God versus Darwin - When nothing means everything
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the Earth. What was BEFORE the beginning? By definition, nothing. At least, nothing material. There was no matter, no time, no change, no energy, no entropy, nothing. Some people like to think that nothing made itself into a Universe that is fine-tuned for life on Earth and situated so that the Universe itself can be observed and understood by the inhabitants of Earth. I say that a Supernatural Creator made all things material ex nihilo, from nothing. We see two remarkable signs of the supernatural within the natural, two things that are of immense importance to every man.
Information.
Life.
Two nails in the Darwinist coffin:
1) INFORMATION IS NOT MATERIAL IN NATURE OR FORM
It took a few months to get it to be said by Darwinists but they finally gave the correct response: "...this post is also from the mind that defines "Information" as the weightless and massless, intelligent transmission of intelligence. I mean, how awesome is that?"
Pretty awesome! As previously stated, information itself is not a material, not a medium, but is intelligence that is transmitted through a medium. My previous illustration demonstrates this easily.
An excerpt: "The guy who coined the phrase, "global village", McLuhan recognized that the rapid growth of new methods of communication would revolutionize the world. He sought to quantify and identify the growth, to analyze the effects of such growth and recognize patterns within the process. He came to several conclusions based upon the idea that information was part of the material world. He was wrong, even though many of his conclusions were pretty accurate. The medium is NOT the message. Information is intelligence transmitted. What we commonly call information is actually the translation of a message into a material form. One must not confuse the medium or the method for the message itself. A message is a transfer of intelligence and information is that intelligence which is being transmitted from one entity to another.
For the naturalistic atheistic materialist, the problem is unsolvable. Information IS the massless, weightless part of the puzzle of living organisms that has no materialistic explanation. Nor can it have one, because chance is not intelligent. Darwinists are the people who expect you to walk along and find Paley's watch and expect that is just happened to occur by chance. In all fairness, I will quote from a source that is not a big fan of Paley's argument:
" The classic statement of the teleological argument is that of William Paley in his Natural Theology. Paley likened the universe to a watch. Like a watch, he said, the universe consists of many complex parts functioning in harmony towards some useful end. In a watch the various parts are ordered such that they measure time; in the universe, such that they support life. The two are, in this respect, similar. This comparison forms the basis of Paley’s argument for intelligent design.
In the case of a watch we take these properties to constitute evidence of design. If we were to stumble across a watch in a natural environment, lying on a heath, to cite Paley’s example, then we would instantly know, because of its order and complexity, that it was designed. Order and complexity are the marks of design.
If order and complexity constitute evidence of design in the case of a watch, though, then they must also constitute evidence of design in the case of the universe. The case of the watch thus illustrates the fact that the order and complexity of the universe is evidence that the universe was designed. Insofar as the universe is observed to consist of many different parts functioning in harmony to accomplish a purpose, then, we have reason to believe that it was created for that purpose by an intelligent agent.
The inference from the order and complexity of a watch to its being designed is not dependent on knowledge of how watches are made. If we were to stumble across a watch in a natural environment, then we would instantly know that it was designed even without any knowledge of how watches are made or where watches come from. It is therefore no objection to Paley’s argument that we know how watches are made but do not know how universes are made. Order and complexity are together sufficient to support the inference to a designer even without any knowledge at all of the origins of universes. We need not have prior knowledge of how universes are made in order to run Paley’s argument to design.
Nor is it an objection to Paley’s argument that the flaws in the universe, the disorder or failure to accomplish its purpose, count against the claim that it is designed. Even in a watch that sometimes breaks, or runs slow, ordered complexity suggest design; the same must surely hold for the universe.
Not only can we infer from the analogy between the order and complexity of a watch and the order and complexity of the universe that the universe has a designer, we can also infer something about what this designer is like. For the universe is not only ordered and complex in the same way as a watch, but it is so on a much grander scale. The order and complexity of the universe far exceeds that of a watch, and we may therefore infer that the designer of the universe is correspondingly greater than designers of watches.
