‘spooky action at a distance’ – March 24, 2015 Excerpt: An experiment,, has for the first time demonstrated Albert Einstein’s original conception of “spooky action at a distance” using a single particle. ,,Professor Howard Wiseman and his experimental collaborators,, report their use of homodyne measurements to show what Einstein did not believe to be real, namely the non-local collapse of a (single) particle’s wave function.,, According to quantum mechanics, a single particle can be described by a wave function that spreads over arbitrarily large distances,,, ,, by splitting a single photon between two laboratories, scientists have used homodyne detectors—which measure wave-like properties—to show the collapse of the wave function is a real effect,, This phenomenon is explained in quantum theory,, the instantaneous non-local, (i.e. beyond space and time), collapse of the wave function to wherever the particle is detected.,,, “Einstein never accepted orthodox quantum mechanics and the original basis of his contention was this single-particle argument. This is why it is important to demonstrate non-local wave function collapse with a single particle,” says Professor Wiseman. “Einstein’s view was that the detection of the particle only ever at one point could be much better explained by the hypothesis that the particle is only ever at one point, without invoking the instantaneous collapse of the wave function to nothing at all other points. “However, rather than simply detecting the presence or absence of the particle, we used homodyne measurements enabling one party to make different measurements and the other, using quantum tomography, to test the effect of those choices.” “Through these different measurements, you see the wave function collapse in different ways, thus proving its existence and showing that Einstein was wrong.” http://phys.org/news/2015-03-quantum-einstein-spooky-action-distance.html

In short, (and much like Darwinists), whatever MWI proponents such as Deutsch are doing, they certainly are NOT doing empirical science. i.e. MWI is experimentally shown to be false! And that falsification of MWI, for all intents and purposes, renders anything else Deutsch may have to say about Quantum Mechanics worthless. Verse:

1 Thessalonians 5:21 Test all things; hold fast to that which is good.

bornagain77

The analogy between the theory of evolution and the 2+2 theory is in fact closer than the mere difficulty of imagining a good explanation to the contrary

Someone presents gobbledygook and in a straight face pretends it is truth. This quote alone should disqualify Deutsch as nothing but a clown and anything but a serious scientists. He compares a definition, yes 2 + 2 is a definition within a logic framework, with a supposition as to how some physical event took place. The physical event is the appearance of various live entities in the past. The latter requires a mechanism using the physical laws and exists in the real world. The former exists in the mental world of logic which requires a mind to observe. They are two extremely incomparable things. Aside: A favorite t-shirt of mine has the expression “2 + 2 = 5 for very large values of 2.” I use it to mock those who actually believe that 2+2 is not equal to 4 as they redefine just what a number is. We have those believers here. Aside2: we constantly use mental ideas such as mathematics to make sense of the real world where the laws of physics operate. That does not make any mental concept such as Darwinian Evolution also useful because one believes it reveals the real world. The mental thought might help one to investigate the real world. But never in a second believe because one can think of something , does it make it the real world or even a potential real world. Aside3: Chiara Marletto is an extremely beautiful young woman. Aside4: Chiara Marletto does a fantastic job of describing how complicated life is. jerry

And the paper on bringing information into fundamental physics: https://arxiv.org/abs/1405.5563 critical rationalist

What does fallibilism say about self-evident truths such as A=A, 2+2=4, error exists, truth exists, I exist?

Perhaps an example discussion on the Fabric of Reality list would help to clarify this…. The question asked was if is 2+2=4 falsifiable. Someone proposed the following test.

If Tommy has two cupcakes in a box and then Tommy puts two more cupcakes in a box and Tommy doesn’t now have 4 cupcakes in a box then the idea has been proven false.

David Deutsch, the Oxford Physicist and author whom’s work the list is based on, pointed out the the problem with this conclusion.

The thing is, if carried out under the conditions implied, the outcome would not refute the theory that 2+2=4 but rather, it would refute the theory that the Tommy-cupcake-box system accurately models the numbers 2 and 4 and the operation of addition. This is exactly analogous to why, as I argued, [a single] fossil rabbit in the Jurassic stratum would not refute the theory of evolution: experimental testing is useless in the absence of a good explanation. What would a good explanation that 2+2 doesn’t equal 4 look like? I can’t think of one; that’s because the theory that it’s true is, in real life, extremely hard to vary. That’s why mathematicians mistake it for being self-evident, or directly intuited, etc. And it is of course my opinion that 2+2 does in fact equal 4, so I’m not expecting to find a contrary theory that is at all good as an explanation. But, for instance, Greg Egan’s science-fiction story Dark Integers explores essentially that possibility (albeit only for very large integers). The analogy between the theory of evolution and the 2+2 theory is in fact closer than the mere difficulty of imagining a good explanation to the contrary. Both of them, if false, would seem to involve there being laws of physics that directly mess with the creation of knowledge, in what we would consider a malevolent way. This makes for very bad explanations, but that doesn’t affect the logic of the issue so here goes: The analogue of creationism being true, then, would be something like that there is really no such entity as the number 4 because the axioms of arithmetic as we know them are blatantly inconsistent, and that the laws of physics act on neurons to make us unconsciously confabulate excuses for ignoring the physical effects of that.

In case this isn’t clear, given the observations of the experiment, we would assume that something was tampering with Tommy’s box, the cupcake, our neurons, etc., rather than conclude that 2+2 doesn’t equal 4. This is because the explanation that 2+2 actually equals 4, in reality, is extremely hard to vary. Nor can we think of a better explanation as to why 2+2=4. critical rationalist

@ETDA I wrote my comment offline and it appears to have scrambled the link. https://arxiv.org/abs/1407.0681 critical rationalist

Constructor theory might be revolutionary but what can you do with it? - Tim Andersen, Ph.D - 2021 Excerpt: 1 Physics already has ways to reconcile dynamics with possibility,, It’s called probability theory or, more specifically, statistical mechanics.,,, 2 Physics is mainly useful in as far as it can make predictions,, Constructor theory, so far, has not yielded much predictive ability.,,, 3 Constructor theory does not solve the problems it claims to solve Despite claims that it solves a number of problems in physics such as the connection between quantum and classical systems (hybrid systems) and irreversibility in thermodynamics, it isn’t clear that it solves any of these problems better than reductionist solutions that are more specific to those subfields.,, Conclusion Philosophically constructor theory is interesting because it points out that perhaps we are too focused on equations and should rely instead on more intuitive statements about the universe from which those equations derive. Perhaps that would help us steer clear of theories of everything that seem to be nothing but equations. Yet, constructor theory seems to be attempting to do what quantum non-equilibrium statistical theory is achieving. They are somewhat similar in that they are focused on state transitions, distributions of possible transitions, and less focused on initial conditions. But unlike constructor theory, that theory fits well within the traditional reductionist paradigm of initial conditions to which it reduces.,,, https://medium.com/the-infinite-universe/constructor-theory-may-not-be-the-science-revolution-it-claims-to-be-347ac51311e Tim Andersen, Ph.D. - Principal Research Scientist at Georgia Tech.

bornagain77

A book on constructor theory.

The Science of Can and Can't: A Physicist's Journey through the Land of Counterfactuals

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0525521925?tag=edgeorg-20&linkCode=ogi&th=1&psc=1 Seems more philosophical than physics. jerry

Your link to arxiv.org is broken (the one about the constructor theory).

Use this https://www.constructortheory.org/ and this https://www.edge.org/memberbio/chiara_marletto jerry

Since CR bashed Christianity:

“If you were to take Mohammed out of Islam, and Buddha out of Buddhism, and Confucius out of Confucianism you would still have a faith system that was relatively in tact. However, taking Christ out of Christianity sinks the whole faith completely. This is because Jesus centred the faith on himself. He said, “This is what it means to have eternal life: to know God the Father and Jesus Christ whom the Father sent” (John 17:3). “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). Buddha, before dying, said in effect, “I am still seeking for the truth.” Mohammed said in effect, “I point you to the truth.” Jesus said, “I am the truth.” Jesus claimed to not only give the truth, but to be the very personal embodiment of it.” http://commonground.co.za/?resources=is-jesus-the-only-way-to-god Keith Green's Incredible Testimony: (All other religions point to Jesus in one way or the other) "Jesus proved He is God!" - 1978 Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfzK6RGHe0M

bornagain77

CR @ 51, Your link to arxiv.org is broken (the one about the constructor theory). EDTA

it wanted us to know living things were designed it could have, well, designed the knowledge in the organisms of living things to contain the kind of knowledge that only people can create. Right?

Wrong! We have a new master of gobbledygook. Just about everything said is nonsense. The creator of the universe is immensely smart and immensely powerful. This creator has objectives because why is the universe created in a specific way? Maybe one of those objectives is uncertainty. Aside: There is no such thing as random. One just does not know the true origin of the force causing the effect. It’s too complicated to figure out. So we use the term random. jerry

Darwinism and epistemology,

Why Evolutionary Theory Cannot Survive Itself Nancy Pearcey - March 8, 2015 John Gray writes, “If Darwin’s theory of natural selection is true,… the human mind serves evolutionary success, not truth.” What is the contradiction in that statement? Gray has essentially said, if Darwin’s theory is true, then it “serves evolutionary success, not truth.” In other words, if Darwin’s theory is true, then it is not true. Self-referential absurdity is akin to the well-known liar’s paradox: “This statement is a lie.” If the statement is true, then (as it says) it is not true, but a lie. 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.” But that means Crick’s own theory is not a “scientific truth.” Applied to itself, the theory commits suicide. 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.” https://evolutionnews.org/2015/03/why_evolutionar/

Teleology

“Teleology is like a mistress to the biologist; he dare not be seen with her in public but cannot live without her.” J. B. S. Haldane The ‘Mental Cell’: Let’s Loosen Up Biological Thinking! – Stephen L. Talbott – September 9, 2014 Excerpt: Many biologists are content to dismiss the problem with hand-waving: “When we wield the language of agency, we are speaking metaphorically, and we could just as well, if less conveniently, abandon the metaphors”. Yet no scientist or philosopher has shown how this shift of language could be effected. And the fact of the matter is just obvious: the biologist who is not investigating how the organism achieves something in a well-directed way is not yet doing biology, as opposed to physics or chemistry. Is this in turn just hand-waving? Let the reader inclined to think so take up a challenge: pose a single topic for biological research, doing so in language that avoids all implication of agency, cognition, and purposiveness 1. One reason this cannot be done is clear enough: molecular biology — the discipline that was finally going to reduce life unreservedly to mindless mechanism — is now posing its own severe challenges. In this era of Big Data, the message from every side concerns previously unimagined complexity, incessant cross-talk and intertwining pathways, wildly unexpected genomic performances, dynamic conformational changes involving proteins and their cooperative or antagonistic binding partners, pervasive multifunctionality, intricately directed behavior somehow arising from the interaction of countless players in interpenetrating networks, and opposite effects by the same molecules in slightly different contexts. The picture at the molecular level begins to look as lively and organic — and thoughtful — as life itself. http://natureinstitute.org/txt/st/org/comm/ar/2014/mental_cell_23.htm Metaphor and Meaning in the Teleological Language of Biology Annie L. Crawford – August 2020 Abstract: Excerpt: However, most discussions regarding the legitimacy of teleological language in biology fail to consider the nature of language itself. Since conceptual language is intrinsically metaphorical, teleological language can be dismissed as decorative if and only if it can be replaced with alternative metaphors without loss of essential meaning. I conclude that, since teleological concepts cannot be abstracted away from biological explanations without loss of meaning and explanatory power, life is inherently teleological. https://uncommondescent.com/philosophy/biologists-cant-stop-using-purpose-driven-language-because-life-really-is-designed/ teleological – adjective exhibiting or relating to design or purpose especially in nature https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/teleological

bornagain77

continued

Right of Reply: Our Response to Jerry Coyne – September 29, 2019 by Günter Bechly, Brian Miller and David Berlinski Excerpt: Harvard mathematical biologist Martin Nowak has shown that random searches in sequence space that start from known functional sequences are no more likely to enter regions in sequence space with new protein folds than searches that start from random sequences. The reason for this is clear: random searches are overwhelmingly more likely to go off into a non-folding, non-functional abyss than they are to find a novel protein fold. Why? Because such novel folds are so extraordinarily rare in sequence space. Moreover, as Meyer explained in Darwin’s Doubt, as mutations accumulate in functional sequences, they will inevitably destroy function long before they stumble across a new protein fold. Again, this follows from the extreme rarity (as well as the isolation) of protein folds in sequence space. Recent work by Weizmann Institute protein scientist Dan Tawfik has reinforced this conclusion. Tawfik’s work shows that as mutations to functional protein sequences accumulate, the folds of those proteins become progressively more thermodynamically and structurally unstable. Typically, 15 or fewer mutations will completely destroy the stability of known protein folds of average size. Yet, generating (or finding) a new protein fold requires far more amino acid sequence changes than that. Finally, calculations based on Tawfik’s work confirm and extend the applicability of Axe’s original measure of the rarity of protein folds. These calculations confirm that the measure of rarity that Axe determined for the protein he studied is actually representative of the rarity for large classes of other globular proteins. Not surprisingly, Dan Tawfik has described the origination of a truly novel protein or fold as “something like close to a miracle.” Tawfik is on Coyne’s side: He is mainstream. https://quillette.com/2019/09/29/right-of-reply-our-response-to-jerry-coyne/ Plant Galls and Evolution – Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig – 7 September 2017 How More than Twelve Thousand1 Ugly Facts are Slaying a Beautiful Hypothesis: Darwinism Excerpt: In short, entirely new organs (complex, refined, sophisticated, “high tech” galls), consisting of up to seven differentiated layers with diverse positive functions for the guests, are formed at the exclusive expense of the plant host, i. e. without any useful return by the animals (“fremddienliche Zweckmäßigkeit” (Erich Becher) – not easy to translate, but something like ‘extrinsic usefulness’, ‘disinterested suitability’, ‘well-directed extraneous utility’, closely akin to altruism; cf. p. 16). Now, Darwin formulated the following falsification criterium, among others, for his theory of natural selection – fully applicable to the modern neo-Darwinian versions of the theory as well, because: “Natural selection cannot possibly produce any modification in any one species exclusively for the good of another species; “… If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection.” Also: “Natural selection can produce nothing in one species for the exclusive good or injury of another; though it may well produce parts, organs, and excretions highly useful or even indispensable, or again highly injurious to another species, but in all cases at the same time useful to the possessor.” Inference reached on the basis of the evidence: Because in the case of the galls, in thousands of plant species often entirely new organs have been formed for the exclusive good of more than 132,930 other species, these ‘ugly facts’ have annihilated Darwin’s theory as well as the modern versions of it. The galls are not ‘useful to the possessor’, the plants. There is no space for these phenomena in the world of “the selfish gene” (Dawkins). Moreover, the same conclusion appears to be true for thousands of angiosperm species producing deceptive flowers (in contrast to gall formations, now for the exclusive good of the plant species) – a topic which should be carefully treated in another paper. http://www.weloennig.de/PlantGalls.pdf

Consciousness,

The Hardest Problem in Science? October 28, 2011 Excerpt: ‘But the hard problem of consciousness is so hard that I can’t even imagine what kind of empirical findings would satisfactorily solve it. In fact, I don’t even know what kind of discovery would get us to first base, not to mention a home run.’ - David Barash - Professor of Psychology emeritus at the University of Washington. https://www.chronicle.com/blogs/brainstorm/the-hardest-problem-in-science/40845

Immaterial mathematics

Naturalism and Self-Refutation – Michael Egnor – January 31, 2018 Excerpt: Mathematics is certainly something we do. Is mathematics “included in the space-time continuum [with] basic elements … described by physics”?,,, What is the physics behind the Pythagorean theorem? After all, no actual triangle is perfect, and thus no actual triangle in nature has sides such that the Pythagorean theorem holds. There is no real triangle in which the sum of the squares of the sides exactly equals the square of the hypotenuse. That holds true for all of geometry. Geometry is about concepts, not about anything in the natural world or about anything that can be described by physics. What is the “physics” of the fact that the area of a circle is pi multiplied by the square of the radius? And of course what is natural and physical about imaginary numbers, infinite series, irrational numbers, and the mathematics of more than three spatial dimensions? Mathematics is entirely about concepts, which have no precise instantiation in nature,,, Furthermore, the very framework of Clark’s argument — logic — is neither material nor natural. Logic, after all, doesn’t exist “in the space-time continuum” and isn’t described by physics. What is the location of modus ponens? How much does Gödel’s incompleteness theorem weigh? What is the physics of non-contradiction? How many millimeters long is Clark’s argument for naturalism? Ironically the very logic that Clark employs to argue for naturalism is outside of any naturalistic frame. The strength of Clark’s defense of naturalism is that it is an attempt to present naturalism’s tenets clearly and logically. That is its weakness as well, because it exposes naturalism to scrutiny, and naturalism cannot withstand even minimal scrutiny. Even to define naturalism is to refute it. https://evolutionnews.org/2018/01/naturalism-and-self-refutation/

Darwinism undermines reliable observation,

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/

Information is an immaterial entity that is physically distinct from matter and energy, and not reducible to matter and energy, as is presupposed within Darwinian thought:

First Teleportation Between Distant Atoms – 2009 Excerpt: For the first time, scientists have successfully teleported information between two separate atoms in unconnected enclosures a meter apart – a significant milestone in the global quest for practical quantum information processing. Teleportation may be nature’s most mysterious form of transport: Quantum information, such as the spin of a particle or the polarization of a photon, is transferred from one place to another, but without traveling through any physical medium. It has previously been achieved between photons over very large distances, between photons and ensembles of atoms, and between two nearby atoms through the intermediary action of a third. None of those, however, provides a feasible means of holding and managing quantum information over long distances. Now a team from the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) at the University of Maryland (UMD) and the University of Michigan has succeeded in teleporting a quantum state directly from one atom to another over a substantial distance https://jqi.umd.edu/news/first-teleportation-between-distant-atoms Quantum Teleportation Enters the Real World – September 19, 2016 Excerpt: Two separate teams of scientists have taken quantum teleportation from the lab into the real world. Researchers working in Calgary, Canada and Hefei, China, used existing fiber optics networks to transmit small units of information across cities via quantum entanglement — Einstein’s “spooky action at a distance.”,,, This isn’t teleportation in the “Star Trek” sense — the photons aren’t disappearing from one place and appearing in another. Instead, it’s the information that’s being teleported through quantum entanglement.,,, ,,, it is only the information that gets teleported from one place to another. https://www.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2016/09/19/quantum-teleportation-enters-real-world/#.V-HqWNEoDtR

bornagain77

CR, contrary to what Darwinists believe, repeating lies does not make them true. Since mutations to DNA are now known, in the vast majority of instance, to not be truly random, but to be 'directed'. Darwinists will often respond to this (very) inconvenient falsification of a core presupposition of their theory by claiming that mutations are only held to be random with regard to fitness, i.e. to the needs of the individual, (as if that claim gets them out of the severe jam they have with this core falsification to their theory), but even their claim that mutations are only held to be random with regard to fitness, i.e. to the needs of the individual, is now known to be a false claim in and of itself.

