About World View.....and Science
There are several good reasons that Darwinism needs to be questioned and other possibilities need to be considered by serious students. The philosophical stance of so many in the scientific community today cause them to work long and hard to keep creation science and Intelligent Design from the discussion. Ad hominem attacks and the dismissal of the numbers of non-Darwinist scientists and their work are the best weapons Darwinists have. When the fight comes down to science they struggle.
The Odds
I am told that I don't understand math while being in agreement with Michael Dembski, who holds a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago and has done postdoctoral work in mathematics at MIT, in physics at the University of Chicago, and in computer science at Princeton University (and other stuff, but it gets pretty long, his list of accomplishments). That's fine, call what I presented a fallacy but that is because Darwinists cannot disprove it. So they try to talk their way around it by changing the assumptions and reworking the equation. Boo!
Complexity
Irreducible complexity is another problem for Darwinists. I only really concentrated on one of myriad examples in that post. What about the neck of the Giraffe, or the Bombadier Beatle's defense mechanism?
There are more huge problems for Darwinists, but even one major issue would be enough for serious scientists who would like to know the answers to questions no matter what they might be. If you read the comments sections of this blog, you will see that the Darwinists say the same thing in different ways, over and over. They do not want anything but macroevolution taught or even considered. They make fun of scientists who disagree with them and denigrate their work. They ignore the brilliant men who disagree with them (I am talking about guys like Behe and Townes and Tipler and Barrow, not me!),
The search for truth should be done with honesty and a willingness to learn something new. Many Christians believe in macroevolution and many believe in long ages for the earth, or at least for the universe. Many are young earth creationists. Some dyed-in-the-wool macroevolutionists are Christians. Some people who believe in a creation or at least in Intelligent Design do not believe in God per se. There are not just two simple sides in the debate. Heck, some of my best friends are Darwinists, hee hee!
What surprises me is the dogmatism associated with the apparent majority of Darwinists who cannot abide and even fear the teaching of creationism/ID. I believe a lot of that stems from philosophical differences, although some of them deny it (but not all). I have difficulty seeing their logic otherwise. I see them trying to deny and stifle something that threatens their very core beliefs even if it is a futile task.
Philosophy
Bible modernists have sought for ways to take the impact of the Bible away by casting doubts upon authorship. They attacked the book of Genesis based on the names in that book used for God. The JEDP documentary hypothesis requires remarkable twists of logic and it also requires a willful ignorance. For even as they sought to parse and part out that book by the use of the name of God, they knew that God was referred to by various names in other books as well. Good Bible students know that these various descriptive names had nothing to do with the author. (One can see that Moses may have used historical tablets as a basis for Genesis and it is possible the tablets had been passed down and added on to since Adam and on down. That only makes the record that much more reliable.)
But the Bible and Christianity have actually been key to the advance of Western Civilization and individual freedoms in the last few centuries. Francis A Shaeffer has written a great deal about the philosophy of the rational Christian and the effect of Christianity on today's world. I want to bring a few of his quotes into the discussion. This is because I believe, as the summary of his book How Should We Then Live states,
"Schaeffer wrote that, "To understand where we are in today's world -- in our intellectual ideas and in our cultural and political lives -- we must trace three lines in history, namely, the philosophic, the scientific, and the religious." That is exactly what he does in How Should We Then Live?. The way a person lives is based on how they view the world. Ideas are not without consequences."
We all stand on a platform of world view. This world view greatly impacts all that we think or do. Francis Shaeffer, in the aforementioned book, considers both the Renaissance and the Reformation as he looks at the three lines of history and mankind. All of the following quotes are from Shaeffer:
"There is a flow to history and culture. This flow is rooted and has its wellspring in the thoughts of people. People are unique in the inner life of the mind -- what they are in their thought-world determines how they act. This is true of their value systems and it is true of their creativity. It is true of their corporate actions, such as political decisions, and it is true of their personal lives. The results of their thought-world flow through their fingers or from their tongues into the external world. This is true of Michelangelo's chisel, and it is true of a dictator's sword."
One's world view comes with presuppositions:
" People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize. By presuppositions we mean the basic way an individual looks at life, his basic world-view, the grid through which he sees the world. Presuppositions rest upon that which a person considers to be the truth of what exists. People's presuppositions lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world. Their presuppositions also provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions."
