The Incoherence of Evolutionary Origins (Part 2)
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The fusion of confusion
Evolutionists, except the rather small coterie of theistic ones, believe every complex and meticulously ordered thing got here through mechanisms which we neither see now nor can see in the evidence left in the past. Even our cognitive faculties and the immaterial laws of logic and number “evolved.” The Big Bang is the most popular notion of the origin of the universe at the present time, although there is a significant lobby of dissidents. The Big Bang is an explosion. All explosions are chaotic, disorderly things. (The Big Bang exploded flat—not in all directions). In other ways it would have been like every other explosion: confused and irrational.
But from this chaos the vast complexity of the first life sprang: not, it is true, overnight, but over billions of years. From this incoherence the coherent came. Do we ever see coherence, in the form of sequenced “specified” complexity, arise out of chaos and disorder? No we do not. Nothing self-orders in complex and specific ways without a code. And a code needs someone to write it. But evolutionary naturalism requires just the opposite.
Furthermore, as we, the observers, recognize and analyze the coherence in the world, our standing (or existence) as observers must be accounted for. This was one of the questions asked by Richards and Gonzalez in their book The Privileged Planet. It is a good question. Why is the world comprehensible? Why can we do science?
This question must be addressed by creationists and evolutionists. It cannot be ducked on the pretext that evolution does not concern itself with such matters. Biological evolution does not. But there is such a thing as “chemical evolution.” There is even a “Center” for it!
One prominent evolutionist puts the matter clearly:
One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task, to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet, here we are as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation. (George Wald, “The Origin of Life.” Scientific American, 1954)
We must not link this use of “spontaneous generation” with the old idea that new life arises from rotting meat. Once this is kept in mind there is nothing wrong with Wald’s use of the term. But talk about the power of presuppositions! He believes in the impossible. And as we shall see, it is not one isolated “impossibility” that evolutionists have to swallow. In fact, it is not even the first.
Has this kind of evolution (a form of abiogenesis) ever been demonstrated? It has not. One creationist writer comments:
After decades of investigation, no environment has been discovered that facilitates abiogenesis. The richest inventory of chemical compounds have been zapped, irradiated, dried, rehydrated, and subjected to a host of parameters. All of these processes, however, have resulted in disorganized matter. In order to provide an appropriate framework for life, a machinist would still be necessary, one who could construct several thousand specific proteins, nucleic acids, carbohydrates, vitamins, and lipids in their exact configurations, all the while maintaining the integrity of each molecule in the collection. (Brian Thomas, “Origin of Life Research Still Dead”)
Also, as Meyer explains,
Every choice the investigator makes to actualize one condition and exclude another—to remove one by-product and not another—imparts information into the system. Therefore, whatever “success” these experiments have achieved in producing biologically relevant compounds occurs as a direct result of the activity of the experimentalist—a conscious, intelligent, deliberative mind—performing the experiments. (Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design, 335)
To an evolutionist this means that “when” somebody produces organic cells from its constituents the cry will go up, “We have discovered the conditions in which life arose.” But would it? While some confidence in the deliverances of science, even defined in reductionistic tones, is warranted, and the great successes of scientists lend encouragement to the belief that more is to come, it is extremely doubtful that any of these successes have any logical connection to belief in evolution. Scientists holding to evolution have done marvelous things, and so have scientists not holding to evolution. But the principle of testing competing hypotheses is not bettered by a belief which itself has failed to substantiate any of its major tenets.
To any other person any announcement that scientists have found the original environment for life would only prove that trained scientists, knowing the constituents of cellular organisms, have replicated what was (perhaps) previously done. It would certainly not prove it was achieved by undirected mindless processes. If evolutionists could do such a thing (and they can’t), they would, in their announcements, be sure to divert attention away from the designed and controlled laboratory conditions and the training and funding of the scientists.
The blind and ignorant watchmaker
Richard Dawkins wrote,
Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose. (Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 1)
We all know this quote, but behind it lies a steely determination not to recognize what we all do recognize in every other walk of life—design. The title of his book is interesting but misleading. Interesting because it evokes a scene where someone blind from birth, and having no prior knowledge of watches, proceeds over time to put together one of these marvelous mechanisms in full working order. Misleading because the watchmaker himself, also envisioned as a product of evolution, but being far more complex than the watch, must also be explained. Although Dawkins is being rhetorical, calling evolutionary processes by this name commits the fallacy of reification—a very common fault with these people.