(False) Prediction of Darwinism – Mutations are not adaptive – Cornelius Hunter In the twentieth century, the theory of evolution predicted that mutations are not adaptive or directed. In other words, mutations were believed to be random with respect to the needs of the individual. As Julian Huxley put it, “Mutation merely provides the raw material of evolution; it is a random affair, and takes place in all directions. … in all cases they are random in relation to evolution. Their effects are not related to the needs of the organisms.” (Huxley, 36) Or as Jacques Monod explained: “chance alone is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution: this central concept of modern biology is no longer one among other possible or even conceivable hypotheses. It is today the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact. And nothing warrants the supposition—or the hope—that on this score our position is likely ever to be revised.” (Monod, 112) Ronald Fisher wrote that mutations are “random with respect to the organism’s need” (Orr). This fundamental prediction persisted for decades as a recent paper explained: “mutation is assumed to create heritable variation that is random and undirected.” (Chen, Lowenfeld and Cullis) But that assumption is now known to be false. The first problem is that the mutation rate is adaptive. For instance, when a population of bacteria is subjected to harsh conditions it tends to increase its mutation rate. It is as though a signal has been sent saying, “It is time to adapt.” Also, a small fraction of the population increases its mutation rates even higher yet. These hypermutators ensure that an even greater variety of adaptive change is explored. (Foster) Experiments have also discovered that duplicated DNA segments may be subject to higher mutation rates. Since the segment is a duplicate it is less important to preserve and, like a test bed, appears to be used to experiment with new designs. (Wright) The second problem is that organisms use strategies to direct the mutations according to the threat. Adaptive mutations have been extensively studied in bacteria. Experiments typically alter the bacteria food supply or apply some other environmental stress causing mutations that target the specific environmental stress. (Burkala, et. al.; Moxon, et. al; Wright) Adaptive mutations have also been observed in yeast (Fidalgo, et. al.; David, et. al.) and flax plants. (Johnson, Moss and Cullis) One experiment found repeatable mutations in flax in response to fertilizer levels. (Chen, Schneeberger and Cullis) Another exposed the flax to four different growth conditions and found that environmental stress can induce mutations that result in “sizeable, rapid, adaptive evolutionary responses.” (Chen, Lowenfeld and Cullis) In response to this failed prediction some evolutionists now are saying that evolution somehow created the mechanisms that cause mutations to be adaptive. https://sites.google.com/site/darwinspredictions/mutations-are-not-adaptive

As to natural selection,

The waiting time problem in a model hominin population – 2015 Sep 17 John Sanford, Wesley Brewer, Franzine Smith, and John Baumgardner Excerpt: The program Mendel’s Accountant realistically simulates the mutation/selection process,,, Given optimal settings, what is the longest nucleotide string that can arise within a reasonable waiting time within a hominin population of 10,000? Arguably, 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]. This represents at least 75 million nucleotide changes in the human lineage, many of which must encode new information. 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. In this light, we suggest that a string of two specific mutations is a reasonable upper limit, in terms of the longest string length that is likely to evolve within a hominin population (at least in a way that is either timely or meaningful). 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. It is widely thought that a larger population size can eliminate the waiting time problem. If that were true, then the waiting time problem would only be meaningful within small populations. While our simulations show that larger populations do help reduce waiting time, we see that the benefit of larger population size produces rapidly diminishing returns (Table 4 and Fig. 4). 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/

Body plans,

Response to John Wise – October 2010 Excerpt: But there are solid empirical grounds for arguing that changes in DNA alone cannot produce new organs or body plans. A technique called “saturation mutagenesis”1,2 has been used to produce every possible developmental mutation in fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster),3,4,5 roundworms (Caenorhabditis elegans),6,7 and zebrafish (Danio rerio),8,9,10 and the same technique is now being applied to mice (Mus musculus).11,12. None of the evidence from these and numerous other studies of developmental mutations supports the neo-Darwinian dogma that DNA mutations can lead to new organs or body plans–,,, (As Jonathan Wells states),,, We can modify the DNA of a fruit fly embryo in any way we want, and there are only three possible outcomes: A normal fruit fly; A defective fruit fly; or A dead fruit fly. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2010/10/response_to_john_wise038811.html

Fisher’s Theorem

Geneticist Corrects Fisher’s Theorem, but the Correction Turns Natural Selection Upside Down – December 22, 2017 | David F. Coppedge A new paper corrects errors in Fisher’s Theorem, a mathematical “proof” of Darwinism. Rather than supporting evolution, the corrected theorem inverts it. Excerpt: The authors of the new paper describe the fundamental problems with Fisher’s theorem. They then use Fisher’s first principles, and reformulate and correct the theorem. They have named the corrected theorem The Fundamental Theorem of Natural Selection with Mutations. The correction of the theorem is not a trivial change – it literally flips the theorem on its head. The resulting conclusions are clearly in direct opposition to what Fisher had originally intended to prove.,,, The authors of the new paper realized that one of Fisher’s pivotal assumptions was clearly false, and in fact was falsified many decades ago. In his informal corollary, Fisher essentially assumed that new mutations arose with a nearly normal distribution – with an equal proportion of good and bad mutations (so mutations would have a net fitness effect of zero). We now know that the vast majority of mutations in the functional genome are harmful, and that beneficial mutations are vanishingly rare. The simple fact that Fisher’s premise was wrong, falsifies Fisher’s corollary. Without Fisher’s corollary – Fisher’s Theorem proves only that selection improves a population’s fitness until selection exhausts the initial genetic variation, at which point selective progress ceases. Apart from his corollary, Fisher’s Theorem only shows that within an initial population with variant genetic alleles, there is limited selective progress followed by terminal stasis.,,, The authors observe that the more realistic the parameters, the more likely fitness decline becomes. https://crev.info/2017/12/geneticist-corrects-fishers-theorem/

Fossil record,

Scientific study turns understanding about evolution on its head – July 30, 2013 Excerpt: evolutionary biologists,,, looked at nearly one hundred fossil groups to test the notion that it takes groups of animals many millions of years to reach their maximum diversity of form. Contrary to popular belief, not all animal groups continued to evolve fundamentally new morphologies through time. The majority actually achieved their greatest diversity of form (disparity) relatively early in their histories. ,,,Dr Matthew Wills said: “This pattern, known as ‘early high disparity’, turns the traditional V-shaped cone model of evolution on its head. What is equally surprising in our findings is that groups of animals are likely to show early-high disparity regardless of when they originated over the last half a billion years. This isn’t a phenomenon particularly associated with the first radiation of animals (in the Cambrian Explosion), or periods in the immediate wake of mass extinctions.”,,, Author Martin Hughes, continued: “Our work implies that there must be constraints on the range of forms within animal groups, and that these limits are often hit relatively early on. Co-author Dr Sylvain Gerber, added: “A key question now is what prevents groups from generating fundamentally new forms later on in their evolution.,,, http://phys.org/news/2013-07-scientific-evolution.html

Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig

Lönnig on Darwin’s “Abominable Mystery” Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig - January 10, 2022 Excerpt: All orders and families of the angiosperms appear abruptly in the fossil record (the same for most lower systematic categories). The statement of distinguished paleontologist Otto H. Schindewolf (University of Tübingen) of 1965 has definitely been further corroborated by paleobotany and is all the more evidently true now (see also Eldedge et al. 2005 and discussion in Lönnig 2018, 20193; see also Bechly 20214). "According to the Darwinian concept, minor racial differences are to be gradually increased to become species traits, and then, by adding more and more small alterations, become generic, family differences, etc. The variety of forms would then increase towards the end of the individual phyla, and there would be the greatest abundance of orders, families and genera, that is to say, differences of a higher degree. The opposite is the case. A new Bauplan (body plan) of the systematic range of a class or order usually appears absolutely abruptly in the fossil record, without long rows/successions of links that would show us a gradual formation from another order forming its root."5 And, what is more, living fossils are not the exception — as they are usually portrayed in the biological literature — but the rule for a large part of plant and animal families: We are literally surrounded by living fossils: Angiosperms, mammals, birds, and many other organisms. Moreover: “Living fossils are something of an embarrassment to the expectation that evolutionary change is inevitable as time goes by” (Eldredge). https://evolutionnews.org/2022/01/abstract-lonnig-on-darwins-abominable-mystery/

Convergent evolution,

Extinct Four-Eyed Monitor Lizard Busts Myth of a Congruent Nested Hierarchy – Günter Bechly – April 23, 2018 Excerpt: One of the most essential doctrines of Darwinian evolution, apart from universal common descent with modification, is the notion that complex similarities indicate homology and are ordered in a congruent nested pattern that facilitates the hierarchical classification of life. When this pattern is disrupted by incongruent evidence, such conflicting evidence is readily explained away as homoplasies with ad hoc explanations like underlying apomorphies (parallelisms), secondary reductions, evolutionary convergences, long branch attraction, and incomplete lineage sorting. When I studied in the 1980s at the University of Tübingen, where the founder of phylogenetic systematics, Professor Willi Hennig, was teaching a first generation of cladists, we still all thought that such homoplasies are the exceptions to the rule, usually restricted to simple or poorly known characters. Since then the situation has profoundly changed. Homoplasy is now recognized as a ubiquitous phenomenon (e.g., eyes evolved 45 times independently, and bioluminiscence 27 times; hundreds of more examples can be found at Cambridge University’s “Map of Life” website).,,, ,,, We can safely conclude: it is an epic myth, willingly perpetuated by evolutionary biologists, that the similarities between organisms mostly fall in a hierarchic pattern of nested groups and thus suggest common ancestry and indicate phylogenetic relationship. In reality this claim is contradicted by a flood of incongruences and reticulate patterns that shed doubt on fundamental paradigms of evolutionary biology like the notions of homology and common descent. This inconvenient conflicting evidence is explained away with a pile of ad hoc hypotheses, correlated with more and more contrived and implausible evolutionary scenarios. https://evolutionnews.org/2018/04/extinct-four-eyed-monitor-lizard-busts-myth-of-a-congruent-nested-hierarchy/

bornagain77

PM1, I have suggested that while there are clearly self evident and otherwise infallible and knowable certain truths [try to deny 3 + 2 = 5 or that error exists etc], most of the time we use knowledge in a weaker sense. That is, warranted, credibly true (so, reliable) beliefs, which we are persuaded of and feel comfortable acting on, or would even be irresponsible not to act on . . . and yes, Ciceronian first duties lie down that road. Science, History, Management decision making and a lot of common sense day to day life lie in this realm. KF PS, I have been impressed by Dallas Willard (and heirs), but notice my adjustment:

To have knowledge in the dispositional sense—where you know things you are not necessarily thinking about at the time—is to be able to represent something as it is on an adequate basis of thought or experience, not to exclude communications from qualified sources (“authority”). This is the “knowledge” of ordinary life, and it is what you expect of your electrician, auto mechanic, math teacher, and physician. Knowledge is not rare, and it is not esoteric . . . no satisfactory general description of “an adequate basis of thought or experience” has ever been achieved. We are nevertheless able to determine in many specific types of cases that such a basis is or is not present [p.19] . . . . Knowledge, but not mere belief or feeling, generally confers the right to act and to direct action, or even to form and supervise policy. [p. 20] In any area of human activity, knowledge brings certain advantages. Special considerations aside, knowledge authorizes one to act, to direct action, to develop and supervise policy, and to teach. It does so because, as everyone assumes, it enables us to deal more successfully with reality: with what we can count on, have to deal with, or are apt to have bruising encounters with. Knowledge involves assured [--> warranted, credible] truth, and truth in our representations and beliefs is very like accuracy in the sighting mechanism on a gun. If the mechanism is accurately aligned—is “true,” it enables those who use it with care to hit an intended target. [p. 4, Dallas Willard & Literary Heirs, The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge, Routledge|Taylor& Francis Group, 2018. ]

kairosfocus

CR at 51, Another one who wants God to appear to him on demand. "• The Church “proclaims that by the light of reason the human intellect can readily and clearly discern purpose and design in the natural world, including the world of living things.” '• “Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.” '• Quoting our late Holy Father John Paul II: “The evolution of living beings, of which science seeks to determine the stages and to discern the mechanism, presents an internal finality which arouses admiration. This finality, which directs beings in a direction for which they are not responsible or in charge, obliges one to suppose a Mind which is its inventor, its creator.” ' "Christoph Cardinal Schönborn is archbishop of Vienna and general editor of the Catechism of the Catholic Church." relatd

CR at 49, God works infallibly in Creation. From Communion and Stewardship: Part 69: "... But it is important to note that, according to the Catholic understanding of divine causality, true contingency in the created order is not incompatible with a purposeful divine providence. Divine causality and created causality radically differ in kind and not only in degree. Thus, even the outcome of a truly contingent natural process can nonetheless fall within God’s providential plan for creation. According to St. Thomas Aquinas: “The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency” (Summa theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1). In the Catholic perspective, neo-Darwinians who adduce random genetic variation and natural selection as evidence that the process of evolution is absolutely unguided are straying beyond what can be demonstrated by science. Divine causality can be active in a process that is both contingent and guided. Any evolutionary mechanism that is contingent can only be contingent because God made it so. An unguided evolutionary process – one that falls outside the bounds of divine providence – simply cannot exist because “the causality of God, Who is the first agent, extends to all being, not only as to constituent principles of species, but also as to the individualizing principles....It necessarily follows that all things, inasmuch as they participate in existence, must likewise be subject to divine providence” (Summa theologiae I, 22, 2).' relatd

01. Mutations are not random. Already addressed. They are random to any problem to be solved. Again, this is old hat. The use of the term “directed” is equivocation. 02. Natural Selection is poor design substitute. Yes, the natural process of evolution is a poor design substitute, as I’ve already explained. Designers create explanatory knowledge, which has significant reach. Evolution does not. It creates non-explanatory knowledge, which has limited reach. Only people can create explanatory knowledge. However, the genome contains, you guessed it, non-explanatory knowledge, not explanatory knowledge. Ask yourself, why did the designer intentionally decide to obscure its involvement by only creating the kind of knowledge that natural processes could create? If it wanted us to know living things were designed it could have, well, designed the knowledge in the organisms of living things to contain the kind of knowledge that only people can create. Right? Why would a designer do this? Is it trying to hide its involvement? Also, the probably calculations you reference assume the outcomes in question were intentional targets picked from the very start. This isn’t part of evolutionary theory. It’s a hidden ID assumption that is smuggled into this kind of argument. Again, see the video regarding probability in science. You haven’t responded to it at all. 03. DNA and body plans With a person has six fingers due to a genetic mutation, does their DNA contain an entire extra copy of an entire finger? No, it doesn’t. This doesn’t help your argument as a small change can have a large impact on body plans. You seem to keep referencing papers and ideas that you seem to think help your position, but actually do not. This doesn't bode well for your understanding of either the references or the subject at hand. 04. Fisher’s Theorem in population genetics This is more of “Darwin thought”, except in the context of “Fisher thought”. Had either of them being found wrong does not falsify Neo-darwinism. This is a non-sequitur. After all, Einstein had mistaken ideas about several aspects of fundamental physics, including an expanding universe, black holes, gravity waves, etc. Yet, we don’t hear you complaining about how GR has been falsified because Einstein was wrong about those things. What gives, BA? Where is the equal outrage? You have no outrage because it doesn’t suit your purpose. Neo-Darwinism is just an unfortunate theory that happens to convict with one of your religious beliefs. 04. What “Darwin thought” about the fossil record Already addressed. Ignoring this, you don’t seem to have any problems with varying rates of inflation in the expansion of the universe. So why do you have a problem with varying rates of mutation in evolution? Because varying rates of inflation suits your purpose in the form of the Big Bang. See above. 05. Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig Lönnig’s conclusions about the results of multiple experiments are, to put in mildly, heavily contested and considered misinterpretations. But this isn’t anything new, either. You're grasping at straws. 06. Darwin’s theory, due to the randomness postulate… Another “Darwin thought” non-sequitur. What about what Einstein thought, etc? Where is your outrage in the case of GR? 07, 08. “Darwin thought” about the beneficial features and irreducible complexity. Another “Darwin thought” non-sequitur. And, like the irreducible complexity of the bacterial flagellum? 09. “Darwin thought” about consciousness. Another non-sequitur. Neo-Darwinism is about biological complexity, not consciousness. But you already know this as well. Again, what gives, BA? 10. Mathematics and the impossibility of Neo-darwninism. See the constructor theory of evolution, which specifically addresses this criticism. Specifically, it asks: since biological replicators operate at such hi-fidelity, did the design of replicators have to be present, at the outset, in the laws of physics?

