Undeniable–Douglas Axe
UNDENIABLE– How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed
Douglas Axe, 299 pages by HarperOne, 2016. (Hardcover $25.99, less on Amazon.com)
A new book reviewed by Jack Hoehn.
The slipcover to the book is a close-up photograph of
the fantastically colored, intricately designed, mosaic-like art of a chameleon’s tail. Every little scale in turquoise, green, orange, yellow and blue is a perfect spiral of fantastic artistic design. But it is an animal, not an art gallery, and it has a ten-inch-long tongue with a unique mechanism for sticking to the hapless fly foolish enough to mistake art for predator.
Douglas D. Axe, Ph. D.
Molecular biologist with his Ph.D. from Caltech and published postdoctoral research from the University of Cambridge, Douglas D. Axe has written a book called Undeniable to support the untutored impression that the chameleon, as it appears at first, is indeed a work of art. Or artistry. Or design.
The fact that biology remains firmly in the grip of a materialistic dogma that reduces the chameleon to a series of unplanned coincidences magically transformed into this beautiful piece of living art with a fantastic tongue is the topic of his book. And the devotion of scientists to the unproven ability of some form of natural selection to do what we now clearly know it cannot do, is his target.
Enzymes Don’t Evolve
His science is clear enough. He has proved in published peer-reviewed scientific research that mutations or changes in functional enzymes by accidental processes or laboratory design almost never created new functional proteins capable of evolving new functions for cells or the creatures made of cells.
But the fact that his science shows Darwinian evolution by natural selection impossible has not removed the materialistic attempts to explain life. Darwinians still hold with fundamentalist fervor to the hope that the designed and purposeful world we live in is one big series of unplanned accidents. Axe’s published work has shown that given the age of the universe and the number of changes needed to change even one simple enzyme into a better one, much less the myriad of changes needed for Darwinian suppositions to change a sponge into a dolphin, evolution of the chameleon by natural selection is not a realistic possibility.
Darwinian Taliban
Yet any scientific publishing that slips and mentions “design” or a “creator” is immediately censored by the Darwinian Taliban. Mentioning God or an Intelligent Designer as a possible explanation of the obvious design in every living cell of every living creature is damned as religion and out of place in a scientific journal. Instead of answering the science of ID with better science, the whole project is dismissed instead of reasoned with. Words such as “myth,” an “attack on biology,” an “intellectual virus,” an “insidious movement,” something that is “a retreat to the dark ages,” “terrifying” and “like Frankenstein’s monster” are used in otherwise scholarly pages discussing the dreaded Intelligent Design movement.
This brings to mind the bombast of a Trump rather than the supposed cool and thoughtful search for truth scientists like to drape themselves with!
Dr. Axe suggests that since technical arguments have not convinced many scientists to re-evaluate their dedication to materialism that he wants to offer “nontechnical arguments” to support the validity of the design inference most humans have when first looking at the world we live in.
But I have to admit that even as a physician I bogged down in some of his “common science” explanations. Some were as easy as “alphabet soup” while others required perhaps a little more of a mindset of a Caltech/Cambridge molecular biologist to fully comprehend. But the conclusions of his arguments are very clear and very easy to understand. And many people in the Amazon.com reviews praise the book for its understandability.
Clear Conclusions
“Darwin’s idea that life wanders from one variation to the next, never committing, always yielding to the blind force of natural selection…” is plainly incompatible with the facts of the exquisitely designed and optimized life forms we find all around us.
Natural “selection can only home in on the fitness signal from an invention after that invention already exists; it can’t actually invent.” Or as was first said over 100 years ago, “Natural Selection describes the survival of the fittest but not the arrival of the fittest.”
“Tasks that we could need knowledge to accomplish can be accomplished only by someone who has that knowledge.” Biology shows more and more that living things are a complex, not simple, combination of parts – each necessary to support the whole. He calls this “Functional Coherence,” which he explains as the necessary coordination of different parts, each essential to get a complex job in nature done.
“Functional coherence makes accidental invention [i.e., Darwinism] fantastically improbable…” “simply not an outcome our universe can deliver.”
Naming the Designer
This book is not a theology; it is a support for the science that points to design. So while Axe acknowledges “birth defects, cancer, infectious diseases, parasites, suffering…” as realities, he explains, “I’m not denying that the present state of life is troubling in many respects. Rather, I’m affirming that something spectacularly good is clearly discernible even through the haze of trouble.” And that spectacular good is that the nearly perfect “physical forms of life are expressions of something deeper, something immovable, something perfect.” And he does not hesitate to call it God.
He is not satisfied with an impersonal “nature” or unseen “laws” behind the design in life, because of the fact that humans are persons. We have an inner consciousness where we are in our bodies but observing them. “…the overwhelming richness displayed to us by the outside world is complemented by an equally rich inner experience…” “We are persons, dwellers in the richest of all worlds, and this rich world of personhood we each inhabit had to come from a Source…” “Our own thinking can’t possibly be reduced to any physical process because it collapses the moment we suppose otherwise.”
That is, if thought is merely chemistry in the brain, and completely material, then you have no reason to trust that thought as any form of “true.” Materialism destroys the validity of the thoughts it claims to explain! He says children who enter the world universally know things were made for a purpose. He quotes evidence that “by elementary-school age, children start to invoke an ultimate God-like designer to explain the complexity of the world around them—even children brought up as atheists.”
“Of the millions of species participating in this remarkable adventure called life, only ours has been given the ability to grasp this most crucial truth. We can and we do, from an early age.” “The source from which everything else came is not a what but a who.”
A New Open Biology?
He ends with a vision of a new biology where research scientists are free to openly study life “as something clearly and cleverly designed.” “That the deepest questions in biology have not yet been answered means they are still asking to be answered. Anyone who cares to examine the facts carefully will see that the old answers were wrong… Having learned much since Darwin’s day, we have every reason for optimism this time. Speaking as a scientist, I can’t think of a more attractive message to convey to young people of technical ability.”
A New Open Creationism?
How young Adventists “of technical ability” will be able to freely and openly study this clearly and cleverly designed creation, free of not only the dogma of fundamentalist materialism but also free of the fundamentalist quasi-doctrine of young-earth creationism remains to be seen.
Adventist theologians and scientists who have embraced some version of Darwinian Evolution as the “scientifically proven option” need to more critically review the evidence that suggests the insufficiency of random mutations and natural selection as the main engine for diversity.
Championing doctrinaire scientific naturalism as the only way to do “true science” may be an unnecessary, artificial, and restrictive position for a Christian scientist to maintain. Scientists can study what God did and how, just as rigorously as the atheist, without blinding themselves to the many evidences of purpose and design their science reveals.
