Skewering abiogenesis and serving it up hot and barbecued
We begin with fertile ground provided by a commenter. I will convert my part to this color so you see the back and forth and once and for all hoist him upon his own petard for all to see concerning the Law of Biogenesis:
"Creationism can't come up with a single testable, falsifiable claim, let alone confirm it, so it isn't included. Why should that be any other way?"
"Law of Biogenesis. Testable, falsifiable, confirmed. Game, set and match."
Why skip past the good stuff Radar? It's uncanny that someone of your vast ego so consistently skips past this question, whistling nervously. Well, not uncanny perhaps. But embarrassing.
So I just made a scientific statement (above) and now you are going to, hee hee, make me whistle nervously while skipping? What mighty power will you wield?
Radar, how is the impossibility of abiogenesis -
1. testable?
2. falsifiable?
3. tested?
4. confirmed?
I said that creationism couldn't come up with a single testable, falsifiable claim, let alone confirm it. In response, you provided nothing of the kind. And you can't.
Ah, but I did. The Law of Biogenesis falsifies a naturalistic materialistic view of life, for life does not appear spontaneously and we know that organisms are clearly designed with a remarkable coding system, information and built-in redundancies in both systems and feature choices. The Law of Biogenesis has provided us with consistent and repeatable results for well over 150 years.
Think about each of these questions. Apply all you know about logic and science, try to put aside prejudices and see if you can answer them.
If you really think that the law of biogenesis has the goods, then you should have no problem answering these questions (as you should have no problem answering Jon Woolf's questions, but those also have you running for the hills).
C'mon Radar, can you do it?
Yes, I can. First, specifically, the Law of Biogenesis states that life only comes from life. About 150 years of testing confirmed this to be true for higher life forms and eventually even to tiny microorganisms. Spontaneous generation was falsified and abiogenesis is just another term for spontaneous generation.
So, let's say that we are talking about another law, such as gravity. Gravitational forces have been proven conclusively to exist and on our planet we can say simply, barring ourside help, what goes up must come down. In other words, objects fall down.
But Woolf and other commenters do not like gravity because it is not in line with their worldview. What shall they do? Laws of gravity are established. Why, the obvious thing to do is assert that they will do research in ungravity!
Darwinists, how is the impossibility of ungravity -
1. testable?
2. falsifiable?
3. tested?
4. confirmed?
If you say, don't be ridiculous, gravitational laws have been confirmed and remained unchallenged for many decades. I will then say that the same is true of the Law of Biogenesis. If you say "show me one time something FELL UP", then I will say "show me one time that life poofed into existence."
cartoon
The Law of Biogenesis remains a law and you religious zealots can pretend it isn't there, rather like a toddler hiding your eyes from someone. But from a logical standpoint you are without argument. You are putting time and resources to waste, like defying Relativity and spending a lifetime seeking to build a time machine, or defying the Laws of Thermodynamics in seeking to prove there is a perpetual motion engine or simply like the scientific and religious community of Galileo's time, preferring their belief in geocentricism to his proof of a heliocentric solar system. You are unscientific religious kooks! But I mean that in the nicest possible way. I would rather that you were both informed and scientific.
The Law of Biogenesis:
"The law of biogenesis states that life only comes from already established life. This very important and fundamental scientific law can be credited to the work of Louis Pasteur and others. The findings rooted in repeated scientific experimentation and observation can be summarized as follows, Omne vivum ex ovo, which is Latin for, "all life is from life."
The law of biogenesis is not to be confused with Ernst Haeckel's biogenetic law.
Of course, this assumption relies heavily upon faith. There has never been a scientific observation of life arising from non-living matter (abiogenesis). It would, however, seem that the scientific community in its modern incarnation, coupled with atheism and naturalism, would rather build upon unsubstantiated theories such as abiogenesis, rather than follow well established, empirically tested, scientific laws such as biogenesis.