The man who has presuppositions based on Biblical absolutes is dangerous to those who do not. He is at odds with the totalitarian. He is at odds with oppression.
"No totalitarian authority nor authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions. The Christians had that absolute in God's revelation. Because the Christians had an absolute, universal standard by which to judge not only personal morals but the state, they were counted as enemies of totalitarian Rome and were thrown to the beasts."
Many Humanists today point their fingers at the Islamofascists (when they are not busy defending them) and say that this is what Christians would become if given the chance. Go read the Democratic Underground, the LA Times, the Huffington Post or the Daily Kos for awhile if you doubt it. In truth, Islamofascism and the rule of Sharia Law are among the things a Bible absolutist would recognize as entirely wrong.
"Because the Reformers did not mix humanism with their position, but took instead a serious view of the Bible, they had no problem of meaning for the individual things, the particulars; they had no nature-versus-grace problem. One could say that the Renaissance centered in autonomous man, while the Reformation centered in the infinite-personal God who had spoken in the Bible. In the answer the Reformation gave, the problem of meaning for individual things, including man, was so completely answered that the problem -- as a problem -- did not exist. The reason for this is that the Bible gives a unity to the universal and the particulars."
I endorse a world where the seeking of knowledge would be encouraged and there would be no orthodox or dogmatic stand against the advance of science where it did not intrude into the arena of Right or Wrong. Let Darwinists seek to prove macroevolution if they will and let all men of science seek for ways to improve the human condition and learn more about the world around us without doctrinal hindrances from religion (Christian or Humanist or any other).
" First, the Bible tells men and women true things about God. Therefore, they can know true things about God. One can know true things about God because God has revealed Himself. The word God was not contentless to Reformation man. God was not an unknown "philosophic other" because God had told man about Himself. As the Westminster Confession (1645-1647) says, when God revealed His attributes to people, the attributes are not only true to people but true to God. That is, when God tells people what He is like, what He says is not just relatively true but absolutely true. As finite beings, people do not have exhaustive truth about God, but they can have truth about God; and they can know, therefore, truth about that which is the ultimate universal. And the Bible speaks to men and women concerning meaning, morals, and values.
Second, the Bible tells us true things about people and about nature. It does not give men and women exhaustive truth about the world and the cosmos, but it does give truth about them. So one can know many true things about nature, especially why things exist and why they have the form they have. Yet, because the Bible does not give exhaustive truth about history and the cosmos, historians and scientists have a job to do, and their work is not meaningless. To be sure, there is a total break between God and His creation, that is, between God and created things; God is infinite and created things are finite. But man can know both truth about God and truth about the things of creation because in the Bible God has revealed Himself and has given man the key to understanding God's world.
So, as the Reformation returned to biblical teaching, it gained two riches at once: it had no particulars-versus-universals (or meaning) problem, and yet at the same time science and art were set free to operate upon the basis of that which God had set forth in Scripture. The Christianity of the Reformation, therefore, stood in rich contrast to the basic weakness and final poverty of the humanism which existed in that day and the humanism which has existed since."
The Bible includes historical narratives that help us understand science and history. But the Bible is not a science book and it was not given to us merely as a book of history. It is rather a basis for studies in science and history. But it is especially a book in which God presents to us His world view and invites us to live it.
"It is important that the Bible sets forth true knowledge about mankind. The biblical teaching gives meaning to all particulars, but this is especially so in regard to that particular which is the most important to man, namely, the individual himself or herself. It gives a reason for the individual being great. The ironic fact here is that humanism, which began with Man's being central, eventually had no real meaning for people. On the other hand, if one begins with the Bible's position that a person is created by God and created in the image of God, there is a basis for that person's dignity. People, the Bible teaches, are made in the image of God -- they are nonprogrammed. Each is thus Man with dignity.
That Man is made in the image of God gives many important answers intellectually, but it also has had vast practical results, both in the Reformation days and in our own age. For example, in the time of the Reformation it meant that all the vocations of life came to have dignity. The vocation of honest merchant or housewife had as much dignity as king. This was strengthened further by the emphasis on the biblical teaching of the priesthood of all believers -- that is, that all Christians are priests. Thus, in a very real sense, all people are equal as persons. Moreover, the government of the church by lay elders created the potential for democratic emphasis.