To this end I apply Constructor Theory's new mode of explanation to provide an exact formulation of the appearance of design, of no-design laws, and of the logic of self-reproduction and natural selection, within fundamental physics. I conclude that self-reproduction, replication and natural selection are possible under no-design laws, the only non-trivial condition being that they allow digital information to be physically instantiated. This has an exact characterisation in the constructor theory of information. I also show that under no-design laws an accurate replicator requires the existence of a "vehicle" constituting, together with the replicator, a self-reproducer.

If the answer to this question is “No.” then why would the design of replicators need to be present in some designer, at the outset? Do you have any criticism of this paper BA? 11. The scientific method itself is based on reliable observation. Which is a mistaken theory of epistemology. Your point is? 12. Information is immaterial. We can bring information into fundamental physics using constructor theory. See this paper. You haven’t responded to this in the least. If specific physical tasks must be possible for information, then how can information be completely independent of physical systems? Again, you’ll completely ignore this reference as it doesn’t suit your purpose. But, by all means, explain it to us, BA. I won’t be holding my breath. 13. Darwinism and epistemology. This whole line of argument appeals to the idea that knowledge is justified true belief. That’s yet another example of a mistaken epistemology. 14. Darwinism and teleology I think teleology exists. I just don’t think it was involved in created the knowledge in living things. They contain non-explanatory knowledge, not explanatory knowledge. Again, only people can create explanatory knowledge. This is because they intentionally attempt to conjecture explanatory theories of how to solve problems, then criticize them. The result has significant reach. Yet, the knowledge in the genomes of living things do not contain explanatory knowledge. What gives? Again, you should download latest version of physics-materialism.exe, as your’s is woefully out of date. But, of course, you won’t because, well, it doesn’t suit your purpose. critical rationalist

@48

What does fallibilism say about self-evident truths such as A=A, 2+2=4, error exists, truth exists, I exist?

I'd be interested to hear how Critical Rationalist responds. Certainly one option would be to say that fallibilism does not apply to analytic statements. But that would commit a fallibilist to the analytic/synthetic distinction, which became controversial in 20th century philosophy thanks to Morton White and W. V. O. Quine. Then there is the question as to what we ought to be fallibilists about. A standard answer is "theories". But this invites the nice question as to whether there's an unambiguous distinction between a scientific theory and our everyday conceptual frameworks. Perhaps a fallibilist would be willing to say that a conceptual system as a whole can be mistaken, regardless of what is logically entailed by that system. Should we be fallibilists about arithmetic? Could we be? Could we even conceive of an experience which shows that arithmetic should be replaced with a different conceptual system? I cannot conceive of a situation that could lead people to decide that arithmetic should be abandoned, but perhaps that is a failure of my own imagination. PyrrhoManiac1

The Christian God has revealed Himself in Scripture.

Origenes, how have you infallibly identified the Bible as an infallible source of the Christian God, or any God? Or is that a tautology, in that the Christian God is just whatever the Bible says God it is. But many other holy books claim to say God is like X, etc. Assuming you somehow managed to achieve this, how have you managed to infallibly interpret the Bible? And, if you've somehow managed to achieve that, how have you infallibly determined when to defer to the Bible? After all, the Bible supposedly is not a science book. Which means we shouldn't defer to it on matters of science. But how do you know it also is not a book on how God actually is, what he actually did, etc., either? So we shouldn't defer to it on matters of God's actual existence? Rather, it could be a book we should defer to on matters of what the people who wrote it thought God would be like if he existed. Or if rejected their preferred explanation of how they think God would have acted behind the scenes, had he existed. That the Bible is actually about how things really are, instead of how they wanted things to be, depends on how and when we should defer to it. Right? IOW, any infallibly in a supposedly infallible source cannot help us before our fallible human reasoning and problem solving has had its say. Which is effectively the same as someone who didn't believing in the infallibility of the source. In both cases, the weakest link in the chain, is fallible human reasoning and problem solving. critical rationalist

CR What does fallibilism say about self-evident truths such as A=A, 2+2=4, error exists, truth exists, I exist? Origenes

IOW, the idea that there is some barrier after which human reasoning and problem solving cannot pass is to “undermine the credibility of the human mind

Several non sequiturs here. A couple of them are The universe, solar system and Earth are fine tuned? Why? Implies an entity of massive capabilities behind this fine tuning. You placed no limits on humans. Implies eventually there will be unlimited number of god like creatures with unlimited abilities. That would be fun to watch. By the way infinity is out as an explanation. It is self refuting. jerry

CR at 44, Respectfully, you've said nothing new. The Christian God has revealed Himself in Scripture. The ONLY problem is He will not appear in a lab on command to undergo tests that prove He is the real thing. relatd

CR, your knee-jerk denialism does not constitute a legitimate refutation.

Darwinism vs. Falsification - list followed by links to defense of each claim https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I6fT6ATY700Bsx2-JSFqL6l-rzXpMcZcZKZfYRS45h4/

Of supplemental note, Whereas there is apparently no falsification criteria that Darwinists will accept, there is currently a 10 million dollar prize being offered for the first person who can falsify a primary claim of ID. Namely, that only Intelligence can create the coded information that is necessary to explain life,,,

Evolution 2.0 Prize: Unprecedented $10 Million Offered To Replicate Cellular Evolution – Jan 2020 Excerpt: An incentive prize ten times the size of the Nobel – believed to be the largest single award ever in basic science – is being offered to the person or team solving the largest mystery in history: how genetic code inside cells got there, and how cells intentionally self-organize, communicate, then purposely adapt. This $10 million challenge, the Evolution 2.0 Prize can be found at http://www.evo2.org.,, The Evolution 2.0 Prize is designed by Chicago engineer-turned-marketer-turned-business consultant Perry Marshall and his A-list team of partners. They include top genetic experts from Harvard and Oxford, plus a diverse group of investors from private banking, healthcare and biotechnology, software, real estate, publishing and more. “A germ resisting antibiotics does more programming in 12 minutes than a team of Google engineers can do in 12 days,” said Marshall. “One blade of grass is 10,000 years ahead of any computer. If a single firm in Silicon Valley held a fraction of the secrets of this natural code inside a single cell, they’d set the NASDAQ on fire. Organisms self-edit and reprogram in real time in a way that dwarfs anything manmade. If we crack this, it will literally change the course of aging, disease, A.I. and humanity.” https://www.prnewswire.com/in/news-releases/evolution-2-0-prize-unprecedented-10-million-offered-to-replicate-cellular-evolution-875038146.html

bornagain77

First, EVERY worldview, including atheistical ones, must answer to the issue of ultimate origins, thus roots of reality and faces the same burden of comparative difficulties.

That is itself, well, a world view.

For, in reality and in straightforward truth, atheism is the claim to know that there is no God. Indeed, as God is inter alia, a serious candidate necessary being world root, the assertion of atheism is an implicit claim to warrant that God is impossible of being.

For me God, doesn't add to the explanation. He is an inexplicable mind that exists in an inexplicable realm, who operatives via inexplicable means and methods and is driven by inexplicable motives. This just seems to push the problem up a level without improving it. Calling God a necessary being seems in search of a solution for a problem that doesn't exist. And it arbitrarily reflects an end to asking questions, such as why are there necessary beings instead of necessary non-beings? Why would a necessary being want this universe, instead of some other universe? How is it that God can know anything and what is the origin of his knowledge, etc. It's unclear how suggesting "That's just what the necessary being must have wanted" actually explains anything. Rather, it just attempts to justify things. But unless things too are also justified, then it's unclear how it can be a justification, etc.

Going further, over the ages and currently, there are so many millions who have claimed to meet, know and be positively transformed by God, that to imply or invite that we are all delusional, is to self referentially undermine the credibility of the human mind.

Being a fallibilist doesn't mean I think we're delusional or that our that we cannot find knowledge now and then.

Popper’s answer is: We can hope to detect and eliminate error if we set up traditions of criticism—substantive criticism, directed at the content of ideas, not their sources, and directed at whether they solve the problems that they purport to solve. Here is another apparent paradox, for a tradition is a set of ideas that stay the same, while criticism is an attempt to change ideas. But there is no contradiction. Our systems of checks and balances are steeped in traditions—such as freedom of speech and of the press, elections, and parliamentary procedures, the values behind concepts of contract and of tort—that survive not because they are deferred to but precisely because they are not: They themselves are continually criticized, and either survive criticism (which allows them to be adopted without deference) or are improved (for example, when the franchise is extended, or slavery abolished). Democracy, in this conception, is not a system for enforcing obedience to the authority of the majority. In the bigger picture, it is a mechanism for promoting the creation of consent, by creating objectively better ideas, by eliminating errors from existing ones.

Fallibilism, correctly understood, implies the possibility, not the impossibility, of knowledge, because the very concept of error, if taken seriously, implies that truth exists and can be found. The inherent limitation on human reason, that it can never find solid foundations for ideas, does not constitute any sort of limit on the creation of objective knowledge nor, therefore, on progress. The absence of foundation, whether infallible or probable, is no loss to anyone except tyrants and charlatans, because what the rest of us want from ideas is their content, not their provenance: If your disease has been cured by medical science, and you then become aware that science never proves anything but only disproves theories (and then only tentatively), you do not respond “oh dear, I’ll just have to die, then.”

IOW, the idea that there is some barrier after which human reasoning and problem solving cannot pass is to "undermine the credibility of the human mind." critical rationalist

Sev, 35:

The burden of proof may be a foreign concept to you but if believers want others, including scientists, to share their beliefs then they should present compelling reasons and evidence for them. What has been offered thus far does not rise to that standard in my view.

This caught my eye, and given the issue of self referentiality on hard, core questions, it is a doozy. First, EVERY worldview, including atheistical ones, must answer to the issue of ultimate origins, thus roots of reality and faces the same burden of comparative difficulties. That is, you have no default standing to pretend that "absence of belief in a god" [note, abusive lower case typically used] holds a default. For, in reality and in straightforward truth, atheism is the claim to know that there is no God. Indeed, as God is inter alia, a serious candidate necessary being world root, the assertion of atheism is an implicit claim to warrant that God is impossible of being. So, your or some other atheism advocate's warrant that the inherently good, utterly wise creator, a necessary and maximally great being is incoherent and impossible of being is? ________ I suggest, it is far harder to fill that blank cogently than many have suggested, especially post Plantinga, much less post Boethius. Going further, over the ages and currently, there are so many millions who have claimed to meet, know and be positively transformed by God, that to imply or invite that we are all delusional, is to self referentially undermine the credibility of the human mind. Which, actually, is a known, multiply major problem with the most relevant current form of atheism, evolutionary materialistic scientism. The scientism shoots itself in the head by asserting or implying the epistemological claim to monopoly or decisive dominance on knowledge. The evolutionary materialism is hopelessly caught up in implying that brains somehow programmed themselves into credible minds, ending up in spooky claims of grand inexplicable emergence as we have seen in recent months. The basic challenge is that no computational substrate is truly rational, responsibly, rationally free to warrant, instead it is caught up in GIGO driven dynamic stochastic procedures on an architecture likely to be bug riddled. (Recall, even hello world can be argued to be bug ridden.) Going beyond, there is a consistent pattern of such projecting delusion to large swaths of humanity, religious believers, despised social classes, races, sexes, political opponents, neurotics struggling with potty training and linked complexes, operant conditioning, etc. In all cases self referentiality lurks. So, I suggest retiring this particular rhetorical gambit. KF kairosfocus

There is no theory of natural selection. Natural selection is just what happened. So it’s just whatever happened, happened. It’s meaningless as a scientific explanation. It’s a tautology. https://uncommondescent.com/origin-of-life/paul-davies-on-the-gap-between-life-and-non-life/#comment-775881 jerry

1. Darwin’s theory holds mutations to the genome to be random. The vast majority of mutations to the genome are not random but are now found to be ‘directed’.

They are random to the particular problem to be solved, not completely random. I mean, this is really basic stuff here BA. What gives?

2. Darwin’s theory holds that Natural Selection is the ‘designer substitute’ that produces the ‘appearance’ and/or illusion of design. Natural Selection, especially for multicellular organisms, is found to be grossly inadequate as the ‘designer substitute.

Which is incredibly vague criticism. The supposed designer on organisms seems to out run their headlights all the time. The knowledge it would have produced has very limited reach. Which is what what we expect in regards to a process that creates non-explanatory knowledge. Why might that be the case?

3. Darwin’s theory holds that mutations to DNA will eventually change the basic biological form of any given species into a new form of a brand new species. Yet, biological form is found to be irreducible to mutations to DNA, nor is biological form reducible to any other material particulars in biology one may wish to invoke.

** First, let’s get past this “Darwin’s theory” stuff. Darwin was mistaken about a number of things. So what? Many people today have a better understanding about general relativity than Einstein did. Your point? Second, this is an appeal / criticism of reductionism. You really ought to get out more.

4. Darwin’s theory, (via Fisher’s Theorem in population genetics), assumed there to be an equal proportion of good and bad mutations to DNA which were, ultimately, responsible for all the diversity and complexity of life we see on earth. Yet, the ratio of detrimental to beneficial mutations is overwhelmingly detrimental. Detrimental to such a point that it is seriously questioned whether there are any truly beneficial, information building, mutations whatsoever.

Again, see above **. Mutations need not be beneficial in the sense you seem to be implying. They just need to get copied into the next generation. In many cases, mutations cause hardship and may eventually result in extinction. But other mutations will not. They play a causal role in being retained when embedded in a storage medium. You don’t have to outrun the bear, just out run the other person.

5. Charles Darwin himself held that the gradual unfolding of life would (someday) be self-evident in the fossil record. Yet, from the Cambrian Explosion onward, the fossil record is consistently characterized by the sudden appearance of a group/kind in the fossil record, (i.e. disparity), then rapid diversity within the group/kind, and then long term stability and even deterioration of variety within the overall group/kind, and within the specific species of the kind, over long periods of time. Of the few dozen or so fossils claimed as transitional, not one is uncontested as a true example of transition between major animal forms out of millions of collected fossils. Moreover, Fossils are found in the “wrong place” all the time (either too early, or too late).

When someone goes behind a tree, does that mean they were not there during that time? We have good explanations (scientific theories, such as geometry, optics, etc.) that explain why we wouldn’t expect to see them. We don’t have any good theories to explain how they would have disappeared either. The same can be said in regards to our explanations as to how fossilization occurs, etc. Again, this really is basic stuff here, BA. You’re grasping as straws here.

6. Darwin’s theory, due to the randomness postulate, holds that patterns will not repeat themselves in supposedly widely divergent species. Yet thousands of instances of what is ironically called ‘convergent evolution’, on both the morphological and genetic level, falsifies the Darwinian belief that patterns will not repeat themselves in widely divergent species.

Again, see above **.

7. Charles Darwin himself stated that “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” Yet as Doug Axe pointed out, “Basically every gene and every new protein fold, there is nothing of significance that we can show that can be had in that gradualistic way. It’s all a mirage. None of it happens that way.”

This hasn’t been demonstrated.

8. Charles Darwin himself stated that “If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection.” Yet as Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig pointed out, “in thousands of plant species often entirely new organs have been formed for the exclusive good of more than 132,930 other species, these ‘ugly facts’ have annihilated Darwin’s theory as well as modern versions of it.”

Like how the bacterial flagellum was provided to be irreducibly complex? Also, how can Neo-darwinism be falsified if it’s not science?

9. Charles Darwin himself stated that, ““The impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God. Yet ‘our conscious selves’ are certainly not explainable by ‘chance’ (nor is consciousness explainable by any possible reductive materialistic explanation in general), i.e. ‘the hard problem of consciousness’.

We don’t think it was chance. Come on BA. Is this really all you’ve got?

10. Besides the mathematics of probability consistently showing that Darwinian evolution is impossible, the mathematics of population genetics itself has now shown Darwinian evolution to be impossible. Moreover, ‘immaterial’ mathematics itself, which undergirds all of science, engineering and technology, is held by most mathematicians to exist in some timeless, unchanging, immaterial, Platonic realm. Yet, the reductive materialism that Darwinian theory is based upon denies the existence of the immaterial realm that mathematics exists in. i.e. Darwinian evolution actually denies the objective reality of the one thing, i.e. mathematics, that it most needs in order to be considered scientific in the first place!

Except, probability isn’t a valid way to approach the subject. You haven’t explained how that probably could actually be calculated. See the peppers on constructor theory and this video on probability in science.