Louis Pasteur knew quite well after debunking current thinking that microorganisms do spontaneously arise, stated; "spontaneous generation is a dream," or in French it reads,
~ dusts off hands~
Now on to another blog post
Some of these arguments will be taken from the previous post, which is duly linked and attributed, so you can go back and read it here at your leisure. I will not repeat any of the links or references from that post in this one unless there is a particular need. If I put a quotation in blue, it will be from the book, THE WORLD’S GREATEST CREATION SCIENTISTS From Y1K to Y2K by David Coppedge
"Dr William Dembski is a mathematician and philosopher of science, who has recently transferred to the University of Texas at Irving as theology professor. In his preceding work, The Design Inference,1 Dembski developed the theoretical basis for his concept of ‘Complex Specified Information’ (CSI). Such systems conform to an independently recognizable pattern (i.e., they can be ‘specified’) but have a vanishing probability of arising guided only by natural laws or random processes. Such systems can only be the product of deliberate intelligent design. The key elements of The Design Inference were discussed in this journal2 and overlapping ideas and examples will be avoided here.
In Intelligent Design, Dembski has reviewed many of the earlier ideas in The Design Inference in less technical detail, and added new thoughts and explanations of much relevance to the evolution vs creation debate. Only a few highlights can be illustrated here.
Professor Behe, who wrote the foreword, espouses a sister concept he calls ‘Irreducible Complexity’ (IC), and his own work3 has also been discussed in this journal.4 Systems have IC when a number of components must be present together as an integrated unit for the overall function to be possible. Removal of one part deactivates the system and provides nothing for natural selection to act upon. Behe’s challenge to explain how his biochemical examples could have arisen by any series of steps from a simpler starting point remains unanswered, and his critics have been rebutted on the internet.5
Both IC and CSI have caused much discomfort in the naturalistic scientific community, because the conclusion appears irresistible that, without an intelligent causal agent, current reductionist claims are vacuous. This has gone so far, that a well-known University of Chicago mathematics professor, who taught Dembski complexity theory and was mentioned with gratitude in The Design Inference, asked that his name be removed from that book. This is despite his contribution to the prestigious Cambridge series of technical mathematical books, Studies in Probability, Induction, and Decision Theory.
Both Dembski and Behe point out correctly that their approaches to looking at what appear to be intelligently designed functional systems are based on perfectly acceptable scientific methodologies. The theological implications have been carefully downplayed so far. Nevertheless, any reasonable scientific model for origins should not be allowed to ignore details which constrain various materialistic proposals, irrespective of religious convictions.
Behe continues to be publicly coy about his theological viewpoints. In this book Dembski reveals his own thinking in a non-confrontational manner: the biblical claims are reasonable for the intelligent person. We read (p.3), ‘Intelligent design is three things: a scientific research program that investigates the effects of intelligent causes; an intellectual movement that challenges Darwinism and its naturalistic legacy; and a way of understanding divine action.’ The first aspect was focused on earlier1,2 and now he continues with the next two aspects."
What is most important to note from the above, and indeed from much of the article is that Darwinists make a number of huge mistakes in their thinking and they are in fact so huge and staggeringly absurd that people don't think critically about them. Darwinism should have been discarded when the design implications of DNA and cellular structures and systems became known.
Any ordinary person walking down a gravel road would, when coming to an automobile parked by the side of the road, would recognize that the automobile was conceived, designed and built by someone using intelligence and creativity. Darwinists expect us to walk down the "road" of scientific research and, when coming upon a human cell (more complex than a mere automobile, by the way) we are expected to believe that it just somehow by a series of happy accidents just kind of happened to happen with no design or purpose or intelligence or creativity. Yet we closely examine a cell and we find complex coding, tremendous amounts of information and creative ways of providing redundancies and planned-for contingencies. How can this be? How did everyone get hoodwinked?
"In The Biotic Message6, Walter ReMine suggests there are imprints in the biological record which allow us to surmise there is but a single Creator who uses unifying concepts such as DNA, RNA, proteins, and ATP. Further, there is too much variety to be accommodated by any evolutionist theory of common descent.7"
Okay,everyone did NOT get hoodwinked. There have always been great men of science who follow a question to the end. Some questions have answers that involve a Creator. To deny this is to live in a world of just-so stories that would make Rudyard Kipling scoff.
Francis Bacon believed that one must test and deduct and apply logic to problems, looking to find answers to questions by reasoning and testing rather than appeals to authority. His "The New Organon" provided a basis for scientific methodology based on reason both deductive and inductive but dependent upon observation and previously proven laws rather than the establishment of an axiom followed by a rigorous attempt to defend it. Here is the essence of what he taught:
The scientific method consists of the following steps:
Step three - Darwinism identifies natural selection and is correct in part about the functionality thereof. Edward Blyth was the creationist who first proposed the operation of natural selection as a means by which God had designed creatures to be preserved by being able to adjust to varying conditions.:
Like Pascal, Bacon had a flair for the piquant proverb. His eponyms are words fitly spoken, like “apples of gold in settings of silver” (Proverbs 25:11). Here are some examples to get a taste of his thinking:
Francis Bacon said, "The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits but not when it misses"
Darwinism is nothing but misses. Roger Bacon sought to help mankind avoid the errors of superstition and magic. Too bad Darwinism is pretty much nothing but superstition and magic.
