Category: Big Questions

The Broad Array of Moral Concepts are In-Place and On-Time for Human Consideration…Revised

            In Galatians 5:22-23, Paul lists some of the positive fruits of the Spirit: “love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.”

            Earlier in Galatians 5:19-21, Paul lists some of the negative “works of the flesh”: “Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envy, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like.”

            To these two lists of moral attributes and characteristics we could add the concepts of truth, honesty, dignity, loyalty, friendliness, honor, humility, dedication, forgiveness, mercy, compassion, humor, flexibility, empathy, forbearance, consideration, self-sacrifice, gratitude, persistence, commitment, discernment, rationality, logical thinking, being organized, being a peace-maker, fairness, generosity, passion…and a number of other distinct and precise words that describe finely differentiated moral characteristics.

            This list could be expanded further by adding their negative counterparts.

            Why is this important in a Christian book about science and faith?

            When anyone who is a born-again Christian, Bible college student, Christian theologian, atheist, skeptic, or curious truth-seeker begins an examination of the perfect and sinless life of Jesus Christ, they are acknowledging the existence of the very tools of the sophisticated and varied concepts available that precisely define moral characteristics, that make such an examination possible.

            Without this complete and exhaustive tool-kit of concepts by which to judge moral characteristics, a personal decision for or against accepting Christ as Savior would fall short of being meaningful, would not have all of the richly differentiated criteria to support a valid decision, one way or the other.

            The three complimentary categories: the existence of the broad array of moral concepts, our capacity for intellectual and moral reasoning, and the divinely composed life-script for Jesus Christ, must all be fully developed and fully functional in-time for the appearance of Jesus Christ into this world in the first-half of the first-century A.D.

            This discussion opens the door into a better and fuller understanding of the uniqueness of the cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ, validating the life of Jesus to be at the top-most point of moral perfection.

This is an Excerpt from my book Pondering Our World: Christian Essays on Science and Faith.

Scientific Information is Easily Accessible Today…Revised

            In doing the research for this book, I sense that the general populace in countries like the United States are two or three decades behind where science today actually is.

            I sense that the general populace is still somewhere back in the 1990’s, accepting the assertion by Carl Sagan promoting the idea of the Principle of Mediocrity that the earth is an insignificant, pale blue dot lost in a vast universe, and the assertion by the Harvard paleontologist Stephen J. Gould that science and God cannot overlap, but belong in entirely different, non-overlapping categories of reality.

            A person needs to invest only about two hours to get caught-up with where science is today, in some of the key critical areas that influence our worldview philosophy for life.

            This can easily be achieved for those people who have access to the Internet (via smart phone, computer, or other electronic device), and are willing to watch in succession, with coffee or tea breaks in-between, the presentations by Edward Murphy discussing the standard theory of the origin of the elements of the Periodic Table[1], then Gunter Bechly describing the discontinuities in the fossil record[2], and Stephen C. Meyer explaining the quantum mechanics at the Big Bang[3], to see that the evidences for random and undirected processes still being put-forward by the philosophy of scientific materialism, are no longer reasonably plausible.

            But for a real jolt forward by several decades to reach the current science in the field of molecular biochemistry (what it takes to create life), watch Scientists Are Clueless on the Origin of Life, Lecture @ Andrews University (Sept. 11, 2020) featuring Dr. James Tour on YouTube.

            When I watch on the Internet the 2014 presentation by Aoife McLysaght[4] in defense of modern Darwinian evolution, I run into the same brick-wall I encountered reading Jerry A. Coyne’s book.

            About five minutes into this excellent presentation, I sense that Dr. McLysaght is unwittingly making a cumulative case argument for intelligent agency rather than historical Darwinian evolution, so brilliantly marvelous is the scope and breadth of the natural world she is describing.

            To a modern, discriminating audience using critical-thinking, merely exchanging the phrase “intelligent designing agency” with the substitute word “evolution” is a semantics slight-of-hand card-trick that is apparently undetectable to scientific materialists.

            If intelligent agency is disallowed according to the philosophical worldview of naturalistic materialism, then the only word capable of expressing the secular version of agency is evolution.

            But merely saying something, does not make it so.

            The classic statement made in 1988 by Francis Crick to scientists that they must “constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved,”[5] in just a few short years has now become obsolete.

            Information about the natural world has exponentially exploded that quickly.

            Whenever phenomena in nature are described thoroughly using their full informational content discovered through science, the more and more obvious becomes the design element requiring agency, that transcends above and pushes out a purely materialistic explanation through evolution.

            How do you get multi-cellular green algae floating on top of the ancient oceans, having whatever small number of different cell-types biologists and paleontologists agree upon today, to make the leap from there to branch-off into becoming the next iteration of being a Precambrian jellyfish floating near the surface of the ancient oceans, considered by some scientists today to possess around 10 to 12 different cell-types[6] to support their architectural body-plans? 

            How do you get from there to the introduction of the new and different architectural body-plans and lifestyle habits of the creatures of the Cambrian Explosion, exhibiting the dynamic movement of predator/prey relationships within more complex biodiversity and ecosystems, that appear suddenly in the geological record around 535-million years ago?

            These new and novel creatures are estimated to have between 30-40 different cell-types in support of their new and active body-plans and lifestyle habits, without any lead-up, intermediate precursors found in the Precambrian rock/sediment strata, or in imaginative fictional contemplation.

            Imposing a skeletal explanatory framework over the fossil record, of gradually continuous biological development chopped-up into introducing one new cell-type at a time, is unsupported by the fact-based evidence we see all around us today in the natural world of well-defined living organisms having discontinuous gaps between them, that even children can recognize.

            In a learning game with young children, we point to various animals in a book as they answer that this picture is of an elephant and that picture is of a dog, cat, or horse.  They recognize the well-defined differences between each animal type even before they stumble over correctly pronouncing the names hippopotamus or rhinoceros.

            As we look out at the natural living world today, we do not see a multitude of forms all blending together into continuous linkages, that would prevent young children from being able at first-glance to separate them into their unique names. 

            This was the case in 1859 as it is today.

            An argument can be made that it was the atheism within naturalistic materialism that falsely interpreted the data at that time-period, and not the empirical, fact-based evidence itself.

            To suggest instead an alternative skeletal explanatory framework over the geological data and the fossil record of functional end-point outcomes in biology that are achieved by the input of blocks of information in clustered groups, this requires the existence of an Intelligent Designing Agent as the architect and builder of the natural living and non-living world.

            Again, this is unacceptable to the worldview of scientific materialism.

            In the final analysis, if possession of the facts does not lead to near-perfect conclusions clearly apparent to nearly everyone, this introduces a gray area of discretionary judgment into the equation of the search for truth in science and in human living, which is inexplicable in a purely material universe.

