Nathan Lents in USA Today: Evolution is Certain

Darwin’s Dangerous Idea

In a recent USA Today opinion piece evolutionist Nathan Lents states that the human race has “evolved through a long line of ancestry that connects with all other living things going back nearly 4 billion years.” And if there was any doubt, Lents later clarifies that it is “the undeniable scientific truth that the human population evolved from ancestor ape species and shares common descent with all living things.” Simply put, Lents is stating that evolution is an undeniable scientific truth.

This claim of high certainty is nothing new. From the Epicureans in antiquity, to their modern descendants, mandates of a strictly naturalistic origins have consistently been foisted with no less confidence. Lents’ certainty is the rule, not only for today’s evolutionists, but in the long history of Epicurean thought.

One immediate sign of trouble is that such claims of certainty are inevitably in conflict. For example, proponents of monergistic and synergistic theories of the origin of the Solar System (where the Sun and planets formed simultaneously or in sequence, respectively), were both certain their theories were correct. But they cannot both be right. As Dire Straits put it, “Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong.”

Lack of detail is another sign of trouble. How can we be certain of theories which gloss over a host of details, and really are little more than just-so stories?

But it gets worse. For inevitably, such claims of certainty are made about theories that make little scientific sense. Daniel Bernoulli was certain the solar system resulted from the solar atmosphere forcing the planets into the ecliptic. Bernoulli was a brilliant scientist, but in this case, not so much. The irony is that he chose to express absolute confidence in what was undoubtedly the biggest blunder of his career.

It is no different with evolutionists today. They are absolutely certain, but their certainty is exceeded only by their inability to defend their theory. Evolution has left a trail of failed predictions. And with each failure the theory becomes more contorted, complex, and mysterious. There is no explanation, beyond mere hand-waving, of how the entire biological world is supposed to have arisen by itself—spontaneously. The idea is a scientific failure.

All of this leads to the inevitable question of why. Why do Lents and the epicureans make such claims? Surely they must know better.

Indeed they do know better, or at least should know better. There simply is no question that Lents and his fellow evolutionists are aware of the science. In a very real sense they are without excuse. They massively misrepresent the science, and it is tempting to brand them as liars and be done with it. And indeed, in a sense they are liars—they make ridiculously false claims and they know it. Given their training and experience, there simply is no way they could be innocently naïve of the basic scientific facts they so consistently contradict with complete assurance.

But to stop there would superficial. Anyone who knows evolutionists knows they do not easily fit into the liar category. To begin with, evolutionists really do believe what they say. A liar makes statements he knows are false.

So how can evolutionists understand the science and yet believe evolution is true? The answer is a long story but, suffice it to say, it is a story about religion. What we are dealing with here is much more complicated than a simple lie. And much more dangerous.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Allmon and Ross Demolish Evolution

It Gets Worse

Last time we saw, in a new paper, evolutionists Warren Allmon and Robert Ross reformulate the argument for evolution from homologous structures. The paper makes several mistakes, but is important because it is a rare case of evolutionists (i) recognizing the religion in evolutionary thinking, and (ii) trying to do something about it. In this case the religion is in the claim that God would not have created non optimal homologies (such as vestigial structures). Allmon and Ross attempt to remove the religion by restating the claim as: God did not have to create such homologies. It is good that evolutionists are finally recognizing the religion, after having been in denial for so many years. But Allmon and Ross’ solution fails on several counts.

The first failure of Allmon and Ross’ solution is that it strips the power of the argument. The traditional religious arguments (i.e., God would not create those structures) at least had the virtue of providing a strong argument for evolution. Granted it was a religious argument, and granted one had to agree with that particular religion. And granted it ignored the problems of process and pattern (more below on that). And granted it turned evolution into, as Elliott Sober hinted, a “Lewis Carroll world in which down is up,” because the argument required evidence that is unlikely on evolution. The more unlikely, the better. Such is the logic of evolution’s religion. But after all those caveats, at least it provided a strong argument for evolution.

With design refuted, evolution had to be true, no matter how many problems it had. But with Allmon and Ross’ reformulation, design is not refuted. Now the advantage for evolution is not that the alternative is false or even highly unlikely, but that the alternative does not specify what we observe whereas evolution does. Allmon and Ross triumphantly conclude their new formulation is a powerful argument for evolution. They apparently think their reformulation is merely a minor tweak, and that their new argument is just as strong as the traditional argument. It isn’t. There is no free lunch. What Allmon and Ross fail to understand is that this is a much weaker argument.

But it gets worse.

The second failure of Allmon and Ross’ solution is that it never did get rid of the religion as they had hoped. Allmon and Ross naively assume that the claim God may or may not create these homologies is merely an obvious point of fact. This is a deep subject into which Allmon and Ross have rushed in, but suffice it to say that it is not at all clear that God can go with either world. Leibniz undoubtedly would disagree. The Lutheran polymath would argue that because of His perfection and other attributes, God cannot just create any old world. The bottom line, and one which Allmon and Ross are blissfully naïve of, is that like it or not, claims about God are religious.

But it gets worse. Much worse.

Not only did Allmon and Ross utterly misapprehend and expose the homology argument, they have, in fact, altogether demolished evolutionary theory. Remember, with their reformulation it becomes utterly crucial that evolution predicts what we observe. In other words, evolution must predict the pattern of similarities and differences we observe across the species. This is because their new formulation was that while design can explain a common descent pattern or other patterns, evolution is narrowly restricted to the common descent pattern.

With that the two Harvard trained Epicureans just inadvertently blew up evolution. This is because what we actually observe is not the common descent pattern.

The actual comparisons between the species have contradicted the common descent pattern over and over. It is, as we have documented here so many times, not even close.

If evolution predicts the common descent pattern, then by modus tollens, evolution is false.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Blindness in Cave Fish is Due to Epigenetics

Evolutionists Say “We See”

A recent paper out of Brant Weinstein’s and William Jeffery’s laboratories on eye development, or the lack thereof, in blind cave fish has important implications for evolutionary theory (paper discussed here). The study finds that the loss of eyes in fish living in dark Mexican caves is not due to genetic mutations, as evolutionists have vigorously argued for many years, but due to genetic regulation. Specifically, methylation of key development genes represses their expression and with it eye development in this venerable icon of evolution. But the finding is causing yet more problems for evolutionary theory.

Darwin appealed to the blind cave fish in his one long argument for evolution. It is a curious argument in many ways, and the first sign of problems was in Darwin’s presentation where he flipped between two different explanations. At one point he explained the loss of vision in the cave fish as an example of evolutionary change not due to his key mechanism, natural selection. Instead, the Sage of Kent resorted to using the Lamarckian mechanism or law of “use and disuse.” Privately Darwin despised and harshly criticized Lamarck, but when needed he occasionally employed his French forerunner’s ideas.

Elsewhere Darwin hit upon a natural selection-based mechanism for the blind cave fish, explaining that elimination of the costly and unneeded vision system would surely raise the fitness of the hapless creatures.

This latter explanation would become a staple amongst latter day evolutionary apologists, convinced that it mandates the fact of evolution. Anyone who has discussed or debated evolutionary theory with today’s Epicureans has likely encountered this curious argument that because blind cave fish lost their eyes, therefore the world must have arisen by itself.

Huh?

To understand the evolutionary logic, or lack thereof, one must understand the history of ideas, and in particular the idea of fixity, or immutability, of species. According to evolutionists, species are either absolutely fixed in their designs, or otherwise there are no limits to their evolutionary changes and the biological world, and everything else for that matter, spontaneously originated.

Any evidence, for any kind of change, no matter how minor, is immediately yet another proof text for evolution, in all that the word implies.

Of course, from a scientific perspective, the evidence provides precisely zero evidence for evolution. Evolution requires the spontaneous (i.e., by natural processes without external input) creation of an unending parade of profound designs. The cave fish evidence shows the removal, not creation, of such a design.

The celebration of such evidence and argument by Darwin and his disciples reveals more about evolutionists than evolution. That they would find this argument persuasive reveals their underlying metaphysics and the heavy lifting it performs. It is all about religion.

We are reminded of all this with the news of Weinstein’s new study. But we also see something new: The insertion, yet again, of Lamarck into the story. The irony is that the epigenetics, now revealed as the cause of repressed eye development in the cave fish, hearkens back to Lamarck.