What these sorts of quotes are telling us is that because of their naturalistic bias, these eminent evolutionists will not even consider special creation as an alternative. And as there are just two models of origins, evolution (in their view), wins by default: it must be true no matter how much evidence accrues to falsify it. Operating from such an outlook the evolutionist is doomed to miss the wood for the trees.
Evolution is treated as unfalsifiable, and is treated as such because it is viewed as having so much power to uphold the philosophy of naturalism. It is the only avenue of explanation open to the materialist, and cannot be allowed to buckle under unwelcome scrutiny. It is treated and taught as an unassailable fact. Evolution supports naturalism. Naturalism is the only methodology permitted by evolutionists. Ergo, naturalism must support evolution. It is viciously circular.
Writing some time ago, two evolutionists admitted that,
Our theory of evolution has become one which cannot be refuted by any possible observation; every conceivable observation can be fitted into it. It is thus outside of empirical science, but not necessarily false. No one can think of ways in which to test it. Ideas, either without basis, or based on a few laboratory experiments carried out in extremely simplified systems, have attained currency far beyond their validity. They have become part of an evolutionary dogma accepted by most of us as part of our training. (E. Birch and PR Ehrlich, The Journal of Nature, 1967, number 214)
Things haven’t changed:
Science today is locked into paradigms. Every avenue is blocked by beliefs that are wrong and if you try to get anything published by a journal today, you will run up against a paradigm and the editors will turn it down. (Sir Fred Hoyle, from Scientific American, March 1995. Quoted by Andy Macintosh, Genesis for Today)
But the law of biogenesis holds. Why look for ways to circumvent it?
Biologists know only that all life derives from proceeding life, and that the parent organism’s offspring are always of the same kind. The idea that life can come from non-life is called abiogenesis, which is assumed by evolutionists to have occurred only once or a few times at most in earth history. This conclusion is not a result of evidence, but is obtained because the current dominant worldview in Western science, naturalism, requires a chance spontaneous origin of life. (Jerry Bergman, In Six Days, ed. by John Ashton, 40)
The blind watchmaker seems to be on a hiding to nowhere.
Paul Henebury Bio
Paul Martin Henebury is a native of Manchester, England and a graduate of London Theological Seminary and Tyndale Theological Seminary (MDiv, PhD). He has been a Church-planter, pastor and a professor of Systematic Theology and Apologetics. He was also editor of the Conservative Theological Journal (suggesting its new name, Journal of Dispensational Theology, prior to leaving that post). He is now the President of Telos School of Theology.
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Paul quotes a quote of Fred Hoyle:
Science today is locked into paradigms. Every avenue is blocked by beliefs that are wrong and if you try to get anything published by a journal today, you will run up against a paradigm and the editors will turn it down. (Sir Fred Hoyle, from Scientific American, March 1995. Quoted by Andy Macintosh, Genesis for Today)
The bias Fred Hoyle is talking about is not against creationism, but Fred Hoyle was the famous man who coined the phrase “Big Bang” for the theory the Catholic Priest physicist Georges LeMaitre had invented from studying General Relativity. Fred Hoyle believed adamantly in the Steady State Theory. This was idea that the universe had always been and always will be. He was certainly no Christian creationist. Once his ideas, which had once been popular, had been overturned by the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation he refused to relent and spent the next 30 years as a crusty old antagonist to the Big Bang theory, NOT BECAUSE THE UNIVERSE WAS TOO OLD BUT TOO YOUNG!!!
I am not a biologist so I have no comment on the incoherence of evolution.
But I will follow on from the Fred Hoyle quote that Paul used…If I were a creator and I wanted to make it abundantly clear that natural causes DID NOT make the universe what I would do is make the Cosmic Microwave Background NOT PERFECTLY MATCH a blackbody emitter which cooled after the universe expanded for 380,000 years from some singularity. Instead, the CMBR as it is called PERFECTLY MATCHES such a blackbody. In fact, for all practical purposes the CMBR is a “perfect” blackbody. Thus, the CMBR seems to be clear indication of a hot dense extremely small universe (and ironically opaque to light) in the past expanding slowly over hundreds of thousands of years (380,000 to be exact) as it cooled enough to allow electrons to combine with protons and make atoms for the first time. Once those atoms formed the universe stopped being opaque to light and instead freely allows almost all light to travel the breadth of the universe leaving for us all to see that the universe is old and came from a tiny dense beginning.