            If the final takeaway after five-hundred years of the Scientific Revolution is that after most of the evidence regarding the natural world is in…has been acquired…that as smart as we humans think humans are, if we still need a smarter God to lead and guide us into genuine truth in all of the realms of existence (Jn. 16:13), this would truly be a colossal discovery.  

This is an excerpt from my book Pondering Our World: Christian Essays on Science and Faith.

[1] “The Origin of the Elements” by Jefferson Lab, Nov. 20, 2012 with Dr. Edward Murphy, University of Virginia, on You Tube.

[2] Fossil Discontinuities: Refutation of Darwinism & Confirmation of Intelligent Design—Gunter Bechly, published Oct. 11, 2018 on You Tube by FOCLOnline.

[3] Watch the Internet interview on You Tube: The Return of the God Hypothesis: Interview with Stephen Meyer.  Streamed live on May 13, 2020, Dr. Sean McDowell.

[4] Copy number variation and the secret of life—with Aoife McLysaght, produced by The Royal Institution, May 27, 2014, on You Tube.

[5] Francis Crick, What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery (New York: Basic Books, 1998), 138.

[6] On the Origin of Phyla—Interviews with Dr. James Valentine, by Access Research Network, published on Oct. 22, 20`4, on You Tube.

Human Development and Evolution, revised Part 2

Human Writing as an Indicator

            The human invention of writing is a critical, date-stamp indicator of human intellectual progress that helps to pinpoint when humans acquired their full complement of 215 cell-types and 100 brain nerve-cell types.

            The invention of writing is dated to as recent a time as 3,200 B.C. in the wedge-shaped cuneiform lettering of Egyptian hieroglyphs.  The cuneiform alphabet in Syria is dated to around 2,000 B.C., and the invention of the 22-sign Phoenician alphabet is dated to around 1,000 B.C.

            The start of the writing of the first five books of the Old Testament called the Pentateuch, is dated by conservative scholars at around 1,450-1,410 B.C., at the time of the Exodus.[1]

            The Greeks adopt the Phoenician writing script around 800 B.C.   

            The invention of human writing is therefore placed at only 5,200 years ago.

            There is no evidence of sophisticated, written communication using an alphabet 15,000 years ago, 50,000 years ago, or 150,000 years ago in the very recent past as a milestone event in human intellectual development.

            The boundary-line between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens is generally placed at around 200,000 years ago, which inaugurates the start of what is considered by paleontologists to be modern man.

            It would follow then that the invention of writing, by some exceptionally gifted persons having forwardly progressing IQ’s above and out in-front of the general populace as is common today, would have occurred at least as far back as sometime around 200,000 B.C.

            To have a smooth transition of beneficial, variant physical traits moving incrementally forward in a positive direction from the start of Homo erectus at 1.8-million years ago to the start of Homo sapiens at 200,000 years ago, yet have human writing start around 3,200 B.C., is illogically nonsensical.

            For humans to invent writing in 3,200 B.C. and then be standing on the moon in 1969 A.D. is fact-based evidence that argues for the near instantaneous introduction of intellectual capacity.

            This is in stark contrast with Darwin’s notion that nature makes no sudden leaps, in the one and only area where the developments of advancing physical traits and lifestyle habits can be compared side-by-side in the common descent theory of human beings.

            When Charles Darwin wrote in his classic 1859 book The Origin of Species “nature makes no sudden leaps,” he locked himself into the paradigm of changein relation to time applied to biological development, which in my opinion is wrong because he was working within the limited constraints of the materialistic worldview.

            According to what seemed reasonable at the time in 1859, Darwin thought that by hypothesizing small-step changes put-out by living organisms as variant traits through random and undirected processes, that natural selection could arbitrate between the comparative values of these traits for survival and reproductive advantage, and favor the most beneficial. 

            In fairness to Darwin, it would be asking too much to expect that he could rise above the conventional thinking of change occurring over time, because the modern discoveries of complex, specified, and coherently integrated systems of information in the natural world of biology were little known in 1859.

            But today the concept of an instantaneous rate of change occurring in a “width-less” moment of time t=0 is entirely understandable when we ponder the Big Bang, the origin of life, the Cambrian Explosion, the immergence of human intelligence, and elementary calculus.

            The outdated skeletal explanatory framework based upon naturalistic materialism will pump-out a program of incremental, progressive, evolutionary development in biology.

            But there is an alternative skeletal explanatory framework that is more logical and fits the facts “on the ground” much better today.

            Here the concept of instantaneous rates of change enters into the choice of worldviews, this term being an oxymoron[2] within the limited context of a materialistic universe, but not at all inconsistent in a universe created by an intelligent agent existing outside of time.

            When I am driving in my car from a dead-stop at a traffic light that has turned green, to the next traffic light turned red one-half mile down the road, going from zero velocity to 30-mph to zero velocity again, over a 10-second duration…my velocity can be graphed on a two-dimensional x/y-plane as a standard bell-curve, and my acceleration and deceleration as a standard S-curve.

            I exist in the four dimensions of time and space, and it takes me 10 seconds in this example to go from one street intersection to the next street intersection, reaching a top-speed of 30-mph before slowing down to a dead-stop again.

            A photographic snapshot of me driving part-way along this short journey will not reveal how fast I am going.  To determine my velocity, I need the distance traveled divided by the time duration, which is not obtainable in an instant of frozen time having zero duration.

            In order for Darwin to make the extrapolation from microevolutionary change to macroevolutionary change, he needs the materialistic factors of measurable change over measurable time.

            But a timeless God can turn-on the gene regulatory network switches in existing living cells to release the 10 or 20 new and different cell-types to support the Cambrian Explosion of innovative, new architectural body-plans…in an instant of “time” having zero duration.

            The correct explanation for the immergence of the biblical Adam and Eve may then simply be the release of the on-switch of DNA information already contained within upright, bi-pedal primates (Gen. 2:7) to create the new amino acid folds, proteins, and new cell-types in number up to the minimum required 215 (and 100 brain nerve-cell types) to produce the functional architectural body-plan and lifestyle habits of modern humans at a certain point in time.

            This is an example of the relationship between distance (change) over time, expressed in this case as miles per hour driving a car…being distance divided by time…illustrating the huge practical difference between a purely agent-free, material universe contrasted with a material universe having a timeless God as its Creator.

            In this example, the God of the Bible driving in His car takes zero seconds to cover this same distance from one traffic light to the next. 

            In this analogy, the God of the Bible can drive across America from coast to coast in zero-time, because He is a timeless Spirit-Being outside of the four dimensions of time and space.

            “Instantaneous rates of change” is an oxymoron having no meaning in our reality, because “instantaneous” means no lateral movement of time on the horizontal x-axis depicting duration of elapsed-time (Figure 1).

            In the relationship of distance over time…of distance divided by time, zero elapsed time in the denominator is meaningless.

            Basic arithmetic tells us we cannot divide by zero.

            Humans invented calculus in mathematics to get around this problem.

