Behe's Box and Huxley's Horse - Part one
Testimimony versus Evidence - Looking into origins is much like being at a murder trial. There are witnesses that come to the stand to testify, there are evidences entered into the record, and there are attorneys that argue the case. A judge and almost always a jury will consider the evidence, the testimony and the persuasive arguments of the attorneys and then render their decision.
Creationists consider the Bible to be a witness, that is, the narratives in Genesis and a few other places. The Bible is a witness to the origin of all things. It is up to the attorneys to try to convince the judge and jury of the reliability or unreliability of the witness.
In our discussions, I am an attorney and I claim that the account of the witness is reliable and true. The opposition says, "Not so!" But make no mistake, we are talking about a witness statement.
The evidence is a different matter. Just as the forensics involved in determining whether a bullet came from a specific weapon or that a hair found on the body had been determined to belong to John Doe, evidence like the sedimentary layers on earth and the composition of organisms today consist of evidence that can be entered into the record for consideration. I do not confuse the two, and hopefully from this point on no one else will either.
Fact versus Truth -Scientific fact, as we know it, is the best representation of truth known at the time in the opinion of the person who is accepting of that fact. If something is generally believed to be true on the face of the evidence and has been tested and reliably retested so that it is demonstrable, then we will call it a fact. Until a new discovery comes along and changes what we know. Hopefully everyone is looking for the truth.
Going against the Flow - Galileo had to fight the Catholic Church establishment to get out his views of the makeup of the solar system. Jesus, sixteen centuries earlier, had to wrestle with the establishment of his day, which consisted primarily of the Jewish religious heirarchy and the Roman Empire. The establishment is historically resistant to change, whether it be good or bad. It is undeniably true that the established view among most scientists today is that Darwinism (Macroevolution) is a fact (which it is not) and creationists and ID proponents fight ridicule and prejudice in an attempt to present evidence and witnesses that oppose the viewpoint held by the vast majority.
Do most scientists accept Darwinism? Yes. Are many, many Darwinists also believers in God? Most definitely. Do some use Darwinism as an excuse to dismiss the notion of God? Yes, this is also true. You can be a Christian and believe in Darwin's hypothesis and there is no doubt you can be a good one. Much of this is dependent on how the witness statement is viewed and understood. Your view of the origin of life does not get you into or keep you out of heaven. Nevertheless, since I am the attorney for creationism at this time, my viewpoint will be the one from which I will argue the various evidences and witnesses presented.
Definition of Terms - During the course of several posts on the subject, people have objected to my use of the term "kind." There are those who demand that I use terms like "species" in talking about differing varieties of living things. I return to my witness, the Book of Genesis, for one of many examples of the use of the word.
Genesis 1:25 - "God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good."
The word for "kind" in the Hebrew is "miyn" and is defined by Strong's Lexicon of Old Testament Hebrew as:
"kind, sometimes a species (usually of animals) ++++ Groups of living organisms belong in the same created "kind" if they have descended from the same ancestral gene pool. This does not preclude new species because this represents a partitioning of the original gene pool. Information is lost or conserved not gained. A new species could arise when a population is isolated and inbreeding occurs. By this definition a new species is not a new "kind" but a further partitioning of an existing "kind"."
This means that all arguments presented in which a segment of a population can no longer mate with other portions of a population do not represent macroevolution in action, but rather the loss in information in that population's gene pool. Isolated portions of populations which lose their ability to mate with others are not transforming into another kind of animal but actually in danger of falling out of the gene pool altogether. This is a hallmark of possible extinction rather than macroevolution.
Life - No Darwinist has ever come up with a reasonable explanation of where life comes from. Even should he suggest how organisms may have evolved, he is describing (in my view it is a fantasy) a means by which simple organisms have become more complex and produced the various kinds of life now found on the planet. He tries to show how the mechanical parts improve, change, etc, but he has no explanation or good definition of the "spark of life" itself. Canards like the primordial soup being struck by lightning have been tested and failed.
Ralph O. Muncaster has proposed a "demonstration of absurdity by being absurd."