Science may overwhelm our insufficient 19th-century short-chronology of creation, but free and open science strongly supports our essential doctrine of a free and open Creator and the weekly Sabbath that memorializes his genius and his intelligently designed plans for each of us, chameleons and all.
(Your constructive comments after you read this book are welcome.
But please refrain from criticizing the book by its cover
or my brief review until you’ve invested in reading the book yourself.
It is available in Kindle as well as for purchase on line.)
I just started reading Axe’s new book. You are right Jack that this type of professional literature is pure gold apologetically for especially college and university age seekers and those Christians confused by the materialist claims of Today’s scientism.
Jack: We have an inner consciousness where we are in our bodies but observing them. “…the overwhelming richness displayed to us by the outside world is complemented by an equally rich inner experience…” “We are persons, dwellers in the richest of all worlds, and this rich world of personhood we each inhabit had to come from a Source…” “Our own thinking can’t possibly be reduced to any physical process because it collapses the moment we suppose otherwise.”
Jack, if this doesn’t bring a charge of ‘spiritualism’ against you, its because some traditionalists jsut can’t see it. This quotation is how the immaterialists speak, in direct contradiction of the anti-immaterialist position adopted by James and Ellen from the very beginning. But Axe, and you, are absolutely correct in taking this view of human nature. Without it, there is no such thing as free will. The logic of materialism is one of determinism, something which materialists also deny. They jsut don’t get it.
Thank you for bringing this very interesting work to our attention.
That chamelion’s tail,speaks volumes about intelligent design and not pure randomness.
Likewise the stunning plumage of many birds, and the mottled markings of koi fish ( although the latter have been bred over centuries, but again with savvy Japanese selectors).
As a classical music lover, I am in awe I hearing a virtuoso violinist playing a fiendishly frenetic concerto at breakneck speed, and all from memory.
Or a pianist playing a Rachmaninov or Gershwin selection.
Only some incredible planner could have designed a brain that allowed such
hand/thought connection, plus all performed from memory!
But that pales into insignificance when we consider the
COMPOSERS whose brains intuitively wrote the rythms and tonalities, for multiple instruments to be played simultaneously, without actually hearing the music, except synthesized from all the component instruments, in their brains.
No chance mutations no matter over how many millions of years, could have produced such complexity.
Jack, have you considered the flip side of the design argument, namely, all the obvious design to rip, tear, kill and eat others? The chameleon is a case in point. Such things we see as beautiful are, more often than not, tools at the disposal of the creature that possesses them in order to both not become the prey of another, and to conceal themselves while stalking their quarry. At the other end of that beautiful Fibonacci-like tail is an extraordinarily adapted muscle known as a tongue, wonderfully capable of reeling in a whole host of unsuspecting critters. Chameleon: a beautiful killing machine, a reptilian brain at its finest.
Did God design his animals for such things, or is this the marvellous work of a different designer? Is the Demiurge theory useful here?
Serge,
You raise a provocative and pertinent point which has long troubled me:
The PREDATORY life cycle,in nature.
Even in my urban garden, the neighbor’s cat pounces on the bird, who is busily consuming the earthworm, while the spider constructs his lethal spider web in my rose bush!
As millions of dinosaur skeletons/fossils comtinue to be discovered, scientists aver that these predators were so monumental/massive/lethal, they could not have co-existed with humankind — man would have long since become extinct.
Some dinosaurs had club-like projections on their tails– one lash would eviscerats any nearby human/animal!
The crocodile has a selective sensory organ unique to its species— a pressure sensor in its mouth. Lying with its snout submerged in the water, it can detect a small animal/child placing its foot/hoof in the water fifty yards upstream–even when no ripple is detectable by the human eye. Such a sophisticated sensor, that no evolutionary mechanism could have been responsible. An intelligent designer was required.
Such a huge percentage of both sea creatures, birds, reptiles and mammals, are hunters/predators, each requiring sophisticated neuronal pathways to refine their killer instincts and methods of capturing their prey.
Those humans eaten/destroyed by wild beasts/sharks will confront God in heaven: What were you thinking God, when you unleashed such destructive and cruel forces on the planet???
It’s amazing, Robin, the creative energies you expend on articulating ways to blame God for so many things. I’m glad I’m not smart, educated, sophisticated enough to come up with so many reasons to hate the One who sacrificed Himself on Calvary for me.
Jews suffering in the concentration camps of the Nazis still found reasons to trust God; you, apparently not. It would be interesting to know the source of your anger. I doubt it’s your concern for the sufferings/ injustices of life in general. Is it really so terrible that spiders spin webs or birds eat worms?
And yet, Hansen, decades earlier, atheistic communist Jewish Bolsheviks sent Russian Christians by the million to the Gulags. Did all Jews in the Nazi camps find cause to hope in God? Do the exceptions prove all rules, for you? Does it matter if a beautiful bird lives by the death of another creature? It might, if you are the worm. Yes, indeed, the early worm gets the bird. The point here being that every ‘life’ cycle is also a well-designed ‘death cycle.’ Its the anomolous that should take more of our attention, not the superficial, whose main purpose is to enable the avoidance of facing the deeper questions. ‘There’s a crack, a crack in everything…… that’s how the light gets in.’
Would you believe that only today have I discovered Leonard Cohen? A Jewish human rights lawyer being interviewed on the radio jsut now has nominated Cohen’s ‘Anthem’ as his all-time greatest song. Having now listened a few times, I see why.
The birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again
I heard them say
Don’t dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.
Ah the wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
She will be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again
the dove is never free.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.
That’s how the light gets in.
Mr Hansen,
What is really amazing is that when any writer/blogger makes a comment with which you disagree, you attack the messenger in a most disagreeable way.
If you truly do not like the sentiments/views expressed, how about offering a cogent counter argument, a plausible protest, a rational rebuttal, a realistic refutation?
If all you can be is an attack dog, you lose all credibility.
I did make some extremely affirmative positive statements about God, in my first post on this topic,
giving God the creator, all credit for fantastic musicians, and more importantly oir genius composers.
Robin,
The cross of Christ is a “cogent counter argument, a plausible protest, a rational rebuttal, a realistic refutation” to every negative you have said about God, whether as Saviour, Redeemer, Creator, Intercessor, or coming King.
Hansen,
No one is denying for a moment Christ’s death on the cross for us.
But once again you duck the issue.
Christ’s death on the cross has absolutely NOTHING to do with the legitimate question as to why God created the loathsome crocodiles, the great white sharks,
the complex though tiny malarial parasite, with life cycles in both humans and mosquitoes, too complex to have “evolved” and needing an “intelligent designer”
Yes Christ’s sacrifice for us shows love, but many other obvious issues do not show love.
Please rent the recent movie JURASSIC WORLD or watch in netflicks for stunning
realistic computer generated pictures of “live” dinosaurs.