11. Donald Hoffman has, via population genetics, shown that if Darwin’s materialistic theory were true then all our observations of reality would be illusory. Yet the scientific method itself is based on reliable observation. Moreover, Quantum Mechanics itself has now shown that conscious observation must come before material reality, i.e. falsification of ‘realism’ proves that our conscious observations are reliable!.

Huh? And no. Quantum mechanics doesn’t show any such thing. But you know this already. That’s an interception of QM, in which you must add something to the theory to explain why conscious beings do not evolve according to the wave function, like the rest of the universe. What might that be BA?

12. The reductive materialism that undergirds Darwinian thought holds that immaterial information is merely ’emergent’ from a material basis. Yet immaterial Information, via experimental realization of the “Maxwell’s Demon” thought experiment, is now found to be its own distinctive physical entity that, although it can interact in a ‘top down’ manner with matter and energy, is separate from matter and energy.

We can bring information, and knowledge, into fundamental physics using constructor theory. Even if we couldn’t, this doesn’t disprove Neo-darwinism. This is yet another non-sequitur.

13. Darwinists hold that Darwin’s theory is true. Yet ‘Truth’ itself is an abstract property of an immaterial mind that is irreducible to the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian evolution. i.e. Assuming reductive materialism and/or Naturalism as the starting philosophical position of science actually precludes ‘the truth’ from ever being reached by science!

That’s quite the leap you’ve made there BA!

14. Darwinists, due to their underlying naturalistic philosophy, insist that teleology (i.e. goal directed purpose) does not exist. Yet it is impossible for Biologists to do biological research without constantly invoking words that directly imply teleology. i.e. The very words that Biologists themselves are forced to use when they are doing their research falsifies Darwinian evolution.

You ought you download the lasted version of physics.exe. Your’s seems to be way out of date. critical rationalist

BA77 wrote

Critical Rationalist, your arguments unsuccessfully trying to defend Darwinism from Popper’s criticisms, and especially your appeal to Deutsch, does nothing to defend Darwinism from my overall claim that Darwinism is, in fact, a untestable, unfalsifiable, pseudo-science.

You're not even being consistent with your own references. Specifically, I'm referring to the paper you referenced from Sober. What gives?

In Popper’s view, there are three categories into which you can place a theoretical system: sciences that generate empirical knowledge and understanding through the postulation of universal laws of nature, sciences that do not postulate such laws but nonetheless generate knowledge and understanding through the proposal of methodological rules and the construction of models, and pseudosciences that do not generate empirical knowledge and understanding at all.

IOW, Popper didn't think evolution was pseudoscience, as you just claimed. Apparently, you don’t realize your own reference doesn't support your own position. Popper's criticism was focused on Darwin's formulation of natural selection: "survival of the fittest." But, fortunately, we're not stuck with Darwin's formulation. Again, see Dawkins' "The selfish gene", which was published in 1976. Popper addresses this directly...

The fact that the theory of natural selection is difficult to test has led some people, anti-Darwinists and even some great Darwinists, to claim that it is a tautology. . . . I mention this problem because I too belong among the culprits. Influenced by what these authorities say, I have in the past described the theory as "almost tautological," and I have tried to explain how the theory of natural selection could be untestable (as is a tautology) and yet of great scientific interest. My solution was that the doctrine of natural selection is a most successful metaphysical research programme. . . . [Popper, 1978, p. 344]

So, even if Popper had not changed his mind, it would fit into the second category. But Popper did change his mind.

I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation. . . . [p. 345] The theory of natural selection may be so formulated that it is far from tautological. In this case it is not only testable, but it turns out to be not strictly universally true. There seem to be exceptions, as with so many biological theories; and considering the random character of the variations on which natural selection operates, the occurrence of exceptions is not surprising. [p. 346]

So, despite Darwin's "survival of the fittest" being tautological, natural selection can be reformulated in a way that it's not tautological. Which is in line with Popper. Furthermore, your demand for a "law of evolution", in the sense of Popper's first category, in the current conception of physics. This is addressed in the paper I referenced on the constructor theory of life.

Indeed, the central problem here – i.e., whether and under what circumstances accurate self-reproduction and replication are compatible with no-design laws – is awkward to formulate in the prevailing conception of fundamental physics, which expresses everything in terms of predictions given some initial conditions and laws of motion. This mode of explanation can only approximately express emergent notions such as the appearance of design, no-design laws, etc. Von Neumann, who attempted to investigate self-reproduction within this framework, got as far as discovering its essential (replicator-vehicle) logic, [9]. However his use of the prevailing conception forced his analysis to be in terms of predictions: thus he attempted without success to provide the design of an actual self-reproducer in terms of atoms and microscopic interaction. The very existence of catalysts might be a sign of fine-tuning in the laws of physics, but not fine-tuning for biological adaptations, with which we are concerned here. He finally produced a viable toy model, [15], within cellular automata, but at the cost of severing the connections with actual physics. That model is thus inadequate to address the current problem - whether self-reproduction is compatible with the actual laws of physics un-augmented by any design of adaptations. The prevailing conception also forces a misleading formulation of the problem, as: what initial conditions and laws of motion must (or must probably) produce accurate replicators and self-reproducers (with some probability)? But what is disputed is whether such entities are possible under no-design laws. More generally, it cannot express the very explanation provided by evolutionary theory – that living organisms can have come about without intentionally being designed. It would have aimed at proving that they must occur, given certain initial conditions and dynamical laws.

But, we do not know the initial conditions. IOW, this law you appear to be demeaning would need to predict, after starting out with some initial conditions at the Big Bang, goats would appear billions of years later. (If ID is scientific, does provide a law that predicts human beings will appear billions of years after some specific initial conditions? Which specific conditions?) We don't know exactly what the initial conditions are. But, fortunately for us (but unfortunately for you?), we're not stuck with the current conception of physics. Assuming we are stuck with the current conception reflects an artificially narrow appeal. It's disingenuous.

To overcome these problems I resort to a newly proposed theory of physics, constructor theory. [16, 17, 18]. It provides a new mode of explanation, expressing all laws as statements about which transformations are possible, which are impossible and why. This brings counterfactual statements into fundamental physics, which is key to the solution. The explanation provided by the theory of evolution is already constructor-theoretic: it is possible that the appearance of design has been brought about without intentionally being designed; so is our problem: are the physical processes essential to the theory of evolution - i.e., self- reproduction, replication and natural selection - possible under no-design laws?

critical rationalist

Ba77, Seversky, and a few others here, must defend Darwinism. They have no choice. They see God coming back into science, and facts or no facts, they need to confuse readers here. To make them believe that Darwinism is somehow true when you have clearly, and repeatedly, shown it to be false and not testable science. Seversky's problems with God are another matter, but definitely connected. He, like some atheists, wants God to appear in a lab for some tests, followed by Seversky having a few words with Him... relatd

Seversky, your criticism of me would be much more fitting if it did not apply exponentially more-so to you. For prime example, you never present any compelling empirical evidence for your position, and you ignore numerous lines of falsifying evidence against your Darwinian worldview, and yet, you continually use faulty, even false, theological presuppositions about what God should and should not do, not scientific evidence, to continue to try to cling to your Darwinian atheism. For crying out loud, the self-refuting, and Theologically based, 'argument from evil' is literally your bread and butter argument for Darwinism and against God! See my post this morning on Cornelius Hunter's thread to get a glimpse of just how hypocritically self-refuting your naturalistic/atheistic worldview actually is in regards to scientific evidence and Theological presuppositions.. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/cornelius-hunter-on-evolution-as-a-religious-theory/#comment-776654 bornagain77

Critical Rationalist, your arguments unsuccessfully trying to defend Darwinism from Popper's criticisms, and especially your appeal to Deutsch, does nothing to defend Darwinism from my overall claim that Darwinism is, in fact, a untestable, unfalsifiable, pseudo-science. For instance, after Denis Noble had shown many foundational assumptions of Darwin's theory to be experimentally false,

"Physiology Is Rocking the Foundations of Evolutionary Biology": Another Peer-Reviewed Paper Takes Aim at Neo-Darwinism - Casey Luskin - March 31, 2015 Excerpt: Noble doesn't mince words: "It is not only the standard 20th century views of molecular genetics that are in question. Evolutionary theory itself is already in a state of flux (Jablonka & Lamb, 2005; Noble, 2006, 2011; Beurton et al. 2008; Pigliucci & Muller, 2010; Gissis & Jablonka, 2011; Shapiro, 2011). In this article, I will show that all the central assumptions of the Modern Synthesis (often also called Neo-Darwinism) have been disproved." Noble then recounts those assumptions: (1) that "genetic change is random," (2) that "genetic change is gradual," (3) that "following genetic change, natural selection leads to particular gene variants (alleles) increasing in frequency within the population," and (4) that "inheritance of acquired characteristics is impossible." He then cites examples that refute each of those assumptions,,, He then proposes a new and radical model of biology called the "Integrative Synthesis," where genes don't run the show and all parts of an organism -- the genome, the cell, the body plan, everything -- is integrated. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2015/03/physiology_is_r094821.html

,, after Denis Noble had shown many foundational assumptions of Darwin's theory to be experimentally false, and Darwinists then subsequently refused to accept those experimental findings as falsifications of their theory, Denis Nodel stated, "If, as the commentator seems to imply, we make neo-Darwinism so flexible as an idea that it can accept even those findings that the originators intended to be excluded by the theory it is then incumbent on modern neo-Darwinists to specify what would now falsify the theory. If nothing can do this then it is not a scientific theory.”

Central tenets of neo-Darwinism broken. Response to ‘Neo-Darwinism is just fine’ – August 1, 2015 Excerpt: “If, as the commentator seems to imply, we make neo-Darwinism so flexible as an idea that it can accept even those findings that the originators intended to be excluded by the theory it is then incumbent on modern neo-Darwinists to specify what would now falsify the theory. If nothing can do this then it is not a scientific theory.” – Denis Noble - President of International Union of Physiological Sciences https://jeb.biologists.org/content/218/16/2659

To further solidify Dr. Noble's claim that Darwin's theory, (at least how Darwinists treat their theory), is unfalsifiable, here is a list of falsifications of Darwin's theory (that Darwinists simply refuse to accept as falsifications off their theory)

1. Darwin’s theory holds mutations to the genome to be random. The vast majority of mutations to the genome are not random but are now found to be ‘directed’. 2. Darwin’s theory holds that Natural Selection is the ‘designer substitute’ that produces the ‘appearance’ and/or illusion of design. Natural Selection, especially for multicellular organisms, is found to be grossly inadequate as the ‘designer substitute. 3. Darwin’s theory holds that mutations to DNA will eventually change the basic biological form of any given species into a new form of a brand new species. Yet, biological form is found to be irreducible to mutations to DNA, nor is biological form reducible to any other material particulars in biology one may wish to invoke. 4. Darwin’s theory, (via Fisher’s Theorem in population genetics), assumed there to be an equal proportion of good and bad mutations to DNA which were, ultimately, responsible for all the diversity and complexity of life we see on earth. Yet, the ratio of detrimental to beneficial mutations is overwhelmingly detrimental. Detrimental to such a point that it is seriously questioned whether there are any truly beneficial, information building, mutations whatsoever. 5. Charles Darwin himself held that the gradual unfolding of life would (someday) be self-evident in the fossil record. Yet, from the Cambrian Explosion onward, the fossil record is consistently characterized by the sudden appearance of a group/kind in the fossil record, (i.e. disparity), then rapid diversity within the group/kind, and then long term stability and even deterioration of variety within the overall group/kind, and within the specific species of the kind, over long periods of time. Of the few dozen or so fossils claimed as transitional, not one is uncontested as a true example of transition between major animal forms out of millions of collected fossils. Moreover, Fossils are found in the “wrong place” all the time (either too early, or too late). 6. Darwin’s theory, due to the randomness postulate, holds that patterns will not repeat themselves in supposedly widely divergent species. Yet thousands of instances of what is ironically called ‘convergent evolution’, on both the morphological and genetic level, falsifies the Darwinian belief that patterns will not repeat themselves in widely divergent species. 7. Charles Darwin himself stated that “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” Yet as Doug Axe pointed out, “Basically every gene and every new protein fold, there is nothing of significance that we can show that can be had in that gradualistic way. It’s all a mirage. None of it happens that way.” 8. Charles Darwin himself stated that “If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection.” Yet as Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig pointed out, “in thousands of plant species often entirely new organs have been formed for the exclusive good of more than 132,930 other species, these ‘ugly facts’ have annihilated Darwin’s theory as well as modern versions of it.” 9. Charles Darwin himself stated that, ““The impossibility of conceiving that this grand and wondrous universe, with our conscious selves, arose through chance, seems to me the chief argument for the existence of God. Yet ‘our conscious selves’ are certainly not explainable by ‘chance’ (nor is consciousness explainable by any possible reductive materialistic explanation in general), i.e. ‘the hard problem of consciousness’. 10. Besides the mathematics of probability consistently showing that Darwinian evolution is impossible, the mathematics of population genetics itself has now shown Darwinian evolution to be impossible. Moreover, ‘immaterial’ mathematics itself, which undergirds all of science, engineering and technology, is held by most mathematicians to exist in some timeless, unchanging, immaterial, Platonic realm. Yet, the reductive materialism that Darwinian theory is based upon denies the existence of the immaterial realm that mathematics exists in. i.e. Darwinian evolution actually denies the objective reality of the one thing, i.e. mathematics, that it most needs in order to be considered scientific in the first place! 11. Donald Hoffman has, via population genetics, shown that if Darwin’s materialistic theory were true then all our observations of reality would be illusory. Yet the scientific method itself is based on reliable observation. Moreover, Quantum Mechanics itself has now shown that conscious observation must come before material reality, i.e. falsification of ‘realism’ proves that our conscious observations are reliable!. 12. The reductive materialism that undergirds Darwinian thought holds that immaterial information is merely ’emergent’ from a material basis. Yet immaterial Information, via experimental realization of the “Maxwell’s Demon” thought experiment, is now found to be its own distinctive physical entity that, although it can interact in a ‘top down’ manner with matter and energy, is separate from matter and energy. 13. Darwinists hold that Darwin’s theory is true. Yet ‘Truth’ itself is an abstract property of an immaterial mind that is irreducible to the reductive materialistic explanations of Darwinian evolution. i.e. Assuming reductive materialism and/or Naturalism as the starting philosophical position of science actually precludes ‘the truth’ from ever being reached by science! 14. Darwinists, due to their underlying naturalistic philosophy, insist that teleology (i.e. goal directed purpose) does not exist. Yet it is impossible for Biologists to do biological research without constantly invoking words that directly imply teleology. i.e. The very words that Biologists themselves are forced to use when they are doing their research falsifies Darwinian evolution. Darwinism vs. Falsification – list of falsifications (that Darwinists simply refuse to accept as falsifications) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I6fT6ATY700Bsx2-JSFqL6l-rzXpMcZcZKZfYRS45h4/edit

CR, despite your repeated false claims to the contrary, by any reasonable measure, Darwin's theory simply fails to qualify as a real and testable science, but is much more appropriately classified as a pseudo-science, even as a religion for atheists, rather than being classified as a real and testable science. For instance, as Berlinski quipped with the casting aside of natural selection by 'neutral theory', and yet Darwinists subsequent acceptance of neutral theory as if it is somehow compatible with their theory,,,, "By this standard, if the Archangel Gabriel were to accept personal responsibility for the Cambrian explosion, his views would be widely described as neo-Darwinian."

Majestic Ascent: Berlinski on Darwin on Trial - David Berlinski - November 2011 Excerpt: The publication in 1983 of Motoo Kimura's The Neutral Theory of Molecular Evolution consolidated ideas that Kimura had introduced in the late 1960s. On the molecular level, evolution is entirely stochastic, and if it proceeds at all, it proceeds by drift along a leaves-and-current model. Kimura's theories left the emergence of complex biological structures an enigma (since Natural Selection no longer played a role), but they played an important role in the local economy of belief. They allowed biologists to affirm that they welcomed responsible criticism. "A critique of neo-Darwinism," the Dutch biologist Gert Korthof boasted, "can be incorporated into neo-Darwinism if there is evidence and a good theory, which contributes to the progress of science." By this standard, if the Archangel Gabriel were to accept personal responsibility for the Cambrian explosion, his views would be widely described as neo-Darwinian. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/11/berlinski_on_darwin_on_trial053171.html

Verse

1 Thessalonians 5:21 but test all things. Hold fast to what is good.

bornagain77

Whistler/32

“Elite” means satanic. ?

It is good to see there are some who are keeping alive the traditions of Dark Age thinking. Seversky

Bornagain77/31

Well ChuckyD, to point out the obvious once again, (which seems to be a recurring theme with you), most people assume that since most elite scientists are atheistic or agnostic then they must have very good scientific reasons for being atheists and/or agnostics. Yet the surprising thing is that they don’t have very good scientific reasons for being atheists and/or agnostics. It turns out that they are atheists/agnostics for personal reasons, not scientific reasons.

The burden of proof may be a foreign concept to you but if believers want others, including scientists, to share their beliefs then they should present compelling reasons and evidence for them. What has been offered thus far does not rise to that standard in my view.

So thus ChuckyD, to point out the obvious once again, an elite scientist being an atheist/agnostic for personal reasons, not scientific reasons, carries as much weight as anyone else, (your garbageman, your mailman, etc.)., believing what they believe for personal reasons. Their personal beliefs simply carry no scientific weight. It is the scientific evidence itself that matters.

