No, this time failure to believe Darwinian fairy tales isn’t the claimed cause of decline.

_{Denyse O'Leary

July 24, 2014

Intelligent Design, News, Philosophy, Science}

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The problem is in thinking that science is “the basis for knowledge.” It isn’t. It never has been. It never can be.

Calvin Beisner

That is because science—in terms of scientific method, testing hypotheses by real-world observation—cannot justify any truth judgments based solely on empirical observation.

Empirical observation alone doesn’t tell us how to sort the many different stimuli our senses receive at any given moment. It doesn’t tell me why I should collect the stimuli of patterns of light and darkness on my computer screen and identify them as coherent, meaningful text and pictures while ignoring the stimuli of sound (our air conditioning system and my keystrokes and the vibration of my cell phone and kids shouting in the community pool across the street) touch (the coolness and hardness of the floor under my feet, the texture of my cotton shirt), smell (the soap residue on my just-washed hands), taste (the lingering flavor of my raisin bran with the more recent flavor of my green tea), and sight (the dark corners of my desk, the brightness of my windows, the many colors of the books on my bookcases, and the cloudy sky and green trees out my window) all into one thing and call it a schmooglewop. More.

Readers will doubtless differ on the specifics of the religious approach offered, but Beisner is surely right in saying that philosophical presuppositions must underlie the way we interpret evidence.

Though most modern scientists are empiricists, they are unaware that empiricism—real, consistent empiricism—leads directly not to skepticism, which is a good thing (1 Thessalonians 5:21, “Test all things, hold fast what is good.”) but to irrationalism, which, frankly, is what is taking over the world of science, particularly with the rise of post-normal, highly politicized science, as I argued in “Wanted for Premeditated Murder: How Post-Normal Science Stabbed Real Science in the Back on the Way to the Illusion of Scientific Consensus on Global Warming.”

So I recommend to my scientist friends concerned about the disintegration of science as a trustworthy pursuit that they visit the roots of science by studying epistemology itself.

See also: Senior scientist on the real threat to the scientific method

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Comments

Moreover, as if all that was not bad enough for the atheists, even 'scientific' atheists themselves cannot rid themselves of 'design thinking':
Design Thinking Is Hardwired in the Human Brain. How Come? - October 17, 2012 Excerpt: "Even Professional Scientists Are Compelled to See Purpose in Nature, Psychologists Find." The article describes a test by Boston University's psychology department, in which researchers found that "despite years of scientific training, even professional chemists, geologists, and physicists from major universities such as Harvard, MIT, and Yale cannot escape a deep-seated belief that natural phenomena exist for a purpose" ,,, Most interesting, though, are the questions begged by this research. One is whether it is even possible to purge teleology from explanation. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2012/10/design_thinking065381.html Scientists discover that atheists might not exist, and that’s not a joke By Nury Vittachi | July 6th 2014 Excerpt: “atheism is psychologically impossible because of the way humans think,” says Graham Lawton, an avowed atheist himself, writing in the New Scientist. “They point to studies showing, for example, that even people who claim to be committed atheists tacitly hold religious beliefs, such as the existence of an immortal soul.” http://www.science20.com/writer_on_the_edge/blog/scientists_discover_that_atheists_might_not_exist_and_thats_not_a_joke-139982 Children are born believers in God, academic claims - Telegraph - November 2008 Excerpt: "The preponderance of scientific evidence for the past 10 years or so has shown that a lot more seems to be built into the natural development of children's minds than we once thought, including a predisposition to see the natural world as designed and purposeful and that some kind of intelligent being is behind that purpose," http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/religion/3512686/Children-are-born-believers-in-God-academic-claims.html
Verse and Music:
Psalm 145:3 Great is the LORD and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom. Write Your Story - Francesca Battistelli https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecV1NHmELuA
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Christianity continues to provide a nurturing environment for science and for education in general:
Bruce Charlton's Miscellany - October 2011 Excerpt: I had discovered that over the same period of the twentieth century that the US had risen to scientific eminence it had undergone a significant Christian revival. ,,,The point I put to (Richard) Dawkins was that the USA was simultaneously by-far the most dominant scientific nation in the world (I knew this from various scientometic studies I was doing at the time) and by-far the most religious (Christian) nation in the world. How, I asked, could this be - if Christianity was culturally inimical to science? http://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2011/10/meeting-richard-dawkins-and-his-wife.html
As to the epistemological failure inherent in Naturalism, besides the reference to Plantinga's work which I've already cited in the previous post, even atheists themselves admit that Naturalism cannot provide a foundation for reliable cognition. The following interview is sadly comical as a evolutionary psychologist realizes that neo-Darwinism can offer no guarantee that our faculties of reasoning will correspond to the truth, not even for the truth that he is purporting to give in the interview, (which begs the question of how was he able to come to that particular truthful realization, in the first place, if neo-Darwinian evolution were actually true?);
Evolutionary guru: Don't believe everything you think - October 2011 Interviewer: You could be deceiving yourself about that.(?) Evolutionary Psychologist: Absolutely. http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128335.300-evolutionary-guru-dont-believe-everything-you-think.html
Even leading 'new atheist' Richard Dawkins agrees:
Why No One (Can) Believe Atheism/Naturalism to be True - video Excerpt: "Since we are creatures of natural selection, we cannot totally trust our senses. Evolution only passes on traits that help a species survive, and not concerned with preserving traits that tell a species what is actually true about life." Richard Dawkins - quoted from "The God Delusion" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4QFsKevTXs
Atheist Steve Pinker also agrees:
Scientific Peer Review is in Trouble: From Medical Science to Darwinism - Mike Keas - October 10, 2012 Excerpt: Or, if your short on time and patience to grasp Plantinga's nuanced argument, see if you can digest this thought from evolutionary cognitive psychologist Steve Pinker, who baldly states: "Our brains are shaped for fitness, not for truth; sometimes the truth is adaptive, sometimes it is not." Steven Pinker, evolutionary cognitive psychologist, How the Mind Works (W.W. Norton, 1997), p. 305. http://blogs.christianpost.com/science-and-faith/scientific-peer-review-is-in-trouble-from-medical-science-to-darwinism-12421/
And Thomas Nagel, an atheist who is certainly more than qualified to comment on the matter, also agrees that Naturalism undermines the reliability of our cognitive abilities:
"The failure of evolutionary naturalism to provide a form of transcendent self-understanding that does not undermine our confidence in our natural faculties should not lead us to abandon the search for transcendent self-understanding. There is no reason to allow our confidence in the objective truth of our moral beliefs, or for that matter our confidence in the objective truth of our mathematical or scientific reasoning, to depend on whether this is consistent with the assumption that those capacities are the product of natural selection. Given how speculative evolutionary explanations of human mental faculties are, they seem too weak a ground for putting into question the most basic forms of thought. Our confidence in the truth of propositions that seem evident on reflection should not be shaken so easily (and, I would add, cannot be shaken on these sorts of grounds without a kind of false consciousness)." ~ Thomas Nagel (atheist), Mind and Cosmos (2012) Oxford University Press
Moreover, when Naturalism is pushed to the extreme of trying to explain the origin of the universe, or to trying to explain the moment by moment quantum actions of the universe, the epistemological failure inherent in naturalism becomes far worse. For instance, given the fact that no one can actually scientifically prove that history actually exists, there is no way for you to prove that you are not in fact a Boltzmann Brain that just popped into existence with merely the illusion that you have a reliable history:
"For instance, we find multiverse cosmologists debating the “Boltzmann Brain” problem: In the most “reasonable” models for a multiverse, it is immeasurably more likely that our consciousness is associated with a brain that has spontaneously fluctuated into existence in the quantum vacuum than it is that we have parents and exist in an orderly universe with a 13.7 billion-year history. This is absurd. The multiverse hypothesis is therefore falsified because it renders false what we know to be true about ourselves. Clearly, embracing the multiverse idea entails a nihilistic irrationality that destroys the very possibility of science." Bruce Gordon
As well, given Naturalism, there is no way for you to prove that there are not an infinite number of you in an infinite number of parallel universes who are mass murderers:
10 Mind-Bending Implications of the Many Worlds Theory Excerpt: the implications threaten to become overwhelming; for there are billions of versions of you—all of which are undeniably you—but many of which are very, very different from the “you” of this world-line. The differences between those versions are as staggering and vast as your imagination, and the reality of their existence forces us to examine human nature a bit differently. Of course, you would never kill anybody (we hope), but have you ever thought about it? There is a world-line where you did. In fact, there’s a world-line where you’re the worst mass murderer ever. Conversely, there’s another where your tireless efforts and dedication to the cause brought about world peace. http://listverse.com/2013/02/22/10-mind-bending-implications-of-the-many-worlds-theory/
And yes, this cockamamie nonsense, from Naturalism, of a infinite number of each of us, is an epistemologically self defeating proposition for science:
WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT? Infinity – Max Tegmark Excerpt: Physics is all about predicting the future from the past, but inflation seems to sabotage this: when we try to predict the probability that something particular will happen, inflation always gives the same useless answer: infinity divided by infinity. The problem is that whatever experiment you make, inflation predicts that there will be infinitely many copies of you far away in our infinite space, obtaining each physically possible outcome, and despite years of tooth-grinding in the cosmology community, no consensus has emerged on how to extract sensible answers from these infinities. So strictly speaking, we physicists are no longer able to predict anything at all! This means that today’s best theories similarly need a major shakeup, by retiring an incorrect assumption. Which one? Here’s my prime suspect: infinity. http://edge.org/response-detail/25344 (actually, to state the obvious, the ‘theory’ that needs to be retired is the entire materialistic philosophy which led to the epistemological failure of science in the first place)
And besides such over the top failures in epistemology for Naturalism, there are also more 'personal' clues as to the epistemological failure inherent in Naturalism. For instance, it is impossible for anyone to live consistently within the Naturalistic worldview:
The Heretic - Who is Thomas Nagel and why are so many of his fellow academics condemning him? - March 25, 2013 Excerpt:,,,Fortunately, materialism is never translated into life as it’s lived. As colleagues and friends, husbands and mothers, wives and fathers, sons and daughters, materialists never put their money where their mouth is. Nobody thinks his daughter is just molecules in motion and nothing but; nobody thinks the Holocaust was evil, but only in a relative, provisional sense. A materialist who lived his life according to his professed convictions—understanding himself to have no moral agency at all, seeing his friends and enemies and family as genetically determined robots—wouldn’t just be a materialist: He’d be a psychopath. http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/heretic_707692.html?page=3
In the following video, Dr. Craig points out that Naturalism is reducto ad absurdum on (at least) eight points:
Is Metaphysical Naturalism Viable? - William Lane Craig - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzS_CQnmoLQ 1.) Argument from intentionality 1. If naturalism is true, I cannot think about anything. 2. I am thinking about naturalism. 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 2.) The argument from meaning 1. If naturalism is true, no sentence has any meaning. 2. Premise (1) has meaning. 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 3.) The argument from truth 1. If naturalism is true, there are no true sentences. 2. Premise (1) is true. 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 4.) The argument from moral blame and praise 1. If naturalism is true, I am not morally praiseworthy or blameworthy for any of my actions. 2. I am morally praiseworthy or blameworthy for some of my actions. 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 5.) Argument from freedom 1. If naturalism is true, I do not do anything freely. 2. I am free to agree or disagree with premise (1). 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 6.) The argument from purpose 1. If naturalism is true, I do not plan to do anything. 2. I (Dr. Craig) planned to come to tonight's debate. 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 7.) The argument from enduring 1. If naturalism is true, I do not endure for two moments of time. 2. I have been sitting here for more than a minute. 3. Therefore naturalism is not true. 8.) The argument from personal existence 1. If naturalism is true, I do not exist. 2. I do exist! 3. Therefore naturalism is not true.
bornagain77_{July 25, 2014
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Acartia_bogart, in regards to the Judeo-Christian founding of modern science and the epistemological failure inherent in Naturalism, you state:
"This is simply your opinion"
Au Contraire Acartia_bogart, this is not 'simply my opinion' but is a undeniable fact. As to the Judeo-Christian founding of modern science, that is not even in question (save apparently for when you have millions of dollars to try to rewrite history as the 'Cosmos' series recently tried to do).