            By choosing a materialistic worldview (a modern interpretation being inconceivable at the time), Darwin eliminated the possibility of “instantaneous rates of change” applied to biological progressive development, a possibility which provides a better explanation for the massive inputs of information as singularities at the Big Bang, the origin of life, the transition from single-cell to multi-cell organisms, the Cambrian Explosion, and the sudden appearance of the human capacity for intellectual and moral reasoning.

            The God of the Bible driving across America in zero-time would be shown on a two-dimensional x/y-plane graph as a vertical line parallel to the y-axis, starting at the bottom of the line on the West Coast to the top of the line on the East Coast for the distance traveled, but with line thickness zero (“width-less”) as measured along the horizontal x-axis depicting time.

            It makes little difference whether the elapsed time-period of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana is a split-second as time t approaches zero or is actually zero.  The change from water to wine would be so fast as to be imperceptible.

            The use of the concept of limits in calculus to determine the rate of change as time t approaches zero is used in many applications in science.

            In my opinion, this analysis presents a much more plausible explanation for the near instantaneous creation of the dimensions of time and space, the speed of light, the force of gravity, and the expansion rate of the universe at the Big Bang (see Figure 1 below).

[1] 2061030 The Oldest Yahweh Inscription 2 Kings Joel Kramer, published Oct. 30, 2016 by Lighthouse Church-Twin Falls on YouTube…at Joel Kramer Archaeologist.

[2] The paradox of the derivative/Chapter 2, Essence of Calculus in the 3Blue 1Brown series on You Tube, published April 29, 2017.

Science and God are Not n Conflict, revised Part 4

The Physical Universe Requires a Timeless Creator

            Darwin’s fundamental condition that nature makes no sudden leaps locks his theory into the materialistic dynamic of change over time, which no longer works when applied to the complexity we find in the living world.

            But a timeless, Spirit-Being God can input the new information or turn-on a gene regulatory network switch to release 5, 10, or 20 new and different cell-types together to produce new architectural body-plans in time t=0.

            This can be represented by a “width-less”[1] vertical line on the two-dimensional x/y-graph of change (vertical axis) over time (horizontal axis) over the course of geological history.

            Common descent in biology can be true without utilizing Darwin’s model of small, incrementally progressive steps fueled by random and accidental serendipity.

            Common descent can simply have another and better explanation, being a divinely timeless God inputting massive infusions of information in the form of new and different cell-types in clustered groups at various points in time…represented by “width-less” vertical lines on the two-dimensional x/y-graph, these lines having zero-time durations.

            For a brilliant refutation of Darwinian evolution see Gunter Bechly Explains What The Fossil Evidence Really Says, hosted by Discovery Science, published November 23, 2021 on You Tube.

Moravec’s Paradox

            Moravec’s Paradox (footnoted below) makes the insightful observation that because modern machines can perform complex calculations like finding the square-root of 3,492 in a spit-second, we naturally make the incorrect assumption that machines can also perform “simple” functions that a one-year-old child can do.

            A one-year-old child giggles and laughs when I play “peek-a-boo” by taking my hand away momentarily from covering my face and saying “peek-a-boo!”, then putting my hand back to cover my smiling face.

            A young child instantly grasps the nature of this game.

            But this is many times more complex in the individual instructions that must be broken-down for a machine to duplicate this same child’s game…to even begin to approach a smiling face and cheerful voice that could elicit laughter from a child.

            Ask this one-year-old to tell you the square-root of 3,492 to an accuracy of three decimal places, and they will look at you with a blank stare.

            The one-year-old sitting on the floor building a small tower using square wooden blocks is an activity that seemingly is so simple that a child can do it. 

            Yet for a machine this child’s play is many times more complex, requiring the computer code language instructions that must be programmed into the machine involving the concepts of the recognition, grasping, positioning, balancing, and not knocking over the other blocks as the tower is built.

            A human-like machine using artificial intelligence would have to be able to create the physical expressions for a child to correctly recognize that “peek-a-boo” is a humorous game. 

            How is it that we are programmed from birth with the innate capacity for analytical thinking to be able to quickly perceive the humor in a game, and to be able to stack wood blocks one upon another to build a small tower to see how high we can go before the whole thing falls over, yet as adults we need machines to perform complex mathematical operations?

            Is the yes/no decision-making of deliberate, intentional design apparent in this human capacity?

Does Matter and Energy Alone Define the Whole of Reality?

            When a person today objects that they cannot believe the Bible, because they live in the modern Age of Science, they are voicing a storyline narrative that is based upon a 20th-century philosophy that is obsolete and no longer currently credible.

            Here I am borrowing heavily from a podcast[2] I listened to on You Tube entitled: Science and Faith in a Secular Society with J. P. Moreland, hosted by Think Biblically, through Biola University, downloaded by me on 3/24/2020.

            It turns out that scientism is a concept that is self-refuting. 

            Examples of concepts that are self-refuting might be: “No statement is longer than three words,” or “I can’t utter a word of English,” or “There are no truths,” each of which makes itselffalse, is self-refuting.

            To quote Dr. Moreland from this podcast: “The statement: ‘The only way that you can know truth is through the hard sciences,’ is not something that itself could be known to be true through the hard sciences.”

            In this sense, scientism makes itself false, is self-refuting by its own definition.

            It also turns out that scientism, as a worldview adopted uncritically and for the most part unknowingly by many people in our modern world, is as false a narrative as can be. 

            Upon closer inspection it is actually an enemy ofscience, undermining the very field of science it purports to defend.

            It is widely understood that scientific discovery is dependent upon several general assumptions, essential to conducting science, that do not meet the high-definition test that scientism itself cannot reach.

            These fundamental assumptions are: that the natural world is orderly and intelligible, that the laws of mathematics and logic are true, that truth has a correspondence to reality, and that human beings are endowed with the mental capacity to be able to understand things external to ourselves…paraphrased by me from this podcast.

            Without first accepting each and every one of these fundamental assumptions as being true, assumptions themselves lacking formal proofs, the empirical enterprise of human scientific investigation of the natural world cannot proceed forward, does not exist.

            This is part of the gaping hole of inconsistency in the modern narrative of naturalistic materialism that makes the untrue and unscientific suggestion to modern mankind, to rely solely upon the hard sciences as the only sure standard by which to identify truth. 

            The fact is that all of science is built upon the foundation of philosophical assumptions we accept “by faith” to be true, without hard scientific, backup proofs of their truth-value.

            One of Dr. Moreland’s main themes of this podcast is that scientism is one of the most corrosive and destructive ideologies in our modern social culture. 

            Scientism erroneously contributes to the post-modernrelativism regarding truth, which attempts to reduce all of the things we know to be true, down to the narrowly limited database of only those things that can be demonstrated as true through hard science alone.

            This then downgrades everything else asserted to be true to the relative opinions of my truth or your truth, neither one being able to rise to the standard of repetitive laboratory testing for truth as defined by scientism, including all philosophical assumptions.