You do realize that that argument applies equally to the religious beliefs of scientists as well? They have no bearing on the science either.

Moreover, I hold that if we take the artificial blinders off of science, specifically take the artificial blinder of ‘methodological naturalism’ off of science, and let the scientific evidence speak for itself, then the scientific evidence itself is very good at pointing us to Theism, not atheistic naturalism, as the true explanation for reality.

The scientific evidence leads us to a number of profound mysteries. It does not point unequivocally towards Theism. As others have pointed out, cherry-picked quotes are a form of confirmation bias and read more like theistic grasping at scientific straws.

Here are a few comparisons:

Do I really need to repeat the rebuttals to those points yet again?

As you can see when we remove the artificial imposition of the naturalistic philosophy (methodological naturalism), from the scientific method, and look carefully at the predictions of both atheistic naturalism and Theism, side by side, we find the scientific method is very good at pointing us in the direction of Theism as the true explanation. – In fact modern science is even very good at pointing us to Christianity as the solution to the much sought after ‘theory of everything’

I find it - ironic - that you decry the principle of methodological naturalism. How else would you conduct science other than through a methodical investigation of the nature of the world in which we find ourselves? Are you suggesting something like a religious Lysenkoism in which the acceptability of the findings of science is determined by the extent to which they are judged to conform to religious presuppositions? Seversky

“In his autobiography, Karl Popper said he had come to the conclusion that “Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program.”8 To say that a species now living is adapted to its environment “is almost tautological,” he wrote. “Adaptation or fitness is defined by modern evolutionists as survival value, and can be measured by actual success in survival. There is hardly any possibility of testing a theory as feeble as this.”

Popper's autobiography was published in 1976. The page I referenced quotes from Popper after 1976. Your point is?

Further controversy ensued, for Popper—apparently under pressure in England—partially recanted in 1978. Later, in 1988, I had a chance to interview Popper myself, when he spent a week at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. I immediately brought up the issue of natural selection. He told me that his opinion had not changed. He also said he thought that natural selection had in fact been falsified “by Darwin’s own theory.” Distortions introduced by sexual selection sometimes meant that offspring were not better adapted than their parents, he said. When I mentioned that Darwinism had evidently benefited from the idea of Progress, widely accepted in the mid-nineteenth century but widely rejected in the late twentieth, Popper said that “I have been one of the people who have destroyed it.” He said he had “preached” along those lines in his book The Poverty of Historicisms.” – Tom Bethell, Darwin’s House of Cards (2016) (pp. 14–15)

Again, we have quotes from Popper that doesn't imply natural selection is a pseudo science from 1978. Darwin can be mistaken about natural selection in regards to survival of the fittest, etc. as described in the selfish gene, which was published in 1976. But this isn't anything new in the present. This is more selective appeal to Popper when it suites your purpose.

The fact that the theory of natural selection is difficult to test has led some people, anti-Darwinists and even some great Darwinists, to claim that it is a tautology. . . . I mention this problem because I too belong among the culprits. Influenced by what these authorities say, I have in the past described the theory as "almost tautological," and I have tried to explain how the theory of natural selection could be untestable (as is a tautology) and yet of great scientific interest. My solution was that the doctrine of natural selection is a most successful metaphysical research programme. . . . [Popper, 1978, p. 344]

I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation. . . . [p. 345]

The theory of natural selection may be so formulated that it is far from tautological. In this case it is not only testable, but it turns out to be not strictly universally true. There seem to be exceptions, as with so many biological theories; and considering the random character of the variations on which natural selection operates, the occurrence of exceptions is not surprising. [p. 346]

Popper’s Shifting Appraisal of Evolutionary Theory – Mehmet Elgin and Elliott Sober – Feb 2017 Excerpt: Karl Popper argued in 1974 that evolutionary theory contains no testable laws and is therefore a metaphysical research program. Four years later, he said that he had changed his mind. Here we seek to understand Popper’s initial position and his subsequent retraction. We argue, contrary to Popper’s own assessment, that he (Popper) did not change his mind at all about the substance of his original claim. We also explore how Popper’s views have ramifications for contemporary discussion of the nature of laws and the structure of evolutionary theory. Popper’s Shifting Appraisal of Evolutionary Theory – Mehmet Elgin and Elliott Sober – Feb 2017 Excerpt: Karl Popper argued in 1974 that evolutionary theory contains no testable laws and is therefore a metaphysical research program. Four years later, he said that he had changed his mind. Here we seek to understand Popper’s initial position and his subsequent retraction. We argue, contrary to Popper’s own assessment, that he (Popper) did not change his mind at all about the substance of his original claim. We also explore how Popper’s views have ramifications for contemporary discussion of the nature of laws and the structure of evolutionary theory. Popper’s Shifting Appraisal of Evolutionary Theory – Mehmet Elgin and Elliott Sober – Feb 2017 Excerpt: Karl Popper argued in 1974 that evolutionary theory contains no testable laws and is therefore a metaphysical research program. Four years later, he said that he had changed his mind. Here we seek to understand Popper’s initial position and his subsequent retraction. We argue, contrary to Popper’s own assessment, that he (Popper) did not change his mind at all about the substance of his original claim. We also explore how Popper’s views have ramifications for contemporary discussion of the nature of laws and the structure of evolutionary theory.

Yes. Popper's appraisal of Evolutionary theory changed. The lack of laws in the sense of, say, newton's laws, etc. isn't isn't any more of a problem than the principles behind the second law of thermodynamics.

Moreover, the primary reason no one can seem to find any rigid falsification criteria for Darwinian evolution is simply because it is not based on any known physical law nor mathematics. The Evolution of Ernst: Interview with Ernst Mayr – 2004 (page 2 of 14) Excerpt: biology (Darwinian Evolution) differs from the physical sciences in that in the physical sciences, all theories, I don’t know exceptions so I think it’s probably a safe statement, all theories are based somehow or other on natural laws. In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences.

First, as Popper pointed out, this isn't a surprise. Variation comes in many forms. Second, natural selection can be formulated in a way that is testable based on existing laws. Biological adaptions can be modeled as abstract replicators, which are forms of information that, once embodied in a physical system, tend to remain there, while others do not. They play a causal role in being retained in future generation. This is testable. What would refute Darwinian evolution?

Evidence which, in the light of the best available explanation, implies that knowledge (in the genes of organisms) came into existence in a different way (than the specific variant of conjecture and criticism found in biology) . For instance, if an organism was observed to undergo other (or mainly) favorable mutations, as produced by Lamarckism or spontaneous generation, then Darwinism's 'random generation' populate would be refuted. If organisms were observed to be born with new, complex adaptions - for anything- of which there were no precursors in their parents, then the gradual-change prediction would be refuted and so would Darwinism's mechanism of knowledge-creation. If an organism was born with a complex adaption that has survival value today, yet was not favored by selection pressure in its ancestry (say, an ability to detect and use internet weather forecasts to decide when to hibernate), then Darwinism would again be refuted. A fundamentally new explanation would be needed. Facing more or less of the same unsolved problem that Paley and Darwin faced, we should have to set about finding an explanation that worked. - David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity

Strangely, many ID proponents (falsely) claimed this is the case with the bacterial flagellum. Why would they do this if they didn't think it would reflect a falsification if found to be true?. Third evolution can be represented as a principle. Specifically, as abstract replicators in constructor theory. From this paper

2.10 Laws and principles The deepest known laws of nature, sometimes called ‘principles’, are meta-laws, constraining other laws rather than the behaviour of physical objects directly. For example, the principle of the conservation of energy does not say what forms of energy exist, nor what the energy of any particular system is. Rather, it asserts that for any system S, the object-level laws (those governing S and its interactions with other systems) define a quantity that has the usual properties of energy. Principles purport to constrain all true laws, known and unknown. But there is no way of deducing such an implication from laws expressed in the prevailing conception. At most one can add it informally, or prove that existing laws conform to the principle. But all laws of constructor theory are principles; and when they call a task possible, that rules out the existence of insuperable obstacles to performing it, even from unknown laws. It is sometimes claimed that principles are untestable. An object-level theory is testable if it makes predictions which, if the theory were false, could be contradicted by the outcome of some possible observation, which is then said to falsify the theory. Now, mathematics alone determines whether an object-level law L obeys a principle P. But if it does (so the argument goes), the experimental falsification of L would not falsify P, because it would not rule out that some unknown law L? conforming to P might be true. And if L violates P, the experimental corroboration of L would not falsify P either, because then some alternative explanation might still satisfy P. For example, experiments in the 1920s, interpreted according to the then-prevailing theories (L) of what elementary particles exist, implied that the energy of a nucleus before beta decay is greater than the total energy of the decay products. But that did not falsify the principle (P) of the conservation of energy: Pauli guessed ( L? ) that energy was being carried away by unknown particles (nowadays called antineutrinos). No experimental results could ever rule out that possibility – and the same holds for any principle. But this supposed deficiency is shared by all scientific theories: Tests always depend on background knowledge – assumptions about other laws and about how measuring instruments work (Popper 1963, ch. 10 §4). Logically, should any theory fail a test, one always has the option of retaining it by denying one of those assumptions. Indeed, this has been used as a critique of the very idea of testability (Putnam 1974). But scientific theories are not merely predictions. They are, primarily, explanations: claims about what is there in the physical world and how it behaves. And the negation of an explanation is not an explanation; so a claim such as ‘there could be an undetected particle carrying off the energy’ is not a scientific theory. Nor is ‘perhaps energy is not conserved’. Those are research proposals, not explanations. Consequently the methodology of science includes the rule that any proposal to modify a background-knowledge assumption must itself be a good explanation1. So, if the only explanatory implication of Pauli’s suggestion had been to save the principle of the conservation of energy, both would have been abandoned (as the principle of parity invariance was abandoned as a result of other experiments on beta decay). In the event, it was soon used to account for other observations and became indispensable in the understanding of nuclear phenomena, while no good explanation contradicting energy conservation was found.

Details of this can be found in here.

Neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory explains how the appearance of purposive design in the sophisticated adaptations of living organisms can have come about without their intentionally being designed. The explanation relies crucially on the possibility of certain physical processes: mainly, gene replication and natural selection. In this paper I show that for those processes to be possible without the design of biological adaptations being encoded in the laws of physics, those laws must have certain other properties. The theory of what these properties are is not part of evolution theory proper, and has not been developed, yet without it the neo-Darwinian theory does not fully achieve its purpose of explaining the appearance of design. To this end I apply Constructor Theory's new mode of explanation to provide an exact formulation of the appearance of design, of no-design laws, and of the logic of self-reproduction and natural selection, within fundamental physics. I conclude that self-reproduction, replication and natural selection are possible under no-design laws, the only non-trivial condition being that they allow digital information to be physically instantiated. This has an exact characterisation in the constructor theory of information. I also show that under no-design laws an accurate replicator requires the existence of a "vehicle" constituting, together with the replicator, a self-reproducer.

critical rationalist

"Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve." Whistler, Today's Gospel reading, as it happens. Andrew asauber

most elite scientists and scholars are atheists.

"Elite" means satanic. ;) Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. whistler

Well ChuckyD, to point out the obvious once again, (which seems to be a recurring theme with you), most people assume that since most elite scientists are atheistic or agnostic then they must have very good scientific reasons for being atheists and/or agnostics. Yet the surprising thing is that they don't have very good scientific reasons for being atheists and/or agnostics. It turns out that they are atheists/agnostics for personal reasons, not scientific reasons. To further quote from the article, with the part you left off attached,

,,, "Yes, most elite scientists and scholars are atheists. But their reasons for being atheists and agnostics are varied and often personal. And their typical arguments are rather common and shallow – god of the gaps and the existence of evil. It would seem clear that their expertise and elite status is simply not a causal factor behind their atheism.",,, https://shadowtolight.wordpress.com/2016/11/08/elite-scientists-dont-have-elite-reasons-for-being-atheists/

So thus ChuckyD, to point out the obvious once again, an elite scientist being an atheist/agnostic for personal reasons, not scientific reasons, carries as much weight as anyone else, (your garbageman, your mailman, etc.)., believing what they believe for personal reasons. Their personal beliefs simply carry no scientific weight. It is the scientific evidence itself that matters. Moreover, I hold that if we take the artificial blinders off of science, specifically take the artificial blinder of 'methodological naturalism' off of science, and let the scientific evidence speak for itself, then the scientific evidence itself is very good at pointing us to Theism, not atheistic naturalism, as the true explanation for reality. Specifically, Atheistic Naturalism and Theism make, and have made, several basic contradictory predictions about what type of science evidence we will find about reality. These basic contradictory predictions about reality, and the evidence that is now found by modern science, can be compared against one another to see if either atheistic naturalism or Theism was true in its basic predictions about reality. Here are a few comparisons:

1. Naturalism/Materialism predicted space-time energy-matter always existed. Theism predicted space-time energy-matter were created. Big Bang cosmology now strongly indicates that time-space energy-matter had a sudden creation event approximately 14 billion years ago. 2. Naturalism/Materialism predicted that the universe is a self sustaining system that is not dependent on anything else for its continued existence. Theism predicted that God upholds this universe in its continued existence. Breakthroughs in quantum mechanics reveal that this universe is dependent on a ‘non-local’, beyond space and time, cause for its continued existence. 3. Naturalism/Materialism predicted that consciousness is an ‘emergent property’ of material reality and thus should have no particularly special position within material reality. Theism predicts consciousness precedes material reality and therefore, on that presupposition, consciousness should have a ‘special’ position within material reality. Quantum Mechanics reveals that consciousness, (I,e, Conscious observation, measurement), has a special, even a central, position within material reality. - 4. Naturalism/Materialism predicted the rate at which time passed was constant everywhere in the universe. Theism predicted God is eternal and is outside of time. – Special Relativity has shown that time, as we understand it, is relative and comes to a complete stop at the speed of light. (Psalm 90:4 – 2 Timothy 1:9) - 5. Naturalism/Materialism predicted the universe did not have life in mind and that life was ultimately an accident of time and chance. Theism predicted this universe was purposely created by God with man in mind. Scientists find the universe is exquisitely fine-tuned for carbon-based life to exist in this universe. Moreover it is found, when scrutinizing the details of physics and chemistry, that not only is the universe fine-tuned for carbon based life, but is specifically fine-tuned for intelligent life like human life (R. Collins, M. Denton).- 6. Naturalism/Materialism predicted complex life in this universe should be fairly common. Theism predicted the earth is extremely unique in this universe. Statistical analysis of the hundreds of required parameters which enable complex organic life to be possible on earth gives strong indication the earth is extremely unique in this universe (G. Gonzalez; Hugh Ross). - 7. Naturalism/Materialism predicted it took a very long time for life to develop on earth. Theism predicted life to appear abruptly on earth after water appeared on earth (Genesis 1:10-11). Geochemical evidence from the oldest sedimentary rocks ever found on earth indicates that complex photosynthetic life has existed on earth as long as water has been on the face of earth. - 8. Naturalism/Materialism predicted the first life to be relatively simple. Theism predicted that God is the source for all life on earth. The simplest life ever found on Earth is far more complex than any machine man has made through concerted effort. (Michael Denton PhD) - 9. Naturalism/Materialism predicted the gradual unfolding of life would (someday) be self-evident in the fossil record. Theism predicted complex and diverse animal life to appear abruptly in the seas in God’s fifth day of creation. The Cambrian Explosion shows a sudden appearance of many different and completely unique fossils within a very short “geologic resolution time” in the Cambrian seas. - 10. Naturalism/Materialism predicted there should be numerous transitional fossils found in the fossil record, Theism predicted sudden appearance and rapid diversity within different kinds found in the fossil record. Fossils are consistently characterized by sudden appearance of a group/kind in the fossil record(disparity), then rapid diversity within that group/kind, and then long term stability and even deterioration of variety within the overall group/kind, and within the specific species of the kind, over long periods of time. Of the few dozen or so fossils claimed as transitional, not one is uncontested as a true example of transition between major animal forms out of millions of collected fossils. - 11. Naturalism/Materialism predicted animal speciation should happen on a somewhat constant basis on earth. Theism predicted man was the last species created on earth – Man (our genus ‘modern homo’ as distinct from the highly controversial ‘early homo’) is the last generally accepted major fossil form to have suddenly appeared in the fossil record. (Tattersall; Luskin)– 12. Naturalism/Materialism predicted that the separation of human intelligence from animal intelligence ‘is one of degree and not of kind’ (C. Darwin). Theism predicted that we are made in the ‘image of God’- Despite an ‘explosion of research’ in this area over the last four decades, human beings alone are found to ‘mentally dissect the world into a multitude of discrete symbols, and combine and recombine those symbols in their minds to produce hypotheses of alternative possibilities.’ (Tattersall; Schwartz). Moreover, both biological life and the universe itself are found to be ‘information theoretic’ in their foundational basis. 13. Naturalism/Materialism predicted much of the DNA code was junk. Theism predicted we are fearfully and wonderfully made – ENCODE research into the DNA has revealed a “biological jungle deeper, denser, and more difficult to penetrate than anyone imagined.”. - 14. Naturalism/Materialism predicted a extremely beneficial and flexible mutation rate for DNA which was ultimately responsible for all the diversity and complexity of life we see on earth. Theism predicted only God created life on earth – The mutation rate to DNA is overwhelmingly detrimental. Detrimental to such a point that it is seriously questioned whether there are any truly beneficial, information building, mutations whatsoever. (M. Behe; JC Sanford) - 15. Naturalism/Materialism predicted morality is subjective and illusory. Theism predicted morality is objective and real. Morality is found to be deeply embedded in the genetic responses of humans. As well, morality is found to be deeply embedded in the structure of the universe. Embedded to the point of eliciting physiological responses in humans before humans become aware of the morally troubling situation and even prior to the event even happening. 16. Naturalism/Materialism predicted that we are merely our material bodies with no transcendent component to our being, and that we die when our material bodies die. Theism predicted that we have minds/souls that are transcendent of our bodies that live past the death of our material bodies. Transcendent, and ‘conserved’, (cannot be created or destroyed), ‘non-local’, (beyond space-time matter-energy), quantum entanglement/information, which is not reducible to matter-energy space-time, is now found in our material bodies on a massive scale (in every DNA and protein molecule). - Brief defense of all 16 comparisons https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vHkCYvFiWiZfMlXHKJwwMJ7SJ0tlqWfH83dJ2OgfP78/edit

As you can see when we remove the artificial imposition of the naturalistic philosophy (methodological naturalism), from the scientific method, and look carefully at the predictions of both atheistic naturalism and Theism, side by side, we find the scientific method is very good at pointing us in the direction of Theism as the true explanation. - In fact modern science is even very good at pointing us to Christianity as the solution to the much sought after 'theory of everything'

Oct. 2022 – And although there will never be a purely mathematical ‘theory of everything’ that bridges the infinite mathematical divide that exists between quantum mechanics and general relativity, all hope is not lost in finding the correct ‘theory of everything’.,,,, https://uncommondescent.com/cosmology/from-iai-news-how-infinity-threatens-cosmology/#comment-766384 Feb. 2023 - Besides being irrational, the denial of the reality of free will, agent causality, and/or intelligent causation, by atheistic naturalists is also unscientific. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/the-inconsistencies-of-materialism/#comment-776383

So thus in conclusion, regardless of whatever elite scientists may personally choose to believe about God, the scientific evidence itself could care less about what they may personally believe, and the scientific evidence itself is telling us a VERY different story from what 'elite scientists' may personally choose to believe..

