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William Paley. Charles Darwin. Wallace. Darwin. Competition. Variation. The New Atheists. Darwin has made “the God hypothesis” redundant. Religion is dangerous. Miracles are unscientific. What sort of God would create suffering?. Reductionism.
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William Paley Charles Darwin
Wallace Darwin Competition Variation
The New Atheists • Darwin has made “the God hypothesis” redundant. • Religion is dangerous. • Miracles are unscientific. • What sort of God would create suffering?
Reductionism • “The universe is nothing but a collection of atoms in motion, human beings are simply machines for propagating DNA, and the propagation of DNA is a self-sustaining process. It is every living object’s sole reason for living” (Dawkins) • “What shall we think then , of human love and fear? Are they meaningless neural behaviour patterns? Or what shall we make of the concept of beauty or truth?(Lennox) • Darwin’s Doubt – “With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of a man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy” • “… the very assertions of the reductionist himself are nothing but blips in the neural network of his brain. The world of rational discourse dissolves into the absurd chatter of firing synapses. Quite frankly, they cannot be right and none of us believes it to be so” (Polkinghorne)
Is Evolution a Fact? “Fact: In science, an observation that has been repeatedly confirmed and for all practical purposes is accepted as “true”. Truth in science, however, is never final, and what is accepted as a fact today may be modified or even discarded tomorrow” (National Academy of Sciences).
Not Science by Definition? “Creation-Science … fails to display the most basic characteristic of science: reliance upon naturalistic explanations. Instead, proponents of “creation-science” hold that the creation of the universe, the earth, living things, and man was accomplished through supernatural means inaccessible to human understanding” (US National Academy of Sciences)
The Faith of Evolutionists? “Philosophical naturalismis so deeply ingrained in the thinking of many educated people today, including theologians, that they find it difficult to imagine any other way of looking at things” (Phillip Johnson)
“When discussing organic evolution the only point of agreement seems to be: It happened. Thereafter, there is little consensus, which at first sight must seem rather odd … Given, therefore, this history and the most recent and spectacular advances in molecular biology…” Simon Conway Morris, “Bringing Molecules into the Fold”. Cell, 100, 1-11, 2000
Misleading the public – microevolution presented as macroevolution
Scant search for the Maker TES 20 April 2001 The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism … But where is the experimental evidence? None exists in the literature claiming that one species has been shown to evolve into another. Bacteria, the simplest form of independent life, are ideal for this kind of study, with generation times of 20 to 30 minutes, and populations achieved after 18 hours. But throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another … Since there is no evidence for species changes between the simplest forms of unicellular life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for evolution from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, let alone throughout the whole array of higher multicellular organisms. Alan H. Linton is emeritus professor of bacteriology, University of Bristol
The Moral Law • A sense of the divine
The Moral Law • A sense of the divine • The origins of the universe “… scientists have been unable to interpret the very earliest events in the explosion …
The Moral Law • A sense of the divine • The origins of the universe • The Anthropic Principle "The more I examine the universe, and the details of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the Universe in some sense must have known we were coming." — Freeman Dyson "A bottom-up approach to cosmology either requires one to postulate an initial state of the Universe that is carefully fine-tuned — as if prescribed by an outside agency — or it requires one to invoke the notion of eternal inflation, a mighty speculative notion to the generation of many different Universes, which prevents one from predicting what a typical observer would see." — Stephen Hawking
Fine-Tuning and Pointers to God The fine-tuning of the universe is seen most clearly in the values of the constants of nature. There are many such constants, the best known of which specify the strength of the four forces of nature: the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, the electromagnetic force, and gravity. If these forces took on even slightly different strengths, the consequences for life would be devastating…
”There is now broad agreement among physicists and cosmologists that the universe is in several respects ‘fine-tuned' for life.” P. Davies Int. J. of Astrobiology 2(2): 115, (2003). The Universe is “just right”
The Moral Law • A sense of the divine • The origins of the universe • The Anthropic Principle “It would be very difficult to explain why the universe should have begun in this way, except as the act of a God who intended to create beings like us” – Stephen Hawking “The best data we have are exactly what I would have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a whole" — Arno Penzias
Complexity of DNA and Schroeder’s answer to the “monkey theorem” (pg 76) • On Dawkins – “If any of this were true there would be no use to go on …”Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish”. No eloquence can move programmed robots. But in fact no of it is true – or even faintly sensible”. • 1. Nature obeys laws – the rational universe. • 2. Origin of intelligently organized life – life from non-life. • 3. The existence of nature – how did the universe begin.
