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1. Gabriel August 21st, 2009 1:33 pm :

   Excellent article.  I am constantly amazed at the narrow-minded stupidity of the brilliant scientists who seem to base their hypotheses on assumptions which go against such child-like common sense.  Not only that - but they ridicule anyone who dares to disagree with these assumptions.  I would love to see more exposure of this kind - and hopefully for people who think to have the ability to express themselves in intelligent ways - unlike the way that so many creationists have done for so long - making themselves and others look stupid.

   I like the backward logic approach - everything man-made IS designed for a purpose. It’s also true that everything in nature (trees, water…) have purposes (multiple) - and designs… so the only thing left is it’s creator/designer… this is logic that a child can see… but not complex enough for a scientist… yet.

2. Dan A. September 12th, 2009 1:18 am :

   Here I come back, for a little bit.

   I think I’ve already said my piece on gay rights, premarital sex, and the (un)Biblical basis for the Pro-Life movement, so I”m going to ignore most of those articles.  You already know what i think on those issues.

   I’m glad you wrote this, Daniel, as it raises some key issues in the debate of evolution vs. creation.

   I’m not a man of science, so I can’t tell you why the amazing complexity of cells, eyes, and skin didn’t need a designer.

   I am, however, a man of reason, equal-mindedness, and truth-seeking, so I can tell you exactly why your comparison in this article is not valid.  I wish there was a gentler way to say it, but your analogy is flawed at the core.

   Here’s why.

   First of all, you’re talking about a historian, an archeologist.  This is not someone with a biology degree, and certainly not someone who’s involved in the study of evolution.

   Second of all, it is a spotlight on a new solo historian’s theory.  It’s not accepted into the the study of ancient history that Dr. Adovasio is correct.  This is just a new development to consider.  This finding has absolutely no bearing on whether we came from primates or not.  None whatsoever. 

   In fact, pushing the date back for the existence of people could actually help the argument for Creation, because the earlier humans existed, the greater chance that they were “always there.”  Do you really want to discredit this man?

   Even if we don’t look at those two points, your analogy does not work for one huge reason:  we have witnessed men make tools out of rock. 

   We have never witnessed someone, man or deity, create matter with their minds.  It’s never happened since we’ve been here, ever.  We can visit countries in Africa where they’re making similar tools like this today.  We see a man create a tool in a 3rd world country in 2009, then look at a tool dated 16,000 years ago, and we can make a hypothesis that people existed back then.

   On the question of whether the finding was a tool or a misshapen rock, I can’t comment, since I haven’t seen it, nor have expertise in primative tool-making.

   Lastly, you’re assuming that this finding makes scientists intellectually dishonest.  You’ve gone from attacking their beliefs to attacking their character, which never furthers anyone.  Since we’re talking about history, a lot of liberal Christians and non-religious people could say you’re intellectually dishonest for your beliefs.  I’m not doubting your intentions here.  I know you mean what you say.

   However, if you don’t know someone, and they’re not actively advocating violence, it’s best not to assume you know what’s in their hearts.  This is especially important when you’re making claims about evolutionary biologists based on what an archeologist says in a completely different field of research.

   –Dan

   P.S. — If they allowed signatures in comments, mine would say “Always open to new evidence.”  If there ever is enough reason to believe in creationism, I will accept it.  I’m just not swayed by, “We can’t figure out how this happened, so it must be by design.”

3. Daniel Kolenda September 12th, 2009 2:58 am :

   Hi Dan,

   All science is founded upon logic.  If logic is sound, shouldn’t it be able to be applied to any discipline whether history or biology.  The simple, unassailable logic here is the same as was used by William Paley in the 1800’s when he used the watchmaker analogy. Also Fontanelle presented almost identical reasoning in the 1600’s. You can find this same logic throughout the history of philosophy and it still has never been countered except by clumsy, bias arguments.

   Complexity, order, design and language always require a designer an architect or an author.  We see all of these things in nature and can therefore conclude that our existence is intentional.  It is the simplest of all deductions and hard to understand why anyone would reject it without ulterior motives.  Though I have no way of judging your heart, in my experience, i have found that the “ulterior motive” is usually a fear of moral accountability.

   You said you weren’t willing to follow the reasoning that suggests, “We can’t figure out how this happened, so it must be by design”.  I dont think thats quite the right way to look at it.  We are saying, “It is obviously designed, so there must be a designer”.  That is a big difference.

   You said that you are “Always open to new evidence”.  I think that is a terrific attitude and I want to challenge you be open to evidence that exists outside of a textbook or a test tube…that kind of evidence is always changing.  Ask God to reveal himself to you.  There is no greater evidence that someone is alive then meeting them face to face.  My life has been changed by personal experience with God.  This is why my faith is more than a logical argument.  I’ve met the man Himself and I’ve given my life for His glory.

   Blessings,
   Daniel

4. Dan A. September 12th, 2009 3:57 am :

   Hey Daniel,

   The Watchmaker example has its own flaws.  We know watches are designed by man because we have historical records of men making watches for thousands of years, if you count the sundial.  Therefore, since 100% of watches we know were designed by man, if we find one, we can assume it’s designed by man.

   However, we do not have this same luxury of knowledge with the universe.  We’ve never seen one designed… ever.

   The reason that apologists claim it’s designed is because of it’s complexity.  Do I have that right as the basis of the argument?  It’s extremely complex, so it must be designed.  After all, what has a really complex make-up that isn’t designed?  Hmm… I’ll go with DNA.

   “That was designed by God.”

   Um… ok.  How about the Milky Way galaxy?

   “That was designed by God too.”

   The Watchmaker idea is set up so the non-theist can’t give an example of complexity without a designer.  If I mention anything natural without a design, you’ll say that God made it.  I’m not familiar enough with academic philosophy to name the specific fallacy, but I’m sure this is one of them.

   I agree with you that logic must be used in every discipline.  The problem with your article was you were judging evolutionary biologists based on the actions of a historian.  That’s not logical.

   You were also calling the scientific community hypocritical for recognizing clues of human design which takes place in front of our eyes every day, while not agreeing to divine design which no one has witnessed.  That’s not logical either.

   I still don’t see how complexity implies a designer.  All we know is that known man-made machines require a man to make them.  We don’t know any deities scientifically so we can’t attest to what parts of nature they design.  Do you understand what I”m saying?  We have no proven record of something natural being designed, so we have nothing to base intelligent design off of. 

   If we saw matter being created in front of our eyes, such as an adult animal being formed from sand, then yes, we would have much more evidence for someone designing life.  however, the time of plant, animal, and especially earth formation is so long ago, we can’t assume it’s designed simply because it’s so complicated for our little minds to understand.

   By the way, I do talk to God in my own way, but I hear different things than you do.  Now and then I talk directly to Jesus, “If you’re the one and only Son of God, help me see you.”  I haven’t gotten the answers you have, for whatever reason. It’s not because I don’t want to be held morally accountable.  I’m about as moral as anyone I know, including devout Christians in my area.

   Also, and this might take some effort on your part…

   You have to give non-theists the benefit of the doubt in their intentions.  It’s not them trying to be let off the hook from morals.  It truly isn’t.  It just doesn’t line up with them what you’re saying.  The answer is not obvious as much as you’d like it to be.  Honestly, sometimes I read an apologetics book (I own close to a dozen) and wonder how any intellectually honest person can agree with some of the things in there.  The only apologetics books I’ve looked at that are logically consistent are Dr. Brown’s books, and that’s because they only work in the closed universe of Biblical Judaism (assuming the Old Testament is inspired from the outset)

   There are as many reasons to want to believe in Christianity as to believe in something else.  While you may not think Christianity is an easy path, it does fulfill a lot of people’s spiritual needs, and give a lot of comfort.  I’ve met Christian missionaries who say if they found out their faith was false, they’d kill themselves because it would mean life has no meaning.  Statements like that let me know that believers out there who desperately want the faith to be true.

   Plus, while atheist REGIMES are almost always awful, atheist citizens in a secular society are as well behaved as Christians, from everything I’ve seen. If you mean morals in terms of premarital sex, of course that could be a discouragement, but there are plenty of married atheists who wouldn’t lose any privileges by embracing Jesus.

   –Dan

5. Dan A. September 12th, 2009 4:01 am :

   I’d also like to add, what if I turned the argument around?

   “All things that are designed can be recreated on demand.  Therefore, nothing natural is designed..”

   Go ahead and name something natural with a confirmed designer.  It’s a blind assertion no matter what side you’re on.  This sample argument is silly, but it’s honestly equally as silly as the idea of

   “Man-made complex things are designed, so this means that natural complex things are designed.”

   –Dan

6. Chad Duby September 12th, 2009 7:41 am :

   To Dan A. and to Dan K.: - Intelligent design does not necessarily imply that God exists. (For example the famous biologist Michael Denton who was never religious at one time believed that aliens must have evolved on another planet and come here and designed mankind) -Intelligent design in both of its forms, irreducible complexity and specified complexity, both are compatible with evolution, but not Darwinian evolution (slow successive modifications). - Lack of design is not evidence against God. Dougherty and Postan have raised an interesting challenge of materialists. If life had no design it would actually be evidence for God because God as a supremely rational being would want to create the universe in the simplest way possible which is with an initial big bang that lead to the formation of a universe which was stacked to cause life to arise out of non-life in what would appear as an undesigned manner. (Big bang and life arising out of nonlife are separate issues and have no bearing on biological evolution whatsoever, but I mention them as context for D and P’s argument.) Both of you are trying to discuss a few dozen topics at the same time. I will try to make my comments precise. 1) Dan K’s criticism obviously has nothing to do with what the specialty of the scientist is. It doesn’t matter if the person is an archaeologist or biologist WITH REGARD TO THE INTUTION THAT ARTEFACTS IMPLY THAT HUMANS WERE THERE BECAUSE EVERYONE HAS THIS INTUTION. Who cares what specialization the expert has? It has no bearing on what Dan K. is saying. Dan merely points out that all parties regardless of their specialization have this intuition that objects such as arrow heads (or whatever the tool is) clearly indicate that people were there. Our intuition that enables us to know the tool implies that humans were there is had regardless of education whatsoever. We have the ability to see patterns, not because of education, but it is simply a brute fact about human cognitive ability. So much of what Dan A. has said is off topic. 2) The amount of time that mankind has existed has absolutely no bearin on Dan K’s comment. He makes a very simple point, namely – we all agree that if you have some kind of tool which was designed then it implies something designed it. So bringing up how long people lived has no bearing on Dan’s point. He merely mentioned it because it was a conclusion scientists took from their premise – IF THERE IS A TOOL THEN THERE WAS SOMEONE WHO MADE IT. 3) Dan K’s comment has nothing to do with the instrument in fact being an artefact. He does not say that the supposed artefact is in fact an artefact. He says that some expert says it is an artefact, and then Dan K points out that the man is able to reasonably infer this merely upon inspecting the rock. Dan K. sees that it is reasonable to infer a designer when we think we see design. That is all. It doesn’t matter if the rock found was in fact an artefact or not. It has no bearin on the issue. Dan could choose a million examples of finding tools in a forest or a cave and just use that as an example to demonstrate the intuition we have that if we see design there must be a designer. 4) Until Darwin, many non-theists believed that the world appears designed. Even today many of the most extreme defenders of materialism such as Daniel Dennet and Richard Dawkins believe the world APPEARS designed. So Dan A. saying that we can not infer design because we never saw God do it really misses the whole point. How do I know the axe head sitting in my garage was designed? I just look at the thing and know! How do I know things like the body’s skeletal structure were designed? I just look at the thing. Could I be wrong about the axe head or body? Yes, but it is quite reasonable to make such an inference. See, in order for scientists to say that inferring design from the body is different than inferring design from the axe head, they have to postulate that methodological naturalism should be imployed. So if we eliminate the possibility of the existence of a designer of the universe or our bodies, then of course we will conclude that there is no designer for the universe or bodies. But Dan K. wants to know why scientists feel this is called for. Why should someone assume methodological naturalism should be employed? Well, the truth is that neither theists nor atheists hold an unbias view. As a theist I have a biased view. Atheists also have an equally bias view. The belief that there is no designer of the universe or body is a view which holds the same metaphysical weight with atheists as does the view that the world was designed, for the theist. I think Dan K. just wants these materialists to say, “Hey, we have a double standard to tell you the truth because after all we already assume there is no God in our methodology.” Lol! I think Dan has a point. But keep in mind just because something is complex doesn’t mean it is designed. There is an endless list of complex things with no designer, such as ice crystals. But if there is a special kind of complexity, we humans will see it and infer that it is the kind that needs a designer.

7. Chad Duby September 12th, 2009 8:00 am :

   To Dan A.: Dan K’s argument actually looks like this:

   1) If something is designed then it had a designer. 2) This object here was designed. Conclusion) This object here had a designer. (modus ponens) A->B A Therefore B But the Dan A. says this: “I’d also like to add, what if I turned the argument around? “All things that are designed can be recreated on demand. Therefore, nothing natural is designed..”” Here we have nothing that even remotely looks like what Dan K. says. We have hopeless confusion. But luckily I graduated with a degree in logic after making straight A’s, yay. I recognize the above argument. It is first of all not the reverse of what Dan K. said. The reverse of what Dan K. said would be this; 1) If something is designed then it had a designer. 2) This object here was not designed. Conclusion) This object here did not have a designer. (modus tollens) A->B ~A Therefore ~B Not only is Dan A’s argument not the reverse of Dan K’s argument, it is not even a logically valid argument, which means the conclusion does not follow deductively from the premises. It only has 1 premise! That is simply not the way we do philosophy. I am always amazed at people who have no clue what they are talking about just spouting off at the mouth. It is like some truck driver going into a hospital and teaching the 20 verteran brain surgeon that he is doing surgery on the brain wrongly. “No, we don’t do it like this.” Then the truck driver gets out a sledge hammer and says “You idiot doctor, you have to smash the brain like this to fix. You religious idiot doctor!” So I am sure Dan A. will respond with another big and even more confused response. Of course any atheist with a Ph.D. in logic or philosophy can read what I have just written and say yes to every single line. It is all quite elementary. But not these internet atheist cowboys. They know it all. I am ready to get a lesson in logic for sure. Don’t mind the fact that I studied this nonstop for years. Dan A. is about to disagree with every line I just wrote. I am just waiting for it. I am not a cynic, just a person with normal inductive faculties.

8. Chad Duby September 12th, 2009 8:10 am :

   Lol, the self proclaimed expert in logic accidentally wrote it wrong. I caught it right after I entered it lol. But everything else is straight. Here is what the modus tollens should look like (please forgive me =) ):
   1) If it is designed then there is a designer.
   2) There is no designer.
   Conclusion) Therefore it was not designed. (modus tollens)
   A->B,
   ~B
   Therefore ~A

9. Dan A. September 12th, 2009 2:35 pm :

   Hey Chad,

   Could you please use paragraphs with spaces in between? You have really good content but it’s very hard to read.

   Anyway, I’m not too attached to my “counter-argument” I spun up as an example, so I’ll assume you’re right about that one.

   One thing you and Dan K. haven’t addressed is my point that we say a “a tool needs a human maker” because we actually have tools around TODAY and know their makers first hand.  There’s actually little to no intuition involved.  It comes from direct experience with human tool making.  It’s the same way that a surgeon recognizes a stab wound because he treats fresh ones every day.  This is why it’s not a double standard at all. Can you comment on that?

   So let’s see if I understand the design argument:

   1.  Every design has a designer.
   2. The universe is designed.
   3.  Therefore the universe has a designer.

   It’s because premise 2 assumes the conclusion from the outset, that people don’t often respect this as a good argument.

   Also, I think you’ve overestimating how prevalent this “intuition” is about mass complexity needing a designer.  You’re projecting your own feelings on everyone else.  I believed in the biblical God for many years, but I never had that feeling the universe had to be designed.  I just believed what I was told.

   And even if we did have this inuition, would that make it correct?  In uneducated societies, we also have the tendency to assume people from other races are dangerous or best kept away from. 

   Maybe it’s not a coincidence that the more educated a free society is, the more atheists there are?

10. Chadwick September 12th, 2009 4:18 pm :

    Dan A.,

    Wow, I can type on this forum now lol.

    I can’t type on the website. For some reason my computer does not like facebook or the Voice of Revolution websites. I have to type on word document and copy and paste. If it means anything to you I would have you know that my paper on the word document is really pretty lol. I tried to use spaces after copying, but it takes 1 full minute for my computer to respond.
    Well, by counter argument I take it to be a reversal. There is a saying in logic that “Every man’s modus ponens is another man’s modus tollens”. That just means you can disagree about a premise and turn the argument around. So that is what I took you to be attempting to do.
    Sure Dan A. So your comment is that we know that tools are made by men not by intuition, but by inference from our knowledge about the world. So then what is our knowledge about the world with regard to biological mechanisms? Well, let’s ask atheists from the past until now if they think the world appears designed. Well, we can look to just about any radical atheist or agnostic or deist from the past. They all seem to think the universe looks like it had a maker. They also think human bodies and other biological structures look designed. Do you know David Hume? Do you know Dawkins or Dennet? These men agree that things looked designed. So somehow they came to this belief. It really doesn’t seem to matter what exactly the process was. It might be important, but I don’t see the importance. The main thing is that we all agree this stuff LOOKS designed, right? So what I want to do is say we all agree that hammers and human bodies look designed. We know for sure artefacts were designed. It seems at least a plausible explanation that biological structures are also. I mean, if something looks designed, then we should only after careful inspection find out that in fact it is not designed to our surprise. It seems quite reasonable to believe the human body is the product of design since it looks like it.
    But some biological structures really look like manmade structures. Things like rotary motors on flagella for example are like manmade structures, but they are made from protein. Maybe we should conclude that some humanoid made them. But Dan K. has the much weaker claim that there is some designer.
    One thing you and Dan K. haven’t addressed is my point that we say a “a tool needs a human maker” because we actually have tools around TODAY and know their makers first hand.  There’s actually little to no intuition involved.  It comes from direct experience with human tool making.  It’s the same way that a surgeon recognizes a stab wound because he treats fresh ones every day.  This is why it’s not a double standard at all. Can you comment on that?
    Let’s clean the premises up a bit. I don’t like exactly how you phrased the argument. I said this “Dan K. sees that it is reasonable to infer a designer when we think we see design.” So I do not want to talk metaphysics about the universe. That would be to make the very strong claim. Let’s just talk about having justification for the belief that the universe is designed:
    1. If something appears to be designed, then it is reasonable to believe it has a designer.
    2. The universe is something which appears to be designed.
    3. Conclusion: It is reasonable to believe that the universe has a designer.
    So here I am dealing with what I said in the first letter was Dan’s “inference”. This is not metaphyscis (what is the case) but merely epistemology (what we believe is the case).
    This is a straightforward modus ponen. If you can’t recognize this as a modus ponens there is not much to say to you. Ok, you seem to have some cognitive malfunction whereby when you see very basic valid arguments you think it is begging the question. What am I supposed to do to help you?
    What you write below would be a fallacy of begging the question because it makes a metaphysical claim in 2 that is also in the conclusion. So you are correct there, but like I said I never claimed what is below:
    “So let’s see if I understand the design argument:
    1.  Every design has a designer.
    2. The universe is designed.
    3.  Therefore the universe has a designer.”
    It’s because premise 2 assumes the conclusion from the outset, that people don’t often respect this as a good argument.
    I also pointed out that extreme complexity does not imply that there is a designer. It is only when it is of a specific type of design that we humans will say “That was designed!”. Now Dawkins and Dennet want to say that when they feel that “It was designed!” feeling that it is just us flawed humans misjudging. In fact there is no design, even though it looks like it. But it really seems like they use smoke and mirrors. They from the beginning have atheism as a postulate, so of course anything that looks like design to them will not really be design. They actually seem to be pretty close to making the same error that you accused me of making.
    The intuition is not that complexity needs a designer. The intuition is that things in nature look like they were designed. I already pointed out several people who believe this. I have seen and read enough debates to know that the typical mantra of materialists is that it “only LOOKS designed”. I don’t need to say anything more on this.
    I actually was not raised as a Christian. I struggled with agnosticism/atheism for a couple years in high school, but then I had some powerful experiences and read the words that Jesus said. I would often feel atheistic when I thought about the problem of evil, but I always felt theistic when I went for walks in nature. I think it is ok for children to just believe what they are told, but at some point they need to grow up. It is good that you don’t believe in God if the evidence is not there for you. God certainly would not want you to believe irrationally, even though church people will always say you should just believe no matter what. It is insanity to believe in something with no reason.
    If we had the intuition that things look designed, would it make it correct? No, intuitions can be wrong. It is like seeing faces. Sometimes we see faces and they are really there. But sometimes, for example the face on Mars, we see something we think is a face, but it turns out to not be one. We have very flawed faculties when it comes to perception, at least perceiving certain things. So, Dawkins and Dennet just might be right. But they also sure SEEM to be wrong. They sure seem to be very wrong.
    Do you really think America is well educated? Do you think any nation today is? Abe Lincoln debated Douglass for 7-8 hours without notes and his speeches were incredibly sophisticated. Barak Obama uses a teleprompter. People are freaking retarded. The level of intellectual decay in the world is unimaginably bad. I don’t hear too many people familiar with the history of science and philosophy say atheism and intellectuality go hand in hand. Ever heard of Isaac Newton? He spent the last 5 years of his life studying the Bible only. Ever heard of Blaise Pascal? He was one of the most important mathematicians and philosophers in history, but he had written down his baptism of fire story about the night when he met God. Ever heard of Godel and the incompleteness theory which happens to be one of the most important breakthroughs in math this century? He was at the same think tank as Einstein. He spent each Sunday reading the Bible in bed. I am not going to list the other thousands of Christians that gave you science. How ridiculous. Ever heard of Plantinga or Descartes? Anyway, I think that is enough.
    Society is not free. There is a global network of very powerful bankers who are about to force everyone into an economic system by which you can not buy or sell without a micro chip in your hand. Bush and Obama have had secret prisons. The drug trade is run mainly by major first world governments. The private prison system is so out of control that we have more people in prison than any other country in the world. You only think you are free because you do exactly what the slave masters want you to do. Even the science in the universities has been hijacked by bankers. They pay for people’s funding. They pay people to find evidence for whatever they can cash in on. They buy truth into existence. We are free?

11. Dan A. September 12th, 2009 4:53 pm :

    Hey Chad,

    Try typing in Notepad instead of Word.  Then copy and paste into the window here.  That should take care of the spaces.  If you don’t have notepad, download any “plain text” editor.  Notepad is on every computer, to my knowledge though.

    I guess I’ll have to rephrase my problem with the design argument.  I disagree with the premises. Is that fair?  Maybe I don’t know enough about biology, but from what I’ve seen, it doesn’t look designed to me.  I guess it’s because we haven’t witnessed anyone design something biological from scratch.  If there’s no reference point in history to something biological being designed, so there’s not something clear to base it off of.  Also, if Dawkins and Dennett, supposed spokesmen for atheists, say it appears designed, that doesn’t make it a universal view.  CS Lewis had some very unorthodox views of theology (not going to hell if you honestly used logic to reject Christ), for example, that most Christians disagree with.

    As for America not being well educated, it’s the most religious parts that have the least education.  I’m in my own bubble living in a major city and having a master’s degree, but I know much of the US doesn’t even graduate college.  As for Barack using a teleprompter, that’s probably the least of our concerns in terms of this country.

    I believe in more of a zen/taoist experience of God, which is a belief system that only can exist on your real experience.  It’s actually a philosophy where if the teacher thinks you’re believing blindly, he will snap you out of it. 

    There’s the story of the zen master, who asked his student “Tell me about reality.”  The student says “Reality is an illusion.  There are no objects.  There is no person or planet.  There is no life or non-life.”  The zen master then hits the student in the head with his cane and says “If there’s no object, then what hit you?”  The student can’t answer and has to reevaluate how much he understands zen.

    This is not universal in all Buddhism, of course, or even in all teachings of zen.  Everyone can fall into mythical belief if they’re not careful.  The Dalai Lama and Tibetan Buddhists are probably the worst offenders of this, because they have such an intricate explanation of spirits and deities, and the afterlife, which they’ve never visited.  They still have some good things to say, of course.

    I’m reading this book by Osho called The God Conspiracy, which I think you’d enjoy.  It talks about how both atheists and theists are retarded.

    –Dan

12. Chadwick September 13th, 2009 12:04 am :

    Dan A.,

    What premise do you disagree with?  Why do you disagree with it?  Certainly you don’t want to reject 1, which says that if something looks designed it is reasonable to believe that it has a designer.  It should only be after careful study that the apparently designed object is found to have not been designed.  Would you like to reject 2?  Well, it is strange that you think you need to see someone design biological structures before you can believe that these biological structures were designed.  But how often have you seen a NOT DESIGNER design biological life?  I mean, you think it is just beyond your imagination to conceive of someone designing biological life, but to imagine it all came from nothing is the easier thing to conceive.  Imagine if we did police investigations like this…

    “Well, it looks like the victim has been strangled to death.  Yes, but I am a police officer and have never seen anyone strangled before.  Probably this means the person put their own hands on their neck and choked themselves to death.”

    Now, you might not believe things look designed.  But can you really fault someone like Dan for thinking it is true?  I mean, what is easier to conceive, things just making themselves into elaborate specified structures or a designer doing it?

    I didn’t say it is a universal law that all men think the world is designed.  I don’t think there could be a law like that.  It might be that all properly functioning humans can clearly see design in nature, but sin is very traumatic on our cognitive faculties.  As one hardens one’s heart they lose touch with nature.

    Lewis had many of the same strange or unorthodox views which I hold.  What do you mean reject Christ?  He didn’t reject Christ.  But I don’t think anyone who reads the words of Jesus can honestly look God in the face on judgment day and say “Just not enough evidence”.  I don’t think you will have any excuses.  The reason you fail to apprehend God may have something to do with your heart.  You should read “The Great Divorce”, by CS Lewis.

    I know people with Ph.D.’s who are idiots.  You can miss out on an education even if you stay in university a long time.  Studying what they put on the chalkboard does not make you educated.  Come on look at what the great humanities teachers have said since Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.  The life of reflection, the life devoted to understanding is what builds the foundation for an education.  For example, most biologists with Ph.D.’s can’t even recognize basic valid and invalid structures in logic.  You are telling me they can’t even formulate a 2 premise argument, but they are “educated”.  Not on your life man.

    I have a minor in religious studies.  I have read up on Buddhism.  I really enjoy reading about Buddhist teachings.  But Zen is clearly nonsense.  The way it works is it breaks down the mind by constant contradictions.  You become lulled into a sort of euphoria with insanity.  My favorite Zen aphorism is “The Buddha is a shitstick”.  It makes no sense.  It isn’t supposed to.  But that would explain your confusion.  Zen makes men terribly confused creatures.

    What is this stuff about the religious leaders needing to see something to be justified in believing it?  All of your beliefs about science are justified by not sensory beliefs.  You can not use the 5 senses in order to justify the 5 senses.  That would be circular reasoning.  What you are talking about is called “positivism”, and it has been rejected across the board by philosophers of all stripes, even the very famous father of it- AJ Ayer.

13. Dan A. September 13th, 2009 5:10 am :

    Chad,

    Here is how I would reword the first premise so they make sense to me.

    1. If something appears to be designed, it is reasonable to consider the possibility of a designer.

    The reason why evolution is a theory, and intelligent design is a hypothesis is because there’s no real research on ID except japs at the incompleteness of evolution theory.  If you want to make a hypothesis, go ahead, but I would not say the appearance of design makes it reasonable to conclude that there is a designer.

    Once again, the lack of reference points is the dealbreaker here.  Your police work example doesn’t work because police have multitudes of case studies where people have been strangled to recognize it when they see it.  We have exactly zero case studies of confirmed biological design.  None whatsoever.

    If it’s convenient for you to say “Looks designed, must be designed,” that’s your choice, but there’s no science behind it, simply because we don’t have any reference points.  Can you even describe what a design looks like?  It seems like it’s just a bunch of intricate parts working together that we can’t understand the source of.

    What I was saying about C.S. Lewis (someone whose writings I enjoy), is that he says in Mere Christianity that if you honestly came to the conclusion that Jesus isn’t the real deal, you won’t be punished for it.  He thinks it’s only if you willfully disbelieve that you’re in trouble.  I read the Great Divorce, and it would be a much more merciful God than the Bible talks of if you can take a bus to Heaven from Hell at any time.  In that book, everyone in hell had more interpersonal problems than religious belief ones anyway.

    I would lend suppot to the possibility that living your life completely in Zen could create problems, but to say its nonsense is really missing the point.  What zen does is remove your fallacious cause and effect associations so you can make clear decisions and understandings in the moment. 