I am an urban guy, but did grow up in Africa. Now when I take my London born grandchildren to the London Zoo, we do see ferocious beasts, into whose cages, I would not want my little grandchildren to fall.
We also watch with amazement, huge skeletons, several stories high, of re-assembled dinosaur skeletons in the London Museum of Natural History.
The huge clawed feet, the voracious gnashing jaws, the huge carnivorous teeth,
the huge tails made for eviscerating other animals/humans, with one lash, do not evoke a “loving ” creator.
One hundred deaths of Christ on the cross, do not erase these legitimate and troubling questions.
Robin, When man rebelled against God, the animal kingdom rebelled against man and each other, just as Cain and Abel did. The situation into which the earth and its inhabitants descended was referred to as “vanity” by Solomon. Better to have never been born than to witness the evil in the world; He hated life because of what he saw
Rom 8: 20For the creation was subjected to vanity, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together until now.
What we see now is only temporary. Not only is the cross an example of chaos in the natural world [Deicide], it is an assurance of that world’s transitory nature. Peace.
Mr Hansen,
What is truly amazing about you, is that whenever you find some post/blog/message, with which you disagree, you attack the writer/messenger in a most disagreeable way.
If you truly did not agree with my post, how about offering a plausible protest, a rational retaliation, a reliable rebuttal?
When all you can do is be an attack dog, without any answers of your own, you lose all credibility.
I did make some laudable comments about God on my first posting on this topic which you apparently ignored nor did not read.
Is it true that the chameleon can instantly change his colors to disappear into his surroundings? Were his beautiful colors only momentary? Was that not part of his beautiful coloring–to simulate many coats?
Robin, the secret of the many musicians who excel on their chosen instrument is a combination of love, skill, talent, and most of all: thousands of hours of practice, without which they would not excel. The old mantra”
“Practice makes perfect” is most applicable; without it, all the others are secondary.
And please do not even attempt to tell me that Satan/Lucifer created these hunter/predatory/killer animal/fish/reptile/bird species.
Every theologian I have ever consulted, assures me that Satan, himself a created being, has NO/ZERO/NIL creative powers!
For those who believe otherwise, please name an ANDREWS/SOUTHERN ADVENTIST UNIV theologian who states unequivocally that Satan has creative powers– those are uniquely possessed by God.
Just a note among the various comments. I don’t like to use the names Satan or devil because of the baggage they carry. I believe the Jews used the term the Adversary. An adversary is the one or group that are in opposition–in this case God. It’s the classical story of good vs evil. I don’t know the answer, but evil would obviously mean violence comes through it and all destruction of life. My thought is that the entrance of sin brought with it a whole new pattern of life and adaptation as we see today. I would think it came gradually. The adversary can’t make life, but he/it can mutate it from what already exists. Certainly if humans can do this through breeding and in the lab, certainly the adversary can.
Robin, those marvelous musicians who composed such wonderful music are a separate class. Listening, and watching the late Glenn Gould, still the master of Bach’s piano compositions, reveals to me the greatest musical composer of all time. Bach was a master, never surpassed. But he also was from a family with many musicians.
Genes, environment?
Robin,
It is so compelling, this question about the predatory life cycle. If ever there were an issue of good and evil, the predatory life cycle personifies it for us humans.
It came to me again last week scuba diving in the Caribbean. Fish as … well … fish food. Pretty much every one.
And seeing a Blue whale on Monterey Bay not many feet from and longer than the boat we were using to look for whales last month. The naturalist on board handed me a little bottle of krill, several of which can swim in a tablespoon of water, three to four tons of which that Blue whale eats daily.
Perhaps the advice regarding the tree of the knowledge of good and evil wasn’t so much a test as a warning that this question unanswered will outlive us, too.
That we are puzzled by the food chain but not by music or love or beauty or tenderness is itself a mystery; indeed the greater mystery, I’m thinking.
Revelation 13:8, in many translations, refers to the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world. But of course Jesus wasn’t slain at the foundation of the world.
We see in the Bible how salvation, accomplished at a particular point in history, works backwards in time. Is it possible that, just as salvation works backwards in time, sin, introduced to earth by Adam and Eve, also worked backward in time so that what was created perfect appeared in history as evil? It’s just a thought. For a more profound development of this idea, read “The End Of Christianity?” by William Dembski, Jr., a brilliant pioneer in the field of intelligent design. His chapter on the cross is not to be missed
Nathan– “We see in the Bible how salvation, accomplished at a particular point in history, works backwards in time.”
A kind of back-to-the-future experience we are living in. (I liked the movie, too.)
Nathan– “Is it possible that, just as salvation works backwards in time, sin, introduced to earth by Adam and Eve, also worked backward in time so that what was created perfect appeared in history as evil? ”
This catches my attention, Nathan. What interests me is that everything that can be contained by the word “sin” is not a violation of God’s sovereignty nor a Divine surprise … and thus, perhaps, not a fault. Embryonic development is a design, not a series of accomplishments or failures but something like inherent successive approximations.
This is not a theodicy, but an encouragement. Better than a theodicy, which is but the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Thanks also for the book link.
Just a thought…
What if we paralleled the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world with sin slaying from the foundation of the world?
In the beginning, we are told, the earth was without form and void; darkness was upon the face of the earth. God, I’m the creation story, brought order out of chaos. He introduced form, structure, light and functionality; the possibility for life to reproduce AFTER ITS KIND.
So how did the formless, dark, chaotic void originate? Doesn’t the very description, and the contrast provided by God’s creative intervention, suggest pre-creation domination of the earth by evil? Is it perhaps even possible that there was pre-creation life that was not producing after its kind?
The Biblical accounts of creation offer many possibilities within the framework of the loving Creator who designed us, and who persists in His relentless, creative quest to free the world from darkness, chaos and sin, through light, order and righteousness.
Its a very strange thesis, Nathan. Very strange. I havent found an electronic version of the book, so have had to rely on reviews. This one is from creation.com, a pro young earth literal week site.
http://creation.com/end-of-christianity-review
Dembski’s retroactive view of the Fall is ultimately bizarre:
Dembski claims that there is a theological precedent for such a reading of Genesis 1–3 because “the saving effects of the Cross … are held to act not only forward in time but also backward” (p. 50). However, this is completely unconvincing—Scripture does teach that Jesus’ work of redemption, wrought at the Cross, transcends time,10 but never hints at anything resembling Dembski’s thesis regarding the Fall of Man. Consider the following assertion (p. 145): “To make us realize the full extent of human sin, God … allows natural evils (e.g. death, predation, parasitism, disease, drought, floods, famines, earthquakes, and hurricanes) to run their course prior to the Fall. Thus, God himself wills the disordering of creation, making it defective on purpose.”
