Intelligent design hypothesis-conclusion of reflections

Intelligent design hypothesis-conclusion of reflections

After posting a few reflections on ID over the last month or so, I'd like to conclude for now with these thoughts.

Scientific endeavor is about hypothesis, measurement and testing. It always begins with a problem or question, and it should be a worthy one. A philosopher whose name escapes me (Popper?) said that doing research into the cubic volume of books in a library would be a theoretical subject for study, but pointless. Agreed. Not all research is worthwhile. But big questions about origins are worth asking, and we had better get the answers right since one of the options floating around out there is that we have a creator to whom we are accountable and who plans to bring us into judgment in eternity. Surely as the Christian philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal suggested in his 'wager', if that option is even anywhere near the table we had better take it very seriously? We ought at least not be willing to be thrown off the track by bluster, censorship and slogans.

As the guitarist Joe Satriani sang in 'I Believe'

'I've been out walking, for hours.

got something on my mind.

how did we get here

where are we going?

and why is life so hard?'

Fair questions, and old ones. We exist, our existence in this astonishing universe and marvelous planet seems very improbable but nevertheless here we are. we had to have originated somehow-so was it God or was it Chance? Its a question worth asking, and getting the right answer matters. As Dr Vij Sodera says (see link below) 'It doesn't matter what you believe as long as what you believe is true.'

It's probably true to say from anthropological studies and history that most humans since the beginning of humanity have assumed that we have a creator. Belief that the universe and its inhabitants were created by atoms sticking together whether entirely accidentally or through some impersonally 'life-force' (deism) go back to the ancients. I came across the idea that we had formed from atoms in Marcus Aurelius and I understand that Epicurus was an atheist who accepted some form of evolution. 

But obviously the idea was developed by Darwin in his 1859 book 'Origin of Species' that humans and other life forms developed by natural selection acting very slowly on naturally occurring variations and became known as the theory of evolution. And it is clear, notwithstanding the contradictions of professing Christians who say that molecules to man evolution is compatible with biblical Christianity, that the theory of evolution explains away our existence without recourse to a Great Maker or creator. In my opinion that has always been its purpose.

So what of ID? Clearly ID does not exist in a vacuum, it is primarily an  attempt by mainly (although not exclusively) Christian believers to falsify evolutionary theory by using the scientific method. Let's not be coy about this-but this is NOT an admission that ID arguments are inadmissible because they are tainted by the motives of their advocates, since CLEARLY the advocates of evolution are equally open to a charge of wanting materialism/atheism to be true.

to summarise

1) The intelligent design (ID) hypothesis is not religious. If its advocates have religious or philosophical motivations, then so equally do evolution advocates. Similarly, if ID has metaphysical implications, so equally does evolution theory. It is therefore NOT LEGITIMATE to exclude consideration of ID arguments and questions by smearing them as creationism in disguise.

2) ID makes observations and asks questions about structures in the natural world, particularly nanomachinery and information in living cells.

3) ID posits that unguided evolutionary mechanisms could not possibly have made the living things that we observe, and that unguided molecule to man evolution by natural selection acting on random mutations is therefore falsified. (*)

4) ID also notes, using similar arguments to Lyell and Darwin (the present is the key to the past) that we can observe the process and results of purposeful design today. Applying the lessons learned from studying design today, we find that living things share aspects of devices and structures that we know from direct observation were designed and made. We therefore deduce that the living things which we did not see originate were most likely designed by a superior intelligence. We deduce this on the grounds that we know from direct observation that complex, purposeful structures with numerous working parts routinely arise from intelligent design but are never seen to arise from unguided processes as evolutionists claim must have happened in the unobservable distant past.

I could go on but will leave it there for now.

Intelligent design  was a given for the Psalmist (e.g. Psalm 19:1 'the heavens are telling the glory of God') and the Apostle Paul (Romans 1: 8-22 where he argues that the divine nature is obviously seen through the things that have been made).

Going beyond the intelligent design hypothesis, the bible believing Christian notes that we have good reasons for believing that the God of Abraham, Moses, David, Isaiah, Daniel etc is the creator and has spoken to us, most notably and finally through His Son Jesus, who was raised from the dead and is coming again to judge the living and the dead. This Jesus and His Apostles repeatedly warned about false teachers and false prophets who would come particularly in the last days before the end of the world and would lead many astray. Paul wrote to the church at Colossae (Col 2:8)

'Take care that no one takes you away by force, through man's wisdom and deceit, going after the beliefs of men and the theories of the world, and not after Christ:'

I'd like to leave this discussion on ID there. For more information the UK centre for ID and the excellent book by Dr Vij Sodera which comprehensively documents the scientific evidence against evolution 'One Small Speck to Man: The Evolution Myth.'

Intelligent design basically shows, using scientific arguments and facts, why evolution theory doesn't work. Ask yourself, why is ID routinely vilified, misrepresented and censored in the main stream media? Ask yourself if you have ever seen a TV programme consider the arguments being put forward in support of the ID hypothesis. No, we are just constantly bombarded with evolutionist propaganda.

God or Chance? This is much too important to be left to the people who tell society what to think. If ID can be falsified by empirical science, for example by demonstrating a meaningful new structure self assembling without design input, then let it be so falsified. But if ID is being shouted down and suppressed by arrogant establishment bullies, then maybe consideration could be given to the possibility that evolution is an elaborate deception promoted and sustained by powers who want to stop you thinking about Christianity perhaps being true. If it is, then we will be giving account to God for our wrongdoing, including our culpable unbelief, sooner than we think.

(*) it is conceded that many ID advocates including Michael Behe, accept many aspect of evolution including long ages and a common ancestor, hence my carefully qualified description of evolution, a word that is claimed to mean many different things. I think Behe is wrong to accept long ages and common descent, but that does not invalidate the facts and arguments set out in his books and lectures.

What is the intelligent design hypothesis?

OK, so what is the intelligent design hypothesis?

This question can best be addressed by studying the books at the heart of the movement. These would be (in my view and I would suggest by common consent)  'Darwin's Black Box' and 'The Edge of Evolution' by Michael Behe and 'Signature in the Cell' by Stephen Meyer. 

