Reasons to Believe (that Creationists are Crazy)

So the Origins Conference sponsored by the Skeptics Society was held last Saturday, and a good time was had by all. Or, at least, a good time was had by most. Or, maybe the right thing to say was that a good time was had much of the time by many of the people.

More specifically: the morning session, devoted to science, was fun. The evening entertainment, by Mr. Deity and his crew, was fantastic. In between, there was some debate/discussion on science vs. religion. Ken Miller is a biologist who believes strongly that science should be taught in science classrooms — he was an important witness in the Dover trial — and who happens also to be a Catholic. He gave an apologia for his belief that was frustrating and ultimately (if you ask me) wrong-headed, but at least qualified as reasonable academic discussion. He was followed by Nancey Murphy, a theologian who was much worse; she defended her belief in the efficacy of prayer by relating an anecdote in which she prayed to God to get a job, and the phone immediately rang with a job offer. (I am not, as Dave Barry says, making this up.) And Michael Shermer and Vic Stenger represented the atheist side, although both talks were also frustrating in their own ways.

But all of that just fades into the background when put into the same room as the sheer unadulterated looniness of the remaining speaker, Hugh Ross. Despite warnings, I didn’t really know anything about the guy before the conference began. The taxonomy of crackpots is not especially interesting to me; there are too many of them, and I’d rather engage with the best arguments for positions I disagree with than spend time mocking the worst arguments (although I’m not above a bit of mockery now and then).

So I was unprepared. For those of you fortunate enough to be blissfully unaware of Ross’s special brand of lunacy, feel free to stop reading now if you so choose. For the rest of you: man, this guy is nuts. And he’s not even the most nuts it’s possible to be — he’s an “old-earth” creationist, willing to accept that the universe is 14 billion years old and that the conventional scientific interpretation of the fossil record is generally right. Still: totally nuts.

Ross’ talk took two tacks. First, he explained to us how the Bible predicted that: (1) the universe started from an initial singularity; (2) it is now expanding; and (3) it is cooling down at it expands. The evidence for these remarkable claims? A long list of Bible verses! Well, not the verses themselves. Just the citations. So we couldn’t really tell what the verses themselves said. Except for poor Ken Miller, who was trying to salvage some last shred of dignity for his side of the debate, and had the perspicacity to look up one of the verses on his iPhone. (Praise be to technology!) I’m not sure which verse it was, but that’s okay, because they all say precisely the same thing. Here is Isaiah 45:12, in the New International Version:

It is I who made the earth
and created mankind upon it.
My own hands stretched out the heavens;
I marshaled their starry hosts.

What’s that? You don’t see the bold prediction of Hubble’s Law, practically ready for peer review? It’s right there, in the bit about “stretched out the heavens.” To the mind of a non-crazy person, this is a poetic way of expressing the fact that the dome of the sky reaches from one horizon to the other. To Hugh Ross, though, it’s a straightforward scientific prediction of the expansion of the universe.

Here is Ross in person, going through some of these same arguments:

(Yes, that video is embedded from “GodTube.com.”)

His second tack was to explain how our universe is finely-tuned for the existence of life. We’ve all heard this kind of claim, from real scientists as well as crackpots. But Ross and his clan take it to grotesque extremes, as detailed in the website for his Reasons to Believe ministry. Where, by the way, they don’t believe the LHC will destroy the world! Rather, it will “provide even new reasons to trust the validity of Scripture.” It would be nice if they would tell us what those reasons are ahead of time. Does Scripture predict low-energy supersymmetry? Large extra dimensions?

According to Reasons to Believe, the chance of life arising on a planet within the observable universe is only 1 in 10282 — or it would have been, if it weren’t for divine miracles. (Don’t tell them about there are 10500 vacua in string theory, it would ruin everything.) They get this number by writing down a long list of criteria that are purportedly necessary for the existence of life (“star’s space velocity relative to Local Standard of Rest”; “molybdenum quantity in crust”; “mass distribution of Oort Cloud objects”), then they assign probabilities to each, and cheerfully multiply them together. To the non-crackpot eye, most have little if any connection to the existence of life, and let’s not even mention that many of these are highly non-independent quantities. (You cannot calculate the fraction of “Sean Carroll”s in the world by multiplying the fraction of “Sean”s by the fraction of “Carroll’s. As good Irish names, they are strongly correlated.) It’s the worst kind of flim-flam, because it tries to cover the stench of nonsense by squirting liberal doses of scientific-smelling perfume. If someone didn’t know anything about the science, and already believed in an active God who made the universe just for us, they could come away convinced that modern science had vindicated all of their beliefs. And that’s not something any of us should sit still for.

There is a reason why all this is worth rehashing, as distasteful as it may be and as feeble as the arguments are. Namely: there is no reason whatsoever to invite such a person to speak at a conference that aspires to any degree of seriousness. You can invite religious speakers, and you can have a debate on the existence of God; all that is fine, so long as it is clearly labeled and not presented as science. But there’s never any reason to invite crackpots. The crackpot mindset has no legitimate interest in an open-minded discussion, held in good faith; their game is to take any set of facts or arguments and twist them to fit their pre-determined conclusions. It’s the opposite of the academic ideal. And it’s an insult to religious believers to have their point of view represented by crackpots.