"...It could be argued that, rather than science vs. religion, the debate was not about the Bible at all, but about experimental science vs Greek philosophy. Galileo’s opponents were primarily academics and professors, not churchmen. To complicate matters, the Catholic church itself had compromised Biblical teachings with pagan Greek ideas about nature. Dava Sobel explains that Thomas Aquinas “grafted the fourth-century-B.C. writings of Aristotle onto thirteenth-century Christian doctrine. The compelling works of Saint Thomas Aquinas had reverberated through the Church and the nascent universities of Europe for hundreds of years, helping the word of Aristotle gain the authority of holy writ, long before Galileo began his book about the architecture of the heavens” (Sobel, p. 152). It was Aristotle, not Scripture, that taught the immutability and perfection of the heavenly spheres in contradistinction to the corruption of the earth. Finding blemishes on the moon and spots on the sun violated Aristotelian teachings, but not a word of Scripture. Galileo’s “heresy” was against Aristotle, not the Bible! He wrote, “To prohibit the whole science would be but to censure a hundred passages of Holy Scripture which teach us that the glory and greatness of Almighty God are marvelously discerned in all His works and divinely read in the open book of Heaven.”
Galileo believed that “Holy Scripture and Nature are both emanations from the divine word: the former dictated by the Holy Spirit, the latter the observant executrix of God’s commands” (Sobel, p. 64). There was no contradiction between the two, in his view, but he distrusted the fallibility of human interpretation: “Holy Scripture cannot err and the decrees therein contained are absolutely true and inviolable. I should only have added that, though Scripture cannot err, its expounders and interpreters are liable to err in many ways.”
"...Much has been made of “Pascal’s Wager,” a philosophical challenge usually unfairly oversimplified as follows: If you choose Christianity and it is false, you lose nothing. If you reject Christianity and it is true, you lose everything. Skeptics (and many Christians) feel this is a weak argument to become a Christian. It is, but it is not what Pascal meant. James Kiefer explains that the Wager is an educated choice, not a flip of the coin. Having decided that the evidence for Christianity is strong, and having decided that union with Christ is a worthy goal in life, it is the best bet to train for it like an athlete would train for the highest prize, even though the athlete cannot be sure he will win or the contest will even occur. Kiefer says, “Obviously, if Christ is an illusion, then nothing will move me closer to Him, and it does not matter what I do. But if He is not an illusion, then obviously seeking to love Him, trust Him, and obey Him is more likely to get me into a right relation with Him than the opposite strategy. And so it will be the one I take.” Understanding this, the Wager is not a blind hope that I’ll find myself on the right side after I die; it is a positive choice that will order my life and give me peace, joy, and purpose in the present. To avoid misrepresenting Pascal’s Wager, we encourage readers to read the argument in his own inimitable words in the Pensées. When used properly, it’s still a powerful argument for accepting Christ..."
"In this roster of great scientists who were Christians and creationists, occasionally one stands out as worthy of a gold medal. The requirements are stringent. The person needs to have performed exceptional scientific work, that produced some fundamental discovery, or advanced the scientific enterprise in a highly significant way; perhaps to be known as the father of a branch of science or the discoverer of a fundamental law of nature. Simultaneously, the person needs to have been a devout Christian whose personal life and character was befitting the honor (this eliminates Newton). Yet some who fulfilled both these qualifications did little to relate their Christian faith to their scientific work; they were Sunday Christians and weekday secular scientists.