Cue snorts and retorts from the 'Behe has been refuted many, many times.' brigade. Behe has indeed been cursed, derided and misrepresented many, many times but his arguments have not been refuted, even if they have had to be modified to a limited extent. I'll come to that later. We are discussing what kind of thing ID is: the question of whether its principal protagonists are right or wrong in their arguments is obviously very important but peripheral to the question 'Is intelligent design religion?'

In 'Darwin's Black Box' Behe considers several biological processes in detail and asks whether Darwinian mechanisms (natural selection acting on random mutations) are capable of having built such systems. By meticulous study of the details of the systems, which include the clotting of blood, sight (photosensitivity) and the immune system. Behe develops the concept of 'irreducible complexity' in which we find that sophisticated machines in which  many parts work together to achieve a particular outcome tend to fail completely when one part is removed or wrongly assembled. Behe uses the analogy of a regular mouse trap to lead into the much more sophisticated nanomachinery of a bacillary flagellum. If any one part of the mouse trap, let alone the flagellum is taken away, or is even slightly wrong (for example, if the spring of the mouse trap is too strong or too weak, the trap does not catch FEWER mice, it catches NO mice.

As an example of the poor reasoning which opponents of Behe and intelligent design are willing to use rather than admit he might have a point, one opponent (Ken Miller) has made a video in which he uses a broken mouse trap as a tie clip. He claims that this refutes Behe's irreducible complexity argument, although in fact he is only using typical Darwinian 'could have' assertions. On another web site I saw a series of drawings which claimed to show functional mouse traps in varying degrees of functionality. But none of the traps would in fact have worked. Presumably their proposers know this because these 'might have been' traps remain drawings. Nobody to my knowledge (I'm happy to be corrected on this, comments are not moderated or censored) has made working models and used them to catch real mice. I don't think any of them would work. What's more, any spring based trap has to actually be SET and BAITED, which can't be explained without an intelligent external agent. More importantly, the mouse trap analogy is many orders of magnitude less sophisticated than the simplest biological system.

But even if we can debate the validity of the mousetrap analogy, we note that Behe hasn't got anywhere near talking about religion or creation. He is just testing a scientific hypothesis-that biological structures like the eye can develop gradually by steady slow improvement, or whether this (like the fake mousetraps referenced above) is merely a philosophical abstraction which would not deliver working structures that progresses from good to better to best by unguided processes in real life.

meaningful versus meaningless complexity

Stephen Meyer mainly uses mathematical arguments in his book 'Signature in the Cell' . The book could in my view do with being about 40% shorter, but the long preamble is all about the mathematics. Meyer studied the discovery of DNA at Cambridge and his central argument is about meaningful versus meaningless information. This is very important when we are talking abotu probabillity. If we could assign a number to the precise spatial arrangement of all the grains in a cubic metre of sand, it would be a stupefyingly massive number with effectively zero probability of it being repeated randomly. Nevertheless, the number evidently did occur once. This argument or one like it is used against those who (like me) assert that the probability of life assembling itself is so small that it can be discounted, because 'Given enough time, anything could have happened'. However, this sand number is utterly meaningless. Plot the spatial arrangement of grains in a billion, billion, billion etc cubic metres of sand, they will all have highly complex and rare numbers but all be the exact same kind of dead inanimate thing. Meyer successfully explains the difference between random complexity and purposeful complexity.

In the nucleotide sequences found in DNA, we also have stupefyingly unlikely numbers, BUT they carry coded information which DOES something. When transcribed and used to build amino acids in correct sequences into proteins by intracellular nanomachinery (which has all the appearance of being purposefully designed and does in fact behave purposefully) we see that the information carried on DNA is PURPOSEFUL.

Meaningful information is never seen to emanate from a non intelligent source.

Having explained what we mean by a meaningful piece of information (which could be as simple as a rhyming couplet) Meyer argues that there is no example in any field of human study where a meaningful piece of information has ever arisen from a non intelligent source. He argues from this that if we use the same principles that Darwin and Lyell used in their reasoning (the key to explaining effective causes in the distant unobserved past is the study of effective causes/repeatable events today) then we should logically deduce that since meaningfully complex things ARE routinely seen to arise from designing intelligences but NEVER observed (where we know the cause by direct observation) to arise from non rational causes, we should reasonably conclude that the high order magnitude meaningfully complex things that we see in nature had a designer.

Random DNA changes are observed to degrade information

As Behe, Meyer and other ID advocates observe, even relatively small changes in the DNA nucletotide sequences lead to wrongly assembled proteins which will not function normally. In another book which uses ID arguments 'Genetic Entropy: the Mystery of the Human Genome' by geneticist john Sanford, the author speaks of 'near neutral' mutations. these are analogous to small, infrequent spelling mistakes which we initially compensate for but which will inexorably and inevitably convert a meaningful piece of written information into illegible junk. The same thing is happening with the human genome, and it would happen very much faster if it were not for the incredible DNA check and repair mechanisms we have which detect and correct most mutations.

The above is a very short overview of some of the arguments used by prominent intelligent design advocates. Although to my knowledge Behe, Meyer and Sanford are all Christians, the key arguments advanced in the books mentioned above do not rely on God, faith or the Bible but only meticulously reasoned science. In particular, the complex and purposeful nature of the information carried on DNA which instructs cellular nanomachinery to build correct proteins. 

DNA mutations are seen to be harmful, sometimes lethal.

If the information is corrupted by random alterations (mutations) the tendency is for the protein to become less functional or to fail completely, leading to less fit or dead plants, animals and people. The genetic disease Xeroderma Pigmentosum (caution, disturbing images)  illustrates this very effectively by showing us what happens when our DNA check and repair mechanisms do not work properly. 60% XP of sufferers are dead by age 20.

If ID is religious, is Darwinism anti-religious?

So far, we have seen no evidence that intelligent design hypothesis is religious. Admittedly, I have not proved it isn't religious, but all I have cited above (and you can read the books and judge for yourself) is a fair reflection of typical ID arguments. But if we accept that ID is not religious, does ID have a religious agenda? That's an interesting question, which must be considered with the opposite question 'Does evolutionism have an anti-religious agenda?'.