Which, if you want to be excessively conspiratorial, might have been the point. Perhaps the conference organizers wanted to ridicule belief in God by having it defended by Hugh Ross, or perhaps they wanted to energize the skeptical base by exposing them to some of the horrors that are really out there. Still, it was inappropriate. If we non-believers are confident in our positions, we should engage with the most intelligent and open-minded exemplars of the other side. Shooting fish in a barrel is not a sport that holds anyone’s attention for very long.

166 Comments

166 thoughts on “Reasons to Believe (that Creationists are Crazy)”

  1. Lawrence B. Crowell

    Hugh Ross is engaging in various intellectual contortions to show some connection between science and scripture. It is curiously complementary to what might be called the the “classical” creationsists who invent all sort of quasi-science to argue why the scientific community has it all wrong. In either case these arguments tend to be highly convoluted.

    This is not to argue for atheism, but that theistic arguments do appear highly ineffective at understanding the world. People are still of course free to believe as they choose and science will never be able to provide any strong evidence that God does not exist. On the other hand science does consistently point to a universe which exists according to principles which are orthogonal to religious ideals. Science tells us certain things based on reason and evidence, while religion tells us other things based almost entirely on faith.

    Whether one elects to think according to reason and evidence or according to faith is a choice. Religious people will cite faith as the highest ideal, and of course the Christian Gospels are filled with instances of Jesus admonishing against those looking for “signs.” The faith of a mustard seed will move a mountain. Of course I am not sure what is meant by the faith equivalent to a mustard seed. Nobody so far has moved a mountain on this basis. A person who thinks according to reason will then of course say these things are simply ridiculous.

    To depart slightly, the origin of life is not understood. If we manage to find life on other planets that might support the hypothesis that life emerges naturally. Of course life on Mars might be a case of cross planetary contamination due to meteoroid impacts showering materal between the planets. Life on Europa and other Jovian or Saturnian moons is pretty conjectural at this point.

    I did some work years ago on how it is that other solar systems with G-class stars and Jovian planets would perturb the orbit of any putative earth-like planet. It does turn out that our solar system is pretty well tuned to support a stable orbit of a biologically active planet. Jovian planets much closer to the parent star than Jupiter might perturb the planet too much.

    Lawrence B. Crowell

  2. I’ve noticed that just about all of the mainstream media news stories I read about the two Mars Rovers concern the search for evidence of running, liquid water having existed on the Martian surface in some past epoch. We never hear about anything else. What interesting minerals did they find? What differences and similarities are there between Earth and Mars? There are all kinds of stories that they could release, but all they seem to be interested in is running water, and the stories always end with “If Mars once had liquid water, then maybe it had life, because life needs water.”

    I really don’t think there is much of an ulterior motive behind the types of press stories published about Mars. First, if you look at the overall science output from the Mars missions, I suspect you will find a ton of papers on mineralogy, weather systems, geology, etc., but none of that is particularly appealing to the masses being fed by the media. It is one of NASA stated goals for studying the other planets in the solar system that we will understand more about Earth’s past by examining the history of all the planets but, again, it’s not an especially sexy subject.

    So, yes, you will get a focus in the media on stories about whether there is life on Mars (or the precursors for life), and it is a stated long term goal of NASA. It is a genuinely interesting scientific issue, and there are just enough tantalizing signs to keep the results in doubt. But I really don’t see any evidence of an anti-religious undercurrent driving the mission, and I am pretty sure that the enthusiasm scientists like Steve Squyres has for their work is genuinely driven by his love for the subject and of his job, nothing more.

  3. You should know, those who truly read and study the Bible, and have a direct relationship with God, do not ascribe to the lunacy of the catholic church or the cults of Mormonism and Islam.

    The usual “it’s a relationship, not a religion” nonsense spouted by many Christian fundamentalists who believe they have the answers and no one else. The arrogance of that belief does you no favors.

    I claim to be a devout “Christian” and not a fake one such as Pelosi or Obama, but one who really does believe in God. I was wondering if there was a place here where all you experts might be willing to answer some questions I have for you?

    So now you can read minds now? Amazing. As for giving answers, there are plenty of venues on the web for that, but I suspect you’re not really interested in listening anyway. Your comment is dripping with arrogance and condescension (a fine example of a Christian temperament… not), and your objective is all too transparent. As with many in the religious right, your politics appears to be more important than your faith.

  4. Pingback: The Origins - Big Questions conference | Relax and Have Fun

  5. To: Michael T. on Oct 9th, 2008 at 11:59 am
    ( The second half of the conference on god and science was IMHO pointless and lead to the forgone conclusion of religious folks being nut cases. It suffered from what I will call an “Abrahamic bias” in that the discussion was focused in particular on Christian theology. It would have been most interesting to get other religious points of view from either the Dharmic and/or the Taoist traditions. They both have a very different take on matters and the discussion would have been far more productive since many of the points of contention simply don’t exist.)