In other words, God did this in advance, pre-empting the rebellion of Adam hundreds of millions of years before he would even exist. If so, He actively cursed the real world with disease, decay, death and relentless suffering for untold eons prior (chronologically) to the existence of morally culpable human beings!
As the man said, bizarre.
It’s a thought experiment, Serge. It’s been several years since I read the book. I found it provocative, especially the way Dembski looks at time. My suspicion is that our speculative imaginings aren’t nearly as bizarre as the reality God will reveal to us in eternity.
I form the light, and create darkness; I make peace, and create evil; I am the LORD, that doeth all these things.
Isaiah 45:8
William, if God “forms the light”, wouldn’t that mean His Light has exposed the “darkness” which exists? And does not His “peace” bring to our awareness the existence of “calamity” (NKJV) within the world? So does God actually create that which is contrary to His nature/character? Just a thought.
Nathan, I think equating the words “without form and void” with “chaos” does not do justice to the creation account in Genesis 1, and especially to God. I don’t see a state of “chaos” (as some refer to it) but rather stages within the creation process where something is “not yet formed”, or “unformed”. It’s like the developing stages of the unborn fetus. Does the fetus represent “chaos” in its early stage of development? If we regard the first stage of creation as “chaos”, then one could say the same for a “seed” before it grows and becomes a plant. But God made the seed also.
“13 For You formed my inward parts;
You covered me in my mother’s womb.
14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
Marvelous are Your works,
And that my soul knows very well.
15 My frame was not hidden from You,
When I was made in secret,
And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed.
And in Your book they all were written,
The days fashioned for me,
When as yet there were none of them.”
Ps. 139:13-16.
Nathan, –The Biblical accounts of creation offer many possibilities within the framework of the loving Creator who designed us, and who persists in His relentless, creative quest to free the world from darkness, chaos and sin, through light, order and righteousness.
This is a wonderful takeaway.
In chaos, in the beginning; whatever is, is equal. The creation is the differentiation and the end of equality.
CS Lewis imagines that the mind of God is completely outside of time. All things, to God are present and in a sense eternal. In his mind there is no beginning or ending. This idea makes Biblical passages like: Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am.” sensible.
What else could God’s name be? For who can name God? I am conveys this incomprehensible mystery of His eternal presence and His ever-present eternity.
So in the mind of God it is true: The Lamb is slain before the foundation of the world. He is always on the cross. He is always suffering with us and for us. God is outside of time, beyond time, apart from time. The human imagination can not imagine this reality.
Einstein imagined his theories of relativity, which posit the function of time is relative to the observer. If you could move fast enough time theoretically would move backwards. It all depends on your relative reference points. Is malleable time an observed reality? Perhaps.
Robin lays the blame on God for the existence of evil. God acknowledges in scripture, He alone is the causal agent of all things, including evil. For me, I imagine myself, through my sin, crucifying Jesus Christ. I am the causal agent of God’s suffering. It is a terrifying, willful, malicious act and I fear God and His wrath. I am evil.
I have been trying to get through Axe’s book before I make comments. I’m cheating, but I’m over the hump and half-way through. I know scientific method works, in the sense we can learn truth, a species of truth anyway, using science. Science is more limited than we imagine. It tells the truth in a very narrow sort of way. It can tell the truth about observations that can be measured. Can it do more than that? I don’t think so. It never proves there is a designer and it can’t tells us anything about the designer. It is great fun to use the scientific method to consternate those who would expunge God and His revealed truth from the human imagination. We know God through His revelation, what He reveals, not through science.
Look at how many lottery tickets get sold. Hoping in the highly improbable is human nature. It is a great relief to know there is no God and no sin. Science will always tell us the truth about our power to measure. Scientists will never measure God. The scientist literally knows nothing about God, because God is apprehended through belief and faith – not measure.
The scientist is telling the truth when he says, “I know nothing about God”
It is said, William, that when the Marquis de Laplace presented a copy of his work on the properties of the solar system (improving on Newton’s version) to Napoleon, the emperor asked if there was mention of the Creator? He is said to have replied, ‘Sir, I had no need of that hypothesis.’
I agree with you on the nature of eternity. It is not endless 24 hour cycling. The full term should be ‘spacetime.’ ie, space and time are inseparable, they are functions of each other. The Creator cannot be part of the created realm, ergo He must be apart from the limitations of time. His realm is not of this spacetime kosmos. Heaven is not part of this kosmos. Heavenly ‘time’ is not time as we know it.
You make a fair point, William. I’m not sure that the evidence of design can be categorized as scientific. But neither am I convinced it can’t be. It’s really a matter of definition. In his book, “Darwin’s Doubt,” Stephen Meyer has a fine discussion of the various types of evidence and arguments that can reasonably be thought to fit within the rubric of “science.” Certainly logic, reason and intuition are integral to scientific investigation.
To me, as a non-scientist, the most powerful arguments supporting design are the nature of information systems (code) and population genetics, traditionally the go-to engine for natural selection and random mutation. If random mutation/natural selection is not
plausible, have we thereby proven design? Well, yes – if those are the only two possible explanations. By ruling out natural selection/random mutation, if design and randomness are the only possibilities, have we thereby proven design scientifically? I really don’t care. Logic, reason and experience can be of superior probative value.
Of course the “holy grail” in this argument – at least for Christians – is God – a discombobulating prospect for neodarwinists. But to get there from a secular, materialist world view, there are pathways that need to be cleared. One of those is the pathway to a creator. And
that pathway must run, it seems to me, through design. Axe’s contribution is strong confirmation of the pathway.
Serge, nothing works backward in time. Although the plan for the redemption of mankind was determined before the foundation, man’s salvation was future, unless
there was a previous creation on the Earth, which would indicate perhaps a migratory creation from another planet, Spacemen, giants, dinosaurs etc.
Nothing works backwards in spacetime, Earl. Eternity (the eternal Now/Today) is a different matter. And since between them ‘there is a great gulf, fixed,’ Dembski’s thesis is untenable.
Are you proposing that the Demiurge/Architect of the Universe is a giant dinosaur spaceman? Didn’t Zechariah Sitchin elaborate on a theory like that?
Serge, i am not well read. i believe the Cosmos is ever inflating, no stability, no backward movement. “Back to the Future”, a human fantasy. i can’t contemplate the
animal monster god, however the Evil Empire is a reality on Earth. Mankind, in the image of God Almighty, must constantly struggle with Evil. Not believing man coexisted with the Dinosaurs, and other tooth and nail
monsters. Although God says He brought peace, but also a sword, to combat evil means, that is an Evil of a god of EviL, the dark prince of the Earth, and possibly of the Cosmos.