Darwin despised Lamarck and later evolutionists made him the third rail in biology. Likewise they have pushed back hard against the scientific findings of epigenetics and their implications.

The environment must not drive biological change.

False.

Well such biological change must not be transgenerational.

False.

Well such inheritance must not be long lasting, or otherwise robust.

False again.

This last failure is revealed yet again in the new blind cave fish findings.

False predictions count. A theory that is repeatedly wrong, over and over, in all of its fundamental expectations, will eventually be seen for what it is.

The rise of epigenetics is yet another such major failure. Evolutionists pushed back against it because it makes no sense on the theory, and that means it cannot now be easily accommodated.

One problem is that epigenetics is complex. The levels of coordination and intricacy of mechanism are far beyond evolution’s meager resources.

It’s not going to happen.

Another problem is the implied serendipity. For instance, one epigenetic mechanism involves the molecular tags places on the tails of the DNA packing proteins called histones. While barcoding often seems to be an apt metaphor for epigenetics, the tagging of histone tails can influence the histone three dimensional structures. It is not merely an information-bearing barcode. Like the tiny rudder causing the huge ship to change course, the tiny molecular tag can cause the much larger packing proteins to undergo conformational change, resulting in important changes in gene accessibility and expression.

This is all possible because of the special, peculiar, structure and properties of the histone protein and its interaction with DNA. With evolution we must believe this just happened to evolve for no reason, and thus fortuitously enabled the rise of epigenetics.

Another problem with epigenetics is that it is worthless, in evolutionary terms that is. The various mechanisms that sense environmental shifts and challenges, attach or remove one of the many different molecular tags to one of the many different DNA or histone locations, propagate these messages across generations, and so forth, do not produce the much needed fitness gain upon which natural selection operates.

The incredible epigenetics mechanisms are helpful only at some yet to be announced future epoch when the associated environmental challenge presents itself. In the meantime, selection is powerless and according to evolution the incredible system of epigenetics, that somehow just happened to arise from a long, long series or random mutations, would wither away with evolution none the wiser.

These are the general problems with epigenetics. In the case of the blind cave fish, however, there is possible explanation. It is a longshot, but since this case specifically involves the loss of a stage of the embryonic development, evolutionists can say that genetic mutations caused changes in the methylating proteins, causing them to be overactive.

This explanation relies on the preexistence of the various epigenetic mechanisms, so does not help to resolve the question of how they could have evolved. What the explanation does provide is a way for evolutionists to dodge the bullet presented by the specter of the cave fish intelligently responding to an environmental shift.

Such teleology in the natural world is not allowed.

So the evolutionary prediction is that these proteins will be found to have particular random changes causing an increase in their methylation function, in particular at key locations in key genes (i.e., the genes associated eye development).

That’s a long shot, and an incredible violation of Occam’s Razor.

My predictions are that (i) this evolutionary prediction will fail just as the hundreds that came before, and (ii) as with those earlier failures, this failure will do nothing to open the evolutionist’s eyes.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Your Own Evidence For Evolution

The Nature of Evidence

Charles Darwin would approve of this video showing evidence for evolution found in the human body.

Tasneem Zehra Husain, The Multiverse, and Plenitude

How Physicists Learned to Love the Multiverse

Tasneem Zehra Husain has an excellent article on the multiverse in this month’s Nautilus. In this age of the expert whom we must trust to give us the truth, Husain’s transparent and clear explanation of some of the underlying philosophical concerns regarding the multiverse is refreshing. I only wish that her writing was more aware of the historical plenitude traditions. Many of the philosophical concerns regarding the multiverse interact heavily with, or even are mandated by, plenitude thinking. Husain makes this quite clear, and locating this thinking in the historical matrix of plenitude traditions would further enrich and elucidate her explanation of the multiverse hypothesis.

Plenitude thinking holds that everything that can exist will exist. As Lovejoy observed, it had an obvious influence on a range of thinkers since antiquity, including Bruno’s infinity of worlds (read extra-terrestrials) and Leibniz’ view that the species are “closely united,” and “men are linked with the animals.”

Though I don’t suspect plenitude thinking had a direct influence on the initial development of the multiverse hypothesis, it doesn’t take a physicist to see a fairly obvious connection. If everything that can exist will exist, then why should there be only one universe?

But a more interesting interaction comes in how physicists evaluate and justify the multiverse hypothesis which, after all, isn’t very satisfying. With the multiverse, difficult scientific questions are answered not with clever, enlightening, solutions but with a sledgehammer. Things are the way they are because things are every possible way they could be. We are merely living in one particular universe, with one set of circumstances, so that is what we observe. But every possible set of circumstances exists out there in the multiverse. There is no profound explanation for our incredible world. No matter how complicated, no matter how unlikely, no matter how uncanny, our world is just another ho-hum universe. All outcomes exist, and all are equally likely. Nothing special here, move along.

As Princeton cosmologist Paul Steinhardt puts it, the multiverse is the “Theory of Anything,” because it allows everything but explains nothing. Given this rather unsatisfying aspect of the multiverse, how can it be defended?

Enter plenitude thinking. An important theme in plenitude thinking is that there should be no arbitrary designs in nature. If everything that can exist will exist, then no particular designs will exist where others are also possible.

This has become a powerful element in evolutionary philosophies of science. As Leibniz explained, the entire, continuous, range of designs should be manifest in nature, rather than a particular, arbitrary design. That would be capricious.

This rule holds unless there is sufficient reason for it not to (Leibniz’ PSR). If only one design can arise in the first place, due to some reason or technicality, then all is good—the design is no longer viewed as arbitrary. The problem is, we can find no such reason or technicality for our universe. It seems any old universe could just as easily arise.

Plenitude thinking mandates that the designs we find in nature should fill the space of feasible designs. We should not find particular designs where others are possible. But this seems to be precisely what we find in our universe. It is a particular design where others are possible. Theoreticians have been unable to find any reason for why this design should have occurred.

If we say the universe was designed, then it is a design that is arbitrary, and that violates the Principle of Plenitude. The solution to this conundrum is the multiverse.

This is how physicists can learn to love the multiverse. Yes it is a sledgehammer approach, but it satisfies plenitude thinking. Our universe is no longer arbitrary. Instead, the full range of universes exists out here. Husain beautifully explains this, and here is the money passage:

For decades, scientists have looked for a physical reason why the [universe’s] fundamental constants should take on the values they do, but none has thus far been found. … But to invoke design isn’t very popular either, because it entails an agency that supersedes natural law. That agency must exercise choice and judgment, which—in the absence of a rigid, perfectly balanced, and tightly constrained structure, like that of general relativity—is necessarily arbitrary. There is something distinctly unsatisfying about the idea of there being several logically possible universes, of which only one is realized. If that were the case, as cosmologist Dennis Sciama said, you would have to think “there’s [someone] who looks at this list and says ‘well we’re not going to have that one, and we won’t have that one. We’ll have that one, only that one.’ ”

Personally speaking, that scenario, with all its connotations of what could have been, makes me sad. Floating in my mind is a faint collage of images: forlorn children in an orphanage in some forgotten movie when one from the group is adopted; the faces of people who feverishly chased a dream, but didn’t make it; thoughts of first-trimester miscarriages. All these things that almost came to life, but didn’t, rankle. Unless there’s a theoretical constraint ruling out all possibilities but one, the choice seems harsh and unfair.

Clearly such an arbitrary design of the universe is unacceptable. (By the way, Husain also adds the problem of evil as an associated problem: If the universe was designed, then “how are we to explain needless suffering?”)

The multiverse solves all this. Yes, the multiverse is an unsatisfactory, sledgehammer approach. But it saves plenitude, and that is the more important consideration.

Husain’s article is a thoughtful, measured explanation of how physicists today are reckoning with the multiverse hypothesis. But make no mistake, religion does the heavy lifting. The centuries old plenitude thinking is a major theme, running all through the discourse. That, along with a sprinkling of the problem of evil, make for decisive arguments.

The multiverse is another good example of how religion drives science in ways that are far more complex than is typically understood.

Tim Ingold’s Question For Andy Gardner Says It All

A Not So Hidden Agenda

Anthropologist Tim Ingold’s question for Andy Gardner at last week’s “New trends in evolutionary biology” Scientific meeting at The Royal Society should disabuse those who still don’t get it. Gardner had finished his talk, “Anthropomorphism in evolutionary biology,” in which he acknowledged the design in biology. But if Gardner's organisms are actually designed, an agitated Ingold demanded, then how would Gardner’s explanation for their origin be any different from William Paley’s natural theology which invoked design?