    One of the four Dharmic religions is Buddhism, and there are 3 branches of Buddhism. I am from Theravada Buddhism. From this link, http://www.what-buddha-taught.net/Books2/Dhammananda_What_Buddhists_Believe.htm one can get an overview of the Theravada Buddhist beliefs and their beliefs about God idea. In brief “For more than 2,500 years, all over the world, Buddhists have practised and introduced Buddhism very peacefully without the necessity of sustaining the concept of a creator of God.” The key headings are –
    The Development of the God-idea ;
    The God-idea and Creation ; Human Weakness and the Concept of God

    The attitude by Dalai Lama, from another branch of Buddhism, is that when science shows any part of the Buddhist scriptures is wrong ( In Theravada Buddhism, its scriptures are about 11 times the length of the Bible), then that part of the Buddhist scripture should be revised. He has collaborated with Emory University in Atlanta to bring science to Tibetan Buddhist monasteries.
    Arising from an initial perception that Catholics view the Big Bang as a point of time in creation, as that God created the world at a point in time, I once wrote a Catholic scientist-priest and enquired if there were any big bangs before the current one? He wrote-

    “I now have a few minutes to answer your questions about cosmology and about multiple Big Bangs. We really do not know if there were other Big Bangs before the one that took place about 15 billion years ago. The reason we do not know, is because there is absolute no possibility of detecting any signals which would give us information about times earlier than the Big Bang from which our observable universe issued. All information about other Big Bangs earlier (if indeed there were any) was wiped out before our Big Bang, and information about possible Big Bangs elsewhere in reality — outside our universe — is simply not accessible.

    Most cosmologists and specialists in this area of science, however, do now feel that it is somewhat unlikely that our observable universe suffered Big Bangs before the one we know happened. This because the entropy density, or measure of disorder, in our observable universe would probably be higher than it actually is, if other Big Bangs had been part of our history; and even more because it now seems that our universe will expand for ever and not collapse. Evidence is emerging that it does not possess enough matter to slow the expansion rate and induce collapse… in fact the expansion may be gently accelerating! That means it is very hard to imagine how there could have been enough matter and energy have earlier Big Bangs and collapses, if there is not enough now. Finally, we really do not know how the Big Bang itself was initiated — it could not have been just a single explosion as we normally think of that, and it could not have occurred within a pre-existing space. It itself generated space and time — and in a sense was a manifold of many events taking place simultaneously.

    From this you can see that there is not likely to be an evidence any time soon for earlier Big Bangs. If there is, it would create a real revolution in cosmology. At present it is very difficult to imagine what evidence would demonstrate this — what to look for.

    From a theoretical point of view, it is easy to see that Big Bangs in completely different observable universes could occur. However, it is clear that if they did, there is no scientific possibility — as we presently understand that — of every detecting them, or detecting the universes in which they occurred.

    What I have given you here is the standard answer most in the cosmological community would give you. I hope it helps a little bit!”

    🙂

  6. I’ll leave you to your universe after this, I didn’t know you folks would be so easily offended by a simple question, but please realize the prior quote proves ALL of what we stand for, believe and confess. .

    QUOTE: “The usual “it’s a relationship, not a religion” nonsense spouted by many Christian fundamentalists who believe they have the answers and no one else. The arrogance of that belief does you no favors.”

    This is where all of you are highly confused. In fact just the opposite is true. We who DO have this relationship with God, have no answers at all but that which is given us by our Creator. I know, that always energizes you to say, “we can’t think for ourselves,” and “we blame God for all our problems,” and “hypocritically go about living our lives.” You see, if we tell you the truth, since you don’t have the sprit of God within you, you mock us, thus, I will give you that opportunity.
    We know nothing, we are pathetically helpless, we severely miss the mark God wants of us, and we couldn’t go one nano-second without the direct help of God, and for this help and comfort, we gratefully thank Him for. When the end arrives, the difference between us and atheists is simple and ugly. We will have a long time friend to take us out, while they will be looking for a hiding place on some distant planet or some remote cave.
    As for the “reading minds” innuendo, as I said, we only know what God told us, and with that, we know, its impossible Pelosi and Obama are Christians, as they have lived their every waking moment subverting God’s will and dragging others with them, just as the apostate hell bound gay church has done.
    And I really didn’t expect you to want to answer anything, because scientists can’t even agree with theories, let alone science. Nor do they know the difference between the two.
    Sir, I really hope one day you give the Lord a taste, you’ll find all the answers and comfort you ever wanted in Him.

  7. WTF does “supernatural” means?
    Please explain this before arguing pro or con.
    It seems Americans (mostly) are a loony bunch to pay attention to such balderdash when they (supposedly) are scientists.
    There is no need to “disprove” plain nonsense, atheism is not a “belief” anymore than OFF is a TV channel.

  8. …just as the apostate hell bound gay church has done.

    Yikes! Who let the Fred Phelps acolyte in?

    Have a nice life elsewhere, Charlie. No one here will miss you one bit.

  9. Simply stated – The biblical writiings were never written as a scientific writing. Instead the purpose and context of each writer was to provide the information and policy of a people who chose to “stand on” (the meaning of the word faith) the writer’s work.

    Jehovah of Israel who created Himself as Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah of the Jew, provided and caused a collection of writings stictly designed to inspired the readers/hearers to become citizens of His nation called “Israel”.