Richard Dawkins and Fairy Tales

 The amateur theologian and philosopher Richard Dawkins has been back pedalling after his comments against the practice of reading fairy tales to children have been widely criticised by some people who actually knew what they were talking about and had some evidence to support their views. He made the comments at a literary festival in Cheltenham. A link can be found here http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-magazine-monitor-27715735

Interestingly, there were some reflections on storytelling, willing suspension of disbelief, the meaning that fantastic tales can carry etc. in my last post about Godzilla, which was posted before these comments of Dawkins were reported. Anyway.....

I had to laugh when I heard that Dawkins said that children should not be read traditional fairy stories as, for example it was ‘extremely statistically improbable’ that a frog should turn into a prince. For this same Dawkins believes that hydrogen atoms turned into people, including princes, by random processes which utterly defy probability and cannot be demonstrated. 

Imagine the kind of bedtime stories that would be told if the old bigmouth had his way..... 

'Now listen carefully children. Once upon a time there was Nothing, then the Nothing exploded and made everything, including time and the laws of physics. Then the particles from the Big Bang clumped together and made stars, and the stars made heavy elements like iron, oxygen and tin. Then some of the stars blew up and showered bits of star dust everywhere, then some of the bits stuck together and made the earth (with its perfectly balanced moon). A load of water came to earth from somewhere and together with some volcano gas and sparks made the first amoebas, some of which turned into sponges, worms, jellyfish, snails, fish, frogs, reptiles, birds, apes and then finally you and I.  And there was no designer or god of any sort, it all just happened. Because it did.

This is not make believe, although I AM going to MAKE you BELIEVE it.

Good night children (depending on what we mean by 'good' in an evolutionary sense) and remember THERE IS NO GOD.'

He talks about 'improbable events' but famously refuses to debate with people such as Stephen Meyer who dare to challenge him on the mathematical probability of the processes which supposedly led molecules to man evolution, which is the Fairy Tale that Dawkins demands that all children are indoctrinated with from the earliest age. Meyer’s Book ‘Signature in the Cell’ used only mathematical arguments to show that the existence of the information on the DNA molecule is profoundly statically impossible without a designer. It is not a religious book, yet while both men were on US book tours, Dawkins refused invitations to debate Meyer’s arguments in public, writing him off as a ‘creationist’. Dawkins has elsewhere advised his followers not to enter rational debate with Christians or creationists but to abuse and insult them.

He says that instead of being taught traditional tales, which as one expert said can carry some moral and social values (e.g. Little Red Riding Hood teaches young girls to beware predatory male adult strangers) they should be taught ‘scientific rigour’.  However, as we saw over the Michael Reiss affair, in which Dawkins and others at the Royal Society forced an innocent man out of his job for merely suggesting that Darwin dissent in the classroom should be met with politely and a request for evidence. The Dawkins line is that children must be taught that Darwinian evolution is an unchallengeable dogma that may not be questioned. Even the fact of the existence of scientifically literate disagreement may not be acknowledged in the classroom.

Traditional Fairy Tales are introduced with the phrase ‘Once upon a time...’ which sets the scene for a willing and temporary suspension of incredulity. Dawkins' Fairy Tales are introduced with ‘This is supported by Mountains of Overwhelming Evidence-so don’t ask naughty questions, just believe!’
As I often say, people should read Darwin's 'Origin of Species' and see how often phrases such as 'may we not believe?...I have no difficulty in imagining...I can hardly doubt....' occur to make up for the lack of evidence. Indeed, one of the biggest Fairy Tales of all surround the idea that molecules to man evolution is somehow supported by rigorous scientific facts and repeatable observations. Dawkins is of course one of the greatest purveyors of this Mythos.

Dawkins’ back pedalling is interesting. Like a crafty politician he is always testing the limits to see how much of his agenda the public will tolerate. Just testing the water, although if he is able to drive the climate of opinion just a little further towards a totalitarian intolerance of Christianity.....? When it turns out he has gone slightly too far for the current climate of opinion, he uses the classic 'Oh I was misunderstood...taken out of context....only being ironic.....' strategy after being caught out and revealing his true heart of darkness. He doesn't REALLY want the children of believers taken into care. 'I only said teaching children about Jesus was tantamount to child abuse......' 

But on the other hand, His real target is  of course not traditional children's stories of dragons, witches, dwarves and ogres (although of course like all good atheists he hates the C S Lewis Narnia stories) but is the Christian religion, which he regards as a ‘pernicious’ Fairy Tale’. He wants the teaching of Christianity as truth to children banned. Outlawed. Criminalised. He is careful not to put it in quite so many words. 

Do not be deceived. Take a look at 20th century history to see what hard line atheists actually do when they get into power. One of the first things they always do is take complete control of the ideas to which children are exposed.

PS Dawkins doesn't want children to hear about princesses being rescued from dragons in enchanted castles in case it gives children ideas he finds unacceptable. So how does he feel about shoot-em-up computer games, World of Warcraft, Tour of Duty, Grand Theft Auto etc?

 

Radiation eating monsters versus Godzilla -film review

I saw the latest remake of the Japanese classic monster movie Godzilla last week and felt like writing a few comments about evolutionistic aspects of the film. Before continuing I should say I thought it a first class monster movie, and that I understand how we willingly suspend disbelief when storytelling is going on. However, the film was presented as modern-day realistic, and people clearly get at least some of their ideas about life from art, whether novels, songs, theatre or film. I am sure most of the audience felt they were getting a good adventure thriller, and so we were, but we also got a good dose of evolutionary reinforcement as well, largely subliminal.

CAUTION: This review may contain plot spoilers and you might prefer to see the film first.

The dramatically staged introduction included clips from the original Japanese black and white film ‘Gojira’ (fish lizard, nothing to do with any kind of ‘god’) and footage from the 1950s Pacific nuclear weapons tests. There was also a brief, almost subliminal, shot of the frontispiece of Charles Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’, including the subtitle ‘..or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.’ That bit of the title usually gets left out, not least due to that other world changing book with the word ‘Struggle’ (*) in the title. Anyway, introductions matter and we were being told that he story had something to do with evolution and radiation.