Anyone who has interacted with evolutionists knows this moment all too well. The metaphysics and religion are always there for evolutionists, crouching at the door and ready to strike at any moment. Whether in lecture, seminar, or writings, the agenda is painfully obvious. As Eva Jablonka put it, “Not God—we’re excluding God.”

Evolution isn’t about the science—it never was. It doesn’t matter what the science shows, evolution must be true. Religion drives science, and it matters.

Here’s That Study That Found Pseudo-Pseudogenes

Evolution is Getting Demolished

It is one of the strongest arguments for evolution: dysteleology, the apparent lack of design in the biological world. And the most obvious and compelling examples of such dysteleology are in the genome. And the most celebrated examples of dysteleology in the genome are the pseudogenes—genes which are broken. They are the long since abandoned junk of the genome. And the most obvious example of such brokenness is a stop codon that has accidentally arisen somewhere in the middle of the gene. These so-called premature termination codons (PTCs) halt the production of proteins in mid-stream. And the most abundant source of pseudogenes is the olfactory receptor families—genes involved in detecting odors. All those pseudogenes are a sure sign that no designer worth his salt would have constructed such a world. Evolution must be true, as evolutionists from Charles Darwin to Jerry Coyne have proclaimed. There’s only one problem—such examples of junk always turn out to be false.

At evolution’s foundation is the claim of lack of function, and that is a terrible argument. First of all, it is metaphysical rather than scientific. It is not a positivist argument—evolutionists have no idea how genes, or anything else for that matter—actually evolved. The argument is that such nonfunctional structures would never have been designed or created. That conclusion does not come from science, and cannot be tested by science. It is a religious argument.

But in addition to the metaphysics, showing that a structure has no function makes no sense to begin with. For one would have to watch the structure, in the organism, for the entire life of the organism. And one would have to be able to measure function—all possible functions. Needless to say, no evolutionist has ever done that.

But it gets worse.

Not only is the dysteleology argument religious and nonsensical, it is also false. At least in the cases that have been investigated. Over and over, the long lists evolutionists make of nonfunctional structures just get shorter and shorter.

That brings us to pseudogenes.

For sometime it has been known that not all pseudogenes are pseudogenes. That is, not all pseudogenes are junk. Some pseudogenes have been found to be performing useful functions. But typically these are onesies, twosies.

Now, a new study has found something more interesting—a PTC in an olfactory receptor pseudogene that, in certain contexts, is not actually a termination codon after all. The gene has a stop codon, and yet the gene is successfully used to create a protein. The translation process somehow can read-through what normally would be a stop codon. The paper suggests this is accomplished with a near-cognate tRNA, which inserts an amino acid rather than causing a halt:

We suggest that read-through is due to PTC recognition by a near-cognate tRNA that allows insertion of an amino acid instead of translation termination.

What appeared to be a pseudogenes is actually functional. It is a pseudo pseudogene.

Furthermore, and importantly, this is not an isolated case. They found other examples, and conclude this could be a “widespread phenomenon.”

Pseudogenes are generally considered to be non-functional DNA sequences that arise through nonsense or frame-shift mutations of protein-coding genes. … We identify functional PTC-containing loci within different olfactory receptor repertoires and species, suggesting that such “pseudo-pseudogenes” could represent a widespread phenomenon.

Widespread phenomenon? This adds yet more support to the Project Encode suggestion, which evolutionists immediately pushed back on, that most of the genome is functional rather than junk as evolutionists had insisted (for example, see here, here, and here).

Pseudogenes comprise only a small fraction of the genome, but they have served as the poster child of junk DNA, and proof of evolution.

Instead, once again history appears to be reliable guide as pseudogenes appear to be going down the same path as those other supposedly “nonfunctional” structures. Instead of nonfunctional, pseudogenes are beginning to look like they may have a rather sophisticated function that was not apparent to evolutionists.

Of course function is often not apparent to evolutionists because they view biology as an accident. Organisms are built on a vast number of chance events so of course they will be found to be full of mistakes.

But in its inexorable march of progress, science always seems to find function. Evolution seeks lack of function, which makes no sense, and science just keeps on finding more function. Evolution and science, it seems, are in an eternal conflict.

Don’t expect contriteness anytime soon though. For evolutionists, the finding of function was never a problem. It simply is an example of evolution finding function for what was nonfunctional. The junk was repaired and took on some new function. In fact, it remains powerful evidence for evolution because it is obviously so quirky. When the supposedly “backward” retina of the mammalian eye was found to be incredibly sophisticated, evolutionists didn’t miss a beat. After all, it was still a kludge of a design. As Richard Dawkins put it, “it is the principle of the thing that would offend any tidy-minded engineer!”

So it really doesn’t matter how much function is found, and how optimal a design is. For man has found nature to be wanting, and so it must have formed by chance. This, in a nutshell, is Epicureanism.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

The BBC on Evolution: Chris Stringer Puts the Hammer Down

Right There in the Mirror

British anthropologist Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London, a leading proponent of the “Out of Africa” hypothesis, is by any measure a leading light amongst evolutionists. And so not surprisingly religion drives his thinking. He made that clear in Chris Baraniuk’s article for the BBC about why evolution is a fact. As Baraniuk writes:

By comparing how many genes organisms share, we can figure out how they are related. For instance, humans share more genes with apes like chimps and gorillas than other animals, as much as 96%. That suggests they are our closest relatives.

"Try to explain that in any other way than the fact that those relationships are based on a sequence of changes through time," says Chris Stringer of the Natural History Museum in London. "We have a common ancestor with chimpanzees, and we and they have diverged since then from that common ancestor."

In other words, according to Stringer, genetic similarities between humans and apes cannot be explained in any way other than evolution. This sentiment, which runs all through evolutionary thought, is not scientific, it is metaphysical.

Stringer and the evolutionists insist that there is no explanation, other than evolution, for similarities we observe between species, such as the high genetic similarity between humans and chimpanzees.

And since there is no explanation, other than evolution, then we must conclude that “We have a common ancestor with chimpanzees.”

That must be the conclusion.

But this claim makes reference to the set of all possible explanations. You’ve got evolution, and then you’ve got all the others.

This means that Stringer and the evolutionists must have knowledge of all those explanations. All possible theories of origin are known to them.

Creationism comes to mind, but of course there could be different versions of creationism. And of course there could be other theories still.

A scientist, qua scientist, cannot have such knowledge. This is why Mr. Nelson was so careful to teach you in seventh grade science class that “The Scientist” works from observation to hypothesis to prediction to experiment. Scientists deal with hypotheses and theories, which they deduce and test.

They don’t make all-encompassing truth claims. The claim that Theory A explains Observation B is scientific. The claim that no theory except Theory A explains Observation B is metaphysical. A slight change in the language makes an enormous difference in the claim.

One is scientific, one is religious.

But it gets worse.

Because, as stated above, Stringer and the evolutionists are making claims about creationism. Stringer’s point is that God would not create genomes with so much similarity. This claim traces back to the Principle of Plenitude. That is the label that historian Arthur Lovejoy gave to a long running religious tradition in the history of thought about, simply put, how God would design the world.

The Principle of Plenitude is very much with us today, as much as it was with Plato, Anselm, Bruno, and Leibniz.

Evolutionists aren’t merely making some vague claims about colored marbles in an urn. They are making very specific claims about what God would and would not do.

That’s religious.

But it gets worse.

Not only are Stringer and the evolutionists driven by religious sentiment, but it forces them into a completely untenable position. If you genuinely want to test theories against the evidence, it is evolution that fails. In this case we’re talking about the comparisons between the species. How are they similar, and how are they different?

And these data demolish evolutionary theory.

The data do not fit the evolutionary model, not even close. One way to measure this is with the so-called consistency index, which consistently shows, pun intended, no consistency. The observables are closer to the random “null hypothesis” model than to the evolution model.

So while evolutionists criticize the skeptics for being religiously-driven, anti-science, smuggling metaphysics into science, and insisting on terrible theories, all those criticisms are, actually, right there in the mirror.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

A Question For Larry Moran

Wanna Play Ball Scarecrow?