1 Thessalonians 5:21 but test all things. Hold fast to what is good.

bornagain77

BA77 & Relatd @27 and 28 Just one final comment and I'm moving on. I watched the video provided by BA77. It is important to note that it is a compilation of short video clips edited by Dr. Jonathan Pararejasingham, a British physician. The key takeaway apropos my comment @23 is:

Yes, most elite scientists and scholars are atheists.

The Nature article provided by Relatd @24, makes the very same conclusion based upon actual survey data. So, I'm not sure exactly what BA77 and Relatd are trying to challenge, they seem to have made my case. But it’s not really news, as the Nature article shows, this is a 100-year trend…… chuckdarwin

Nice, date align best with and help attest to Pearlman YeC SPIRAL cosmological redshift hypothesis and model. follow project at researchgate dot net and the series available on amazon + kindle. some dated excerpts also on academia www.academia.edu/94346772/Pearlman_YeC_SPIRAL_on_JWTS_JADES_photometry_and_spectroscopy Pearlman

CD at 26, Ba77 filled in the details. I thank him. relatd

Of related note to ChuckyD's appeal to "the prevalence of atheism and agnosticism among first flight scientists,"

Elite Scientists Don’t Have Elite Reasons for Being Atheists - November 8, 2016 Excerpt: Dr. Jonathan Pararejasingham has compiled video of elite scientists and scholars to make the connection between atheism and science. Unfortunately for Pararejasingham, once you get past the self-identification of these scholars as non-believers, there is simply very little there to justify the belief in atheism.,,, What I found was 50 elite scientists expressing their personal opinions, but none had some powerful argument or evidence to justify their opinions. In fact, most did not even cite a reason for thinking atheism was true.,,, The few that did try to justify their atheism commonly appealed to God of the Gaps arguments (there is no need for God, therefore God does not exist) and the Argument from Evil (our bad world could not have come from an All Loving, All Powerful God). In other words, it is just as I thought it would be. Yes, most elite scientists and scholars are atheists. But their reasons for being atheists and agnostics are varied and often personal. And their typical arguments are rather common and shallow – god of the gaps and the existence of evil. It would seem clear that their expertise and elite status is simply not a causal factor behind their atheism. Finally, it is also clear the militant atheism of Dawkins is a distinct minority view among these scholars. https://shadowtolight.wordpress.com/2016/11/08/elite-scientists-dont-have-elite-reasons-for-being-atheists/

bornagain77

Relatd How do you figure? chuckdarwin

ChuckyD claims that it is "historical revisionism writ large" to claim that, "All of science was born out of, and is STILL dependent upon, Judeo-Christian presuppositions." Yet actually, it is ChuckyD, and his Darwinian cohorts, who are blatantly guilty of "historical revisionism writ large".

The Two Guys to Blame for the Myth of Constant Warfare between Religion and Science - February 27, 2015 Excerpt: Timothy Larsen, a Christian historian who specializes in the nineteenth century, notes: The so-called “war” between faith and learning, specifically between orthodox Christian theology and science, was manufactured during the second half of the nineteenth century. It is a construct that was created for polemical purposes. No one deserves more blame for this stubborn myth than these two men: Andrew Dickson White (1832-1918), the founding president of Cornell University, and John William Draper (1811-1882), professor of chemistry at the University of New York. http://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2015/02/27/the-two-guys-to-blame-for-the-myth-of-constant-warfare-between-religion-and-science/ The Importance of the Warfare Thesis - Cornelius Hunter, PhD in Biophysics - July 26, 2015 Excerpt: Historians have understood for the better part of a century now that this Warfare Thesis (between science and religion) is a false history. It was constructed by evolutionists to frame the origins debate in their favor. In fact the conflict is the exactly the opposite—it is between the metaphysical foundation of evolutionary thought and science. That metaphysical foundation of naturalism is unyielding and unbending, and it makes no sense on the science. It is the evolutionists who have a conflict between their religious beliefs and science. The Warfare Thesis is an attempt to turn the tables and turn the attention away from the obvious problems with evolutionary thought. Evolutionists say that their skeptics suffer from bad religion and bad science. In fact, the metaphysical foundation of naturalism is not biblical (in spite of the fact that it comes from Christians), and evolutionary theory is not scientific. Science does not indicate that the world spontaneously arose.,,, Clear scientific evidence for evolution? Abundant genetic and fossil evidence for evolution? Yes, the scientific evidence is clear, and the genetic and fossil evidence is abundant, but it does not support evolution. Not even remotely. Of course Scripture can have different interpretations. But the science leaves no such wiggle room. It does not prove, indicate or suggest that the species arose spontaneously, as a consequence of natural laws and processes. That is a metaphysical mandate (from atheists) that is in conflict with the science. http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2015/07/heres-whats-going-on-with-biologos.html

I guess the game for ChuckyD here is to accuse Christians of what atheists were, and still are, blatantly guilty of. Despite ChuckyD's dishonest denial to the contrary, the fact that modern science was born out of the Judeo-Christian culture of Medieval Christian Europe is simply a historical fact.

Christians – Not the Enlightenment – Invented Modern Science – Chuck Colson – Oct. 2016 Excerpt: Rodney Stark's,,, book, "For the Glory of God,,,, In Stark's words, "Christian theology was necessary for the rise of science."Science only happened in areas whose worldview was shaped by Christianity, that is, Europe. Many civilizations had alchemy; only Europe developed chemistry. Likewise, astrology was practiced everywhere, but only in Europe did it become astronomy. That's because Christianity depicted God as a "rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being" who created a universe with a "rational, lawful, stable" structure. These beliefs uniquely led to "faith in the possibility of science." So why the Columbus myth? Because, as Stark writes, "the claim of an inevitable and bitter warfare between religion and science has, for more than three centuries, been the primary polemical device used in the atheist attack of faith." Opponents of Christianity have used bogus accounts like the ones I've mentioned to not only discredit Christianity, but also position themselves as "liberators" of the human mind and spirit. Well, it's up to us to set the record straight, and Stark's book is a great place to start. And I think it's time to tell our neighbors that what everyone thinks they know about Christianity and science is just plain wrong. http://www.cnsnews.com/commentary/chuck-colson/weve-been-lied-christians-not-enlightenment-invented-modern-science

And per Stephen Meyer, here are the three essential Judeo-Christian presuppositions that were necessary for the rise of modern science in medieval Christian Europe

New Book: For Kepler, Science Did Not Point to Atheism - Stephen C. Meyer - January 17, 2023 The Conflict Myth Unmade,,, As historian Ian Barbour says, “science in its modern form” arose “in Western civilization alone, among all the cultures of the world,” because only the Christian West had the necessary “intellectual presuppositions underlying the rise of science.”2 So, what were those presuppositions? We can identify three. As Melissa Cain Travis shows, (in her book: "Thinking God’s Thoughts: Johannes Kepler and the Miracle of Cosmic Comprehensibility"), all have their place in Kepler’s seminal works. More generally, all find their origin in the Judeo-Christian idea of a Creator God who fashioned human beings and an orderly universe. (1) Intelligibility First, the (Christian) founders of modern science assumed the intelligibility of nature. They believed that nature had been designed by the mind of a rational God, the same God who made the rational minds of human beings. These thinkers assumed that if they used their minds to carefully study nature, they could understand the order and design that God had placed in the world.,,, (2) The Contingency of Nature Second, early pioneers of science presupposed the contingency of nature. They believed that God had many choices about how to make an orderly world. Just as there are many ways to design a watch, there were many ways that God could have designed the universe. To discover how He did, scientists could not merely deduce the order of nature by assuming what seemed most logical to them; they couldn’t simply use reason alone to draw conclusions, as some of the Greek philosophers had done.,,, (3) The Fallibility of Human Reasoning Third, early scientists accepted a biblical understanding of the power and limits of the human mind. Even as these scientists saw human reason as the gift of a rational God, they also recognized the fallibility of humans and, therefore, the fallibility of human ideas about nature.,,, Such a nuanced view of human nature implied, on the one hand, that human beings could attain insight into the workings of the natural world, but that, on the other, they were vulnerable to self-deception, flights of fancy, and prematurely jumping to conclusions. This composite view of reason — one that affirmed both its capability and fallibility — inspired confidence that the design and order of nature could be understood if scientists carefully studied the natural world, but also engendered caution about trusting human intuition, conjectures, and hypotheses unless they were carefully tested by experiment and observation.11,,, https://evolutionnews.org/2023/01/new-book-for-kepler-science-did-not-point-to-atheism/ Stephen Meyer, (Ph.D. in the philosophy of science from the University of Cambridge)

Moreover, modern science is STILL dependent on Judeo-Christian presuppositions. As Paul Davies succinctly put it, "even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.”

Physics and the Mind of God: The Templeton Prize Address – by Paul Davies – August 1995 Excerpt: “People take it for granted that the physical world is both ordered and intelligible. The underlying order in nature-the laws of physics-are simply accepted as given, as brute facts. Nobody asks where they came from; at least they do not do so in polite company. However, even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.” https://www.firstthings.com/article/1995/08/003-physics-and-the-mind-of-god-the-templeton-prize-address-24

So thus in conclusion, ChuckyD turns out to be the one who is guilty of the very thing that he accused me of being guilty of. Namely, "historical revisionism writ large". Judeo-Christian presuppositions were, and still are, necessary for the practice of modern science. Of supplemental note, here is a list of major disciplines of science, and the Bible believing scientists who founded them,

Founders of Modern Science Who Believe in God - Tihomir Dimitrov - (pg. 235) Scientific Disciplines – Bible-believing Scientists 1. Analytical Geometry – Rene Descartes – (1596-1650) 2. Anesthesiology – James Simpson – (1811-1870) 3. Antiseptic Surgery – Joseph Lister – (1827-1912) 4. Astronautics – Hermann Oberth – (1894-1989) – Wernher Von Braun – (1912-1977) 5. Atomic Physics – Joseph J. Thomson – (1856-1940) 6. Bacteriology – Louis Pasteur – (1822-1895) 7. Biology – John Ray – (1627-1705) 8. Calculus – Isaac Newton – (1642-1727) – Gottfried Leibniz – (1646-1716) 9. Cardiology – William Harvey – (1578-1657) 10. Celestial Mechanics – Johannes Kepler – (1571-1630) 11. Chemistry – Robert Boyle – (1627-1691) 12. Comparative Anatomy – Georges Cuvier – (1769-1832) 13. Computer Science – Charles Babbage – (1791-1871) 14. Cryology – Lord Kelvin – (1824-1907) 15. Differential Geometry – Carl Friedrich Gauss – (1777-1855) 16. Dimensional Analysis – Lord Rayleigh – (1842-1919) 17. Dynamics – Isaac Newton – (1642-1727) 18. Electrodynamics – James Clerk Maxwell – (1831-1879) Andre-marie Ampere – (1775-1836) 19. Electro-magnetics – Michael Faraday – (1791-1867) 20. Electronics – John Ambrose Fleming – (1849-1945) Michael Faraday – (1791-1867) 21. Electrophysiology – John Eccles – (1903-1997) 22. Embriology – William Harvey – (1578-1657) 23. Energetics – Lord Kelvin – (1824-1907) 24. Entomology Of Living Insects – Henri Fabre – (1823-1915) 25. Experimental Physics – Galileo Galilei – (1564-1642) 26. Field Theory – Michael Faraday – (1791-1867) 27. Fluid Mechanics – George Stokes – (1819-1903) 28. Galactic Astronomy – William Herschel – (1738-1822) 29. Gas Dynamics – Robert Boyle – (1627-1691) 30. Genetics – Gregor Mendel – (1822-1884) 31. Geology – Nicolaus Steno – (1638-1686) 32. Glacial Geology – Louis Agassiz – (1807-1873) 33. Gynecology – James Simpson – (1811-1870) 34. Heliocentric Cosmology – Nicolaus Copernicus – (1473-1543) 35. Hydraulics – Leonardo Da Vinci – (1452-1519) 36. Hydrodynamics – Blaise Pascal – (1623-1662) 37. Hydrography – Matthew Maury – (1806-1873) 38. Hydrostatics – Blaise Pascal – (1623-1662) 39. Ichthyology – Louis Agassiz -(1807-1873) 40. Immunology – Louis Pasteur – (1822-1895) 41. Isotopic Chemistry – William Ramsay – (1852-1916) 42. Laser Science – Charles Townes – (1915-2015) – Arthur Schawlow – (1921-1999) 43. Mathematical Analysis – Leonhard Euler – (1707-1783) 44. Microbiology – Louis Pasteur – (1822-1895) 45. Mineralogy – Georgius Agricola – (1494-1555) 46. Model Analysis – Lord Rayleigh – (1842-1919) 47. Modern Medicine – William Harvey – (1578-1657) 48. Nanotechnology – Richard Smalley – (1943-2005) 49. Natural History – John Ray – (1627-1705) 50. Non-euclidean Geometry – Bernhard Riemann – (1826-1866) 51. Number Theory – Carl Friedrich Gauss – (1777-1855) 52. Oceanography – Matthew Maury – (1806-1873) 53. Optical Mineralogy – David Brewster – (1781-1868) 54. Optics – Johannes Kepler – (1571-1630) 55. Paleontology – John Woodward – (1665-1728) – Georges Cuvier – (1769-1832) 56. Pathology – Rudolph Virchow – (1821-1902) 57. Physical Astronomy – Johannes Kepler – (1571-1630) 58. Physical Chemistry – Mikhail Lomonosov – (1711-1765) 59. Physiology – William Harvey – (1578-1657) 60. Quantum Mechanics – Max Planck – (1858-1947) – Werner Heisenberg – (1901-1976) 61. Reversible Thermodynamics – James Joule – (1818-1889) 62. Statistical Thermodynamics – James Clerk Maxwell – (1831-1879) 63. Stratigraphy – Nicolaus Steno – (1638-1686) 64. Systematic Biology – Carolus Linnaeus – (1707-1778) 65. Taxonomy – John Ray – (1627-1705) 66. Thermodynamics – Lord Kelvin – (1824-1907) 67. Thermokinetics – Humphry Davy – (1778-1829) 68. Transplantology – Alexis Carrel – (1873-1944) – Joseph E. Murray – (1919-2012) 69. Vertebrate Paleontology – Georges Cuvier – (1769-1832) 70. Wave Mechanics – Erwin Schroedinger – (1887-1961) https://www.academia.edu/2739607/Scientific_GOD_Journal

Verse:

1 Thessalonians 5:21 but test all things. Hold fast to what is good.

bornagain77

CD at 23, You are quite mistaken. https://www.nature.com/articles/28478 relatd

Apropos PM1 @20, I learned long ago that BA77 refuses to color within the lines. His agenda is driven by two overarching beliefs intertwined with the bugbear of evolution:

[1] All of science was born out of, and is STILL dependent upon, Judeo-Christian presuppositions.... [2] Moreover, the artificial imposition of naturalism onto science by atheists, i.e. methodological naturalism, and as the OP itself gives evidence to, has led to nothing but confusion in science. (emphasis added)

The second belief is belied by the prevalence of atheism and agnosticism among first flight scientists, especially in physics and chemistry. The first belief is historical revisionism writ large. That's not to say that "Judeo-Christian" culture had no effect on the arc of science in the West (that position would be just as ridiculous), it's to say that this fashionable cliche among Christian apologists is clearly an overstatement.... chuckdarwin

PMI, the shoe is squarely on the other foot. Darwinists keep repeating the same lies over and over again, even though their claims have been experimentally refuted at every turn. That you would try to defend such anti-science shenanigans reflects very poorly on your capacity to be intellectual honest, not on me. Moreover, it is a bit rich that I would be accused of being a mindless chatbot, when Darwinists are, in fact, the ones who hold their entire sense of self is merely a neuronal illusion (Crick). And that they have no free will (Coyne). For crying out loud, that is literally the definition of a mindless chatbot :) bornagain77

PM1 at 20, Cheap shot. I've read Ba77's posts and they are highly credible. Your accusations are baseless. relatd

@15

IOW, you’re just picking and choosing references, and even appealing to Popper, when it suite your purpose, while rejecting them when they do not. Do you really think this is a valid approach?

