The Darwinist believes the impossible to be inevitable
Darwinists commenting on this blog have stated that Creationists retreat and redefine arguments in order to avoid issues. I disagree. I had challenged one and all to take on the statistical argument in a straightforward manner and they could not do it. This time I am allowing other voices to speak for me. In the realm of chance we have a place where Darwinists have no choice but to retreat and redefine for otherwise they miserably fail.
How about the Fine-Tuning issue?
"...Astrophysicist George Smoot explains that the degree of fine-tuning required for life to exist on Earth would be similar to shooting an arrow all the way to the planet Pluto (four billion miles away) and having the arrow come within a hundred yards of the target.3
Do you like to bet? Would you be apt to bet if the odds were 5:1 against you? How about if they were 6,000:1 against you? If you were to bet on the universe developing without a Designer, the odds of our universe forming on its own is 10 to the 124th to 1.
Again, just because there is a vastly remote chance that all the requirements perfectly fell into place by chance, why would a reasonable person conclude that it actually did come about that way? If the odds of a jet making it safely to its destination were 10 to the 124th to 1, who would get on that plane? We are so reasonable in so many areas of life. We look at clay pots and watches and are willing to say that obviously people made these, even if we don't see those people. Could not the same logic be used when we consider the human body and the universe?
Don't the intricacies of the human body and the universe give reason to say, "Though I don't see him, it makes most sense to conclude that God exists"?" EveryStudent.com
Simply put, yes. This is one reason Darwinists get upset, because the simple solution (The Occam's Razor solution) is that God created all things and that is why all things appear to be designed. Because they are designed! It's all in the math, baby, for anyone not too blind to see it.
FAT CHANCE: The Failure of Evolution to Account for the Miracle of Life1
by Hank Hanegraaff
"No rational person looking at Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper would suggest that this masterpiece came into being through blind chance. Incredibly, however, many blindly believe that chance operating through natural processes can account for the masterful precision and design of the universe in which we live. The eye, the egg, and the earth are but three examples of organized complexity that can not be accounted for apart from the existence of an omniscient designer. As the science of statistical probability demonstrates, forming even a protein molecule by random processes is not only improbable; it is indeed impossible.
One of the primary dilemmas of naturalistic evolutionary theory is that it forces scientists to conclude that the cosmos in all of its complexity was created by chance. As biologist Jacques Monod, a Nobel prize winner, puts it, “Chance alone is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, [is] at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution” (emphasis in original).2 Noted theologian R. C. Sproul explains, for the materialist chance is the “magic wand to make not only rabbits but entire universes appear out of nothing.”3 Sproul also warns that “if chance exists in any size, shape, or form, God cannot exist. The two are mutually exclusive. If chance existed, it would destroy God’s sovereignty. If God is not sovereign, he is not God. If he is not God, he simply is not. If chance is, God is not. If God is, chance is not” (emphasis in original).4"
Now, Darwinists try to distance themselves from the idea or even the very word, "random" even though it is inherent to their beliefs. I'll present one more small excerpt from this excellent article:
"....In Darwin’s Black Box, Behe further notes that there are black boxes within black boxes. As science advances, more and more of these black boxes are being opened, revealing an “unanticipated Lilliputian world” of enormous complexity that has pushed the theory of evolution beyond the breaking point.17 Evolution cannot account for the astonishingly complex synchronization process needed for, say, the shell of a developing egg to form from the calcium that is stored inside the bones of a bird’s body.18 This shell not only provides a protective covering for the egg but also provides a source of calcium for the developing embryo and a membrane through which it can breathe.19
Furthermore, evolution cannot account for the complex synchronization process needed to produce life from a single fertilized human egg. “The tapestry of life begins with a single thread.”20 Through a process of incredible precision, a microscopic egg in one human being is fertilized by a sperm cell from another. This process not only marks the beginning of a new life but also marks the genetic future of that life.21 A single fertilized egg (zygote), the size of a pinhead, contains chemical instructions that would fill more than 500,000 printed pages.22 The genetic information contained in this “encyclopedia” determines the potential physical aspect of the developing human from height to hair color. In time, the fertilized egg divides into the 30 trillion cells that make up the human body, including 12 billion brain cells, which form over 120 trillion connections.23
In Darwin’s day, a human egg was thought to be quite simple — for all practical purposes, little more than a microscopic blob of gelatin. Today we know that a fertilized egg is among the most organized, complex structures in the universe. In an age of scientific enlightenment, it is incredible to think that people are willing to maintain that something so vastly complex arose by chance. As Dr. James Coppedge, an expert on the science of statistical probability, puts it, “Chance requires ten billion tries on the average in order to count to ten.”24
In an experiment using 10 similar coins numbered one through 10, chance will succeed on the average only once in 10 billion attempts to get the number one followed in order by all the rest. Coppedge explains that if a person could draw and record one coin every five seconds day and night, it would still take over 1,500 years for chance, on average, to succeed just once in counting to 10.25 He goes on to demonstrate the difference intelligence makes by documenting that a child can do in minutes what chance would take a millennium to do. “Chance doesn’t have a chance when compared to the intelligent purpose of even a child.”26 Even more revealing is the fact that a child playing with the party game Scrabble can easily spell the phrase, “the theory of evolution,” while chance requires five million times the assumed age of the earth to accomplish the same feat.27" Read the entire article here -FAT CHANCE:
The Failure of Evolution to Account for the Miracle of Life.