            Because the fundamental, underlying assumptions that form the basis for all scientific research are philosophical in nature, and therefore cannot meet the standard of verification through the hard sciences, the narrow worldview philosophy of scientism ironically undermines by definition the very foundational assumptions of science itself.

            This narrowly crafted approach to categorizing genuineknowledgewould also reduce the obvious existence of well-defined, discretionary choice-making down into the inconsequential category of scientifically unsupportable data not amenable to being quantified or tested physically in a laboratory.

            Scientism is therefore a logically incoherent philosophical program that dissolves itself by being self-refuting, and by undermining the very edifice of the science it purports to defend.

            The irony here is that the complex, specified, and coherently integrated systems of information in the natural living and non-living world point towards the need for intelligent agency.

            The skeletal explanatory frameworks that define the distinctive essences of these systems of information are similar in character to the four basic assumptions underlying science listed above…being abstract, intangible, philosophical realities needed to conduct science.

            A reasonable argument could be made that if scientific materialism insists upon excluding intelligent agency based upon the abstract nature of some of the implications of its findings, then much of science should also be abandoned because the scientific method itself relies upon informational assumptions that are abstract and intangible, assumptions that are conceptually philosophical in nature.

From Pondering Our Creation: Christian Essays on Science and Faith.

[1] See on the Internet Moravec’s Paradox – Why are machines so smart, yet so dumb? On Up and Atom published July 8, 2019, and The Essence of Calculus, sections one and two, describing change over time and the concept of limits, in 3Blue 1 Brown.

[2] https://www.biola.edu/blogs/think-biblically/2018/science-and-faith-in-a-secular-society

Science and God are Not in Conflict, revised Part 3

Definition Automatically Creates Gaps of Exclusivity

            In the two Socrates in the City interviews of John Lennox in Labastide, France[1], the interviewer Eric Metaxas makes the point that the atheistic worldview of naturalistic materialism creates a false zero-sum game in science.

             Each new discovery made by science adds to the increasing database of valid human knowledge on one side of the ledger sheet, and creates an equal and opposite subtraction of human ignorance on the other side of the ledger sheet. 

            This beneficially decreases the number of explanations of the phenomena in nature based upon “old-wives” tales, superstition, black magic, witchcraft, unfounded speculation, and the unfathomable whims of the ancient gods.

            Human scientific investigation is the one and only research methodology that can move the innumerable mysteries regarding the phenomena in the natural world from the ignorance column over to the knowledge column.

            But for atheists, in a closed-system worldview consisting only of material things, the more we know about the workings of the natural world discovered through the reliability of the hard sciences, the less our need by default to ascribe the things we do not yet understand to the random serendipity of unknown causes. 

            This artificial, zero-sum dynamic from ignorance to knowledge has created the erroneous concept of a god-of-the-gaps explanation, of a god that does nothing else but exists to perform the role of a temporary placeholder for ignorance. 

            The contrived god-of-the-gaps fills-in as a “nothing burger” explanation until scientific investigation can uncover the real, empirical truths underlying the particular phenomena in nature.

            Until we scientifically understood the physics of lightning, for example, in ignorance mankind historically ascribed the mystery of lightning to be an act of God, which in one sense it is, for the Christian theist lightning being the natural creation of God.

            In these two episodes of Socrates in the City, Lennox and Metaxas arrive at the brilliant observation that the God of the Bible is entirely unique amongst other gods…is not a material entity.  The God of the Bible is not like the gods of the ancient world descended from the primeval “stuff” of the universe, but instead is an eternal, immaterial Spirit Being (Jn. 4:24).

            One problem with a zero-sum approach to judging the advancing achievements in science is that it requires a materialistic universe having a finite total number of available, objectively knowable facts that can be moved from the ignorance side of the ledger sheet to the knowledge side of the ledger sheet.

            But a universe having a transcendent Creator God…an eternal Mind…being a living Spirit, radically differs in that this theistic worldview infinitely broadens the possible biological diversities of the architectural body-plans and lifestyle habits of the ten-million living species on earth. 

            A non-material God who is a living Spirit broadens beyond human imagination the possible scope and diversities of the life-scripts that can be composed and orchestrated for human beings, from Abraham through Paul recorded in the Bible, and into our present-day.

            This is one of the outstanding features exhibited in the biblical narrative stories of faith.  

            An Intelligent Spirit Being is a superior explanation for the origin of information in our universe, because both the Bible and modern science tell us that all of the universe-related matter, energy, and information all came into existence at the Big Bang.

            Genesis 1:1 and John 1:1-3 tell us that God inventedthe information and created the physical matter and energy through the medium of His spoken words, through information in the form of divinely uttered speech. 

            This is a metaphorical medium not currently amenable to scientific investigation, but has outcomes that can be empirically recognized and appreciated through its complex, specified, and coherently integrated function, a concept commonly referred to as organized complexity.

            Paraphrasing John Lennox, the Bible has the priority of creation in the right sequential order, in saying that immaterial, universe-building information generated by the Word of God Jesus Christ is primary, and matter/energy in the universe is secondarily derivative.

            Naturalistic materialism has it backwards, saying that matter/energy comes first…is primary…and information is derived secondarily from matter and energy.

            This is ingeniously and concisely summarized in the question posed by some modern physicists in this Age ofInformation: Is the universe it before bit, or bit before it?[2]

            In this question, it is material in the form of mass/energy.  Bit is non-material in the form of the “bits” of ones and zeroes comprising the information in computer software language code.

            One of the most brilliant takeaways I got from watching these John Lennox interviews is that for much of the phenomena in the natural world, the best that science can do is to offer descriptions only but not full explanations.

            Isaac Newton’s mathematical descriptions of motion and gravity, called the laws of gravity can get us to the moon, but Newton himself admitted that he had no idea what gravity actually is.  Newton attempts to offer no explanation of gravity beyond his description of it.

            Even today we do not understand what gravity, energy, and many other things in the natural world actually are, even though we can describe them in terms of mathematical equations and the laws of physics.  

            John Lennox tells the story about his 2008 debate with Richard Dawkins, who asked Lennox the question: “If God created you, then who created God?”

            In answer to which John Lennox asked the question: “If you believe that the universe created you, then who created the universe?”

            The Bible tells us that God is not a created Being, but is eternal.

            This seemingly paradoxical dilemma of who created God becomes easy to answer, if we simply jettison the notion that the dimension of time created at the Big Bang must apply to God going backwards for an eternity. 

            A more straightforward explanation is that God lives in a timeless reality, rendering the question of a moment in time when He Himself would have been created or come into existence as being mute and inapplicable.

            Unlike the ancient fertility gods that humanity invented, being derived from material things like the sun, the moon, the sky, mountains, and wild beasts that can be reduced to idol-gods of wood, stone, or precious metals…the God of the Bible is the Creator of the universe (Gen. 1:1; Jn. 1:1-3).