Nature obeys laws – the rational universe – did the universe know we were coming - a Divine Lawmaker. • Stephen Hawking - “The overwhelming impression is one of order. The more we discover about the universe, the more we find that it is governed by rational laws”. • Albert Einstein – “Whoever has undergone the intense experience of successful advances in this domain is moved by profound reverence for the rationality made manifest in existence … the grandeur of reason incarnate in existence” • Paul Dirac – “God is a mathematician of a very high order and He used advanced mathematics in constructing the universe”
2. How did life go live? Paul Davies – “Life is more than just complex chemical reactions. The cell is also and information stiring, processing and replicating system. We need to explain the origin of this information, and the way in which the information processing machinery came to exist”. George Wald – “We chose to believ e the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance”
3. Did something come from nothing? “If the universe had a beginning, it became entirely sensible, almost inevitable, to ask what produced this beginning… Modern cosmologists seemed justas disturbed as atheists about the potential theological implications of their work”. ie. Everything from nothing or Something always has been or Something was created by a power outside of the universe
”Richard Owen (1848) introduced the term homology to refer to structural similarities among organisms. To Owen, these similarities indicated that organisms were created following a common plan or archetype. … Nevertheless, if every organism were created independently, it is unclear why there would be so many homologies among certain organisms, while so few among others. It is also hard to make sense of the fact that homologous structures can be inefficient or even useless. Why would certain cave-dwelling fish have degenerate eyes that cannot see? Darwin made sense of homologous structures by supplying an evolutionary explanation for them: A structure is similar among related organisms because those organisms have all descended from a common ancestor that had an equivalent trait.” http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~bio336/Bio336/Lectures/Lecture5/Overheads.html Homologies
“Sequences” “Biologists Nilsson and Pegler have performed a sophisticated calculation to show that an eye capable of casting an image could evolve gradually, possibly within a few hundred thousand years … Because the eye is composed of soft tissue, we do not have fossil evidence of the evolution of eyes in this way. Nevertheless, every step that appears in the calculation is represented in some animal known today. The inference that eyes evolved roughly as suggested in the calculation is therefore supported by hard evidence … the eye is not irreducibly complex …” Young and Edis, Why Intelligent Design Fails, Rutgers University Press, 2005, pg 24
Common genetic code Homeotic genes complexes
Primordial soup Cambrian Explosion
Evolutions gaps New information Origin of life Speciation Natural selection a force for conservation Intermediary forms Cambrian explosion Intelligence, mind, language and morality Evidence of design Inescapable teleological language Fine tuning of the conditions for life “extreme perfection and complication” The adaptational package Improbability- “Convergence” eg marsupials and placental mammals. Irreducible complexity Intelligence and morality The problem of goodness v the problem of evil
The Test of Evolution and Irreducible Complexity “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down” Charles Darwin “A single system which is composed of several interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, and where the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning” Michael Behe
"IMAGINE A NANOTECHNOLOGY MACHINE far beyond the state of the art: a microminiaturized rotary motor and propeller system that drives a tiny vessel through liquid. The engine and drive mechanism are composed of 40 parts, including a rotor, stator, driveshaft, bushings, universal joint, and flexible propeller. The engine is powered by a flow of ions, can rotate at up to 100,000 rpm ... and can reverse direction in a quarter of a rotation. The system comes with an automatic feedback control mechanism. The engine itself is about 1/100,000th of an inch wide -- far smaller than can be seen by the human eye. (Peterson D., "The Little Engine That Could...Undo Darwinism," The American Spectator," 8 May 2005).