The only explanation creationist scientists have for this clear signal is to try to make the claim that earth is in some special cosmic position that is unobservable but makes earth clocks run slower than the universe’s clocks…but the age is clear.
[Mark_Smith] If I were a creator and I wanted to make it abundantly clear that natural causes DID NOT make the universe what I would do is make the Cosmic Microwave Background NOT PERFECTLY MATCH a blackbody emitter which cooled after the universe expanded for 380,000 years from some singularity.
Or you could tell us via inspired scripture that you created it in six morning and evenings.
Mark exhibits all the characteristics of a True believer…in the Big Bang, that is.
It is a fact. He never suggests in any way that there may be problems with it. Its professional detractors are “crusty” and “old.”
Big Bang theory is explained with the acronyms and scientific jargon of the initiated, giving it the weight of authority by reason of mysterious verbiage (much the way some pastors put the hoi polloi in their place by using very large, technical theological words). Young Earth Creationist views are presented in simple, child-like terms, as though they have no knowledge of physics, mathematics, or the laws of nature. Simple terms mean simple ideas, so they must be simpletons.
Suggestion for Mark: Open up a correspondence with Derek Humphreys and/or Jason Lisle, and report back to us on your discussions. Better still, post them.
[AndyE]Mark_Smith wrote:
If I were a creator and I wanted to make it abundantly clear that natural causes DID NOT make the universe what I would do is make the Cosmic Microwave Background NOT PERFECTLY MATCH a blackbody emitter which cooled after the universe expanded for 380,000 years from some singularity.Or you could tell us via inspired scripture that you created it in six morning and evenings.
Okay, this one wins the very best comment on SharperIron! I am still laughing on this one. I guess, Andy, the truth in Scripture is just too obvious.
I guess having faith in an omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God who exists in three persons, became man, died on a cross (that saved us from our sins), rose again from the dead in three days, is preparing a special place for us, will come again and cast sinners into a Lake of Fire, despite any physical evidence of his existence and the fact that he has no beginning and end is infinitely easier to believe than his ability to create the universe out of nothing. The fact that science has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that a human being cannot lie rotting in a tomb for 3 days and miraculously rise from the dead and ascend into Heaven is okay, because we can have faith. But when science tries to put together a model that has a lot of assumptions and is not 100% proven, than hey, we can just throw out Scripture, because in this instance, science has to be right.
I appreciate the correction offered by Mark. I should have made it more clear that the Hoyle quote referred to the Big Bang, which the article starts with. However, the point is right on. If someone wants to argue I refer them to Frank Tipler’s chapter in the book Uncommon Dissent ed. by Dembski.
But I regard the Big Bang as a big crock. It can only be believed by willingly reinterpreting the plain sense of Gen. 1 so as to make room for “science.” It is classic ‘accommodationist’ hermeneutics. The BB posits a singularity which explodes into nothing, making something as it goes. To insert a comment I made elsewhere: “I realize that the Inflationary hypothesis comes in to explain the fact that the background radiation is equal in all directions. But that supposed incident was billions of times greater than the first one. Plus, some cosmologist have inferred a chaotic inflation event to try to account for the formation of stars and galaxies. And of course, no one has explained why the universe contains far far more matter than anti-matter (the Baryon number).”
There is more to the Big Bang than CMBR, as Mark knows (and I believe that Penzias/Wilson’s discovery came under Gamow’s prediction?). In fact, the CMBR is a big problem because the universe is “lumpy” and because of the matter/anti-matter unbalance.
But this article is only meant to show up some basic but fundamental incoherences with evolution and its antecedent, the Big Bang. As before Mark, you have two ideas playing in your brain. The first is to believe that God knows what He did and has told us in the Bible. The other is that on the issue of origins (in your case of the universe) God hasn’t really told us He did it in 6 days and has left it open for naturalistic science to tell us. You stepped over my comment about how naturalism cannot be the basis for science (in the last thread). It seems as though you struggle to reconcile two competing authorities. And for the last time Mark, these posts are not about the age of the earth!
Dr. Paul Henebury
I am Founder of Telos Ministries, and Senior Pastor at Agape Bible Church in N. Ca.