One objection to this argument is that the analogy between a watch and the universe is too weak to support the inference to a designer of the universe, that there are better alternative analogies available that imply different views of the universe’s origins. Another objection is that arguments from analogy are too limited in the kinds of conclusion that they can support, and so force those who use them into an anthropomorphism that is inconsistent with theism. A further problem is that the principle that ordered complexity implies a designer applies no more to the universe than it does to God, inviting the question Who created God?
I say that other questions that arise from the complexity and design of the Universe concerning the nature and identity of a Creator are not the issue in discussion organisms found on Earth. We can have those discussions. But first we have been discussing the possibilities of Darwinist evolution and since there is no possible way for information to enter the cell and no source of information available in the natural world I would say that the application of Paley's Watch is perfect for organisms. Organisms are understood now to be full of information packed into the DNA and the precision of the reproduction process is such that it is preloaded with choices that are selected for mutations and copying errors so that most non-lethal mutations do not cause problems for the gene pool as a whole. Never have Darwinists produced one example of an organism gaining new information, they always find speciation and trumpet it as a Darwinist triumph and then we discover that information is lost or transferred, never gained. Neither is any new kind of creature ever formed. Darwinism never even gets off the starting line.
Not only does Paley's Watch apply, for we know we will not find a watch laying around that simply happened because a tornado went through a junkyard, but also that someone had to wind the watch and set the time! All creatures are not only designed and packed with information, they are also alive and responsive to the world around them.
Glen Miller said this about consciousness: "Consciousness" has attracted a great deal of attention, esp. in the last 50 years or so. There are numerous attempts daily(!) to 'reduce it' to physical processes (with or without the intermediate 'biological' half-way house). I personally am not convinced that we can even 'objectify' it adequately, since it is basically experienced 1) from 'within' (we study it from 'without') and 2) our experience of it from 'without' is so heavily conditioned by the presence of 'will' as to make our results highly questionable. Although consensus philosophy of science assumes that this reduction 'obtains' they have essentially given up on demonstrating it! (see the Books section readings).
At this point, I consider consciousness to be 'irreducible' in content, like 'fear'...you cannot define it except ostensibly. [To be fair, I don't think we do much better with terms like 'matter' or 'nature' or 'existence' or 'essence' or 'individuation' either--so I don't think this is a major objection...but I have taken a stab at definitions of existence in the Wall section]
As for how the consciousness interacts with the neuro-stuff...well, I have my naive, pet theory. I think the will has the ability to create patterns of minute electrical charges (ex nihilo--sorta like the virtual electrons/photons/gauge particles of quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory, eh?) in the brain, that 'route' the massive parallel flows that are characteristic of all macro-level operations...much as a train switch or rudder of ship...not many such electrons (or whatever) are truly necessary to make massive shifts in the patterns.
But what about the observability of this suggested mechanism? What about its predictive power? I have found it to be surprisingly powerful as a predictive model. For example, almost every time my consciousness 'wills' to press the letter H on this keyboard, my arm/finger movements do just that!
Watch...HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH...see? Amazing!
Now, I KNOW what some of you out there are probably thinking--something like "hey, wait a minute...how can you demonstrate that your 'willing' produced the neuro-stuff that produced the motion? If you can't demonstrate how the 'exchange' or 'interface' worked, why should we believe you?" And to this I simply ask if you have been tracking the methods and procedures of sub-atomic physics for the last 50 years. That 'hard science' area has so many more unobservables than does my full-blown theological system!...and they infer the 'existence' of those particles, by the production of macro-level consequences (such as bubble-chamber tracks) WITHOUT any 'inspection' or 'demonstration' of the intermediate processes or interfaces. The strange languages of quantum field theory, quantum electrodynamics, and quantum chromodynamics are accepted because of their PREDICTIVE power alone. So...watch me again...HHHHHHHHHHHHHH...it worked again. (There are some qualifications to this argument, but they will have to wait till I have made more progress on the other pages.)