            The God of the Bible was not created by the universe, and therefore is transcendent and outside of the zero-sum reality that scientific materialists have limited themselves to through their closed-system philosophy.

            John Lennox goes on to say that the God of the Bible is far above being a mere placeholder for temporary ignorance, for mankind the invented god-of-the-gaps, who can be displaced by the empirical findings of science.

            Lennox gets a laugh from the audience when he recites a materialistic revision of the first verse in the Bible: “In the beginning God created the bits of the universe that we do not yet understand.”

            He then recites the correct first verse in the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 1:1), which says that God created everything.

            The materialistic zero-sum approach leaves out the Intelligent Designer who invented the information content of the phenomena we investigate through science.

From Pondering Our Creation: Christian Essays on Science and Faith.

[1] Socrates in the City with John Lennox…in Labastide, France…Part One on Jan. 12, 2018…and Part Two on Jan. 23, 2018…interviewed by Eric Metaxas, on You Tube.

[2] John Lennox: Socrates in the City in Labastide, France Part 1, published Jan. 12, 2018 on You Tube.

Science and God are Not in Conflict, revised Part 2

Our Brain is a Mind

            In the Socrates in the City interview “Has Science Buried God?” of scientist and author John Lennox by Eric Metaxas[1], the critical point is argued that modern science has not buried faith, but that modern science can bury atheism.

            Oxford professor of mathematics Dr. Lennox tells the story of some of his world-famous scientist friends and colleagues asking the question why he is not an atheist. 

            His telling response is to ask them that if the computer and equipment they use in their scientific research was produced, was designed and manufactured through a random and undirected process, could they have a reasonable and consistent confidence in the data the computer and lab-equipment generated. 

            Their answer every time is no.

            If, according to materialism, the human mind/brain is likewise the product of the random and undirected process of Darwinian evolution, this undermines our sure confidence in the accuracy of human rational thought. 

When extended-out to its logical end-point this radical materialism dissolves rationality, even dissolves the philosophical thinking of atheism itself.

            Atheism thought-out all the way through to its end-point dissolves the reliability and credibility of its own thought process, because the accuracy of a computer, lab-equipment, or a human brain that is the materialistic product of a random and undirected process cannot be absolutely trusted.

            Atheism based upon naturalistic materialism, when extended-out logically, destroys rationality in every field of science.  Materialism sweeps away our reasonable confidence in the human mental capacity to accurately take advantage of the fundamental assumptions underlying all scientific research, that the natural world is both orderly and intelligible. 

            But most importantly and insightfully recognized, the natural world is intelligible to human beings alone amongst all other living organisms, an extraordinary capacity I do not believe we want to give up so easily to misleading philosophy.

            The reliability of our mental capacity to differentiate truth from error, and our ability to place value upon trustworthy research methods, enables the pursuit of modern science.

            One of the ingeniously insightful apologetic arguments in recent times for the existence of God is the differentiation between matter and mind…the contrast between concrete, material things as opposed to the abstract, conceptual nature of information.

            The classic case is made that the information conveyed in the daily headlines of the New York Times newspaper is not explainable by means of the physics and chemistry of ink bonding to paper.

            The information conveyed in the newspaper headlines is the product of the intelligent arrangement of the ink on paper, in this instance in the English language.  This reality transcends above and is completely detached and independent from the mechanical explanation of how ink bonds to paper.

            Physics and chemistry alone are incapable of the abstract thought process of arranging ink on paper to convey intelligible information.  The arrangement of anything complex, specified, and coherently integrated like the intelligent design of the headlines of the New York Times newspaper requires a mind.

            In the Socrates in the City interview noted above, John Lennox makes another critical point by saying that informationis not a material thing. 

            Information is correctly defined to be an abstract, intangible entity that has a non-materialistic essence, quite apart from the material explanation of how ink bonds to paper.

            Dr. Lennox gives a beautiful illustration of this.  On a mountaintop in the state of Washington, he sends up a message using smoke signals, which are read by Native American Indians who telephone this information to someone in Oxford, England, who types-inputs this into a computer that can be emailed to friends and colleagues of John Lennox at Oxford University.

            In this illustration, the information/message remains the same, but the mediums used to convey the information in the form of smoke signals, smartphone, computer, and email are all different. 

            This means that the complex, specified, and coherently integrated systems of information discovered in the natural world by modern scientific investigation cannot be the sole product of naturalistic materialism. 

            The information cannot be the product of the smoke signals, the smartphone, or the computer, but instead first originate from an intelligent mind, because information correctly defined is not materialistic but abstract.

From Pondering Our Creation: Christian Essays on Science and Faith.

[1] Socrates in the City: “Has Science Buried God?” Aug. 21, 2019.

Science and God are Not in Conflict, revised Part 1

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament showeth his handiwork.  Day unto day uttereth speech, and night unto night showeth knowledge.”                                  (Ps. 19:1-2)

            A recent scientific discovery now illuminates our understanding of genetic mutations, which can be chosen by natural selection in the wild or by the artificial selection of human breeding. 

            Some genetic mutations produce helpful variant traits, which can now be tracked in a broad range of living organisms, thanks to the hard work of the 10-year project to map the human DNA genome.

            What initially took years of painstaking effort mapping the 3.5-billion letters of DNA letter-by-letter in humans, now can map the DNA sequence of a particular breed of dog, for example, in an afternoon as a result of faster computers and specialized software programs.

            Thanks to improved technology, we are now able to track-down helpful changes/mutations in the DNA, and match these mutations to their actualized traits…the physical characteristics they produce.

            This new research has revealed that Darwin’s theory of evolution is in actuality a process of devolution.[1] 

            This is discussed in an interview of biochemist, professor, and author Dr. Michael Behe in Socrates in the City, by Eric Metaxas.

            It turns out that genetic mutations do not add new informationto the DNA strand that if so, might support Darwin’s theory that the mutation/selection process is capable over long periods of time of producing enough complex, innovative new features to explain the origin of species. 

            Developments like the fully functional winged flight of birds, the visual sight of an owl, the running speed of the cheetah, the underwater sonar capacity of a dolphin, bipedal upright walking, human speech, and the human mind require vast amounts of complex, specified, and coherently integrated systems of information.

            Molecular biochemistry is now telling us that devolution is instead a process that breaks individual genes in the existing DNA sequence of chemical letters, not adding new creative information but subtracting information from the DNA code.

            This is much different from adding blocks of new and different cell-types in clustered groups to create the one-step leap from a Precambrian jellyfish to a Cambrian Trilobite or Wiwaxia, which I am proposing in this book as the explanation for biological development.

            But devolution does brilliantly explain the microevolution that enables adaptation to differing geographical and ecological environments, without the need to extrapolate this process into the much larger theoretical concept of macroevolution to explain the vast diversity of life progressing over the course of geological history.