I can go on and on about the Creationist Christian scientists who understood that a logical Creator would create a logical Universe and devoted themselves to discovery. Like James Maxwell, who managed to bring laws of electricity and magnetism together in a unified theory, or the remarkable Michael Faraday, a pioneer in electricity and a brilliant inventor whose photo, alongside Isaac Newton's and James Clerk Maxwell's adorned the wall of Albert Einstein's study. Men like these have done great things, providing steps for those coming along behind to get one step closer to truth and understanding in various fields. Carolus Linnaeus, whose system of classification was an early attempt at Baraminology. Morse code inventor Samuel Morse, the first to promote and succeed at a system of instantaneous communication. We can include Joule and Lord Kelvin and Mendel and Louis Pasteur and rocket scientist par excellence Werner Von Braun. One of my very first posts listed a few current scientists who are creationists and have won awards and honors in their fields despite that fact.
merlin
Science owes its very existence to Christian creationists who fought against axiomatic, superstitious and magical thinking in favor of step-by-step investigation. Darwinism is on the side of Descartes and Aristotle and Merlin. Creation science is on the side of reasonable and logical investigation as established by the greats like Bacon and Boyle and Maxwell.
"Creationism can't come up with a single testable, falsifiable claim, let alone confirm it, so it isn't included. Why should that be any other way?"
"Law of Biogenesis. Testable, falsifiable, confirmed. Game, set and match."
Why skip past the good stuff Radar? It's uncanny that someone of your vast ego so consistently skips past this question, whistling nervously. Well, not uncanny perhaps. But embarrassing.
So I just made a scientific statement (above) and now you are going to, hee hee, make me whistle nervously while skipping? What mighty power will you wield?
Radar, how is the impossibility of abiogenesis -
1. testable?
2. falsifiable?
3. tested?
4. confirmed?
I said that creationism couldn't come up with a single testable, falsifiable claim, let alone confirm it. In response, you provided nothing of the kind. And you can't.
Ah, but I did. The Law of Biogenesis falsifies a naturalistic materialistic view of life, for life does not appear spontaneously and we know that organisms are clearly designed with a remarkable coding system, information and built-in redundancies in both systems and feature choices. The Law of Biogenesis has provided us with consistent and repeatable results for well over 150 years.
Think about each of these questions. Apply all you know about logic and science, try to put aside prejudices and see if you can answer them.
If you really think that the law of biogenesis has the goods, then you should have no problem answering these questions (as you should have no problem answering Jon Woolf's questions, but those also have you running for the hills).
C'mon Radar, can you do it?
Yes, I can. First, specifically, the Law of Biogenesis states that life only comes from life. About 150 years of testing confirmed this to be true for higher life forms and eventually even to tiny microorganisms. Spontaneous generation was falsified and abiogenesis is just another term for spontaneous generation.
So, let's say that we are talking about another law, such as gravity. Gravitational forces have been proven conclusively to exist and on our planet we can say simply, barring ourside help, what goes up must come down. In other words, objects fall down.
But Woolf and other commenters do not like gravity because it is not in line with their worldview. What shall they do? Laws of gravity are established. Why, the obvious thing to do is assert that they will do research in ungravity!
Darwinists, how is the impossibility of ungravity -
1. testable?
2. falsifiable?
3. tested?
4. confirmed?
If you say, don't be ridiculous, gravitational laws have been confirmed and remained unchallenged for many decades. I will then say that the same is true of the Law of Biogenesis. If you say "show me one time something FELL UP", then I will say "show me one time that life poofed into existence."
The Law of Biogenesis remains a law and you religious zealots can pretend it isn't there, rather like a toddler hiding your eyes from someone. But from a logical standpoint you are without argument. You are putting time and resources to waste, like defying Relativity and spending a lifetime seeking to build a time machine, or defying the Laws of Thermodynamics in seeking to prove there is a perpetual motion engine or simply like the scientific and religious community of Galileo's time, preferring their belief in geocentricism to his proof of a heliocentric solar system. You are unscientific religious kooks! But I mean that in the nicest possible way. I would rather that you were both informed and scientific.
The Law of Biogenesis:
"The law of biogenesis states that life only comes from already established life. This very important and fundamental scientific law can be credited to the work of Louis Pasteur and others. The findings rooted in repeated scientific experimentation and observation can be summarized as follows, Omne vivum ex ovo, which is Latin for, "all life is from life."
The law of biogenesis is not to be confused with Ernst Haeckel's biogenetic law.