I can’t prove you will not win the Powerball. Lots of people every week prove they believe they just might. After all, somebody wins. But you and I know the probabilities are more than daunting. You will not win the Powerball. No matter what you believe. No matter how frequently you buy a ticket.
I maintain scientific method becomes a different method when it tries to do more than observe and measure. I asserted this once and Erv Taylor told me I needed to read more widely and get out more. I am still asserting it and my argument merits a more thoughtful rebuttal.
Science is quite within its rights to say it knows nothing about the designer or God. Because He will not be measured. He does not permit any to observe him. If I am a man of science, what can I say scientifically about God?
In the quantum realm we observe strange things. We measure and we are overwhelmed by the improbability of random chance ordering anything, let alone everything. But we still buy those lotto tickets.
William, maybe folks who buy those tickets are convinced of this part of the wisdom of Solomon-
Eccles 9.11 ¶ I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happens to them all.
I’ve never bought a lottery ticket, William. I haven’t even put a nickel in a slot machine.
Powerball is a poor example because the odds are not so staggering as to make winning virtually impossible in a trillion lifetimes. The odds of winning powerball can be calculated mathematically. In fact, the odds of someone winning powerball are usually very high. That someone is just unlikely to be you.
You have a very narrow view of what constitutes science, William. You apparently would also say that you can’t scientifically prove that a 777 or a nuclear reactor could not come into being through a natural, undesigned series of random reactions and events. i kind of agree with Erv on this one, William. While I agree with you that science doesn’t get a free hand in defining what constitutes science, neither do non-scientists get to put science into a definitional straitjacket that renders the distant past the exclusive realm of history, religion and philosophy. I would encourage you to read the end of “Darwin’s Doubt,” where the author asks and answers the question, “What is science, and what qualifies evidence as being scientific?”
Nathan,
When the woman going through a divorce complained to the judge that her husband had taken a great sum of their money and hidden it (the guy said he blew it at the track). The judge said to her, “I can only divide the assets that are before me.”
Science can not prove or disprove the spontaneous, random or designed causal agent of anything, simple or complex, unless it can observe the agent doing the causing. Otherwise its just statistics. Ernest Rutherford, the father of nuclear physics and probably history’s greatest experimental scientist said, “If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment.”
The Powerball isn’t as bad an example as you think. You are right, statistically it is a much better bet you will win the jackpot than enzymes and proteins will usefully self-arrange themselves. But it is also true you are eight times more likely to die in a vending machine accident than your Powerball ticket will have all the lucky numbers perfectly arranged.
Statistical improbability does not deter sales. In fact, the Lotto company decreases the odds of winning by one hundred million and sells more tickets because the jackpot is bigger.
In other words, it is a great comfort to believe there is no God. Men (and women) can dispense with the burden of sin and judgment altogether. Free, free at last. Ask any atheist (except Nietzsche) how exhilarating freedom is. They want to believe there is no God.
Millions of people “need” God. Who else can they credit or blame? “It was an act of God,” or “God is in charge
of the world.” How does it differ from the excuse: “The Devil made me do it”? Why did the writers of the OT give God the credit of everything good or evil? The rain falls on the just and unjust; as do hurricanes, earthquakes and even human calamities. “The Lord giveth and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
How many stories are recorded in the OT that God sent plagues; He made the earth open up and swallow Korah, Dathan and Abiram and all their families, including innocent children. He ordered whole tribes massacred. Were those God’s orders or not? Is the Bible true in such details, or are they only man’s words? Is the Bible the “Word of God” or human’s words telling of God as they understood Him? Do we understand Him better today?
I guess what you’re saying here, William, is that, no matter how improbable a designerless universe may be, people will still believe in it. Otherwise, I’m stumped by the powerball analogy, as it doesn’t seem to relate to the question of what constitutes science or the type of evidence that is admissible to prove or disprove a hypothesis.
The very construction of a hypothesis is part of scientific inquiry. Science does not always proceed by direct observation. It is closely intertwined with other types of knowledge. Science yields information that is subject to mathematical calculation, which in turns often leads to hypotheses that turn out to be true. Science reveals the truth before the physical reality is observed. This is particularly true in astronomy.
Science uses circumstantial evidence and extrapolates highly probable truths about things that have never been observed from its knowledge of natural laws currently observed in the universe. Do you believe that DNA evidence is not scientific, or do you simply believe that it can’t prove anything.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding your point. It just seems to me that you ignore what often occurs within overlapping circles of various disciplines and epistemological pathways, in order to confine “science” as you define it within a sliver of space. Few disciplines can know much of anything on their own if you restrict their identity to narrow definitions.
Nathan,
Right, statistical probability will never persuade people there is a God. The believe or disbelieve for a variety of other reasons. Intelligent Design is well intentioned & it plays by science’s rules. It doesn’t address why people believe there is no God or believe God is irrelevant to the natural reality. The Powerball analogy does not relate to the scientific method, but it does relate to why scientists don’t believe in God.
Science is a way of knowing things about — only the things that can be observed. That is what an experiment is: a controlled observation that renders a measurement of the thing observed. The math in a hypothesis is meaningless unless an observation and measurement confirms it.
You write: Science uses circumstantial evidence and extrapolates highly probable truths about things that have never been observed from its knowledge of natural laws currently observed in the universe. Do you believe that DNA evidence is not scientific, or do you simply believe that it can’t prove anything.
For example? Radioactive dating of rock? Observations about radioactive decay in certain radioactive elements are held to be highly probable constants throughout time. So we have a highly probable truth about how old rocks are by the presence of the decaying radioisotopes. But if someone, somewhere observes that high pressure waves can induce a ten to the fourth power increase in the alpha decay rate of radioisotopes.
cont. – radioisotopes then the highly probable truth has to be statistically recalibrated to some to some lower form of highly probable truth and I am left thinking Rutherford was right. “If your experiment needs statistics, you should have done a better experiment.”
Highly probable truths — — are statistics.
Yes I am trying to confine science to its appropriate epistemological path. It is called the scientific method. Hypothesis, experiment, observations and measurements, repeat, confirm – discover truth.
William, Nathan, I would happily have a bet with you both that more than one person in history has professed a belief in God based on the logic of Pascal’s wager. Pascal you recall was a very famous mathematician. He is credited with laying hte foundations of modern probability theory. So if anyone knew about the likely outcomes of a game of chance, it would have been Pascal.
His famous ‘wager’ is simple. Believe in God because its your best, most logical, bet. If it turns out he doesn’t exist, you’ve lost nothing. If he does, you win everything. Now who would go for atheism in the face of logic like that, where you are guaranteed to lose?
William A,
Are you inspired by or affronted by those who seek to support a 6,000-year existence for the whole of life on earth by questioning scientific methods here or there individually rather than addressing the whole of science cumulatively?