Recently Larry Moran, Professor in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto, asked for assistance. Professor Moran will be attending the upcoming “New trends in evolutionary biology” Scientific meeting at The Royal Society, and he has asked for help in deciding what question to pose to the speakers. For Douglas Futuyma, who will be defending the status quo against the scientific evidence, Moran already has a couple of ideas, such as:

As you explain in your textbook, describing the pathways to modern species contributes to the FACT of evolution and the FACT of descent with modification but how those genetic changes actually occur and become fixed is part of evolutionary theory. Do you distinguish between evolutionary theory and the actual history of life?

Moran, like Futuyma, defends the belief that the species arose by chance. As the all-caps help to illustrate, he is a modern-day Epicurean. And I’m sure Professor Moran would not disagree that this is a softball question—a setup for Futuyma to rail on those who think the scientific evidence is actually a problem for evolution. But Moran is mistaken here, as this is not a debate against creationists.

This line of defense—that scientific failures are relevant to the theory of evolution, but not to the fact of evolution—is standard theory protectionism, routinely used by evolutionists when they are presented with any of the many empirical problems with their Epicurean theory.

Not only is this argument a revealing own-goal (it provides a live demonstration that evolution is not exposed to the empirical evidence and is not falsifiable), but it is not relevant in The Royal Society meeting since the bad guys, in this case, are fellow evolutionists who simply are beginning to reckon with the science.

They completely agree that evolution is a fact. So Moran can set aside the silly canards about “the FACT of evolution and the FACT of descent with modification.”

On the other hand, Darwin’s God suggests a slightly different approach. If Moran wants to ask a meaningful question of Futuyma, why not query his fellow Epicurean where and how he discovered that “the Creator” would not likely have bestowed “two horns on the African rhinoceroses and only one on the Indian species.” That was, after all, one of Futuyma’s points in his book, Science on Trial.

And if there is time for a follow-up Moran might, as diplomatically as possible, ask the ardent evolutionist why anyone should take him seriously?

Religion drives science, and it matters.

New Study Reveals How the Shape of My Nose Arose

The Nose Knows

It is ironic that Charles Lyell, whose seminal, if flawed, work in geology—the barrister is sometimes known as the father of modern geology—positively influenced Charles Darwin’s development of evolutionary theory—the young Darwin read Lyell’s book as he sailed around the world in the H.M.S. Beagle—and who helped to arrange for Darwin’s first formal, if awkward, presentation of his theory—an event precipitated by Wallace’s Ternate letter—was one of the last of the intelligentsia to accept Darwin’s new formulation of Epicureanism, known as evolution.

At one point an exasperated Darwin asked Lyell—it always comes down to metaphysics—if he believed “the shape of my nose was designed?” If Lyell did think so then, Darwin added, “I have nothing more to say.” The infra-dignitatem, or infra-dig for the irreverent, argument, which insisted that it was beneath the dignity of the Creator to stoop so low as to dwell in the details of the world, had been promoted by no less than the father of natural theology John Ray and Platonist Ralph Cudworth, and in Darwin’s day was in full swing. Its influence on the young Darwin was clear in the naturalist’s early notebooks, and here in his appeal to Lyell. One look at one’s nose is all one needs to know about origins. Obviously we evolved. Now, a century and a half later, science finally has its say in the matter.

A new study out of, appropriately enough, England, now reveals the underlying genetic details that influence the shape of our noses. It seems there are four genes that influence the width and length of our olfactory device and, as the press release informs us, “The new information adds to our understanding of how the human face evolved.”

Glad to have that cleared up. Religion drives science, and it matters.

A Response to VJ Torley

One Long Argument

To read VJ Torley’s analysis of my criticism of S. Joshua Swamidass’ recent article, Evidence and Evolution, one would think that I mercilessly berated a poor fellow who was merely attempting to “extend an olive branch to creationists.” After all, nowhere did Swamidass belittle or ridicule his opponents, and nowhere was there so much as a trace of the smug superiority. And the guy is a Christian, not some atheistic reductionist. In fact, Swamidass does not even draw any conclusions in his article.

This is how Torley begins his article and unfortunately this gives those who have not read the two articles the wrong impression. I gave a lengthy, fact-based, scientific criticism of Swamidass’ claims which was not dismissive or sarcastic. I did not accuse of Swamidass of belittling or ridiculing anyone, nor did I accuse him of smugness, academic or otherwise. And I did not question his religious beliefs. All of this was injected by Torley.

As for drawing conclusions, yes contrary to Torley, Swamidass draws conclusions. He states in no uncertain terms that the evolutionary story “is by far the best scientific explanation of our origins.” In fact, the evidence is stunning:

What is the evidence for human common ancestry with apes? The strongest evidence is a series of stunningly accurate predictions about human genomes that have been confirmed in recent decades as the human and ape genomes have been sequenced.

The idea that Swamidass does not draw conclusions is inaccurate. Swamidass goes on to suggest that microevolution is sufficient to explain the evolution of humans from a small, ape-like creature.

Throughout his piece, Swamidass uses a scientist versus theologian, Warfare Thesis perspective. Scientists simply refer to the data whereas theologians must adjust their sights, drop their denial, and grapple with the undeniable truths of evolution. To object is futile and attempts to explain humans as a product of design are “lawyerly”:

A common lawyerly objection to this evidence is that these similarities are “equally” explained by common “design.” As scientists, our response to this objection is data.

Perhaps the theologian “could look for errors in the scientific analyses,” but even that would be futile:

Still, even if he [the theologian] found standing for quibbles here and there, the overall picture would remain the same and the evidence against common ancestry, at best, would be subtle and debatable.

Swamidass presents a story in order to “reduce the fear some feel when encountering evidence that might contradict their understanding of the Bible.”

This is all Warfare Thesis, and Torley finds it to be “irenic in tone, easy to follow, deeply learned, and absolutely right.”

On the other hand Torley throws occasional ad hominems my way and finds that my critique of Swamidass’ piece was “polemical and curtly dismissive in tone.” In fact, my criticism was about Swamidass’ arguments. I pointed out that his scientific claims were erroneous and that ultimately his arguments relied on metaphysical claims.

This is not to say there cannot be improvements in my article. It is, after all, a blog post. I’m thankful for feedback and corrections to my errors. But Torley’s casting of the two articles is simply a misrepresentation. It seems that his criticism of my post is, in fact, more applicable to his article.

What about the science?

Torley next castigates me for ignoring the main scientific evidence Swamidass presents. And what is Torley referring to? A series of references Swamidass made. So instead of addressing the key scientific claims made by Swamidass (which I did), I am supposed to do an expansive analysis on several references Swamidass provided as backup.

In fact I was planning on getting to those references at some point, time permitting, as they are yet more examples of failed science. But Torley’s requirements and criticisms are unrealistic.

Torley next quotes from one of Swamidass’ references, imagines what my response would be, and argues with it. This is getting silly. Normally I would not respond to this type of article, but this is different since it appears so close to my article.

Torley finishes with a series of erroneous rebuttals, ad hominems, and strawmen arguments. To be sure, Torley makes some good tangential points, but they are unfortunately the minority in a series of failed arguments.

Not surprisingly Torley shares Swamidass’ theological convictions which underwrite their claims. Their contrastive reasoning, if correct, proves their case. As Torley writes:

On a special creationist account of human origins, there is absolutely no reason to expect that humans would have what appear to be the remains of genes used for making egg yolks in their DNA – just as there is no particular reason to expect that humans would be more genetically similar to chimps than rats are to mice – or for that matter, than foxes are to wolves, or horses are to donkeys. [emphasis in original]

No reason. If Torley is correct here then, yes, we can safely conclude for evolution. Likewise:

Reasoning on Bayesian grounds, these striking and singular facts have a high probability on the hypothesis of common descent, but are surprising (and hence improbable) on a hypothesis of separate creation. One can only conclude that these facts lend scientific support to the hypothesis of common descent.