The Gold Watch - Creation Model - "Hans created timepieces. As a young man he made ordinary sundials. He later built hourglasses and water timers. And he fashioned all kinds of clocks... magnificent grandfather clocks, pretty little anniversary clock... clocks of every shape and size. But his most prized creation was a watch.
Hans worked on details of his gold watch for many years. Day after day he labored over design - sizing every gear, calculating every small weight and detailing the exquisite artwork. Meticulous care went into the manufacture of each piece. Tiny gears were microscopically measured, formed and polished for precision. The balance wheel was carefully calibrated ensuring maximum accuracy. The spring, the casing, the face, the crystal... every detail was crafted to create the most "perfect" timepiece ever. Finally, when the last gear was delicately placed, the polished crystal gently set and the gold band lovingly attached... Hans marvelled at the beauty and precision of his masterpiece. He realized, however, that he was still holding just a beautiful ornament. Then Hans began to wind the watch. The sound began... "Tick, tick, tick." The ornament had become a timepiece."
The Gold Watch - Evolution Model - "Billions of years ago, the earth was far more favorable to "manufacturing" than today. Surrounding the earth was a sea of "ooze", richly laden with the precise elements to create timepieces. Bits of gold, bits of silica, even bits of paint.
Years and years went by. Then the inevitable happened. Bits of metal were joined together by volcanic heat. Amazingly, metal molecules bonded in the exact way needed to create intricate gears and balance wheels. As the parts tumbled in the "ooze," delicate polishing occurred: Precision polishing in the exact way to produce a perfectly calibrated timepiece. Then, molecules of black paint formed together in exact patterns to create numbers. And they coincidentally landed on a surface randomly covered with pure white paint. As the years continued to pass, eventually gears, wheels, a face, a crystal and a beautifully engraved band came together to form an exquisite gold watch... a product of the right mix of materials and billions of years. It was beautiful. It was complete and meticulously formed. It was perfect in every way. Almost... It still needed someone to wind it."
Darwinists who do not believe in God have a difficult time explaining where "the dirt" came from whereas a creationist believes that God created. Darwinists who do not believe that God at least created living beings also have the problem of where life originated. Creationists say that God created all living things as per His testimony in the Book of Genesis.
Well, should we concede the dirt and the spark of life, we now have the problem of evolving into complex organisms. Enter....
The Horse - As previously noted, the famous Horse Evolution Chart has been shown to be untrue.
"We now know that the various forms of horses have been found in layers with other forms. Eohippus has often been found in the same strata with Equus! Beyond that, there was no progression shown between the different animals. In fact, the rib numbers first decrease, then increase suddenly, and then decrease again. Hyracotherium had 18 pairs of ribs, Orohippus had 15, Pliohippus had 19, and Equus has 18. The number of lumbar vertebrae also changes from six to eight and then back to six."
So Darwinists can no longer honestly point to a progression of types leading up to the present horse. They do, however, continue to believe that the horse did evolve from more primitive forms in spite of evidence to the contrary.
Huxley's Horse- In Evolution in Action, Julian Huxley computed the odds against a horse evolving:
"The figure 1 with three million naughts after it: and that would take three large volumes of about 500 pages each, just to print! ... no one would bet on anything so improbable happening; and yet it has happened." Obviously, Huxley remained a true believer in the face of contradictory evidence.
Part of his computations involved the odds of a mutation being beneficial to an organism. He said, "One would expect that any interference with such a complicated piece of chemical machinery as the genetic constitution would result in damage. And, intact, this is so: the great majority of mutant genes are harmful in their effects on the organism." and "A proportion of favorable mutations of one in a thousand does not sound much, but is probably generous, since so many mutations are lethal, preventing the organism from living at all, and the great majority of the rest throw the machinery slightly out of gear."
Later in the same book, Huxley concludes, "To sum up, natural selection converts randomness into direction, and blind chance into apparent purpose. It operates with the aid of time to produce improvements in the machinery of living, and in the process generates results of a more than astronomical improbability which could have been achieved in no other way."