[AndyE]Mark_Smith wrote:
If I were a creator and I wanted to make it abundantly clear that natural causes DID NOT make the universe what I would do is make the Cosmic Microwave Background NOT PERFECTLY MATCH a blackbody emitter which cooled after the universe expanded for 380,000 years from some singularity.Or you could tell us via inspired scripture that you created it in six morning and evenings.
Andy E,
Great retort. The problem is, from the principles of thermodynamics, the reason the universe is a perfect blackbody is BECAUSE IT IS NOT 6000 years old (with the caveat of inflation)! A perfect blackbody is not necessarily the sign of a creator, but of age and time to mix properly.
[Wayne Wilson]Mark exhibits all the characteristics of a True believer…in the Big Bang, that is.
It is a fact. He never suggests in any way that there may be problems with it. Its professional detractors are “crusty” and “old.”
Big Bang theory is explained with the acronyms and scientific jargon of the initiated, giving it the weight of authority by reason of mysterious verbiage (much the way some pastors put the hoi polloi in their place by using very large, technical theological words). Young Earth Creationist views are presented in simple, child-like terms, as though they have no knowledge of physics, mathematics, or the laws of nature. Simple terms mean simple ideas, so they must be simpletons.
Suggestion for Mark: Open up a correspondence with Derek Humphreys and/or Jason Lisle, and report back to us on your discussions. Better still, post them.
Wayne,
I appreciate your comments and those of others. I really do. My intent here has been to get people like you to interact with things they are uncomfortable with or lack knowledge about, but that is not what is wanted. I understand. I guess it is not reasonable of me to assume so.
My intent was to get people to think outside of their comfort zone. To look the science of cosmology in the face, rather than to throw a verse at it and run in fear. Maybe you didn’t do that but plenty of others do. Through 2 threads I have tried with little success. I guess I failed, so I will “shut up”. Good day all.
And, yes, I am familiar with many of the arguments of creationist scientists, and I am very familiar with the faults of the Big Bang theory. Discussing those was not my intent here. I guess my intent, as it always is as a science educator, is to teach science when I can and when appropriate. All too often, I weep because Christians, of whom I am and whom I love, just want “red meat” and statements like “science like cosmology is bad”. We’ll take microwaves and airplanes, leave the astrophysics alone! Quite frankly, and I am only slightly exaggerating on this, if you go to the average fundamentalist church or meeting and introduce yourself as a scientist, you are immediately distrusted. The only way to win confidence in people is to assure them you are a creationist…and even then you are eyed very carefully, and never quite trusted. If you even hint at something like the Big Bang…bang, you are thrown under the bus! Can you imagine what that is like?
And, yes, Jason Lisle adamantly accepts the age of the universe just like I originally wrote above. He proposes a way to make the universe have experienced way more time than the earth, just like I wrote above. That is what all creation scientists do…because the age is real.
Mark,
I don’t know what a blackbody is but my general position is that I would not expect natural science to get the age of the earth correct because creation was a supernatural event that natural science is not able to properly analyze.
I don’t think you need to ‘shut up’ BTW. You raise good questions. I am not in fear of science but believe their are limitations on the things it can answer.
Andy
I will “shut up” because talking on message boards just doesn’t work. Probably most of the SI readers now think I’m some raving, disheveled haired, mad humanist scientist!
That is not what I was trying to do. I was trying to present a different perspective and to try to “teach” rather than just give the “don’t trust this science” and “science can’t give the right answer” stick that creationists usually do. But that can’t be done in this medium effectively (by me at least).
Mark, we have not always agreed on everything but I appreciate what you have done here. You have been misquoted and mislabeled. For example, you are called a believer in the Big Bang even though you have clearly said you accept YEC by faith. In my opinion, it takes stronger faith to realistically look at science and still come away believing in YEC than to put your head in the sand and pretend that creationists actually are able to answer science with science. Kudos to you for understanding science but still being a creationist.
Mark’s point is not so difficult to understand but is buried by all the emotion around this. He is just saying that creationism is a faith issue and we cannot account for it with science. Just like the resurrection. That is hardly grounds for excommunication. It is hardly grounds for people to get so antsy. In my opinion, all the emotion is interesting. If you have a solid position, why get so emotional about this topic?