True enough. Such reasoning is perfectly valid, but it hinges on metaphysical premises. From a scientific perspective, evolution and common descent are unlikely to say the least, but from a metaphysical perspective, they are compelling.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

“Evolution” of Darwin’s Finches Tracked at Genetic Level

Fat, Drunk and Stupid

One thing we can all agree on is that the infamous finches on the Galápagos Islands are a classic icon of evolution. The difference is that evolutionists are playing the fool. Ever since Darwin wondered aloud that if the different types of finches he saw on the Galápagos Islands were not merely variants of a species, but in fact different species, then it “would undermine the stability of species,” and therefore the finches (and everything else) must have spontaneously arisen, evolutionists’ dullness has been embarrassing. Like the co-worker who reveals his ignorance as he rambles on about his pet peeve, evolutionists positivistic proclamations about the finches reveals an astonishing level of ignorance.

Darwin’s findings on the Galápagos Islands told him precisely nothing about how the finches, or anything else for that matter, could spontaneously arise as he would claim. Instead, it was all a silly, eighteenth century, non-scientific, religious argument. God would never create those finches, so they must have evolved.

To this day evolutionists continue to parrot this silly argument as though it has any relevance to modern science. And so not surprisingly, they import their centuries-old, religious views into today’s science, failing to comprehend what it actually means. Witness yesterday’s news item from the leading journal, Nature, which begins:

Researchers are pinpointing the genes that lie behind the varied beaks of Darwin’s finches – the iconic birds whose facial variations have become a classic example of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection.

A classic example? It is a classic example of how utterly non scientific evolutionary “theory” is. The article discusses particular genes that have been identified as influencing the size and shape of the finch’s beak. And it rehearses the myth that changes that occurred in the finch populations over the course of recent drought years reveal “evolution in action”:

Shifts in this gene underlay an evolutionary change that researchers watched in 2004-05, during a drought that ravaged the Galápagos Islands, where the finches live. The beak sizes of one population of finches shrank, so as to avoid competing for food sources with a different kind of finch – and their genetics changed accordingly.

Of course there was no “evolution in action.” This is evolutionary mythology.

The finch’s beaks altered in response to the drought. The finches were still finches. No new finches arose, and no new beak designs arose.

This is not a story of random mutations luckily finding a new, improved, design that was then fixed in the population via natural selection. Preexisting genes influenced preexisting beak designs in preexisting finch species. And when the drought ceased the populations cycled back to their pre drought designs. New designs were not created.

But that is the science, and evolution never was about the science. Evolutionist’s on-going claims about the Galápagos finches are non scientific and, frankly, ridiculous. The finches truly are a classic icon of evolution. They don’t reveal a case of evolution in action, but rather evolutionary thought in action.

Lawrence Krauss: The Universe is Inhospitable

The Religious Beliefs of an Atheist

Lawrence Krauss just finished his opening statement in the “What’s Behind It All? God, Science,and the Universe,” and he once demonstrated what drives evolutionary thought. His arguments from dysteleology said it all. The universe, the physicist from Arizona State University explained, is inhospitable. It is not user-friendly, and in most places, would kill you instantly. And we all know that a Creator would never do such a thing.

Evolutionists have no idea how the world could have spontaneously arisen. They have no idea because the science flatly contradicts evolution. But their metaphysics mandates evolution.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Jason Rosenhouse: “I Think You Get the Idea”

The New Priesthood

I once heard an evolution professor insist that all of the biological evidences support and confirm the theory of evolution. Since then I found that this view occupies the consensus position. All of the findings in the life sciences are exactly what we would expect from an evolutionary perspective. You can see it everywhere from textbooks to evolutionary journal papers. A good recent example of this thinking comes from professor Jason Rosenhouse.

The idea that all of the biological evidences are exactly what evolution would expect is a misrepresentation of the science. The misrepresentation is striking given the extent to which the evidence contradicts evolutionary theory. You can see examples of these contradictions here.

It is important to understand that evolutionists are not merely saying their theory is an interesting idea that merits investigation. They are not merely saying their theory deserves to be considered or has some degree of merit. Such circumspect sentiment is not, and never has been, what evolutionary thought is about. Evolutionary thought is about high truth claims, with complete certainty, which contradict what we know about the world.

This cognitive dissonance is maintained by evolutionists using two moves. First, because evolution is taken to be true from the start (for non scientific reasons), the evidences naturally undergo interpretation and filtering.

The body of evidence, as understood by evolutionists, is what philosophers refer to as theory laden. For instance, contradictory evidences are often set aside. They may be viewed as incomplete, erroneous, not normative, or anomalous. One way or another they are not ready for prime time.

For example, evolutionists compare homologous genetic sequences between species to evaluate their evolutionary relationship. But the very act of comparing homologous sequences ignores, and filters out, the many sequences for which there is no homology.

The second move is to discount and delegitimize scientific objection as insignificant or nefarious. If you point out the many scientific problems with the Epicurean belief that chance events, coupled with natural laws, explain the origin of the world, then ironically the tables will be turned and you will be blamed for having the religious agenda.

Rosenhouse expresses these points, in typical fashion:

every scrap of evidence discovered by scientists points strongly in that direction [naturalism and evolution]. If evolution is false, for example, then it should have been trivially easy to disprove. And yet every scrap of data we have is consistent with what evolution tells us to expect.

Every scrap of evidence points strongly in the direction of naturalism and evolution? Even though I have seen such claims many times now, I still wince. They are, as they say, not even wrong. This is one of those rare times where superlatives really are appropriate. This is not just absurd, it is very absurd. Not just a misrepresentation but a perversion. Not just a lie, but a damn lie.

From the age-old evidence of breeding and twentieth century fly experiments to the more modern protein evolution studies and the violations of the common descent pattern across the species (a mere four of many examples), the “scraps” of evidence we actually have unequivocally do not point in the direction of naturalism and evolution.

This is simply a bald faced lie.

Rosenhouse then proceeds to discount the actual science as insignificant and merely the product of those religiously-driven creationists trying to prove their creator. What would evolutionists do without the Creationists?

Of course there is a reason for all the machinations. Evolutionists do not insist their modern-day Epicureanism is a fact, in spite of everything around us, without reason. Not surprisingly, that reason is really no different than that of the Epicureans. Modern thinkers have substantially elaborated on the theological details, but it boils down to religious beliefs about how a Creator would and should interact with the world.

First, if a creator were specifically design and create a world, it certainly would not look like this one. Beyond that, a truly great god would not use miracles anyway, and even if he would, the lowly things of this world are beneath his dignity to begin with. Furthermore science becomes impossible with an interventionist god.

The arguments go on and on, and they mandate a naturalistic origins. So not surprisingly, Rosenhouse explains that whatever concerns one might have with evolution, the real problem lies with the alternative:

For example, those biomolecular systems we were talking about never look quite so impressive after you study them in detail. … However superficially implausible they [the problems with evolution] seem, the only alternative on offer is much harder to believe.

After all, we just can’t really understand God:

Whatever mysteries you think you have found in the naturalistic view of life pale in comparison to what happens when you try to comprehend an entity with the attributes God is said to have.

For instance, how can God cause physical actions if he has no physical existence?

God is said to be mind without brain. For all the experience we have with actual minds and actual brains, that just looks like a contradiction in terms. God has no physical existence, yet acts of His will can cause whole universes with finely-tuned fundamental constants to appear where there was nothing before. How does He do that?

And what is the connection between His will and the creation of matter? Did you ever think of that?

What’s the connection between His will and the creation of matter? God knows what everyone is thinking at every moment of every day. How is that possible? How can he process and store all of that information? He exists “necessarily,” whatever that means, in contrast to the more mundane sort of existence we see all around us each day. I could go on multiplying the implausibilities, but I think you get the idea.

Yes, we certainly do get the idea. Evolutionists are driven by religious dogma in spite of the obvious evidence staring right at them. As even Rosenhouse must admit:

Personally, I find it incredible that the four fundamental forces of physics, operating from the moment after the Big Bang, could rearrange matter into everything that we see today. That unintelligent causes can ultimately lead to the creation of intelligent creatures, who can then rearrange matter and energy in clever ways, is, I entirely agree, hard to believe. And Darwinian evolution strains credulity as well. I am very sympathetic to the view that natural forces do not construct delicate, biomolecular machines.

But of course none of that matters because, after all, don’t forget the creationists. We must not allow God to interact with the world.

Young children are content with magical, supernatural explanations for things. But as we grow up most of us come to realize that invocations of God never really explain much of anything. They just create big mysteries where only small ones existed before.

Of course they are evolutionists, their religion requires it. Religion drives science, and it matters.