MATH/SCHMATH. Darwinists are driven to hold on to their position for reasons other than scientific evidence. This is the reason why when mathematics slam-dunks their hypothesis, they just change the equation. For most Darwinists, they are philosophically incapable of allowing for the idea of Creation (or perhaps in many cases simply unwilling).
WHAT IS DARWINISM? Why Science Clings to a Fractured Paradigm
"Summary
The debate between creationism and Darwinism is often depicted as a dispute between naive biblical literalists, who ignore the overwhelming evidence for evolution, and scientifically enlightened intellectuals. But this is a caricature that serves the purpose of helping to perpetuate a world view hostile to Christian faith: atheistic naturalism. The debate hinges on five key terms: creationism, evolution, science, religion, and truth. Instead of trying to Christianize evolution we ought instead to challenge the assumption that atheistic naturalism is true.
The popular television game show Jeopardy reverses the usual order of things. Instead of being asked a question to which they must supply the answer, contestants are given the answer and asked to provide the appropriate question. This format suggests an insight that is applicable to law, to science, and indeed to just about everything. More important than knowing all the answers is knowing what question is being asked.
That insight is the starting point for my inquiry into Darwinian evolution and its relationship to creation, because Darwinism is the answer to two very different kinds of questions. First, Darwinian theory tells us how a certain amount of diversity in life forms can develop once we have various types of complex living organisms already in existence. If a small population of birds happens to migrate to an isolated island, for example, a combination of inbreeding, mutation, and natural selection may cause this isolated population to develop different characteristics from those possessed by the ancestral population on the mainland. When the theory is understood in this limited sense, Darwinian evolution is uncontroversial and has no important philosophical or theological implications.
Evolutionary biologists are not content merely to explain how variation occurs within limits. They aspire to answer a much broader question — how complex organisms like birds, flowers, and human beings came to exist at all. The Darwinian answer to this second question is that the creative force that produced complex plants and animals is essentially the same as the mechanism producing variations in flowers, insects, and domestic animals before our very eyes. In the words of Ernst Mayr, the dean of living Darwinists, "Transspecific evolution [i.e., macroevolution] is nothing but an extrapolation and magnification of the events that take place within populations and species."
Neo-Darwinian evolution in this broad sense is a philosophical doctrine so lacking in empirical support that Mayr’s successor at Harvard, Stephen Jay Gould, in a reckless moment once pronounced it "effectively dead." Yet neo-Darwinism is far from dead. On the contrary, it is continually proclaimed in textbooks and the media as unchallengeable fact. How does it happen that so many scientists and intellectuals, who pride themselves on their empiricism and open-mindedness, continue to accept an unempirical theory as scientific fact?
DEFINING THE ISSUES
The answer to that question lies in the definition of five key terms — creationism, evolution, science, religion, and truth. Once we understand how these words are used in evolutionary discourse, the continued ascendancy of neo-Darwinism will be no mystery, and we need no longer be deceived by claims that the theory is supported by "overwhelming evidence." As we shall see, there are powerful vested interests in this area that thrive in the midst of ambiguity and confusion. Those who insist on defining terms precisely and using them consistently may find themselves regarded with suspicion and hostility, and even accused of being enemies of science."
Read this excellent article here.