(How to get to all of the other pages)
2) LIFE IS NOT MATERIAL IN NATURE OR FORM
A movie - 21 Grams - was made based on the assertion by a Dr. Duncan MacDougall from the early 20th century that a human soul has a weight and that the body loses that weight at the moment of death. Naturally such an urban legend would be addressed by Snopes. There is no clinical study done that actually supports such an assertion. At the moment of death a body remains the same in terms of mass and chemical composition as it was in life but upon death a host of processes begin. One reason that the gradualistic idea of rock layers is preposterous is that it requires unusual circumstances to preserve bodies. Once an organism dies there are immediate changes as putrefaction begins and carrion critters begin working on the remains. Otherwise we would have five million dead possum fossils formed by the sides of roads. But no scientist has been able to define life in a materialistic way.
The spark of life and the presence of consciousness, did those arise from a primordial soup and bolts of lightning? How so if they are not even material in nature? You cannot put a gram of "life" on a slide to examine under a microscope. An intelligent Christian would no more expect "the soul" to have mass and weight than he would expect God to be a material being. God is supernatural and preexistent. He formed time and matter and energy as He made the Universe and He also gave organisms something we call life. We have become pretty good at determining whether something is alive or not. But we can only use descriptive terms for evidence that something is alive rather than be able to define life itself. Can you define it? These guys give it a try:
"life, although there is no universal agreement as to a definition of life, its biological manifestations are generally considered to be organization, metabolism, growth, irritability, adaptation, and reproduction. Protozoa perform, in a single cell, the same life functions as those carried on by the complex tissues and organs of humans and other highly developed organisms. The attributes of life are inherent in such minute structures as viruses, bacteria, and genes, just as they are in the whale and the giant sequoia. In seeking an understanding of life, scientists have broken down many barriers that once separated the physical sciences from the biological sciences; a result of the growth of biochemistry, biophysics, and other interrelated fields of study has been a better understanding of the composition and functioning of living tissues of all kinds."
Oh, okay. That didn't do the trick. How about these guys?
No matter how you define life, science cannot pin it down and certainly has never been able to identify it as a substance, a force, a particle or a wave. We have not discovered the subatomic particles of life. Life does not seem to have material substance...and yet it exists and those people who have it also have free will and, if during their one shot at life they decide that life itself is just an accident and that accidents and mistakes and epiphanies are responsible for this highly complex universe full of highly complex organisms packed with information then they will face the Creator God with no excuses.
When you choose Darwin and chance as the explanation for everything then you are denying the idea of God and denying the existence of absolutes such as right and wrong. This is no light decision. If indeed there is a Creator God who has communicated His existence through the Bible and has signed life with the signature of DNA and if man refuses to recognize Him in life, then man will recognize Him in death.
I carry on because in the long run I have the hope that some will reconsider the propaganda that has been assailing their senses from childhood and think seriously about the massive problems of Darwinism and the complete emptiness of Atheism and seek to find truth in the possibility of a Creator God. I believe anyone who sincerely seeks God will find Him.
Information.
Life.
Two nails in the Darwinist coffin:
1) INFORMATION IS NOT MATERIAL IN NATURE OR FORM
It took a few months to get it to be said by Darwinists but they finally gave the correct response: "...this post is also from the mind that defines "Information" as the weightless and massless, intelligent transmission of intelligence. I mean, how awesome is that?"
Pretty awesome! As previously stated, information itself is not a material, not a medium, but is intelligence that is transmitted through a medium. My previous illustration demonstrates this easily.
An excerpt: "The guy who coined the phrase, "global village", McLuhan recognized that the rapid growth of new methods of communication would revolutionize the world. He sought to quantify and identify the growth, to analyze the effects of such growth and recognize patterns within the process. He came to several conclusions based upon the idea that information was part of the material world. He was wrong, even though many of his conclusions were pretty accurate. The medium is NOT the message. Information is intelligence transmitted. What we commonly call information is actually the translation of a message into a material form. One must not confuse the medium or the method for the message itself. A message is a transfer of intelligence and information is that intelligence which is being transmitted from one entity to another.
I will use an example I presented previously in greater detail. Suppose I have a notepad and a pen. I show you the items. Nothing has been written upon the notepad. I put them on a scale and weigh them. I put you on a scale and weigh you. I weigh myself.