    As it always was from the first writer to the last, anyone, Jew or non-Jew can believe and wait on the final formation of Jehovah/Jesus’ Kingdom.

    To compare science to the Bible is futile, and incorrect useage of the writings of the God of Israel.

    Science is really just the work of mankind looking back into time, attempting to figure it out. There is nothing in the biblical writings which will ulimately absolutely prove there is a God and that He was The Creator.

    For me personally, I believe Jehovah created the universe and the world as an aged physical creation billions of years old within six of our solar days as we understand those days to be today. I stand on the pages of the biblical writers and thank scientist for attempting to explain the works of a non physical creator.

  10. “We who DO have this relationship with God, have no answers at all but that which is given us by our Creator.”

    Charlie just proved the cause for atheism. What do mean by saying that if you have a relationship with God you are deprived of answers? I’m not going to link to your Bible because I know you have a copy and are quit familiar with it, but didn’t Jesus say “And I say unto you, Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” Did you ever ask for answers? So why can’t you just ask Jesus for the answers? Why would he have said what he said if he didn’t mean to back it up?

    Dark ages dogma doesn’t help one bit. All that people like Hugh Ross are trying to do is show that the Bible doesn’t necessarily contradict scientific findings. I’m sure he knows that he is walking on the edge of the abyss, but his “faith” and “relationship” tell him that he is protected in some way, so he forges on.

    The atheists are right in wanting all religions and superstitions to be bulldozed right into the nearest landfill, but that does not eliminate the chance that there really might be an intelligent entity that created our reality as we perceive it. People like Charlie aren’t helping the cause for the search for truth.

    “There is no need to “disprove” plain nonsense, atheism is not a “belief” anymore than OFF is a TV channel.

    I’ll agree with the first half of your sentence because you said it yourself. Yes, I’ve heard it before. Atheism is not a ‘belief’ because in reality, it is a ‘lack of belief’. Yah,…. right. As the great Geddy Lee once said “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”

  11. God never said earth was the only planet He breathed life into? As a “real” believer in God, I happened to believe He may very well have many planes of life,

    I rather like C.S.Lewis’ idea: that this eath is the “lost sheep” which, out of all the worlds in existence, fell and whom the good shepherd went out of his way to save.

    Religion has a long history of adapting itself to any fact.

    (and is it realy true that you cannot use subscripts?)

  12. George Coyne S.J. :

    It is unfortunate that, at least in America, creationism has come to mean some fundamentalistic, literal, scientific interpretation of Genesis. Judaic-Christian faith is radically creationist, but in a totally different sense. It is rooted in a belief that everything depends upon God, or better, all is a gift from God. The universe is not God and it cannot exist independently of God. Neither pantheism nor naturalism is true.

    But if we confront what we know of origins scientifically with religious faith in God the Creator, in the senses described above, what results? I would claim that the detailed scientific understanding of origins has no bearing whatsoever on whether God exists or not. It has a great deal to do with my knowledge of God, should I happen to believe he exists. Let me explain.

    Take two rather extreme scientific views of origins: that of Stephen Gould of an episodic, totally contingent and, therefore, non-repeatable evolutionary process as contrasted to a convergent evolutionary process such as that of Christian de Duve, in which the interplay of chance, necessity and opportunity leads inevitably to life and intelligence. In either case, it is scientifically tenable to maintain an autonomy and self-sufficiency of the natural processes in a natural world, so that recourse to God to explain the origins of all that exists, is not required. It is not a question of chance in nature, excludes God; destiny in nature requires God. In neither case is God required.

    If, however, I believe in God then what nature tells me about God in one case is very different from what nature tells me about God in the other. Please note that I am not calling upon faith to adjudicate between contrasting scientific viewpoints. I do think that convergent evolution is more consistent with God’s revelation of himself in the Book of Scripture, so that, as Galileo was fond of stating, the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature speak of the same God.
    If we take the results of modern science seriously, it is difficult to believe that God is omnipotent and omniscient in the sense of the scholastic philosophers. Science tells us of a God who must be very different from God as seen by the medieval philosophers and theologians. Let us ask the hard question. Could, for instance, God after a billion years in a fourteen billion year old universe have predicted that human life would come to be? Let us suppose that God possessed the theory of everything, knew all the laws of physics, all the fundamental forces. Even then could God know with certainty that human life would come to be? If we truly accept the scientific view that, in addition to necessary processes and the immense opportunities offered by the universe, there are also chance processes, then it would appear that not even God could know the outcome with certainty. God cannot know what is not knowable. The theologian, of course, would have a different answer. God is transcendent, outside of space and time. All events are simultaneous to him. But I have wished to stress God’s immanence in a universe where the origins of life are a challenge to our knowledge.