One of the regular commenters on the blog has chimed in as well. Naturalism is illogical in more than one way. Not only does it fail to account for the Universe, it cannot account for morality, because, well, I'll let him explain.Tim High says this:
"...So where does good and evil fit in with naturalism? Many assert that naturalism makes no attempt at defining or explaining good or evil, and this in not consistant. How would a naturalist explain the evil acts of men? Well, sociopathy and psychopathy are popular arguments as for reasons why men commit evil. But then is that evil? Isn't this the same as saying that there is no good or evil, just sane and insane? A bold assertion since we have not been able to even locate the human mind yet, let alone use psychology to explain all human behavior.
Skeptic's Dictionary:
Naturalism is a metaphysical theory that holds that all phenomena can be explained mechanistically in terms of natural (as opposed to supernatural) causes and laws. Naturalism posits that the universe is a vast "machine" or "organism," devoid of general purpose and indifferent to human needs and desires.
So naturalism asserts that the universe holds no purpose, and that all phenomena can be explained through scientific reason.
Hence, understanding God is unnecessary to understanding the world.
But both remarks pose a problem. Naturalism is a self-defeating philosophy because:
The supernaturalist, with his moral and spiritual purposes inherent in every aspect of reality, must come up with some sort of explanation for the existence of evil.
Naturalism has already claimed that all phenomena can be scientfically explained. Why not evil? Here is where the sociopath, psychopath, argument comes into play. But as I said, that is eliminating evil and replacing it with psychosis. Fine to do so, except, as we see later, naturalists are not above labeling certain acts of man as "good" or "evil". The naturalist unfairly tries to place the burden of explanation on a system based on faith. (belief without seeing) Since the naturalist asserts that all phenomena is natural, and can be scientifically explained, the naturalist is in no position whatsoever to leave the explanation of evil up to supernaturalists. For that matter, what is evil from the naturalist point of view, and what is the final authority to decide good vs. evil? Observe the skeptic's view of pedophile behavior:
Their desires may be natural but that does not mean that they should be fulfilled. Both the supernaturalist and the naturalist hold pedophiles and sexual predators accountable for their evil behavior."
Confining one's science to only what is natural is a failure, just as a morality with no basis or standard is nonsensical. The great failure of Darwinism is the inability to consider the possibility of a Designer. The great failure of Humanism is the inability to consider a Definer of Absolutes. Both science and philosophy based on....nothing....eventually come back to their beginnings.
Coming Attractions:
FRIDAY - FLOOD WATERS AND SALINITY
This is absolutely and certainly the subject of Friday's main post. I promised it was coming and have no intention of backing off....See you tomorrow!
How about the Fine-Tuning issue?
"...Astrophysicist George Smoot explains that the degree of fine-tuning required for life to exist on Earth would be similar to shooting an arrow all the way to the planet Pluto (four billion miles away) and having the arrow come within a hundred yards of the target.3
Do you like to bet? Would you be apt to bet if the odds were 5:1 against you? How about if they were 6,000:1 against you? If you were to bet on the universe developing without a Designer, the odds of our universe forming on its own is 10 to the 124th to 1.
Again, just because there is a vastly remote chance that all the requirements perfectly fell into place by chance, why would a reasonable person conclude that it actually did come about that way? If the odds of a jet making it safely to its destination were 10 to the 124th to 1, who would get on that plane? We are so reasonable in so many areas of life. We look at clay pots and watches and are willing to say that obviously people made these, even if we don't see those people. Could not the same logic be used when we consider the human body and the universe?
Don't the intricacies of the human body and the universe give reason to say, "Though I don't see him, it makes most sense to conclude that God exists"?" EveryStudent.com
Simply put, yes. This is one reason Darwinists get upset, because the simple solution (The Occam's Razor solution) is that God created all things and that is why all things appear to be designed. Because they are designed! It's all in the math, baby, for anyone not too blind to see it.
FAT CHANCE: The Failure of Evolution to Account for the Miracle of Life1
by Hank Hanegraaff
"No rational person looking at Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper would suggest that this masterpiece came into being through blind chance. Incredibly, however, many blindly believe that chance operating through natural processes can account for the masterful precision and design of the universe in which we live. The eye, the egg, and the earth are but three examples of organized complexity that can not be accounted for apart from the existence of an omniscient designer. As the science of statistical probability demonstrates, forming even a protein molecule by random processes is not only improbable; it is indeed impossible.