    One zen-like question that has helped me in every situation is “Could I stop being so smart and allow this to be other than what I think it is?”  It gives you a fresh perspective not dependent on past experiences.  The idea is that your intuition/unconscious mind has an unbelievable amount of understanding waiting for you, and that removing thoughts processes on the surface gain you access to them.

    Since using zen-style techniques, my social calibration has raised considerably, my love for other people -including adversaries- has gone up a ton, and life is just easier. You grow to tolerate a much higher level of ambiguity, without having to come to a decision on a lower point of knowledge.

    Do you think most people in the US understand the the president’s healthcare proposal?  I sure as hell don’t.  However, a ton of people will listen to a pundit and make a decision within hearing five minutes of information from a biased source.  They feel like they have to be either for it or against it.  Leaving it alone is too uncomfortable for most people.

    With zen, along with some healthy Taoism, you just let the politicians do their thing, and vote when asked.  Yes, if everyone acted this way, bad things could happen, but that’s not the real issue here.

    Most importantly, you acknowledge all your beliefs as perceptions, not facts.  You recognize your carpet’s color as your perception today.  You can only learn anything from your five senses anyway.  If you’re reading a newspaper, you’re using your eyes and making a judgment based on the credibility of the paper, which is based on what you have read and heard in the past.

    If you want to go deeper, you’re not even using your eyes, but your mind.  Everything you experience is inside your head, which gives you a shadow of the shadow of the object you were looking at. 

    Zen people have their minds open, so they should actually be more receptive to the Gospel message if it actually makes sense.  They’re less likely to believe an argument of “If Jesus rose from the grave, it means that he’s God.”

    Why is that?  Because they acknowledge that a man’s resurrection proves only that he was resurrected.  It doesn’t account for the meaning of the resurrection, nor Jesus’s honesty, nor if his words were understood.  It opens the myriad of possibilities of explanations because conclusions aren’t taken out of convenience.

    Another thing that happens with Zen is that your friends problems sound more and more ridiculous.  People in general seem to be like chickens running around with their heads cut off.  Someone tells you “I messed this up and think I’m getting fired tomorrow,” and you say “Stop worrying til tomorrow then,” because you have that ability, but they don’t realize they have it as well.  You realize how most, if not all of our problems are mind made.

    Anyway, hope that gave you a little more insight into how zen works.  It’s not my only thing, but it’s a significant part of my worldview.

14. Chadwick September 13th, 2009 11:41 pm :

    Dan A.,

    Why do you need to reword what I wrote?  It seems pretty clear.  If you want I will explain it though.  Here is the first premise with regard to the argument that it is rational to believe that the universe or certain biological structures had a designer:

    1. If something appears to be designed, then it is reasonable to believe it has a designer.

    This says that that a person who believes that the human eye, for example, is the product of design, then that person has not committed any errors with regard to their belief formation.  If I believe irrationally in something such as I will win the lottery because my fortune cookie gave me the lucky numbers, then I have failed to form my beliefs in a responsible and reasonable manner.  Thus my belief in my winning the lottery is not rational.

    Your “rewording” actually changes the meaning of my premise completely.  In fact your premise says something wholly different.  Let’s see:

    “1. If something appears to be designed, it is reasonable to consider the possibility of a designer.” (quoting Dan A.)

    What do you mean by possibility?  Is this logical possibility?  Is this epistemic- “for all I know this could exist”?  It isn’t clear.  Either way it is not what I say.  Of course it is reasonable to consider most things.  It is reasonable to consider whether I will eat cookies or ice cream.  To reflect on whether or not God exists is something atheists, theists, and agnostics do all the time.  You don’t need any evidence to make it reasonable to consider something.  Of course I don’t want to say something so obviously true as that.  It is not significant at all.  I want to make a significant point.  That point is that belief in a designer is rational.  I can actually claim that “A designer exists” and that belief be rational because it is grounded properly in evidence.  See how much different my claim is?

15. Chadwick September 14th, 2009 12:05 am :

    Dan A.,

    Intelligent design says nothing about whether evolution is true or false.  The fact that you think so shows you have absolutely no knowledge of the subject.  Many propoenents of evolution believe in intelligent design.  This is so basic, and the fact that you don’t know this really says a lot.  I love it when people treat me like I am a chimp for believing ID, when I have read a ton on the debate, yet they know literally nothing.  I actually know their side much better than they do, whereas they know nothing about ID.  If you don’t know ID and evolution are compatible, then you simply know NOTHING about the ID debate.

    There is no research on ID?  Are you joking?  Did you ever hear of William Dembski or Michael Behe?  Not only have these men put forward many examples of design, these examples have been taken up by non-ID Darwinists and supposedly proven wrong.  What is it that the Darwinists scientists are proving wrong?  They supposedly are proving wrong the reserach that the ID theorists are doing.  All you have shown is that you have not done any reading on the debate.  You are simply ignorant of the issues you speak on.  Go do some reading and find out how wrong you are.  Not only has a TON of research been done, it is quite compelling and able to stand up to rigorous demands of science.

    My analogy to the police is fine.  People aren’t retarded.  The first time someone was found with their throat cut the people who found him knew it was caused.  It wasn’t like humans had to wait until they saw murder before they could imagine that murder is the cause of the person’s death.  Your critique is laughable at best.

    I didn’t say if it looks designed it is designed.  I said it was REASONABLE TO BELIEVE it is designed if it looks designed. That person can then say “It is designed” and they are not in error in their belief formation as long as there are no counter evidence against them.

    Can I describe what design looks like?  Yes it looks like a well organized object which could not have come about by random processes, but only by free will and intelligence.  Whatever you want to say as far as describing a manmade tool can be said about an intelligently designed biological structure.

    CS Lewis claimed he did not know if someone would go to hell if they had never heard the gospel.  I don’t think he said that if you honestly reject Jesus you are ok.  Probably if he said that he had the implied premise that no one could apprehend Jesus and reject him honestly.  If you have a citation I would appreciate it.

    In the Great divorce it is all about the heart.  People have messed up beliefs or messed up interpersonal problems because of the heart.

    Cause and effect are real.  Truth is real.  Zen often incorporates a lot of contradictions.  Anyone who says some meaningful assertion can be both true and false in the same sense is only kidding themselves.  There is truth.  There is falsity.  If something is a meaningful statement it is either true or false and not both and not neither.  That is the very basis of logic and anyone who does not recognize this is not recognized.

    I do not acknowledge all of my beliefs as perceptions.  Perceptual beliefs are things like- “The cat is on the mat”.  I believe it because I see it.  I believe 24×55 is 2,695 because of memorial belief.  I don’t need to do it in my head or see it because I remember it as my first multiplication problem from years ago.  I believe that ‘the number 2 exists’ because of my ability to think abstractly.  It is also not perceptual.  I believe that the Cardinals won last night’s baseball game because my friend who is honest and a fan of baseball just told me.  That is a belief based upon testimony.  I believe that science is good at giving us true knowledge.  I believe this for many reasons, but none of them purely perceptual.  Any perceptual belief can not be a foundation for science because that is circular.

16. Chadwick September 14th, 2009 12:11 am :

    Dan A.,

    I like talking about Zen, ID, epistemology, Jesus’ resurrection, but we can not do all these at the same time.  Not only that, but you are also missing what I am saying.  We need to focus.  I will answer you questions on other topics, but let’s focus on ID, which is the point of this blog.

    Zen seems to destroy the mind.  Why belive Jesus is God if he rose from the dead?  Simple, he said he would do this great miracle and he did it.  What is the best explanation?  That he was who he said he was and did what he said he did.  That is the best explanation.  In context you would simply appear incapable of rational inference to miss this.

    I never said my beliefs were all perceptual.  What is funny is that you are using many memorial beliefs just to write this letter, yet you claim all beliefs are perceptual.

17. Chadwick September 14th, 2009 12:14 am :

    Dan A.,

    There are Zen adherents who worry.  There are Christians who worry.  There are atheists who worry.

    There are Zen adherents who don’t worry.  There are Christians who don’t worry.  There are atheists who don’t worry.

18. Dan A. September 14th, 2009 12:53 am :

    Chad,

    For someone who wants to focus on one thing, you sure threw a lot at me. 

    If you think Intelligent Design has nothing to do with evolution is true, go look at the Panda’s Paw book, as well as any book in Borders defending intelligent design.  Aside from a few exceptions, they’re just about all arguments against evolution. 

    You’re starting to throw some hostility at me (examples “You must have a cognitive malfunction” and “You know absolutely nothing on the subject”), so it’s not something I can really engage back in, sorry.

    I think I’ve stated my case enough in this thread, so anyone not already committed to their point of view can see what I’m saying.  Whether they believe it is up to their own reasoning.

    If you can recommend a single book however, that makes a good case for the Christian faith without fallacy, I’d be interested in reading it.

    The last thing I’ll say on Zen is that worrying to Zen is like violence is to Christianity.  If a member partakes in the action, he’s going against the principles he claims.

    –Dan

19. Chadwick September 14th, 2009 7:37 am :

    Dan A.,

    When I say you are ignorant, I am not calling you stupid or anything negative.  I am saying you just aren’t familiar with the issues.  I think you should slow down and try to learn something instead of just running away or changing the subject.  Go look at any book by Behe or Dembski, the two main proponents of ID.  Or go look at any book by modern philosophers who discuss ID theory.  ID is contra Darwinian evolution, not evolution austere.  Every book by Dembski and Behe make clear that evolution may very well be the process by which the designer made everything.  But you just keep putting your fingers in your ears and screaming “ID and evolution are against each other”.  Where do you get such nonsense?  I am totally open to the possibility that evolution is true.  So is Behe.  So is Dembski.  Denton always has been too, even when he was an ID proponent.  They are all against Darwinian evolution.  But you may only be familiar with one type of evolution, and perhaps this is why you think there is tension.

    I did not bring up the many issues that you brought up.  You brought up Jesus, Zen, the modern world being better and more atheistic, etc.  I only responded to them.  I think it would be best for me not to do so on this page.  We can do it on another page if you’d like.  All the issues you raised are important, but they do not all directly pertain to the ID debate.

    You are completely wrong about ID being contrary to evolution.  ID is only contrary to one form of evolution- Darwinian evolution.  Darwinian evolution’s central key is that slow successive modifications over time are the manner of development of the organism.  But many forms of evolution which are defended by biologists are at odds with this.  Don’t tell me it is wrong when it is obviously true what I am saying.  The thing you are forgetting is that the overwhelming majority of biologists are Darwinists.  Instead of saying “Darwinian evolution”, which is the clear way of expressing what they defend, they often sloppily say only “evolution”, which creates confusion for people who only have a passing knowledge of the debate.

    You just need to read more.  The reason why Darwinists often don’t make things more explicit is that they read and already know the terminology.  They often expect their readers to be informed.

    Listen, you come to me saying a lot of stuff that everyone knows is false.  Anyone who has read one book on this debate would know what you are saying is from being misinformed.  It is one thing to not know much about a subject and to ask questions or make mistakes.  But you are trying to correct me even though I spent years studying this full time and you have yet to do even a superficial overview of the debate.  But you are going to correct me.  Of course you can’t respond back by saying I’m ignorant.  I am more up to date on the debate than most biologists who simply wave an athetic hand at the issue.

    I don’t want to talk about Christianity or anything outside the topic.  I spent a lot of my time answering your questions and responding to you.  Now you are just going to run away?  Anyone who reads what I have said and fact checks me can see what I have said is for the most part accepted by both sides of the debate, that is with regard to my neutral claims, i.e. ID is not at odds with evolution austere, only with evolution in Darwinian forms.  Are you going to respond or just stop listening?

20. Chadwick September 14th, 2009 7:41 am :

    Dan A.,

    Great! I spent time typing out a long explanation and this dumb website says “duplicate comment detected”.  Well, ok I guess I can’t enter my comments anymore.

    Dan A., did you know Behe and Dembski both say evolution is the possible vehicle the designer used to make everythng?  Did you know that Darwin’s Black Box starts with a whole slew of evolutionists criticizing Darwinian evolution?  ID is contra Darwinian evolution only, not other forms of evolution.  Don’t know this?  Then it is because you just haven’t read enough.  But don’t go on trying to correct me.  “No, doctor.  The way you do brain surgery is you take this big hammer and you smash the brain like this.  Stupid idiot doctor, thinking brain surgery is don’t with care and precision.”

21. Gabriel September 14th, 2009 10:18 am :

    I’m enjoying reading this conversation - i have a logical thought for you’re consideration - i’m no philosopher, and i’ve never really studied logic, but i think i have a pretty logical way of thinking in general… anyway - for your consideration and judgment:

    A.  Everything that exists has a purpose.

    B. Everything with purpose has a design.

    Conclusion: Everything has a design.

    (I’ll leave the designer part out - although i think that it may be implied - but not necessarily logical).

    If this is true - then it could be a good starting point for further logical thoughts about how Every design must have a designer.  We know this to be true for EVERYTHING.  Look at the article above!  The fact that there is a tool found - the basic clear assumption is that there were men who designed it… the people are not visible, but the fact that something has design is proof enough! I agree with them- that is logical.  So to be honest, when we have a clearly designed universe, eco-system, living organisms- it is the most illogical conclusion to say that there is no designer.   Honestly the onus is on YOU to prove that - and good luck with that SCIENTIFIC evidence!

    I understand that the first question will be raised as to A. does everything have a purpose… well - you find something that doesn’t and put it on here.  Most likely it is your own ignorace that you will be exposing.  Or the ignorace of science to date.  (ie. the apendix, dark matter…)

    I would like to hear back- especially from the guy who actually studied logic!

22. Gabriel September 14th, 2009 10:34 am :

    Dan A.

    You wrote:

    I’m not a man of science, so I can’t tell you why the amazing complexity of cells, eyes, and skin didn’t need a designer.

    If you believe that all of these things don’t need a designer and you don’t have the understanding to say why - you are BLINDLY putting your faith in the hands of scientists.  Who are constantly revising their own understanding.

    Your argument on the watchmaker:

    We know watches are designed by man because we have historical records of men making watches for thousands of years, if you count the sundial.  Therefore, since 100% of watches we know were designed by man, if we find one, we can assume it’s designed by man.

    This premise is true - however - did you consider that EVEN if we didn’t have a single record of men making watches at all, and we found a watch, the watch itself would prove that an intelegent being designed and put together that watch.

    OH and by the way - I’d LOVE to hear you or any scientist PROVE that DNA is not designed!  What kind of scientific proof do you think is available for that hypothosis?  Athiesm is not scientific proof by the way.

    I respect your opinions, and I don’t mean to be rude, so please take these arguments with my respect for your opinions, and please consider them as well.

    We have no proven record of something natural being designed, so we have nothing to base intelligent design off of.

    I hear where you’re coming from here, but you ask one side only - the converse is just as important:
    We cannot come to the conclusion that life has not been designed simply because we cannot see the point of creation itself.

23. Chadwick September 14th, 2009 10:41 am :

    Gabriel,

    Good ideas.  You can see a similar line of thought in Aristotles Nichomachean Ethics.  But there are two types of purpose.  There is a strong meaning and a weaker meaning.  If I create a glass in order to hold water, it has a true purpose.  I have free will (perhaps) and I am sufficiently intelligent to shape the sand into a glass for the purpose of holding water for drinking.  But there is another sense of purpose.  We have teeth which have a purpose or a function.  But if these things were not designed by someone with intelligence and free will, such as God or aliens, then it would still have a purpose in the weaker sense but not in the stronger sense.

    So to say everything has a purpose would not be a really significant claim.  It would not suprise an atheist or rock their metaphysical beliefs.

24. Gabriel September 14th, 2009 10:53 am :

    I thought about the various purposes that there are:

    emotion, vs… trees - giving off carbon dioxide…, to making paper.

    You’re right though the next step is really impossible logically - to conclude that there is a designer - even though it seems clear.

    thanks for your response,
    I love thinking about this stuff!  any recommendations for reading?
    i’m looking at Aristotles Nichomachean Ethics now.

25. Chadwick September 14th, 2009 10:57 am :

    As a side note I would like to say that I am a Christian.  I do not see anything like scientific claims being made in the Bible.  When the Bible says God made the universe in 6 days, I do not see this as literal.  We are told by literalists that a day is 24 hours.  But our hours and days are measured by the sun which was not created on the first day.  So we are supposed to measure days by the sun that didn’t exist??? Nonsense, the Bible is not making literal claims there.  That said, I am agnostic about evolution.  I don’t really see much evidence for it.  History is filled with scientists faking evidence to prove it.  Big bankers funded universities to create a materialist mindset in people because they are much easier to control and make good economic slaves than religious people.  To see this read Alduous Huxley’s “Brave New World”.  His grandfather was “Darwin’s Bulldog”.  His family were related to the royals and he was honestly telling about the gruesome future where everything would be stable (no more love, no family, no morals, no nations, no religion, no gender roles, no races, no tradition).  Humanity is under severe attack.

    I also do not see any problems in Genesis with evolution being true.  Everything reproduced after its own kind.  Ok, we know that.  We can even see this in fossils that we have.  We do not know if there was at one point in time a massive leap from species.  Perhaps God did use evolution and intelligently guided it.  But what I do not see in Genesis is any claim that would be in conflict with evolution.  God man man on the sixth day.  Ok, but maybe God took chimpanzees or orangutangs or some common ancestor more likely, and then in a single change gave it rationality sufficient to be a free moral being and then in that moment infused it with a soul, a perfect soul.  Many scholars such as van Inwagen have written on this (see The Problem of Evil by Peter van Inwagen.  It is an amazing book).

    Many cosmologists have stated that the big bang is exactly what you would expect to see if the God of the Bible made the universe.  It is funny that Christians always get so hot and bothered by the big bang and atheists always act like it is evidence for them when in fact atheist scholars at the highest levels fight the traditional big bang model tooth and nail because it certainly implies the existence of God.  To see why the big bang implies the existence of God see William Lane Craig’s “Kalaam Cosmological Argument”.

26. Daniel Kolenda September 14th, 2009 11:48 am :

    Gentlemen,

    I would love to hear your thoughts on the short video clip linked below.  I feel it gives a thorough answer to Dan A’s objection that I have also heard from others so many times (ie “Maybe I don’t know enough about biology, but from what I’ve seen, it doesn’t look designed to me.  I guess it’s because we haven’t witnessed anyone design something biological from scratch.  If there’s no reference point in history to something biological being designed, so there’s not something clear to base it off of.” ).  I am sure that we can reasonably conclude with complete objectivity that the universe is designed.  Dan A, I would love to hear your honest thoughts in light of this video:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azMgKrkJ5lA&feature=related

27. Dan A. September 14th, 2009 3:31 pm :

    Hey Daniel K.,

    I just watched the video.  Thanks for pointing it out.

    You know, it does make a good case for why life appears designed.  Concluding it, however, I still think is many, many steps away.

    Plus, it says nothing about if Darwinian evolution is true.  Maybe that wasn’t an issue for you, but it sounded like you assumed that evolutionary biologists were committed that there could not be a creator at all.  I think if you asked those biologists if there could be a divine force helping to guide evolution, you’d get wider agreement.

    Honestly, I can’t comment on the DNA any more than that, from an uneducated eye, it appears to be designed, like you said.  A possibility that comes to my mind is that close to a billion years ago, a DNA strand was a lot shorter, and more complex combinations arose through trial and error, until they led up to a single cell. 

    I have nothing to base that thought on; it’s just what comes to mind.  Should there be more research on the subject?  Sure.  I just think scientists should be wary on making a conclusion.  This is why evolution is still classified as a “theory” and not a “law.”  Scientists explicitly say that evolution is our best idea for what happened, but it’s not perfect. 

    Whether you see Intelligent Design as compatible with evolution or not, I’d say it’s still in the hypothesis stage.  What makes secular people very uncomfortable is the idea of forcing ID into a classroom when there isn’t much respected research to back it up.  Also, to be honest, the fact that the people most committed to teaching ID are religious fundamentalists isn’t helping the case for the few scientists that do have something valid to say on it.

    Chad, if you think that evolution is plausible, I think we agree enough on the issue.  We must have just had a disagreement in terms.

    –Dan

28. Daniel Kolenda September 14th, 2009 4:14 pm :

    Dan A,

    I think that there is a very important point raised here that should not be quickly dismissed.  DNA is not only orderly and complex but it is a form of code…a sophisticated language.  It is not difficult to understand what random mutations do to language.  As an example, follow this link http://www.randommutation.com type a sentence and click “mutate”.  Do your own experiment.

    It is simply impossible to conceive that language could come about from any source other than a mind…especially when we are talking about a code so unbelievably complex.  If you can believe this, I commend you because I could never have such faith.

    As the video demonstrated, if we heard even a simple code coming from a distant planet every scientist would immediately conclude that the source was intelligent life.  This is why I referred to the utter rejection of the possibility of intelligent design by the mainstream scientific community as “intellectual dishonesty”…which is what started this whole conversation to begin with.

    I hope that now you can see where I was coming from.  Btw…thanks for being open minded.  I pray that the Lord would truly reveal Himself to you in a profound way.

29. Dan A. September 14th, 2009 4:44 pm :

    Thanks Daniel K.,

    I can’t really argue the point more because I believe in divinity, so I can’t really argue to disprove design.  You’ve raised some good points.

    All I can say is that the scientists researching this area are doing the best they can with the awareness they have, so I think the accusations are unnecessary.  I also have to say that science and scientists in general are a lot more willing to consider alternate views than fundamentalist Christians.

    Surely a scientist may cling to his theory, but over time, we see our understandings of the cosmos and physics change drastically.  Einstein (and Darwin for that matter) is not treated sacredly and more flaws are being found in his work as the years go.  This is not to disparage him, but things improve with new developments.

    In theology, however, can any research change your beliefs?  Could any historical and archeological discovery lead the church to abandon Matthew’s Gospel, for example? 

    What if archeologists looked into the matter very deeply and said “You know, it looks like the apostle John did write John’s Gospel and that Luke did a very good job.  Matthew, however, is a forgery, we have 50 documents from the era to prove it.”

    If that happened, would you drop Matthew from what you believe to be the Biblical Canon? Could anything lead you to discount Matthew as valid?

    If not, you’ve officially closed your mind far more than any mainstream scientist.

    Just something to consider.

    –Dan

30. Chadwick September 14th, 2009 10:24 pm :

    Dan K.,

    I haven’t even seen the video, but of course the evidence implies that Darwinian evolution is false.  These mathematical arguments always attack the slow successive modification theory of Darwin.  They don’t attack other forms of evolution because other forms are consistent with an intelligent designer.

    I can’t watch the video, but I suppose it talks about the mathematical probability that non-intelligent forces acted upon matter to produce what we see.  Dembski, who has a Ph.D. in mathematics, does a lot of interesting work in this area.  Of course it is absurd that everything came about without guidance from an intelligent being.  But even if there were no designer, considering the evidence for one, we should demand such a high level of evidence to disprove the existence of a designer before we gave up belief in design.  Instead many scientists do the very opposite.

    Even though many scientists are religious, most do not believe in design.  If you are a Darwinist, then you can not believe in design.  It would make no sense to postulate a designer to produce all of the life we see today when nonpersonal forces could just as easily explain it.  A Darwinist could believe in a creator who initially started the universe and provided laws which would insure that evolution would produce what we see.  But even if there is a creator that does not mean the creator specially designed each creature.  The types of evolution that are consistent with intelligent design are just those types which call for rapid change in a short amount of time.  Rapid change is what is needed to match the fossil record and presently existing lifeforms.  Darwinian evolution can not explain how to go from light sensors to fully formed human eyes without transitional forms.  There are so many problems for Darwinian threory, that there is a need to move to a new model of evolutionary theory.  We need one that is consistent with design because frankly only a designer is capable of producing such rapid changes that we see in nature.

31. Dan September 14th, 2009 11:00 pm :

    Chad,

    Curious what your thought is on ideation/idealism, the idea that everything is just thought around us, without a real “physical nature”

    Does that one ring as possible to you as Intelligent Design (dualism, I believe)?

    Does idealism seem more possible to you than pure materialism?

    –Dan

32. Chadwick September 14th, 2009 11:41 pm :

    Dan,

    Is this a 3rd Dan???  We should all start using nick names.  This is getting ridiculous.  Or maybe I should change my name to Dan.

    Well, idealism is the view that objects are mind dependent.  Objects do not have an existence apart from the perceiver.  This denies an objective world.  It makes the world merely subjective to the perceiver. 

    Dualism is usually an issue discussed in the philosophy of mind.  I am not aware of anyone discussing dualism with regard to idealism.  I haven’t read anything on idealism in a year or two.  I don’t know what to say.

    I think idealism or materialism are either possible or impossible.  I don’t think there are degrees regarding them.  I don’t fully understand materialism.  What are angels made of?  What will people be made of when they are dead?  I don’t know.  I don’t think the answer would be significant for the issue of design though.

    I just don’t see any connection here to the issue of intelligent design.

33. Dan A. September 15th, 2009 12:37 am :

    Sorry Chad, forgot to add the “A.” on the last one.  I was the only Dan here til Mr. Kolenda came aboard.

    Was just curious of your thoughts on that in general.  I come from more of an idealist point of view (not confirmed, of course), so that might be a helpful context for you in regard to my other posts.

    –Dan

34. Chadwick September 15th, 2009 3:14 am :

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    Dan A.,

    Ok, sorry about the mix up.  Dan K. wrote the article by the way if you didn’t notice at the top.

    I don’t see how idealism would even enter into the issue.  An idealist is not committed to either view.  Materialists generally reject intelligent design, although they could be intelligent design theorists if they accepted a view which postulated aliens as the designers.  Materialists have very big problems with the other issues that were raised about the design of the universe.  I think it would have been better for the article above to separate design of the universe from design of biological life forms.  I know people who do not believe in biological design, but they do believe God designed the universe.  If you commit to one you are not necessarily committed to the other.  Some believe God would most likely start the universe with the plan to have Darwinian evolution as the vehicle to create life.  I mentioned Poston and Dougherty in a post above.  It is some really interesting stuff.

    So what I find is funny is that there seems to be no rocks to hide under from God.  If you are a darwinist you still have a very big problem.  God who is the supremely rational and the maximally powerful being might want to or be compelled to by his perfection to create a universe in one act.  So perhaps when God started the initial big bang from a singularity and never touched the universe again.  Why? Because a supremely rational being should be able to do things in the most efficient way.  Is it more efficient to create something in 1 act or 50,000 acts?  Well, it seems that 1 act is superior to many because a being who can create in the fewest moves is superior to a being who needs more.  If God needs many acts to create the universe He would be inferior to a being who can do it in 1.  So God would not be the greatest conceivable being.  Although I find this argument compelling I still think there may be reasons why God would find it necessary to use multiple acts of creation.  The reason would be if there was something He wanted to create which would also be impossible to actualize without more than one step.  For example, he could create man through Darwinian evolution, but maybe he finds some sentimental reason for making them from dust not monkies.  Perhaps God sees it important to make them with a separate act.

    Whether or not God used Darwinian evolution, an alternate and less popular form of evolution (perhaps combined with design), or special creation, this has no bearing on the existence of God.  God’s existence can be established much easier with other arguments aside from biological design.

    Than said, I can not imagine biological organisms looking any MORE designed than they already do.  Think of how sublime the human eye is.  Think of how amazing the body is.  When our scientists get to the point of intelligently designing life, will it look MORE DESIGNED?  I think when you see this way it is laughable to say life does not looked designed.
    
    -Chad
    

35. Dan A. September 15th, 2009 3:20 am :

    Chad,

    Actually William Lane Craig had a great rebuttal to what you just said (and acknowledged as just one possibility).  Efficiency is only needed if you have limited time and resources.  God has an infinite supply of both, so he could easily take his time.  It’s sort of like how a musician sometimes likes a piece to slowly develop instead of starting off with the total orchestra playing.

    Beyond that, I think it’s a little ridiculous for us to have any idea of how God might prefer the world to be or develop.  “God wouldn’t do this,” and “God wouldn’t do that,” are always assertions.  Even if you go by what’s consistent in God’s character in the Bible, you’re still left with a lot of guessing.  If your best friend or lover has surprised you with their actions, think of how little you might understand how God works.

    –Dan

36. Chadwick September 15th, 2009 12:06 pm :

    Dan A.,

    Of course there is a rebuttal.  I think Craig’s rebuttal is quite good too.  Of course if Craig is right, then God exists.  If Poston and Dougherty are right then God exists.

    I didn’t really want to get off track into cosmology, although we can talk about that on another post.  My point in raising that issue was to point out that on a materialist’s world view, which usually goes hand in hand with Darwinian theory, they usually try to make it sound like there is no need to bring up the existence of God.  But theism is still actually more probable than atheism, given that Darwinian theory is true.  The view of creation as a one time act has need to go all the way back to the initial big bang.  That is the reason for bringing up cosmology.  So on any world view God seems to be the best answer.