A second question if I may; have your read “The Rocks Don’t Lie”? I recently read the book and found it to be a most interesting review of the history of the interplay between those whose focus is either Special Revelation or Natural Revelation. The history is thousands of years in the making, as it turns out.
Bill,
First, rocks neither lie nor tell the truth under normal circumstances. However I remain open to this possibility: And he [Jesus] answered and said unto them, I tell you that, if these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.
Second; I don’t believe in natural revelation. Nature isn’t revealing anything to us. Revelation requires a revealer. Robin Vandermolen is driving himself to despair believing in natural revelation, so for my sanity’s sake, I’ll pass.
Finally, I’m a big supporter of questioning science, in both the particular and universal. If I understand ‘science’ correctly, questions are all to the good. Science doesn’t work if it isn’t questioned and re-verified and re-examined. For clarification – Personally, I don’t think the bible holds us to what Jack Hoehn calls Young Earth Chronolgy, YEC. It probably leaves wiggle room for deep time, what some call evolutionary time.
My problem is with science asserting it knows and proves this and that to be true when it does not and cannot know this and that to be true, let alone prove it. They have no observations of the the deep past and they have to make too many assumptions about unobserved constants. Untestable hypotheses and unverified assumptions are not settled science. You don’t have to be peer-reviewed to prove we don’t know something. We don’t know a lot.
Technicians can observe and measure. Intuition, through knowledge, aids scientists to explore theories. How could mere observation and measurement develop the wonderful information on genes that are discovered daily? Theory questions observation and tests to either prove or disprove theory. What may be observed in vitro is often confirmed or denied by in situ.
Elaine,
Intuition, at a stretch, is a legitimate tool in home economics. I heard it here first that intuition is the backbone of the scientific method.
Please, don’t misquote me. I wrote: Intuition, through knowledge, aids scientists to explore theories.
Intuition is great when making personal choices for most people who can sense if something is not right, but intuition COUPLED with knowledge of the subject is necessary to pursue theories. A non-scientist’s intuition is not usually of great worth because he is not fully informed on the subject.
William, Elaine…. this quote is attributed to Einstein, but is more likely a summation of Einstein’s thinking on the matter, by Bob Samples.
“The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”
Intuition precedes theorem precedes hypothesis precedes experiment precedes final theorem precedes fresh intuition……
Thanks, Serge. When I wrote “intuition” I had “hypothesis” which is the first step in discovery.
Thanks, Serge. When I wrote “intuition” I had “hypothesis” in mind which is the first step in discovery.
Elaine,
Elaine,
The scientific method is basically conduct experiments and measure what you observe. Yes you have to have a hypothesis, intuition as a word choice isn’t that far off, but intuition doesn’t require the structure of a hypothesis. A valid hypothesis is needed to validate an experiment.
You wrote: ‘Technicians can observe and measure.’ True enough. Experiments can be put together by scientists and run by technicians. My point is the learning and knowing that comes out of science is limited to what we observe and measure. Does anybody think a hypothesis is knowledge?
I did misquote you. Sorry. Let me say it this way: Experiments are the backbone of Science, its head, hands and feet also.
I found Axe’s book an amazing read and especially the focus on nature, beauty, and human thought.
I don’t recall that he talked about the existence of evil or predatory behavior that came about after the entrance of sin. There is even an amazing sense in how creatures have adapted to protect themselves in the shadow of a sinful world. Humans seem to be the ones most out of harmony.
Without the Adversary motif, however, it would be quite difficult to believe a God of love even existed. When belief in the “devil” became unpopular, it turned many educated people against God. For many it’s easier to be atheistic than believe God causes evil.
The search for the reason for Evil must also have an excuse that exempts God. That is why the Devil was invented. There was no “Devil” in the Hebrews mind until they encounted this idea in Persia from Zororaster, while in exile there. It was then reflected in their written scriptures and carried into the NT and Christianity; undergoing many transformations.
In the early OT writings, God is in charge of both good and evil. Later, there was an Adversary in the writings that metamorphosed into many descriptions: keeper of hell; with a pitchfork, and became the serpent that tempted Eve.
I think you are using as your authority liberal scholars who make such claims. They are partially right in that the term wasn’t used (outside of Job for which we don’t have a date) but there is much inference of an adversary of God throughout, especially in the Garden when the serpent was used as a medium. Serpents since then symbolized evil or sin like the serpent on the cross that symbolized Christ taking on the sins of the world and the people were to look at it for healing (salvation metaphor).
These symbols may not be acceptable to the liberal mind, but they are used by believing scholars of many denominations.
Something I keep in mind while studying the Bible is to remember there was an original source we call the Word. From that we get Genesis and the unfolding history of God’s people and then Israel in the OT. It’s theme is salvation or healing in which we find the story of Christ through many parallel stories like Exodus and types of Christ. They don’t need to accurate in every detail to be inspired by God. The NT uses these stories to reveal their meanings in Christ in many instances. Perhaps in trying to prove their exactness, we lose their meaning.
However, outside of Israel many other religions and peoples were taking the original stories and with lack of inspiration they spread into many differing versions of creation, gods, floods, etc. To find similar stories in other cultures is not surprising for they (like a game of gossip) became twisted as peoples moved across the earth. They made gods in their own images. We look for a time when the nations will come back to the God of creation.
” outside of Israel many other religions and peoples were taking the original stories and with lack of inspiration they spread into many differing versions of creation, gods, floods, etc.”
It is rather easy to prove that many accounts in surrounding cultures predate the biblical stories: Hamarubi’ Code predates the Law given by God as recorded in the OT; the flood story was common prior to the account recorded in Genesis. There were virginal births, resurrections, in the Hellenistic culture where Christianity first flourished.
There are no Bible writings recorded until hundreds of years later when these earlier accounts were known. Unless there are proven dates of these accounts from the Bible or other cultures, claims needed evidence. Where are the dates when the flood account was first RECORDED in the Bible? Oral accounts cannot be dated.
Elaine
In saying the stories predated the OT: I think you misunderstood what I said. Nothing predated the original verbal stories passed on from the original witnesses. I did not say that was the OT which wasn’t put together until the time of Moses. There was verbal passing on of stories long before that and some were twisted. There were believers before Israel. Noah was not a Hebrew as were none of the former characters in the Bible.
There had to be an original source for life history.
Elaine, Elaine, there you go again! I think you know, or should know, that the book of Job, thought by modern scholarship to have been written long before the Persian period.
Correct Darrell, but scholarship also acknowledges that Job is of Hebrew adaptation, not originality. As with most of their ideas. Canaanite sources are prominent for some of the Satan ideas. But then, all the civilisations round about had their ‘cosmic enemy’ stories. Neil Forsyth’s ‘The Old Enemy: Satan and the Combat Myth’ is as good a summary of these stories and their origins as you will find.