    This stress on God’s immanence is not to place a limitation upon God. Far from it. It reveals a God who made a universe that has within it a certain dynamism and thus participates in the very creativity of God. Such a view of creation can be found in early Christian writings, especially in those of St. Augustine in his comments on Genesis. If they respect the results of modern science, religious believers must move away from the notion of a dictator God, a Newtonian God who made the universe as a watch that ticks along regularly. Perhaps God should be seen more as a parent or as one who speaks encouraging and sustaining words. Scripture is very rich in these thoughts. It presents, indeed anthropomorphically, a God who gets angry, who disciplines, a God who nurtures the universe. Theologians already possess the concept of God’s continuous creation. I think to explore modern science with this notion of continuous creation would be a very enriching experience for theologians and religious believers. God is working with the universe. The universe has a certain vitality of its own like a child does. It has the ability to respond to words of endearment and encouragement. You discipline a child but you try to preserve and enrich the individual character of the child and its own passion for life. A parent must allow the child to grow into adulthood, to come to make its own choices, to go on its own way in life. Words which give life are richer than mere commands or information. In such wise does God deal with the universe.
    These are very weak images, but how else do we talk about God. We can only come to know God by analogy. The universe as we know it today through science is one way to derive analogical knowledge of God. For those who believe modern science does say something to us about God. It provides a challenge, an enriching challenge, to traditional beliefs about God. God in his infinite freedom continuously creates a world which reflects that freedom at all levels of the evolutionary process to greater and greater complexity. God lets the world be what it will be in its continuous evolution. He does not intervene, but rather allows, participates, loves. Is such thinking adequate to preserve the special character attributed by religious thought to the emergence not only of life but also of spirit, while avoiding a crude creationism? Only a protracted dialogue will tell.”

    Extracted from a 17 page article by George Coyne S.J. – Destiny of Life and Religious Attitudes, 2005, in Life as We Know It, ed. J. Seckbach (Dordrecht: Springer Science 2005) with 61 paragraphs, 683 lines and 8,533 words, ….

  13. “There is no need to “disprove” plain nonsense, atheism is not a “belief” anymore than OFF is a TV channel.

    I’ll agree with the first half of your sentence because you said it yourself. Yes, I’ve heard it before. Atheism is not a ‘belief’ because in reality, it is a ‘lack of belief’. Yah,…. right. As the great Geddy Lee once said “If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”

    That sounds more like the wishy-washy agnostics.

    “Yah,…. right”? Yeah, right. Are you agnostic about other unprovable, unobserved, unneeded things? Need I mention a-fairyism and a-unicornism… how about inastrology? The reason you’ve fallen for the “atheism is a belief” tripe is because it’s a word religious people use to describe us. Some of us (not me) just took it and went with it. But there’s no reason whatsoever that an “atheist” should be calling herself/himself that. There is no atheism as there is no a-unicornism.

  14. Otis (from several posts)

    The rarity or unlikelihood of life in the universe should not be taken as if there’s a purpose to it (or something supernatural). Knowledge progresses, and doing that just stops progress (as with any god invocation). We don’t know anything, but we do know a lot, and tomorrow we’ll know more than today. We will be less likely to make the same mistakes. The history of science and the HUGE progress it brought always point at natural causes for things, and the more explanations we have, the more that way it follows.

    Darwin did away beautifully with the problem of the complexity of life on earth, and it is perfectly conceivable that something like that is responsible for life in the universe. The god explanations are just so mundane, so presumptuous, but most of all, so unnecessary and unhelpful.

  15. Holy cow, I don’t even know where to start with Charlie. Scientists don’t answer definitively the question of abiogenesis, because… it’s hard. And they look for something called “evidence”. Look it up, it’s a fun word. And to do that, there’s these things called experiments and stuff.

    I would like to know how you replicated god creating living things, by the way, if you’re so sure that happened.

  16. “Yah,…. right”? Yeah, right. Are you agnostic about other unprovable, unobserved, unneeded things? Need I mention a-fairyism and a-unicornism… how about inastrology?

    Wow,… I offended an atheist. One of the definitions of the word ‘religion’ is: ” A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion.
    Your so called “lack of belief” is itself a belief, and arguing that it is not seems just as ridiculous as one of Charlie’s statements. Outspoken atheists are actually practicing evangelism.

  17. How exactly is my “belief” different than your “belief” that there are no fairies? I wasn’t offended, I wasn’t trying to offend you back. It is a legitimate question, ridiculous as it seems.

  18. Darwin did away beautifully with the problem of the complexity of life on earth, and it is perfectly conceivable that something like that is responsible for life in the universe.

    There have been some new discoveries since the time of Darwin. How does Darwin do away with the problem that apes have 24 chromosome pairs and humans only have 23? According to Darwin, apes and humans have a common ancestor. Presumably, this ancestor had 24 chromosome pairs. Darwin couldn’t look at chromosomes, but we can, and we find that the ape’s 9th and 14th chromosome pairs, if joined together and reversed like a palindrome, look just like the human 12th chromosome.

    So here we have evidence of one species begatting another. Darwin says that genetic mutations are random, with detrimental ones dying off and beneficial mutations being passed along.

    In order for a new species to arise, this random mutation that causes 2 chromosome pairs to just randomly join together and reverse themselves, would have to occur twice, identically and simultaneously, in a single male, and a single female offspring, that are available to each other, in order to form a breeding pair. If the mutation only occurred once, that organism would be unable to breed. The mutation could only be reproduced if it happens twice.