    So what did you think about all the stuff about design?  Have you found any information about Behe and Dembski supporting non-Darwinian versions of evolution?

    Do you still disagree with most scientists throughout history that things look designed?

    Later,
    Chad

37. Chadwick September 15th, 2009 12:06 pm :

    Dan A.,Of course there is a rebuttal.  I think Craig’s rebuttal is quite good too.  Of course if Craig is right, then God exists.  If Poston and Dougherty are right then God exists.I didn’t really want to get off track into cosmology, although we can talk about that on another post.  My point in raising that issue was to point out that on a materialist’s world view, which usually goes hand in hand with Darwinian theory, they usually try to make it sound like there is no need to bring up the existence of God.  But theism is still actually more probable than atheism, given that Darwinian theory is true.  The view of creation as a one time act has need to go all the way back to the initial big bang.  That is the reason for bringing up cosmology.  So on any world view God seems to be the best answer.So what did you think about all the stuff about design?  Have you found any information about Behe and Dembski supporting non-Darwinian versions of evolution?Do you still disagree with most scientists throughout history that things look designed?Later,Chad

38. Dan September 15th, 2009 9:38 pm :

    Chad,

    From what I’ve read, Behe and Dembski have been discredited pretty decisively by their peers.  If there’s some “conspiracy” among the scientists to suppress them, I have yet to read about it from credible source (Ann Coulter and Ben Stein don’t count for me, sorry.)

    I think that if Behe and Dempski believe macro-evolution (what most people consider Darwinism) is compatible with their theories, than I have no problem with them.  No one has an idea on the origin of life, and bringing God into it is a cop out, in my opinion.  We know so little about divine intelligence, that trying to personify it in our science books is pre-mature at best, and discourages more in-depth research if you make it a conclusion this early.

    To me, assuming that there’s a God doing all this (which is somehow what it ends up as 99.9% of the time instead of aliens or hundreds of gods at work), is similar to people 1000 years ago saying, “Past a certain point in the ocean, you can’t see anything.  The earth gives us every indication it’s flat.”

    If there’s something that gives me resistance to scientists to talking about “God,” it’s the eagerness of the religious right to move the process along so we’re suddenly talking about only one God, who fits the Biblical description, eventually leading to confirmation of Christianity.  You cannot argue that the proponents of Intelligent Design don’t see scientific confirmation of Christianity as a long-term goal in this movement.  There’s a huge bias and conclusion in mind from the beginning, and that’s why I think the idea is really dangerous to science.

    I’m not as much opposed to design being discovered as I am scientists taking a premature conclusion in the matter.

    –Dan

39. Chadwick September 16th, 2009 5:04 am :

    Dan,

    Lol, who brought up Ben Stein and Anne Coulter???  They are complete idiots.  You have to act like a child now because things didn’t go your way?

    Dembski and Behe have been discredited?  Well, how so?  Let’s deal with the arguments.  What specific arguments have they raised, which have been discredited?  The term “discredited” can be taken many ways.  So elaborate on this idea and let me know what you mean.  Dembski doesn’t write in peer review journals because they have an agenda which would be a waste of his time.  Behe is a tenured professor of biology.  I think the extreme comments made against these men when combined with how much the scientific community has written on their work shows that they are doing serious work.  No one in the science community publishes scientific articles against Coulter and Stein, right?  Why do they do it against Behe and Dembski in mass?  It is because they are the real thing.

    No, you are wrong again about something so basic.  Who told you “macro evoluion” means “Darwinism”???  Whatever website you are reading is must be pretty shoddy.  Macro evolution is the only kind of evolution I have been referring to when I say the word “evolution”.  Evoluion has many many forms or theories.  Darwinian theory is most popluar amongst scientists, but you can find some pretty impressive names that disagree.  Guess what, when an evolutionist defends a non-Darwinian theory they get ousted from the coolness club.

    Intelligent design does not postulate God.  Creationism postulates God’s existence.  ID says there is clear evidence of design in nature, and the implications of that may have theistic implications.  One starts with God’s existence as a premise.  The other one says nothing about God, but there may be some implication down the line.  So you don’t even understand the very fundamentals of ID.  You still think it is the same thing as creation.  You still don’t understand the difference between Darwinian theory and other evolutionary theory.

    No one believed the earth was flat 1,000 years ago.  That is an urban legend.  Where do you get this stuff from man?

    If people think the implications of design would be best explained by God rather than aliens then shouldn’t they be rational and carry through with being rational?  No one is using the Bible to say God exists.  It is not something people postulate.  Also, intelligent design could never give you all the properties needed in order to show that God exists, not the God of the Bible.  It only gives you some very powerful creator.  Really, because nature is so cruel it does not give you the property of love by the maker.  If anything, you would be surprised to find out that the maker is loving, if indeed he or it is.  So I certainly wouldn’t want to argue that we can see that God exists just by looking at nature.  It would take more arguments to ever show that the maker is loving, and this would include overcoming the atheist argument from the problem of evil.

    There is a danger in church people hijacking science.  It would be a terrible thing.  It was terrible what the Catholic church did, but then again the scientists were mainly very devout religious men who gave us science.  It would be as terrible as science falling into the hands of men who are really bad at philosophy, and who have as part of their religion the belief in Darwinian theory.  Of course many scientists don’t want the church to take over and destroy science.  Many of them want to keep on destroying science by keeping out rational argument and debate.  What you have presently is just about as bad as what it would be if the church controlled things.

    Yes church people have a huge bias in mind.  Yes so do those who are Darwinists.  Yes so does everyone.  Don’t lie to yourself, you do too.  I do too.  We all have personal biases about these very important issues.  Many scientists fight religion because they themselves are religious.  Who is lying to themselves?

40. Dan A. September 16th, 2009 5:09 am :

    Chad,

    “You have to act like a child now because things didn’t go your way?”

    This is what I was talking about before.  I tried to give you another chance, but you’re using personal insults so I can’t reply to you anymore on this thread or any other. 

    If Gabriel or Daniel K. have something to say, please do, I will definitely keep considering your thoughts.

    –Dan

41. Chadwick September 16th, 2009 6:18 am :

    Dan A.,

    Quoting Dan A.:

    “(Ann Coulter and Ben Stein don’t count for me, sorry.)”

    What a child!

    You might as well go.  You really need to stop the bleeding.  Nearly everything you said was either refuted or corrected.  I think the only accurate thing you said was your quoting of William Lane Craig who in that context is giving a proof for the existence of God.

    You never responded to a single point I raised.  Once you saw you were defeated you just changed the subject over and over again.  Of course you won’t engage the debate.  I have on several occasions had the opportunity to discuss these matters with professors of biology, and I the same thing happens to them.  It just amazes me that people have beliefs about subjects such as evolution and design, but they DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY CLAIM TO BELIEVE.  Someone tell me how you affirm belief in something you don’t even have the very elementary knowledge of???

    Go lick your wounds buddy.  But stop blaming good men for your personal cowardice and ignorance.  Be a man and accept defeat.  You were terribly defeated.  Must this be said?

42. Chadwick September 16th, 2009 6:19 am :

    Dan A.,

    Read your own words about Coulter and Stein—–>What a child!

    You might as well go.  You really need to stop the bleeding.  Nearly everything you said was either refuted or corrected.  I think the only accurate thing you said was your quoting of William Lane Craig who in that context is giving a proof for the existence of God.

    You never responded to a single point I raised.  Once you saw you were defeated you just changed the subject over and over again.  Of course you won’t engage the debate.  I have on several occasions had the opportunity to discuss these matters with professors of biology, and I the same thing happens to them.  It just amazes me that people have beliefs about subjects such as evolution and design, but they DON’T EVEN KNOW WHAT THEY CLAIM TO BELIEVE.  Someone tell me how you affirm belief in something you don’t even have the very elementary knowledge of???

    Go lick your wounds buddy.  But stop blaming good men for your personal cowardice and ignorance.  Be a man and accept defeat.  You were terribly defeated.  Must this be said?

43. Marcus French September 16th, 2009 9:27 am :

    Chadwick,

    Please see our commenting rules here: http://voiceofrevolution.askdrbrown.org/commenting/.

    We do not allow personal attacks on our site.  Please refrain from this in the future.

    Marcus French
    Editor: Voice of Revolution

44. Marc Thomas September 16th, 2009 6:37 pm :

    Chadwick,

    I haven’t read the previous comments or the article, but in any case, your last one seems a little emotional. I’m not giving an opinion on things that I haven’t read, just stating a point about what you said in your last comment. Try not to get worked up like that. It’s not helpful to others, your argument or yourself.

    Marc

45. Chadwick September 16th, 2009 8:48 pm :

    Marc,

    I gave Dan A. a response to every question and challenge he raised, but then he responds by making a comment which is obviously supposed to be offensive.  Then I called him childish for it.  I told him to stick to the debate and respond.  Where is the emotion?  Also, what is wrong with emotion again?

    This is ridiculous.

46. Marcus French September 17th, 2009 9:56 am :

    Chadwick,

    Your last comment has been deleted due to more personal attacks.  Please stick to the issues rather than attacking Ben Stein, Ann Coulter, Dan A., those of us overseeing this site, and everyone in the church.

    Marcus French
    Editor: Voice of Revolution

47. Chad September 17th, 2009 11:08 am :

    Marcus,

    Anne Coulter is not a scientist.  She constantly makes very offensive racist statements.  Dan A. accused me of supporting her theories of ID.  I denied it.  Why don’t you go tell Dan A. to stop making strawmen fallacies and ad hominem fallacies?

    Ben Stein made a great documentary and ruined it with a red herring fallacy that implied that belief in evolution lead to the holocaust.  It ruined the whole picture.  I don’t want that kind of association.

    I didn’t attack Dan A.  I just told him to stop being a child.  Why is it wrong to tell a grown man who is acting like a child to stop being a child?

    When the preacher on sunday talks about sin in the church is he personally attacking the church? (You aren’t going to think about this.  You will just move on and it will pass you right by.)

48. Gabriel September 17th, 2009 12:44 pm :

    Chad,

    I respect your thoughts as i think everyone on here does - including Dan A.  Chill a little though bro.  I want to hear what you have to say. And of course there’s nothing wrong with emotion, but it’s hard to argue with someone on the offense or defense - you know that- that’s why you got offended in the first place.  no one is rejecting you - we want to hear your thoughts.  I might say the same thing to Dan A. - just step back and relax - it’s ok to recognize that there’s an arc of distortion especially on typed messages.

    as to the holocaust red-herring - I think you should look at the clear evidence of history. Hitler had his own motives, but - the Nazi’s definitely have at their center, a value and belief system based on eugenics which is definitely partially based and supported by darwinian evolution that led scientists in Germany to believe and propagate the understanding that there was a superior “race” - which is very clearly what led at least to the excuse of the holocaust.  there is all kinds of records with eugenics photos showing the inferiority of specific “racial” qualities of the Jews, gypsies, handicap people etc… verses the “Aryans” race.  As well as the writings of scientists even USA scientists of the time…

    To be honest - this belief is still a danger to science and humanity - there are many who still buy it - (survival of the fittest - at it’s essence completely supports this - and strives to destroy the possibility of purpose).

    I believe that survival of the fittest is flawed - although has some truth.. that’s another discussion though…

49. Dan September 17th, 2009 6:31 pm :

    Amazing how many times I can be called “childish” with the moderator kindly explaining why this isn’t polite behavior.

    For the record, Chad, I never accused you of supporting Ann Coulter or Ben Stein.  I said I hadn’t read anywhere credible about a conspiracy about anti-darwinist research being suppressed.  I added that Ann Coulter and Ben Stein didn’t count to me because they are the most famous people saying this.  You chose to assume that I was trying to call you a supporter of them, and that for some reason, this was an insult on your character.

    Either way, I’m unsubscribed from this thread, so work it out yourselves. 

    Thanks for keeping the peace, Marcus, but I think you’ll have be a bit harder on people who make personal attacks.  Obviously asking nicely doesn’t always work, and curious atheists and spiritual seekers visiting here will not stick around if this type of stuff is tolerated.

    Thanks again,

    –Dan

50. Chadwick September 18th, 2009 5:15 am :

    Gabriel,

    It doesn’t matter if it is true that evolution lead to the holocaust.  Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Stein was 100% correct that it does.

    Well, what was the whole documentary arguing?  What were his interviews about?  They were all about how unfairly intelligent design science is treated.  It showed how political the system is.  That evidence does not lead to the conclusion that evolution caused the holocaust.  He argued to one conclusion, and then he just tacked on the comment that evolution caused the holocaust.  It was a totally fallacious argument, even it is true.  It ruined the whole movie.

51. Dean November 12th, 2009 10:30 am :

    Hi,
     
    I am a graduate of Brownsville from before the split. I am a friend of FIRE and its congregants since then also. Anyhow, I wanted to talk with someone about issues about evolution, the Bible, and the role both may play in a believer’s life and worldview.
     
    I was raised Christian. I was taught young earth creationism since I was a child. I found it interesting and began reading books about it in my teen years. THen I was introduced to Kent Hovind and became a fan of his videos which I wore out. Etc, etc. Then over a year ago I was bored at my job with internet access and so I began trying to sway evolutionists to the gospel on internet forums. To my surprize, some of the more educated people on their had entirely reasonable and solid answers to everything that I threw at them.
     
    So I read most of the info at talkorigins.com. I read a handful of books on the issues of evolution, the big bang, etc. I could no longer deny that I now understand evolution to be factual.
     
    Fortunately, just before this all took place, I was researching the background and cultural context of the creation and flood stories the best I could. I read all about the myths of Sumer, Akad, the Babylonians, Gilgamesh, Atat Hasis, Atum, Adapa and the Sumerian Kings list. These shed tremendous background to the first 11 chapters and Genesis. They were so illuminating that I could not at all deny that much of those chapters of Genesis was written in part as as polemical against the teachings of the cultures that surrounded the Hebrews and Abraham. Struggling with faith in God and the Bible in genereal was not part of my journey thankfully God kept me from that.
     
    Now this revelation is no indication that those chapters are not inspired, not valuable for doctrine or spiritual enrichment, etc. They are. I now see so much more in those chapters now that I have been sifting through the older myths that came before and influenced the text of the Bible. I see no problem with this any more than Jesus using non literal parables to teach truths- or apocalyptic literature in Daniel, Isaiah and Revelation being vehicles to teach truth. Myth is a literary genre I believe. It is not a lie or error filled story if you see it as another style of literature that the ancients used to teach theifr values and worldviews.
     
    Anyhow, I am considered a mislead heretic by many and I am extremely cautious about sharing this with any one, especially since creationism is often taught as gospel truth and foundational to the faith (which I completely disagree with coming from an informed perspective on these matters.). I hope maybe there is one or two people on staff there who contribute to the philosophy and science sections who would have time and willingness to just simply discuss these things with me.
     
    i am not looking for a debate but I know it is one of those things that happens when addressing these issues. I am just looking to talk with some like minded on fire people who are really serious believers and care about how these issues affect the gospel in the earth and how these issues can affect a believers’ relationship with Jesus and with the church in general. I do believe that the battle against science (evolution) is the entirely wrong battle to fight. In the end, truth will probably win. I also believe that the church would be more successful with the great commission if evolution was accepted and affirmed while the real truth behind Genesis 1-11 was commenly taught backround information- that and the fact that it need not be taken historically or literally at all.
     
    Thanks so much.
     
    God bless your great work with VOR.
     
    Dean (not my real name just yet)

52. Chadwick November 12th, 2009 9:09 pm :

    Dean,

    I also went to BRSM.  I was a 2nd or 3rd semester when the split took place.  It is really hard to talk to people about these things.  Most Christians never study these issues out.  It is really great that you have done so much work in this important area.  I have also.  I foudn that most of what goes on in the church is intellectually unsatisfying, especially what goes on at seminaries.  I decided to get a secular philosophy degree and study logic.  I also got to study proofs for God’s existence under the head of the department who is a philosopher of science.  I would like to talk if you want.  But let me just say that debates are good.  They are healthy.  Most people in the church are so childish and undeveloped that they can’t even have an intellectual discussion at an adult level- this is what a debate is.

    Let’s do some clarifying first.  What you said was a bit confusing.  Why do you discuss the big bang when we are supposed to be discussing biological evolution?  For example you say the following:

    “So I read most of the info at talkorigins.com. I read a handful of books on the issues of evolution, the big bang, etc. I could no longer deny that I now understand evolution to be factual.” - Quoting Dean

    The big bang has a ton of evidence to support it, but scholars seem to agree that it is a big problem for atheists.  It is exactly what you would expect if the book of Genesis were true.  So what is the connection here you want to make to biological evolution?

    I would also like to know why you believe in biological evolution.  Please give me one piece of evidence.  I want your best evidence, not a million little pieces of weak evidence.  I am open to it.  It might be true, but I just haven’t seen much evidence, if any.  I don’t go along with special creation, but it might also be true as well.  I just don’t know.  I am pretty much agnostic about the issue.  I tend to think some form of intelligent design is probably at work, but that may also include God-guided evolution.

    C.S. Lewis believed in evolution, but he was skeptical because of the childish and unreasonable attitudes from the scientific community.  They had an almost religious fervor for biological evolution.  In fact there was this whole religious myth of evolution he often wrote about where they see mankind as on the verge of a breakthrough.  “Everything is evolving!”, is the mantra.

    Later,
    Chad

53. Dean November 13th, 2009 8:21 am :

    Hi Chad,

    Thanks so much for the reply. appreciate the respect. To contrast, the other day I felt like I was talking with Torquemada when a close friend of mine addressed my views with me for the first time. Yuk. The Jesus way is  much better.

    I do wish I could find more info about CS Lewis and his beliefs about science, I read part of a letter of his that addrexssed this matter that you also probably read. It was written just before he died. On that note, I made a comment about how he beleived in evolution to a woman in my church and she immediately retorted “You can’t believe in evolution and be a Christian!” I felt such a sense of community and love… LOL.

    The reasong I the the big bang in there with biological evolution is because though it it not a biological issue, it is evolution none the less. It is cosmological evolution. But at any rate, the big bang is a matter of natural processes seemingly unguided. In that way it is in the same general category as biological evolution. Its all evolution, just different realms of it.

    And yes there are problems with the big bang (indeed in many areas of science) yet to be satisfactorily dealt with, but that is no “proof” that the general idea is untenable or false. If we applied that rule of logic to the Bible, no one could have reasonable faith at all, if you know what I mean. Look at how silly people look creatively trying to defend grasshoppers with 4 legs, a special dome (firmament) containing the sun moon and stars covering over the flat earth, or the book of Enoch as being somehow but somehow still not on the same level as the Bible.

    Not all scholars have a problem with the big bang theologically. I know Steven Hawking for one (who is a foremost scholar on the big bang) does not see any definite gaps for God to fill in the big bang. He laid out a few potential scenarios with supportive evidences as to how the big bang happened the way it did- no God or gods are part of the equations. Before our spiritual antennea start to jiggle, realize that these theories are contrived of various hard evidences that seem to fit together in particular ways that make sense of the facts. It is not a matter of trying to find a way to disprove God any more than they are trying to disprove Scientology, LOL.

    Yes most people are almost totally uniformed about the issues of science and our faith. Unfortunately, most often when believers are aware of these issues, they are poisioned with fallacies, straw man arguments, lies, misinformation and indoctrination against real science. What ever happened to the call from God for his people to be truthful witnesses, to investigate matters, or “The first to present his case seems right, till another comes forward and questions him.” –Proverbs 18:17.

54. Dean November 13th, 2009 9:12 am :

    Hi again Chad,

    I almost forgot you asked for one piece of evidence for biological evolution. I think it is a lot more complicated than looking at one piece to prove something. Evolution is seen for what it is when you look at a pluthera of evidences together from geology, plate tectonics, genetics, paleontology, etc, etc.

    Lenski’s experiment is one “real-time” proof of biological evolution. Here is his site’s info about it http://myxo.css.msu.edu/ecoli/summdata.html.

    Another would be genetic studies. Using the same genetic information that is used to prove paternity in court, scientists have demonstrated to relationship between humans and chimps on a molecular level. It is around 98%. We are both from a common ancestor. Furthermore, we both share some key identical genetic pseudogenes. These are corrupted remnants of genes leftover from past evolution. Humans carry the pseudogenes for producing vitamin C, for instance. No human can do it any longer, but the genetic record of history is there in all of us to see. 

    How about the geological record? It has never betrayed to basic tenants of biological evolution but instead has supported it. This is so much so that the geologic column has guided evolutionist scientists the know where to look for “transitional forms” or “missing links.”

    Take the human ancestors- various sorts of Australopithecines, homo habilis, Ardepithecus, the Turkana boy, Cro-magnon, Homo Ergaster, the very existance of Neanderthals, and the list goes on and on. These fossils are all found in the Eocene and later layers only. The order is amazingly supportive of evolution. If just one primate were to be found in say a Jurassic layer, evolution would be completely thrown for a loop. Noah’s flood can not begin to account for any of this either.

    A textbook example of evolution theory successfully leading scientists to discover a “smoking gun” piece of hard evidence is the recent discovery of Tiktaalik. It was found in the exact rock layers that biological evolution predicted such a creature would be found in, the Devonian. It is an airtight example of being exactly “half fish, half amphibian” as you could have made up yourself.

    Look at the fossil record for the evolution of horses, whales, dinosaurs to birds and yes humans for great examples of transition being so obvious and the fossil record in the proper rock layers as empirical evidences to support biological evolution.

    For me it is  no longer a question of “did evolution happen or not.” For me it is more like, “Where does God fit into the whole equation?” For me, the only hard “evidences” for the existence of God are the same ones that support the historicity of the New Testament and the resurrection of Jesus. These are as strong as can reasonably be expected, indeed stronger, if the New Testament’s record about Jesus and the early church is indeed factual and historical. Since I can definitely believe in the New Testament, I can have faith in the gospel for sure too.

    I can’t help but to naturally look at my personal experience with God as evidence also. But the human mind is relentlessly creative and I can also just as easily look at things like unanswered prayer, and others things that happen that seem to contradict what I understand about the character of God from the Bible. So I think it wise to leave personal experience in its safe place- more of icing on the cake or somehting like that. If you don’t, a critical thinking mind will find itself in endless knots when it comes to having faith and simply living life with God.  

55. Chad November 14th, 2009 6:04 am :

    Dean,

    Let’s try to stay focused.  First we can talk about cosmic evolution and the big bang and later we can deal with biological evolution.  I will do it in that order because you seem more interested in the cosmological issue.

    The big bang is an obvious problem for atheists.  William Lane Craig is a famous philosopher who does debates with atheists on the big bang.  No atheist scholars want to accept that the universe had a beginning, which is exactly what you get from the traditional big bang model.  The traditional big bang model has been a terror to atheists for a century.  You say Stephen Hawkings does not see a place where God fits in.  Well, it is obvious where God fits in.  Let’s look at the argument Craig advances:

    1) Whatever begins to exist must have a cause.
    2) The universe began to exist.
    Conclusion) The universe has a cause.

    If both of these premises are true, then the atheist has a big problem as I will show in later entries.  I have never seen anyone agree to both of these premises in a debate because what follows is a very powerful argument that God exists.  What I want to know from you is whether or not you accept these two premises.  I will address the other issues in your letter.  I have to go watch the movie “2012″ now.  I need to find out what is going to happen to the earth in the future if we don’t give Al Gore all our money to invest in carbon cutting projects.  Remember, Al Gore is not on a mission to become a billionaire, he just loves us all.

56. Dean November 15th, 2009 9:00 am :

    Hi Chad,
     
    Al Gore is such a voice in the wilderness crying out. Thankfully he invented the Internet so we could even have this conversation. Wait. Isn’t the Internet bad for the environment too? All that burned energy and carbon footprint…
     
    OK. First of all I remind you that I am not an atheist and there are quite a few believers who also accept some version of the fluctuation theory.
     
    Second. One can easily find a place or places where God would fit into the big bang- or one could find the same evidences as an example of strong anthropic principle. If it is really the direct work of God that we see evidence of than great and I hope that science will progress into this truth more clearly. If not, than it is no more a problem for a believer than any other aspect of either cosmological evolution or even biological evolution. It is natural processes at work in its most sublime theater.
     
    I don’t really have a stance about whether it is strong anthropic principle or the fingerprints of God. I can rest with faith and unknowns while being in awe and wonder of God and the creation while seeking more knowledge with an open heart and mind the whole time. Its just that it may be unwise to assume God onto something when simply probing and experimenting more might find the cause of any particular scientific thing. Such has proven the case many times in the past. Take hail for example. The Bible says that it comes from God’s storehouses in the dome of the sky which opens large doors to release onto the earth while science has discovered the weather cycle. Obviously the Bible was using figurative poetic language to communicate to the people of that time most clearly. We can do justice to the Bible and say that there is more non literal language of certain parts of the Bible that deal with scientific issues than we may have initially realized.
     
    You said:
     
    The traditional big bang model has been a terror to atheists for a century.  You say Stephen Hawkings does not see a place where God fits in.  Well, it is obvious where God fits in.  Let’s look at the argument Craig advances:
    1) Whatever begins to exist must have a cause.
    2) The universe began to exist.
    Conclusion) The universe has a cause.
     
    And every action has an equal and opposite reaction. It is not as though scientists never thought of that problem. The bigger problem would be to successfully explain a few other things first.
     One is- why is everything in the universe moving away from the earth at a dramatic rate of speed, the universe is expanding? This is an established fact.
     
    Another is something like this. Scientists predicted that the universe would be filled with “cosmic background radiation” from the enormous energy released in the initial explosion of the big bang. Lo and behold they found exactly that when the technology was finally invented for them to look.
     
    If you take the time to read through some reputable books explaining the hows and whys of all this you will see that it is not the outlandish folly that many streams of Creationism makes it out to be.
     
    The anthropic principle deals with the “fine tuning” of the universe. There are a handful of specifics that for unknown reasons were exactly the way that they were against all odds that can be postulated. Stacked at least five of these specific factors together as our universe has done really boggles the mind to contemplate how those odds were overwhelmingly overcome. But that being said, these particular fine tuning factors were necessary for cosmological and thus also for biological evolution to occur- not for six days of spontaneous creation to occur.
     
     So the equation scientists might debate about is something like “Did God intervene and set these factors, did random chance do it, or is there more to the picture that has yet to be discovered? Number three is a wise position to take. Random chance is not likely. But that being said, there are some new models of a “multiverse” are based on some very intriguing observations and experiments that give the concept real potential to help explain some of these things. A large or seemingly infinite number of universes constantly being created and/or destroyed is a model that can’t be ruled out nor can it be definitely proven as of yet.
     
    If you find that laughable than look into how the mathematical models of how we observe the power of gravity affecting stellar bodies always progressively breaks down at the outer edges of spiral galaxies. Where does that matter and energy go in order for the second law of thermodynamics to remain constant? Why does this phenomenon only happen under those conditions? Thus there is “apparent” initial evidence for the existence of at least one parallel universe we can indirectly observe from out own universe.
     
    Yes the Big Bang had a cause. Be it a cosmic fluctuation, something from another universe, some factor(s) dealing with the nature of the possible multiverse, some factors yet to be discerned about the “big bang simgularity,” or the direct hand of God Himself, etc. These are all issues for science to continue to probe for answers for. But none of these at all are real reasons to totally rule out the big bang. Again, you have the expanding universe and cosmic background radiation for starters. You have the observations of stars being formed and stars being destroyed which is explained by all the big bang models and all the math.
     
    So yes it is not impossible that God caused the big bang to happen a certain way that we have begun to uncover the incriminating evidence for. If that is the case than we are forced to ask why everything else that happened in cosmological evolution and indeed biological evolution when dusted for those same fingerprints has uncovered none? Then, Deism becomes a real issue. Then we can move onto grounds that put the nature and character of God into question even worse. Pantheism and polytheism are some things that would come up. We may as well just live our lives believing in whatever fantasies a daily dose of serious hallucinogenic drugs would induce for that matter.
     
     Being dogmatic can put us into theologically tight spots. It is best to hold to our reasoable faith in the gospel, be skeptically reasonable and forever inquisitive about science and stand in awe of what remains mystery and of what no longer does. At any rate, God is infinitely greater than the universe and everything in it. So being that the universe (or yes, LOL, the multiverse) is so incredibly vast, we can agree with the wisdom that God gave Job. If science is so sublime, how much more is God and His ways?
     
     
     
     
     
     

57. Marcus French November 15th, 2009 5:36 pm :

    Dean,

    With reference to your original comment, I do not believe that one need adhere to young-earth creationism or disbelieve in evolution to be a follower of Jesus. 

    Regarding Genesis 1-11, is your stance that there is no historical information there?