Biogenesis and Evolution
The general theory of evolution requires the violation of this law of science at some point in the distant past. In a letter that Charles Darwin wrote to J.D. Hooker (February 1871), he makes the remarkable suggestion that life may have begun in a;| “ | ... warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, lights, heat, electricity, etc. present, that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed. [1] [2] | ” |
Louis Pasteur knew quite well after debunking current thinking that microorganisms do spontaneously arise, stated; "spontaneous generation is a dream," or in French it reads,
| “ | La génération spontanée est une chimère. | ” |
References
- ↑ Darwin's warm pond idea is tested by Rebecca Morelle, BBC News
- ↑ What Darwin wrote
External Links
- Darwin's warm pond theory tested #1 by Stephen Jones
- Biogenesis by Answers.com
See Also
~ dusts off hands~
Now on to another blog post
Some of these arguments will be taken from the previous post, which is duly linked and attributed, so you can go back and read it here at your leisure. I will not repeat any of the links or references from that post in this one unless there is a particular need. If I put a quotation in blue, it will be from the book, THE WORLD’S GREATEST CREATION SCIENTISTS From Y1K to Y2K by David Coppedge
"Dr William Dembski is a mathematician and philosopher of science, who has recently transferred to the University of Texas at Irving as theology professor. In his preceding work, The Design Inference,1 Dembski developed the theoretical basis for his concept of ‘Complex Specified Information’ (CSI). Such systems conform to an independently recognizable pattern (i.e., they can be ‘specified’) but have a vanishing probability of arising guided only by natural laws or random processes. Such systems can only be the product of deliberate intelligent design. The key elements of The Design Inference were discussed in this journal2 and overlapping ideas and examples will be avoided here.
In Intelligent Design, Dembski has reviewed many of the earlier ideas in The Design Inference in less technical detail, and added new thoughts and explanations of much relevance to the evolution vs creation debate. Only a few highlights can be illustrated here.
Professor Behe, who wrote the foreword, espouses a sister concept he calls ‘Irreducible Complexity’ (IC), and his own work3 has also been discussed in this journal.4 Systems have IC when a number of components must be present together as an integrated unit for the overall function to be possible. Removal of one part deactivates the system and provides nothing for natural selection to act upon. Behe’s challenge to explain how his biochemical examples could have arisen by any series of steps from a simpler starting point remains unanswered, and his critics have been rebutted on the internet.5
Both IC and CSI have caused much discomfort in the naturalistic scientific community, because the conclusion appears irresistible that, without an intelligent causal agent, current reductionist claims are vacuous. This has gone so far, that a well-known University of Chicago mathematics professor, who taught Dembski complexity theory and was mentioned with gratitude in The Design Inference, asked that his name be removed from that book. This is despite his contribution to the prestigious Cambridge series of technical mathematical books, Studies in Probability, Induction, and Decision Theory.
Both Dembski and Behe point out correctly that their approaches to looking at what appear to be intelligently designed functional systems are based on perfectly acceptable scientific methodologies. The theological implications have been carefully downplayed so far. Nevertheless, any reasonable scientific model for origins should not be allowed to ignore details which constrain various materialistic proposals, irrespective of religious convictions.
Behe continues to be publicly coy about his theological viewpoints. In this book Dembski reveals his own thinking in a non-confrontational manner: the biblical claims are reasonable for the intelligent person. We read (p.3), ‘Intelligent design is three things: a scientific research program that investigates the effects of intelligent causes; an intellectual movement that challenges Darwinism and its naturalistic legacy; and a way of understanding divine action.’ The first aspect was focused on earlier1,2 and now he continues with the next two aspects."
What is most important to note from the above, and indeed from much of the article is that Darwinists make a number of huge mistakes in their thinking and they are in fact so huge and staggeringly absurd that people don't think critically about them. Darwinism should have been discarded when the design implications of DNA and cellular structures and systems became known.
Any ordinary person walking down a gravel road would, when coming to an automobile parked by the side of the road, would recognize that the automobile was conceived, designed and built by someone using intelligence and creativity. Darwinists expect us to walk down the "road" of scientific research and, when coming upon a human cell (more complex than a mere automobile, by the way) we are expected to believe that it just somehow by a series of happy accidents just kind of happened to happen with no design or purpose or intelligence or creativity. Yet we closely examine a cell and we find complex coding, tremendous amounts of information and creative ways of providing redundancies and planned-for contingencies. How can this be? How did everyone get hoodwinked?
"In The Biotic Message6, Walter ReMine suggests there are imprints in the biological record which allow us to surmise there is but a single Creator who uses unifying concepts such as DNA, RNA, proteins, and ATP. Further, there is too much variety to be accommodated by any evolutionist theory of common descent.7"
Okay,everyone did NOT get hoodwinked. There have always been great men of science who follow a question to the end. Some questions have answers that involve a Creator. To deny this is to live in a world of just-so stories that would make Rudyard Kipling scoff.