Valid or not, it's the only approach he has. I tend to think of bornagain77 as a chatbot that just repeats the same nonsense over and over, regardless of whether it's relevant to the thread, regardless of what others say about it, regardless of all the flaws and omissions that are pointed out to him. If you assume bornagain77 is an AI, like ChatGPT or Sydney, and not an actual person, you'll find your interactions with it much less frustrating. PyrrhoManiac1

CR at 15, It has been stated that humans and apes had a common ancestor. And this assumes that a mostly ape gave birth to something more human - a primitive human. Which self-upgraded into so-called "modern humans." Please give the date (+/- 1,000 years) when this 'common ancestor' lived. relatd

Critical Rationalist, this may interest you,

"In his autobiography, Karl Popper said he had come to the conclusion that “Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research program.”8 To say that a species now living is adapted to its environment “is almost tautological,” he wrote. “Adaptation or fitness is defined by modern evolutionists as survival value, and can be measured by actual success in survival. There is hardly any possibility of testing a theory as feeble as this.” Further controversy ensued, for Popper—apparently under pressure in England—partially recanted in 1978. Later, in 1988, I had a chance to interview Popper myself, when he spent a week at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. I immediately brought up the issue of natural selection. He told me that his opinion had not changed. He also said he thought that natural selection had in fact been falsified “by Darwin’s own theory.” Distortions introduced by sexual selection sometimes meant that offspring were not better adapted than their parents, he said. When I mentioned that Darwinism had evidently benefited from the idea of Progress, widely accepted in the mid-nineteenth century but widely rejected in the late twentieth, Popper said that “I have been one of the people who have destroyed it.” He said he had “preached” along those lines in his book The Poverty of Historicisms." - Tom Bethell, Darwin’s House of Cards (2016) (pp. 14–15) Tom Bethell on Karl Popper's rejection of Darwinian Evolution as a testable scientific theory - 5:54 minute mark https://youtu.be/MLdZzf8HoUU?t=352 Laszlo Bencze: Karl Popper Never Really Retracted His Doubt Of Darwin - November 9, 2020 Most of us know that at one point Karl Popper turned his attention to evolution and made the following statement: “…Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme—a possible framework for testable scientific theories.” — Unended Quest An Intellectual Autobiography, Karl Popper, p. 168 The statement aroused so much controversy and animosity amongst his academic colleagues that he was forced to “recant” in the following statement: “I have in the past described the theory as ‘almost tautological’, and I have tried to explain how the theory of natural selection could be untestable (as a tautology) and yet of great scientific interest. My solution was that the doctrine of natural selection is a most successful metaphysical research programme. It raises detailed problems in many fields, and it tells us what we would expect of an acceptable solution of these problems. “I still believe that natural selection works in this way as a research programme. Nevertheless, I have changed my mind about the testability and the logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation. My recantation may, I hope, contribute a little to the understanding of the status of natural selection.” — Popper Selections, Karl Popper (edited by David Miller), p. 242 Note that his choice of the word “recantation” is significant. He might well have used “reevaluation” or “disavowal” or “repudiation.” I believe he chose recantation deliberately to ally himself with Galileo and to make clear that he was being persecuted by misguided and dimwitted authorities just as Galileo was. Furthermore, he writes that natural selection is “a most successful metaphysical research program.” Wait a minute. Wasn’t that what he was to apologize for? So within his recantation he is reaffirming his original point of view, the very one that got him in trouble. He goes on to say that he is glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation. Sure he is. He would much prefer to have a root canal without anesthesia than to recant a statement integral to his life’s work as philosopher. Finally, in his summary sentence he is “glad to contribute a little to the understanding of the status of natural selection.” So what did he contribute? He contributed the understanding of natural selection as a metaphysical research program. I never noticed these points until a friend pointed them out to me. Now they jump forth as obvious. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/laszlo-bencze-karl-popper-never-really-retracted-his-doubt-of-darwin/ Popper’s Shifting Appraisal of Evolutionary Theory – Mehmet Elgin and Elliott Sober – Feb 2017 Excerpt: Karl Popper argued in 1974 that evolutionary theory contains no testable laws and is therefore a metaphysical research program. Four years later, he said that he had changed his mind. Here we seek to understand Popper’s initial position and his subsequent retraction. We argue, contrary to Popper’s own assessment, that he (Popper) did not change his mind at all about the substance of his original claim. We also explore how Popper’s views have ramifications for contemporary discussion of the nature of laws and the structure of evolutionary theory. http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/full/10.1086/691119

Moreover, the primary reason no one can seem to find any rigid falsification criteria for Darwinian evolution is simply because it is not based on any known physical law nor mathematics.

The Evolution of Ernst: Interview with Ernst Mayr – 2004 (page 2 of 14) Excerpt: biology (Darwinian Evolution) differs from the physical sciences in that in the physical sciences, all theories, I don’t know exceptions so I think it’s probably a safe statement, all theories are based somehow or other on natural laws. In biology, as several other people have shown, and I totally agree with them, there are no natural laws in biology corresponding to the natural laws of the physical sciences. ,,, And so that’s what I do in this book. I show that the theoretical basis, you might call it, or I prefer to call it the philosophy of biology, has a totally different basis than the theories of physics. - per Scientific American What Scientific Idea Is Ready For Retirement? Evolution is True – Roger Highfield – January 2014 Excerpt: If evolutionary biologists are really Seekers of the Truth, they need to focus more on finding the mathematical regularities of biology, following in the giant footsteps of Sewall Wright, JBS Haldane, Ronald Fisher and so on. ,,, Whatever the case, those universal truths—’laws’—that physicists and chemists all rely upon appear relatively absent from biology. Little seems to have changed from a decade ago when the late and great John Maynard Smith wrote a chapter on evolutionary game theory for a book on the most powerful equations of science: his contribution did not include a single equation. http://www.edge.org/response-detail/25468 “It is our contention that if ‘random’ is given a serious and crucial interpretation from a probabilistic point of view, the randomness postulate is highly implausible and that an adequate scientific theory of evolution must await the discovery and elucidation of new natural laws—physical, physico-chemical, and biological.” Murray Eden, “Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory,” Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution, editors Paul S. Moorhead and Martin M. Kaplan, June 1967, p. 109. https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~christos/evol/compevol_files/Wistar-Eden-1.pdf Top Ten Questions and Objections to ‘Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics’ – Robert J. Marks II – June 12, 2017 Excerpt: “There exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. Hard sciences are built on foundations of mathematics or definitive simulations. Examples include electromagnetics, Newtonian mechanics, geophysics, relativity, thermodynamics, quantum mechanics, optics, and many areas in biology. Those hoping to establish Darwinian evolution as a hard science with a model have either failed or inadvertently cheated. These models contain guidance mechanisms to land the airplane squarely on the target runway despite stochastic wind gusts. Not only can the guiding assistance be specifically identified in each proposed evolution model, its contribution to the success can be measured, in bits, as active information.,,,”,,, “there exists no model successfully describing undirected Darwinian evolution. According to our current understanding, there never will be.,,,” https://evolutionnews.org/2017/06/top-ten-questions-and-objections-to-introduction-to-evolutionary-informatics/ Robert Jackson Marks II is an American electrical engineer. His contributions include the Zhao-Atlas-Marks (ZAM) time-frequency distribution in the field of signal processing,[1] the Cheung–Marks theorem[2] in Shannon sampling theory and the Papoulis-Marks-Cheung (PMC) approach in multidimensional sampling.[3] He was instrumental in the defining of the field of computational intelligence and co-edited the first book using computational intelligence in the title.[4][5] – per wikipedia

bornagain77

Whatever Seversky. All of science was born out of, and is STILL dependent upon, Judeo-Christian presuppositions. (See Stephen Meyer, "Return of the God Hypothesis") Moreover, the artificial imposition of naturalism onto science by atheists, i.e. methodological naturalism, and as the OP itself gives evidence to, has led to nothing but confusion in science. For example,

Basically, because of reductive materialism (and/or methodological naturalism), the atheistic materialist (who believes Darwinian evolution to be true) is forced to claim that he is merely a ‘neuronal illusion’ (Coyne, Dennett, etc..), who has the illusion of free will (Harris, Coyne), who has unreliable, (i.e. illusory), beliefs about reality (Plantinga), who has illusory perceptions of reality (Hoffman), who, since he has no real time empirical evidence substantiating his grandiose claims, must make up illusory “just so stories” with the illusory, and impotent, ‘designer substitute’ of natural selection (Behe, Gould, Sternberg), so as to ‘explain away’ the appearance (i.e. the illusion) of design (Crick, Dawkins), and who also must make up illusory meanings and purposes for his life since the hopelessness of the nihilism inherent in his atheistic worldview is simply too much for him to bear (Weikart), and who must also hold morality to be subjective and illusory since he has rejected God (Craig, Kreeft). Who, since beauty cannot be grounded within his materialistic worldview, must also hold beauty itself to be illusory (Darwin). Bottom line, nothing is truly real in the atheist’s worldview, least of all, beauty, morality, meaning and purposes for life.,,, April 18, 2021 - Defense of each claim https://uncommondescent.com/philosophy/philosopher-mary-midgeley-1919-2018-on-scientism/#comment-728595

Thus, although the Darwinian Atheist and/or Methodological Naturalist may firmly, and falsely, believe that he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for naturalistic explanations over and above God as a viable explanation), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists themselves are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to. It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science, indeed more antagonistic to reality itself, than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.

2 Corinthians 10:5 Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ;

bornagain77

Seversky at 14, You worship men. You worship scientists. Your worldview is only inward looking. Your choice. "We don’t know but turning to Bronze Age myths about a Chosen People looks like grasping at straws." Your worldview, and that is the correct term, hangs not on every word that comes from the mouth of God but every word that comes from the mouths of scientists and certain other self-chosen people. What you are involved in is a cult called Humans Worshiping Humans. Let's look at the facts: 1) Humans are fallible. 2) The Soviet Union established the Workers' Paradise where the official State religion was atheism. It didn't work out. You may think that Christians, for example, are uninterested in science, don't study it or don't understand it. That religious belief impedes 'understanding' certain scientific things. That is false. The Catholic Church has a Pontifical Academy of Sciences. It was instrumental in spreading legitimate scientific information, and setting up universities. https://www.amazon.com/Catholic-Church-Built-Western-Civilization/dp/1596983280 You should look into this. Life is short. You've been warned that there will be consequences after. relatd

BA77:

And as Dr. Hunter further noted, Darwin’s ‘theory’ is unfalsifiable in that it is, apparently, able to explain completely contradictory results with equal ease via ‘ad hoc modifications’.

This confuses not yet being falsified with being unfalsifiable. For example, adding horizontal gene transfer didn't falsify Neo-dawinism because it still reflects variations being genuinely created over time via a process of variation and selection. Which fits our theories of how knowledge is created in general. In the case of evolution, variation occurs via mutations, horizontal gene transfer, etc. Criticism takes the form of natural selection. Knowledge is information that plays a causal role in being retained when embedded in a storage medium.

The physics community had been aware of the shortcomings of Newtonian mechanics for some time and a number of physicists had been working towards a replacement. Einstein happened to get there first.

Either General relativity, quantum mechanics or both are incomplete because we lack a working theory of quantum gravity. So, I fail to see your point.

Moreover, besides Kuhn, some statements from [Popper] and Lakatos are even more ‘problematic’ for Darwinism.

Wow. I mean, you really ought to research before posting. This has been addressed several times. What gives? You seem to have selective amnesia or this is just outright disingenuous. https://ncse.ngo/what-did-karl-popper-really-say-about-evolution

The fact that the theory of natural selection is difficult to test has led some people, anti-Darwinists and even some great Darwinists, to claim that it is a tautology. . . . I mention this problem because I too belong among the culprits. Influenced by what these authorities say, I have in the past described the theory as "almost tautological," and I have tried to explain how the theory of natural selection could be untestable (as is a tautology) and yet of great scientific interest. My solution was that the doctrine of natural selection is a most successful metaphysical research programme. . . . [Popper, 1978, p. 344] I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation. . . . [p. 345] The theory of natural selection may be so formulated that it is far from tautological. In this case it is not only testable, but it turns out to be not strictly universally true. There seem to be exceptions, as with so many biological theories; and considering the random character of the variations on which natural selection operates, the occurrence of exceptions is not surprising. [p. 346]

I blush when I have to make this confession; for when I was younger, I used to say very contemptuous things about evolutionary philosophies. When twenty-two years ago Canon Charles E. Raven, in his Science, Religion, and the Future, described the Darwinian controversy as "a storm in a Victorian teacup," I agreed, but criticized him for paying too much attention "to the vapors still emerging from the cup," by which I meant the hot air of the evolutionary philosophies (especially those which told us that there were inexorable laws of evolution). But now I have to confess that this cup of tea has become, after all, my cup of tea; and with it I have to eat humble pie. [Popper, 1972, p. 241]

What does Popper mean by "my cup of tea"? See above. Popper proposed that knowledge is objective in that it is independent of a knowing subject. Knowledge grows via conjecture and criticism.

What Darwin showed us was that the mechanism of natural selection can, in principle, simulate the actions of the Creator and His purpose and design, and that it can also simulate rational human action directed towards a purpose or aim. [Popper, 1972, p. 267; see also Popper, 1978, pp. 342-343]

IOW, you're just picking and choosing references, and even appealing to Popper, when it suite your purpose, while rejecting them when they do not. Do you really think this is a valid approach? critical rationalist

Bornagain77/2

Given that you are Darwinist who is constantly making lame excuses for why your theory is contradicted by empirical evidence time and time again, I can see why you would think that is the way science is suppose to work. But the answer to your question is “No, that is not how science, especially physics, is ‘suppose to work.”

Yes, it is. If new data is uncovered then you try to adjust your theory to accommodate it. If you can't do that then you start looking for a better theory.

For prime example, Newton’s theory, (which is based on 3-Dimensional Euclidean geometry), was not simply ‘revised’ because of anomalous observational evidence, (particularly Mercury’s anomalous orbit). Instead Newton’s theory was completely replaced by Einstein’s theory of General relativity, which is based on a completely different mathematical framework.

The physics community had been aware of the shortcomings of Newtonian mechanics for some time and a number of physicists had been working towards a replacement. Einstein happened to get there first. Scientific theories are not dogma or gospel. They are better than their predecessors and, when their weaknesses become apparent, they point towards their successors. This is unlike theology. When are we going to see good old Abrahamic theology replaced with a relativistic theology or even a quantum theology? Although it wouldn't surprise me if there is a quantum theology lurking around here somewhere.

One ‘timeless eternity’ is found for a hypothetical observer who is going the speed of light, and another ‘timeless eternity’ is found for a hypothetical observer falling to the event horizon of a black hole.

So is the soul just a photon zooming around out there and is heaven sitting on the event horizon of a supermassive black hole somewhere?

Please note Seversky, they are not saying the standard model of cosmology needs to be tweaked, and/or simply ‘revised’ as you are suggesting, but they are instead saying it needs to be ‘discarded’.

Yup, that's what happens to theories that are past their sell-by date.

… And the Copernican Principle, and/or the Principle of Mediocrity, has been one of the main, supposedly scientific, arguments used by atheists to argue that man is insignificant in the grand scheme of things,

That depends on how you measure significance. Maybe we are in some way or maybe we're going to go the way of the dinosaurs. We don't know but turning to Bronze Age myths about a Chosen People looks like grasping at straws. Seversky

CD at 7, Allow me to replace a few words for you. "But then, no self-respecting Darwinist would miss an opportunity, no matter how inapt, to trash ID." ___________________________________________________________________ "As I’ve said before, Newtonian physics put us on the moon." No. Wernher von Braun and other German rocket specialists got us to the Moon. relatd

Ba77, The following shows an incredible lack of logic: "While the same laws of physics may apply in every corner of the universe, the universe itself it is not the same everywhere." It would be more accurate to state that matter distribution in the Universe is not uniform. relatd

Chuckdarwin/3

Of course, that is the way science proceeds. Seems like the only people “pounding lecterns” are IDers……

They're pounding pulpits. They're just trying to pretend they're lecterns. Seversky

ChuckyD, Your comments are, as usual, nonsensical. I stand by my comment.,,,, "to point out the obvious, the only reason that Newton’s theory is still used today is because it is, compared to General Relativity, much easier to calculate with. No one, (save for a very few people at the extremes), considers Newton’s theory to be a true and valid description of Gravity." Moreover, besides Kuhn, some statements from Papper and Lakatos are even more 'problematic' for Darwinism.