In short, Huxley computed the odds of the horse evolving as 1/10 x 3,000,000. The limits of statistical possibility are about 1/10 x 50. How could he reasonably believe that the horse could then exist. The key is that he sees no other way. The horse exists and therefore..."it has happened!" Obviously, Huxley has assigned godlike powers to natural selection and/or his belief in miracles exceeds that of most Christians.
How to look at the odds - Here is where creationists and Darwinists diverge rather vehemently at times. Darwinists ascribe great powers to natural selection, first of all, and secondly they attack the foundations of the math itself. Let's start with the math.
The odds against flipping a coin that lands with "heads' up is 1/2 or 50%. To get the same result twice in a row is not 50% again, but rather 50% x 50%, which is 25% or 1/4. Dr. Henry Morris, who has regrettably just passed away, posited that it would require 1500 consecutive correct occurences for a simple protein molecule (more simple that actually found in nature) to evolve from one beginning electron and even giving each "attempt" to evolve a 1/2 chance of success the resultant odds are phenomenally impossible. He gave the odds of such a basic building block of life a 1/10 X 450 chance of happening even giving all possible electrons in all of space for the several billion years that the universe has supposedly existed. Naturally, Darwinists have attacked Morris and Dembski and other ID/creationists by attacking the math. They give magic qualities to natural selection.
But it is true that an organism has to be rather complex in order to be "alive." No Darwinist can tell you otherwise. Fanciful dreams of less-complex-but-alive ancestors are all they have to offer up. Meanwhile, the odds that a thing complex enough to have become a living organism are too small to be considered possible.
Yet, even given the possibility that it happened, it has millions of steps to get to the level of the horse. This is what Huxley saw and what Darwinists have been trying to explain away. How do they do it? By depending upon natural selection.
Natural Selection - "Natural selection is the phrase Charles Darwin used in 1859 for the process he proposed to explain the origin of species and their apparent adaptation to their environment. Along with the rules of inheritance, discovered by Gregor Mendel at about the same time, natural selection provides the fundamental mechanistic foundations for modern evolutionary theory."
A dictionary definition: "The process in nature by which, according to Darwin's theory of evolution, only the organisms best adapted to their environment tend to survive and transmit their genetic characteristics in increasing numbers to succeeding generations while those less adapted tend to be eliminated."
Darwinists will argue with you long and hard that the first living thing didn't face such odds and that there could have been less complex forms of life that existed and reproduced and provided a gene pool for the development of more complex life. These less complex forms of life have not been observed nor is there any evidence they could possibly exist. It is an unsupported hypothesis.
But even should the impossible have happened and a simple living organism have happened, how did the remarkably complex and wonderfully designed DNA come into existence? With billions of components and strict patterns for the production and alignment of the code of life, the odds against this simply evolving are ridiculously high.
From Answers.com comes this: "Overall, there are about ten times as many bacteria as human cells in the body, 1 quadrillion (10 to the 15th) versus 100 trillion (10 to the 14th), with bacterial cells being much smaller than human cells. Though normal flora are found on all surfaces exposed to the environment (on the skin and eyes, in the mouth, nose, small intestine, and colon), the vast majority of bacteria live in the large intestine. It is estimated that 500-1000 different species of bacteria live in a human."
Huxley's rather conservative odds against the evolving of a horse pale compare to the odds of every variety of creature on earth having evolved even in billions of years! We have still not discovered all the different kinds of creatures that live on the earth today so great is the abundance of different possibilities. I have read Darwinist explanations concerning this and never seen any answer that approaches the immensity of the problem.
The creationist would say that God created all living things with a blueprint for inheritance and the ability to adopt to changing conditions within the DNA coding that all organisms have within them. Natural selection provides the means for variation within kind, both to help the population to survive and also to allow mankind to breed for specific traits beneficial to him. Thus, we have domesticated dogs, milk cows and so on. There is no need for new kinds to develop, because God provided for multiple types of animals that could fill the same basic need. This means that when creatures become extinct (whether dodo or allosaur) there are still other kinds of creatures to fill environments and be part of the food chain/ecosystem.