Roger Bacon, a 13th Century scholar, composed the first true Encyclopedia of science and promoted the idea that the study of the Universe and the Earth was both Godly and profitable. His concept that God's world could be understood would reverberate throughout Europe. Arabian thought, Greek thought and Church proclamations were often at odds and it could be unpopular and dangerous to ask questions and seek answers. Roger Bacon was at the forefront of the movement to make scientific study acceptable and philosophically sound.
"Bacon studied at Oxford under the eminent Bishop of Lyons, Robert Grosseteste, who advocated the study of nature as evidence of the Creator. Bacon performed systematic experiments on lenses and mirrors. When he caught the excitement of what experimental science could do, he became an ardent promoter of the experimental method as a way to understand the world, improve the human condition, and avoid the errors of superstition and magic. To Bacon, experimental science was superior to deduction from authority, having better accord with experience. Bacon also saw the value of science as an apologetic, to draw people to faith in Christ."
Sir Francis Bacon was a Christian who is credited with devising the "scientific method" which has been twisted by Darwinists in recent years.
"Although not a practicing scientist, Bacon is considered by many historians to be the “founder of modern science.” His philosophy and writings were largely responsible for igniting the scientific revolution in the 17th century. Numerous intellectuals like Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton seized on the “new philosophy” of Bacon that emphasized empiricism and induction. Casting aside dependence on authorities like Aristotle, the new science exploded on the scene, yielding a wealth of discoveries and inventions that has continued unabated to this day. But this “new philosophy” was really nothing new; it was a return to the principles of the Bible. The “founder of modern science” was a Bible-believing Christian, and Christian doctrine was the foundation of his thinking."
scientists
Francis Bacon believed that one must test and deduct and apply logic to problems, looking to find answers to questions by reasoning and testing rather than appeals to authority. His "The New Organon" provided a basis for scientific methodology based on reason both deductive and inductive but dependent upon observation and previously proven laws rather than the establishment of an axiom followed by a rigorous attempt to defend it. Here is the essence of what he taught:
I cannot reprint that article without permission, but to summarize he critiqued the four idols of THE TRIBE, THE CAVE, THE MARKETPLACE AND THE THEATRE. One often sees these four idols in the absurd proclamations of Darwinists, who will believe something because it is popular, because it is emotionally satisfying, because especially that everyone else is proclaiming it to be, because they so badly WANT it to be but alas...most importantly he insisted that when an idea does not fit the evidence, dump that idea. Francis Bacon may well have considered Darwinism when it was first presented, particularly since the more radical atheistic side of the paradigm was not at first pushed, but he would have soon abandoned it as impractical once completely familiar with it. There is certainly no excuse for a thinking rational human being to believe in Darwinism since the discovery of DNA!
The scientific method consists of the following steps:
- Observe some aspect of the universe or natural world.
- Define the aspect through a tentative description, called a hypothesis, that is consistent with what you have observed.
- Use the hypothesis to then predict, or essentially form experiments that compare what you predicted through a hypothesis and what actually happens.
- Test those predictions by repeated experimentation for further observation.
- Modify the hypothesis in light of the results.
- Repeat steps four and five until there are no discrepancies between hypothesis, prediction and observation. [2]
Using Bacon's method, steps one and two are beholden to a Creator God 'from the word go'. One must presume that we have a Universe that behaves according to logical laws and forces and patterns. If we actually had a randomly produced Universe, one could not expect logical laws and forces to be operational and if life were in existence today there would be no expectation that it would be there tomorrow. There would be no expectation of tomorrow!
Step three - Darwinism identifies natural selection and is correct in part about the functionality thereof. Edward Blyth was the creationist who first proposed the operation of natural selection as a means by which God had designed creatures to be preserved by being able to adjust to varying conditions.:
"...According to Loren C. Eiseley, Benjamin Franklin Professor of Anthropology and the History of Science at the University of Pennsylvania before his death, "the leading tenets of Darwin's work — the struggle for existence, variation, natural selection, and sexual selection — are all fully expressed" in a paper written by creationist Edward Blyth in 18351 (emphasis added). Unlike Darwin, however, Blyth saw natural selection as a preserving factor rather than as "a potentially liberalizing" one. According to this under-appreciated naturalist, the conserving principle was "intended by Providence to keep up the typical qualities of a species." Atypical variations, to use Eiseley's words, led to the animal's "discovery and destruction."2
Eiseley, not a creationist, wrote that "Blyth is more than a Darwinian precursor, he is, instead, a direct intellectual forebear. . . ." In Eiseley's estimation, Blyth "belongs in the royal line . . . one of the forgotten parents of a great classic." On the same page, Eiseley also affirmed that "Darwin made unacknowledged use of Blyth's work."3
Editor Kenneth Heuer concluded, "this is Eiseley's discovery." Darwin had "failed to acknowledge his obligation to Blyth."4 He did acknowledge others (and even Blyth peripherally), but, as Eiseley demonstrates persuasively, Darwin for some reason chose not to credit creationist Blyth with the key element in his theory — natural selection.