How Cosmos Does Religious History Badly - Jay Richards - April 30, 2014 http://thefederalist.com/2014/04/30/how-cosmos-does-religious-history-badly/ Cosmos Is Slammed for its "Inaccurate" and "Revisionist" History of Giordano Bruno - Casey Luskin - March 2014 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/03/cosmos_slammed_083111.html Darwin-Defending Historians Debate Whether It's Justified for Cosmos "to Lie" for the Sake of Science Casey Luskin May 21, 2014 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/05/darwin-defendin085831.html Cosmos Scrubs Religion's Positive Influence from the History of the Scientific Revolution - Casey Luskin - March 25, 2014 http://www.evolutionnews.org/2014/03/cosmos_scrubs_r083641.html
Aside from the 'revisionist history' that Cosmos tried to pull off, a shenanigan which should offend even atheists, the fact Judeo-Christian influences were integral to the rise of modern science is not even in dispute among scholars. The lead off article in the OP itself makes the point clear that Judeo-Christian influences were integral to the rise of modern science:
The Threat to the Scientific Method that Explains the Spate of Fraudulent Science Publications - Calvin Beisner | Jul 23, 2014 Excerpt: It is precisely because modern science has abandoned its foundations in the Biblical worldview (which holds, among other things, that a personal, rational God designed a rational universe to be understood and controlled by rational persons made in His image) and the Biblical ethic (which holds, among other things, that we are obligated to tell the truth even when it inconveniences us) that science is collapsing. As such diverse historians and philosophers of science as Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Duhem, Loren Eiseley, Rodney Stark, and many others have observed, and as I pointed out in two of my talks at the Ninth International Conference on Climate Change (ICCC), science—not an occasional flash of insight here and there, but a systematic, programmatic, ongoing way of studying and controlling the world—arose only once in history, and only in one place: medieval Europe, once known as “Christendom,” where that Biblical worldview reigned supreme. That is no accident. Science could not have arisen without that worldview. http://townhall.com/columnists/calvinbeisner/2014/07/23/the-threat-to-the-scientific-method-that-explains-the-spate-of-fraudulent-science-publications-n1865201/page/full
Dr. Michael Egnor recently had a excellent interview on the subject:
podcast - Dr. Michael Egnor: Judeo-Christianity and the Rise of Modern Science - March 2014 http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2014-03-03T12_53_03-08_00
Several other excellent resources backing up the claim for the Judeo-Christian founding of modern science are available, such as Thomas Woods, Stanley Jaki, David Linberg, Edward Grant, J.L. Heilbron, Christopher Dawson, and Alfred North Whitehead. Whitehead and Jaki are particularly informative on the subject:
The War against the War Between Science and Faith Revisited - July 2010 Excerpt: …as Whitehead pointed out, it is no coincidence that science sprang, not from Ionian metaphysics, not from the Brahmin-Buddhist-Taoist East, not from the Egyptian-Mayan astrological South, but from the heart of the Christian West, that although Galileo fell out with the Church, he would hardly have taken so much trouble studying Jupiter and dropping objects from towers if the reality and value and order of things had not first been conferred by belief in the Incarnation. (Walker Percy, Lost in the Cosmos),,, Jaki notes that before Christ the Jews never formed a very large community (priv. comm.). In later times, the Jews lacked the Christian notion that Jesus was the monogenes or unigenitus, the only-begotten of God. Pantheists like the Greeks tended to identify the monogenes or unigenitus with the universe itself, or with the heavens. Jaki writes: Herein lies the tremendous difference between Christian monotheism on the one hand and Jewish and Muslim monotheism on the other. This explains also the fact that it is almost natural for a Jewish or Muslim intellectual to become a patheist. About the former Spinoza and Einstein are well-known examples. As to the Muslims, it should be enough to think of the Averroists. With this in mind one can also hope to understand why the Muslims, who for five hundred years had studied Aristotle’s works and produced many commentaries on them failed to make a breakthrough. The latter came in medieval Christian context and just about within a hundred years from the availability of Aristotle’s works in Latin,, http://www.scifiwright.com/2010/08/the-war-against-the-war-between-science-and-faith-revisited/
Moreover, many of the founders of Modern science were 'in your face' Christians who publically defended their faith against atheists:
Christianity and The Birth of Science - Michael Bumbulis, Ph.D Excerpt: Furthermore, many of these founders of science lived at a time when others publicly expressed views quite contrary to Christianity - Hume, Hobbes, Darwin, etc. When Boyle argues against Hobbe's materialism or Kelvin argues against Darwin's assumptions, you don't have a case of "closet atheists." http://ldolphin.org/bumbulis/
Here is a bit of a who's who list of the founders of modern science in which you will be hard pressed to find even one 'closet atheist' in the entire bunch:
Founders of Modern Science Who Believe in GOD - Tihomir Dimitrov - (pg. 222) http://www.academia.edu/2739607/Scientific_GOD_Journal
bornagain77_{July 25, 2014
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BA77:
Acartia_bogart, but why is it that Judeo-Christian presuppositions led to the successful founding of modern science, whilst Naturalistic presupposition lead to the epistemological failure of science?