One of the primary dilemmas of naturalistic evolutionary theory is that it forces scientists to conclude that the cosmos in all of its complexity was created by chance. As biologist Jacques Monod, a Nobel prize winner, puts it, “Chance alone is at the source of every innovation, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, [is] at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution” (emphasis in original).2 Noted theologian R. C. Sproul explains, for the materialist chance is the “magic wand to make not only rabbits but entire universes appear out of nothing.”3 Sproul also warns that “if chance exists in any size, shape, or form, God cannot exist. The two are mutually exclusive. If chance existed, it would destroy God’s sovereignty. If God is not sovereign, he is not God. If he is not God, he simply is not. If chance is, God is not. If God is, chance is not” (emphasis in original).4"
Now, Darwinists try to distance themselves from the idea or even the very word, "random" even though it is inherent to their beliefs. I'll present one more small excerpt from this excellent article:
"....In Darwin’s Black Box, Behe further notes that there are black boxes within black boxes. As science advances, more and more of these black boxes are being opened, revealing an “unanticipated Lilliputian world” of enormous complexity that has pushed the theory of evolution beyond the breaking point.17 Evolution cannot account for the astonishingly complex synchronization process needed for, say, the shell of a developing egg to form from the calcium that is stored inside the bones of a bird’s body.18 This shell not only provides a protective covering for the egg but also provides a source of calcium for the developing embryo and a membrane through which it can breathe.19
Furthermore, evolution cannot account for the complex synchronization process needed to produce life from a single fertilized human egg. “The tapestry of life begins with a single thread.”20 Through a process of incredible precision, a microscopic egg in one human being is fertilized by a sperm cell from another. This process not only marks the beginning of a new life but also marks the genetic future of that life.21 A single fertilized egg (zygote), the size of a pinhead, contains chemical instructions that would fill more than 500,000 printed pages.22 The genetic information contained in this “encyclopedia” determines the potential physical aspect of the developing human from height to hair color. In time, the fertilized egg divides into the 30 trillion cells that make up the human body, including 12 billion brain cells, which form over 120 trillion connections.23
In Darwin’s day, a human egg was thought to be quite simple — for all practical purposes, little more than a microscopic blob of gelatin. Today we know that a fertilized egg is among the most organized, complex structures in the universe. In an age of scientific enlightenment, it is incredible to think that people are willing to maintain that something so vastly complex arose by chance. As Dr. James Coppedge, an expert on the science of statistical probability, puts it, “Chance requires ten billion tries on the average in order to count to ten.”24
In an experiment using 10 similar coins numbered one through 10, chance will succeed on the average only once in 10 billion attempts to get the number one followed in order by all the rest. Coppedge explains that if a person could draw and record one coin every five seconds day and night, it would still take over 1,500 years for chance, on average, to succeed just once in counting to 10.25 He goes on to demonstrate the difference intelligence makes by documenting that a child can do in minutes what chance would take a millennium to do. “Chance doesn’t have a chance when compared to the intelligent purpose of even a child.”26 Even more revealing is the fact that a child playing with the party game Scrabble can easily spell the phrase, “the theory of evolution,” while chance requires five million times the assumed age of the earth to accomplish the same feat.27" Read the entire article here -FAT CHANCE:
The Failure of Evolution to Account for the Miracle of Life.
MATH/SCHMATH. Darwinists are driven to hold on to their position for reasons other than scientific evidence. This is the reason why when mathematics slam-dunks their hypothesis, they just change the equation. For most Darwinists, they are philosophically incapable of allowing for the idea of Creation (or perhaps in many cases simply unwilling).
WHAT IS DARWINISM? Why Science Clings to a Fractured Paradigm
"Summary
The debate between creationism and Darwinism is often depicted as a dispute between naive biblical literalists, who ignore the overwhelming evidence for evolution, and scientifically enlightened intellectuals. But this is a caricature that serves the purpose of helping to perpetuate a world view hostile to Christian faith: atheistic naturalism. The debate hinges on five key terms: creationism, evolution, science, religion, and truth. Instead of trying to Christianize evolution we ought instead to challenge the assumption that atheistic naturalism is true.
The popular television game show Jeopardy reverses the usual order of things. Instead of being asked a question to which they must supply the answer, contestants are given the answer and asked to provide the appropriate question. This format suggests an insight that is applicable to law, to science, and indeed to just about everything. More important than knowing all the answers is knowing what question is being asked.
That insight is the starting point for my inquiry into Darwinian evolution and its relationship to creation, because Darwinism is the answer to two very different kinds of questions. First, Darwinian theory tells us how a certain amount of diversity in life forms can develop once we have various types of complex living organisms already in existence. If a small population of birds happens to migrate to an isolated island, for example, a combination of inbreeding, mutation, and natural selection may cause this isolated population to develop different characteristics from those possessed by the ancestral population on the mainland. When the theory is understood in this limited sense, Darwinian evolution is uncontroversial and has no important philosophical or theological implications.