In addition to providing the reader with a chapter on Edward Blyth written by contemporary Arthur Grote, Dr. Eiseley furnished essays written by the creationist himself — essays that most assuredly were read by Charles Darwin. They originally appeared in The Magazine of Natural History in 1835, 1836, and 1837. Examples of how this naturalist honored his Creator are provided..."
Steps four, five and six all agree with the Creationist model. Organisms were generated by a Creator and had pre-existing information within the cell and the Designer's Signature, DNA, as a sophisticated coding mechanism. There is variation within kind and preservation of kind. More Bacon!
- Knowledge is power.
- Hope is a good breakfast, but it is a bad supper.
- Money is like muck, not good except that it be spread.
- Discretion in speech is more than eloquence.
- Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.
- To choose time is to save time.
- Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.
- God has placed no limits to the exercise of the intellect that he has given us, on this side of the grave.
- Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.
- The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits but not when it misses.
- A prudent question is one-half wisdom.
- Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
- To read without reflecting, is like eating without digesting.
Francis Bacon said, "The root of all superstition is that men observe when a thing hits but not when it misses"
Darwinism is nothing but misses. Roger Bacon sought to help mankind avoid the errors of superstition and magic. Too bad Darwinism is pretty much nothing but superstition and magic.
Galileo Galilei was threatened with expulsion and perhaps even death for promoting Copernican Heliocentricism. But consider what was actually at stake:
"...It could be argued that, rather than science vs. religion, the debate was not about the Bible at all, but about experimental science vs Greek philosophy. Galileo’s opponents were primarily academics and professors, not churchmen. To complicate matters, the Catholic church itself had compromised Biblical teachings with pagan Greek ideas about nature. Dava Sobel explains that Thomas Aquinas “grafted the fourth-century-B.C. writings of Aristotle onto thirteenth-century Christian doctrine. The compelling works of Saint Thomas Aquinas had reverberated through the Church and the nascent universities of Europe for hundreds of years, helping the word of Aristotle gain the authority of holy writ, long before Galileo began his book about the architecture of the heavens” (Sobel, p. 152). It was Aristotle, not Scripture, that taught the immutability and perfection of the heavenly spheres in contradistinction to the corruption of the earth. Finding blemishes on the moon and spots on the sun violated Aristotelian teachings, but not a word of Scripture. Galileo’s “heresy” was against Aristotle, not the Bible! He wrote, “To prohibit the whole science would be but to censure a hundred passages of Holy Scripture which teach us that the glory and greatness of Almighty God are marvelously discerned in all His works and divinely read in the open book of Heaven.”
Galileo believed that “Holy Scripture and Nature are both emanations from the divine word: the former dictated by the Holy Spirit, the latter the observant executrix of God’s commands” (Sobel, p. 64). There was no contradiction between the two, in his view, but he distrusted the fallibility of human interpretation: “Holy Scripture cannot err and the decrees therein contained are absolutely true and inviolable. I should only have added that, though Scripture cannot err, its expounders and interpreters are liable to err in many ways.”
Along this line, although relatively blameless himself, Galileo seems to have started a philosophy of interpretation that, taken too far, would later lead to a form of intellectual schizophrenia: the idea that the Bible is concerned only with spirit, while nature is the exclusive domain of science. In the modern world, this has gone to extremes. Some Christian creationists subscribe to a dual-revelation theory, that nature is just as authoritative a revelation from God as Scripture. This is a half-truth, for the Bible certainly teaches that the works of God declare His glory, but proponents of this view often fail to take into account the fallibility of human interpretation of natural revelation. They tend to accept whatever secular scientists say as authoritative, and mold the Bible to fit it. Secularists and atheists, on the other hand, are sometimes patronizingly willing to let religious people have everything they wish in the spiritual realm, as long as scientists retain their hegemony over the study of nature. Stephen Jay Gould, for instance, proposes a peace accord called “non-overlapping magisteria” (with a play on words from Catholic vocabulary), in which the church gets the art, music and theology, but science gets physics, chemistry and biology. In both these views, dual-revelation and NOMA, inevitably nature winds up devouring the spirit, and Scripture becomes the servant of secular science..."