This is simply your opinion. Science is far from failing. It suffers the same strengths and weaknesses as any other profession. After all, it is conducted by humans.Acartia_bogart_{July 25, 2014
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Acartia_bogart, but why is it that Judeo-Christian presuppositions led to the successful founding of modern science, whilst Naturalistic presupposition lead to the epistemological failure of science? Notes:
The Great Debate: Does God Exist? - Justin Holcomb - audio of the 1985 Greg Bahnsen debate available at the bottom of the site Excerpt: The transcendental proof for God’s existence is that without Him it is impossible to prove anything. The atheist worldview is irrational and cannot consistently provide the preconditions of intelligible experience, science, logic, or morality. The atheist worldview cannot allow for laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, the ability for the mind to understand the world, and moral absolutes. In that sense the atheist worldview cannot account for our debate tonight.,,, http://justinholcomb.com/2012/01/17/the-great-debate-does-god-exist/ “If you do not assume the law of non-contradiction, you have nothing to argue about. If you do not assume the principles of sound reason, you have nothing to argue with. If you do not assume libertarian free will, you have no one to argue against. If you do not assume morality to be an objective commodity, you have no reason to argue in the first place.” - William J Murray Why No One (Can) Believe Atheism/Naturalism to be True - video Excerpt: "Since we are creatures of natural selection, we cannot totally trust our senses. Evolution only passes on traits that help a species survive, and not concerned with preserving traits that tell a species what is actually true about life." Richard Dawkins - quoted from "The God Delusion" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4QFsKevTXs "Refuting Naturalism by Citing our own Consciousness" Dr. Alvin Plantinga - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r34AIo-xBh8 Content and Natural Selection - Alvin Plantinga - 2011 http://www.andrewmbailey.com/ap/Content_Natural_Selection.pdf
of related interest to Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism:
Quote: "In evolutionary games we put truth (true perception) on the stage and it dies. And in genetic algorithms it (true perception) never gets on the stage" Donald Hoffman PhD. - Consciousness and The Interface Theory of Perception - 7:19 to 9:20 minute mark - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=dqDP34a-epI#t=439 Philosopher Sticks Up for God Excerpt: Theism, with its vision of an orderly universe superintended by a God who created rational-minded creatures in his own image, “is vastly more hospitable to science than naturalism,” with its random process of natural selection, he (Plantinga) writes. “Indeed, it is theism, not naturalism, that deserves to be called ‘the scientific worldview.’” http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/14/books/alvin-plantingas-new-book-on-god-and-science.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all BRUCE GORDON: Hawking's irrational arguments - October 2010 Excerpt: For instance, we find multiverse cosmologists debating the "Boltzmann Brain" problem: In the most "reasonable" models for a multiverse, it is immeasurably more likely that our consciousness is associated with a brain that has spontaneously fluctuated into existence in the quantum vacuum than it is that we have parents and exist in an orderly universe with a 13.7 billion-year history. This is absurd. The multiverse hypothesis is therefore falsified because it renders false what we know to be true about ourselves. Clearly, embracing the multiverse idea entails a nihilistic irrationality that destroys the very possibility of science. Universes do not “spontaneously create” on the basis of abstract mathematical descriptions, nor does the fantasy of a limitless multiverse trump the explanatory power of transcendent intelligent design. What Mr. Hawking’s contrary assertions show is that mathematical savants can sometimes be metaphysical simpletons. Caveat emptor. http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/oct/1/hawking-irrational-arguments/
bornagain77_{July 25, 2014
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but Beisner is surely right in saying that philosophical presuppositions must underlie the way we interpret evidence.
It is better phrases as that philosophical presuppositions bias the way we interpret evidence.Acartia_bogart_{July 25, 2014
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This seems like a good place to put a plug in for the upcoming documentary: Privileged Species Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAHPTwGZSP4bornagain77_{July 25, 2014
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supplemental note: The Scale of The Universe - Part 2 - interactive graph (recently updated in 2012 with cool features) http://htwins.net/scale2/scale2.swf?bordercolor=white The preceding interactive graph points out that the smallest scale visible to the human eye (as well as a human egg) is at 10^-4 meters, which 'just so happens' to be directly in the exponential center of all possible sizes of our physical reality (not just ‘nearly’ in the exponential center!). i.e. 10^-4 is, exponentially, right in the middle of 10^-35 meters, which is the smallest possible unit of length, which is Planck length, and 10^27 meters, which is the largest possible unit of 'observable' length since space-time was created in the Big Bang, which is the diameter of the universe. This is very interesting for, as far as I can tell, the limits to human vision (as well as the size of the human egg) could have, theoretically, been at very different positions than directly in the exponential middle;bornagain77_{July 25, 2014