    The only inescapable conclusion that Darwin could ever possibly lead us to, is the absolute fact, that for almost every separate species on Earth, there had to be an original, beginning, pair of breeders (excluding species that are capable of asexual reproduction). The idea that the diversity of life on Earth all came about through the guidance of random chance, I find a little too far fetched to believe.

  19. It should be pointed out that many Christians call atheism a religion because they believe that atheists worship themselves, or “man”, or science. They are obviously wrong — usually because what their own religious leaders teach about atheism is steeped in their own Biblical worldview (i.e. also dead wrong).

    Look at the definitions of “religion” from dictionary.com:

    1. a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, esp. when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.

    2. a specific fundamental set of beliefs and practices generally agreed upon by a number of persons or sects: the Christian religion; the Buddhist religion.

    3. the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices: a world council of religions.

    4. the life or state of a monk, nun, etc.: to enter religion.

    5. the practice of religious beliefs; ritual observance of faith.

    6. something one believes in and follows devotedly; a point or matter of ethics or conscience: to make a religion of fighting prejudice.

    Applying these definitions to atheism, you can only apply the first definition in the loosest possible way — the “esp.” qualification clarifies the widely accepted definition of the term, and atheism recognizes no supernatural agency, has no devotional or ritual observances, and is silent on moral codes.

    Atheism is not a religion.

  20. Mike, are you an “Intelligent Design” advocate/believer? If so, then it’s another whole conversation. About your question on the chromosomes, I’m not a biologist, but I’m almost certain that you’ve got it fundamentally wrong. 2 chromosome pairs did not randomly joined together and “reversed”. Given the difference in number of chromosomes with the other great apes, evolution predicted one pair of chromosomes fused by mutation, and that’s exactly what biologists found. Ken Miller, that filthy, filthy catholic, gave a great talk on this subject after the Dover trial. Excerpt here.

    But the thing is that even if there were such a problem, the god “answer” does not answer anything. We have learned in these past few hundred years, that if you look deep enough, you’ll find an explanation, and every time there’s a thoroughly verified explanation, guess what, it’s perfectly natural. The god hypothesis is utterly useless for knowledge. Even if not for knowledge’s sake, it’s not useful for practical reasons either. It just stops you from looking further. What if scientists just threw their hands at the chromosome problem and said “god did it”?

  21. andyo: “About your question on the chromosomes, I’m not a biologist, but I’m almost certain that you’ve got it fundamentally wrong.”

    I wasn’t asking a question, I was pointing out the obvious,… which you missed. If the two ape chromosome pairs, at any point in the process of reproduction or of living, joined together to become a single chromosme pair, it would have had to have happened twice, at the same time, in two separate oraganisms, one male and one female, in order for the new chromosome to be reproduced.

    Darwin’s theory is slow and gradual change over time. Chromosomes prove that the change has to happen in one instance of reproduction. This directly contradicts Darwin.

    So how do these genetic changes occur. They call it a ‘genetic code’ or ‘genetic information’ or ‘genetic instructions.’ All life has the same 4 molecules arrainged in certain particular orders, just like a base 4 number system. The genetic code is software.

    Don’t try to stick any labels on me, like your “Intelligent Design” advocate/believer crack. Let’s just say that I’m not an atheist. Where do you get ‘software’ without a “software engineer?” And if you have evidence of changes being made to the files, why would you automatically rule out any possibility of an unseen programer being responsible for the changes? Wouldn’t you need some kind of ‘evidence’ to make that ruling?

  22. OK, so you don’t wanna call yourself an advocate of ID, but what you say is the same they say. You don’t accept evolution as it is accepted even by postitively-theist Ken Miller (and the vast majority of biologists and scientists in general all over the world), which is it doesn’t need any intervention of a designer at all. Do you believe in Intelligent Design or not? If not, what’s your “alternative” to evolution?

    But in any case, two pairs weren’t fused. Only one pair fused. There’s no super-coincidence. No one says two pairs fused. I didn’t miss what you said, I just thought you probably meant something else, so I didn’t mention it. Only one pair fused. I think what you’re getting at is that two chromosomes (one pair) fused, and that is too much of a coincidence to you.

    Human reproductive cells only have 23 chromosomes, to be joined by the other 23 when fertilization is achieved. This is different from the other cells, which have 23 pairs (46 total). So it could only take that one fusion, and once that mutated fused chromosome spread enough in the population, until it met another fused chromosome, and there you have your pair. A biologist could explain this to you with further detail, I’m sure.

    But you’re still missing the point, that is even if such problems arise, the god explanation doesn’t solve anything, it just stops progress. We have learned that. Knowledge is progressive.

  23. “…..Where do you get ’software’ without a “software engineer?” And if you have evidence of changes being made to the files, why would you automatically rule out any possibility of an unseen programer being responsible for the changes? Wouldn’t you need some kind of ‘evidence’ to make that ruling?”

    George Coyne S.J. :

    “…. 3. Origins of Intelligent Life

    How did we humans come to be in this evolving universe? It is quite clear that we do not know everything about this process. But it would be scientifically absurd to deny that the human brain is a result of a process of chemical complexification in an evolving universe. After the universe became rich in certain basic chemicals, those chemicals got together in successive steps to make ever more complex molecules.