    – Marcus

58. Dean November 15th, 2009 8:26 pm :

    Marcus

    yes

59. Chad November 15th, 2009 8:52 pm :

    Dean,

    The traditional big bang model is accepted so widely it is considered the consensus view, just as Darwinian evolution is.  Sure there are a few people who disagree with big bang theory, but so it is with evolution.  I have never heard this contested in any of Craig’s debates.  Every single atheist that Craig debated has accepted that statement about the big bang model.  I have heard no atheists bring up alternative models (in debates with Craig).  They all just accept this.  Craig usually quotes a lot of top scholars who make very strong claims about how widely accepted traditional big bang theory is.

    Your comment that the cosmological arugment just assumes the existence of God prior to adequate scientific support is absurd.  How so?  What steps have been skipped?  It argues that there are certain ways that things would have to be, and certain properties the cause would have to have.  I think we should look at the debate together before leaping to conclusions.  Let’s go slowly.

    Dean, you completely miss the point of the first premise.  You say “And every action has an equal and opposite reaction”.  That is a physical principle.  It is not a metaphysical law such as in premise 1.  Even God can not make premise 1 false.  It is necessarily true.  However, God can make it false that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  So you don’t seem to see what I am trying to say there.

    Dean you say the following:”If you take the time to read through some reputable books explaining the hows and whys of all this you will see that it is not the outlandish folly that many streams of Creationism makes it out to be.”

    I’m a creationist now???  Creationism makes big bang theory seem absurd???  I am not a creationist, and while some creationists object to the big bang, it doesn’t apply to all creationists.  I have studied this subject in university, like I said, under the head of the department who is a philosopher of science with a physic’s degree.  I have already studied the cosmological argument.  I have not put forward anything against it.  I am arguing for the big bang.  Why on earth would you tell me that it isn’t that absurd, when I am arguing in favor of it.  I am really getting confused here.

    The anthropic principle is raised by atheists in order to attack fine tuning.  You have it totally backwards.  The anthropic principle tries to say that things only appear fine-tuned because we only have our perspective to view the universe.  Of course things will look fine-tuned (says the AP), because any random chance occurance of proper conditions for life will bring forth life.

    Please stop telling me I am a creationist.  I am not.

    Multiverse theory does not state that an infinite number of universes are constantly being created.  Multiverse theory says that there are an infinite number of universes that are being created simultaneously.  So you do not get an infinite amount of time.  Big bang model is still accepted by 99%  You can disagree with the masses of scholars, but it is not easy to do.  You have to have some good arguments.  Do you?

    Let’s discuss one thing- what the cause of the big bang would have to be like.  It would have to be able to exist apart from time.  It must be able to exist apart from time because time started at the big bang.  So in order to exist apart from time (being able to exist even if time does not exist), the cause must be unchanging.  If there is change, then there is time.  Time is change.  In order to exist without change the cause has to be immaterial.  If the cause has material parts, then the cause can not be immutable.  So the cause of the big bang has to be timeless, spaceless, and unchanging.  Agree so far?

60. Chad November 15th, 2009 8:55 pm :

    To all,

    I am not a creationist.  I do believe in Jesus.  I am open to evolution, but I have seen little evidence for it.  I believe in big bang theory and a 16 billion year old universe.  The Bible clearly does not make a claim of 24 hour periods, since there was no sun until day 4.

61. Chad November 15th, 2009 8:58 pm :

    We can deal with biological evolution later.  These issues are so vast that it helps to stay focused.  I just want to deal with the cosmological arugment before we switch topics.

62. Dean November 16th, 2009 8:44 am :

    Chad

    Forgive me for assuming you were poising for attack against the big bang as most creationists I have ever talked with so often do. You are not and yes I was misunderstanding things. You are not a creationists you say. But we both believe in the Bible so it is confusing right there you see.

    Qick Q. Since you and I both believe in the Bible and God and God as creator (how is another story), then what label do we identify with since we do not agree with what is popularly called Creationism? Or do we simply deal with it on a case by case basis?

    Now as for your points:
    Let’s discuss one thing- what the cause of the big bang would have to be like.  It would have to be able to exist apart from time.  It must be able to exist apart from time because time started at the big bang.  So in order to exist apart from time (being able to exist even if time does not exist), the cause must be unchanging.  If there is change, then there is time.  Time is change.  In order to exist without change the cause has to be immaterial.  If the cause has material partLet’s discuss one thing- what the cause of the big bang would have to be like.  It would have to be able to exist apart from time.  It must be able to exist apart from time because time started at the big bang.  So in order to exist apart from time (being able to exist even if time does not exist), the cause must be unchanging.  If there is change, then there is time.  Time is change.  In order to exist without change the cause has to be immaterial.  If the cause has material parts, then the cause can not be immutable.  So the cause of the big bang has to be timeless, spaceless, and unchanging.  Agree so far?

    If that is all there is to the equation then yes that sounds reasonable. But on the other hand, and I am not automatically disregarding anything you may be about to say by any means, there must be good reason why 99% of scholars believe in a model of the big bang that does not have God in the equation. 

    It may be that there is no multiverse and God caused the big bang. But if that proves not to be the case, then does that necessarily create a problem for us believers? (pun intended)

63. Chadwick November 16th, 2009 8:58 pm :

    Dean,

    It isn’t confusing.  I believe God made everything, but I don’t believe what you learn in sunday school that God used a 24-hour clock to count off the time.  He didn’t even have the sun until the 4th day, thus he was not using the sun to count the first 4 days.  The Bible does not support the 24- hour creation theory.  It isn’t like I am going against the Bible.  The Bible goes against the creationists.  The Big Bang is exactly what you would expect to happen if Genesis were true.  The big bang has been a big problem for atheists.  It supports the Bible.  Time and the measure of time are two wholly different things.  Time means that there is change.  How we measure time is another thing.

    I call myself a believer in the traditional big bang theory.  I call myself agnostic with regard to biological evolution, but I think probably some form of God-guided evolution would be needed.  It is possible that God just made everything like special creation.  I don’t rule that out either.  So I guess for me, the only label I can have is big bang adherent or something like that.  Reason demands that we remain undecided until there is sufficient evidence to conform to the right belief.

    Why do you say 99% of scientists believe a view that does not have God in the equation?  It seems to me that the big bang is solid evidence that God MUST exist.  The cause of the big bang has to be able to exist timelessly, without space, unchanging.  The cause has to be extremely powerful and able to exist outside of time and space yet be able to causally affect time and space.  The cause has to be extremely intelligent, putting the universe into a very balanced state.  The probability that the universe would be so finely tuned is astronomical.  And the cause of the universe must be personal.  The cause is either a mechanically operating cause or a non-mechanically operating cause.  If it is mechanical then whenever you had the cause, you would have the effect.  The effect being the universe, being 16 billion years old, it would mean the cause would also be 16 billion years old.  But that would be absurd because the cause would then need some other cause for its existence.  Something has to be an uncaused cause which exists eternally or timelessly.  So the cause of the universe is non-mechanical.  The cause is personal.

64. Dean November 16th, 2009 10:28 pm :

    Chad,

    Good points to consider. Ultimately it makes sense that there is a first cause. If that is the case than that cause being God does make sense. As far as sense makes when tlaking about where the supernatural meets science.

    I do question if and what difference it makes if one believes that God cause the big bang or not, at least not in any direct sense any more than any other natural process of science that we can observe in real time. I am not a Calvinist/reform theology adherant. So I don’t believe that God is directly the author of every single event, decision, etc. So why is it important that God be the first cause? Why can’t it safely be some yet not completely understood aspect of the multiverse, etc?

65. Chad November 17th, 2009 1:51 am :

    Dean,

    Do you have an objection to something in the cosmological argument?  If not, then you have your answer to the questions you asked.  The cause of the universe must be something like God because of the properties which are essential to the cause of the universe.

    You ask why the cause could not be some aspect of the multiverse.  The multiverse is not infinitely old.  It is a theory which states that there are an infinite number of universes that came into existence simultaneously.  The multiverse is no older than our universe, if it exists at all.  It doesn’t affect the cosmological argument at all.

    Whatever the cause is must be personal with a free will.  It must be intelligent.  It must be eternal.  Whatever the cause is, it can’t just be some aspect of the universe for all the reasons already mentioned.  It must have a mind because it is clear that it created the universe to be fine-tuned and to have laws that govern it.

    Of course we don’t want to postualte a universe in which God is always stepping in to keep it balanced.  That would be evidence that God is not a good creator.  An all powerful and supremely rational being would be able to make a universe which was runs right without having to interfere.  So we should get a universe in which there appears to be no God at all.

    What do you mean the supernatural meets science?  What does “supernatural” mean?  Does it just mean things we can’t observe?  Then would math be included in supernatural?  Do you mean God is supernatural?  Well, he exists, so in what sense is he different from nature?  Or perhaps you intend to separate the cause of the universe and the universe into nature and supernature.  It isn’t clear to me what is meant by “supernatural”.

66. Chad November 17th, 2009 1:58 am :

    Dean,

    It seems like you didn’t really understand the argument.  Once you admit to premise 1 and 2 of the cosmological argument all the properties follow.  The properties of the cause being an uncaused, eternal, immutable, immaterial, transcendant, intelligent, and personal being are all derived necessarily from the 2 premises.  So there is no choice in the matter.  It is sort of like a math equation.  If you have 2 and 2 then you have 4.  There is no room to wiggle out of it by considering the possibility that the first cause was some impersonal law.  We know it was not an impersonal law because of the arguments given for the properties.  An impersonal cause would not be able to cause the universe to exist and also exist eternally unchanged.  Any time an impersonal cause exist, so does its affect.

    So we have a cause for the universe that looks very much like God except we do not have one very important property- love.  It doesn’t mean the cause does not have the property of being loving.  It just means that the cosmological argument alone does not give you the property love.  Other arguments can establish this, i.e. Frederick’s argument he used against Russell in their famous debate.

67. Dean November 17th, 2009 7:48 pm :

    Chad,

    For the sake of argument, which I am much less qualified for about this than you, I will say you have a point. I need time to look into this more and give it a fair treatment. But conceding that you are right, is the cosmological argument absolutely necessary for our faith in God as creator to be solid? I have some thoughts about it but I just want to hear what you say first.

    I know this is changing the subject but this just makes my mind wander over to things like suffering and the case example of the ichneumon wasps which carefully sting certain points of a caterpillar’s nervous system, effectively paralyzing it. Then the wasp larvae eat the fat and digestive system saving the heart and nervous system for last- so that the caterpillar stays alive until the bitter end. This and a plethora of other examples make me wonder how this is a reflection of the character of God as a perfect, wise and purposeful creator. How do I reconcile all these terrible sufferings of nature as the best way that the world could have been of all possible worlds?

    And the doctrine that these are all a result of the fall in the garden is more a recent creationist doctrine that is a back door to escape these problems. I can’t accept that doctrine as Biblical. It has such a small and shaky foundation. Rabbit trail but a significant one.

68. Chad November 17th, 2009 8:59 pm :

    Dean,

    Of course we don’t need the cosmological argument or any argument for faith.  Faith, however, is not separate from reason.  If you look at what Plantinga says about faith, it is something like the product of a reliable belief producing mechanism such as the eye.  We have some reliable belief producing mechanism called “The Holy Spirit”.  He gives us knowledge of God.  Faith is not believing irrationally.  But it is still good to seek truth and question beliefs, and it is good to have our belief in God backed by our understanding of the world, apart from spiritual knowledge.

    Now you are bringing up the problem of evil.  That is one of the most important issues to think about.  I said that the cosmological argument would not demonstrate that the cause of the universe has the property of love.  But there are other arguments.  The best one is one’s personal experience of God.  Another is Ferderick Copleston’s moral argument for the existence of God.  That does demonstrate that God is good or loving.  It will take us some time.  Would you like to discuss evil or biological evolution next?  I think we have said enough for the cosmological argument for now.  At least you seem to have found it interesting and would like to move on.

    I was impressed to hear from a philosophy graduate student that one of his atheist professors, who is a really first rate philosopher, told him he thinks that he thinks the cosmological argument actually works to prove God’s existence, but he just doesn’t care, lol.

69. Dean November 18th, 2009 9:22 am :

    Chad,

    Now I have some homework to do in relation to the cosmological argument. Thant’s good and I think it may have real merit.

    But the issue of evil and suffering is one that inevitably comes up. I wish I had a copy of C S Lewis’ book The Problem of Pain. But I don’t .I just read the back cover on line and it apparently deals with these very topics. :{

    About the moral argument… Yes I accept biological evolution via natural selection as evident from the various fields of science. I know you currently do not see it that way and so it may not be fruitful to discuss that at this moment. 

    I also see that the human conscience, morality, etc can all be accounted for by biological evolution just like every other part of a person can. That is no argument against the existence of God though.

    So whether its part of the natural processes of natural selection or of some other unknown origen, biological life is inundated with pain and suffering. Most of it would seem totally avoidable in the first place had things been created or organized with the notion of eliminating unnecessary suffering and pain in mind.

    Why the ichneumon wasp? Why make the teeth and claws of the predatory dinosaurs so utterly painful and horrific for their innocent prey? The world could have been full of only vegetarians couldn’t it? Why do viruses even exist at all? You get my point.

70. Chadwick November 19th, 2009 12:51 am :

    Dean,

    Ok, we can put the cosmological argument away for a while.  Let’s discuss evil and evolution which will obviously need to be dealt with together.

    You say that the following:

    “Yes I accept biological evolution via natural selection as evident from the various fields of science. I know you currently do not see it that way and so it may not be fruitful to discuss that at this moment. ”

    I am completely open to evolution.  It may have happened.  I have considered it seriously for a long time.  I don’t just rule it out because the preacher says it is wrong.  I see nothing in the Bible that conflicts with evolutionary theory.  I already told you why I reject the 6 days of creation as being literal.  It was because the sun was not created until the 4th day, so there could be no 24 hour days in the literal sense.  I also do not think the passage in Genesis where it says everything reproduced after its own kind is contrary to evolution.  Everything could have evolved from a one-celled creature and then after a certain point in time when evolution reached an end, everything from that point on reproduced after its own kind.  I remain agnostic with regard to the whole issue of biological evolution.  Of course we can have a frutiful discussion.

    Remember, whether we have a fruitful discussion will have to do with our ability to be rational and look at the evidence.  It doesn’t matter if you are a creationist and I am an evolutionist or even if both of us agree.  It matters that we take time to address the issues.

    I lean toward evolution more so than creation.  The reason is that 99.9% of scientists lean toward evolution.  I don’t agree with the majority of the church that just throws out science because of their view of the Bible.  I think we need to be careful to find a unity among our beliefs.  So many find this unity by being careless with intellectual issues.

    So let me check out the website you gave me in a previous post.  You said it was good evidence for biological evolution.  I looked at it earlier, but it seems quite extensive.  Do you think you can give me a synopsis of the article?

71. Chadwick November 19th, 2009 1:10 am :

    Dean,

    I read all of the articles on the Michigan University website you link to in your post.  I see nothing about an information increasing beneficial mutation on there.  The website is not exactly user friendly.  Parts of it appear to be unpublished according to the footnotes.  Can you help me out here with a summary of the data?

72. Chadwick November 19th, 2009 1:23 am :

    Dean,
    I want to address the issue of the relation between chimps and humans.  I was at first excited to find out that we have similar chromosomes.  We have one less pair than chimps, but supposedly two of our chromosme pairs became fused together.  I think this may be promising for the theory of evolution.

    I was reading an article recently about the theory that Native Americans were descentants of Asians.  There seems to be good genetic evidence of that.  But is this really what is going on with chimps and humans?  There may be reason to doubt this.

    You can explain the similarity between chimps and humans two ways.  Firstly, it could be because they had a common ancestor.  However, another thing which would explain the commonality would be that they had a common designer.  Both would do the work.  So maybe God gives them both similar DNA because he wants to give them similar design.  And who is to say that what we are looking at with the fused chromosome is merely accidental.  Maybe God made it that way for a good reason.  This is not God of the gaps, and I will tell you why.  We have many examples in the past of thinking organs and sections of DNA are “vestigial” or “junk”.  But later we find out that these things have very important functions.  Are we sufficiently progressed to say that humans have junk DNA and organs that were once useful?  It seems like we have been proved wrong about this time and time again.  Maybe some caution would be wise.  Maybe we should be slow in our assessments.  Planes and cars both have similar looking wheels, but they are not related to each other.  They have a common designer- man.  Another problem is the timeline.  Although there is minimal difference in

73. Chadwick November 19th, 2009 1:48 am :

    Dean,

    I was in a biology class in university, and a professor was going over all this evidence for evolution.  After I grilled her about all the intentional forgeries and frauds which were put forward by paleontolgists, she responded by saying “Paleontologists are not considered real scientists by biologists”.  I don’t agree or disagree with her.  All I am saying is that we are told how wonderful the “geologic record” is, but it is not so tidy as some make it sound.

    We don’t have a “geologic record” or a “fossile record”.  What we have is bones in the dirt.  We have bones in the dirt and human artifacts which do not fit nicely with evolutionary theory.  I will point out a few problems.

    We are told by evolutionists that dinosaurs died out 65,000,000.  However, we have a few examples of dinosaur bones with soft tissue and blood still remaining!  It could be that we have just discovered that blood and soft tissue can last for millions of years longer than we thought.  Or perhaps the entire timeline we are given by scientists is wrong.  Of course no one ever mentions the latter.  That to me is evidence of dishonesty and lack of care for truth by scientists.

    Another huge problem is that ancient human artifacts have been found inside coal veins.  They have found many silver bells, statues, and human tools made of metal inside coal.  This suggests that humans pre-existed the formation of coal! But coal supposedly takes millions of years to form.  We were also told that diamonds take millions of years to form, but we can make real diamonds in 2-3 days in factory.

    I want to point out a problem that G.K. Chesterton pointed out.  If an aeronautics engineer makes a mistake we will see it when the plane crashes.  But geologists and paleontologists have no such checks and balances.  They have to make a series of assumptions, each of which hinge on other assumptions, but they have no checks to see if what they predicted is true.  They have a tightly knit social/political structure that oversees the research in their fields, but they do not have any outside auditing.  It is just like the Federal Reserve in that respect.  We just have to trust that they have no corruption in them.  Hopefully they are all a bunch of angels.

    The dating methods used to see how old the universe are seem to be pretty reasonable.  But the methods used to date things on earth do not seem reasonable.  When we look at starlight, we can use trigonometry to measure how far away the star is.  That seems fine.  That is just math.  Then we take the speed of light, and we get a nice figure for how far away the star is.

    But our methods of dating fossils and rocks is very dubious.  Firstly, radiometric dating is always based on relative dating.  Relative dating was in place well before we had any modern radiometric dating systems.  We had been assigning ages in the millions of years for objects well before we even knew what an isotope was.  This is actually hilarious when you think about it.  I remember Wagner, who was first to propose the theory of continental drift in the early 1920s, said the continents were moving at about 2 inches per year.  Recently we have found that he was EXACTLY correct.  The continents appear to be moving 2 inches per year based on what our satelites can detect!  But there is a problem.  The satelites have an error factor of +- 2 inches.  So the continents are either drifting or they are not drifting at all.  Either way, we get the same numbers lol.

    This is what happens when someone finds a fossil to take to a lab…

74. Chadwick November 19th, 2009 2:04 am :

    Dean,

    This is what happens when someone finds a fossil to take to a lab…

    The scientist will ask them where they found it.  After that, the fossil will be given a relative date.  This relative date is extremely important.  If you tell them you found it 100 feet lower in the rock colloum, they will use a totally different isotope to find a date for it.  This is hilarious.  They presuppose relative dating and then use that to support radiometric dating.  They also do a lot of circular dating.  They date the rocks by the fossils, and they date the fossils by the rocks.  This is no joke.  They do it, and it goes unquestioned because to question it is to lose your job.  There are endless examples of people taking 10-20 year old bones to scientists and the scientists coming up with numbers like 20 million years old etc.

    Fresh rock from Mt. St. Helens eruption was dated to 2.8 million years old.  So how can we trust this as anything even remotely scientific?

75. Chadwick November 19th, 2009 2:14 am :

    Dean,

    Noah’s flood can not account for humans being at the top of the dirt pile?  Of course it can.  First of all, humans are found deep in the earth.  There are fossils that do not fit the geologic coloum.  Secondly, if there was a worldwide flood, humans would certainly be the last ones to go.  If I was in a competition to survive a flood against a cow and a dinosaur, guess who can climb a tree?  I could also think of ways to stay afloat.

    I think there is very impressive evidence for Noah’s flood.  Ever seen Kent Hovind on the flood of Noah?  Ever seen the Grand Canyon speech he gives?  I am no fan of Hovind’s theories, but he does have some impressive comments about the Grand Canyon and Noah’s flood.

    Are you aware of spirit lake near Mt. St. Helens?  The rock layers were formed in weeks, not millions of years.  So, we never saw rock layers form over millions of years.  We do know that they can form in a short time.  So should we conclude that they form in a short time always?  It doesn’t seem like a terrible conclusion, at least not on first thought.

    What do you think about the clams that can be found at the top of every moutain?  It seems like it is evidence that every part of the world was once flooded.  What do you think?

76. Dean November 19th, 2009 10:43 pm :

    Chad,

    Well that is way too much information to address all in one little response. And its not because I can’t.

    The Lenski experiment is something I have come across in a few different books and websites. Here is the Wikipedia entry on it. It is user friendly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment

    Basically an E. coli organism has been being very carefully bred for thousands of generations for years now in controlled conditions in a lab. At one point one strain of them had developed the ability to digest what was normally deadly poison to them and use it as energy. It also changed its appearance. This is totally new genetic “information” if there ever is any such thing. It is a case of Darwinian natural selection observed speciating.

    Also polyploydy plants have been observed branching into new species.

    And the whole creationist teaching about dating rocks by the fossils and the fossils by the rocks is only a partial truth.

    Igneous rocks betray their age with 99. some odd percent accuracy with radio carbon dating. Yes the infamous radio carbon. Igneous rocks can be found in particular layers which are used as index layers. The respective layers in between igneous portions will betray their ages to the limits that the igneous layers set the windows for.

    Other dating examples work corraboratively with radio carbon dating. Potassium Argon is one, dendrocondritology is another (although it deals with tree ring indexing and only in the last ten thousand  years), coral rings are another (very interesting proof of the age of life on the earth, very interesting), varves, and ice cores all work together to betray ages. Also plate tectonics betray the extensive ages of the fossils in the layers.

    The separation of the continents reveal the expected evolutionary history in the fossils also. That would require a lot more to sufficiently explain but I throw it out there.

    Noah’s flood is literally impossible outside of it being entirely miraculous from beginning to end. There is not enough water on earth to cover tall mountains like Mt Everest for example. If a  one time catastrophe caused the fossil record to form, than one would find a generalized order of fossil deposits instead of a strict one. You never find mammals on the bottom or humans in any, ANY layers dating back more than say a million years or so. You would find plenty of fossilized drunks, disabled persons, hapless people and random creatures of all sorts scattered in every layer of sediment. But that is not the case. I mean, why not one single mouse or rabbit found in the lowest layers? It defies reason to insist in a flood.

    Noah’s flood has no explanation for the distribution of species. Why do islands carry plants and animals that are uniquely evolved for that sepcific habitat only? Why is Australia filled with unique marsupials almost exclusively? Why do we not find animals in places where they would thrive if given the chance? Like penguins on the north pole, New world monkeys in Africa, African monkeys in the New World, weeds and all plants could have been universally spread out. Evolution explains all of this with great clarity. Indeed without any fossil record at all, the distribution of species is enough to discredit Noah’s flood and proov evolution.

    Also there are arid layers that are pancaked in between more temperately formed layers. How could dry conditions exist during a flood? How could volcanoes erupt and leave layers with precise radio carbon levels that differ from each other in order of layers all at once during the flood? You would have to rewrtie all of physics to explain that away.

    It is also curious that we find a recognizable chain of links demonstrating the long term evolution of whales, horses, people, etc in the expected layers. Ever wonder why there is not a one fossil with evidence of humans and dinosaurs coexisting?

    Clams atop mountains are explained by the forces that gave rise to those mountains. Plate tectonics help explain that. The fossilized sea floor was pushed upwards by the plates pushing together and the sea floor rising to become the mountain top. That’s easy. The sea floor was slowly pushed up there.

    And the way that radio carbon dating is done is very reliable contrary to the erroneous claims of creationist ministries. There is very good reason to use radio carbon dating. Just research exactly what it is and how it is done and you will not be so doubtful of it. Half lives of radio carbon are not arbitrary nor changable. The amount of radio carbon in a living creature is consistant with the environment when it died. Testing the amount of radio carbon with the amount of the element that it decays into is how you come up with dates. But radio carbon is just one of a variety of methods to determine ages of things or how long it took for something to happen…

    And “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” is absolutely not reputable as it appears to be. There are living trees older than the flood legends and myths themselves. A global flood is not possible now nor was it ever. See http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-noahs-ark.html#georecord for more on that.

77. Chad November 20th, 2009 12:52 am :

    Dean,

    I don’t see anything impressive in the wikipedia article.  Perhaps they did not sufficiently explain the issue.  All it says is that fitness was improved (cells grew faster and larger).  I don’t really see why that is so great, of course it is nothing more than micro evolution, which even the most hard core creationists believe happens.  It also showed that they came to be able to use citric acid.  But here are some questions.  Was it just a population shift?  If you have a group of 100 moths, 99 white and 1 black, and the population shifts from that to 99 black and 1 white, did you have evolution?  No, of course not.

    Did the E. Coli gain the ability to use citric acid merely because there was a population shift?  Maybe it was due to the loss of DNA.  There are numerous examples of beneficial mutations that help an organism to survive, but most are due to loss of DNA.  For example the cycle-cell disease that affects the blood cells of some black people.  In areas where malaria is present you have a large percentage of the population with this mutation.  It is not due to a mutation that increases information.  It is merely due to a loss of information which deforms the cell wall, and that coupled with the survival of people with this mutation to produce a large percentage of people with cycle-cell blood cells.

    But this is not the kind of thing we need to account for the vastness of biological complexity.  If we are to believe evolutionary theory (generally), we are supposed to believe that nature has recreated the eye 20 separate times!  Where are all the observeable mutations that (1) increase information and (2) are beneficial.  I still see nothing.

    What is interesting in the Lenski experiment is that we see de-evolution.  The latter generations broke down in their ability to repair DNA which lead to great increases in mutations.  What I find really interesting is that this is exactly what we see in every species today.  We see humans with ever increasing rates of harmful genetic mutations.  We see animals species with very thin genetic populations, such as cheetahs.  We are observe de-evolution.  What it looks like to me is that if evolution ever did take place, it must have started with a bang and fizzled out.  Or of course the other possibility is that God simply made his creation with very rich DNA so that they could adapt to their environments without dying off.  Over centuries their DNA became less and less rich.  But it is suspect to me that evolution came and went without leaving so much as a trace.

78. Chad November 20th, 2009 1:25 am :

    Dean,

    NOAH’S FLOOD.  (I don’t really know what to think about Noah’s flood.  Below I will defend it to the best of my ability because I think Noah’s flood possibly happened and that there is some evidence that it did.  But I am not really sure.)

    1.  You say there is not enough water in the world to cover the mountains.

    This is an easy problem to solve.  There were no mountains before Noah’s flood.  Also, if you look at the tidal wave that hit in Alaska due to a land slide it is easy to imagine what might have happened.  A land slide displaced a large body of water which formed a wave as tall as 400+ feet that slammed into a moutain, stripping it of its forests something like half a mile up the mountain.  Imagine a large meteor hit the earth and caused the foutains of the deep to burst open and causing a massive wave to go around the world.  It could have covered the earth 2,000 feet over.  It could have done this easily.  You don’t need the whole world flooded at the same time, just a big wave.  There were also no iceburgs around back then.  Imagine the sea level being much higher and the land being much lower.  A global flood would be a piece of cake.

    Mountains all over, including Everest, have a ton of ocean fossils on the very tops of them.  The top of Everest was cetainly once submereged under the ocean.

    2.  You say the flood would had to have been a miracle.  Why is that a problem.  Why am I supposed to have some duty to be a materialist?  What reason should I throw out the possiblity of miracles?  (I don’t think we need to appeal to miracles, but I don’t understand why I shouldn’t.)

    3.  You seem to indicate that marsupials living in Australia only is proof that they evolved on Australia.

    In fact there are marsupial fossils all over the world.  We see examples of this stuff all the time.  We have tons of elephant fossils in North America, but there no elephants in North America today.  Many species have died out in one location whereas in other locations they did not die out.  It doesn’t prove a thing.