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Of supplemental note, Just as it was necessary to have Judeo-Christian worldview to bring science to a sustainable maturity, I hold that only the Judeo-Christian worldview will bring a successful resolution to science between General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics into the much sought after 'Theory of Everything': General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, Entropy, and The Shroud Of Turin - updated video http://vimeo.com/34084462 Colossians 1:15-20 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.bornagain77_{July 24, 2014
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Further notes which lend support to the thesis: Radio Astronomy reveals privileged position for Earth in relation to the quasar and radio galaxy distributions in the universe:
Is there a violation of the Copernican principle in radio sky? - Ashok K. Singal - May 17, 2013 Abstract: Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) observations from the WMAP satellite have shown some unexpected anisotropies (directionally dependent observations), which surprisingly seem to be aligned with the ecliptic\cite {20,16,15}. The latest data from the Planck satellite have confirmed the presence of these anisotropies\cite {17}. Here we report even larger anisotropies in the sky distributions of powerful extended quasars and some other sub-classes of radio galaxies in the 3CRR catalogue, one of the oldest and most intensively studies sample of strong radio sources\cite{21,22,3}. The anisotropies lie about a plane passing through the two equinoxes and the north celestial pole (NCP). We can rule out at a 99.995% confidence level the hypothesis that these asymmetries are merely due to statistical fluctuations. Further, even the distribution of observed radio sizes of quasars and radio galaxies show large systematic differences between these two sky regions. The redshift distribution appear to be very similar in both regions of sky for all sources, which rules out any local effects to be the cause of these anomalies. Two pertinent questions then arise. First, why should there be such large anisotropies present in the sky distribution of some of the most distant discrete sources implying inhomogeneities in the universe at very large scales (covering a fraction of the universe)? What is intriguing even further is why such anisotropies should lie about a great circle decided purely by the orientation of earth's rotation axis and/or the axis of its revolution around the sun? It looks as if these axes have a preferential placement in the larger scheme of things, implying an apparent breakdown of the Copernican principle or its more generalization, cosmological principle, upon which all modern cosmological theories are based upon. http://arxiv.org/abs/1305.4134 http://arxiv.org/pdf/1305.4134.pdf Mysteries of the Large-Angle Microwave Sky - Dragan Huterer - video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bc6K32ZaHas Why is the solar system cosmically aligned? BY Dragan Huterer - 2007 The solar system seems to line up with the largest cosmic features. Is this mere coincidence or a signpost to deeper insights? Caption under figure on page 43: ODD ALIGNMENTS hide within the multipoles of the cosmic microwave background. In this combination of the quadrupole and octopole, a plane bisects the sphere between the largest warm and cool lobes. The ecliptic — the plane of Earth’s orbit projected onto the celestial sphere — is aligned parallel to the plane between the lobes. http://www-personal.umich.edu/~huterer/PRESS/CMB_Huterer.pdf Of note: The preceding article was written before the Planck data (with WMPA & COBE data), but the multipoles were actually verified by Planck. A Large Scale Pattern from Optical Quasar Polarization Vectors - 2013 http://arxiv.org/pdf/1311.6118.pdf Testing the Dipole Modulation Model in CMBR - 2013 http://arxiv.org/pdf/1308.0924.pdf
Thus, whereas Naturalism cannot even give us a coherent explanation for our conscious experience in the first place, on the other hand, we have excellent evidence from science supporting the Judeo-Christian proposition that we were created in God's image and that we live in a universe that we can discover deep mysteries of because God has designed it 'beneficially' to be that way for us, His children. Verse and Music:
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.” Kutless: Promise of a Lifetime - Live http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wgA93WQWKE
bornagain77_{July 24, 2014
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The following videos are in the same line of thought as the preceding:
We Live At The Right Time In Cosmic History – Hugh Ross – video http://vimeo.com/31940671 Hugh Ross - The Anthropic Principle and Anthropic Inequality - video http://www.metacafe.com/w/8494065
At the 38:10 minute mark of the following video, Dr. Huterer speaks of the 'why right now? coincidence problem' for dark matter and visible matter:
Dragan Huterer - 'coincidence problem' - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qTJc1Y7duM#t=2290
Robin Collins brought Gonzalez's 'Privileged Planet', discoverability, thesis along a little further here:
The Fine-Tuning for Discoverability - Robin Collins - March 22, 2014 Excerpt: Examples of fine - tuning for discoverability. ,,A small increase in ? (fine structure constant) would have resulted in all open wood fires going out; yet harnessing fire was essential to the development of civilization, technology, and science - e.g., the forging of metals.,,, Going in the other direction, if ? (fine structure constant) were decreased, light microscopes would have proportionality less resolving power without the size of living cells or other microscopic objects changing.,,, Thus, it is quite amazing that the resolving power of light microscopes goes down to that of the smallest cell (0.2 microns), but no further. If it had less resolving power, some cells could not be observed alive. The fine - structure constant, therefore, is just small enough to allow for open wood fires and just large enough for the light microscope to be able to see all living cells. Predictive and Explanatory Power of Discoverability - Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation Prediction: DLO: Within the range of values of a given parameter p that yield near - optimal livability, p will fall into that subrange of values that maximize discoverability (given constraints of elegance are not violated). In every case that I was able to make calculations regarding whether the fundamental parameters of physics are optimized in this way, they appear to pass the test.[iv] This alone is significant since this hypothesis is falsifiable in the sense that one could find data that potentially disconfirms it – namely, cases in which as best as we can determining, such as a case in which changing the value of a fundamental parameter – such as the fine - structure constant – increases discoverability while not negatively affecting livability.[v] Below, I will look at a case from cosmology where this thesis could have been disconfirmed but was not.,,, The most dramatic confirmation of the discoverability/livability optimality thesis (DLO) is the dependence of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) on the baryon to photon ratio.,,, ...the intensity of CMB depends on the photon to baryon ratio, (??b), which is the ratio of the average number of photons per unit volume of space to the average number of baryons (protons plus neutrons) per unit volume. At present this ratio is approximately a billion to one (10^9) , but it could be anywhere from one to infinity; it traces back to the degree of asymmetry in matter and anti - matter right after the beginning of the universe – for approximately every billion particles of antimatter, there was a billion and one particles of matter.,,, The only livability effect this ratio has is on whether or not galaxies can form that have near - optimally livability zones. As long as this condition is met, the value of this ratio has no further effects on livability. Hence, the DLO predicts that within this range, the value of this ratio will be such as to maximize the intensity of the CMB as observed by typical observers. According to my calculations – which have been verified by three other physicists -- to within the margin of error of the experimentally determined parameters (~20%), the value of the photon to baryon ratio is such that it maximizes the CMB. This is shown in Figure 1 below. (pg. 13) It is easy to see that this prediction could have been disconfirmed. In fact, when I first made the calculations in the fall of 2011, I made a mistake and thought I had refuted this thesis since those calculations showed the intensity of the CMB maximizes at a value different than the photon - baryon ratio in our universe. So, not only does the DLO lead us to expect this ratio, but it provides an ultimate explanation for why it has this value,,, This is a case of a teleological thesis serving both a predictive and an ultimate explanatory role.,,, http://home.messiah.edu/~rcollins/Fine-tuning/Greer-Heard%20Forum%20paper%20draft%20for%20posting.pdf Greer Heard Forum: Robin Collins – “God and the Fine-Tuning of the Universe for Discovery” – video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBWmMU7BXGE
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Epistemology: Why should the human mind be able to comprehend reality so deeply? Contemplating the structure of a atom, pondering the origin of the universe, and delving into intricacies of mathematics, hardly seem to be a the result of undirected processes. Such amazing abilities of the human mind certainly seems to be more easily explained by a Creator who endowed up with these gifts.
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences - Eugene Wigner - 1960 Excerpt: ,,certainly it is hard to believe that our reasoning power was brought, by Darwin's process of natural selection, to the perfection which it seems to possess.,,, It is difficult to avoid the impression that a miracle confronts us here, quite comparable in its striking nature to the miracle that the human mind can string a thousand arguments together without getting itself into contradictions, or to the two miracles of the existence of laws of nature and of the human mind's capacity to divine them.,,, The miracle of the appropriateness of the language of mathematics for the formulation of the laws of physics is a wonderful gift which we neither understand nor deserve. We should be grateful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for better or for worse, to our pleasure, even though perhaps also to our bafflement, to wide branches of learning. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~matc/MathDrama/reading/Wigner.html
Moreover, Science and advanced engineering, as foreign as it may sound to some people, was not born out of a naturalistic worldview but was born out of a purely Judeo-Christian worldview. To be certain, other cultures, during the history of the world, have given fits and starts to science and engineering, but never did these foreign cultures bring science and engineering to a sustainable maturity. It was in the Judeo-Christian worldview, and in that worldview alone, that modern science was brought to the sustainable level of maturity. Several resources are available that document this seemingly mysterious, yet undeniable, fact of history. Here is one.