Now I take the pen and draw a bunch of quick scribbles and lines on the pad in a random way. I show it to you. You do not perceive a message from me on the notepad. I weigh the pad and paper and the weight is unchanged. You stand on the scale and your weight is unchanged. I weigh myself and my weight is unchanged.
Now I take the pen and write "Jesus rose from the dead on Easter." You are able to read this message. I have transmitted information to you. I now weigh the notepad and paper and the weight remains the same. You get on the scale and you weigh the same. I get on the scale and I weigh the same. But now you and I both agree that something has passed between you and I. I have transmitted information to you without passing anything material to you. Maybe you already know that Jesus rose from the dead and when. Maybe you didn't know it, or maybe you don't believe it. But you know that I transmitted that message to you whether you agree with it or not."
For the naturalistic atheistic materialist, the problem is unsolvable. Information IS the massless, weightless part of the puzzle of living organisms that has no materialistic explanation. Nor can it have one, because chance is not intelligent. Darwinists are the people who expect you to walk along and find Paley's watch and expect that is just happened to occur by chance. In all fairness, I will quote from a source that is not a big fan of Paley's argument:
" The classic statement of the teleological argument is that of William Paley in his Natural Theology. Paley likened the universe to a watch. Like a watch, he said, the universe consists of many complex parts functioning in harmony towards some useful end. In a watch the various parts are ordered such that they measure time; in the universe, such that they support life. The two are, in this respect, similar. This comparison forms the basis of Paley’s argument for intelligent design.
In the case of a watch we take these properties to constitute evidence of design. If we were to stumble across a watch in a natural environment, lying on a heath, to cite Paley’s example, then we would instantly know, because of its order and complexity, that it was designed. Order and complexity are the marks of design.
If order and complexity constitute evidence of design in the case of a watch, though, then they must also constitute evidence of design in the case of the universe. The case of the watch thus illustrates the fact that the order and complexity of the universe is evidence that the universe was designed. Insofar as the universe is observed to consist of many different parts functioning in harmony to accomplish a purpose, then, we have reason to believe that it was created for that purpose by an intelligent agent.
The inference from the order and complexity of a watch to its being designed is not dependent on knowledge of how watches are made. If we were to stumble across a watch in a natural environment, then we would instantly know that it was designed even without any knowledge of how watches are made or where watches come from. It is therefore no objection to Paley’s argument that we know how watches are made but do not know how universes are made. Order and complexity are together sufficient to support the inference to a designer even without any knowledge at all of the origins of universes. We need not have prior knowledge of how universes are made in order to run Paley’s argument to design.
Nor is it an objection to Paley’s argument that the flaws in the universe, the disorder or failure to accomplish its purpose, count against the claim that it is designed. Even in a watch that sometimes breaks, or runs slow, ordered complexity suggest design; the same must surely hold for the universe.
Not only can we infer from the analogy between the order and complexity of a watch and the order and complexity of the universe that the universe has a designer, we can also infer something about what this designer is like. For the universe is not only ordered and complex in the same way as a watch, but it is so on a much grander scale. The order and complexity of the universe far exceeds that of a watch, and we may therefore infer that the designer of the universe is correspondingly greater than designers of watches.
One objection to this argument is that the analogy between a watch and the universe is too weak to support the inference to a designer of the universe, that there are better alternative analogies available that imply different views of the universe’s origins. Another objection is that arguments from analogy are too limited in the kinds of conclusion that they can support, and so force those who use them into an anthropomorphism that is inconsistent with theism. A further problem is that the principle that ordered complexity implies a designer applies no more to the universe than it does to God, inviting the question Who created God?
I say that other questions that arise from the complexity and design of the Universe concerning the nature and identity of a Creator are not the issue in discussion organisms found on Earth. We can have those discussions. But first we have been discussing the possibilities of Darwinist evolution and since there is no possible way for information to enter the cell and no source of information available in the natural world I would say that the application of Paley's Watch is perfect for organisms. Organisms are understood now to be full of information packed into the DNA and the precision of the reproduction process is such that it is preloaded with choices that are selected for mutations and copying errors so that most non-lethal mutations do not cause problems for the gene pool as a whole. Never have Darwinists produced one example of an organism gaining new information, they always find speciation and trumpet it as a Darwinist triumph and then we discover that information is lost or transferred, never gained. Neither is any new kind of creature ever formed. Darwinism never even gets off the starting line.