The Bible, however, also says that man is fallen; he has revolted against God. At the historic space-time Fall, man refused to stand in the proper relationship with this infinite reference point which is the personal God. Therefore, people are now abnormal. The Reformation saw all people as equal in this way, too -- all are guilty before God. This is as true of the king and queen as the peasant. So, in contrast to the humanism of the Renaissance, which never gave an answer to explain that which is observable in people, the Bible enabled people to solve the dilemma facing them as they look at themselves: they could understand both their greatness and their cruelty."
It is the world view of the Bible that has given us liberty as individuals. It is that world view that was the basis for the Constitution of the United States. It was the world view of Pasteur, of Newton, yes even of Galileo as he defied the orthodox view of the Catholic Church. It is that world view that I hold. Those who do not share that view, they are those who seek to ban the teaching of ID or creationism from the classroom. They fear ideas that do not agree with theirs. But how futile and foolish this is!
I think macroevolution was an interesting concept and that as science learned more about the nature of organisms it should have been discarded. But I don't want to ban macroevolution from science, from the classroom and from the museums. No! I endorse the free exchange of ideas and let the truth come forth. Man seeks for truth and in a free society he will continue to do so. The study of macroevolution has been, to some extent, the study of microevolution and such studies have reaped rewards to mankind. Since the proponents of macroevolution are at work to ban the very idea of creationism or ID then I must labor against them even as I know that we could both do more good were the issue settled and our energies devoted to better endeavors.
But I have a certain hope. In the book of Acts, when Peter and other believers were doing miracles and preaching in the name of Jesus, the orthodox Jewish leadership sought to oppose them and perhaps even have the men put to death. But then Gamaliel, a Pharisee, rose and spoke these words: "...Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God." - Acts 5:38 & 39
I must, I have to believe that truth wills out and that man will continue to seek for truth. Creation science will either continue to prove to be the best scenario for the origins of all things, in my opinion, or it will not. I say to the Darwinists who seek to keep creation science and ID out of the classroom and the laboratory and the observatory, let my people go... if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.
The Odds
I am told that I don't understand math while being in agreement with Michael Dembski, who holds a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago and has done postdoctoral work in mathematics at MIT, in physics at the University of Chicago, and in computer science at Princeton University (and other stuff, but it gets pretty long, his list of accomplishments). That's fine, call what I presented a fallacy but that is because Darwinists cannot disprove it. So they try to talk their way around it by changing the assumptions and reworking the equation. Boo!
Complexity
Irreducible complexity is another problem for Darwinists. I only really concentrated on one of myriad examples in that post. What about the neck of the Giraffe, or the Bombadier Beatle's defense mechanism?
There are more huge problems for Darwinists, but even one major issue would be enough for serious scientists who would like to know the answers to questions no matter what they might be. If you read the comments sections of this blog, you will see that the Darwinists say the same thing in different ways, over and over. They do not want anything but macroevolution taught or even considered. They make fun of scientists who disagree with them and denigrate their work. They ignore the brilliant men who disagree with them (I am talking about guys like Behe and Townes and Tipler and Barrow, not me!),
The search for truth should be done with honesty and a willingness to learn something new. Many Christians believe in macroevolution and many believe in long ages for the earth, or at least for the universe. Many are young earth creationists. Some dyed-in-the-wool macroevolutionists are Christians. Some people who believe in a creation or at least in Intelligent Design do not believe in God per se. There are not just two simple sides in the debate. Heck, some of my best friends are Darwinists, hee hee!
What surprises me is the dogmatism associated with the apparent majority of Darwinists who cannot abide and even fear the teaching of creationism/ID. I believe a lot of that stems from philosophical differences, although some of them deny it (but not all). I have difficulty seeing their logic otherwise. I see them trying to deny and stifle something that threatens their very core beliefs even if it is a futile task.
Philosophy
Bible modernists have sought for ways to take the impact of the Bible away by casting doubts upon authorship. They attacked the book of Genesis based on the names in that book used for God. The JEDP documentary hypothesis requires remarkable twists of logic and it also requires a willful ignorance. For even as they sought to parse and part out that book by the use of the name of God, they knew that God was referred to by various names in other books as well. Good Bible students know that these various descriptive names had nothing to do with the author. (One can see that Moses may have used historical tablets as a basis for Genesis and it is possible the tablets had been passed down and added on to since Adam and on down. That only makes the record that much more reliable.)