    4. You say:

    “You never find mammals on the bottom or humans in any, ANY layers dating back more than say a million years or so. ”

    Of course not!  If scientists find a human deep in a layer of rock that they thought was 60,000,000 years old, they just say, “Oh, this rock is only 100,000 years old.  We need to adjust the time.  We date the rocks by the fossils and the fossils by the rocks.”  They have found human bones where they didn’t think they would be, in rock they previously have thought were much older.  Look at what they did recently when they cracked open a T-Rex bone and found soft flesh inside with blood.  It wasn’t even fossilized!  They didn’t for a second doubt their precious timeline, they concluded immediately that soft tissue can be preserved for 65 million years!  That is such a testimony to how religious they are about their dogma.  Any scientist who expressed even the least doubts in public would be ridiculed and ostricized by the rest of the scientific community.

    5.  You ask why there are no rabbits or humans with disabilities found in lower layers.

    There are plenty of these examples.  The only place the fossil record exists is in the text books.  I have seen numerous pictures on Kent Hovind’s presentations.  I am not a fan of Hovind’s theories, but he does have some impressive information which he presents.

79. Chad November 20th, 2009 1:46 am :

    Dean,

    NOAH’S FLOOD CONTINUED…

    6.  You say the following:

    “How could volcanoes erupt and leave layers with precise radio carbon levels that differ from each other in order of layers all at once during the flood? You would have to rewrtie all of physics to explain that away.”

    Carbon dating can only be used on relatively new material.  It can’t go back more than several thousand years at most.  So what are you talking about with the dating of igneous here?  The truth is that radiometric dating doesn’t seem to give us accurate information.  Before the dating of any rocks we already have an estimated age for the rock.  If something doesn’t fit it is thrown out.

    7.  You ask “It is also curious that we find a recognizable chain of links demonstrating the long term evolution of whales, horses, people, etc in the expected layers. Ever wonder why there is not a one fossil with evidence of humans and dinosaurs coexisting?”

    What is a chain of links?  Do you mean transitional fossils?

    We don’t have any transitional fossils would be my answer.  Where are these transitional fossils?

    There is fossil evidence of humans and dinosaurs existing.  There are footprints with dinosaurs and humans.  I have read a ton on this topic.  I realize that many scientists don’t accept the evidence, but it is so overwhelming that I feel justified in believing the evidence in spite of the opinions of many paleontologists.  I remember an eye-witness account of the footprints found in Palaxy, that the scientist on camera came to the sight where the footprints were.  He refused to look down at the footprints.  Then on camera he said he couldn’t see any human and dinosaur footprints together lol.  I have seen these footprints.  They are unmistakbly human and dinosaur.  They lived together.  I also think I saw a newspaper photo of a human and dinosaur fossil in a layer of rock.

    8.  You say plate techtonics explains the clams on the moutains.

    Yes it does.  So does a global flood.  The global flood also explain a lot of things the plate techtonic theory can’t.  It can’t explain why the Grand Canyon displays so many aspects which are identical to local floods such as Spirit Lake’s flood in the 90s.  The Grand Canyon is much higher at the end of the river than the start of the river, but there is no sign of rock uplift.  So either there was a massive flood or there was a miracle.  Maybe the god of techtonic plates performed a miracle here making it looks like there was a Noah’s flood, but in fact here wasn’t.

    9.  You say radio carbon dating is reliable.

    Yes, it is reliable for things which are only a couple thousand to a few thousand years old.  Scientists use a variety of different isoptope dating methods because there are limits to accuracy.  You can only accurately test the age of something to a few half lives.  Carbon dating can’t be used for anything that has to do with dinosaurs.  Actually, I think it can, but according to the official story it can’t because according to the official story dinosaurs haven’t been around for millions of years.  I have read up on radiometric dating.  I have a good book on it.  I have read numerous articles.  I know several examples of big mess-ups.  Apparently scientists can date things very accurately that are millions of years old, but they can’t date anything which is not old.  I would like you to address what I brought up in another post about the Mt. St. Helens igneous being dated 2.8 million years old when it was only about 10 years old.  What do you have to say about that?  I already know what the other side says, and I find it very telling.

    10,  You say “Expelled” is absolutely not reputable.

    I thought it had a lot of good interviews, but the stuff at the end about the holocaust was a total red herring fallacy.  I am not a fan of the documentary, but I am a fan of some of those philosophers and scientists that were interviewed.  I actually read their work rather than listening to Ben Stein’s crappy documentary.

    Yes, there is a ton of evidence for a global flood.  I have discussed this with 2 university professors and had both of them admit that most likely there was a global flood.  It seems that it is not that unlikely.  I believe in an old universe (16 billion years old), and I also believe the world was flooded.  I don’t believe it because the Bible says it was flooded.  It really looks like there is an overwhelming amount of evidence in favor of it.

80. Dean November 21st, 2009 10:17 am :

    My comment is failing to post

81. Dean November 21st, 2009 10:17 am :

    Chad,
     
    This is way too much info to reasonably discuss as fun and tempting as that is. So I will focus in on the Lenski experiment. Here is what the Wikipedia article actually said:
     
     
    In the early years of the experiment, there were several common evolutionary developments shared by the populations. The mean fitness of each population, as measured against the ancestor strain, increased—rapidly at first, but leveling off after close to 20,000 generations (at which point they grew about 70% faster than the ancestor strain). All populations evolved larger cell volumes and lower maximum population densities, and all became specialized for living on glucose (with declines in fitness relative to the ancestor strain when grown in dissimilar nutrients). 4 of the 12 populations developed defects in their ability to repair DNA, greatly increasing the rate of additional mutations in those strains. Although the bacteria in each population are thought to have generated hundreds of millions of mutations over the first 20,000 generations, Lenski has estimated that only 10 to 20 beneficial mutations achieved fixation in each population, with less than 100 total point mutations (including neutral mutations) reaching fixation in each population.
     
    In 2008, Lenski and his collaborators reported on a particularly important adaptation that occurred in one of the twelve populations: the bacteria evolved the ability to utilize citrate as a source of energy. Wild type E. coli cannot transport citrate across the cell membrane to the cell interior (where it could be incorporated into the citric acid cycle) when oxygen is present. The consequent lack of growth on citrate under oxic conditions is considered a defining characteristic of the species that has been a valuable means of differentiating E. coli from pathogenic Salmonella. Around generation 33,127, the experimenters noticed a dramatically expanded population-size in one of the samples; they found that there were clones in this population that could grow on the citrate included in the growth medium to permit iron acquisition. Examination of samples of the population frozen at earlier time points led to the discovery that a citrate-using variant had evolved in the population at some point between generations 31,000 and 31,500. They used a number of genetic markers unique to this population to exclude the possibility that the citrate-using E. coli were contaminants. They also found that the ability to use citrate could spontaneously re-evolve in populations of genetically pure clones isolated from earlier time points in the population’s history. Such re-evolution of citrate utilization was never observed in clones isolated from before generation 20,000. Even in those clones that were able to re-evolve citrate utilization, the function showed a rate of occurrence on the order of once per trillion cells. The authors interpret these results as indicating that the evolution of citrate utilization in this one population depended on an earlier, perhaps non-adaptive “potentiating” mutation that had the effect of increasing the rate of mutation to citrate utilization to an accessible level (with the data they present further suggesting that citrate utilization required at least two mutations subsequent to this “potentiating” mutation). More generally the authors suggest that these results indicate (following the argument of Stephen Jay Gould) “that historical contingency can have a profound and lasting impact” on the course of evolution.
     
    Another adaptation that occurred in all these bacteria was an increase in cell size and in many cultures, a more rounded cell shape.This change was partly the result of a mutation that changed the expression of a gene for a penicillin binding protein, which allowed the mutant bacteria to out-compete ancestral bacteria under the conditions in the long-term evolution experiment. However, although this mutation increased fitness under these conditions, it also increased the bacteria’s sensitivity to osmotic stress and decreased their ability to survive long periods in stationary phase cultures, so the phenotype of this adaptation depends on the environment of the cells.

82. Dean November 21st, 2009 10:23 am :

    Chad,
     
    This is way too much info to reasonably discuss as fun and tempting as that is. So I will focus in on the Lenski experiment. 

        I read all about it in Why Evolution Is True by Jerry Coyne and in The Greatest Show On Earth, The Evidence For Evolution by Richard Dawkins. The Wikipedia does contain enough to explain itself. Read it again more carefully. The LEnski Experiement, E. coli.
     
    Notice that in this study, over 40,000 generations of numerous sample strains of the original one strain of E coli were used every day since the 1960s. The population evolved better fitness about the same time at first.
    Then Around generation 33,127, the experimenters noticed a dramatically expanded population-size in one of the samples; they found that there were clones in this population that could grow on the citrate included in the growth medium to permit iron acquisition.
    
    That is evolution my friend. The genome of the E. coli had dramatically changed for the better via evolution from natural selection. It was not a “population shift” in how you put it. It was a carefully followed series of novel mutations that lead to this wonderful new design that exponentially changed that species into another. Each mutation was marked with a genetic marker. I believe it was three specifice mutations successively that made the change.
     
    Notice the series of three would be “irreducibly complex,” lol. Anyhow the first two mutations that were passed on left no noticeable impact on the creature. This is basically gnetic drift. The last mutation when combined with the first two produced as more fit version of the E. coli, a new “kind” able to ingest and digest citrate with oxygen in the environment. No E coli in the world that is known can do what this new version had evolved to do.

    The three mutations that lead to change were clearly observed by the genetic markers that they were tagged with. The results were repeated in more experiments from specimens preserved from each stage of mutation being subjected to the same pressures that the initial strain had been observed evolving in.
     
    This is absolutely hard evidence of “macro-evolution.” Obviously to get more dramatic change like the E. coli evolving into something other that just another version or species of E coli would take a lot more time but the mechanism of its evolution has been proven and observed in repeatable lab experiments such as this Lenski experiment.
     
    Simple. Do the math. If it happened once right there before our eyes, it can and will happen anywhere. Therefore if you have a simple one celled organism, it can and will evolve in a number of ways if given the time to do so as long as it finds a way to survive long enough to reproduce- hence Darwinian evolution via natural selection. Hence if you have a one celled organism, theoretically it could have and likely would have the potential to evolve into all the life on earth if it were to be thriving in the conditions that the very first one celled organisms were in.
     
     

83. Dean November 21st, 2009 10:34 am :

    Ok just this one more point you put forth…

    you said:

    1.  You (Dean) say there is not enough water in the world to cover the mountains.
    This is an easy problem to solve.  There were no mountains before Noah’s flood.  Also, if you look at the tidal wave that hit in Alaska due to a land slide it is easy to imagine what might have happened.  A land slide displaced a large body of water which formed a wave as tall as 400+ feet that slammed into a moutain, stripping it of its forests something like half a mile up the mountain.  Imagine a large meteor hit the earth and caused the foutains of the deep to burst open and causing a massive wave to go around the world.  It could have covered the earth 2,000 feet over.  It could have done this easily.  You don’t need the whole world flooded at the same time, just a big wave.  There were also no iceburgs around back then.  Imagine the sea level being much higher and the land being much lower.  A global flood would be a piece of cake.
    Mountains all over, including Everest, have a ton of ocean fossils on the very tops of them.  The top of Everest was cetainly once submereged under the ocean

    I am not going to address all the mountains of scientific problems your scenario can’t solve (pun intended). But I will address some Biblical problems you have then.

    The Bible says that the source of the floodwaters was the rain and the “fountains of the deep.” It does not say that there was a tsunami or a meteor/asteroid impact or a comet impact. So your version of a global deluge is non Biblical. If your motive for looking for evidence of a global flood is stemming from your faith in Noah’s flood being historical, than just how much of that story is literally historical and how much is not? You already threw out the Bible’s claim for what cause the flood. It was God.
     Genesis 7:10-12
    10And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.
     11In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.
     12And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.

    Nothing but rain and the fountains of the deep involved. No tsunamis.

84. chad November 22nd, 2009 11:19 am :

    Dean,

    First of all, how do we know there was not already a slight number of E. Coli bacteria that were able to utilize citrate?  How do we know there was not a population shift.

    Let’s assume we get past that.  Let’s assume E. Coli gained the ability to do this new feat.  We assume evolution has taken place.  Was it able to do this in virtue of GAINING information?  I do not see that anywhere in the wikipedia article.  Let’s assume it did gain this ability through genetic information increase.  Does it have a survival benefit?  If E. Coli has survived so long without it, why would it even be a meaningful evolutionary benefit?  If there is no benefit, then it would not become prevalent in the population.  For example if a human ancestor, say 100,000 years ago, gained the ability to digest apple seeds, this would not play a significant role in our evolutionary history.  There would be no survival benefit.  There would thus be no way for the gene to be spread significantly into the next generation.

    Now let’s assume that this E. Coli bacteria mutation is beneficial and information increasing.  You seem convinced this is an example of “macro-evolution”.  But macro-evolution is a very broad term.  Some refer to “macro-evolution” as one kind becoming a new kind.  I do not want to use the term “species” because dogs and wolves are considered two distinct species, but they can interbreed.  Horses and donkies are considered different species, but both can interbreed.  But the question is not whether dogs and wolves have a common ancestor.  The question is not whether donkies and horses have a common ancestor.  The question is whether or not dogs and horses have a common ancestor.  Does this E. Coli experiment lend credence to the claim that they had a common ancestor?  Perhaps yes, but then again perhaps no.  You seem so convinced.  I don’t see how an E. Coli bacteria being able to digest or appropriate new chemicals is evidence that E Coli can eventually produce a non-E. Coli cell.  Some humans can not digest milk.  Some humans can not eat peanuts without dying.  But if I were to live in Ancient Taiwan, in a land where no one can digest milk; then coming upon white people who can digest milk, I would not conclude that we had found evidence of macro-evolution.

    Or let me put it another way.  Let’s say this E. Coli experiment is evidence of some kind of macro-evolution.  Well, it is not at all clear to me that this is “macro-evolution” that is sufficient for us to conclude that all animal species had a common ancestor.  I think I am being pretty fair here, right?  E. Coli gains the ability to use citrate, and I am supposed to immediately assume horses and men had a common ancestor?  That seems extremely hasty and careless.

    So I need you to explain how you know it was not population shifting.  I need to know how you know it was a mutation that increased DNA.  Lastly, I need to know why you think this sort of evolution is sufficient to leap the very great gaps from kinds (a common ancestor commonly had by horse to human).

    I am really shocked that you think the above evidence is that strong to just wrap things up.  I find it shocking and even somewhat worrisome.  There should be more agnosticism and careful scrutiny given.  It isn’t like we found a reptile giving birth to a mammal here.

    Later,
    Chad

85. chad November 22nd, 2009 11:32 am :

    Dean,

    I don’t care if the Bible has a flaw in it or millions.  What difference does that make to what I claim?  I claim that the world has certain features that provide evidence of a worldwide flood.  Did I say anything about talking snakes???  Forget the Bible.  I don’t believe the Bible because of what the Bible says.  I believe there was a worldwide flood because the world demonstrates this in many ways.

    You commit a logical fallacy in your reasoning.  You say “because the Bible doesn’t mention an asteroid, therefore an asteroid causing the flood is contrary to the Bible”.  Not at all.  It is completely consistent to say an asteroid hit the earth and broke open the fountains of the deep, and also that the fountains of the deep caused the flooding.  For example consider this: Police come upon the scene of an accident.  They a road completely full of gasoline.  The detective asks a witness what caused all of this gasoline to be on the road.  The witness says the gasoline flood was caused by the tanker truck leaking gas.  The later the officer finds out that the tanker was struck by another vehicle.  Would that mean it was false of the witness to say “The gasoline flood was caused by the tanker truck”?  Of course not.  It is perfectly rational.  We do not have an infinite amount of time to pass on an infinite amount of information.  We do not contradict ourselves by leaving out information.

    You say my version is “non-Biblical”.  There are different senses of the word “non-Biblical”.  The significant sense is when it is contradictory.  I simply came up with a possible theory which is consistent with the Bible, but is not explicit in the Bible.  That is not at all significant.  It would be like having Jesus drink water in a movie, but the Bible never says Jesus drank water.  Or how about Jesus urinating.  If a movie showed Jesus having to deal with bodily functions, that would not be “non-Biblical” in a significant sense.

86. Dean November 23rd, 2009 1:13 am :

    Hi Chad,

    THe whole E. coli thing is not the only reason that I can accept that evolution is scientific reality. It is just that it is a good case of hard evidence of mutations in the genome going through natural selection and leading to increasing fitness and complexy (information). It is a case in point of Darwinian evolution via natural selection. I just focus in on it because it is definitely not something debatable or easily dismissed if you are seriously scrutinizing it,

    There is “increased information” there to be sure. They tracked three successive mutations that lead to the new ability to digest the chemical. The first two mutations had no effect on the organism one way or the other. It was the eventual third specific mutation that then overtook the rest of the population and displaced it. This mutation made it more fit to live long enough to reproduce better than its ancestors. Darwinian evolution is observed.

    I would definitely say that three mutations built upon each other to produce a way to digest different food in a new way is “increaswe amount of genetic information” that is always passed on in that strain now. Scientists agree on that too.

    The E. coli in the “wild” are not subjected to the same controlled conditions that this experiment has. And if there were a similar strain of evolved E. coli out there, it would almost certainly not be so elusive that no one would have found it by now. Remember, it was “random” mutations that were non-randomly selected by natural selection that formed the chain of mutations that lead to this new genetically passed on trait.

    And about your version of the flood being non-biblical. Again, the Bible says that Noah’s flood was caused by rain and the springs of the deep opening- not a heavenly body smashing into the earth. Your scenario is one of a large wave blanketing the earth. That is much different than rain for 40 days and the springs of the deep opening up in some unique way.

    I am pretty sure if it was an asteroid that the Bible would mention it like the star falling to the ground in Yevelation and Joel. Your idea sounds like the Bible missed one of the most significant parts of the whole story. If Noah had access to the information that the springs of the deep had opened I think we can safely say that he could easily have known of and mentioned an asteroid.

    Even so, it can’t rain all over earth all at once EVER. And that phenomenon would have to go on for 40 days. And that would rain have to cover the tallest mountains of the time. Not possible no matter how you cut it. The springs of the deep would have to account for the overwhelming majority of the water. The rain would just be the icing on the cake. Not even needed for that kind of flood.

    And again, E. coli may as well be something I don’t even know about because that is not a really big reason that I accept evolution to be factual. It is just a sure fire way to eliminate the idea that evolution has never been observed, or that increasing of useful and positive  genetic information does not happen via random mutations sometimes proving to be of benefit and then displacing large portions of the population. It happened ther in Lenski’s lab. I would expect that similar things will happen there again in time too.

    If you really want to search evolution out, read all about it. compare and contrast creationist teachings with non creationist teachings. Cross check creationists “facts,” - all of them that you can. Find out, from non creationists (not from extremely biased creationists with lots of faith and high motivation to debunk science), exactly why do so many scientists accept evolution?

    Give the “other” side their fair day in court. Since you have internet, it is not hard to read a lot about it right there. There are a plenty of good videos online too. The talkorigins website archive is a great place to get a lot of info about most creationist’s claims of all streams for starters.

    I can say that if you read Why Evolution is True bu Jerry Coyne you may find your self seeing things differently. Or read The Greatest Show on Earth. Those two presented stronger, indeed basically impervious arguments for evolution. Why not take the time to read them, pound through their evidences and then see what you think?

    And about Kent Hovind, consider the source. He believes in black helicoptors, the computer chip mark of the beast, and concentration camps on US soil. He is KJV only. He is anti-charasmatic gifts of the Spirit. He believes evolution is the cause of Naziism, the holocast, Marxism, etc. He believes that we ought not have drivers’ licenses or ever pay any income tax and even incriminated himself and his wife for years for this belief.

    He lied, cheated and stole in very serious ways for years in his ministry. He recommends people to listen to the radio programs of Patriots- racist conspiracy theory anti semite violent radicals like the violent and aggressive Christian Identity movement.

    In short, if he said it, it is highly questionable as funny and maybe well meaning as may be. No other creationist ministry even associates with him nor have any ever. Wonder why?

    The “Hovind Theory” is just that- ONLY his theory. There is plenty a good reason to just simply ignore his teachings. He is not qualified to even make a scientific theory. His degree is even fraudulent. Anyhow, nuff said about him. I do sincerely hope that God restores him and his wife and their walk with God, etc. They are probably hurting very badly right now, very badly indeed. Prison is the worst.

87. Chad November 23rd, 2009 4:59 am :

    Dean,

    The E. Coli example is a good example of increased fitness, but not of increased information.  Nothing in the article shows that information was increased at all.  Even if it did, which it didn’t, how significant would that be?  You seem to think quite significant.  I don’t.  We only observe very minor changes in speciation.  We see very minor beak variations or variations in what an E. Coli can use for energy.  It does not advance Darwinian theory one iota.  It doesn’t help your case in the least.  In fact, I would say it hurts your case very much, at least the way it is perceived, because this seems to be the best evidence you can come up with to support evolution, and it is certainly not evidence.

    A good creator or designer would create his life forms with the ability to adapt well so that they don’t die off every time the sun goes down or rises.  I ask for evidence of evolution.  You say the E. Coli has turned into E. Coli.  Doesn’t this seem unsatisfactory?

88. Chad November 23rd, 2009 4:59 am :

    Dean,

    The E. Coli example is a good example of increased fitness, but not of increased information.  Nothing in the article shows that information was increased at all.  Even if it did, which it didn’t, how significant would that be?  You seem to think quite significant.  I don’t.  We only observe very minor changes in speciation.  We see very minor beak variations or variations in what an E. Coli can use for energy.  It does not advance Darwinian theory one iota.  It doesn’t help your case in the least.  In fact, I would say it hurts your case very much, at least the way it is perceived, because this seems to be the best evidence you can come up with to support evolution, and it is certainly not evidence.

    A good creator or designer would create his life forms with the ability to adapt well so that they don’t die off every time the sun goes down or rises.  I ask for evidence of evolution.  You say the E. Coli has turned into E. Coli.  Doesn’t this seem unsatisfactory?

89. Chad November 23rd, 2009 5:23 am :

    Dean,

    I AM ALSO NOT DEFENDING THE BIBLE.

    Ok the flood.  The Bible says that it rained.  Firstly, it doesn’t say that rain is the only cause of the flood.  It just says it rained.  It says water came from the foutains of the deep.  It shows two sources.  It doesn’t say which was the main cause or if there were other causes.  It gives very limited information.  I AM ALSO NOT DEFENDING THE BIBLE.  Even though your argument fails to threaten the Biblical story or my theory, I just want to point out I am not trying to defend it.  Maybe I should not have said that I believe Noah’s flood happened, even though you have not raised a single argument that threatens that.  I think the whole world appears to have been flooded at some point in the past.

    The fountains of the deep might have sprayed up water for 40 days.  The falling water is known as rain.  We only see rain from clouds, but perhaps they saw rain which was just water falling back down to earth.  This water had a wave that went around the world.  Noah’s account is safe so far.  My account is safe so far.  Noah and I seem to be doing ok here.  What’s the problem?

    You say the Bible fails to mention an asteroid falling.  Shouldn’t mention that?  I think the Bible should mention a TON of things that it doesn’t mention.  I think Jesus’ life should have been written down with much greater detail.  I think the Bible leaves out TONS of information that should be in there.  But what sense of “should” do I mean?  Is this the kind of “should” that means ‘Stuff I would like to know about’.  Do I think Noah or whoever wrote that account was to blame in some way?  I don’t know.  Maybe he did a bad job accounting for the eye-witness testimony.  Maybe he couldn’t see well because he was in an ark.  It doesn’t matter to me.  I think there are tons of flaws in the Bible.  Where are you going with your argument?  “The Bible should have included extra information”.  Ok? So what?  What do I care about the Biblical account anyway?  I’m just saying the world looks like it flooded.  Noah thought so, and so do I.  He thought so because of what he saw, not because God told him.  I think so because of what I see, not because the Bible says so.

    It rained, but it never says the whole world had rain.  I don’t really know how impossible it is for there to be rain everywhere.  There would be a ton of water being sprayed where the Oceanic Ridge wraps around the world (perhaps the source of the fountains of the deep).  Maybe it only rained on Noah.  Does Noah say every inch of the planet had rain 24/7 for 40 days.  No, of course not.  He just doesn’t include nearly that much detail.  You have lack of detail which you are trying to force into one narrow interpretation.

    You say it couldn’t rain on the mountains.  I already said that there may have been no mountains.  There is actually good reason to believe mountains were formed during the global flood.  There are some cool pictures I have seen of hundred food tall layers of rock in a swirl pattern.  Apparently the layers were formed quickly at the same time and while they were still wet.  Then they were violently rolled into a spiral shape.  I have seen many pictures like this.  But I already mentioned this above, that the ground was probably fairly evenly distributed before the flood, making a global flood very easy.

90. Chad November 23rd, 2009 5:54 am :

    Dean,

     Like I said, tend to lean toward belief in evolution because the majority of scientists say it is true.  But probably some form of ID plus evolution resulted in what we have today.   That would explain why we have so little evidence for Darwin’s slow successive modification theory.

    Ok, then you go back to E. Coli again.  Of course it isn’t the main reason to believe in Darwinian theory.  It isn’t a reason to even believe that a mutation occurred or that it was positive.  For all we know one of the bacteria might have had the genetics to be able to utilize citrate before the experiment.  I found nothing about this addressed in the wikipedia article.  Maybe somewhere in the official report this information was addressed, but not in the links you gave me.  All I have is a lot of unanswered questions with you saying “Yes it is, yes it is”.  But I already pointed out that even if you do have a genuine example of a beneficial information increasing mutation, how significant is it that fitness is improved?  Even creationists of the most staunch character believe fitness can be increased.

    I think we need to at some point address the question about why we see only minor variations within a species but never any significant change.  If Darwinian theory is true why don’t we see anything beyond minor changes or skin color of size or fitness?  We have an E. Coli that can feed on new food so therefore humans and monkies have a common ancestor?  I suggest more investigation of the fused chromosome that humans have.  There might be something in that.  We should discuss that some time.  I think it could be evidence for at least a common ancestor.

    Both evolutionists and creationists have biases.  I have biases.  You have biases.  Don’t act like Darwinian scientists are free from prejudice.  That just shows that you have a SERIOUS bias.  The materialist has just as much religious fervor as a creationist.  Evolution is just as central an issue for their world view as creationism is for the Christian.  I don’t have an opinion on that though.

    (Please do not take the following to be aggressive or rude.  I write in caps to point out important information you may have missed).

    I should “give the other side a day in court”? I AM NOT A CREATIONIST!  I AM NOT ON ANYONE’S SIDE!  WHAT DID I EVER SAY IN FAVOR OF CREATIONISM?  WHAT DID I EVER SAY AGAINST EVOLUTION?  I NEVER ARGUED THAT EVOLUTION IS FALSE!  THIS IS INSANE!  DIDN’T WAS GO THROUGH THIS FROM DAY 1?  I AM AGNOSTIC ABOUT IT!

    C.S. Lewis- You must not decide until there is evidence sufficient enough to make a rational decision.

    I haven’t decided.

    I studied this stuff under a philosopher of science at my university.  I did independent studies with him.  I have read a ton of material on this debate.  I had a university biology professor who graduated from Duke tell me that I am far more informed about the debate than her.  She didn’t tell me I need to read more.  She said , “Wow, you really know your stuff.” 

    I am not a fan of Kent Hovinds theories.  Although he is totally right about black helicopters.  You can get tons of articles about these special operations that the government runs from interviews with police departments.  How could you not know about the black helicopters?  It isn’t even a secret.

    He thinks the microchip is the mark of the beast?  Maybe he is wrong.  But a one-world-government is forming.  They will have a global economic system with no cash.  They will use the microchip or some form of DNA tatooing so that you can not buy or sell without the mark.  It fits pretty perfect with Revelation, but still he might be wrong.  Even if he is wrong he is sure rational, for the evidence fits perfectly with the Bible’s prediction.

    I have seen a ton of evidence that there are camps with a large capacity to hold people here in America.  We put Japanese into concentration camps on American soil during WW2.  We have tons of large camps which have been in the process of being built since the 70’s.  You haven’t seen all the footage?  The government even admits that they have them, but it says it is for illegal immigration, drug-trafficers, etc.  You really seem unaware of a lot of things.  You should read more.

    I don’t think evolution caused the holocaust.  I think he is wrong there.  Genocide has been happening since the earliest times that man has been around.  Men’s evil hearts are to blame.  Plenty of popes committed genocide.  Even the founding fathers committed genocide against the Native Americans.  Evolution isn’t evil.  Like I said, tend to lean toward belief in evolution because the majority of scientists say it is true.  But probably some form of ID plus evolution resulted in what we have today.   That would explain why we have so little evidence for Darwin’s slow successive modification theory.