    Finally in some extraordinary chemical process the human brain came to be, the most complicated machine that we know. I should make it clear that, when I speak about the human brain as a machine, I am not excluding the spiritual dimension of the human being. I am simply prescinding from it and talking about the human brain as a biological, chemical mechanism, evolving out of the universe.

    Did this happen by chance or by necessity in this evolving universe? Was it destined to happen? The first thing to be said is that the problem is not formulated correctly. It is not just a question of chance or necessity because, first of all, it is both. Furthermore, there is a third element here that is very important. It is what I call “opportunity.” What this means is that the universe is so prolific in offering the opportunity for the success of both chance and necessary processes that such a character of the universe must be included in the discussion. The universe is 13.7 billion years old, it contains about 100 billion galaxies each of which contains 100 billion stars of an immense variety.
    We might illustrate what opportunity means in the following way. Einstein said that God does not play at dice. He was referring specifically to quantum mechanics, but it can be applied in general to his view of the universe. For him God made a universe to work according to established laws. This is referred to as a Newtonian Universe. It is like a clock that just keeps ticking away once you supply it energy. Today we might be permitted to challenge this point of view. We could claim that God does play at dice because he is certain to win. The point being made is that God made a universe that is so prolific with the possibilities for these processes to have success that we have to take the nature of the universe into consideration when we talk about how we came to be.

    For 13.7 billion years the universe has been playing at the lottery. What do I mean by the lottery? When we speak about chance we mean that it is very unlikely that a certain event would happen. The “very unlikely” can be calculated in mathematical terms. Such a calculation takes into account how big the universe is, how many stars there are, how many stars would have developed planets, etc. In other words, it is not just guesswork. There is a foundation in fact for making each successive calculation.

    A good example of a chance event would be two very simple molecules wandering about in the universe. They happen to meet one another and, when they do, they would love to make a more complex molecule because that is the nature of these molecules. But the temperature and pressure conditions are such that the chemical bonding to make a more complex molecule cannot happen. So they wander off, but they or identical molecules meet billions and billions of times, trillions if you wish, in this universe, and finally they meet and the temperature and pressure conditions are correct. This could happen more easily around certain types of stars than other types of stars, so we can throw in all kinds of other factors.

    The point is that from a strictly mathematical analysis of this, called the mathematics of nonlinear dynamics, one can say that as this process goes on and more complex molecules develop, there is more and more direction to this process. As the complexity increases, the future complexity becomes more and more predetermined. In such wise did the human brain come to be and it is still evolving. Can we call this process “destiny?”.

    Let us pause for a moment to review the degree of certainty which we can place in the above scenario. We certainly do not have the scientific knowledge to say how each living creature came to be in detail. We do not know precisely how each more complex chemical system came to contribute to the process of self organization which brought about the diversity of life forms as we know them today. Most importantly, we do not know with scientific accuracy the sufficient elements in nature to have brought about the unbroken genealogical continuity in evolution that we propose actually happened. There are, in brief, epistemological gaps which prevent natural science from saying that a detailed theory of biotic evolution has been proven. What we have presented is the most adequate account conceivable at this time considering the available empirical data. And that empirical data, with respect to biotic evolution, comes from various independent scientific enterprises, including molecular biology, paleontology and comparative anatomy.

    How do we know we are on the path to the truth in the scenario of life’s origins just described? In other words how do we judge what is the best way to explain life’s origins. In the natural sciences there are a number of criterion whereby an explanation is judged to be best. I would list the principal criteria as the following: (1) verifiability, i.e., there is, at least in principle, a way of judging whether the explanation fits the data; (2) predictability, i.e., from data on past or present events it is possible to predict future events and then observe to see that the future events actually occur; (3) simplicity or economy, i.e., the least assumptions are made to get the greatest explanatory power; (4) beauty, i.e., the explanation has an aesthetic quality about it. Although, especially for the natural sciences, this may appear to be a very subjective criterion, almost all great scientific discoveries have benefited from its application. (5) unifying explanatory power; i.e. not only are the observations at hand explained but the attempt to understand is also in harmony with all else that we know, even with that which we know outside of the natural sciences.

    It is this last criterion which I would like to discuss, since it appears to me to extend the epistemological nature of the natural sciences towards the realm of other disciplines, such as religious thought. Put in very simple terms this criterion is nothing else than a call for the unification of our knowledge. One could hardly be opposed to that. The problem arises with the application of this criterion. When is the unification not truly unifying but rather an adulteration of knowledge obtained by one discipline with the presuppositions inherent in another discipline. History is full of examples of such adulterations. It is for this reason that scientists have always hesitated to make use of this criterion. And yet, if applied cautiously, it appears to me to be a most creative one for the advancement of our knowledge.