Jerry Coyne on the Scientific Method and Religion – Michael Egnor – June 2011 Excerpt: The scientific method — the empirical systematic theory-based study of nature — has nothing to so with some religious inspirations — Animism, Paganism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Shintoism, Islam, and, well, atheism. The scientific method has everything to do with Christian (and Jewish) inspiration. Judeo-Christian culture is the only culture that has given rise to organized theoretical science. Many cultures (e.g. China) have produced excellent technology and engineering, but only Christian culture has given rise to a conceptual understanding of nature. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/jerry_coyne_on_the_scientific_047431.html
Several other resources backing up this claim are Thomas Woods, Rodney Stark, Stanley Jaki, David Linberg, Edward Grant, J.L. Heilbron, Christopher Dawson, and Philip Hughes. I think Dr. Koons does an excellent job of summing up exactly why the Judeo-Christian worldview is so fruitful to modern science and engineering:
Science and Theism: Concord, not Conflict* – Robert C. Koons IV. The Dependency of Science Upon Theism (Page 21) Excerpt: Without the faith in the rational intelligibility of the world and the divine vocation of human beings to master it, modern science would never have been possible, and, even today, the continued rationality of the enterprise of science depends on convictions that can be reasonably grounded only in theistic metaphysics. http://www.robkoons.net/media/69b0dd04a9d2fc6dffff80b3ffffd524.pdf
Several more resources are available on the internet, and through Amazon, for those who would like to learn more about the Judeo-Christian founding of modern science and engineering. But the main thing I want to focus on in this article is on the particular question of ‘exactly why should it be that the Judeo-Christian worldview is so fruitful to science and engineering? The claim that Naturalism cannot ground a rational basis for doing science, and only Theism can, is not just idle chatter. Naturalism, as Alvin Plantinga has aptly shown, simply dissolves into absurdity in trying to explain our conscious experience.
Is Atheism Irrational? By GARY GUTTING - NY Times - February 9, 2014 Excerpt: GG: So your claim is that if materialism is true, evolution doesn’t lead to most of our beliefs being true. Plantinga: Right. In fact, given materialism and evolution, it follows that our belief-producing faculties are not reliable. Here’s why. If a belief is as likely to be false as to be true, we’d have to say the probability that any particular belief is true is about 50 percent. Now suppose we had a total of 100 independent beliefs (of course, we have many more). Remember that the probability that all of a group of beliefs are true is the multiplication of all their individual probabilities. Even if we set a fairly low bar for reliability — say, that at least two-thirds (67 percent) of our beliefs are true — our overall reliability, given materialism and evolution, is exceedingly low: something like .0004. So if you accept both materialism and evolution, you have good reason to believe that your belief-producing faculties are not reliable. But to believe that is to fall into a total skepticism, which leaves you with no reason to accept any of your beliefs (including your beliefs in materialism and evolution!). The only sensible course is to give up the claim leading to this conclusion: that both materialism and evolution are true. Maybe you can hold one or the other, but not both. So if you’re an atheist simply because you accept materialism, maintaining your atheism means you have to give up your belief that evolution is true. Another way to put it: The belief that both materialism and evolution are true is self-refuting. It shoots itself in the foot. Therefore it can’t rationally be held. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/09/is-atheism-irrational/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
But why should this seemingly foreign, even outrageously bold, Judeo-Christian proposition of the rational intelligibility of the universe, that could even be dared to be comprehended by mere human minds, should be so successful as a proposition of thought??? Why should it be that mere human minds, human minds who happened to have the audacity to believe that their minds were, of all things, created in the image of the Being Who had created the entire universe, would be so successful as to establishing a solid foundation for modern science, unless this seemingly outlandish idea of being made in God’s image were actually true? Dr. Meyer reflects on the success of that outrageous proposition in this video:
Epistemology – Why Should The Human Mind Even Comprehend Reality? – Stephen Meyer – video (notes in description) http://vimeo.com/32145998
Moreover, if the proposition that this universe was 'set up' for us to discover, as is held in the Judeo Christian worldview, then we should discover evidence for the for that proposition. And indeed we do. Gonzalez and Richards first developed this line of evidence (Discoverability) in their book and documentary 'Privileged Planet':
The Privileged Planet - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnWyPIzTOTw The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos Is Designed for Discovery - book By Guillermo Gonzalez, Jay Wesley Richards - available on Amazon Privileged Planet – Observability/Measurability Correlation – Gonzalez and Richards – video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5424431 The very conditions that make Earth hospitable to intelligent life also make it well suited to viewing and analyzing the universe as a whole. - Jay Richards Fine Tuning Of Light to the Atmosphere, to Biological Life, and to Water - graphs http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AYmaSrBPNEmGZGM4ejY3d3pfMTljaGh4MmdnOQ Extreme Fine Tuning of Light for Life and Scientific Discovery - video http://www.metacafe.com/w/7715887
bornagain77_{July 24, 2014
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Why is a simple methodology for application to figuring things out in nature or manipulating it BECOMES a living thing. There is no science. Just people, or apes, thinking . Conclusions are controled by a methodology called science. Science is not the origin of insight. Hunches come from elsewhere. Whats the hand wringing about what science can prove? Science doesn't exist. Just thinking people being careful before conclusions proclaimed. Evolution is not scientific because methodology was not applied before Darwin became a anti christian hero in old england. that was the end of England ehRobert Byers_{July 24, 2014
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