91. Chad November 23rd, 2009 6:01 am :

    Dean,

    On taxes, Hovind is absolutely correct.  We should not pay income taxes, although many other forms of taxation are acceptable.  No one paid taxes in America until 1913.  America went 150 years without the income tax.  It destroyed America.  Thomas Jefferson and Abe Lincoln fought the central banks which were trying to get power to create a system like we have today.  That is why they were shot at.  There are two types of taxation.  There is apportioned and unapportioned taxes.  The founding fathers did not want a direct and unapportioned tax, such as the graduated income tax we pay to Uncle Sam.  There are zero checks and balances on the system.  What you are experiencing with the destruction of the American dollar is the result of an unethical monetary system.  An indirect tax like a tax on gas is self-correcting.  If you don’t want the tax, don’t buy the commodity.  Supply and demand keep it regulated naturally.  But with the direct tax the government can just write into existence heavy chains and burdens that can not be lifted.  It is completely immoral and not to be obeyed.  Of course to disobey is not to sin, but it will bring the wrath of the Mafia known as the IRS.

    You should read more about the history of the central banks.  Hovind is right on with this issue.

92. Chad November 23rd, 2009 6:14 am :

    Dean,

    I think Kent Hovind is wrong about a lot of things.  I think he is wrong about KJV.  I don’t think the Bible is error-free.  I could go on and on.  I think he is one of the biggest heroes in America.  He is a great man of God.  He is in jail because he is a good man, not because he is evil.  I don’t know if he lied.  He isn’t the kind of person that seems dishonest.  He seems wrong about a lot of things, but he seems honest.  He didn’t steal in his ministry.  He didn’t use his money to buy golden toliets and stupid things like the faith preachers buy.  He invested his money into a creationist museum.  That doesn’t seem like the worst thing in the world.  Although I am not a creationist, I think they should get a lot more funding and be accepted into a lot more debates.  Hey, Hovind destroyed every evolutionist opponent that I have seen him debate.  He totally dominates them.  It is like a man among boys.  I got to give him that.

    His teachings are nothing but citations of scientific journals for the most part.  What do you mean you should just ignore them?  A lot of his work is cataloging contradictions and errors that scientists have made.  On those issues he does fine.  I accept what is good and reject what is bad.  I don’t know why you tell me I shouldn’t listent to him.  What did I say in the whole debate that rests on his opinion?  Nothing.  He has tons of pictuers with citations on them.  If I see something in his presentation from a science journal, I don’t have to hide my eyes and run away because he is giving his opinion.  You have a very unreasonable stance on his teachings.

    His degree is fake?  What do you mean it is fake?  Do you mean it was given by a private Christian group?  They weren’t affiliated with America’s public education system?  I don’t get what you mean by “fake”.  I don’t care if a monkey puts together a collection of scientific journal quotes.  You are just looking at citations from a scientific journal.  Where’s the problem?

    Well, it has been pretty difficult talking to you.  You just keep accusing me of being a Hovind creationist, when nothing I have said should give you that impression.  I pointed out tons of times I do not agree with Hovind and creationism.  But I guess you just keep missing that.  I don’t really know what else to say?  Do you even read what I am typing?

93. Dean November 24th, 2009 2:51 am :

    Chad

    i am sorry for frustrating you. It was not my intention. I know it sounds like I am sort of making you out to be a Hovind Creationist. I really don’t know all what positions you take on things or not. It is just that you have parroted some of Hovind’s specific teachings, you defend him as a semi reputable source of information, and your asteroid theory is very similar to the “Hovind Theory.”

    You do accept the big bang, an old earth (I think) and you say you are open to evolution. If that is the case, then why are you repeating some of the common Creationist arguments for a global flood based on Genesis? You say that the Bible is full of errors, but the flood literally did happen. I can’t help but be confused as to where you are coming from.

    And BTW, it would be interesting to discuss those perceived errors in the Bible sometime. I know there are no 4 legged grasshoppers in the real world, but in the Bible there are. Other than a few other non essential small things I am not aware of any serious and real “errors.”

    You say that you are not a creationist. But you repeat their same “arguments” against evolution. I just don’t know where the line is that you don’t cross into agreement with Hovind or Creationism. You say its there so I believe you. I just can’t find your specific line of demarcation.

    I am actually really surprized that you believe in the black helicoptor stuff. You realize that this is comspiracy theory/rumors? The same people who tout the black helicoptors are the same people who believe that Jews are trying to take over the world or already have. They are also the alien and UFO community. They are also the survivalist “Patriot” Y2K paranoids. Yes I have read up on all that sort of thing.

    And the supposed “Concentration camps” on US soil are not concentration camps. SO what that they did it to the Japanese Americans in the 40s? That was then. Times are much different now despite people’s paranoia. Its ALWAYS “about to happen.”

    Those camps are really a number of different non threatening facilities. Some non-paranoid investigating this will reveal just how benign these camps really are.

    And Kent Hovind did lie, chat and steal. He lied to the government about tax issues. He cheated the gov’t of what he legally owed them, whether you agree with the laws or not. He obstructed the investigation and was convicted of that too. He stole the money he owed and used it for maybe his ministry (of teaching many false things that he ought not) but it was still stealing, lying and cheating. He has brought much shame and disrepute on the gospel believe it or not. God have mercy on the man.

    I just looked on the net and discovered enormous amounts of erronous statments he made. Here is just one:
    There was a book written called The Protocols of Zion [sic].  Now, it was written by the rich guys, but they said, “If this book ever gets found we want to blame it on the Jews.”  So they called it Protocols of Zion [sic].  But it’s actually the plan of how to control the world.  It’s about seventy some pages, you can, I don’t think you can print it off my website but you can get it in a lot of places.  And some people saying, “Hovind, Hovind mentions The Protocols of Zion [sic].  That means he is anti Jewish.”  No, I’m not anti Jewish, okay.  I love the Jews.  But The Protocols of Zion [sic] was written to explain how to control the world, I mean, it lays it all out.  But it’s really carefully done so that if it is ever discovered the Jews take the blame for it.  Interesting.  Well, read the book and see what you think.
    Source: http://media.drdino.com/sem/audio/mp3/danger2.mp3 @ 16:10 [March 2003]

    There is a great documentary out there about that vicious piece of ant semitic literature that was a forgery written by a non Jewish Russian miitary person before WW2.  Dr Michael Brown even makes an appearance in it and he strongly denounces that book to. It was used by the Nazis extensively and it is used by white supremacists and jihadists very widely still today. Sheesh.

    Advocating that book is very very dangerous. And Hovind believes in it as well as chem trails, the NWO and every other conspiracy theory out there in some way shape or form. Come on. Aren’t we called to be sober and not to indulge in rumors especially about our leaders?

    Hovind is a big Albatross around your neck if you want me or any one who really knows about him to take you very seriously. I just don’t understand how one can be so educated and yet still agree with so many creationist teachings (or erroneous conspiracy theories) that have long since been exposed for the misleading teachings that they are. I am not in the least bit brainwashed by the NWO, the ZOG or Satan to think ALL of that stuff is utterly bogus.

    Yes you have definitely touted certain Creationist teachings. The asteroid theory is from Hovind (usually). The vertical and wavey, curvey rock layer is a popular creationists “proof” of the flood. The tracks in Glen Rose Texas are a long since debunked and even abandoned creationist “proof.” The human related fossils in coal and rock are either inaccessable or hoaxes long since been had. I hope you don’t believe in the Acambaro figures.

    Anyhow. Maybe its best to leave Hovind completely out of this because it is not going to further any cause to support any of his teachings. His name will just dig the hole deeper if you know what I mean. I would rather leave him completely out of this.
    I am shocked that you never read about the Lenski esperiment. Maybe its new to you since the evolution actually was observed last year (it was traced byt placing markers on the specific parts of the genomes to see the exact mutations and their progressive buildup into increaed and useful complexity).

    You have internet access. You can get books and read them. You can cross examine all these things with scientific materials even more than you have so far. Why not utilize these things more in this area? Its fun too.

    A good starting place is talk origins . com. Most of what most creationist are taught is addressed there quite well.

    And missing links would be a fun place to look next. I had mentioned the chain of fossils etching out the evolution of whales, humans, birds and horses for starters. You can simply google those and with some effortful sifting you would likely find some useful info. It is quite undeniable when you look at it all.

94. Chad November 24th, 2009 3:25 am :

    Dean,

    If you take an intro to biology class you will almost certainly hear at some point that dinosaurs were killed off by a meteor striking the earth.  It isn’t my theory.  If a large meteor were to strike the earth, and the earth were perfectly flat, the whole world would easily be submerged under hundreds of feet of water.

    I didn’t say Hovind it a peer reviewed source of scientific information.  That is why he works mainly as a compiler of scientific journals and textbooks.  If you see any of his presentations, you will see that he has scrupulously cited every reference.  He has made some mistakes by using unqualified sources.  He is infamous for that.  I only pay attention to his stuff that has a proper source.  He knows his stuff though.

    I am coming from an independent mind.  You can’t just put me into a camp.  I believe there are errors in the Bible becasue I have read and studied it a long time and found this to be true.  Of course I believe in the big bang.  The overwhelming majority of cosmologists do.  That is why I believe it, because it is science.  It is also exactly what you would expect given that the Bible is true, which I think a lot of it is true.  I think there was a global flood because of certain issues regarding the Grand Canyon and Spirit Lake.  The science convinces me that there was a global flood and that what we see in the rock layers is not a fossil record, but a mass grave produced in a short time by a world-wide-flood.  Spirit Lake looks just like the Grand Canyon.  We saw the layers in Spirit Lake form quickly.  We should conclude that layers form quickly.  They don’t need millions of years.  But we do live in a universe that is billions of years old.  We know this because of starlight measurements.

    I don’t believe in 6 literal days of creation.  I have no final opinion about biological evolution.  I think we may very well have come from a common ancestor with humans.  I am agnostic about a lot of issues.  I don’t have my mind made up because the evidence is not clear.  I find that the most reasonable people are often agnostic.  But I have read a lot on the issues. 

    No, Hovind did not cheat.  He does not have to legally pay taxes.  There is no law that requires Americans to pay income tax.  If you don’t know about the growing movement of former IRS Agents who have come out about it, you should watch the documentary on youtube called “America: Freedom to Fascism”.  Hovind was right that he doesn’t legally have to pay a thing.

95. Chad November 24th, 2009 3:49 am :

    Dean,

    I didn’t even know Hovind believed in an asteroid striking the earth.  I have heard the asteroid theory on Discovery Channel, National Geographic, every biology class I have ever had, etc.

    I have seen transitional fossils for some animals.  I don’t deny there are what appear to be transitional fossils.  I just wonder where the other 50,000 intermediate species are if Darwinian theory is true.  God-guided evolution can account for transitional fossils.  Creationism can as well.  But Darwinian theroy can not explain all the gaps and missing data.  It is very puzzling to scientists.

    Well, I think this was pretty fruitless.  I was very clear and it seems like you didn’t even read what I wrote.

96. Dean November 24th, 2009 11:26 am :

    Chad,

    The connection with Hovind and the asteroid is that an asteroid caused a global deluge, that’s all. That is the Hovind theory in short. Actually I think he says it was a comet and it was a little more complicated.

    And yes it will be fruitless to even raise any issues about a one world government, the protocols, chemtrails or black helicoptors, etc. Obviously you have researched it. I have as well and I come to very different conclusions about it all. I am not going to go into how and wy I learned about all that stuff. But God delivered me from many things. Nuff said.

    Hitler was right about cookies. He was wrong about racism. But for that reason, I would never seek out Hitler’s teachings for wisdom and knowledge as though I need to sift through it all and pull out “the good.” Its all spurious and highly questionable, no doubt there is some sort of truth woven in there at times.

    Hovind is similar. He believes in tons of nutjob ideas. So I don’t need to take him seriously about much. And he was legally convicted of lieing, cheating and stealing . If you or I don’t agree, we don’t agree.

    I think he has a good point.  But it was still obviously illegal. Abortion is legal but immoral and sinful. Only the crazies take the law into their own hands and start capitol punishment upon those they see as guilty of murder. Do we do the same with our taxes like Hovind and incriminate ourselves just because their is gov’t corruption? Only Jesus will be able to have a perfectly just and fair gov’t. Until then we try to make lemonade out of these lemons.

    And I do carefully read what you wrote. OK? I won’t rebut or address every jot and title of what you may write. I don’t expect you to do that to me either. But its wrong of you to speak so critically and flipantly of Dr Brown. What you said was wrong. How you said it was wrong. I would not be shocked if you were rebuked by him or the editor for so freely criticizing him in that way. He is one of our fathers too. Honor him. Of course he is not all knowing. Niether are we.

    Nothing more about vapor and jet fuel exhaust trials, I mean chem trails, black helicoptors or anything. To me its all garbage for the birds. Yes their is corruption in gov’t. Yes there are scary martial law potentials. But I am going to err on the side that these are in case of an actual decimating invasion and frontal assault on US soil by foreign powers or terrorists. If I am wrong than I will admit it when I am in striped pajamas in a camp in Alabama eating thorn soup on occassion for survival. I guess that makes me one of the sheeple with the whool over my eyes.

    Now we can discuss transitional forms and the fossils. Let’s keep it on that subject. Just science and the Bible on topic. Not zany conspiracies. I won’t pull punches when those things are brought up because I am absoltely convinced that it is all garbage, half truths, rumors, unsubstantiated, and lies.

97. Chad November 24th, 2009 8:48 pm :

    Dean,

    Do you not realize that TONS of scholars propose the asteroid theory.  I bet I can type “asteroid kills dinosaur” into google and find 100 videos made by National Geographic and Nova etc.  Why do you keep bringing up your bad argument?  It is a terrible argument.  I already pointed out TONS of people that support the claim that a huge asteroid hit the earth and caused catastrophic damage.  Why do you keep telling me over and over again that Hovind believes it.  Who cares if Hovind believes the same thing.  Dawkins and Dennet probably believe an asteroid killed off the dinosaurs also.  So what are you proving?  Not a thing.  Move on to a more reasonable line of argumentation.

    Oh lovely.  We are discussing controversial issues and instead of using reasonable argumetnation you just stipulate these things as “things I was delivered by God from”.  Lol, you are trying to influence my beliefs without rational argument.  I can’t be played with like that.  That stuff doesn’t work on me.  You live in a fantasy land if you don’t think they world elite are forming a one world government.  I love how you add “Nuff said”.  Actually I think you need to do more than that to be rational.  Don’t you care about careful belief formation?

    Dude, my Hitler analogy was to show 1 thing- that you can agree with someone on an issue without following them.  I didn’t follow Hitler into belief about cookies being good.  I came to that conclusion independently.  Dawkins, Dennet, and Hovind probably all believe in some theory of world catastrophy involving an asteroid.  I don’t need them to have the same belief.  You completely missed the point of the analogy.  I could have shown that analogy to any 1st semester philosophy student, and they would have understood the meaning instantly.  You missed the point by a mile.  You didn’t just miss the point, but you actually took it to mean something totally different.

    You think we should stick to the facts.  You brought up the hundred and one issues.  None of that should have been relevant to the facts.  I find it hard to talk to you.  You miss about half of what I say.  I think before we move on you need to properly interpret the Hitler analogy.  Did you understand my explanation this time?

98. Dean November 26th, 2009 2:43 am :

    Chad,

    First of all, here is what you said that I want to address:

      I already pointed out TONS of people that support the claim that a huge asteroid hit the earth and caused catastrophic damage.  Why do you keep telling me over and over again that Hovind believes it.  Who cares if Hovind believes the same thing.  Dawkins and Dennet probably believe an asteroid killed off the dinosaurs also.  So what are you proving?  Not a thing. 

    Of course I know about the iridium in the K-T layer. I also know about the impact Chicxulub crater. Even more, I know that it all has nothing to do with a flood. That would be like the Hovind Theory.

    Here is what I actually said: The connection with Hovind and the asteroid is that an asteroid caused a global deluge, that’s all. That is the Hovind theory in short. Actually I think he says it was a comet and it was a little more complicated.

    Hovind connects the comet or asteroid with a flood. The asteroid theory is based of the iridium layer, the craters and the lack of dino fossils above that layer. No flood is even suggested to be a part of the equation. I can prove what Hovind teaches and what most scientists understand, but why? 

     Are we to believe that God carefully selected that no trilobites would be in the upper layers, no birds, humans or mammals in the lower layers, and no dinosaurs above the Cretaceous layer (which also contains the asteroid evidence of iridium in the k-10 layer)? If the asteroid made a flood, you would find the iridium in most or all layers. But it is only in that specific layer all over the world. Hmm.

    Are we to believe that God was careful to be sure that no humans were fossilized together with any dinosaurs and other extinct forms? Are we to believe that no astralopithecenes were not allowed to fossilize along with humans or dinos? There is the order of evolution in the layers. Lots of it.

    If you came to discover that cookies taste good all by yourself without learning about it forst from Hitler, than logically you need never raise Hitler’s name when addressing how great cookies are. That would be counterproductive unless you were talking to Neo-Nazis maybe. It is also very counterproductive to mention anything about Hovind when trying to built a case for something about science that you support. Stop talking to me like I am an incompetant, uneducated person who can’t think “logically.” Is Spock around here or something? SHow some humility like Jesus. Show deference to others.

    What God delivered me from is a bit private at this juncture. But I am well aware of many variations of various conspiracy theories and believing in that nonsense can be potentially very dangerous and even deadly. Naziism is based on such theories. So is Islamic Jihad. Conspriacty theories have lead to much violence and death in the US over the last twenty years and I could give case examples like the Oklahoma City bombing. That is a good reason why God denounced listening to rumors of repeating them.

    So on topic, what do you make of the transitional forms in the fossil record for lets say whales? You avoid the hard evidence of the Lenski esperiment. Did you read what I wrote. I even explained to you how it produced “new information” in the genome of the E. coli. What more proof do you want?

    Oh. I see. No0w it has to be a certain number of mutations that would make it a non E. coli organism for evolution to have happened. So it is acknowledged to be evolution, but only if there is enough of it to satisfy an imaginary number of positive and complex mutations that overtake a population. What number is that specifically? One is not enough I guess.

    So the evolution of whales in the fossile record in order is a great showcase for the process of evolution for starters.

99. Chad November 27th, 2009 1:20 am :

    Dean,

    Do you know about the landslide in Alaska that caused a 400+ ft. wave?  If an asteroid large enough to cause the destruction of all dinosaurs worldwide were to hit the earth, then how big would that wave be?  It seems reasonable to expect such a wave to be enormous.  I have asked a few professors about this and all of them found it reasonable.  If secular atheist professors believe the same thing as Hovind, does that mean they follow Hovind?

    I think bringing up Hovind’s name is fine.  He is the compiler or editor of a lot of good science material.  The head professor of the philosophy department was absolutely brilliant, but his main area of publishing was not in research, but editing.  I could mention his books and articles in them, not mentioning his name because he is the author, but the editor.  Hovind has saved science journals and textbooks for decades.  He has such a wealth of information in his lectures.  I have had to point this out to you many many times now.

    Because I have to point out such obvious and trivial issues, and because of your constant use of fallacious arguments, misunderstanding of arguments (sometimes seemingly intentional misunderstanding), I have had the tendancy to talk down to you a bit.  Can you blame me?  Am I Dr. Spock?  I am someone who got straight A’s in logic, and you are someone who keeps making fallacious arguments which I point out time and time again.  I see myself as just normal.  I would like you to abandon your bad arguments and be more reaonable, then we will be able to see eye to eye better.  Let me give you a textbook example of your very poor logic skills.  In the quote which I will place below, you discuss controversial material.  It is controversial between you and I, we do not agree on the same conclusion.  I clearly think it that officials high up in the government carried out attacks on 9/11.  But do you acknowledge that and try to defend your statements with evidence.  Do you argue for your positions?  Not at all.  You just pontificate as if you are the pope or something.  When we try to have intelligent conversations with people on an issue that is not agreed upon, you need to offer premises that the other person will find appealing.  You don’t thus you commit the fallacy called BEGGING THE QUESTION.  You offer as a premise something that you would only believe is true if you also believed in the conclusion.  Do you not notice you are doing that constantly?  I mean I just told you I didn’t agree.  Moving on to another fallacy you will find below in the quote.  I have no violent tendancies whatsoever regarding the conspiracy theories.  To say it is dangerous to believe them is simply not true.  Some people might become violent if they believed the government was committing atrocities, but would that not be very rational?  The founding fathers fought wars against tyranny.  There is a right and wrong way to demonstrate your beliefs and sentiments.  What you have presented is a red hering.  It has no bearing on the issue.  I believe the OK City bombing was the government.  There is a ton of evidence in favor of it.  So you are trying to provide me evidence that conspiracy theories lead to violence by giving me an example of what I take to be the government killing its own citizens.  Next I love the violent Jihad explanation.  Go take a history class some time about the Middle East.  I have had 2.  What the west has done to the Middle East is just unimaginable.  It is amazing how many crimes of brutality that Europe, U.S., and Israel have committed against the people in the Middle East.  When we blow up 100,000 of them it is a “just war”.  When we starve 1,000,000 of them with sanctions, it is “diplomacy”.  When one of them has their mother killed, father tortured, wife raped and murdered, sons and daughters blown up at school ect., and then that person with nothing left to lose blows up a group of soldiers who bombed their family, we say it was a radical Jihad terrorist.  You think your lame misunderstanding of history convinces me?  This is what you offer as an argument:

    “What God delivered me from is a bit private at this juncture. But I am well aware of many variations of various conspiracy theories and believing in that nonsense can be potentially very dangerous and even deadly. Naziism is based on such theories. So is Islamic Jihad. Conspriacty theories have lead to much violence and death in the US over the last twenty years and I could give case examples like the Oklahoma City bombing. That is a good reason why God denounced listening to rumors of repeating them.”

    Then you say I’M not humble.  You don’t think it is arrogant to just force your opinions on people without reasonable evidence given?  I am just supposed to give up all of my beliefs because you say they are dangerous and crazy?  I just think you have poor reasoning skills.  Maybe your poor reasoning skills have lead you away from believing in conspiracy facts.  On top of all that, as if it was not bad enough, you have to invoke God as a witness on your side.  Ok, now I will change my opinion.  Now that you said God delivered you from it, I am really going to throw out my massive moutain of evidence and good rational thinking because you said the power word “GOD”.

100. Chad November 27th, 2009 1:30 am :

     Dean,

     Listen to how your argument goes.  You just stipulate that I am ignoring the “hard evidence” of the Lenski experiment.  Then you change the subject to whales.  You never gave me a single piece of data that showed that the affects of the experiment ruled out population shift.  I want you to go back to the Lenski article and find where it deals with population shifting.  You never addressed it, nor did any of the websites and articles you gave me.  You never showed anywhere that proves that the genetic information increased.  You also never addressed the problem of limited speciation.  Why is it that we only see minor variations within a kind and never the leaping from one kind to another, if Darwinian theory is correct?  What an arrogant comment to make that I just ignore “hard evidence”.  It is absurd.  You ignored every challenge I threw up.  Let’s go over it again.  You find me the quotes where it addresses my concerns.  The study never rules out alternate explanations.  How do we know that fitness and population shifting is not responsible for the aquired ability of the E. Coli to use citrate?  Show me the quote.  There isn’t one in the information you gave me.

     You never showed at all that information was increased.  We still do not know if this is AN example.  I said “What if your example does work”.  Then you take that to mean that I agree that it is an acceptable example?  This is the stuff that I find so frustrating about you.  It is as if you can’t even find the clear meaning in my words.  Do you not see that “It is an example that I accept” and “What if this is an acceptable example” are two entirely different statements?  You read those statements as the same???  I find it hard to believe that you honestly don’t see the difference in those two statements.  I really can’t believe it.  The errors you are making are so elementary and unsophistocated.  I seriously just can’t believe it.  You can’t see that the issue of whether or not we have 1 example that meets the criteria of a beneficial information increasing mutation and the issue of whether or not the example you have pointed out would give you evidence of Darwinism are the different issues?

101. Chad November 27th, 2009 1:37 am :

     Dean,

     Let’s talk about whales then.  There are transitional fossils, apparrent transitional fossils, of whales and land animals.  So how is it evidence of Darwinian theory?  Why is it not also evidence of some form of God-guided evolution?  The reason Darwian theory has a problem here is that there are no intermediate species.  That would seem to indicate that rapid changes took place.  There are 10,000 morphological changes that need to take place to go from a whale to one of the transitional animals we see in the so called fossil record, which is just bones in dirt.  God can make it happen very fast and a fast change would explain why there are 10,000 transitional fossils missing from the bones in the dirt record.  Darwin loses out bigtime here to biological evolution that encorporates some form of ID theory.

     Yes, whale fossils and transitional-whale-to-land-animal fossils are evidence of evolution, not Darwinian evolution.  They are evidence against Darwin.

     Later,
     Chad

102. Dean November 29th, 2009 9:16 am :

     Chad,

     Here are some links arnd references in response to your asking for proof that any “genetic information” increases, etc. A friend of mine suggested them for me:

     Untangling a gene control network
      to allow a gene in a duplicated pair
     to go on to control a different gene set:
     http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pcbi.0020058

     Here is a link to an article in Nature summarizing work showing possible Darwinian pathways to new genes following duplication events. It does require a subscription though.
     http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v445/n7126/abs/nature05451.html#top

     More Nature Articles dealing with these issues:
     Frank J. Poelwijk, Daniel J. Kiviet & Sander J. Tans, “Empirical Fitness landscapes reveal accessible evolutionary paths”, Nature 445 25-January-2007, 383-386.

     A couple more articles on what happens after gene or whole genome duplication.

     Manolis Kellis, Bruce W. Birren & Eric S. Lander, “Proof and evolutionary analysis of ancient genome duplication in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae”, Nature 428 8-April-2004, pages 617-624.

     Chirs Todd Hittinger and Sean B Carroll, “Gene duplication and the adaptive evolution of a classic genetic switch”, Nature, 449, 11 October 2007, pages 677-681.

     New “information” is accumulated. This happens through Gene duplication and genome duplication. This is how it was explained to me.

     In essence these duplications are really only Random mutations. However, what happens next is very interesting, as the genome tries to stabilize itself. Most genes in the set of pairs get switched off or deleted. Of those that remain, many split the functions of the pre-existing single gene between themselves (sub-functionalization) and a few go off to evolve as entirely new genes (neo-functionalization) while the other gene in the pair retains the original function.

     Much of our genome consists of duplicated genes.
     Gene duplication and genome duplication.

     I asked another fellow blogger friend what he thought of your question about the introduction of “new information” into genes and this is what he said:

     You must first ask for a definition of “information” as it applies to DNA. If someone makes the assertion that there is “no new information”, that implies that DNA information can be measured, and thus DNA information has a unit of measurement. Ask this person what the unit of measurement is: base pairs? protein coding genes? chromosomes?

     I’m fairly certain they will not have a unit of measurement for DNA information nor an explicit definition of DNA information. However, you can point out that gene duplication, polyploidy, retrotranspositions, endogenous retroviral insertions, etc. all add new genetic material to the genome, and that by any definition or unit of measurement for ‘genetic information’ they can come up with, these processes increase genetic information.

103. Dean November 29th, 2009 10:00 am :

     The Lenski experiment.

     Microbes like bacteria reproduce by cell division can produce a new generation in just twenty minutes. This is why we can observe in real time actual evolutionary change over thousands of generations consecutively (no missing links) in a laboratory. This is genuine evolutionary change, demonstrating all three requirements of evolution by natural selection: variation, heritability, and the different survival and reproduction variants. Although the environmental challeng is created by intelligent humans (scientists), these sorts of experiments are more like the natural environment in that the humans don’t choose which individuals get to reproduce.

     Simple adaptations. Microbes can adapt an evolve to virtually anything that scientists subject them to in the lab: high or lows temps, antibiotics, toxins, starvation, new nutrients, and their natural enemies, viruses. Probably the longest running study of this type is being done by Richard Lenski at Michigan State University.

     In 1988, he put genetically identical strains of the common gut bacterium E. coli under conditions in which their food, the sugar glucose, was depleted each day and then renewed the next day. This experiment was a test of the microbe’s ability to adapt to a feast-and-famine environment. Over the next eighteen years (40,000 bacterial generations), the bacteria continued to accumulate new genetic mutations adapting them to this new environment.

     Under the varying food conditions, they grow 70% faster than the original unselected strain. The bacteria have continued to evolve, and Lenski and his collegues have identified at least 9 specific genes whose mutations result in adaptations that are positively benefitial to the bacterium’s ability to survive and reproduce. Genetic “markers” tracked each specific mutation in each generation. The process was repeated when samples from the generation were cross examined by being subjected to the exact same conditions that lead to the evolution and guess what? It happened again. But it only happened where the bacterium had the specific random mutation that lead to the increased abilities evolving. It was “irreducable complexity” being built via natural selection.

     In other words Chad, this was not a simple population shift by any stretch of the imagination.

     But “laboratory” adaptations can also be more complex, involving the evolution of whole new biochemical systems coming about. Maybe the biggest evolutionary challenge humans could experiment with in the lab would be to simply take away a gene that a microbe needs to survive in a particular environment, and see how it responds. Can it evolve a way around this new probelm? This answer is usually yes.