Some expert geologists/palaeontologists are helicoptered to a mine in the Philippines where a huge chasm has opened up, swallowing 40 workers and much machinery. Deep inside it (‘below the Cambrian’ as we were told) a truly gigantic fossil skeleton is found. They stand inside it’s rib cage which seems to go on for several hundred feet. There is also a huge cocoon like structure. We then learn that another similar structure has been discovered from which something appears to have hatched. We then see a gigantic trail of smashed trees and a vast furrow leading from the mine to the sea.

The next thing is that a nuclear plant in Japan collapses under what appears to have been an earthquake. The whole town is evacuated and kept sealed off. 15 years later we discover through a grief-deranged scientist whose wife died in the disaster that the radioactivity has disappeared and  a secret project is going on, studying and hopefully containing a huge weird cocoon like the one we saw in the Philippines mine. It hatches, from it emerges a gigantic winged and taloned monster that causes great destruction before flying away on huge leathery wings.

The injured researcher at last gets some answers. The pre-Cambrian MUTO (Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Object) has been awakened at the Philippines earthquake, hatched out, burrowed under the nuclear station to which it was attracted by radiation, and has been consuming the radiation. Yes, it ‘comes from a distant period in the earth’s past when radiation levels were much higher than today’ as the scientist played by Ken Watanabe tells us (or was it his assistant? Please excuse minor inaccuracies, I don't have a transcript). It eats radiation, that's why it was attracted to the nuclear plant. Now it has metamorphosed (we never got to see the earlier form it took, presumably sticking with this story line it was a mega caterpillar) and now having hatched into its adult form has gone looking for some more radiation to eat.

A Russian nuclear submarine goes missing, and is tracked to a remote island jungle where the MUTO is eating it, tearing off great lumps of metal and chewing and swallowing them. The overall reality of the plot and acting and the excellent special effects actually tend to make this evident impossibility reasonably credible. The grey beast has an oddly shaped flat pointy almost metallic head ( a bit like the Shadows in Babylon 5) and bizarre talons (slightly reminiscent of the mysterious monster in the rather nasty ‘monster destroys New York’ film ‘Cloverfield’).

Anyway, it turns out that there was another cocoon, which the secret researchers ‘vivisected’ and then stored in a nuclear waste facility. They go there to discover it has hatched out (what, after being 'vivisected'?), another even larger MUTO, and, horror of horrors, its a female. It has heard the other one’s call and heads to it. Lots of violence, buildings smashed, brave soldiers getting wasted trying to stop it, and airplanes falling out of the sky as MUTO emits EMP (electromagnetic pulses) which disable all electronic devices. ‘This will take us back to the stone age’ we are told by one researcher.

A plan is conceived to move a big H bomb to an offshore site, attract the monsters to it, then blow it up. Because of the EMP grounding planes and disabling electronics, a clockwork H bomb in a Minuteman missile is used. However the male MUTO grabs the bomb. The MUTOs mate (we are thankfully spared the sight) and a cluster of football sized eggs is laid around the missile, each with a vile monster embryo wriggling inside it. Certainly quite amazing to go from fertilised ovum to chicken sized hatchling in a couple of hours.

Godzilla turns up, bigger than an aircraft carrier, and fights the MUTOs, eventually killing both in dramatic fashion. He then gives a victory roar and swims off into the sunset, fulfilling scientist Watanabe’s hopes about Gojira ‘restoring the balance’. The monster is hailed as a ‘Saviour’ (and he does indeed appear to rise from the dead after sacrificing himself to save San Francisco, although not sadly its iconic bridge, destroyed in so many films of this kind.). 

Where do I start?

Godzilla is taller than a skyscraper, big enough to cause a tsunami. How would his blood circulate that kind of distance from heart to extremities. is he air breathing (apparently), if so how does he live unseen at 10,000 feet? What would he eat? And how could something so big, or rather a breeding population of them, survive undetected from the pre-Cambrian? OK, it’s only a monster movie, we can let that kind of stuff go.

regarding the MUTOs, the assumption that a living thing of any kind, let alone a very large one, could survive in a cocoon from the pre-Cambrian is really in the ‘The cow jumped over the moon’ category of, shall we say, very highly improbable. More to the point, the idea that such a creature (**) could ‘eat radiation’ is even more bizarre. The grammar doesn’t even make sense. You could in theory eat uranium, but first you’d have to extract it from the ore in which it occurs, a long and complicated task (as we know from discussions about Iran’s centrifuges).

 

But radiation isn’t in any possible sense a foodstuff-it is destructive, just like a bullet from a gun. Whether gamma rays, ultraviolet rays, or charged particles, it is a purely destructive process. But, aha, this is where a ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ comes in, for in evolutionary mythology (remember the homage to Darwin’s Origin of Species in the film’s introduction) mutations (the bad monsters are called MUTOs) are the primary, if not only, agent of change in progressive process whereby newer, fitter, more diverse organism arise. As Darwin wrote, ‘Until the favourable variations chance to arise, natural selection has nothing to work with’. And radiation certainly causes variations, although not favourable ones as many cancer sufferers know to their cost.

In evolutionary storytelling, mutations are good, therefore radiation is good. Only in real life we know that ain’t so. So who is willingly suspending disbelief, and to what end? 

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the Lord of the Rings trilogy although I am quite clear in my mind that there are no deathless elves, hairy footed hobbits or rings of power. I’m not complaining about seeing fantastic things in a fantasy film. But, although it might carry moral messages we could discuss, LOTR is clearly presented as fantasy. The 2014 remake of Godzilla is presented as somewhat realistic present day science fiction. I think it probable that people will to some extent have their ideas about the inevitability of evolution by natural selection acting on random mutations reinforced by some of the semi-subliminal messages in the film. I am not saying that the producer and director sat down and deliberately planned to make Darwinist propaganda, I’m sure they were more concerned with art, fame and money, but the message is there all the same. It is ubiquitous, and it is never questioned. The most effective propaganda is the propaganda of which you are completely unaware.