Gould's "peace" is my call to warfare. There was and is no reason great science should give way to superstition and magical thinking of Darwinists who make great pronouncements with no real evidence to back them up time and time again...when they are not simply blatantly lying and changing or destroying evidence.
The real scientific method was what Kepler used, what Sir Isaac Newton used, it was how Maxwell approached his studies and it was the inspiration for the math genius Pascal to issue his famous wager:
"...Much has been made of “Pascal’s Wager,” a philosophical challenge usually unfairly oversimplified as follows: If you choose Christianity and it is false, you lose nothing. If you reject Christianity and it is true, you lose everything. Skeptics (and many Christians) feel this is a weak argument to become a Christian. It is, but it is not what Pascal meant. James Kiefer explains that the Wager is an educated choice, not a flip of the coin. Having decided that the evidence for Christianity is strong, and having decided that union with Christ is a worthy goal in life, it is the best bet to train for it like an athlete would train for the highest prize, even though the athlete cannot be sure he will win or the contest will even occur. Kiefer says, “Obviously, if Christ is an illusion, then nothing will move me closer to Him, and it does not matter what I do. But if He is not an illusion, then obviously seeking to love Him, trust Him, and obey Him is more likely to get me into a right relation with Him than the opposite strategy. And so it will be the one I take.” Understanding this, the Wager is not a blind hope that I’ll find myself on the right side after I die; it is a positive choice that will order my life and give me peace, joy, and purpose in the present. To avoid misrepresenting Pascal’s Wager, we encourage readers to read the argument in his own inimitable words in the Pensées. When used properly, it’s still a powerful argument for accepting Christ..."
I also want to commend to you devoted Christian and brilliant scientist Robert Boyle:
The third qualification involves advancing philosophical understanding of the relationship between science and Biblical Christianity, or actively combatting unbelief and skepticism. All these requirements were met with room to spare in the next honoree of this series, Robert Boyle. He not only can be considered a pillar of modern science – and one of its most eminent practitioners – but he also left the world a profound legacy of rich literature explaining the Christian foundation for science. The title of one of his many books was The Christian Virtuoso (i.e., Bible-believing scientist), and to historians, he was one of the best examples.
Like most in this series, Boyle’s life and adventures make for a good story, but let’s consider first some of the impacts he made on the practice of science:
(1) An emphasis on experiment instead of reason.
(2) Publication of experimental results.
(3) Popularization of scientific discoveries.
(4) Collaboration of scientists in professional societies.
(5) Mathematical formulations of laws.
(6) Putting all claims about nature, no matter the reputation of the authority, to the test of experiment.
(1) An emphasis on experiment instead of reason.
(2) Publication of experimental results.
(3) Popularization of scientific discoveries.
(4) Collaboration of scientists in professional societies.
(5) Mathematical formulations of laws.
(6) Putting all claims about nature, no matter the reputation of the authority, to the test of experiment.
Of course, no one works in a vacuum (no pun intended, as we will see); Boyle was not the only one to advance these ideals. He was influenced by Bacon, Galileo and Kepler before him, and there were contemporaries who also practiced one or more of these principles. But among his peers, Boyle was an eminent leader in all of them. He took the initiative where others stuck to old habits, and he led by example. He is the considered the father of chemistry and a law was named in his honor. The world’s first and oldest professional scientific society with the longest record of continuous publication is due largely to Robert Boyle and the colleagues he attracted with his energy, drive, and enthusiasm for science. That enthusiasm came directly out of his Christian faith. To Boyle, love of God came first, and everything else second. Science was a means to a higher end: loving God with all one’s heart, soul, strength, and mind..."
Science owes its very existence to Christian creationists who fought against axiomatic, superstitious and magical thinking in favor of step-by-step investigation. Darwinism is on the side of Descartes and Aristotle and Merlin. Creation science is on the side of reasonable and logical investigation as established by the greats like Bacon and Boyle and Maxwell.