Evolutionary biologists are not content merely to explain how variation occurs within limits. They aspire to answer a much broader question — how complex organisms like birds, flowers, and human beings came to exist at all. The Darwinian answer to this second question is that the creative force that produced complex plants and animals is essentially the same as the mechanism producing variations in flowers, insects, and domestic animals before our very eyes. In the words of Ernst Mayr, the dean of living Darwinists, "Transspecific evolution [i.e., macroevolution] is nothing but an extrapolation and magnification of the events that take place within populations and species."
Neo-Darwinian evolution in this broad sense is a philosophical doctrine so lacking in empirical support that Mayr’s successor at Harvard, Stephen Jay Gould, in a reckless moment once pronounced it "effectively dead." Yet neo-Darwinism is far from dead. On the contrary, it is continually proclaimed in textbooks and the media as unchallengeable fact. How does it happen that so many scientists and intellectuals, who pride themselves on their empiricism and open-mindedness, continue to accept an unempirical theory as scientific fact?
DEFINING THE ISSUES
The answer to that question lies in the definition of five key terms — creationism, evolution, science, religion, and truth. Once we understand how these words are used in evolutionary discourse, the continued ascendancy of neo-Darwinism will be no mystery, and we need no longer be deceived by claims that the theory is supported by "overwhelming evidence." As we shall see, there are powerful vested interests in this area that thrive in the midst of ambiguity and confusion. Those who insist on defining terms precisely and using them consistently may find themselves regarded with suspicion and hostility, and even accused of being enemies of science."
Read this excellent article here.
One of the regular commenters on the blog has chimed in as well. Naturalism is illogical in more than one way. Not only does it fail to account for the Universe, it cannot account for morality, because, well, I'll let him explain.Tim High says this:
"...So where does good and evil fit in with naturalism? Many assert that naturalism makes no attempt at defining or explaining good or evil, and this in not consistant. How would a naturalist explain the evil acts of men? Well, sociopathy and psychopathy are popular arguments as for reasons why men commit evil. But then is that evil? Isn't this the same as saying that there is no good or evil, just sane and insane? A bold assertion since we have not been able to even locate the human mind yet, let alone use psychology to explain all human behavior.
Skeptic's Dictionary:
Naturalism is a metaphysical theory that holds that all phenomena can be explained mechanistically in terms of natural (as opposed to supernatural) causes and laws. Naturalism posits that the universe is a vast "machine" or "organism," devoid of general purpose and indifferent to human needs and desires.
So naturalism asserts that the universe holds no purpose, and that all phenomena can be explained through scientific reason.
Hence, understanding God is unnecessary to understanding the world.
But both remarks pose a problem. Naturalism is a self-defeating philosophy because:
The supernaturalist, with his moral and spiritual purposes inherent in every aspect of reality, must come up with some sort of explanation for the existence of evil.
Naturalism has already claimed that all phenomena can be scientfically explained. Why not evil? Here is where the sociopath, psychopath, argument comes into play. But as I said, that is eliminating evil and replacing it with psychosis. Fine to do so, except, as we see later, naturalists are not above labeling certain acts of man as "good" or "evil". The naturalist unfairly tries to place the burden of explanation on a system based on faith. (belief without seeing) Since the naturalist asserts that all phenomena is natural, and can be scientifically explained, the naturalist is in no position whatsoever to leave the explanation of evil up to supernaturalists. For that matter, what is evil from the naturalist point of view, and what is the final authority to decide good vs. evil? Observe the skeptic's view of pedophile behavior:
Their desires may be natural but that does not mean that they should be fulfilled. Both the supernaturalist and the naturalist hold pedophiles and sexual predators accountable for their evil behavior."
Confining one's science to only what is natural is a failure, just as a morality with no basis or standard is nonsensical. The great failure of Darwinism is the inability to consider the possibility of a Designer. The great failure of Humanism is the inability to consider a Definer of Absolutes. Both science and philosophy based on....nothing....eventually come back to their beginnings.
Coming Attractions:
FRIDAY - FLOOD WATERS AND SALINITY
This is absolutely and certainly the subject of Friday's main post. I promised it was coming and have no intention of backing off....See you tomorrow!