Not only does Paley's Watch apply, for we know we will not find a watch laying around that simply happened because a tornado went through a junkyard, but also that someone had to wind the watch and set the time! All creatures are not only designed and packed with information, they are also alive and responsive to the world around them.
Glen Miller said this about consciousness: "Consciousness" has attracted a great deal of attention, esp. in the last 50 years or so. There are numerous attempts daily(!) to 'reduce it' to physical processes (with or without the intermediate 'biological' half-way house). I personally am not convinced that we can even 'objectify' it adequately, since it is basically experienced 1) from 'within' (we study it from 'without') and 2) our experience of it from 'without' is so heavily conditioned by the presence of 'will' as to make our results highly questionable. Although consensus philosophy of science assumes that this reduction 'obtains' they have essentially given up on demonstrating it! (see the Books section readings).
At this point, I consider consciousness to be 'irreducible' in content, like 'fear'...you cannot define it except ostensibly. [To be fair, I don't think we do much better with terms like 'matter' or 'nature' or 'existence' or 'essence' or 'individuation' either--so I don't think this is a major objection...but I have taken a stab at definitions of existence in the Wall section]
As for how the consciousness interacts with the neuro-stuff...well, I have my naive, pet theory. I think the will has the ability to create patterns of minute electrical charges (ex nihilo--sorta like the virtual electrons/photons/gauge particles of quantum electrodynamics and quantum field theory, eh?) in the brain, that 'route' the massive parallel flows that are characteristic of all macro-level operations...much as a train switch or rudder of ship...not many such electrons (or whatever) are truly necessary to make massive shifts in the patterns.
But what about the observability of this suggested mechanism? What about its predictive power? I have found it to be surprisingly powerful as a predictive model. For example, almost every time my consciousness 'wills' to press the letter H on this keyboard, my arm/finger movements do just that!
Watch...HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH...see? Amazing!
Now, I KNOW what some of you out there are probably thinking--something like "hey, wait a minute...how can you demonstrate that your 'willing' produced the neuro-stuff that produced the motion? If you can't demonstrate how the 'exchange' or 'interface' worked, why should we believe you?" And to this I simply ask if you have been tracking the methods and procedures of sub-atomic physics for the last 50 years. That 'hard science' area has so many more unobservables than does my full-blown theological system!...and they infer the 'existence' of those particles, by the production of macro-level consequences (such as bubble-chamber tracks) WITHOUT any 'inspection' or 'demonstration' of the intermediate processes or interfaces. The strange languages of quantum field theory, quantum electrodynamics, and quantum chromodynamics are accepted because of their PREDICTIVE power alone. So...watch me again...HHHHHHHHHHHHHH...it worked again. (There are some qualifications to this argument, but they will have to wait till I have made more progress on the other pages.)
(How to get to all of the other pages)
2) LIFE IS NOT MATERIAL IN NATURE OR FORM
A movie - 21 Grams - was made based on the assertion by a Dr. Duncan MacDougall from the early 20th century that a human soul has a weight and that the body loses that weight at the moment of death. Naturally such an urban legend would be addressed by Snopes. There is no clinical study done that actually supports such an assertion. At the moment of death a body remains the same in terms of mass and chemical composition as it was in life but upon death a host of processes begin. One reason that the gradualistic idea of rock layers is preposterous is that it requires unusual circumstances to preserve bodies. Once an organism dies there are immediate changes as putrefaction begins and carrion critters begin working on the remains. Otherwise we would have five million dead possum fossils formed by the sides of roads. But no scientist has been able to define life in a materialistic way.