    The supposition is that there is a universal basis for our understanding and, since that basis cannot be self-contradictory, the understanding we have from one discipline should complement that which we have from all other disciplines. One is most faithful to one’s own discipline, be it the natural sciences, the social sciences, philosophy, literature, religious thought etc., if one accepts this universal basis. This means in practice that, while remaining faithful to the strict truth criteria of one’s own discipline, we are open to accept the truth value of the conclusions of other disciplines. And this acceptance must not only be passive, in the sense that we do not deny those conclusions, but also active, in the sense that we integrate those conclusions into the conclusions derived from one’s own proper discipline. This, of course, does not mean that there will be no conflict, even contradictions, between conclusions reached by various disciplines. But if one truly accepts the universal basis I have spoken of above, then those conflicts and contradictions must be seen as temporary and apparent. They themselves can serve as a spur to further knowledge, since the attempt to resolve the differences will undoubtedly bring us to a richer unified understanding.

    The above discussion particularly applies when we are addressing fundamental and ultimate questions such as life’s origins and meaning. Does the existence of intelligent beings in the Universe have a significance for understanding the Universe as a whole? Does our knowledge of God depend on our understanding of the Universe? In fact, a very strong piece of evidence that there is a universal basis for understanding is the very clear drive of the human being for meaning. This is seen clearly from the very dawn of human history where, with even a very primitive collection of data, our ancestors sought for the meaning of life in the physical universe, as well as in the events of their personal lives and those of society in general.

    In summary, we note that the scientific and the religious approaches to the search for the meaning of life have for the most part been pursued in isolation from one another. In the past when they have met it has been mostly as antagonists. In recent times, however, there has been an increasing awareness of the need for dialogue in the quest for life’s meaning. The common criteria of what is true in this search would be that the explanation be simple, aesthetically appealing, verifiable and that it have a unifying explanatory power. In practice these requirements for a good theory will not always agree among themselves and differing emphasis will be given to one or other criteria in the different disciplines.

    Scientists are usually well aware of the limitations of their knowledge. Religious thinking also has its limitations. The excessively dogmatic approach which sometimes characterizes theology would do well to recognize this. I am not here referring to the faith dimension in religion. In fact, for the purposes of this discussion I am excluding that dimension which is transcendental and, if you will, a-rational (goes beyond reason) and I limit myself to a discussion of theology as a rational science. Theology must deal with the linguistic interpretation of written documents; it must interpret oral traditions; it must reconstruct history. It must establish a rational basis for accepting witnesses to historical events and it must determine when authority alone can be the source of certain truths. Above all there are the serious epistemological problems that arise from the relationship of theology to faith. Although theology is a science, a rational way of knowing in its own right, it is said to proceed from faith and to lead to an understanding of the faith (fides quaerens intellectum). This makes it subject to all of the false illusions that can arise from purely subjective behavior, and it must always struggle to separate those illusions from what is objectively true.

    If we were to pursue the dialogue which I have outlined in this paper, we might soon come to see that a teleology and design in the universe, derived from a religious point of view, are not incompatible with cosmological models, derived from the scientific point of view. Or we would come to realize that inevitable tendency in the physical universe towards more complex structures is not incompatible with, for instance, human free will. In fact, as a deeper synthesis of the understanding of the whole unfolded through dialogue among the various disciplines it is very likely that the questions peculiar to each discipline would receive a more satisfactory answer. The important thing to realize is that in both the scientific and the religious approaches to understanding we are searching for the truth, which we do not yet possess. But it is clear that evolution is an intrinsic and proper characteristic of the universe. Neither the universe as a whole nor any of its ingredients can be understood except in terms of evolution. And evolution is a daily happening. We, for instance, are constantly exchanging atoms with the total reservoir of atoms in the universe. Each year 98% of the atoms in our bodies are renewed. Each time we breath we take in billions and billions of atoms recycled by the rest of breathing organisms during the past few weeks. Nothing in my genes was present a year ago. It is all new, regenerated from the available energy and matter in the universe. My skin is renewed each month and my liver each six weeks. In brief, human beings are among the most recycled beings in the universe.”

    Extracted from a 17 page article by George Coyne S.J. – Destiny of Life and Religious Attitudes, 2005, in Life as We Know It, ed. J. Seckbach (Dordrecht: Springer Science 2005) with 61 paragraphs, 683 lines and 8,533 words, ….

  24. Actually, there may already be scientific theories that explain many a religious claim. The holographic principle might explain life.

    The holographic principle asserts that the entropy inside a region of space is limited to the entropy calculated for the surface of a black hole whose event horizon would encompass that region. And there are some who calculate the entropy of the cosmological horizon, the distance at which space is expanding faster than the speed of light.

    If the entropy in the observable universe is limited by the cosmological event horizon surrounding it, then if space begins to accelerate in its expansion, then the cosmological event horizon will begin to shrink – since the distance at which space is receding at the speed of light will get closer. A shrinking cosmological event horizon means that the entropy of the event horizon will decrease and the entropy of the space within must also decrease. The complexity of life may have risen as a result the accelerated expansion of space. It is curious to note that life began to develop at about the same time that the expansion began to accelerate.

    It might be possible that this limit on entropy might also be responsible for claims such as the resurrection (of Christ), for the mass resurrection predicted to come, and for the coming of the New Heaven and Earth. For the resurrection of Christ came after much suffering. The mass resurrection comes at a time of great climatic destruction and judgment. And the New Heaven and Earth come as the old heaven and earth disappear in flames, etc. If entropy is limited, then complete instant destruction is not possible and may force construction of new structures.

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