            The human breeding of a prototype wolf to produce the variant forms of a Golden Retriever, Great Dane, or Black Labrador dog over many generations, involves at the molecular level in the cell the breakage of particular genes that code for specific characteristics. 

            Scientists can now identify and track these broken genes from wolf to new breed of dog, resulting in a reduction rather than an addition of genetic information creating damaged genes that will not go back in the reverse direction to recover this original lost information.

            This means according to modern genetic biochemistry that the entire program of Darwinian evolution is in reality a process of conservative change around the margins, and not radically progressive macroevolution as originally theorized.

            Instead, biology has strict boundary limits around the change-effects of beneficial genetic mutations, which we can now track through empirical scientific investigation.

I especially like the description of how we can now trace the outward physical changes from a grizzly bear to a polar bear, at the level of specific genes in the cell being broken and damaged, thus identifying the removal of information (devolving) rather than adding new innovative information.

Breaking certain genes within the cells of the polar bear not only removes the brown color of the grizzly bear’s fur to produce white fur, but creates an ensemble of newly grouped broken genes that produces the polar bear’s ability to metabolize the high fat content of seals, and also adds all of the accompanying new lifestyle habits that polar bears need to survive and reproduce in the extreme cold weather of the arctic environment.

The combination of traits that differentiates the grizzly bear from the polar bear, using the Darwinian gradualism of “nature makes no sudden leaps” no longer stacks-up when all of the evidence is examined as a whole.

The incredibly tight engineering tolerances of selecting just the right genes to break at the cellular level to create the completed life-form of a polar bear, when combined with the totally independent factors of the prior fitness of the arctic environment in terms of biodiversity and a complex ecosystem, logically cancels-out the materialistic assertion that raw nature can coordinate these factors into function and fit on its own.

The inference to the best explanation now points to an intelligent designing agent who can identify the specific DNA code letters contained in gene sequences, and break the genes in blocks of clustered groups to produce the new cell-types to create a polar bear from a grizzly bear.

            Quoting two passages from Dr. Behe’s book:

“The molecular parts of the cell are elegantly arranged to fulfill many subsidiary purposes that must blend together in service of the large overall purpose of forming life.  As we’ll see in this book, no unintelligent, undirected process—neither Darwin’s mechanism nor any other—can account for that.”

“It seems, then, that the magnificent Ursus maritimus (polar bear) has adjusted to its harsh environment mainly by degrading genes that its ancestors already possessed.  Despite its impressive abilities, rather than evolving, it has adapted predominantly by devolving.  What that portends for our conception of evolution is the principal topic of this book.”[2] 

            The devolution that occurs in living cells that produces the suite of broken and damaged genes that in turn produce the variation of physical traits that changes a grizzly bear into a polar bear, does not explain how a bear comes into existence in the first-place.

            The information content in living cells that produces the architectural body-plan and lifestyle habits of a bear is much larger and more sophisticated than the microevolutionary processes that put-out variant traits for natural selection to choose from to enhance survivability, to create the differences between a grizzly bear and a polar bear.

From Pondering Our Creation: Christian Essays on Science and Faith.

[1] Michael Behe: Darwin Devolves…Socrates in the City interview, on You Tube dated March 29, 2019

[2] Michael J. Behe, Darwin Devolves (New York: Harper Collins, 2019), 9, 17.

Empirical Evidence for the Existence of God

            During the follow-up questions & answers period after a presentation given by a Christian apologist or after a public debate between an atheist and a Christian, invariably a person from the audience will ask some version of the question: “Is there empirical evidence for the existence of God?”

            In the 21st century, this has to be one of the most misinformed questions a person can have.

            I place the blame for this at the feet of the scientific materialists of the second half of the 20th century and our current century, for the rigid atheism of their worldview that prevents them from considering and then disseminating a fuller and more open-minded view of the natural world.

            This fuller view of the natural world would have educated the general public about the clear demarcation line in absolutely everything…not just science…separating the fixity of things that are physically material from the variability of abstract concepts that are non-material.

            This distinction might be the most important first issue to address in the science and God, evolution and creation debate.

            One classic example of this clear demarcation line is the empirically factual, neutral and unbiased explanation from science of how ink bonds to paper, contrasted with the entirely conceptual explanation of the opinion-loaded information that is advocated in the headlines of a daily newspaper or in the title of a magazine article.

            I can read the front-page headlines and the accompanying article given below in the New York Times newspaper for example, and grasp the arguments being made and process the information on a sophisticated level to be able to form an opinion about the issues being raised, without having the slightest idea about the physics and the chemistry of how ink bonds to paper to create the printing of this newspaper article.

            There is actually no way to get from the technical information of how ink bonds to paper to the altogether different type of information conveyed in the newspaper on world events, business, sports, or fashion.

            The one type of factually specific information acquired through the scientific method of research on how ink bonds to paper, has no connection whatsoever to the type of information being conveyed in the newspaper that is concept-loaded, leading to the possibility of varied opinions and conclusions.

            The physics and chemistry of how ink bonds to paper are entirely neutral and opinion-free on the subjects expressed in a newspaper or magazine article.

            Ink bonding to paper has nothing to say about the letters, words, sentences, paragraphs, punctuation, and grammar intelligently chosen using the English language to convey information in books, magazines, and newspapers.

            The materially empirical and the non-materially conceptual are two things that are in unbridgeable categories of reality.

            This concept can be extended to apply to absolutely everything that is physically material in the natural world, and to absolutely everything that is comprised of non-material, abstract ideas.

            If something is physically material, without exception it is amenable to being dissected, analyzed, categorized, and described in terms of its physical components or behavior.

            But there is no way to quantify in terms of a physical measurement whether my opinion about the issues in the newspaper article are right or wrong.

            The scientific method of inquiry that produces empirical, fact-based evidence cannot breach the demarcation line into the judgmental zone of determining right from wrong between two or more opposing opinions.

            Opinions, conclusions, and viewpoints are in the different category of non-material reality.

            This discussion highlights and differentiates the singular empiricism of the scientific method of investigation that produces databases of factual evidence about phenomena in the natural world.

            This is why I believe that because the universe came into physical being as material at the Big Bang, that given more time and ingenious investigative techniques, that scientists will in the future discover the mechanics of how the universe came into existence.

            This is why I believe that no matter how complex is the material nanotechnology inside living cells, that given more time and evermore ingenious investigative techniques, that scientists will in the future discover all or nearly all of the physical mechanics of how genetics, DNA, and the cell produce the vast diversity of life on earth.

Empiricism Cannot Logically Opine on the Existence of God

            One example of badly missing the big-picture as limited by an atheistic worldview, is to not recognize the implications in terms of directional trajectories and prior fitness that the Big Bang is an explosion.  Explosions do not create intelligible order, but instead create chaotic disorder.

            We only see order coming out of the Big Bang by looking backwards in hindsight from the current order we observe today in the natural world.