Your honor, that is all I have for today. Court will reconvene tomorrow.
Creationists consider the Bible to be a witness, that is, the narratives in Genesis and a few other places. The Bible is a witness to the origin of all things. It is up to the attorneys to try to convince the judge and jury of the reliability or unreliability of the witness.
In our discussions, I am an attorney and I claim that the account of the witness is reliable and true. The opposition says, "Not so!" But make no mistake, we are talking about a witness statement.
The evidence is a different matter. Just as the forensics involved in determining whether a bullet came from a specific weapon or that a hair found on the body had been determined to belong to John Doe, evidence like the sedimentary layers on earth and the composition of organisms today consist of evidence that can be entered into the record for consideration. I do not confuse the two, and hopefully from this point on no one else will either.
Fact versus Truth -Scientific fact, as we know it, is the best representation of truth known at the time in the opinion of the person who is accepting of that fact. If something is generally believed to be true on the face of the evidence and has been tested and reliably retested so that it is demonstrable, then we will call it a fact. Until a new discovery comes along and changes what we know. Hopefully everyone is looking for the truth.
Going against the Flow - Galileo had to fight the Catholic Church establishment to get out his views of the makeup of the solar system. Jesus, sixteen centuries earlier, had to wrestle with the establishment of his day, which consisted primarily of the Jewish religious heirarchy and the Roman Empire. The establishment is historically resistant to change, whether it be good or bad. It is undeniably true that the established view among most scientists today is that Darwinism (Macroevolution) is a fact (which it is not) and creationists and ID proponents fight ridicule and prejudice in an attempt to present evidence and witnesses that oppose the viewpoint held by the vast majority.
Do most scientists accept Darwinism? Yes. Are many, many Darwinists also believers in God? Most definitely. Do some use Darwinism as an excuse to dismiss the notion of God? Yes, this is also true. You can be a Christian and believe in Darwin's hypothesis and there is no doubt you can be a good one. Much of this is dependent on how the witness statement is viewed and understood. Your view of the origin of life does not get you into or keep you out of heaven. Nevertheless, since I am the attorney for creationism at this time, my viewpoint will be the one from which I will argue the various evidences and witnesses presented.
Definition of Terms - During the course of several posts on the subject, people have objected to my use of the term "kind." There are those who demand that I use terms like "species" in talking about differing varieties of living things. I return to my witness, the Book of Genesis, for one of many examples of the use of the word.
Genesis 1:25 - "God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good."
The word for "kind" in the Hebrew is "miyn" and is defined by Strong's Lexicon of Old Testament Hebrew as:
"kind, sometimes a species (usually of animals) ++++ Groups of living organisms belong in the same created "kind" if they have descended from the same ancestral gene pool. This does not preclude new species because this represents a partitioning of the original gene pool. Information is lost or conserved not gained. A new species could arise when a population is isolated and inbreeding occurs. By this definition a new species is not a new "kind" but a further partitioning of an existing "kind"."
This means that all arguments presented in which a segment of a population can no longer mate with other portions of a population do not represent macroevolution in action, but rather the loss in information in that population's gene pool. Isolated portions of populations which lose their ability to mate with others are not transforming into another kind of animal but actually in danger of falling out of the gene pool altogether. This is a hallmark of possible extinction rather than macroevolution.
Life - No Darwinist has ever come up with a reasonable explanation of where life comes from. Even should he suggest how organisms may have evolved, he is describing (in my view it is a fantasy) a means by which simple organisms have become more complex and produced the various kinds of life now found on the planet. He tries to show how the mechanical parts improve, change, etc, but he has no explanation or good definition of the "spark of life" itself. Canards like the primordial soup being struck by lightning have been tested and failed.
Ralph O. Muncaster has proposed a "demonstration of absurdity by being absurd."