Biologos and Science: The Case of the OOL

Evolution is at a Tipping Point

Evolutionists claim their theory is a fact and one way they support this claim is by construing the relationship between religion and science according to what is known as the Warfare Thesis, a mythological retelling of history where scientific skepticism is marginalized as anti intellectual. But the Warfare Thesis is more than merely a perversion of history. When Biologos appeals to the Galileo Affair, for example, to support its evolutionary beliefs it is propagating a false history, but the misrepresentations do not stop there. The Warfare Thesis also relies on a false witness of science.

The Galileo Affair is the posterchild of the Warfare Thesis myth. As the story goes, poor old Galileo was a great scientist just doing his job when, after inventing the telescope, discovered the Earth goes around the Sun and this led to a firestorm of religious opposition from biblical literalists who naively and dogmatically referred to those passages of Scripture that say the Sun revolves around the Earth, and all this led to merciless persecution, torture and imprisonment of Galileo.

Furthermore, just as the literalists opposed poor old Galileo in the seventeenth century, so too they are opposing the innocent evolutionists today. If you admit that Galileo was right about heliocentrism back then, then you must agree that evolutionists today are right about mutations creating the species. It is just good solid science at work.

But this is a false argument on every count. First, this retelling of the Galileo Affair that we hear so often today is all wrong. Galileo did not invent the telescope, he did not discover, or otherwise prove, heliocentrism, he was not just a humble scientist, the serious opposition and legal problems he faced did not stem from biblical literalists, the Scripture does not say the Sun revolves around the Earth, and Galileo was not tortured and did not go to jail.

Yes, there were those who viewed heliocentrism as violating scripture, but generally they were easily dissuaded. There was much more serious resistance that Galileo would face. For example, his ideas unquestionably violated Aristotelian physics and ideology which not only was still active but at times had been elevated practically to the status of official church doctrine. Furthermore (i) Galileo’s caustic personality, and his penchant for humiliating people and making enemies (including his one-time friend, the Pope), (ii) the fact that leading astronomers of the day by no means were in agreement on this cosmological question and often held to opposing views, and (iii) the turbulent politics of the day, all conspired to make the going tough for Galileo.

It is misleading and a misrepresentation of history to hold up the Galileo Affair as an example of biblical literalism opposing scientific progress. Yet there it is.

But false history is not the only fruit of the Warfare Thesis, it also leads to false science. Just as historians prevaricate on the history, scientists prevaricate on the science. Consider, for example, the origin of life (OOL) problem.

The spontaneous generation of life was once accepted, but Darwin contemporary Louis Pasteur demonstrated it does not happen. His Law of Biogenesis stated Omne vivum ex vivo (all life from life), and the burden of proof fell to the evolutionists to prove that over time evolution gets lucky, or that there was something different about the early Earth that changes the rules. Well the early Earth was indeed different, but not in ways that help evolution. And deep time doesn’t help either. Evolutionists have been trying to demonstrate the plausibility of life arising spontaneously, over millions of years, from non living chemicals for almost a century now with no luck. And luck is exactly what is needed, an astronomical amount of luck.

Evolutionists have explored every conceivable mechanism, and then some, to tackle the OOL problem. Perhaps life evolved in a warm little pond, or in bubbles, or in crystals, or at deep sea vents, or in clay, or by hypercycles, or from comets. Some have even said it must have been planted here by extra terrestrials because otherwise the OOL problem requires a miracle to solve.

Not only have evolutionists failed but we now have an enormous body of work confirming what common sense (and Pasteur) indicated all along—the most complicated thing in the universe probably didn’t arise spontaneously by chance events.

But none of this changed the evolutionist’s high claims that their idea is a fact, beyond all reasonable doubt. Scientific evidence didn’t seem to matter. In fact for many years evolutionists were not shy about claiming victory, in spite of the obvious failures. Mainstream evolutionists, organizations, and textbooks insisted the OOL problem was essentially solved, with only the details to be ironed out.

That, of course, was an enormous misrepresentation of science. More recently evolutionists have fortunately been more forthcoming about the empirical findings. They have agreed that the problem has not been solved, and that solutionists are not right around the corner.

For evolutionists that was quite a concession, but it did not change their overall truth claims. Evolution is still an undeniable fact and the misrepresentation is now at more of a philosophical level. This is obvious, for example, at the BioLogos presentation on the evidences for evolution. which makes this argument:

The fact that there is no answer today does not mean there will be no answer tomorrow. Though an explanation for the origin of life is currently elusive, this does not mean divine intervention is the only possible explanation.

The religious agenda is obvious. God must not be an intervening God—special divine action must not be allowed. The state of the art must not be reported as indicating any serious problem for OOL; rather, the problem merely has not yet been solved. This opens the door to scientific misrepresentations which come next:

Although we do not know the path that led to these early bacterial forms, it seems likely DNA had emerged as the information molecule by this time. Microbiologist and physicist Carl R. Woese suggests there was a considerable amount of lateral gene transfer among the first forms of bacteria called archaebacteria. Lateral gene transfer, which is the movement of genes from one bacterium to another, would have enabled the exchange of genetic material, and it would therefore expedite the process of diversification of biological function acted upon by natural selection.

Most in the BioLogos audience won’t recognize the falsehoods in these technical claims. It is easy to fudge the facts when no knows any better but these are, nonetheless, serious misrepresentations. No, it is not “likely” that “DNA had emerged as the information molecule by [a 100 million years of the Earth cooling].” That would be a tremendous breakthrough in OOL research if that were true.

But it isn’t true.

There is no experiment or even calculation show that this is likely. In fact it is the exact opposite. Such a scenario is not likely by today’s science, and that is one of the many problems for OOL.

Next, to say that Carl Woese called for “a considerable amount of lateral gene transfer” is another misrepresentation. Woese called for an entirely different scheme which might be called lateral gene transfer on steroids. This is important because Woese’s idea has no analog in reality. Nothing of the sort has ever been observed in the field or synthesized in the laboratory. What Woese needed was a fanciful world of communities of unicellular organisms which somehow spontaneously arose and then engaged in a highly organized, complex process of sharing genetic material which, if not carefully controlled, would have wreaked havoc even if it somehow could have arisen spontaneously (for which Woese presented no evidence).

The article concludes with more philosophical and fallacious misrepresentations:

Life on this Earth appeared approximately 3.85 billion years ago, yet serious scientific study of its origins began just 60 years ago. A convincing scientific explanation may still emerge in the next 50 years.

Question: What do 3.85 billion, 60, and 50 have to do with each other? Or more to the point, why would an older event require more time to figure out? Would the OOL problem be easier if it was supposed to have occurred 1 billion years ago? And why is 110 years required to solve the problem rather than 60?

The answer, of course, is that this is simply more machinations to avoid the clear and obvious fact that the scientific state of the art does not support evolution. Another machination is the use of false dichotomies:

it is dangerously presumptuous to conclude the origin of life is beyond discovery in the scientific realm simply because we do not currently have a convincing scientific explanation. Although the origin of life is certainly a genuine scientific mystery, this is not the place for thoughtful people to wager their faith.

Wager their faith? Beyond discovery? Dangerously presumptuous? These warnings speak volumes for here we have a window into evolutionary thought. We must be evolutionists for otherwise we would be lost in a world of fideism where one’s very faith is staked to scientific failure. No wonder evolutionists are committed naturalists—their religion depends on it.

Finally, there is the ultimate argument which firewalls OOL off from evolution.

Finally, as a purely technical matter, the theory of evolution does not propose an explanation to the question of the origin of life at all. The theory of evolution becomes relevant only after life has already begun

As if sensing a problem, and just in case we were beginning to have doubts, we are told to forget about the whole thing. Forget about all those journals, conferences, textbook claims about the origin of life, popular books and newspaper articles, speeches and blogs. It all has nothing to do with evolution after all.

Evolutionists believe that the species, life, the Earth and planets, the Sun, the galaxies, yes the entire universe arose by chance events. There is no limit to what evolution can create, but when problems arise, the topic is simply dismissed as extraneous to the theory.

The fact, which evolutionists are at pains to avoid, is that OOL research has not merely failed to find a solution. It has positively succeeded in scientifically demonstrating that such a solution is unlikely. That is, according to today’s state of the art. Could that all change with future findings? Of course. Are philosophical end-arounds available such as redefining “evolution,” or invoking the anthropic principle and multiverse? Again, of course. But none of this changes the scientific facts.