            From our direction looking backwards in time it is easy to take for granted that of course order arose out of the Big Bang explosion 13.7-billion years ago, because today we observe order in the natural world.

            But from the time of the Big Bang looking forward, to arrive at the orderliness and intelligibility of the natural world today is asking too much of a random and undirected, purely materialistic process.

            A massive explosion in a printing press factory will not generate a dictionary.

            A tornado going through a junkyard will not assemble a 747 commercial jetliner.

            In our normal experience, explosions do not produce things that are orderly to the point of being intelligible to human investigation through science, like our universe amazingly is.

            The late scientist Stephen Hawking can brilliantly investigate the origin of the universe through quantum mechanics. 

            This is all well and good, and scientists will continue this investigation.

            But the narrow focus of the atheism of scientific materialism precludes the fuller picture that would include the obvious question once we see it, of how a massive explosion at the beginning of the universe could over billions of years arrive at an end-point in this 21st century of cognitive, thinking human scientists exploring the physically material universe, exploiting with great success this orderliness and intelligibility, arising out of the chaotic disorder of a massive explosion.

            Scientific materialism derisively dismisses intelligent agency as a plausible explanation behind the orderliness and intelligibility of the natural world, while putting forward the materialistically nonsensical view that this orderliness and intelligibility could arise out of an explosion through random and undirected processes.

            Another clear example of atheism sweeping the obvious under the rug, once we see it, is the idea that extra-large stars are needed to implode through gravity to produce the required heat to make carbon and oxygen, just before exploding to spread these critical elements throughout the cosmos that are essential to enable complex life like ourselves to exist.

            The chemical bonding properties of the carbon atom are critical to form the numerous compounds that enable living organisms to exist, yet again a massive explosion of giant stars is required to translate over billions of years this physically material reality into life on earth.

            The Big Bang creation of the universe is dated to 13.7-billion years ago, and the first appearance of life on earth is dated to around 3.8-billion years ago.

            Doing the math, this equates to a gap of time of nearly 10 billion years from the existence of the material universe to the beginning of life on earth.

            What quality of foresight would be capable of spanning this period of time to connect-the-dots beginning with carbon and oxygen created within exploding supernova stars, to arrive at exquisite end-points of function in the ten-million different species living on earth today exhibiting unique architectural body-plans and lifestyle habits.

            The common layman on the street would and does say as the majority opinion that this directionally targeted outcome of complex, specified, and coherently integrated living organisms could not come about through random and undirected processes commencing with giant, supernova stars exploding 13-billion years ago.  

            I did not take anatomy, physiology, or biology courses in high school or college, and could not pass today the first pop-quiz in the introductory classes in any of these subjects.

            But I can easily recognize in this 21st century through the most general understanding of the various parts of my body, through a non-technical introspection of how precisely everything internally works, that I am vastly too complex to be the product of a mindless, blind, accidental, indifferent to outcomes, trial-and-error, and undirected process.

            Ask most people the same thing, and given a moment of reflection would agree that we are too complex and too highly specified in terms of function to be the product of a solely matter and energy universe.

            It is the element of atheism within scientific materialism that generates the uninformed question: “Is there empirical evidence for the existence of God?”

            The correct answer is that of course there is no empirical evidence for the existence of the God of the Bible, because God is a non-material, Spirit-Being…but this is not the end of the story.

            Provisional conclusions that are abstract concepts attached to scientific research programs can no more exclude divinely intelligent agency than they can support atheism as the only worldview acceptable to pure science.

            The leap across the wide canyon from factually empirical data to the conceptualization and theorizing required to make sense of this data, is analogous to the unbridgeable gap between the physics and chemistry of how ink bonds to paper when compared to the opinion-loaded information advocated in the headlines of the New York Times daily newspaper.

            During an interview in Socrates in the City[1], John Lennox makes the insightful comment that after Stephen Hawking states at the beginning of his book The Grand Design that philosophy is dead, Hawking spends the reminder of the book discussing what can only be called the philosophy of science.

            What isn’t clearly being said here is that such a book cannot, by categorical definition, be anything other than philosophy.

            Once Stephen Hawking or any other scientist shifts into the abstract informational zone of temporarily provisional theories and conclusions, in the writing of a book or an article in a scientific journal, or in writing a proposal for a research grant, this vehicle of communication has crossed over the demarcation line from the purely empirical nature of factual databases to breach into the opinionated realm of conceptually abstract idea-making.

            When scientific materialists import abstract reasoning into the empirical realm of factual evidence and attempt to classify this conceptualization as being science as well, they are pleading a special case in favor of science that is not logically allowed anywhere else.

            The unbridgeable dichotomy between the mechanics of literally everything in existence that is physically material, compared to the altogether different reality of conceptually abstract ideas in the non-material form of information, is not only operative in the science and God debate, but in everything imaginable in material and non-material reality.

            This distinction between the material and the non-material is fundamental to understanding anything in the real world, and thereby exposes the nonsensical nature of the question of whether God is a physically material entity and thus amenable to empirical identification.

            Finally, the part about reading a newspaper article and forming my own opinions and reactions to the issues posed, involves the element of free-will choice.

            No one can force me to think a certain way regarding a specific issue or topic.

            This flexible variability in the realm of personal opinions lifts all such abstract conceptualizing and theorizing out of the entirely different realm of the empiricism of studying physically material things in the natural world that produces not variable opinions, but instead fact-based evidences not open to speculative opinion.

            This is why the worldview of atheism does not belong anywhere near the scientific method of research, God or no-God being inapplicable to the scientific research program as long as it stays on the empiricism side of the demarcation line separating the material from the non-material.

            The argument between the theist and the atheist involves the variability of personal opinion, and thus falls outside of the empiricism of the scientific method.

            This then correctly shifts the dispute into what is called an inference to the best explanation, which is entirely philosophical although based upon the same agreed-upon database of facts.

From Pondering Our Creation: Christian Essays on Science and Faith.

[1] John Lennox: Socrates in the City in Labastide, France, Part 2, Jan. 23, 2018 on YouTube.

Human Development and Evolution, revised Part 1

            Modern evolutionists adopt and incorporate the Latin axiom of Charles Darwin in his book The Origin of Species: “natura non facit saltus,” that nature makes no sudden leaps.

            An incrementally progressive chain linking together Australopithecus-Africanus (4-7 million years ago), Homo habilis (2-million years ago), Homo erectus (1.8-million years ago), and Cro-Magnon man which are early Homo sapiens (200,000 years ago), requires the logical consistency of a uniformly straight, gradually moderate, upward-sloping, horizontal graph-line.

            This would include historically recordable milestone advancements along this progression.

            Darwinian macroevolution applied to human development requires incremental improvements chopped-up into small enough pieces in order to easily progress through the process of genetic mutations acted upon by natural selection. 