The Gold Watch - Creation Model - "Hans created timepieces. As a young man he made ordinary sundials. He later built hourglasses and water timers. And he fashioned all kinds of clocks... magnificent grandfather clocks, pretty little anniversary clock... clocks of every shape and size. But his most prized creation was a watch.
Hans worked on details of his gold watch for many years. Day after day he labored over design - sizing every gear, calculating every small weight and detailing the exquisite artwork. Meticulous care went into the manufacture of each piece. Tiny gears were microscopically measured, formed and polished for precision. The balance wheel was carefully calibrated ensuring maximum accuracy. The spring, the casing, the face, the crystal... every detail was crafted to create the most "perfect" timepiece ever. Finally, when the last gear was delicately placed, the polished crystal gently set and the gold band lovingly attached... Hans marvelled at the beauty and precision of his masterpiece. He realized, however, that he was still holding just a beautiful ornament. Then Hans began to wind the watch. The sound began... "Tick, tick, tick." The ornament had become a timepiece."
The Gold Watch - Evolution Model - "Billions of years ago, the earth was far more favorable to "manufacturing" than today. Surrounding the earth was a sea of "ooze", richly laden with the precise elements to create timepieces. Bits of gold, bits of silica, even bits of paint.
Years and years went by. Then the inevitable happened. Bits of metal were joined together by volcanic heat. Amazingly, metal molecules bonded in the exact way needed to create intricate gears and balance wheels. As the parts tumbled in the "ooze," delicate polishing occurred: Precision polishing in the exact way to produce a perfectly calibrated timepiece. Then, molecules of black paint formed together in exact patterns to create numbers. And they coincidentally landed on a surface randomly covered with pure white paint. As the years continued to pass, eventually gears, wheels, a face, a crystal and a beautifully engraved band came together to form an exquisite gold watch... a product of the right mix of materials and billions of years. It was beautiful. It was complete and meticulously formed. It was perfect in every way. Almost... It still needed someone to wind it."
Darwinists who do not believe in God have a difficult time explaining where "the dirt" came from whereas a creationist believes that God created. Darwinists who do not believe that God at least created living beings also have the problem of where life originated. Creationists say that God created all living things as per His testimony in the Book of Genesis.
Well, should we concede the dirt and the spark of life, we now have the problem of evolving into complex organisms. Enter....
The Horse - As previously noted, the famous Horse Evolution Chart has been shown to be untrue.
"We now know that the various forms of horses have been found in layers with other forms. Eohippus has often been found in the same strata with Equus! Beyond that, there was no progression shown between the different animals. In fact, the rib numbers first decrease, then increase suddenly, and then decrease again. Hyracotherium had 18 pairs of ribs, Orohippus had 15, Pliohippus had 19, and Equus has 18. The number of lumbar vertebrae also changes from six to eight and then back to six."
So Darwinists can no longer honestly point to a progression of types leading up to the present horse. They do, however, continue to believe that the horse did evolve from more primitive forms in spite of evidence to the contrary.
Huxley's Horse- In Evolution in Action, Julian Huxley computed the odds against a horse evolving:
"The figure 1 with three million naughts after it: and that would take three large volumes of about 500 pages each, just to print! ... no one would bet on anything so improbable happening; and yet it has happened." Obviously, Huxley remained a true believer in the face of contradictory evidence.
Part of his computations involved the odds of a mutation being beneficial to an organism. He said, "One would expect that any interference with such a complicated piece of chemical machinery as the genetic constitution would result in damage. And, intact, this is so: the great majority of mutant genes are harmful in their effects on the organism." and "A proportion of favorable mutations of one in a thousand does not sound much, but is probably generous, since so many mutations are lethal, preventing the organism from living at all, and the great majority of the rest throw the machinery slightly out of gear."
Later in the same book, Huxley concludes, "To sum up, natural selection converts randomness into direction, and blind chance into apparent purpose. It operates with the aid of time to produce improvements in the machinery of living, and in the process generates results of a more than astronomical improbability which could have been achieved in no other way."