Nevertheless I thought Godzilla a pretty good state of the art sci-fi monster movie remake. I conclude by noting how many apocalyptic/end of civilisation films are being made these days. Something in the air? As Joni Mitchel sang in 'Woodstock'

 

'maybe its just the time of year, or maybe its the time of Man...'

 

 

 

(*) Mein Kampf (my struggle) by Adolf Hitler

(**) The term 'creature' means something created. Technically its incorrect for an evolutionist to use the term, or term s like 'designed', but they often do anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Water on Earth-where did it come from?

So where did the water on Earth come from?

I listened to a brief item early morning on Radio 4 last week with an interviewer and scientists talking about water in space. The context was the recent flooding in England and the water cycle, and the question came up about the total amount of water on earth.  The interviewer asked the scientist (sorry I wasn’t able to listen again and forget the name) how water came to be in the first place. It’s a question worth asking.

He said there were ‘... 2, maybe 3, theories’ about where the water came from. The first was that ‘when the earth and moon were formed by a planet the size of Mars smashing into a collection of rocks’ the water was present in the rocks and leaked out or something to form the sea. The second was that the water arrived in comets. (That would be an awful lot of comets, given how very few are seen-ever- let alone how few crash into the earth. Do any? And what about collateral impact damage from crashing comets? But we always have the appeal to 'deep evolutionary time' to sort out issues like that-ED.) The third, which he seemed rather vague about, was that the water had come out of volcanic magma. Or maybe the water came from asteroids. Whatever.

 

The interviewer appeared to share my feelings about the level of explanatory power of this stuff. She said ‘So we don’t have a clue then?’ He was unable to find a response to this and the item ended. It seemed to me that the scientist had merely reeled off a list of known celestial objects and said 'Any of them could have done it...although we have no evidence at all.'

There was no consideration of the possibility that the planet had been created by a superior being in something like its present form with water and other necessities to support organic life. This possibility was not mentioned, even to dismiss it. This demonstrates a pretty good example of  ‘the philosophical assumption of materialism’ by means of which any discussion about origins begins by axiomatically excluding the possibility of divine action. This assumption is understood to be too basic to need stating. 

n  I thought I’d do a little bit of research, and Googled on ‘origin of water’. Wikipedia came up first and began by saying

‘The origin of water on Earth, or the reason that there is clearly more water on the Earth than on the other planets of the Solar System, has not been clarified. There are several acknowledged theories as to how the world's oceans were formed over the last 4.6 billion years.’

 

I’m not going to quote from the article in detail or argue against its assumptions, but it certainly contains conflicting and contradictory ideas and illustrates the lack of evidence and indeed calls for citations. Evidence. Lack. Of.

The next item to come up was from the Smithsonian mag and included the following paragraph

“Water is so vital to our survival, but strangely enough, we don’t know the first thing about it—literally the first. Where does water, a giver and taker of life on planet Earth, come from? When I was in junior high school, my science teacher taught us about the water cycle—evaporation from oceans and lakes, condensation forming clouds , rain refilling oceans and lakes—and it all made sense. Except for one thing: None of the details explained where the water came from to begin with. I asked, but my teacher looked as if I’d sought the sound of one hand clapping.” (my bold-ED)

The author went on to state standard Big Bang theory, which has been summarised by creationists as ‘Once upon a time there was nothing, then the nothing became unstable, exploded, and made everything.’ Crude though this might be, I still think it is fair to ask where the 'something' came from, and how the laws of physics which as we all know are VERY precisely fine tuned for life came to be, and how you get order from a explosion. Anyway, we were told that water was made in the stars which earlier made themselves from the stuff thrown out in the 'Big Bang’. And then the water the stars made somehow got dumped on Earth and stayed there. Why it didn't all boil off into space wasn't explained, although no doubt some Darwinian 'might have's could be produced.

This 'maybe...could have been...probably did...must have done....' account of water's origin seems to me rather less satisfactory, less probable and to depend on more unseen and untestable entities (Occam's Razor) that the Genesis account of creation. And again, we return to the (usually unstated but always present) philosophical assumption of materialism. This essentially runs that there must be a materialistic explanation, however improbable and even if we have conflicting evidence and absolutely no idea what it is, because it MUST NOT have been God. This assumption was evident in the radio conversation that started me on this piece. 

A few other Googled 'origin of water' items made similar broad assertions about the origin of water on Earth and admitted to general ignorance. One on UCL suggested a different theory that water atoms has been present attached to the various bits of space dust that accreted together to form the Earth. The item mentions that Professor Nora de Leeuw had taught the standard theories of origin of water on Earth for years but increasingly seen that they did not fit the evidence, so developed a new theory which apparently is supported by some computer models.

Of course as with all origins science, it is not possible to test this theory one way or the other. Computer models are just that, however well designed they inevitably depend on inputs and assumptions. They can never re-create the original conditions or repeat unique historical events. They certainly can't rule out the creation of a mature cosmos, solar system and Earth at a moment in history consistent with the biblical genealogies (around 4,000 BC).

On the latter point, I don't want to go off at length about the age of the Earth today beyond repeating that (A) due to the shortage of time machines, all dating methods are based on assumptions about the distant past that we can't validate by repeatable testing, and (B) a deity of the power and wisdom of the One described in the Judaeo-Christian Scriptures 'could have' (if I may borrow that favourite Darwinian term) spoken into being the cosmos, Earth, sea and all that is in them in 6 days. If this happened then the cosmos and Earth, like mature trees, a breathable atmosphere and the first adult human couple, would INEVITABLY have seemed older than 6 days  due to the necessity of being fit for immediate use. Same as the water into wine miracle.

Observing Mars and Venus, our nearest planetary neighbours, is instructive. They are roughly the same size as Earth and not very different in their orbits of the Sun. We now know that neither have liquid water (*) and for various other reasons neither can support life (although we can still enjoy sci-fi written about Mars and Venus in earlier years-especially C S Lewis' brilliant Ransom trilogy). Conditions on Earth are VERY special in many ways, not least in the presence of large amounts of liquid water. Water is only liquid (i.e. not steam or ice) in a very narrow temperature range, one of many 'Goldilocks factors' pointing to design. Our planet certainly looks as if it was designed to support carbon based life including humans. Why is this possibility never considered in media discussions about origins?