The spark of life and the presence of consciousness, did those arise from a primordial soup and bolts of lightning? How so if they are not even material in nature? You cannot put a gram of "life" on a slide to examine under a microscope. An intelligent Christian would no more expect "the soul" to have mass and weight than he would expect God to be a material being. God is supernatural and preexistent. He formed time and matter and energy as He made the Universe and He also gave organisms something we call life. We have become pretty good at determining whether something is alive or not. But we can only use descriptive terms for evidence that something is alive rather than be able to define life itself. Can you define it? These guys give it a try:
"life, although there is no universal agreement as to a definition of life, its biological manifestations are generally considered to be organization, metabolism, growth, irritability, adaptation, and reproduction. Protozoa perform, in a single cell, the same life functions as those carried on by the complex tissues and organs of humans and other highly developed organisms. The attributes of life are inherent in such minute structures as viruses, bacteria, and genes, just as they are in the whale and the giant sequoia. In seeking an understanding of life, scientists have broken down many barriers that once separated the physical sciences from the biological sciences; a result of the growth of biochemistry, biophysics, and other interrelated fields of study has been a better understanding of the composition and functioning of living tissues of all kinds."
Oh, okay. That didn't do the trick. How about these guys?
Pronunciation: \ˈlīf\
Function: noun
Inflected Form(s): plural lives \ˈlīvz\
Etymology: Middle English lif, from Old English lÄ«f; akin to Old English libban to live — more at live
Date: before 12th century
1 a : the quality that distinguishes a vital and functional being from a dead body b : a principle or force that is considered to underlie the distinctive quality of animate beings c : an organismic state characterized by capacity for metabolism, growth, reaction to stimuli, and reproduction
2 a : the sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual b : one or more aspects of the process of living
3 : biography 1
4 : spiritual existence transcending physical death
5 a : the period from birth to death b : a specific phase of earthly existence
6 : a way or manner of living
7 : livelihood
8 : a vital or living being; specifically : personlives were lost in the disaster>
9 : an animating and shaping force or principle
10 : spirit, animationdancing>
11 : the form or pattern of something existing in reality
12 : the period of duration, usefulness, or popularity of something
13 : the period of existence (as of a subatomic particle) — compare half-life
14 : a property (as resilience or elasticity) of an inanimate substance or object resembling the animate quality of a living being
15 : living beings (as of a particular kind or environment)
16 a : human activities b : animate activity and movement
17 : one providing interest and vigorparty>
18 : an opportunity for continued viability
19 capitalized Christian Science : god 1b
20 : something resembling animate life
2 a : the sequence of physical and mental experiences that make up the existence of an individual b : one or more aspects of the process of living
3 : biography 1
4 : spiritual existence transcending physical death
5 a : the period from birth to death b : a specific phase of earthly existence
6 : a way or manner of living
7 : livelihood
8 : a vital or living being; specifically : person
9 : an animating and shaping force or principle
10 : spirit, animation
11 : the form or pattern of something existing in reality
12 : the period of duration, usefulness, or popularity of something
13 : the period of existence (as of a subatomic particle) — compare half-life
14 : a property (as resilience or elasticity) of an inanimate substance or object resembling the animate quality of a living being
15 : living beings (as of a particular kind or environment)
16 a : human activities b : animate activity and movement
17 : one providing interest and vigor
18 : an opportunity for continued viability
19 capitalized Christian Science : god 1b
20 : something resembling animate life
No matter how you define life, science cannot pin it down and certainly has never been able to identify it as a substance, a force, a particle or a wave. We have not discovered the subatomic particles of life. Life does not seem to have material substance...and yet it exists and those people who have it also have free will and, if during their one shot at life they decide that life itself is just an accident and that accidents and mistakes and epiphanies are responsible for this highly complex universe full of highly complex organisms packed with information then they will face the Creator God with no excuses.
When you choose Darwin and chance as the explanation for everything then you are denying the idea of God and denying the existence of absolutes such as right and wrong. This is no light decision. If indeed there is a Creator God who has communicated His existence through the Bible and has signed life with the signature of DNA and if man refuses to recognize Him in life, then man will recognize Him in death.
I carry on because in the long run I have the hope that some will reconsider the propaganda that has been assailing their senses from childhood and think seriously about the massive problems of Darwinism and the complete emptiness of Atheism and seek to find truth in the possibility of a Creator God. I believe anyone who sincerely seeks God will find Him.