Job is one, but the adversary there is far from the full-blown Satan of the intertestamental and NT era. In fact, Milton is attributed with even further development of our modern thinking on this ancient idea.
Some of the participants in the development of the ‘enemy’/adversary concept include the ‘watchers’ of early Genesis. The Nephilim play a role there somewhere. But it is mainly in the intertestamental apocalyptic literature, especially Enoch and Jubilees which set the powers of darkness against the children of light. Again, the ‘watchers’ play a major role. The watchers and holy ones also get a mention in Dan 8., (as does the ‘pawlmene,’ the ‘wonderful numberer,’ whose mystery appears to be too great even for SDA authors. As far as my limited reading has found, I admit.)
Where and when is “Satan” first written about in the Bible? God was originally in charge of both. “Lucifer” identified as Satan was the first century A.D. title conferred on Satan prior to the arcangel’s fall from the heaven. IN classical mythology, LUcifer is the bright Morning Star (the title also given Jesus in Revelation), or Venue, the visible plane in the eastern predawn sky. “Lucifer” means light-bearer.
The Christian origin of Lucifer comes from two biblical lines, written nine centuries apart, on the surface having nothing to do with each other, Isaiah, writing in the eighth century B.C., metaphorically used used “Lucifer” (helel) , meaning “Shining One’ or “Morning Star”, sarcastically referring t0 the Babylonian monarchy. In translating into the Lati Vulgate, helel was rendered as “Lucifer.”
But it was Milton’s “Paradise Lost” which popularized Lucifer as Satan. Unfortunately, many Christians have embraced much of Milton’s greatest work as literal, and used by EGW in some of her writings in that manner.
Where and when is “Satan” first written about in the Bible? God was originally in charge of both. “Lucifer” identified as Satan was the first century A.D. title conferred on Satan prior to the arcangel’s fall from the heaven. IN classical mythology, LUcifer is the bright Morning Star (the title also given Jesus in Revelation), or Venue, the visible plane in the eastern predawn sky. “Lucifer” means light-bearer.
The Christian origin of Lucifer comes from two biblical lines, written nine centuries apart, on the surface having nothing to do with each other, Isaiah, writing in the eighth century B.C., metaphorically used used “Lucifer” (helel) , meaning “Shining One’ or “Morning Star”, sarcastically referring t0 the Babylonian monarchy. In translating into the Lati Vulgate, helel was rendered as “Lucifer.” And in Luke he saw “Satan fall as lightning frm heaven.”
But it was Milton’s “Paradise Lost” which popularized Lucifer as Satan. Unfortunately, many Christians have embraced much of Milton’s greatest work as literal, and used by EGW in some of her writings in that manner.
Thank you Serge, what the “the full-blown Satan” is I dont know, Job seems to have Satan as an evil challenger to the fairness and authority of the Creator who wishes to sow confusion regarding the character of The Creator among human beings and angelic beings. Seems full blown in every sense.
Job being a “Hebrew adaptation” is a supposition based on an unprovable theory. Dont get me wrong, it might be correct. But it might be equally correct that it is even earlier oral tradition that made it into proto Hebrew.
Darrell,”Full blown Satan” is less horrible than the half inflated one. It’s best if we eschew both.
The view presented of God and Satan is likely not what many/any Christians today would hold. Unless one believes a ‘prosperity’ type of gospel. A sign of God’s favour is Job’s material wealth. He offers sacrifice daily, and this covers the sins of the children. Are these minor details of difference from teh God of the NT? I don’t think so. And Satan is only permitted to do what he does by the allowance of God. ANd those poor Sabeans, unwitting tools in Satan’s hand (metaphorically speaking….. Satan does not have ‘hands,’ when one realises the significance of Hebrews 1.14, angels are ‘ministering spirits.’)
So yes, Job presents a type of Satan and even God which is not the same as that presented in the NT. After all, Jesus did come to reveal a fuller picture of God. i guess that also provides a fuller picture of the evil one.
There is an evolutionary change in God and Satan as recorded in the Bible which only indicates that men progressed (or regressed) in their ideology of the unseen. All are human imaginations as no one has seen God nor Satan. Today, if people were asked of their descriptions of these two, they would likely be very different.
Something to think about…… Is it possible the 5 books of Moses could be inspired by Satan, rather than the Almighty?? Crediting God with the Creation, but then charging God with destroying His Creation??
We are often challenged to “think outside the box.” Mr. Calahan has not only thought outside the box, he has thought outside the crate, pallet, and container ship this time. The First Five Books of Moses were written by Satan ! One would certainly agree that this certainly would explain a number of things. However, since the ancient Hebrews did not have a Satan figure until relatively late in their theological evolution that probably is a unlikely explanation of some of the strange ideas contained within it. With regard to Job, as I assume that we all are aware that the Satan figure portrayed in the version we now have is not the Satan/Devil of the New Testament.
“With regard to Job, as I assume that we all are aware that the Satan figure portrayed in the version we now have is not the Satan/Devil of the New Testament.”
I have read how some “Christians” ascribe Satan to having power over the forces of nature, i.e. able to cause great winds, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc. Satan is powerless without humans. Satan’s hands are indeed human hands.
“Crediting God with the Creation, but then charging God with destroying His Creation??”
God doesn’t destroy His creation. Mankind has been instrumental in that area–take a look at Revelation 11:18.
Serge,
I had a young atheist friend tell me he was an atheist because all the really smart people and all the scientists were atheists.
My young friend was speaking ignorantly and using hyperbolic language. Still, clever people are always passing up Pascal’s wager. If the odds are so compelling why are so many math majors not interested?
While Pascal offers the statistical probability as rationale, it didn’t motivate him personally. Blase Pascal was as good a theologian/philosopher as he was a mathematician. Have you read his Pensées? That is where the wager comes from. I read it long ago.
Pascal assumes there is a god that rewards based only on those who believe in a particular god. If such a god is so limited by human beliefs, what sort of a god is that? Millions do not, nor cannot believe in the god represented since Christianity began: one who flips a switch to send people to either heaven or hell. What kind of god must be believed? Why not create a god in our own mind–oh, that is what we all do!
William, Elaine, …… ok, Pascal ‘s thesis is based on the view that one must believe in a particular kind of god for the reward from that god to be effective. So then its a case of working out which is the most likely kind of god to exist and ultimately hand out the rewards. On that basis, SDA’s have ‘invested’ quite a lot in their choice. They do ‘put their money where their mouth is,’ as we say in Aus. The tithe represents a considerable financial bet that such a belief will ultimately be rewarded. Say William, have you calculated the odds of winning if you were, say, to invest your annual tithe into a once-a-year powerball ticket? Solomon does promise that eventually, ‘time and chance’ will happen to all.