But the Bible and Christianity have actually been key to the advance of Western Civilization and individual freedoms in the last few centuries. Francis A Shaeffer has written a great deal about the philosophy of the rational Christian and the effect of Christianity on today's world. I want to bring a few of his quotes into the discussion. This is because I believe, as the summary of his book How Should We Then Live states,
"Schaeffer wrote that, "To understand where we are in today's world -- in our intellectual ideas and in our cultural and political lives -- we must trace three lines in history, namely, the philosophic, the scientific, and the religious." That is exactly what he does in How Should We Then Live?. The way a person lives is based on how they view the world. Ideas are not without consequences."
We all stand on a platform of world view. This world view greatly impacts all that we think or do. Francis Shaeffer, in the aforementioned book, considers both the Renaissance and the Reformation as he looks at the three lines of history and mankind. All of the following quotes are from Shaeffer:
"There is a flow to history and culture. This flow is rooted and has its wellspring in the thoughts of people. People are unique in the inner life of the mind -- what they are in their thought-world determines how they act. This is true of their value systems and it is true of their creativity. It is true of their corporate actions, such as political decisions, and it is true of their personal lives. The results of their thought-world flow through their fingers or from their tongues into the external world. This is true of Michelangelo's chisel, and it is true of a dictator's sword."
One's world view comes with presuppositions:
" People have presuppositions, and they will live more consistently on the basis of these presuppositions than even they themselves may realize. By presuppositions we mean the basic way an individual looks at life, his basic world-view, the grid through which he sees the world. Presuppositions rest upon that which a person considers to be the truth of what exists. People's presuppositions lay a grid for all they bring forth into the external world. Their presuppositions also provide the basis for their values and therefore the basis for their decisions."
The man who has presuppositions based on Biblical absolutes is dangerous to those who do not. He is at odds with the totalitarian. He is at odds with oppression.
"No totalitarian authority nor authoritarian state can tolerate those who have an absolute by which to judge that state and its actions. The Christians had that absolute in God's revelation. Because the Christians had an absolute, universal standard by which to judge not only personal morals but the state, they were counted as enemies of totalitarian Rome and were thrown to the beasts."
Many Humanists today point their fingers at the Islamofascists (when they are not busy defending them) and say that this is what Christians would become if given the chance. Go read the Democratic Underground, the LA Times, the Huffington Post or the Daily Kos for awhile if you doubt it. In truth, Islamofascism and the rule of Sharia Law are among the things a Bible absolutist would recognize as entirely wrong.
"Because the Reformers did not mix humanism with their position, but took instead a serious view of the Bible, they had no problem of meaning for the individual things, the particulars; they had no nature-versus-grace problem. One could say that the Renaissance centered in autonomous man, while the Reformation centered in the infinite-personal God who had spoken in the Bible. In the answer the Reformation gave, the problem of meaning for individual things, including man, was so completely answered that the problem -- as a problem -- did not exist. The reason for this is that the Bible gives a unity to the universal and the particulars."
I endorse a world where the seeking of knowledge would be encouraged and there would be no orthodox or dogmatic stand against the advance of science where it did not intrude into the arena of Right or Wrong. Let Darwinists seek to prove macroevolution if they will and let all men of science seek for ways to improve the human condition and learn more about the world around us without doctrinal hindrances from religion (Christian or Humanist or any other).
" First, the Bible tells men and women true things about God. Therefore, they can know true things about God. One can know true things about God because God has revealed Himself. The word God was not contentless to Reformation man. God was not an unknown "philosophic other" because God had told man about Himself. As the Westminster Confession (1645-1647) says, when God revealed His attributes to people, the attributes are not only true to people but true to God. That is, when God tells people what He is like, what He says is not just relatively true but absolutely true. As finite beings, people do not have exhaustive truth about God, but they can have truth about God; and they can know, therefore, truth about that which is the ultimate universal. And the Bible speaks to men and women concerning meaning, morals, and values.