Intelligent Design • Irreducible complexity • Specified complexity • D_E_S_I_G_N • 309 million goes at getting this out of a scrabble bag in 6 letters
“Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose”Richard Dawkins • Teleological Notions in Biology • Teleological terms such as "function" and "design" appear frequently in the biological sciences. Examples of teleological claims include: • A (biological) function of stotting by antelopes is to communicate to predators that they have been detected. • Eagles' wings are (naturally) designed for soaring. • Teleological notions were commonly associated with the pre-Darwinian view that the biological realm provides evidence of conscious design by a supernatural creator. • Opinions divide over whether Darwin's theory of evolution provides a means of eliminating teleology from biology, or whether it provides a naturalistic account of the role of teleological notions in the science. Many contemporary biologists and philosophers of biology believe that teleological notions are a distinctive and ineliminable feature of biological explanations but that it is possible to provide a naturalistic account of their role that avoids the concerns above.
Isn’t Mother Nature Wonderful! • “It illuminates the mechanisms and processes that evolution uses, and tells us more about how Mother Nature engineers life.“ • “But despite our ever constant desire to do better than nature, we recognize that evolution has had an immense head start as far as biological design goes. To an engineer, each time an organism adapts to changing environmental conditions it represents a successful design solution, providing no less than its continued existence as proof of success. "The natural selection and evolution of species provides us with the longest engineering design test of all time," said Jeannette Yen, professor in Georgia Tech's School of Biology. "By studying how organisms solve the problems they face, we get to benefit from the millions of years of knowledge embedded in the DNA of each creature."
Teleonomy • From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia • Teleonomy is the quality of apparent purposefulness and of goal-directedness of structures and functions in living organisms that derive from their evolutionary history and adaptation for reproductive success. • The term was coined to stand in contrast with teleology, which applies to ends that are planned by an agent which can internally model/imagine various alternative futures, which enables intention, purpose and foresight. A teleonomic process, such as evolution, produces complex products without the benefit of such a guiding foresight. Evolution largely hoards hindsight, as variations unwittingly make "predictions" about structures and functions which could successfully cope with the future, and participate in an audition which culls the also-rans, leaving winners for the next generation. Information accumulates about functions and structures that are successful, exploiting feedback from the environment via the selection of fitter coalitions of structures and functions. Teleonomy is related to past effects instead of present purpose.
“This then is the paradox …Darwin seems to have expelled design from biology, and yet we still go on using and seemingly needing this way of thinking. We still talk in terms appropriate to conscious intention, whether or not we believe in God. In biology, we still use forward-looking language of a kind that would not be deemed appropriate in physics or chemistry… Michael Ruse, Darwin and Design – does evolution have a purpose? Harvard University Press, 2003 Design as a metaphor!
….“Now that things have been spelled out, we see there is nothing very mysterious about purpose in evolution. At the heart of modern evolutionary biology is the metaphor of design, and for this reason function-talk is appropriate. Organisms give the appearance of being designed, and thank’s to Charles Darwin’s discovery of natural selection we know why this is true. Natural selection produces artifact-like features, not by chance but because if they were not artifact-like they would not work and serve their possessors’ needs. Still, is it a concern that we have a metaphor here, a human-based metaphor? … But as Darwin pointed out, we use metaphors all the time in science … Michael Ruse, Darwin and Design – does evolution have a purpose? Harvard University Press, 2003 Design as a metaphor!
“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and godhead; so that they are without excuse” (Romans 1:20) “Paley’s argument is wrong, gloriously and utterly wrong” Richard Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker
Psalm 8 O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens… 3 ¶ When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; 4 What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? 5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. 6 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet… 9 O LORD our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth!
Dysteleology and cruelty “Why should the respiratory and digestive systems be associated? There is, in fact, a good reason for them not to be associated: the double-duty pharynx makes it possible for pony fish, and vertebrates in general, to choke on food” George Williams, Plan and Purpose in Nature, 1996. The total amount of suffering per year is beyond all decent contemplation … no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference” Richard Dawkins, River out of Eden, 1995.
Romans 8 20 For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. 23 And not only so, but ourselves also, who have the first–fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.