Dubitable Darwin? Why Some Smart, Nonreligious People Doubt the Theory of Evolution By John Horgan on July 6, 2010 Excerpt: Early in his career, the philosopher Karl Popper ,, called evolution via natural selection “almost a tautology” and “not a testable scientific theory but a metaphysical research program.” Attacked for these criticisms, Popper took them back (in approx 1978). But when I interviewed him in 1992, he blurted out that he still found Darwin’s theory dissatisfying. “One ought to look for alternatives!” Popper exclaimed, banging his kitchen table. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/dubitable-darwin-why-some-smart-nonreligious-people-doubt-the-theory-of-evolution/

Tom Bethell also interviewed Karl Popper after the Darwinian backlash and Popper again reiterated his claim that Darwinism was not a testable, i.e. falsifiable, scientific theory.

Tom Bethell on Karl Popper’s rejection of Darwinian Evolution as a testable scientific theory – video – 5:54 minute mark https://youtu.be/MLdZzf8HoUU?t=352

And Imre Lakatos stated that “nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin can be described as scientific”

Imre Lakatos – Pseudoscience – Darwin’s Theory According to the demarcation criterion of pseudoscience originally proposed by Lakatos, a theory is pseudoscientific if it fails to make any novel predictions of previously unknown phenomena, in contrast with scientific theories, which predict novel fact(s).[21] Progressive scientific theories are those which have their novel facts confirmed and degenerate scientific theories are those whose predictions of novel facts are refuted. As he put it: “A given fact is explained scientifically only if a new fact is predicted with it….The idea of growth and the concept of empirical character are soldered into one.” See pages 34–5 of The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes, 1978. Lakatos’s own key examples of pseudoscience were Ptolemaic astronomy, Immanuel Velikovsky’s planetary cosmogony, Freudian psychoanalysis, 20th century Soviet Marxism,[22] Lysenko’s biology, Niels Bohr’s Quantum Mechanics post-1924, astrology, psychiatry, sociology, neoclassical economics, and Darwin’s theory. Darwin’s theory In his 1973 LSE Scientific Method Lecture 1[23] he also claimed that “nobody to date has yet found a demarcation criterion according to which Darwin can be described as scientific”. Almost 20 years after Lakatos’s 1973 challenge to the scientificity of Darwin, in her 1991 The Ant and the Peacock, LSE lecturer and ex-colleague of Lakatos, Helena Cronin, attempted to establish that Darwinian theory was empirically scientific in respect of at least being supported by evidence of likeness in the diversity of life forms in the world, explained by descent with modification. She wrote that “our usual idea of corroboration as requiring the successful prediction of novel facts…Darwinian theory was not strong on temporally novel predictions..” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imre_Lakatos#Pseudoscience

Perhaps you can help ChuckyD and lay out a clear criteria by which Darwinian evolution can be, potentially, experimentally falsified and therefore for it to be considered scientific?

Darwinism vs. Falsification - list of falsifications (that Darwinists simply refuse to accept as falsifications) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1I6fT6ATY700Bsx2-JSFqL6l-rzXpMcZcZKZfYRS45h4/edit

bornagain77

For what it's worth, I don't think that Kuhn's sociology of science could be applied to the social sciences at all -- or only with immense care and lots of qualifications. The main reason, I think, is that the social sciences usually don't have a single dominant paradigm at any given time. I can't think of any in sociology at all; instead there are many competing approaches to the study of social phenomena. Likewise with anthropology. For that matter, I don't think even psychology had a dominant paradigm -- at least not in a universal sense. Behaviorism was the dominant paradigm in the United States for most of the middle of the 20th century (1920s-1960s), but outside of the US, there were very different approaches, such as the Gestalt psychology movement in Germany (1900s-1930s). (Arguably the "cognitive revolution" of the 1960s was much influenced by the Gestalt psychologists, many of whom emigrated to the US in the 1930s.) Without a single dominant paradigm, there can't be a paradigm shift. So I'm doubtful that Kuhn's approach can be applied to the social sciences. PyrrhoManiac1

EDTA/6 You raise a good point. Kuhn substantially revised the book in 1970 to include some social science research, in particular the work of Swiss child psychologist and epistemologist, Jean Piaget, but in general, decried the adoption of his theory in the social sciences where it was subsequently completely misused. You even heard it in "corporate-speak" MBA curricula for a while..... chuckdarwin

BA77 AS PM1 states:

The upshot, as is well-known by now, is that classical mechanics yields reliable predictions as long as objects are not too heavy or moving too fast. (Likewise, quantum mechanics shows that classical mechanics breaks down when things are too small.)

Thus, the obvious 10 plus or minus percent (and it's probably closer to 1 or 2%). Perhaps you should chose your words more precisely and not "completely" erase the chalk board. Moreover, "Darwinian evolution" is not the subject of my comment. Whether biology is ready for a paradigm shift is a different topic. But then, no self-respecting IDer would miss an opportunity, no matter how inapt, to trash Darwin. I first read Kuhn for my freshman physics class over 50 years ago. My copy is literally held together with a rubber band (old paradigm). I don't need a biographical summary. Kuhn also concluded that there are no scientifically more "true" or less "true" models, simply models that work better (internal validity), are more robust (external validity) and take up less space (parsimoniousness). This dovetails nicely with Sean Carroll's observation that what scientists do is build workable models with the least number of moving parts. That was the gist of his debate position--reminiscent of LaPlace--in his debate with William Lane Craig. You know, the one where you claim Carroll cheated.... To reiterate, classical physics works 90+ percent of the time--there's no dispute about that. As I've said before, Newtonian physics put us on the moon. So, I would leave it on the chalk board..... chuckdarwin

Today there are so many new problems that have affected the nature of scientific "progress", that it doesn't seem that Kuhn's process is in play any longer. (See here for just a starter list of what those problems are: https://cogitantamerican.wordpress.com/2017/01/15/why-science-is-broken-highlights/). Furthermore, his outlook was based on pre-1960s science, and largely based on paradigms and their shifts in physics/chemistry/astronomy, where the evidence was far more visible, repeatable, etc., than it is in "sciences" like sociology and psychology today, which have their repeatability crises to deal with. EDTA

ChuckyD, to point out the obvious, the only reason that Newton's theory is still used today is because it is, compared to General Relativity, much easier to calculate with. No one considers, (save for a very few people at the extremes), considers Newton's theory to be a true and valid description of Gravity. Of further note to Thomas Kuhn, perhaps you ChuckyD, a Darwinist, should take your own advice and 'take a gander' at Kuhn? Thomas Kuhn, who introduced the term ‘paradigm shift, noted that when faced with an anomaly, a theory’s defenders “will devise numerous articulations and ad hoc modifications of their theory in order to eliminate any apparent conflict.”

Thomas Kuhn Excerpt: Thomas Samuel Kuhn (/ku?n/; July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American physicist, historian and philosopher of science whose controversial 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was influential in both academic and popular circles, introducing the term paradigm shift, which has since become an English-language idiom.,,, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn Inquiry-Based Science Education — on Everything but Evolution – Sarah Chaffee – January 22, 2016 Excerpt: As Thomas Kuhn wrote in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, when faced with an anomaly, a theory’s defenders “will devise numerous articulations and ad hoc modifications of their theory in order to eliminate any apparent conflict.” http://www.evolutionnews.org/2016/01/inquiry-based_s102534.html

And in regards to a theory making predictions that are shown to be false and then making up numerous ad hoc modifications to try to cover up those falsified predictions, then, by that standard set out by Kuhn, Darwinian evolution more than qualifies as a pseudoscience rather than as a real and testable science. Here is a site, that was put together by Dr. Cornelius Hunter, that goes over many of the failed predictions of Darwinian evolution.

Darwin’s (Failed) Predictions – Cornelius Hunter https://sites.google.com/site/darwinspredictions/

As Dr. Hunter states in the following article,,, “With each new absurdity another new complicated just-so story is woven into evolutionary theory. As Lakatos explained, some theories simply are not falsifiable. But as a result they sacrifice realism and parsimony.”

Here’s That Algae Study That Decouples Phylogeny and Competition – June 17, 2014 Excerpt: “With each new absurdity another new complicated just-so story is woven into evolutionary theory. As Lakatos explained, some theories simply are not falsifiable. But as a result they sacrifice realism and parsimony.” – Cornelius Hunter http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2014/06/heres-that-algae-study-that-decouples.html

And as Dr. Hunter further noted, Darwin’s ‘theory’ is unfalsifiable in that it is, apparently, able to explain completely contradictory results with equal ease via 'ad hoc modifications'.

“Being an evolutionist means there is no bad news. If new species appear abruptly in the fossil record, that just means evolution operates in spurts. If species then persist for eons with little modification, that just means evolution takes long breaks. If clever mechanisms are discovered in biology, that just means evolution is smarter than we imagined. If strikingly similar designs are found in distant species, that just means evolution repeats itself. If significant differences are found in allied species, that just means evolution sometimes introduces new designs rapidly. If no likely mechanism can be found for the large-scale change evolution requires, that just means evolution is mysterious. If adaptation responds to environmental signals, that just means evolution has more foresight than was thought. If major predictions of evolution are found to be false, that just means evolution is more complex than we thought.” ~ Cornelius Hunter – Arsenic-Based Biochemistry: Turning Poison Into Wine – December 2, 2010 http://darwins-god.blogspot.com/2010/12/arsenic-based-biochemistry-turning.html

In short, Darwinian evolution is an unfalsifiable pseudoscience, not a hard and testable science. So again ChuckyD, you would do well to take your own advice and 'take a gander' at Kuhn

1 Thessalonians 5:21 but test all things. Hold fast to what is good.

bornagain77

@3

You need to take a gander at Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. General Relativity did not “completely replace” Newtonian (classical) physics. For 90+ percent of real-world problems, classical physics still works just fine………

That's true, up to a point. But recall that Kuhn emphasized that theories are incommensurable: a predecessor theory (e.g. Newtonian mechanics) and a successor theory (e.g. general relativity) will have different conceptual frameworks and thus different entailments, including how to operationalize a measurement. This does not mean, interestingly enough, that the theories cannot be compared. To do so, what needed to happen was the construction within the framework of general relativity of an explanation of why classical mechanics generated reliable predictions, to the extent that it did. The upshot, as is well-known by now, is that classical mechanics yields reliable predictions as long as objects are not too heavy or moving too fast. (Likewise, quantum mechanics shows that classical mechanics breaks down when things are too small.) PyrrhoManiac1

Seversky/1 Of course, that is the way science proceeds. Seems like the only people "pounding lecterns" are IDers...... BTW, BA77:

For prime example, Newton’s theory, (which is based on 3-Dimensional Euclidean geometry), was not simply ‘revised’ because of anomalous observational evidence, (particularly Mercury’s anomalous orbit). Instead Newton’s theory was completely replaced by Einstein’s theory of General relativity, which is based on a completely different mathematical framework. A higher dimensional non-euclidean geometry, i.e. it is based on 4-dimensional space time.

You need to take a gander at Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. General Relativity did not "completely replace" Newtonian (classical) physics. For 90+ percent of real-world problems, classical physics still works just fine......... chuckdarwin

Sev: "They didn’t see it as a threat to some existing dogma, just novel data that will require revision of existing models. That’s the way science is supposed to work, isn’t it?" Given that you are Darwinist who is constantly making lame excuses for why your theory is contradicted by empirical evidence time and time again, I can see why you would think that is the way science is suppose to work. But the answer to your question is "No, that is not how science, especially physics, is 'suppose to work." For prime example, Newton's theory, (which is based on 3-Dimensional Euclidean geometry), was not simply 'revised' because of anomalous observational evidence, (particularly Mercury's anomalous orbit). Instead Newton's theory was completely replaced by Einstein's theory of General relativity, which is based on a completely different mathematical framework. A higher dimensional non-euclidean geometry, i.e. it is based on 4-dimensional space time. In fact, both special relativity and general relativity are based on higher dimensional, non-euclidean, geometry,

Spacetime Excerpt: In 1908, Hermann Minkowski—once one of the math professors of a young Einstein in Zurich—presented a geometric interpretation of special relativity that fused time and the three spatial dimensions of space into a single four-dimensional continuum now known as Minkowski space. A key feature of this interpretation is the definition of a spacetime interval that combines distance and time. Although measurements of distance and time between events differ for measurements made in different reference frames, the spacetime interval is independent of the inertial frame of reference in which they are recorded. Minkowski’s geometric interpretation of relativity was to prove vital to Einstein’s development of his 1915 general theory of relativity, wherein he showed that spacetime becomes curved in the presence of mass or energy.,,, Einstein, for his part, was initially dismissive of Minkowski’s geometric interpretation of special relativity, regarding it as überflüssige Gelehrsamkeit (superfluous learnedness). However, in order to complete his search for general relativity that started in 1907, the geometric interpretation of relativity proved to be vital, and in 1916, Einstein fully acknowledged his indebtedness to Minkowski, whose interpretation greatly facilitated the transition to general relativity.[10]:151–152 Since there are other types of spacetime, such as the curved spacetime of general relativity, the spacetime of special relativity is today known as Minkowski spacetime. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spacetime

In fact, these four dimensional spacetimes of Special relativity, and of General relativity, which replaced Newton's theory, are comforting to overall Christian concerns in that they reveal two very different higher dimensional ‘timeless eternities’ to us. One 'timeless eternity’ is found for a hypothetical observer who is going the speed of light, and another ‘timeless eternity’ is found for a hypothetical observer falling to the event horizon of a black hole. https://uncommondescent.com/cosmology/from-iai-news-how-infinity-threatens-cosmology/#comment-765987 Further notes that are extremely comforting to overall Christian presuppositions:

That what we now know to be physically true from special relativity, (namely that it outlines a ‘timeless’, i.e. eternal, ‘dimension of light’ that exists above this temporal dimension), would fit hand and glove with the personal testimonies of people who have had a deep heavenly NDEs is, needless to say, powerful evidence that their testimonies are, in fact, true, and that they are accurately describing the physical ‘reality’ of a higher heavenly dimension, that they experienced first hand, that really does physically exist above this temporal dimension. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/at-mind-matters-news-are-extra-dimensions-of-the-universe-real-or-imaginary/#comment-772620

Seversky, as to this quote from the OP.

“These objects are way more massive than anyone expected,”

That quote is very similar to this quote from another article that News recently featured on UD.

Our model of the universe has been falsified The cosmological standard model is wrong - 14 Feb. 2023 Excerpt: Massive galaxies have been observed fully formed merely a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, a lot earlier than previously thought possible [9]. The data thus robustly falsify the cosmological principle. While the same laws of physics may apply in every corner of the universe, the universe itself it is not the same everywhere. https://iai.tv/articles/our-model-of-the-universe-has-been-falsified-auid-2393?_auid=2020

Here are a few more juicy quotes from that article that News recently featured here own UD,

“In fact, the observations tell us that the Universe is structured on every scale, amounting to a falsification of the standard model of cosmology with extreme (more than 5 sigma) statistical confidence. A serious physicist would never again touch a theory that has been ruled out at such a significance level.,,, (Concluding sentence),, Thus, rather than discarding the standard cosmological model, our scientific establishment is digging itself ever deeper into the speculative fantasy realm, losing sight of and also grasp of reality in what appears to be a maelstrom of insanity.

Please note Seversky, they are not saying the standard model of cosmology needs to be tweaked, and/or simply 'revised' as you are suggesting, but they are instead saying it needs to be 'discarded'. And Seversky, as I pointed out to you when this article first came out, one of the key false assumptions in the standard model of cosmology is the “cosmological principle”,,, which derives from the Copernican Principle.,,, And the Copernican Principle, and/or the Principle of Mediocrity, has been one of the main, supposedly scientific, arguments used by atheists to argue that man is insignificant in the grand scheme of things, https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/has-our-model-of-the-universe-been-falsified/#comment-775962 In short, it is the false assumption of the cosmological principle, i.e. the assumption that there is nothing really special about the earth and solar system, which is one of the primary assumptions that is being brought into question, even falsified, by these recent findings that challenge the validity of the standard model of cosmology. And just to remind you Seversky, the Bible holds the earth and humanity to be ‘special’ in the grand scheme of things. Not to be insignificant and worthless as your atheistic worldview holds.

Isaiah 45:18-19 For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens, who is God, who formed the earth and made it, who established it, who did not create it in vain, who formed it to be inhabited: “I am the Lord, and there is no other. I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth; I did not say to the seed of Jacob, ‘seek me in vain’; I, the Lord speak righteousness, I declare things that are right.”

Further notes:

So thus in conclusion, at post 2 Seversky asked, “What does the Bible tell us about the Universe’s “clumpiness”?” But as I pointed out to him in post 3, (and as the article in the OP alluded to), it is the false assumption of the cosmological principle (and/or the Copernican principle), i.e. the assumption that there is nothing really special about the earth, solar system and humanity, that is wrecking havoc with the standard model of cosmology. Yet the Bible holds the earth and humanity to be ‘special’ in the grand scheme of things. Not to be insignificant and worthless as Seversky’s atheistic worldview holds. In short, it is Seversky’s atheistic worldview, not the Bible, that is in contradiction with the scientific evidence that we now have in hand. https://uncommondescent.com/intelligent-design/has-our-model-of-the-universe-been-falsified/#comment-775991

bornagain77

My impression was that the astronomers were real excited about this discovery. They didn't see it as a threat to some existing dogma, just novel data that will require revision of existing models. That's the way science is supposed to work, isn't it? Seversky