Second, the Bible tells us true things about people and about nature. It does not give men and women exhaustive truth about the world and the cosmos, but it does give truth about them. So one can know many true things about nature, especially why things exist and why they have the form they have. Yet, because the Bible does not give exhaustive truth about history and the cosmos, historians and scientists have a job to do, and their work is not meaningless. To be sure, there is a total break between God and His creation, that is, between God and created things; God is infinite and created things are finite. But man can know both truth about God and truth about the things of creation because in the Bible God has revealed Himself and has given man the key to understanding God's world.
So, as the Reformation returned to biblical teaching, it gained two riches at once: it had no particulars-versus-universals (or meaning) problem, and yet at the same time science and art were set free to operate upon the basis of that which God had set forth in Scripture. The Christianity of the Reformation, therefore, stood in rich contrast to the basic weakness and final poverty of the humanism which existed in that day and the humanism which has existed since."
The Bible includes historical narratives that help us understand science and history. But the Bible is not a science book and it was not given to us merely as a book of history. It is rather a basis for studies in science and history. But it is especially a book in which God presents to us His world view and invites us to live it.
"It is important that the Bible sets forth true knowledge about mankind. The biblical teaching gives meaning to all particulars, but this is especially so in regard to that particular which is the most important to man, namely, the individual himself or herself. It gives a reason for the individual being great. The ironic fact here is that humanism, which began with Man's being central, eventually had no real meaning for people. On the other hand, if one begins with the Bible's position that a person is created by God and created in the image of God, there is a basis for that person's dignity. People, the Bible teaches, are made in the image of God -- they are nonprogrammed. Each is thus Man with dignity.
That Man is made in the image of God gives many important answers intellectually, but it also has had vast practical results, both in the Reformation days and in our own age. For example, in the time of the Reformation it meant that all the vocations of life came to have dignity. The vocation of honest merchant or housewife had as much dignity as king. This was strengthened further by the emphasis on the biblical teaching of the priesthood of all believers -- that is, that all Christians are priests. Thus, in a very real sense, all people are equal as persons. Moreover, the government of the church by lay elders created the potential for democratic emphasis.
The Bible, however, also says that man is fallen; he has revolted against God. At the historic space-time Fall, man refused to stand in the proper relationship with this infinite reference point which is the personal God. Therefore, people are now abnormal. The Reformation saw all people as equal in this way, too -- all are guilty before God. This is as true of the king and queen as the peasant. So, in contrast to the humanism of the Renaissance, which never gave an answer to explain that which is observable in people, the Bible enabled people to solve the dilemma facing them as they look at themselves: they could understand both their greatness and their cruelty."
It is the world view of the Bible that has given us liberty as individuals. It is that world view that was the basis for the Constitution of the United States. It was the world view of Pasteur, of Newton, yes even of Galileo as he defied the orthodox view of the Catholic Church. It is that world view that I hold. Those who do not share that view, they are those who seek to ban the teaching of ID or creationism from the classroom. They fear ideas that do not agree with theirs. But how futile and foolish this is!
I think macroevolution was an interesting concept and that as science learned more about the nature of organisms it should have been discarded. But I don't want to ban macroevolution from science, from the classroom and from the museums. No! I endorse the free exchange of ideas and let the truth come forth. Man seeks for truth and in a free society he will continue to do so. The study of macroevolution has been, to some extent, the study of microevolution and such studies have reaped rewards to mankind. Since the proponents of macroevolution are at work to ban the very idea of creationism or ID then I must labor against them even as I know that we could both do more good were the issue settled and our energies devoted to better endeavors.
But I have a certain hope. In the book of Acts, when Peter and other believers were doing miracles and preaching in the name of Jesus, the orthodox Jewish leadership sought to oppose them and perhaps even have the men put to death. But then Gamaliel, a Pharisee, rose and spoke these words: "...Therefore, in the present case I advise you: Leave these men alone! Let them go! For if their purpose or activity is of human origin, it will fail. But if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God." - Acts 5:38 & 39
I must, I have to believe that truth wills out and that man will continue to seek for truth. Creation science will either continue to prove to be the best scenario for the origins of all things, in my opinion, or it will not. I say to the Darwinists who seek to keep creation science and ID out of the classroom and the laboratory and the observatory, let my people go... if it is from God, you will not be able to stop these men; you will only find yourselves fighting against God.