     In a dramatic experiment, Barry Hall and his colleagues at the University of Rockchester began a study by deleting a gene from E coli. This gene produced an enzyme that allows the bacteria to break down the sugar lactose into subunits that can be used as food. The geneless bacteria were then put in an envirnment containing lactose as the only food source. Intitially they had lacked the enzyme anc could not grow. But after only a short period of time, the function of the missing gene was taken over by anotherenzyme that, while previously being unable to break down lactose, could now do so weakly because of a new mutation.

     Eventually yet another mutation occured: one that increased the amount of the new enzyme so that more lactose coupd be used. Finally a third mutation at a yet different gene allowed the bacteria to take lactose from the environment more easily. All together, this experiment showed us the evolution of complex biochemical pathway that enabled bacteria to grow on a previously unusable food.

     Beyond demonstrating evolution, this experiment has two important lessons. First, natural selection can promote the evolution of complex, interconnected biochemical systems in which all psrts are codependent, despite the claims by creationists and Intelligent Design advocates that this is impossible. Second, as we have seen repeatedly, selection does not creat new traits out of thin air: it produces “new” adaptations by modifying preexisting features.

     We can even see the origin of new ecologically diverse bacterial SPECIES, all within a singel laboratory flask. Paul Rainey and his collegues at Oxford University places a strain of the bacterium Pseudomonas flourescens in a small vessel containing nutrient broth and simply watched it. (Its suprizingly true that such a vessel actually contains diverse environments, Oxygen concentration, for example, is the highest on the top and lowest on the bottom.) Within ten days- no more than a few hundred generations- the ancestral free-floating “smooth” bacterium had evolved into two additional forms occupying differnt parts of the beaker. One, called “wrinkly spreader,” formed a mat on top of the broth. The other, called “fuzzy spreader,” formed a carpet on the bottom. The smooth original ancestor to the other two new forms continued to thrive exactly the same way as originally in the liquid environment in the middle. Each of the two new forms was genetically different from the original ancestor, having evolved through mutation and natural selection to reproduce best in their respective environments.

     Here then is not only evolution but speciation occurring in the lab: the ancestral form produced, and coexisted with, two ecologically different descendants, and in bacteria such forms are considered distinct species. Over a very short time, natural selection on Pseudomonas yielded a small-scale “adaptive radiation,” the equivalent of how animals or plants form species when they encounter new environments on an oceanic island.

     This was taken mostly from Why Evolution is True pp 129-131.

104. Dean November 29th, 2009 10:01 am :

     The Lenski experiment.

     Microbes like bacteria reproduce by cell division can produce a new generation in just twenty minutes. This is why we can observe in real time actual evolutionary change over thousands of generations consecutively (no missing links) in a laboratory. This is genuine evolutionary change, demonstrating all three requirements of evolution by natural selection: variation, heritability, and the different survival and reproduction variants. Although the environmental challeng is created by intelligent humans (scientists), these sorts of experiments are more like the natural environment in that the humans don’t choose which individuals get to reproduce.

     Simple adaptations. Microbes can adapt an evolve to virtually anything that scientists subject them to in the lab: high or lows temps, antibiotics, toxins, starvation, new nutrients, and their natural enemies, viruses. Probably the longest running study of this type is being done by Richard Lenski at Michigan State University.

     In 1988, he put genetically identical strains of the common gut bacterium E. coli under conditions in which their food, the sugar glucose, was depleted each day and then renewed the next day. This experiment was a test of the microbe’s ability to adapt to a feast-and-famine environment. Over the next eighteen years (40,000 bacterial generations), the bacteria continued to accumulate new genetic mutations adapting them to this new environment.

     Under the varying food conditions, they grow 70% faster than the original unselected strain. The bacteria have continued to evolve, and Lenski and his collegues have identified at least 9 specific genes whose mutations result in adaptations that are positively benefitial to the bacterium’s ability to survive and reproduce. Genetic “markers” tracked each specific mutation in each generation. The process was repeated when samples from the generation were cross examined by being subjected to the exact same conditions that lead to the evolution and guess what? It happened again. But it only happened where the bacterium had the specific random mutation that lead to the increased abilities evolving. It was “irreducable complexity” being built via natural selection.

     In other words Chad, this was not a simple population shift by any stretch of the imagination.

     But “laboratory” adaptations can also be more complex, involving the evolution of whole new biochemical systems coming about. Maybe the biggest evolutionary challenge humans could experiment with in the lab would be to simply take away a gene that a microbe needs to survive in a particular environment, and see how it responds. Can it evolve a way around this new probelm? This answer is usually yes.

     In a dramatic experiment, Barry Hall and his colleagues at the University of Rockchester began a study by deleting a gene from E coli. This gene produced an enzyme that allows the bacteria to break down the sugar lactose into subunits that can be used as food. The geneless bacteria were then put in an envirnment containing lactose as the only food source. Intitially they had lacked the enzyme anc could not grow. But after only a short period of time, the function of the missing gene was taken over by anotherenzyme that, while previously being unable to break down lactose, could now do so weakly because of a new mutation.

     Eventually yet another mutation occured: one that increased the amount of the new enzyme so that more lactose coupd be used. Finally a third mutation at a yet different gene allowed the bacteria to take lactose from the environment more easily. All together, this experiment showed us the evolution of complex biochemical pathway that enabled bacteria to grow on a previously unusable food.

     Beyond demonstrating evolution, this experiment has two important lessons. First, natural selection can promote the evolution of complex, interconnected biochemical systems in which all psrts are codependent, despite the claims by creationists and Intelligent Design advocates that this is impossible. Second, as we have seen repeatedly, selection does not creat new traits out of thin air: it produces “new” adaptations by modifying preexisting features.

     We can even see the origin of new ecologically diverse bacterial SPECIES, all within a singel laboratory flask. Paul Rainey and his collegues at Oxford University places a strain of the bacterium Pseudomonas flourescens in a small vessel containing nutrient broth and simply watched it. (Its suprizingly true that such a vessel actually contains diverse environments, Oxygen concentration, for example, is the highest on the top and lowest on the bottom.) Within ten days- no more than a few hundred generations- the ancestral free-floating “smooth” bacterium had evolved into two additional forms occupying differnt parts of the beaker. One, called “wrinkly spreader,” formed a mat on top of the broth. The other, called “fuzzy spreader,” formed a carpet on the bottom. The smooth original ancestor to the other two new forms continued to thrive exactly the same way as originally in the liquid environment in the middle. Each of the two new forms was genetically different from the original ancestor, having evolved through mutation and natural selection to reproduce best in their respective environments.

     Here then is not only evolution but speciation occurring in the lab: the ancestral form produced, and coexisted with, two ecologically different descendants, and in bacteria such forms are considered distinct species. Over a very short time, natural selection on Pseudomonas yielded a small-scale “adaptive radiation,” the equivalent of how animals or plants form species when they encounter new environments on an oceanic island.

     This was taken mostly from Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne pp 129-131.

105. Chad November 29th, 2009 9:32 pm :

     Dean,

     Duplication of genes is not an increase in information.  If you take a page of the dictionary and double it, it does not give you new information.  You just have double the same information.  As far as scrambling of DNA, that does not get you new information either.  If you take a dictionary and scramble it up randomly, you don’t get new information.  You just lose it.

     You did not show that in the experiment you have these components together - information increase and beneficial mutation.  You only showed that the cells increased the rate at which they grow.  Well, that doesn’t change the species.  If a human could grow in 1 second, it would still be a human.  You showed a population that had increased fitness.  That can easily be accomplished with dogs through selective breeding.  But they will still be dogs.  A pit bull is no more or less a dog than a chiwawa is, but the pit bull in some ways has greater fitness.

     It is easy to find examples where genes are duplicated and either nothing happens or the cow grows a 5th leg.  That doesn’t help a thing.

     You can find examples where information is lost, and by chance a benefit is gained.  For example, if you are missing a leg, you can’t get athlete’s foot.

     You can find examples of fitness.  Dr. Jack Cuozzo found evidence that Neanderthals lived very long lives and grew slowly.  Does that mean we are more advanced?  No, we in fact have many more genetic defects.  The way our muscles tie in to the bones is less efficient.  We don’t have the ability to regrow enamel on our teeth, etc.  So your E. Coli example might actually be a good example of decreased fitness, but that doesn’t matter.  It is not evolution in the significant sense.

     Now you want to challenge the idea of what information is.  You have two problems here.  Firstly, you are already using this term:

     “New “information” is accumulated. This happens through Gene duplication and genome duplication. This is how it was explained to me.”

     So what do you mean by “information”?

     Secondly, information doesn’t mean anything like base pairs, protein coding genes, or chromosomes.  When we write to each other we are passing on information with our words.  The letters are not information, but merely a conduit for information.  Your internet buddy needs to go back to school and take some philosophy classes.  If a snail walked along the ground and randomly spelled out “I-N-F-O-R-M-A-T-I-O-N”, that would not be anything meaningful or informative.  It would just be shapes in the sand.  Our DNA is a conduit for information.  When you double a gene, you do not get information.  When you scramble a doubled gene, you do not get information.  It just doesn’t work like that.

106. Chad November 29th, 2009 11:43 pm :

     Dean,

     How does the Paul Rainey experiment show that speciation took place?  The term “species” is fraught with problems.  Wolves and dogs are different species, but they can interbreed.  But if animals live apart for a long enough period of time so that they are incapable of interbreeding, how is that evidence that they have evolved in a positive way?  If they lose the ability to do something, how is that a step forward?  If someone cuts off my hands, does that mean I have evolved?  If my DNA becomes incapable of alining with some distant race of humans, how does that make us separate species?  We would just be humans that can’t interbreed, right?  So I don’t see how this is even evidence of any kind of evolution whatsoever.

     You give me many examples of fitness being increased.  How is that an example of evolution?  If I gain the ability to eat more eggs, does that mean I am on the way to being a non-human?

107. Dean November 29th, 2009 11:55 pm :

     Read this again:

     In a dramatic experiment, Barry Hall and his colleagues at the University of Rockchester began a study by deleting a gene from E coli. This gene produced an enzyme that allows the bacteria to break down the sugar lactose into subunits that can be used as food. The geneless bacteria were then put in an envirnment containing lactose as the only food source. Intitially they had lacked the enzyme and could not grow. But after only a short period of time, the function of the missing gene was taken over by another enzyme that, while previously being unable to break down lactose, could now do so weakly because of a new mutation.
     Eventually yet another mutation occured: one that increased the amount of the new enzyme so that more lactose coupd be used. Finally a third mutation at a yet different gene allowed the bacteria to take lactose from the environment more easily. All together, this experiment showed us the evolution of complex biochemical pathway that enabled bacteria to grow on a previously unusable food.
     Beyond demonstrating evolution, this experiment has two important lessons.

      First, natural selection can promote the evolution of complex, interconnected biochemical systems in which all psrts are codependent, despite the claims by creationists and Intelligent Design advocates that this is impossible.

     Second, as we have seen repeatedly, selection does not creat new traits out of thin air: it produces “new” adaptations by modifying preexisting features.

     You see, Darwinian evolution via natural selection describes descent with modification. This modification is accomplished by random mutations being selected for survival by nature. That is why we have that fused chromosome that chimps have as two chromosomes not fused that you point out. We are from a common ancestor but by now we are seriously jury rigged by natural selection with numerous modifications.

     My friend that you say should go back to school said this:
     You must first ask for a definition of “information” as it applies to DNA. If someone makes the assertion that there is “no new information”, that implies that DNA information can be measured, and thus DNA information has a unit of measurement. Ask this person what the unit of measurement is: base pairs? protein coding genes? chromosomes?
     I’m fairly certain they will not have a unit of measurement for DNA information nor an explicit definition of DNA information. However, you can point out that gene duplication, polyploidy, retrotranspositions, endogenous retroviral insertions, etc. all add new genetic material to the genome, and that by any definition or unit of measurement for ‘genetic information’ they can come up with, these processes increase genetic information.

108. Dean November 30th, 2009 12:13 am :

     Chad,

     I can take a dictionary and use every letter as a bag o parts and condense, reword things, etc and come up with SOME new information in the book. If I were to duplicate letters and whole words or sentences, etc, i can really come up with a lot more information. So scrambling and duplicating DNA is how new information is developed. That’s what every single mutation is: new information in, old info out, or turned off.

     For an E coli to be able to absorbe that nutrient through its cell wall is a benefitial mutation. For it to be able to digest the food is another benefitial mutation. For it to do it quickly and efficiently is another benefitial mutation. All these mutations were heritable and were passed on indefinitely. The new E coli that had the upgraded digestive abilities displaced the old species. It is considered a new species by the accepted standards of identifying a species.

     What else could you ask for?

     Its just like how you say “there are no transitional forms.” You definitely need to go back to school when it comes to this, and not to a fundamentalist one. Let’s see. Humans and extinct lower primates, are there any “links?”

     There are quite a few skulls and fossil skeletons of numerous transitional forms in between a chimp like ancestor and modern humans. I could name off a list if needed. They have every major feature one could ask for in a transitional form: flatening faces, increasing brains size and forheads, a developing chin, no tail, completely upright walking hips and legs, teeth that are in between chimp and human shaped, lengthening legs, etc etc. What pieces are out of place? What more do you need to call it a transitional form?

109. Chadwick November 30th, 2009 4:54 am :

     Dean,

     Tell your friend to address the issue of what information is.  Let’s say you have a Webster’s Dictionary, and you add to it a page or two from another book, while you take out a page from Webster’s dictionary.  Ok, will that increase information?  Yes, but is it going to do anything as far as progressing toward a better more informative book?  Well, not necessarily.

     I never said it was possible or impossible for new information to be created.  But that does not imply that you need to have a measure of information.  That simply isn’t true at all.  But I never addressed possibility.  I just said that in the article that you gave me, it isn’t clear that the mutation caused information to be increased.  There are plenty of examples of mutations either deleting information or information being duplicated (not an increase).  I also have not seen any evidence which rules out there already being a small segment of the population with pre-existing genetics to account for the “new ability” in terms of population shifts.  You never addressed that at all.  You never sent me anything which showed it wasn’t a population shift.  The issue isn’t addressed at all.  AGAIN…

     Let’s assume some things at this point.  Let’s assume that in the cases above you have provided evidence of an information increasing beneficial mutation.  Well, there is another problem.  How many of these sorts of mutations do we need to get a whale from a sea-dwelling body to a land-dwelling body?  How many mutations do we need, and are the above examples of mutations sufficient to get you the development of the eye, or some other complex structure?

     Actually, if you randomly scramble what is in a dictionary, you will never get more information.  You will get the deterioration of what you started with, and nothing beneficial will EVER come from the scrambling.  We wouldn’t believe the Darwinian story for books, so why believe it about biology?

     Quoting Dean:

     “For an E coli to be able to absorbe that nutrient through its cell wall is a benefitial mutation. For it to be able to digest the food is another benefitial mutation. For it to do it quickly and efficiently is another benefitial mutation. All these mutations were heritable and were passed on indefinitely. The new E coli that had the upgraded digestive abilities displaced the old species. It is considered a new species by the accepted standards of identifying a species.”

     Ok, so I definitely agree that is a beneficial mutation.  I will assume it is not population shift or a decrease in information for the sake of argument.  So what we have is a new species according to our definitions!  What does that get us?  Maybe it means that we have observed something significant or maybe it means that the term “speciation” is vague and insignificant.  I already addressed this issue in the last paper.  Wolves and dogs are a different species, but who cares?  It isn’t a significant change.  Right?

     I didn’t deny that there were what look like transitional fossils, which may very well be transitional fossils.  I said that those transitional fossils are evidence of evolution, but they do not help Darwinian theory too much.  There are still huge gaps with whales, for example.  You need 10s of thousands of changes for whales to become land dwelling creatures or visa versa.  You have 4 or 5 transitional fossils.  Now look what you said above?  Are you reading what I said at all?  Maybe I should go back and hunt down my quote.  I think I will…

     Chad November 24th, 2009 3:49 am :
     “I have seen transitional fossils for some animals.  I don’t deny there are what appear to be transitional fossils.  I just wonder where the other 50,000 intermediate species are if Darwinian theory is true.  God-guided evolution can account for transitional fossils.  Creationism can as well.  But Darwinian theroy can not explain all the gaps and missing data.  It is very puzzling to scientists”

     Please read more carefully.

110. Dean December 1st, 2009 2:30 am :

     Chad,

     First aboiut the E.coli. If these  mutations that lead to the new abilities were already present than they would not be mutations. They were tracked and marked. If they were there previously than they would not be a mutation and tney would have surfaces years ago during the experiment. Also this experiment would not be acclaimed by the the majority of the scientific community as a landmark demonstration of evolution either. I won’t cite all those things. But if you need proof I will see what I can find. And FYI, this is not the only example of evolution having been observed in real time. There are other examples from the wild. It is just that they are not and cluldn’t be as meticulously documented as the lab experiment was.

     Fossil transitional forms. Why aren’t there an abundance of them? I would say that there are for sure. Some types have more than others. Tecodonts are found in abundance. They demonstrate an abundance of step by step transition from reptile to mammal. Again, I can give a link or two for more info if you like.

     Also one must consider the nature of fossils, they are extremely rare because the circumstances in which they are formed are extremely rare. It is normal for paleontologists to discover whole new species of dinosaurs and other animals in the fossil record. Only a part of a skeleton is normally found.

     So do the math. If there were literally millions of Argentinosauruses in their day. It was possilby the biggest land animal ever. Yet there are only a few pieces of a skeleton that have been found. One might expect that there would be literlly countless bones unearthed yet only fragments of one specimen are known. So how much more then ought we to expect that there are countelss unknown variations of animals that will almost certainly never be found in the fossils?

     What can be done is simply predict what should be found, in what layers and where. Such was done for sure with Tiktaalik, a transitional form in between a fish and an amphibian. Such was also the case with numerous subhuman creatures found in the African Rift Valley.

     You can’t reasonably expect to find every link in any evolutionary chain. But you should find a reasonable sampling of change in action in the fossil record and such is found.

     Why is it so obvious that these animals represent transitional forms?

     Archeopteryx
     Australopithecines of various kinds
     Tiktaalik
     Thecodonts
     the “wasp- ants”
     Eohippus
     Ambulocetus
     Pakicetus
     Dinos with “partial feather like structures” on their bodies.
     Full true feathers on dinos like Microraptor

     I could go on but these are enough to get my point out.

111. Dean December 1st, 2009 2:30 am :

     Chad,

     First aboiut the E.coli. If these  mutations that lead to the new abilities were already present than they would not be mutations. They were tracked and marked. If they were there previously than they would not be a mutation and they would have surfaces years ago during the experiment. Also this experiment would not be acclaimed by the the majority of the scientific community as a landmark demonstration of evolution either. I won’t cite all those things. But if you need proof I will see what I can find. And FYI, this is not the only example of evolution having been observed in real time. There are other examples from the wild. It is just that they are not and cluldn’t be as meticulously documented as the lab experiment was.

     Fossil transitional forms. Why aren’t there an abundance of them? I would say that there are for sure. Some types have more than others. Tecodonts are found in abundance. They demonstrate an abundance of step by step transition from reptile to mammal. Again, I can give a link or two for more info if you like.

     Also one must consider the nature of fossils, they are extremely rare because the circumstances in which they are formed are extremely rare. It is normal for paleontologists to discover whole new species of dinosaurs and other animals in the fossil record. Only a part of a skeleton is normally found.

     So do the math. If there were literally millions of Argentinosauruses in their day. It was possilby the biggest land animal ever. Yet there are only a few pieces of a skeleton that have been found. One might expect that there would be literlly countless bones unearthed yet only fragments of one specimen are known. So how much more then ought we to expect that there are countelss unknown variations of animals that will almost certainly never be found in the fossils?

     What can be done is simply predict what should be found, in what layers and where. Such was done for sure with Tiktaalik, a transitional form in between a fish and an amphibian. Such was also the case with numerous subhuman creatures found in the African Rift Valley.

     You can’t reasonably expect to find every link in any evolutionary chain. But you should find a reasonable sampling of change in action in the fossil record and such is found.

     Why is it so obvious that these animals represent transitional forms?

     Archeopteryx
     Australopithecines of various kinds
     Tiktaalik
     Thecodonts
     the “wasp- ants”
     Eohippus
     Ambulocetus
     Pakicetus
     Dinos with “partial feather like structures” on their bodies.
     Full true feathers on dinos like Microraptor

     I could go on but these are enough to get my point out.

112. Dean December 1st, 2009 2:30 am :

     Chad,

     First aboiut the E.coli. If these  mutations that lead to the new abilities were already present than they would not be mutations. They were tracked and marked. If they were there previously than they would not be a mutation and they would have surfaces years ago during the experiment. Also this experiment would not be acclaimed by the the majority of the scientific community as a landmark demonstration of evolution either. I won’t cite all those things. But if you need proof I will see what I can find. And FYI, this is not the only example of evolution having been observed in real time. There are other examples from the wild. It is just that they are not and cluldn’t be as meticulously documented as the lab experiment was.

     Fossil transitional forms. Why aren’t there an abundance of them? I would say that there are for sure. Some types have more than others. Tecodonts are found in abundance. They demonstrate an abundance of step by step transition from reptile to mammal. Again, I can give a link or two for more info if you like.

     Also one must consider the nature of fossils, they are extremely rare because the circumstances in which they are formed are extremely rare. It is normal for paleontologists to discover whole new species of dinosaurs and other animals in the fossil record. Only a part of a skeleton is normally found.

     So do the math. If there were literally millions of Argentinosauruses in their day. It was possilby the biggest land animal ever. Yet there are only a few pieces of a skeleton that have been found. One might expect that there would be literlly countless bones unearthed yet only fragments of one specimen are known. So how much more then ought we to expect that there are countelss unknown variations of animals that will almost certainly never be found in the fossils?

     What can be done is simply predict what should be found, in what layers and where. Such was done for sure with Tiktaalik, a transitional form in between a fish and an amphibian. Such was also the case with numerous subhuman creatures found in the African Rift Valley.

     You can’t reasonably expect to find every link in any evolutionary chain. But you should find a reasonable sampling of change in action in the fossil record and such is found.

     Why is it so obvious that these animals represent transitional forms?

     Archeopteryx
     Australopithecines of various kinds
     Tiktaalik
     Thecodonts
     the “wasp- ants”
     Eohippus
     Ambulocetus
     Pakicetus
     Dinos with “partial feather like structures” on their bodies.
     Full true feathers on dinos like Microraptor

     I could go on but these are enough to get my point out.

113. Chad December 1st, 2009 2:53 am :

     Dean,

     Ok, it sounds like we have an example of a beneficial mutation.  Was it the result of adding or taking away DNA segments?  Did you find any information about that?

     It looks like we have a good candidate for what I was asking for.

     I want to ask you about what you say about other examples of evolution.  You say that evolution has happened many times before, but the evidence to support that was not meticulously followed.  Now of course you believe that evolution has happened many times before.  If you believe Darwinian evolution is true, then of course you believe evolution has happened many times before.  Of course you believe it even though you admit that other cases which you believe to be examples of evolution were not really observed that well, not well enough for you to present them to me as evidence.  So it is good enough for you to believe, but not good enough to use as evidence for someone who is agnostic about Darwinism.  That sounds suspect.

     You are right when you say there are many transitional fossils, but unfortunately, there are so many missing that the transitional fossils are evidence of non-Darwinian types of evolution and evidence against Darwinian evolution.  To go from a whale to a land-dwelling creature you need around 50,000 morphological changes, according to Dr. Berlinski.  So you only have “many” transitional fossils until you consider how many transitions would be needed to get to what we see today.  Then you see that in fact you have so very very few transitional fossils.  It is quite damning.

     Look, you can tell me fossils are rare, but according to Darwinian theory there should be far more transitional fossils than what we see.  That is a straightforward fact.  It is evidence against Darwin.  Now, you can give reasons for why we don’t find fossils, but there is only so much backlash that can be alleiviated with that method.  If you think you are solving the problem by bringing up the difficulties of getting fossils to form, you are getting off into “god of the gaps”-type excuses.  Creationists do this stuff all the time.  They try to argue that transitional fossils could just be there because God wanted them there.  That solves nothing.  It can explain anything, so it explains everything.  But that really explains nothing.  Same here, you can not fully explain the problems of Darwinism by simply saying fossils are difficult to produce.  It is Darwin-of-the-gaps theology, not science.  You know what else causes part of a dinosaur to disappear?- global floods.  I hear there was a big one back in the day.

114. Chad December 1st, 2009 3:04 am :

     Dean,

     This is fallacious and sloppy:

     “So do the math. If there were literally millions of Argentinosauruses in their day. It was possilby the biggest land animal ever. Yet there are only a few pieces of a skeleton that have been found. One might expect that there would be literlly countless bones unearthed yet only fragments of one specimen are known. So how much more then ought we to expect that there are countelss unknown variations of animals that will almost certainly never be found in the fossils? ”

     So we both agree that most animals that have died did not become fossils.  We can both agree many small animals, even if they were fossilized, would not be found, because it is harder to find small things in the dirt than big things.  So we agree there.  But think about how fallacious your argument gets after this point.  If you believe Darwinian evolution is true, then of course you would expect that there were many transitional fossils lost.  But if you did not believe this conclusion, then you would not have accepted it as a premise.  THAT IS TEXTBOOK “BEGGING THE QUESTION” CIRCULARITY!

     This kind of mistake wouldn’t even be made by a first semster philosophy student.  I seriously just don’t know what to say?  If you can’t see that, I just don’t know what I am supposed to say to help you.

115. Chad December 1st, 2009 3:09 am :

     Dean,

     Why are you listing transitional fossils to me?

     I BELIEVE THERE ARE TRANSITIONAL FOSSILS.

     I NEVER DENIED TRANSITIONAL FOSSILS.

     CHAD BELIEVES THE FOLLOWING ARE GOOD CANDIDATES FOR TRANSITIONAL FOSSILS:

     Archeopteryx
     Australopithecines of various kinds
     Tiktaalik
     Thecodonts
     the “wasp- ants”
     Eohippus
     Ambulocetus
     Pakicetus
     Dinos with “partial feather like structures” on their bodies.
     Full true feathers on dinos like Microraptor
     So what does that prove?  If God-guided evolution is true, we would expect to see some transitional fossils, less probably than Darwinain evolution.  Why?  Because Darwinian evolution is contstrained to very slow processes, whereas God is not constrained to develop life slowly.  If God-guided evolution is true, then we should find several transitional fossils, but not 50,000 which is what should be expected if you believe Darwinism is true.  What do we find?  We find what you would expect if Darwinism is false and God-guided evolution were true.  So it is evidence for me, not you.

116. Chad December 1st, 2009 3:13 am :

     Dean,

     You say the following:

     “I could go on but these are enough to get my point out.”

     Really?  Because I think your point is highly fallacious.  You just gave perfect evidence for God-guided evolution.  You gave perfect evidence against Darwinism.  It is a huge problem for Darwinism that there are massive gaps in the transitional sequence.

     In order for scholars to solve a problem they need to recognize that something is a problem.  When I try to defend the idea of a Trinity from arguments of logical necessity, I have to first accept that there is a problem to be solved.  I have not seen you recognize that the limited amount of transitional fossils is evidence against the slow, successive, modification theory.  A healthy dose of confession will be cleansing to your soul.  It will help you to move on to solve the problem.

117. Dean December 1st, 2009 9:59 pm :

     Chad,

     First of all let me state some things that are obvious but need to be put out there again.

     I am not a scholar nor a scientist.

     I do not have the same degree that you do, well not the University one that is.

     I am unsure of what you specifically mean by “God guided” evolution. I presume that this is different than evolution via natural selection/Darwinism?

     Now I don’t have a solid position on exactly where God fits into the whole equation when it comes to evolution any more than I can identify exactly where God’s hand is involved when sperm fertilizes a human egg and life begins literally unfolding in the womb- even though David said that God wove him together and saw his unformed frame. Yet I would with conviction say that God. I say that by faith. I have no proof.

     Now evolution via natural selection is grounded firstly in natural selection which is undeniably happening all around us all the time. Sexual selection is another factor, artificial selection is another which is showcased in dog breeds and in flower color, scents and shape varieties selected by the eyes, noses and mouths of moths, butterflies, insects and women.

     Now producing evolutionary change is the issue we are honed in on but my point was that the mechanism of natural selection is observable.

     I have no problem with God being the driving factor in evolution. But that does create its own problems as well: like
      why would God creat countless varieties and species that are all destined to either evolve or go extinct for the most part?

     If he does everything right the first time, why so many dead ends?

     Why did he jurry rig the mammals’ larygial nerve?

     Why did he do such a poor job on Humans’ backs, teeth and eyes?

     Why create viruses at all?