 

Just as the Earth looks designed, the various speculations about a non-designed origin also look designed. Designed by the opponents of biblical Christianity to nudge men and women into believing that science has quite properly and by a process of reason and evidence ruled God out of the picture. Not only is this both incorrect and a logical fallacy, but ignores the fact that God has revealed Himself to us not only in nature but also though Israel, the prophets and through Jesus, who rose from the dead.


Why do those who control our mainstream broadcast and print media and education systems struggle so hard to prevent this  possibility even being discussed? In any discussion of origins, the unstated assumption is that God is not to be even considered as a possibility. It is a recurring themes of this blog that the continual repetition of this kind of speculation deliberately builds up the impression that science has disproved God and particularly ruled out creation. Both assumptions are simply not true.

Jesus said ‘I am the water of life. He who drinks of this living water will never thirst again.’ see John’s Gospel 4:10 and 7:37. Water is often used in Scripture as a metaphor for life. Anyone who comes to Jesus in penitent faith will be allowed to drink water from the River of Life (Revelation 22:1.) That is an immeasurably  better prospect than casting around in ever decreasing circles trying to find some explanation other than the one which we have been given in God’s account of creation in Genesis 1 and 2.

(*) Whether Mars has buried frozen water now and/or liquid water in the past is another matter. I have posted about the 'search for water and therefore evidence suggesting possible life on Mars' hype several times in the past.

PS there is plenty enough water on the planet for a global flood. All you need to do is raise the deep ocean trenches and lower the major mountain ranges and you get the whole planet covered. Speeded up tectonic plate activity could have done this and would also account for past continental drift e.g. America drifting away from Africa etc. Terrifying but plausible given a VERY angry God judging a wicked humanity (Genesis chapters 6 and 7). Jesus and Peter both compared the suddenness (although warned about) and finality of the Noah Flood to that of the coming judgment.

 People laughed about the Flood before it happened. Not subsequently. 'As it was in the days of Noah, so shall it be in the day of the son of Man' Matthew 24:37-44

 

More reflections on C S Lewis and the science versus religion paradigm

Christians from nearly all traditions, Catholic to Calvinist, love and quote the prolific writer and apologist C S Lewis. I say ‘nearly’ all traditions, there are a few who damn him for being a smoker, drinker, friend of the ‘papist’ Tolkien and the very unorthodox Charles Williams. Some who cite him approvingly might not if they had read some of the less orthodox views in his letters, for example on purgatory and prayers to saints. I once read an angry Bible Blogger who cursed Lewis for ‘believing in the Tao’. A more depressing misreading of what Lewis actually wrote about the Tao (a term he used in Mere Christianity and The Abolition of Man as a metaphor for the essence of the moral imperatives found in most religions) could hardly be imagined.

Much has been written about Lewis, perhaps too much, but as a long term fan I can see why. Today I want to add a little more to earlier reflections about him and science, including evolution. As far as can be ascertained from what he actually wrote, his view was nuanced but far from fully accepting of Darwinism. This reflection is based on the essay ‘Dogma and the Universe’ from 1943 which is in ‘C S Lewis essay collection: Faith, Christianity and the Church' (Harper Collins, 2000)

This essay addresses the position that Christianity is outdated primitive dogma while science is the active pursuit of truth, always finding out new things that Christianity cannot accommodate. Science, in this view, is beating back ‘superstition’ (i.e. religion) which is withering away. This is the ‘science versus religion’ metaphor, so beloved of dogmatic materialists. As Lewis put it in the first paragraph

‘For it seems to him (the outsider) that if our ancestors had known what we know about the universe, Christianity would never have existed at all....’

Certainly the sceptics of Lewis’ time deployed all the tactics and held all the views which our ‘New’ (actually not so new as any reader of Lewis can see) atheists use. Rubbing shoulders with other Oxford academics daily, Lewis was well aware of the assertions of modern science, quoting from Professor Sir Edmund Whittaker’s Riddell lecture ‘The Beginning and End of the World’ (1942) in which he acknowledged that the fundamental assertion of materialism that’...the world has existed from all eternity...’ had recently been withdrawn, making, as Lewis quipped ‘..contemporary science come into line with Christian doctrine’ (i.e. that the world had a beginning. It is worth noting the big bang theory was initially opposed by some atheists on philosophical grounds as it was thought to point to a creator).

Lewis remarked that people sneer at Christianity because the currently known size of the universe was much larger than was thought by our ancestors were in fact ignorant of what our ancestors actually thought. He wrote that this was ‘a simple historical falsehood. Ptolemy (2) knew just as well as Eddington (3) that the earth was infinitesimal in comparison with the whole content of space.'

He went on to write

‘There is no question here of knowledge having grown until the frame of archaic thought is no longer able to contain it. The real question is why the spatial insignificance of the earth, after being known for centuries, should suddenly in the last century become an argument against Christianity.’

Which brings us to the flat earth slander (which Lewis addresses in more detail in his essay ‘’Religion and Science’.

I was taught at school that until modern times everyone thought that the earth was flat, and that this was (A) because the church taught it because it was in the Bible, and (B) that this false belief held back science. In fact none of the above is true. The flat earth slander was invented in the 19^th century by the American writer Washington Irvine. It caught on like a house on fire. Even Wikipedia, not known for its sympathies for Biblical Christianity, states

‘Irving's writings on Columbus are a mixture of history and fiction, a genre now called romantic history/historical fiction. Irving based them on extensive research in the Spanish archives, but also added imaginative elements aimed at sharpening the story. The first of these works is the source of the durable myth that medieval Europeans believed the Earth was flat. (See Myth of the Flat Earth.)’

And

‘In his biography of Christopher Columbus, Irving introduced the erroneous idea that Europeans believed the world to be flat prior to the discovery of the New World. Borrowed from Irving, the flat-Earth myth has been taught in schools as fact to many generations of Americans.’