Mark,
I think what you are up against is the fact that most Christians will not understand enough about the science for them to spend any time with it. If one is a biblical Christian, and accepts the creation account that is in the Bible, then if one is not a scientist, and doesn’t really care about physics or cosmology, then to most it’s not particularly interesting how to get from point A (universe appears to have great age) to point B (Biblical account correct), since all those that accept the biblical account end up at point B anyway.
(As an aside, I’ll admit that’s where I am with regard to eschatology — I’m not particularly interested in trying to understand all the theories, since I think the Bible makes it clear that Jesus will return, will judge the world, and we need to be ready for either that or death. The actual timing of all those events is something we don’t know, and according to Jesus himself, even he did not know all that information, only the Father did. Debating the differences just doesn’t interest me that much.)
My degrees are in math and computer science, so I have no great understanding of physics either, though I was a physics major for two years (probably just enough to learn what I really don’t know!) before I changed to math. However, in a similar fashion to you and Jason Lisle, I’m interested in theories that explain the discrepancy between the biblical account and the apparent age of the universe, probably because I have a great interest in apologetics, and also because most non-Christians I interact with are educated and thoughtful people, and apologetics is a way to be able to talk with them. Like you, I think it’s sad that Christian scientists are looked on with suspicion unless they have been personally introduced by Ken Ham. Obviously, I don’t consider science to be our final authority, but to the extent that it is used properly to explain the natural order that God created, I think it can be used rightly, even when approaching areas that suspicious Christians see as entering “dangerous” territory. You are not alone in worrying about the types of attitudes that led to the views of Galileo by the Catholic church. As I said in the other thread, since we know that most things that occur are not miraculous, but a result of the created order, I think we can use science up until whatever conclusions it leads us to make would go against a clear biblical account. I realize that that approach is not shared by many Christians, but I don’t believe you should despair even if you get a lot of push back from those that have no understanding of science.
Even then, as you said, while it’s interesting to discuss these issues on a forum, this medium will not always be the best for increasing understanding. I don’t think you need to completely give up though.
Dave Barnhart
[AndyE]I don’t know what a blackbody is but my general position is that I would not expect natural science to get the age of the earth correct because creation was a supernatural event that natural science is not able to properly analyze.
I completely agree. “Naturalistic” science, which has a naturalistic methodology and does not accept facts from the Word of God (what most modern science is), by definition cannot arrive at God. Therefore there is no reason to expect it will ever arrive at Genesis - ever. It’s pressupositions are wrong.
What creation scientists are attempting to do is to take what they know as facts, and attempt to come up with possible physical models (hypothesis) that will explain those facts. They want to understand everything God made (and said) as a coherent whole, not as disconnected (even self-contradictory!) “facts”. It seems to me a perfectly reasonable enterprise for a Christian to pursue.
God is eternal and separate from His creation, all here would agree. If there was a Big Bang, a point in time where material was created of which we inhabit, it shows creation. In other words, for a “bang” to happen, it presupposes ‘One who banged’-a Designer.
Jesus never said the Earth was created in 7 days as you and I understand “days”. Jesus also didn’t say the Eearth is not ancient as opposed to recent. All Jesus said was “in the beginning”. Cassuto has clearly shown Genesis 1 specifically structured as something else than a narrative history. It is a mystery of exactly “how” God created the material universe or multiverses if there were or are any. Dt. 29.29 comes into play here. We have to accept creation by faith whether one is ‘old earth’ or ‘new’.
"Our faith itself... is not our saviour. We have but one Saviour; and that one Saviour is Jesus Christ our Lord. B.B. Warfield
I think we just need to be careful in what we call science and facts. I am probably one of the few here that have worked in this area, having worked for the Nobel Physicist Leon Lederman, looking for the “God Particle” while employed at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. I am a YEC, yet I can still study science in this vein and even fully understand it. With that said we as Christians need to hold to the faith and really understand science’s place. While working in cosmology, I had to understand the models that place the universe at 30 billion years and have to use those models to make my science work. Never once did these scientific models ever cause my faith to waiver in a YEC, nor did it require me to be able to explain or refute the scientific principles to explain my belief. John Lennox arguably one of the smartest men on the planet, likes to argue that we are not the crazy ones. We actually admit that science doesn’t match our beliefs and that we are very clear in calling it a miracle.
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