Evolution is at a tipping point. In recent years evolutionists have increasingly had to admit that OOL research has not succeeded. The problem has not been solved save for a few minor details. Nor is there an obvious solution just around the corner.

But what evolutionists have not admitted to is what this implies about the fact of evolution. Evolution never was a fact and evolutionist’s insistence that it is has always been metaphysical. But the OOL problem is a good case study to make this crystal clear. It is abundantly obvious, to any objective observer, that evolution is not a fact. But evolutionists will not go there. At least not yet.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

BioLogos: Ex YEC Tells All

From the Frying Pan to the Fire

Movements need converts and evolutionists are now revealing yet another ex young Earth creationist who has seen the light. Growing up he was an enthusiastic apologist for creationism. As a teenager he spread the word on the radio and made trips to Kentucky to work with Ken Ham’s young-earth creationism (YEC) organization. He believed YEC was the only acceptable interpretation of the Bible. Without it he would lose his faith.

When he went to college for his biology degree his parents thought the teaching might sway him to evolution. But instead, he became even more convinced. His conversion to evolution would come later, when he went to seminary.

It was then that he realized the scriptures presented a far grander story and that evolution revealed a greater god. It was invigorating think of science as exploring the unknown and God became all the more wondrous. Science provided the mechanism by which life develops, and religion provided the agency behind the mechanism. It all fit so well. Science and religion were not in opposition, but rather complemented each other.

He also realized that it is a dangerous fallacy to demand that evolution provide answers to every possible question. Just because evolution cannot explain every detail does not mean it is false. And in fact evolution does provide good answers based on solid scientific research.

That, in a nutshell is the evolution story. It is the story of one man’s journey to Epicureanism, but it is also the story of countless others, including Charles Darwin. The road goes through religion, not science. It was the seminary rather than the biology degree that convinced the young man that the world arose spontaneously. It is not science, but religion that drives men to absurdity. And once there, it seems so right. After all, it makes for a more wondrous theology and it frees up our scientific inquiry. Epicureanism is needed for both God and man.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Metaphysics From John Ray to Nima Arkani-Hamed

An Ad Hoc, Capricious Creation

When John Ray refused to conform to the 1662 Act of Uniformity—aimed mainly at the Puritans—and so was forced to leave his position at Cambridge University, he roamed Europe for three years doing what he loved: observing nature. Ray and his companions were in for a surprise: unfathomable diversity. They found thousands of different kinds of insects, animals and plants. Every place had a different flora and fauna, and with different interactions. Life did not seem to follow the kind of compact formulas Isaac Newton was discovering for the new physics. With the overthrow of Aristotelianism, physics was becoming more parsimonious in line with Occam’s Razor. But biology was headed in the opposite direction. Were all these organic life forms and their detailed life histories really necessary? Ralph Cudworth had warned that the immense details of the world, while refuting Descartes’ rejection of final causes, were surely beneath the sovereign Creator’s dignity, and Ray’s three-year tour upped the ante. The Infra Dignitatem argument for a less hands-on creation story was born. There must have been something between the majestic Creator and this ad hoc, capricious, gritty creation. Like the Gnostics, the Aristotle of England, who would also become the father of natural theology, called for a separation between the Creator and the world.

The ancient Greeks described the cosmos as a set of concentric spheres that rotated and rubbed against each other producing harmonious tones. We have always wanted a simple, beautiful world. Certainly that is what God would have wanted too. But nature has not lived up to our expectations.

In fact ever since Newton, physics has been backsliding and becoming increasingly complex. All this was well explained in a Quanta magazine article from last week about leading physicist Nima Arkani-Hamed:

in recent years one question about the universe has come to preoccupy him, along with the field as a whole. Particle physicists seek to know whether the properties of the universe are inevitable, predictable, “natural,” as they say, locking together into a sensible pattern, or whether the universe is extremely unnatural, a peculiar permutation among countless other, more mundane possibilities, observed for no other reason than that its special conditions allow life to arise. A natural universe is, in principle, a knowable one. But if the universe is unnatural and fine-tuned for life, the lucky outcome of a cosmic roulette wheel, then it stands to reason that a vast and diverse “multiverse” of universes must exist beyond our reach — the lifeless products of less serendipitous spins. This multiverse renders our universe impossible to fully understand on its own terms. As things stand, the known elementary particles, codified in a 40-year-old set of equations called the “Standard Model,” lack a sensible pattern and seem astonishingly fine-tuned for life. Arkani-Hamed and other particle physicists, guided by their belief in naturalness, have spent decades devising clever ways to fit the Standard Model into a larger, natural pattern. But time and again, ever-more-powerful particle colliders have failed to turn up proof of their proposals in the form of new particles and phenomena, increasingly pointing toward the bleak and radical prospect that naturalness is dead.

Like Ray’s seventeenth century findings about biology, today’s physicists are finding what seems to be a capricious creation. There is no natural explanation as the world seems to consist of a long list of ad hoc, randomly selected designs. One thing they know for sure: no creator would have done this. It must have arisen by chance.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Jim Stump: “I almost felt sorry for design advocates”

F6 Thinking

In his recent review of Benjamin Jantzen’s Introduction to Design Arguments (Cambridge University Press, 2014), evolutionist Jim Stump finds much to agree with because, as Stump argues, design arguments are both bad science and bad religion. For example, Michael Behe argues that evolution is challenged by the irreducible complexity of biological structures, but “almost all” biologists think Behe’s examples don’t hold water. The problem is Behe is implicitly appealing to a caricature of how evolution works that views complexity arising all at once. “In reality,” the ex Bethel professor explains, “natural selection operates on combinations of traits, not merely on isolated structures. Half-developed wings won’t help an insect fly, but they might help it do other things that contribute to its survival, like skim across the surface of water. Contrary to the ID claim about irreducible complexity, you don’t have to get the whole thing at once.”

Furthermore, even if Behe is right, he can merely conclude that design is the best explanation available. The history of science is full of best explanations that were later rejected because a previously unconceived explanation arose. Therefore Behe’s claim is considerably weakened. Stump finds Jantzen’s analyses to be cogent and by the end “almost felt sorry for design advocates as the soft underbelly of their arguments was exposed.”

Unfortunately what the philosopher demonstrates here is not a helpful and insightful commentary on design arguments but rather the usual sequence of evolutionary misrepresentations.

It begins with Stump's appeal to authority. This is a common evolutionary argument, but the fact that a majority of scientists accept an idea means very little. Certainly expert opinion is an important factor and needs to be considered, but the reasons for that consensus also need to be understood. The history of science is full of examples of new ideas that accurately described and explained natural phenomena, yet were summarily rejected by experts. Scientists are people with a range of nonscientific, as well as scientific influences. Social, career, and funding influences are easy to underestimate. There can be tremendous pressures on a scientist that have little to do with the evidence at hand. This certainly is true in evolutionary circles, where the pressure to conform is intense.

Next, Behe does not appeal to a caricature of how evolution works as Stump describes. In his development of the problem of irreducible complexity, Behe specifically addresses the adaptation of pre existing structures. Indeed, Stump’s representation of ID as claiming that with evolution you must “get the whole thing at once” is itself a caricature.

Furthermore Stump’s view that “natural selection operates on combinations of traits” is nothing more than the usual Aristotelianism dressed up in Darwinian language. Natural selection doesn’t “operate” on anything. And Stump’s credulous explanation of how “Half-developed wings won’t help an insect fly, but they might help it do other things that contribute to its survival, like skim across the surface of water” is simply a just-so story. There is no scientific evidence that this ever actually occurred in history, and it adds enormous serendipity to evolutionary theory. Does that make it impossible? Of course not. But that’s not the point.

The final critique of Behe is that he can only present design as the best explanation and is therefore vulnerable to the problem of unconceived explanations. Is not Behe’s claim considerably weakened?

This coming from an evolutionist is hypocritical for contrastive thinking is foundational to evolutionary thought. If Behe’s claim is considerably weakened then evolution is demolished.

Stump concludes with the usual Leibnizian / Kantian appeal to naturalism. Reminiscent of the final scene in Inherit the Wind which has the victorious Spencer Tracy clutching a Bible, we are told that the divine hand is evident in the created order, not in the failures of nature:

We see God’s hand throughout the created order not because science can’t explain nature, but because it can. The Designer’s mark is not in systems that don’t work quite right and need tinkering; those are signs of imperfection.