            This has to occur over a long, drawn-out period of time.

            This evolutionary progression would reveal human transitional improvements as historically evident milestones spaced-out incrementally along the way, both in terms of recognizable physical characteristics, but also intellectual/lifestyle advancements.

            We cannot adopt gradualism as the axiom that nature makes no sudden leaps over a long period of time in the advancing anatomical and intellectual development of human beings, without some tangible evidence in the intellectual/lifestyle arena to show for it.[1] 

            This should be a presentation of the evidentiary facts required of modern evolutionists in support of progressive development, especially as historical time ticks downward in the very recent past decades at 90, 80, 70, 60, 50, 40, 30, 20, and 10 thousand years ago.

            In plain words, if gradualism is the paradigm of human development, then we would expect to see a quarterly report-card…a historical audit report…of humanity’s physical and intellectual progress at mid-stride points in time in the distant past. 

            We cannot have sudden, vertical spikes of intellectual forward-progress and a Darwinian progress report of horizontally gradual, slowly improving human physical attributes, both occurring within the same span of time.

            In the hypothetical progression from ancient ancestors to modern humans, a mindless and undirected natural world can provide no preferential skips forward for mankind’s intellect. 

            Darwinian macroevolution allows only a slow-moving, naturalistic gradualism.   

            A large advance of development in a living organism in biology is called a saltation.  They are considered outside the reach of random and undirected processes to bring into being, within single creative events. 

            A saltation requires the combination and coordination of too many small genetic mutations to coalesce into one large, beneficially functional trait, to then successfully be chosen by natural selection at a single point in time.   

            If the historical development of human beings was in-fact gradual, this would apply not only to physical traits but also to lifestyle/intellectual advancements. 

            These advancements must be in a relatively close one-to-one correspondence to the physical traits being put-out by the ever-increasing complexity of new and different cell-types introduced over time. 

            Otherwise, the only option left is to have a lump-sum addition of advanced intelligence to human beings at a late, singular point in time, which could only occur through divine action, which is what I am suggesting did occur here based upon the evidence. 

            The lump-sum addition of human intellectual acuity late in development would create a nonsensical dichotomy between physical and mental advancements in the naturalistic program, a reality that becomes more difficult to explain through random, accidental, and undirected processes.

            Modern humans have 215 different cell-types and roughly 100 brain nerve-cell types.[2]

            I personally have no problem with Australopithecus-Africanus having 160 cell-types, Homo habilis having 170 cell-types, Homo erectus having 185 cell-types, and Cro-Magnon man having 195 cell-types leading up to modern humans (Homo sapiens) with 215 different cell-types to support our current architectural body-plans and lifestyle habits, for example.

            This would explain cave paintings, stone arrowheads, primitive tools, and pottery fragments dating back tens of thousands of years produced by pre-humans lacking the full complement of cell-types, yet still functionally suited to their biodiverse, contemporary environment.  

            The concept of the download of clustered groups of differing new cell-types removes the need of a metaphorical explanation for the sudden appearance of mature human faculties in the biblical story of Adam and Eve, discussed in more detail later in this essay.

            But if we insist upon a linear progression of new and different cell-types one-at-a-time from a hypothetical starting point of 160 cell-types 4-7 million years ago to the current 215 cell-types today, then we must find signs of human intellectual milestones pushed back hundreds of thousands of years, if we are to be logically consistent.

Human Writing as an Indicator

            The human invention of writing is a critical, date-stamp indicator of human intellectual progress that helps to pinpoint when humans acquired their full complement of 215 cell-types and 100 brain nerve-cell types.

            The invention of writing is dated to as recent a time as 3,200 B.C. in the wedge-shaped cuneiform lettering of Egyptian hieroglyphs.  The cuneiform alphabet in Syria is dated to around 2,000 B.C., and the invention of the 22-sign Phoenician alphabet is dated to around 1,000 B.C.

            The start of the writing of the first five books of the Old Testament called the Pentateuch, is dated by conservative scholars at around 1,450-1,410 B.C., at the time of the Exodus.[3]

            The Greeks adopt the Phoenician writing script around 800 B.C.   

            The invention of human writing is therefore placed at only 5,200 years ago.

            There is no evidence of sophisticated, written communication using an alphabet 15,000 years ago, 50,000 years ago, or 150,000 years ago in the very recent past as a milestone event in human intellectual development.

            The boundary-line between Homo erectus and Homo sapiens is generally placed at around 200,000 years ago, which inaugurates the start of what is considered by paleontologists to be modern man.

            It would follow then that the invention of writing, by some exceptionally gifted persons having forwardly progressing IQ’s above and out in-front of the general populace as is common today, would have occurred at least as far back as sometime around 200,000 B.C.

            To have a smooth transition of beneficial, variant physical traits moving incrementally forward in a positive direction from the start of Homo erectus at 1.8-million years ago to the start of Homo sapiens at 200,000 years ago, yet have human writing start around 3,200 B.C., is illogically nonsensical.

            For humans to invent writing in 3,200 B.C. and then be standing on the moon in 1969 A.D. is fact-based evidence that argues for the near instantaneous introduction of intellectual capacity.

            This is in stark contrast with Darwin’s notion that nature makes no sudden leaps, in the one and only area where the developments of advancing physical traitsand lifestyle habits can be compared side-by-side in the common descent theory of human beings.

            When Charles Darwin wrote in his classic 1859 book The Origin of Species “nature makes no sudden leaps,” he locked himself into the paradigm of changein relation to time applied to biological development, which in my opinion is wrong because he was working within the limited constraints of the materialistic worldview.

            According to what seemed reasonable at the time in 1859, Darwin thought that by hypothesizing small-step changes put-out by living organisms as variant traits through random and undirected processes, that natural selection could arbitrate between the comparative values of these traits for survival and reproductive advantage, and favor the most beneficial. 

            In fairness to Darwin, it would be asking too much to expect that he could rise above the conventional thinking of change occurring over time, because the modern discoveries of complex, specified, and coherently integrated systems of information in the natural world of biology were little known in 1859.

            But today the concept of an instantaneous rate of change occurring in a “width-less” moment of time t=0 is entirely understandable when we ponder the Big Bang, the origin of life, the Cambrian Explosion, the immergence of human intelligence, and elementary calculus.

From Pondering Our Creation: Christian Essays on Science and Faith.

[1] See the discussion of the Waiting Time Problem during the final roughly 12 minutes of the podcast: Gunter Bechly Explains What the Fossil Evidence Really Says, published by Discovery Science November 23, 2021 on You Tube.

[2] On the Origin of Phyla—Interviews with Dr. James Valentine, by Access Research Network, published on Oct. 22, 2014, on You Tube.

[3] 2061030 The Oldest Yahweh Inscription 2 Kings Joel Kramer, published Oct. 30, 2016 by Lighthouse Church-Twin Falls on YouTube…at Joel Kramer Archaeologist.

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