Lewis expresses interest both here and in another essay 'Religion and Science' in the speed at which this lie spread and became widely accepted. He observed that he found that the opponents of the Gospel would, like a policeman with a suspect he has arrested who will use anything he says against him, use whatever came to hand as a reason for rejecting faith. 'If the universe was teeming with creatures, that reduced the Christian claim that we are somehow unique to absurdity. On the other hand, ‘if the earth is really unique, then that proves that life is only an accidental by-product in the universe, and so again disproves our religion. Really, we are hard to please.’  Lewis was incredibly prescient about the propaganda tactics of today's atheists, but then again perhaps this is because there is nothing new under the sun and he had to endure the same misrepresentations in his day.

Back to the significance of the size of the universe, CSL wrote ‘Men look on the starry heavens with reverence: monkeys do not. The silence of the heavenly spaces terrified Pascal, but it was the greatness of Pascal that enabled them to do so.’ The universe of the Christian is great and sublime (see Psalm 8, Psalm 19 and Job 38-41) and points us to a Great Maker. Dawkins’ jibes about a ‘poky little mediaeval universe’ is typical of this self-besotted little man.

Lewis concludes that Christians have nothing to fear from an increase in scientific knowledge, but ‘It is those systems which place the whole meaning of existence in biological or social evolution on our own planet. It is the creative evolutionist, the Bergsonian (4) or Shavian (5), or the Communist, who should tremble when he looks up at the night sky.' We should not expect to understand all of God’s creative works, from atom to cosmos, we cannot expect all questions to be answered. Revelation from God is not to satisfy our 'liberal curiosity' but ‘appears to me to be purely practical, to be addressed to the Fallen Man, for the relief of his urgent necessities.’

In other words, as I believe Galileo may have said, ‘Science is about how the heavens go, the Bible is about how to go to Heaven.’

True religion, Lewis argues, is like mathematics. ‘There is a great difference between counting apples and arriving at the mathematical formulae of modern physics. But the multiplication table is used in both and does not grow out of date.’

He finishes the essay by warning us to flee from the wrath to come. Even the best science cannot help us here, but a false view of science may hinder us if it persuades us that science has ruled out God and a coming Judgment. I continue to argue that while being wrong (either way) about creation need not prevent us being reconciled to God, evolutionism is a potent cause of atheism and so therefore may help to keep some people from a saving knowledge of Christ. ‘No possible complexity which we can give to our picture of the universe can hide us from God.’ Citing Revelation20:11 the great polymath and beloved apologist reminds us that ‘in the twinkling of an eye’ we will each stand alone and naked before God, the righteous judge, to receive ‘bliss or horror’ according to how we lived our lives and what we did with Jesus. This, Lewis asserts in a conclusion reminiscent of the final verses of Ecclesiastes (5), is the real business of our life, not the endless pursuit of knowledge but getting right with the God who is our creator and will be our Judge. Wise man and fool, professor or pinhead, we can any of us do this by the means which God has so graciously made available, His beloved Son Jesus.

I hope to return to C S Lewis on science and evolution later. I repeat that I am not ‘claiming’ him as a young earth creationist, just saying that he is no friend to Darwinism and a vigorous and effective opponent of the sad and harmful ‘science equals materialism’ philosophy. I conclude this reflection by agreeing with my brother and sister Christians who (unlike me) accept Darwinism as good science, that getting right with God through Christ matters more than our view of science and origins. My contention is that accepting molecules to man evolution makes people less likely to feel the need to do so, and I suspect that C S Lewis might be on my side regarding that if he had engaged with the debate as it is today. 

(1) 'The Magician’s Twin: C S Lewis on Science, Scientism and Society' edited by john G West (Discovery Institute Press, 2012) is the best study of Lewis on the 'science versus religion' argument I have seen yet.

(2) Ptolemy lived in Alexandria in the second century AD)

(3) Arthur Eddington died in 1944

(4) Henri Bergson wrote a book ‘Creative Evolution’ which is probably the biggest load of impenetrable ravings and balderdash in my collection of research books. It’s as incoherent and rambling as the similar Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s ‘Phenomenon of man’ next to which it sits in my naughty library, but worse written. Incidentally, Teilhard de Chardin (a Jesuit priest and progenitor of theistic evolutionism) was probably involved if not the main perpetrator of the Piltdown Man Fraud, but that is a story for another day...

(5) Shavian-to do with George Bernard Shaw

(6) Ecclesiastes 12:12-13 'And further, my son, be admonished by these. Of making many books there is no end, and much study is wearisome to the flesh. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every work into judgment, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.'

 

 

Darwinism on Shetland, BBC propaganda on Countryfile

Most Sunday evenings I sit down in front of the TV with my companion and watch the country and wildlife magazine programme ‘Countryfile’ on BBC1. Usually it’s worth watching, and last night was no exception. The programme’s main focus is on agriculture and as well as considering national issues like animal welfare, government energy policy etc, the team visits a region of the UK as well as the Cotswold farm of the winsome and articulate Adam Henson. He has an interest in rare breeds that he got from his father.

Yesterday’s edition looked at Shetland and a number of the domestic animals that are kept there. I was struck by the frequent references to Darwinian terms such as ‘adaptation’. I have no problem with this term as long as we understand what it means. There was also a typically Darwinian misuse of language when a variety of duck (a local mostly black feathered version of the Indian Runner variety) was described as a ‘species’ which it very clearly was not. Much of Darwin’s sophistry depended on blurring the distinction between a variety and a species.

The key word about Shetland animals was ‘small.’ It is a windswept place with few trees, a long dark winter, and highly variable weather that is often extreme. The cattle, sheep and horses (the famous Shetland ponies that feature in the popular drawings by Norman Thelwell) were all somewhat smaller than mainland versions. These animals were said to have ‘adapted’ or ‘evolved’ to the Shetland island environment. The term ‘evolve’ was used at least twice, ‘adapt’ 4 or 5 times in the context of these domestic animals.