In short, Huxley computed the odds of the horse evolving as 1/10 x 3,000,000. The limits of statistical possibility are about 1/10 x 50. How could he reasonably believe that the horse could then exist. The key is that he sees no other way. The horse exists and therefore..."it has happened!" Obviously, Huxley has assigned godlike powers to natural selection and/or his belief in miracles exceeds that of most Christians.
How to look at the odds - Here is where creationists and Darwinists diverge rather vehemently at times. Darwinists ascribe great powers to natural selection, first of all, and secondly they attack the foundations of the math itself. Let's start with the math.
The odds against flipping a coin that lands with "heads' up is 1/2 or 50%. To get the same result twice in a row is not 50% again, but rather 50% x 50%, which is 25% or 1/4. Dr. Henry Morris, who has regrettably just passed away, posited that it would require 1500 consecutive correct occurences for a simple protein molecule (more simple that actually found in nature) to evolve from one beginning electron and even giving each "attempt" to evolve a 1/2 chance of success the resultant odds are phenomenally impossible. He gave the odds of such a basic building block of life a 1/10 X 450 chance of happening even giving all possible electrons in all of space for the several billion years that the universe has supposedly existed. Naturally, Darwinists have attacked Morris and Dembski and other ID/creationists by attacking the math. They give magic qualities to natural selection.
But it is true that an organism has to be rather complex in order to be "alive." No Darwinist can tell you otherwise. Fanciful dreams of less-complex-but-alive ancestors are all they have to offer up. Meanwhile, the odds that a thing complex enough to have become a living organism are too small to be considered possible.
Yet, even given the possibility that it happened, it has millions of steps to get to the level of the horse. This is what Huxley saw and what Darwinists have been trying to explain away. How do they do it? By depending upon natural selection.
Natural Selection - "Natural selection is the phrase Charles Darwin used in 1859 for the process he proposed to explain the origin of species and their apparent adaptation to their environment. Along with the rules of inheritance, discovered by Gregor Mendel at about the same time, natural selection provides the fundamental mechanistic foundations for modern evolutionary theory."
A dictionary definition: "The process in nature by which, according to Darwin's theory of evolution, only the organisms best adapted to their environment tend to survive and transmit their genetic characteristics in increasing numbers to succeeding generations while those less adapted tend to be eliminated."
Darwinists will argue with you long and hard that the first living thing didn't face such odds and that there could have been less complex forms of life that existed and reproduced and provided a gene pool for the development of more complex life. These less complex forms of life have not been observed nor is there any evidence they could possibly exist. It is an unsupported hypothesis.
But even should the impossible have happened and a simple living organism have happened, how did the remarkably complex and wonderfully designed DNA come into existence? With billions of components and strict patterns for the production and alignment of the code of life, the odds against this simply evolving are ridiculously high.
From Answers.com comes this: "Overall, there are about ten times as many bacteria as human cells in the body, 1 quadrillion (10 to the 15th) versus 100 trillion (10 to the 14th), with bacterial cells being much smaller than human cells. Though normal flora are found on all surfaces exposed to the environment (on the skin and eyes, in the mouth, nose, small intestine, and colon), the vast majority of bacteria live in the large intestine. It is estimated that 500-1000 different species of bacteria live in a human."
Huxley's rather conservative odds against the evolving of a horse pale compare to the odds of every variety of creature on earth having evolved even in billions of years! We have still not discovered all the different kinds of creatures that live on the earth today so great is the abundance of different possibilities. I have read Darwinist explanations concerning this and never seen any answer that approaches the immensity of the problem.
The creationist would say that God created all living things with a blueprint for inheritance and the ability to adopt to changing conditions within the DNA coding that all organisms have within them. Natural selection provides the means for variation within kind, both to help the population to survive and also to allow mankind to breed for specific traits beneficial to him. Thus, we have domesticated dogs, milk cows and so on. There is no need for new kinds to develop, because God provided for multiple types of animals that could fill the same basic need. This means that when creatures become extinct (whether dodo or allosaur) there are still other kinds of creatures to fill environments and be part of the food chain/ecosystem.
Your honor, that is all I have for today. Court will reconvene tomorrow.