If naturalism fails, then nature fails. And if nature fails, then the Creator has failed. It’s the seventeenth century all over again.

Jeffrey Taylor Sympathetically Reviews Jerry Coyne’s Book Against Religion

Ball Don't Lie

Jerry Coyne, having supplied the world with yet another tome proving that evolution is true—and by true Coyne and the evolutionists mean as true as the existence of gravity or the computer screen sitting in front of you, in other words there is not much nuance there—has now moved on to the next target: religion. In his new book Faith Versus Fact, Coyne rides the mythical Warfare Thesis (which holds that religion, except for in its anti realism form where it merely is the keeper of some vague set of values we might want to think about, opposes science and the two are incompatible) to take the battle to the believers. You can read a polite review in The Atlantic by Jeffrey Taylor. Taylor’s review is polite because, like Coyne, he also is an evolutionist and atheist. Unfortunately, that means that Taylor misses the key point that readers must understand if they are to make sense of Coyne’s new book, and evolutionary thought in general.

Coyne’s earlier book on why evolution is true did not add any new arguments or evidences to the evolution apologetic. The book was an excellent contribution to the genre, with its unique arrangement of the evidence and Coyne’s good writing style. And it gathered more evidence in one place than most treatments. But conceptually, it pounded the same themes that date back to Darwin, Hume, Wolfe, Malebranche, Lucretius, and many more.

And those themes are deeply metaphysical. The most obvious of them is the problem of evil and how evolutionists view it as requiring a distant god. The world must have arisen spontaneously, on its own, so to speak, because their god never would have intended for this gritty world. (You can read more about how Coyne handles the POE here, here, here and here, for example).

The key point to understand when reading the evolution genre is that it is motivated by, and relies on, this sort of religious belief. I call it a key point not only because the religious assumptions are fundamental and essential to evolutionary thought, but because they often are misunderstood. After all, isn’t the argument against an active Creator motivated by science, not religion?

No, science makes no such mandate, or provides no such evidence.

But what about evolution?

Evolution is founded on theological and philosophical claims about God and creation. From a scientific perspective it is not plausible. But from a religious perspective it is a fact.

So when Coyne rails on those of faith, and argues that religious beliefs are no longer tenable, he is making a hypocritical argument. He is a religious person, no less so than any high priest ever was, driven by deeply held metaphysical convictions.

Like evolution, atheism is also grounded in metaphysics. A typical example comes from atheist PZ Myers’ opinion piece in the LA Times where he made the case for atheism from the problem of evil:

We go right to the central issue of whether there is a god or not. We're pretty certain that if there were an all-powerful being pulling the strings and shaping history for the benefit of human beings, the universe would look rather different than it does.

That is a religious argument. Myers, who comes from a Lutheran background, draws a conclusion that depends on what he believes about God. God wouldn’t create this world, so there must be no God.

Aside from the hypocrisy, atheism is founded on a fallacy. For its conclusion, that matter and motion are all that exist, does not support religious beliefs about God. If materialism is all there is, then Myers cannot know anything about God. Myers could not know what God would or wouldn’t do. Atheism is vacuous and collapses on itself. Nor is this problem anything new for atheism. Historian Alan Charles Kors, for example, found that eighteenth century French atheism had come from the church and its culture. Kors wrote:

[My] inquiry led not to a prior history of free thought ... but to the orthodox culture of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in France. It was, above all, within the deeply Christian learned culture of those years that there occurred inquiries and debates that generated the components of atheistic thought. It was, to say the least, not what I had expected; it indeed was what I found. … Before one can understand the heterodoxy of early-modern atheism, one first must understand the orthodox sources of disbelief.

Atheism is a referendum on religious belief and specifically, in most cases, a referendum on Christian religious belief. That referendum is based not on some logical fallacy or historical failure of Scripture, but rather on our rejection of the Creator. God wouldn’t do it that way.

Elsewhere Taylor makes this point repeatedly. He is concerned there is a lack of understanding about atheism. Taylor argues that people need to understand and appreciate the reasoning behind atheism rather than cast atheists simply as failed theists. We must understand the underlying rationale:

Nowhere does Taunton posit the most obvious conclusion one may reach about the growing prevalence of atheism today: namely, that the tenets in which the Christian tradition demands faith may have ultimately appeared to young people to be untenable. Christianity requires that we, in the twenty-first century, after having mapped the human genome, sent probes to Mars, and discovered the Higgs Boson, believe in human parthenogenesis and tales of a man turning water into wine, calming raging seas, curing lepers, and raising the dead. It requires that we believe that God chose to redeem humankind by means of a human sacrifice.

This monumental failure called atheism is all the more striking when it appeals to scientific findings, as though somehow those findings mandate the atheist’s religious convictions. As per the quote above, Taylor somehow sees molecular biology and other advances of science as mitigating against the virgin birth, crucifixion, and atonement of Christ? We’ve discovered genetics and space travel, so therefore miracles aren’t possible? You’re kidding, right?

Unfortunately, no. The atheists are quite serious in their sophism.

As they say in science, this isn’t even wrong. Such a critique would be too generous. These atheist arguments are the stuff of late-night dorm room sessions where freshman argue strenuously about that which they do not understand. The heat of the argument is exceeded only by the ignorance.

Most people eventually grow up. Not so with the atheists and evolutionists.

It’s not that Coyne, Myers, Dawkins, Taylor and the rest are not smart people. They certainly are. But their religious convictions have them stuck in a fool’s game. After two thousand years, they continue to repeat the absurdities of their Epicurean forefathers.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Paper: Spontaneous Creation of the Universe From Nothing

A Two Thousand Year Old Project

Two thousand years ago the Epicureans believed that the world arose spontaneously. Their idea was that randomly veering atoms attained a great variety of configurations by chance, and would eventually find themselves forming stable, functional structures. And while this may seem unlikely, the immense universe provided a great many opportunities for those configurations to come about. In Cicero’s dialog, the Epicurean explains this to his stoic opponent:

You [stoics] would surely have no need of the activity of such a figure [a skilled craftsman] if you would only observe how unlimited, unbounded tracts of space extend in all directions. When the mind strains and stretches itself to observe these distances, it journeys abroad so far that it can observe no ultimate limit at which to halt. It is in this boundless extent of breadth, length, and height, then, that innumerable atoms of infinite quantity flit around. … There is space between them, yet they latch on to each other. In gripping each other they form a chain, as a result of which are fashioned the shapes and forms of things which you Stoics believe cannot be created without bellows and anvils. So you have implanted in our heads the notion of an external lord whom we are to fear day and night; for who would not stand in awe of a god who is a prying busybody, who foresees and reflects upon and observes all things, believing that everything is his business?

Cicero’s dialog reveals how little has changed in two thousand years and just how enduring certain metaphysical themes are. The Epicurean complains to the stoic that he does not appreciate the great size of the universe, that chance events are capable of producing functional structures, and that therefore there is no need to believe a sovereign Creator or “external lord,” who we must fear, is needed.

Though the terminology has changed, the ideas have not. This dialog from Cicero could have been written today. What goes around comes around.

Like the Epicureans, evolutionists believe that the world arose spontaneously. Darwin fulfilled this mandate for the origin of species. But the origin of everything else has been described by modern day Epicureans in the centuries before and after Darwin.

Evolutionary thought is by no means restricted to the species. Consciousness, life, the planets, the galaxy, and even the universe and its natural laws all are hypothesized to have arisen spontaneously.

This is a rather heroic mandate. It seems we do not live in a universe where functioning structures just happen to assemble. Not without other very clever structures to make it happen.

Yet evolutionists do not give this a second thought. They believe all this happened, even though the science does not support them. Last year this movement continued with a new paper entitled “Spontaneous creation of the universe from nothing.” According to evolutionists, this paper provided the mathematical proof of what they already had assumed to be true.

So there you have it. Evolutionists believe not only that giraffes, sharks, violets and moles spontaneously arose; they not only believe consciousness, love and emotion spontaneously arose; they not only believe life itself spontaneously arose; they not only believe the Sun, stars and cosmos spontaneously arose; they believe the entire universe itself spontaneously arose.

Religion drives science, and it matters.