This is of interest in the discussion about Darwinianism since Darwin wrote a whole chapter in ‘Origin of Species’ about variation under domestication, and this was foundational to his argument about all life forms coming by descent with modification from a common ancestor. He wrote at length about how breeders and farmers took care to breed from their best stock, ‘best’ in this context meaning most useful for their purposes. If you want a dog that hunts rats, you breed from the pest pair of ratters you can get, then test their progeny as ratters and breed from the best of them, etc. This process can equally be applied to other characteristics of animals, for example if you live in a cold country you may want to breed dogs with thick fur, if a hot country then dogs with short hair would do better.

Darwin’s observations about intelligent selective human breeding (or ‘variation under domestication’ as he called it) were hardly original, but were thoroughly decent science as far as they went. Variation under domestication is exactly what we can see in terms of the process that led the domesticated farm animals of Shetland to exist in their present form. No problems so far.

The Shetlanders, being intelligent and resourceful people who wanted to survive as well as they could in a tough climate, selected the animals that suited them best and bred them over several centuries with a goal of achieving suitable characteristics. That they were able to succeed, within limits imposed by the various animals’ genomes, is interesting but unremarkable. And importantly, it tells us NOTHING about how any of these animals arose. Sheep remain sheep, cattle remain cattle, ducks remain ducks.

Adam Henson compared a sample of wool from his Cotswold sheep with a local farmer’s Shetland sheep wool. The Shetland wool was much finer. Both Cotswold and Shetland sheep produced quality wool, but with slightly different characteristics, and this was the result of breeding. Call it adaptation if you will (I prefer to call it selective breeding) but if we are going to call it evolution then to avoid confusion we need a completely different term to describe the never observed process by which men supposedly evolved from hydrogen gas that came from the big bang, via dirty water and sparks, pond slime, jellyfish, frogs, mice, lemurs, apes etc. However, sometimes confusion may be just what you want if you are trying to pull the wool over someone's eyes.

Darwin’s biggest offence against science was to describe the above sort of ‘adaptation’ and then boldly assume that nature would do ‘immeasurably more’ when in the real world we observe nature doing measurably less. Intelligent men and women with a goal can ‘adapt’ a bred quite a lot in a relatively few generations, no argument. But what happens if Adam Henson’s Cotswold sheep and the Shetland breeds are left to their own devices, as would happen in nature with the human breeder’s mind and hand removed? Yes, they will interbreed and soon lose any distinctive features they have. Intelligent, purpose driven human breeding is seen to produce more varieties, while nature left to herself tends to revert to the mean as natural selection only selects for survival, whereas men can select for colour, temperament, quality of plumage or wool, meat, sense of smell etc.

Yes, some degree of species splitting into varieties, arguably even new sub-species or even perhaps species, can happen in isolated populations. You could most likely take a range of domestic sheep and leave them to roam and mate freely on an isolated island like Shetland and probably get a tougher variety within relatively few generations as natural selection eliminated the less fit. You see this with feral goats in Somerset. But you won’t get a new kind of animal, at least nobody ever has during recorded history. The idea that all mammals have a common ancestor remains sheer speculation.

Natural selection does less, not more, than selective human breeding. How do I know? Because I can see it. Animal species like sheep, horse, dog, cat or poultry under human domestication tends to produce more varieties than in the wild, but will revert back quickly if the breeder’s directing hand is removed. Darwin knew this, as he wrote about the need for plant breeders to ‘rogue’ their nursery stock (i.e. remove plants with undesired characteristics) and the need for animal breeders not to breed from ‘their worst stock’. The latter idea as applied to humans was enthused about by Darwinians like Galton and put into practice by a failed Austrian watercolour painter who became chancellor of Germany in the 1930s.

So, even watching a family friendly country programme on a Sunday evening, one cannot avoid the steady, slow drip of evolutionary propaganda. The BBC has never, ever, once given even half an hour to a fair examination of the arguments against Darwinism, even though it often gives a voice to unpopular, divisive and outlying points of view from various other areas of life. But there seems to be a strong BBC policy to insert Darwinian references into every kind of programme, from University Challenge to dramas like Lark Rise to Candleford, the News, and now Countryfile.

This might seem trivial, but it’s not. Life is made up of small things, information-true or false- comes in small packages, education and indeed indoctrination depends on frequent repetition. When the young person invited to question Darwin retorts ‘Its proved by mountains of overwhelming evidence’ stuff like the unexamined assumptions about farm animals ‘becoming adapted’ or ‘evolving’ to life on Shetland is an example of the kind of background mood music that is steadily dropped into their brains from when they first begin to understand language.

John’s Gospel chapter 1 verse 3 says ‘Through him (Christ) all things were made, and without him was not anything made that was made.’ Evolutionism is not science, at heart it is and always was intended as anti Christian propaganda. It was designed and spread by the enemies of the Gospel-revolutionaries, liberals and secularists- to emasculate the church and dechristianise society.

It's working as intended.

Mutations cause...evolution?

 

 

The latest anti smoking poster campaign includes graphic images of cancerous growths like this one. The accompanying caption reads

 

'Every 15 cigarettes you smoke causes a mutation that may cause lung cancer'.

 

This is interesting. True science does indeed establish that smoking is the main cause of lung cancer, and that all kinds of cancer are due to mutations.

 

However, we don't hear so much about the 'random mutations' that supposedly cause the progressive and beneficial variations that are preserved by natural selection in the course of molecules to man evolution.

 

Why would that be? Would it be anything to do with the observable, repeatable, peer-reviewed, stone cold, indisputable, in your face FACT that mutations degrade and destroy, whereas in the Darwin mythos they are required to create, improve and build up?

 

As Charles Darwin wrote in Origin of Species,

 

" Without variations, natural selection has nothing to work on."

 

Very true. But we now know that variations are either due to differential expression or shuffling of pre-existing genetic material (a cyclical process that may preserve a species though tough times, as in peppered moths or Darwin's finches, but creates nothing new), or random mutations.

 

Random mutations. Like the ones which the latest anti smoking campaign admit cause destruction and death. As the Intelligent design hypothesis predicts.