     Why punish the poor little antelopes with a certian fate in the horribly painful claws and teeth of lions? The same can be said of rabbits, mice, smal birds, etc.

     Why even bother going through a process of evolution when He could just make it in an instant and make it without flaw?

     Why leave behind vestigial organs and body parts occassionally? If GOd miraculously interviened, one would think he would have made the necesarry changes and done a thurough job of it without leaving partial DNA that pops up every once in a while with useless back legs in blue whales, etc.

     I am not agreeing that there are a sore and disproportionate lack of transitional forms in the fossil record. I lean that there aren’t too many forms missing so far. All it even takes is one kind of dinsaur to change into one kind of bird and then evolution would take that bird and generate thousands of varieties from there. Its finding an identifiable base ancestor that is a big challenge if it is possible. It could be that rapid change took place many times and these changes weren’t preserved in fossils. We have to look at the molecular record of DNA when we can to see its partially washed away traces in junk DNA fragments. Such is the case in birds.

     Birds have somewhat incomplete DNA for teeth in their beeks. THese genes are turned off. But with a little tinkering by man’s tools, a bird will have teeth again soon. The same can be said for a long bony tail in birds like a dinosaur or lizard. The genes are ther but corrupted and turned off. THere are scientists in Europe ( I forget the country) that are planning an experiment that will produce a “chick-o-raptor” with these genes being turned on.

     Natural selection tinkers with DNA and also, albeit very slowly, changes and shapes organisms to adapt to their changing environments. This was observed in the experiments I mentioned earlier.

     Now how the odds of this all happening are routed I am wondering myself. Sure it theoretically could happen that a dino could slowly become a bird. But when one particular dino say had a more flight capable feather mutate in a slight degree, what are the chances for thise benefitial feature to eventually displace the original form in the species? It seems to be extremely slim. But all the evidences I have read about (Sorry I can’t right a whole book about those here for you) show that it somehow DID happen that way.

     THis is where I would see a (dare I say it?) “gap” that God might be the candidate to fill. But again, I don’t lpoose sleep over trying to find a dogmatic position in this.

118. Chad December 1st, 2009 11:12 pm :

     Dean,

     I will analyze the word “evolution” in the manner that David Berlinski does.  There are three basic meanings to it with regard to biological evolution.

     1)  All of life is in some way related in a grand way.

     2)  All of life originated from a common ancestor.

     3)  Specific claims about a mechanism or engine or way in which biological evolution took place, i.e. Darwinism, ID, or some type of spuratic appearance evolution. (In 3 experts attempt to offer a specific explanation for what happened and how it happened.)

     The first claim is believed by everyone.  The second one is somewhat controversial.  The third one is highly controversial.  You have been defending Darwinian evolution, at least this is what I take you to be defending.  You seem to think there were thousands of transitional steps, which corresponds with Darwinian theory.  Other theories do not predict that.  You talk about evolution through mutation plus natural selection, clearly Darwinian.

     The fact that natural selection happens is undeniable.  The fact that it keeps a species healthy is undeniable.  The claim that it has some positive effect on biological evolution to the extent that it can explain all of the vast species that we have is a leap over the moon.  It is absurd and demonstrably false.  We simply don’t see it happening.  It should be happening all the time, but it doesn’t happen at all.  I don’t know why you think it is so obvious.  We have never seen one kind of animal turning into another kind of animal.  About the most you see is the horse kind producing donkies and horses.  That is microevolution, just as your example of E. Coli improving fitness and gaining minor abilities such as the ability to use citrate.  A lot of examples of micro-evolution do not add up to macro-evolution.  I don’t see why anyone thinks that line of argumentation is at all convincing.

     Everything you list above as examples of evolution through natural selection is purely 100% micro-evolution.  You never see horses produce a non-horse.  You never see monkies produce non-monkies.  It never happens.  But if Darwinian theory is true it ought to be happening all the time.  All you ever see is little changes like beak variations in birds or E. Coli improving fitness.  It isn’t even a tiny step toward supporting Darwinian theory.

     We do not have any vestigial organs.  Name 1 organ that is vestigial.  This line of argumentation was once populat, but in recent years it has faded.  When evolutionists bring this up in a debate they wind up looking really foolish because it can be easily refuted.

     You learned NOTHING from that whole discussion of fallacies in the last post.  Of course you imagine that there were transitional lifeforms, but we only have a couple for a few specific animals.  You simply don’t have what you imagine was there.  What you have is excuses and reasons why we can’t find evidence.  But who cares, you don’t HAVE the evidence.  You think it is because they didn’t fossilize.  I think it is because Darwinian theory is wrong.  I don’t have a problem.  YOU HAVE THE PROBLEM.  You only have a couple transitional fossils between whales and land animals.  You do not have 50,000 that you need.  These are not minor variations.  To get a whale, a land mammal has to develop a whole different set of lung systems.  They need a very complex diving system which enables them to float upright.  You need a large oil gland in the head.  There are 50,000 macro-level changes.  These are nothing like the differences between dogs.  Dogs have zero macro-level differences.  What you are doing is DARWIN-OF-THE-GAPS fallacious argumentation.  It is the same things church people do to explain everything.  If your theory can explain everything, you have explained nothing.

     First you say that we are missing a lot of fossils because many didn’t fossilize.  Yes, this is what scientists often say, of course they have no philosophy skills so they don’t see the obvious problems.  But secondly you say that “there aren’t many transitional fossils missing”.  Well, yes there are many missing.  For a whale to a land animal you have 1 or 2 of the 49,998 other transitions that you need.

     You keep saying “it is possible that”, therefore it is a fact that it did happen.  That is so ridiculous.  Go to any logic professor and tell him that if something is possible then it is actual.  That is nonsense.  How can anyone believe such nonsense?  What am I even supposed to tell you.  You think that if something is possible then it is a fact.  Unicorns and leprichans are possible, so they must exist.

     The fact that genes are commonly held does not even necessarily mean evolution of 2 or 3 above happened.  If you believe in a common designer, you would expect common DNA.  So it doesn’t help the case.  We humans being able to give birds teeth in the future will show that we intelligently designed that aspect of the bird.  It shows nothing.

119. Dean December 3rd, 2009 10:03 pm :

     Chad,
      
     Now I do not believe that you are as open to evoltion as you have claimed. But that is beside the point.

     First of all, whales have much more than 2 transitionary forms in the fossils. Here is a link showing 10 “links:” http://evolutionfun.com/whalelegs.htm

     For whale transitionary forms see http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part2b.html#ceta

     The fact that I said something like “somethink is possible, therefore it is a fact that it did happen” is something that you are taking different than I was intending. When it comes to fossils, we can assume beyond a reasonable doubt that if there has been only one partial skeleton of something found, that there were millions of other specimens that may never be unearthed that failed to fossilize or are still undiscovered.

     So it follows that, like living animals today, there are probably numerous similar and related forms. These were either yet undiscovered or remain unfossilized altogether. It is not the same as believing in leprechauns or unicorns at all. Those are folklore creatures. The difference is obvious.

     And the fact about genes being “commonly held…” Chickens posses a corrupted, turned off group of genes that are for bearing teeth in their beaks and nothing else. Now worms don’t have these genes, insects don’t, and frogs don’t either. But lizards do! So it follows that these genes were once used to express themselves as fully formed teeth in the beak. Just as I have many genes from both parents but only a few actually express themselves in my person. The rest are turned off and lie dormant within my chromosomes. Now after thousands or even millions of generation of my descendents replicating my genes, the ones that were not “turned on” for so many generations eventually accumulate so many mutations that they are damaged beyond expression. THat is unless some scientists go in and fill do some tweaking to them and turn them on again if there is enough left to work with in the sequence. SUch is the case with the future chick-o-raptor.

     So common genes between organisms is absolutely no indicator of a common designer like God. It is evidence of the genetic heritage of the species. In the case of the chickens’ teeth  and long bony tail genes, these are indicators of their evolutionary heritage, not evidence of God leaving useless genes there for good measure or just for the fun of it or something.

     If genetics were from a common intelligent designer like God, then one would expect there to be absolutely no “junk” DNA at all. THere would not be corrupted and turned off genes for traits that do not exist in any of the living specimens of a species. Furthermore, an infinitely creative mind would not have difficulty making each and every species, each and every organism so utterly unique that each would consist of entirely unique forms. What I mean is there would be no point to stick to a program called DNA, etc when endless variety could be used. Such variety would be unargueable evidence of intentional and intelligent design.

     If you say that natural selection can only improve a species to adapt to its changing environment, than are you also conceding that chickens were once still chickens but with teeth and long bony tails? That would be an interesting bird! It would look an aweful lot like a comsognathus, oviraptor or something similar more than an a modern day chicken.

     Is classification really that relative? So the chick-o-raptor of the past is a bird, but dinosaurs with feathers which lay eggs, build nests, have beaks some with and some without teeth, and have skeletons nearly indestinguishable in form to manhy birds, these dinos are not birds but the chick-o-raptor was a bird ONLY?

     You are an anti-avian dinosaurite. Thats not as bad as anti-semitic but its still mean. Shame on you.

     There is no evidence in the fossils of a chick-o-raptor. But there is in the modern chicken’s DNA. So is this DNA a false indicator just because we have no skeletal fossils? No. It is more complex than that. I am not making up excuses for a lack of fossils of various animals. I am slowly indicatiing that the evidence for evolution is found in a variety of sciences and corroboratively converge to strongly prove the case for evolution.

120. Chad December 3rd, 2009 11:50 pm :

     Dean,

     Why do you question that I am open to evolution.  Afterall, I am an outcast from church people because I say I am agnostic about whether Genesis is literal, and that evolution may be true.  I sort of go along with C.S. Lewis on this one.

     I have to go now.

121. Gabriel December 4th, 2009 11:26 am :

     Wow.  I’ve been following your (Chad and Dean’s) discussion, silently, but I just can’t take it.  first, I’ll say that I think you are both very intelligent and I don’t mean this as an insult or disrespect at all, but I’m truly amazed at how Dean you seem to disregard Chad’s arguments again and again and then add more of your own arguments to prove your beliefs again, you don’t seem to be open to learning or growing.

     This last chicken comment made me cringe.  How can you say that you believe there was a chicken lizard based on “dormant genes” which you consider to be “junk genes”, without ANY fossil evidence!?  That is NOT good science. 

     First of all, just because science doesn’t understand a gene or a function does not mean it is junk! (ie: your appendix, etc…)  Secondly, if we think that we understand the meaning of the gene, there should be clear evidence of it in the fossil records, without that evidence you could NEVER prove that there where chicken lizards or any other of the “darwinian” creatures that you are so ferociously defending.  You can not make an Assumption based on what you think you understand without scientific proof to prove something that we’ve never scientifically seen in nature - in this case fossil evidence of chickens with tails and teeth. 

     I question whether you are even reading Chad’s posts!
     His last one said:
     
     
     I will analyze the word “evolution” in the manner that David Berlinski does.  There are three basic meanings to it with regard to biological evolution.
     1)  All of life is in some way related in a grand way.
     2)  All of life originated from a common ancestor.
     3)  Specific claims about a mechanism or engine or way in which biological evolution took place, i.e. Darwinism, ID, or some type of spuratic appearance evolution. (In 3 experts attempt to offer a specific explanation for what happened and how it happened.)
     The first claim is believed by everyone.  The second one is somewhat controversial.  The third one is highly controversial.  You have been defending Darwinian evolution, at least this is what I take you to be defending.  You seem to think there were thousands of transitional steps, which corresponds with Darwinian theory.  Other theories do not predict that.  You talk about evolution through mutation plus natural selection, clearly Darwinian.
      
     You didn’t even try to talk about this… you just went on what seems to be a rant trying to prove your self in yet another way - through chicken lizards.  I’m sorry, you don’t have to have a philosophy digree to see the how illogical that is.
     I understand, you really have nothing to respond to it because all Chad is really saying is that you are clearly standing on a belief system (Darwinian) which is really VERY controversial and even faith based, which is why your arguments, as some creationists are not based on the reality of true science, but rather hopes and assumptions that you make based on your ‘religious’ views which you defend vehemently, because they are now a part of your identity.

     While I have been enjoying this discussion, it seems to be going nowhere as Chad is clearly listening to you and responding, (whether you like his responses or not), and you seem to be ignoring many of his responses.

     Dean, you said this:

     The fact that I said something like “somethink is possible, therefore it is a fact that it did happen” is something that you are taking different than I was intending. When it comes to fossils, we can assume beyond a reasonable doubt that if there has been only one partial skeleton of something found, that there were millions of other specimens that may never be unearthed that failed to fossilize or are still undiscovered.

     But you never addressed what Chad really was saying, which is -

     In order for scholars to solve a problem they need to recognize that something is a problem.  When I try to defend the idea of a Trinity from arguments of logical necessity, I have to first accept that there is a problem to be solved.  I have not seen you recognize that the limited amount of transitional fossils is evidence against the slow, successive, modification theory.  A healthy dose of confession will be cleansing to your soul.  It will help you to move on to solve the problem.
     
     
     the point is simple (Chad (and C.S. Lewis) already made it):

     C.S. Lewis- You must not decide until there is evidence sufficient enough to make a rational decision.

122. Dean December 5th, 2009 12:17 am :

     Gabe,

     I will respond to a few of your points. But as to the last C.S. Lewis quote, I will just say that I have been hearing out creationist teachings and arguments for 13 years. About a year ago I gave the other non creationsist sides their fair chance too. It was a very hard sell for me to begin to accept evolution as a fact. Very hard indeed, especially since I am solidly confident in the Bible as the word of God.

     And C.S. Lewis himself was an adherant of evolution and not creationism. So that quote would be used more for supporting the idea that evolution is in fact reality and scientific, not the other way around.

     How can you say that you believe there was a chicken lizard based on “dormant genes” which you consider to be “junk genes”, without ANY fossil evidence!?  That is NOT good science. 

     Since when are fossils the only science that is valid to prove something? Please do more research. Fossils don’t prove anything about most animals alive today. Fossils can’t prove much of anything about soft bodied (no skeletal structure) organisms. Does that prove that there were none a long time ago? No. There are no fossils of giant humans, talking snakes, vegetarian lions or trees that make you wise either.

     Many animals are not in the fossil record at all. Don’t make up new rules. The science of 25 years ago said that there were no feathers or avian type dinos. The fossil science of today is repleat with knowledge of numerlous examples of such creatures. Was science wrong back then? Obviously the science of that day was incomplete. But… ta-da! Scientists were theorizing that such fossils should and would be found and viola! They were right! Evolution made yet another successful prediction. hmmmm.

     I seem to remember numerous ICR creationists aritcles attempting to debunk such fossil finds and predictions. Now they have had to backpedal and accept the obvious truth that there were feathered dinos, beaked avian dinos, bird behavior observed in fossils of dinos (oviraptor nesting position caught in the act in a fossil), and “partial” feathers observed in fossils.

     And how do you say i don’t respond to most of Chad’s challenges? When it comes to ANY conspiracy theories I will not wast time here debating about it. It is all utterly bunk, garbage. Black helicoptors, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, concentration camps in the USA, etc. It is utter craziness and I won’t go there with anyone right now. And Chad said some  very rough things about Dr Brown. I answered that too. Dr Brown would not have been consulted in the DVD about the Protocols unless he had some serious credentials for that sort of thing. They did not call Chad FYI. Isn’t insulting Dr Brown a more grave offense than touting foolish things falsely called “science?”

     Chad said that whale evolution only had 1 or 2 transitional forms as evidences. I gave a link for about 10 of them in order. They are a spectacular showcase for evolution found in respective rock layers (yes there really are genuine rock layers that reflect time periods) in fossils. It could not have been imagined better than the fossils show. Check out the link and research it online and in books for yourself.

     Chad asked for proof of the Lenski esperiment and I quoted a bood by Jerry Coyne almost word for word discussing it. Need I quote the more in depth account of it by Richard Dawkins? It is all out there for anyone to read about. My info came from some of the world’s most respected scientists alive. Are they driveling idiots? Hardley.

     Chad asked for proof of increase of DNA information in evolution. i provided examples and explainations, some of it from online aquaintances of mine who are scientists themselves. I did not give some other relevant info because it would be too much to reprint here.

     I am not ignoring Chad. He claims to be an “independant thinker.” He accepts the big bang and claims to be open to evolution. But the asteroid or comet theory is easily debunked by real science and such can be easily discovered by simply googling these things or even looking on youtube. Simply getting some reputable books on science is even more invaluable to debunk such things.

     i can’t directly respond to a deluge of various things Chad submits or I would write a book in response each time. i can submit some links if feel I need to. But why waste time repeating what others have done the hard work on?

     And about the dino chicken… If there really is the DNA of teeth and long bony lizard tails in chickens, it is obvious that at one point this DNA was expressed in the ancestor of the chicken. Otherwise it serves no purpose today. This DNA has undergone useless duplications and mutations that were passed on and other corruptions over time. That is why it is all unexpressed and unexpressable without some serious tinkering. That is why it is called Junk DNA. It serves no use any longer, just like the corrupted junk DNA in humans to produce vitamine C that is no longer possible but the genetic history is there to see.

     You don’t need fossils to prove the history of the chicken. The DNA is hard evidence in itself. Do you realize that new kinds of animals are found every year from individual fossils? How can you demand that every single organism ever whould be in the currently knwon fossil record? I would say that the fossils of chicken ancestors (based on comparative anatomy, DNA similarities and the geologic record) are probably some of the fossils that we call dinosaurs, like probably certain avian ones. Maybe the Comsognathus, the oviraptor, the dinonychus, the microraptor, the Sinosauropteryx and others are some possible candidates. They are all very bird like, small feathered dinos.

123. Gabriel December 5th, 2009 11:32 am :

     Dean,

     Thanks for your response… look, I’m not offended by anything that you or Chad has said.

     This is what concerns me about what you are saying:

     Evolution is a theory - NOT a fact.  It is impossible to prove it - period.  I’m not disqualifying it, nor am I disqualifying all the evidence that is amassed about it.  But there is hardly enough scientific evidence to PROVE it… and Darwinian evolution is even MORE difficult to prove. 

     It seems to me that you are confused about what true scientific proof actually is.  It is not really really good guesses based on a lot of DNA, fossil and other evidence - that’s all good.  but the FACT is that just as we cannot prove whether God created the earth, there is plenty of overwhelming evidence that He did.  Yet, it remains unprovable…

     why? because the evidence is all modern, and as you said - 25 years ago, our science was QUITE flawed.  - you didn’t quite say that, but you can’t deny it either.  it was.  and today, our science has… grown, but it is still flawed.  We cannot go back 7000 years and prove what made something happen, we can make highly educated guesses, but ultimately, we don’t know if there was a flood, or an earthquake, volcano, etc… that disrupted the chain, or a comet that came down and touched something, changing their dna, or whatever… I’m not saying that any of those things happened, but I am saying that because of our LACK of knowledge, and the impossibility for us to find the past knowledge FOR sure, we are grasping in the darkness for answers that we assume we know, and there is GREAT danger in that… that is not true science to claim a fact that cannot be claimed… that is RELIGION. and it takes GREAT faith.

     You can site all the scientific journals, and friends that you have, and it will be valid, but the problem remains that much of the claims of evolution are unsubstantiated.

     the chicken lizard is just another example.  you claim that by discovering the dna for it proves it.  I can clearly say that - ok it is possible, but it could be 10,000 other things that science simply doesn’t understand yet.  So - yes it is ok to create a hypothisis about chickens with teeth and tails, but it is FAR from a scientific conclusion or fact.  just as the rest of darwinian evolution, and beyond - is full of facts and truths, but way far from a conclusion.

     When Chad talked about a “healthy dose of confession”, it was simply this: confession that you don’t know Darwinian Evolution to be true.  It may be, but it is NOT a Scientific Fact. 

     Even in High School - the title of the chapter on evolution is: the Theory of Evolution.

     Not the Religion of Evolution - (in which case people would be claiming that it was all fact!)

124. Dean December 8th, 2009 10:45 am :

     I just wanted to further clarify that I do not even really know what your take on Genesis is, Gabe. That last paragraph was to you but it was really just more general and not aimed at you specifically. I understand that ICR and other creationist ministries are motivated by a dogmatic interpretation of Genesis that insists that Genesis 1-11 are literal and historic with no room for other interpretations possible. I think that this view is religious, immature, and scientifically, archeologically and logically impossible.

125. Gabriel December 8th, 2009 10:42 pm :

     Thanks for the clarification. My apologies to Chad for mis-interpreting what you believe… I’m sure that my logic is less than sturdy enough to endure your scrutiny, I will say i am impressed with your logic (seriously), and I appreciate your arguments.

     My “take” on Genesis is pretty simple - I’m neither a creationist nor an evolutionist, I love science and I have no doubt that the evidence that is proven towards evolution is very clear. I have a problem - (maybe not the same as Chad) with Darwinian evolution, but again, I’m not claiming that it is wrong, just that I’m not convinced.

     I believe that God initiated creation, and could have done so any way he chose… that said, I believe that our science is extremely limited and potentially flawed, in the sense that it is all from our perspective and therefore is potentially erroneous simply because we are looking at it… that is actually one of the laws of science - as i’m sure you are aware.

     I simply think that there is SO much information that we just don’t have access to yet, that it is impossible to truly understand in fullness at this point evolution, creation, etc…

     Yes we should study it - otherwise we may never find that information.  It is in our dna to be curious - to desire knowledge. But i think the danger is having too much pride to admit that even with our best and most brilliant minds, we just don’t really know for sure.  One day, we will all know.  Until then, I want to learn as much as I can.  And try to stay humble when/if I do discover something big.

126. Dr Michael L Brown December 9th, 2009 1:15 am :

     Hey folks,

     A very interesting and important new book that is relevant to the subject at hand is John H. Walton’s The Lost World of Genesis One: Ancient Cosmology and the Origins Debate. The Amazon reviews give a good idea of Walton’s thesis.

127. Marcus French December 10th, 2009 12:08 pm :

     All,

     I just deleted the last 6 comments from various folks as they either contained personal attacks on people, or were in response to those attacks.  My suggestion at this point is that any further correspondance on the issues these posts referenced be done via personal email.  You can contact me at editor@voiceofrevolution.com, and Dr. Brown at info@askdrbrown.org

     Marcus French
     Editor: Voice of Revolution

128. Marcus French December 10th, 2009 7:23 pm :

     All,

     Upon further scrutiny of this comment thread, several more comments by various folks have been deleted as they either contained personal attacks on people, or were in response to those attacks.  Please review our commenting rules here.    If you have any issues or questions, you can contact me at editor@voiceofrevolution.com.

     Marcus French
     Editor: Voice of Revolution

129. Bill December 11th, 2009 1:13 am :

     Chad, I would like to challenge your argument that the first cause must be personal.
     The argument that the first cause must be personal, as I understand it, is as follows.
     (4)The first cause of the universe is impersonal.
     (5) The first cause never began to exist.
     (6) All impersonal causation is such that if the cause exists then so does the effect.
     (7) If the first cause of the universe never began to exist, then the universe never began to exist.
     (8) But the universe did begin to exist.
     (9) Therefore the first cause of the universe cannot be impersonal.
     (10) Every cause is either personal or impersonal.
     (11) The first cause of the universe is personal.
          First, before I move onto my second more important point, let me raise some doubts about premise 6. Is it true that all cases of impersonal causation are such that the cause is sufficient for the effect? What about cases of indeterministic or probabilistic causation? Suppose an evil genius constructs a random number generator. This generator does not merely use an algorithm to generate the appearance of randomness, but rather is constructed in a way that takes advantage of genuine quantum indeterminacy. He hooks up the generator to a gas chamber that drops the vile of cyanide if the number happens to be 3. The number unfortunately pops up three and the person in the chamber is murdered. Now clearly the evil genius is the cause of the event and we would hold him morally responsible, all things being equal, for his actions. The event that was his flipping the switch on the random number generator caused the death of an innocent person. But this cause could have easily obtained without the effect. He could have flipped the switch and the person remained alive. 
           But, more importantly, I’m concerned that your conclusion here that the first cause is  personal undermines the first premise of the cosmological argument, ‘that everything that begins to exist has a cause’. The trouble is that if the first cause of the universe was a personal cause then I think there must be some event that is either self caused or uncaused. Take the even which is [Gods deciding to bring about the universe at t1]. Didn’t it begin to exist? What caused it? You don’t want to say that it was caused by other sufficient conditions, like the reasons God had for creating, for then, not only does it appear that God is not free, but it appears that you loose the distinction that was so valuable to you above, the distinction between personal and impersonal causes. In other words, if we say that it was caused by some other sufficient condition, then personal causes turn out to reduce to impersonal ones. We would then be able to make an analogous argument against the first cause being a personal cause. Was the event uncaused? Ok, but that contradicts the first premise in the cosmological argument. Did it cause itself? If so, then perhaps the first premise is not refuted, but then it’s not clear why the first cause of the universe could not be the universe itself. It was either caused, uncaused, or self caused and all of these seem to lead to trouble for the argument.
               Perhaps you will want to look more closely at that first option. The event was caused. It was agent caused by God. This causation is an indeterministic cause. The agent is the cause of the event but is not the sufficient condition of the event. So we don’t have to worry about loosing the important distinction between personal and immaterial causes in the above argument and we don’t have to worry about God’s freedom. But now you have merely introduced some other event which is [Gods agent causing the event that is God’s deciding to create the universe at t1]. And now either the dilemma arises again or we are off on an infinite regress. Does God have to actualize an infinite number of events each time he acts? Do we? It seems implausable.
         We wanted to salvage our intuition that (A) things can’t be brought into existence by themselves and (B) can’t come into existence uncaused and so we have been brought to the point of considering (C) that there is something that has an actually infinite number of antecedent causes. It is brought about by a causal chain that never terminates. It seems to me that what we have here are three very bad options. What reason is there to prefer C over A and B? I’m not sure, but I can think of more than a few reasons to prefer A or B to C. Perhaps one thinks, like Craig, that actual infinities are impossible. Perhaps one thinks that, while A or B is at least as implausible as C, one gains ontological and/or explanatory parsimony by accepting A or B and that in so doing she gains a significant philosophical advantage over the theist. Perhaps she is also attracted by the prospect of all the philosophical burdens that she will not have to shoulder: the problem of evil, ex nihilo creation, theological fatalism, dualistic interactionism, divine freedom, omniscience, omnipotence, divine foreknowledge, etc, etc, etc.
              Its still a mystery to me how anything like our common sense notion of free will can ever obtain and even more so how any being very much like God could ever have it. But I’ve left all of that aside here. For the most part my point is only that, if we are to make any sense of the matter, I think we will have to say that decisions are just brute uncaused or self caused events, that every agent, when she makes a decision acts like a little unmoved mover and is the Ultimate source of that action. But we can’t do that without doing violence to our argument.

130. Chadhad December 13th, 2009 1:40 am :

     Bill,

     Haha, they keep blocking my statements.  What a great blog of free speech.  Let’s see if this one works.

131. Marcus French December 13th, 2009 12:14 pm :

     Chad,

     If you have issues with Dr. Brown, please just contact him directly via email.  The comment threads here are to discuss the issues at hand.  Just stick to the issues and you’ll be fine.

     Marcus French
     Editor: Voice of Revolution

132. Bill December 14th, 2009 1:38 am :

     Chad,

         You mentioned that you could demonstrate that God has a loving character. Could I see that argument?

     Bill

133. Chadwick December 14th, 2009 3:20 am :

     Bill,

     The demonstration of God having a loving character would be found in Frederick Copleston’s moral argument for the existence of God.  There must be some maximally good person in order to explain the existence of objective moral values.

     You mentioned that you had an argument against this.

134. Bill December 16th, 2009 8:39 pm :

     Could I see the premises of the argument that proceeds from the fact that there are objective moral values to the conclusion that a maximally good person exists?

135. Chad December 16th, 2009 8:46 pm :

     Bill,

     I’m in the middle of grading 240 papers including 120 essays.  Since we both know you are a much more skilled philosopher, can you do my philosophy homework for me?  You always do the premises real nice.  It would be a big help.  This is sort of like asking your wife to do the ironing for you.  Can you do my philosophical ironing for me please?

136. Marcus French December 16th, 2009 11:16 pm :

     Chad,

     Please abide by the commenting rules.

137. Chad December 16th, 2009 11:27 pm :

     Marcus,

     What did I do wrong?  Bill is my best friend.  He is a great philosopher.  I pointed out that he is good and that he should summarize the argument given by Frederick Copleston to Bertrand Russell so I can save some time because I am incredibly busy right now.  What part of that is a violation so I know not to do that in the future?

138. Marcus French December 18th, 2009 10:38 pm :

     Chad,

     Your post has been re-approved.  Your posts have also become un-blocked.

     Happy posting! I just ask that personal attacks be avoided as much as possible.

     – Marcus

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