My personal take on this is that unless one has an experiential gnosis of God, all bets are off.
If Satan, or Lucifer, does not exist, then one could also discard the Biblical account in reference to the third of the angels who followed Lucifer; having all been thrown out of God’s presence/Heaven and now are reserved under chains of “darkness” until the day of judgment. The question is: Who and where are these rebellious angels now?
Elaine Pagal’s book “The Origins of Satan” is also a book to consider. An aside…..Mitch Ryder sang “Devil with a Blue Dress” in which his devil is apparently a women. Is it fair for Christians to consistently refer to Satan as a he?
The I.D. debate really isn’t about God – and certainly not the God of Christianity – though I.D. opponents certainly want to make people believe that it is. So I think the probability arguments are really a curious diversion. I.D. merely confronts the lynchpin of evolutionary theorizing with scientific and mathematical evidence that it – at least macro evolution – can’t work without adding so much time and so many random biochemical processes and events as to be, for all practical purposes, impossible.
Whether one wants to call it science or not strikes me as irrelevant. Again, William, I ask, is forensic use of DNA evidence to circumstantial li prove guilt and innocence not scientific? What is the point of arguing over whether a proof or disproof is or is not scientific if it is logically and rationally overwhelming?
Forensic DNA evidence is evidence because of experiments, observations and measurements which have established the high probabilities that the observed and measured DNA material before the court is in fact from the the party it matches. No different from fingerprints. The observed and measured print match could theoretically belong to an unknown third party with exactly the same fingerprint, but that is highly unlikely based on all previous observations. All this evidence is based on actual observations.
The problem with enzyme and protein mutation is the assumption that all the observed conditions effecting mutation rates in the experiments which drive the 10 to the 70th improbability calculation may or may not have been present in the past. We can’t observe the past and we can’t measure it. We can only look at what the past has left behind. (Oxymoron)
Multiple assumptions have a high likelihood of corrupting the truth about our conclusions. If I didn’t want to believe in a creator, I could easily believe Dr. Axe’s work doesn’t apprehend historical conditions. His underlying assumptions are probably wrong.
Look, you don’t have to persuade me there is a Designer. It has been revealed to me, (in addition my intuition tells me there is a Designer). Helen Keller, both blind and dumb, intuitively knew there had to be a designer, a maker, of all things before anyone communicated with her.
This comment is not totally off-topic. But it is somewhat. I just read this morning something about a receding ice age on Mars, the Martian ice age ended 370,000 years ago. Recently I saw images of Pluto which, it turns out, has a huge amount of H2O on its surface.
So I went to the Wikipedia article on the source of earth’s water and it is all over the place, they are trying to make sense of alpha-decay rates of deuterium and protium in the H2O present in comets and asteriods and comparing it to ratios on earth. They really don’t know, and it seems like maybe the best guess is the water has been here from the very beginning. I don’t think that original idea fits in any plausible model of planetary evolution.
We are supposed to believe the age of the universe and solar system are nailed down because we use red-shift dating methods to measure distances from the beginning. But we can’t make any dating sense of the oceans or H2O in the solar system?
Why am I considered a mental Neanderthal if I treat the whole project of scientific dating methods with skepticism? How can we be so certain we know what we are doing? There are no experiments, no observations, no measurements of the past. We are playing with the detritus and imagining it is speaking to us.
Perhaps Mr. Abbott might wish to read some peer-reviewed books intended for a general audience explaining the scientific techniques which are used in dating the past. This might help him revise his skepticism — or perhaps not, since his opinions may not be based on the scientific evidence but other considerations. However, if he wishes to become better informed and has any problems in locating appropriate titles, I would be happy to provide him with a list. Most any research university would contain copies.
Professor Taylor,
Just tell me about the water. Where and when did it get here? Why is it on Pluto, Ceres and Mars? If we can’t date it, if we can’t explain its presence, how is reading a peer-reviewed book going to change my concerns about the underlying assumptions? We make multiple assumptions about conditions in the past being consistent with the present. And those assumptions are completely unworkable in explaining the enduring presence of water on our planet and other planets. Why is Pluto discovered to be geologically active with volcanoes, internal heat and lots of water? Underlying assumptions about the solar system are going ‘poof.’
You are telling me, once again, I need to get out more. Why don’t you tell me about the mysterious presence of all that volatile water?
“How can we be so certain we know what we are doing?”
That’s right, William, from our perspective we cannot be certain about anything. Those living in the northern parts of the globe cab assume those living in the southern are upside down. It all looks the same to everyone; we’re all supposedly upright, but not according to God. So, who can we trust?
In sharing, the picture of the chameleon, it is beautiful (as Robin states) and reminds me of Ezekiel 28:13 and the results of iniquity. The beauty in HIS Love that we missed because of sin. Perchance the original sin that cascades into oblivion; without HIM. Actually creating and perpetuating our own worse enemy? Yet constantly feeding and sustaining that enemy?
Are the resultants in our actions not explicit in that goal? Do our measurements and recordings not prove our success in that goal? Do our complaints and failures not substantiate the continuance of that goal?
We still complain and fail; yet HE is there. We demand free choice; which HE gives. Then we complain about the free choice; which we asked for. Maybe it is time to turn everything over to HIM; since HE knows best.
Maybe it is time to stop complaining, look at our failures and fix them; with HIS help? Maybe we should be thankful for the paths HE provided for us and take them; being thankful to HIM for the required Sacrifices necessary to create them? Because we dug the hole so deep that there was no other choice?
I guess otherwise we can plead the title of being the best hole diggers ever known and holding the title of corrupting the most Loving, Perfect Plans ever made?
(Good article Jack).
God or any supernatural force cannot be observed, or measured by any procedure of science; consequently, science must put aside claims of the existence of the supernatural. This exclusion is basic to all science. Science is about the critical analysis of claims about nature. Allowing for entities in the absence of empirical evidence destroys the critical analysis aspect of science and, therefore, science itself. Although a scientist is free to believe in God, he is forbidden to express this belief in any scientific statement because of the nonempirical nature of the belief. Since the goal of science is to obtain knowledge of nature that can withstand critical examination, scientific explanations must be based upon empirical evidence not upon nonempirical beliefs. Science cannot allow evidence derived exclusively form faith. Empirical evidence gained from sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch is the only evidence that can withstand the critical examination required by science. The proponents of intelligent design chose this term to replace God so they could get it into public schools. However, intelligent design is creationism and as such is not science because it invokes the supernatural. One you invoke the supernatural you abandon empirical evidence as you standard of reality.
Just a question for the web editors/moderators here: I thought Spectrum had resorted to a policy of one comment per commenter per blog article. Has that policy been walked back and I missed the announcement? Or have efforts to enforce it been abandoned, as suggested by the above discussion?