Tag: Evolution

The Investigation of the Natural World is not the Same Thing as the Natural World Itself

            The ingenious methodologies of research by humans going in the positive direction from ignorance to a more truthful understanding of the phenomena in the natural world, cannot break through the impregnable barrier of the empiricism of matter and energy to unravel the greater ingenuity in the creative, abstract thinking coming from another direction, that resides within the intelligent agency that invented the thing being researched.

            We do not formally recognize that the data we obtain by studying falling objects though space using the modern scientific method, that reaches the laudable point of sophistication to be able to send men to the moon and back, that this factual database falls short of the imaginative creativity that brought into being a reality as amazing as the force of gravity that we investigate.

This issue of the glass ceiling of the empiricism of the scientific method is central to the God and science debate.

Let’s analyze this issue in more detail.

In the making of Italian spaghetti sauce, a favorite topic in this book, there are at least three main realities.

The first is the cookbook recipe of sequential steps.

The second is the taste-test reaction from the spaghetti eaters.

The third is the breaking-down of the various ingredients into their individual chemical components using the scientific method in a laboratory by trained scientists. 

Similarly, artistic oil painting, water-color painting, and ink drawing can be divided into at minimum three main realities.

The first is the sequential steps of mechanically producing a work of art.

The second is the opinionated viewing by the public of this artwork in a museum.

The third, again, is the breaking-down of the painting ingredients into their chemical components via the scientific method in the controlled environment of a laboratory by scientific researchers.

Another easily understood example might be the construction of a new house, which again can be divided into at least three main realities.

The first is the sequential steps of the assembly of the house from the ground up, following a well-established pattern common to all new housing construction.

The second might be the “curb-appeal” of the front elevation of the house as viewed from the street, or the utility of the floor plan for optimal living.

But the third reality once again can go into the highly technical aspects of what is called materials science, which studies the structural strengths of materials, resistance to fire, waterproofing qualities, insulating between heat and cold, and sound insulation.

In these examples, it would be the height of arrogant hubris to insist that the scientifically empirical perspective was the only one that mattered.

In each of the realities given in the three examples above, it was the Scientific Revolution that added the new, third approach of discovering empirical, fact-based evidence at this level of detail.

But the scientific method is the new kid on the block.

Long before Newton’s equations described gravity, people could throw a small rock four feet above themselves and observe the repetitive laws of physics that the rock always comes down to the ground, without being able to describe this reality mathematically.

Long before the scientific field of modern chemistry, a mother would explain the sequential steps of dressing and seasoning the meat from an elk killed by the hunter/gatherer husband, to her daughter in preparation for cooking, before these steps were ever recorded in a cookbook or analyzed chemically in a laboratory for its nutritional value in terms of sodium, sugar, calories, and fat content, or the features of heat in cooking.

The sequential steps for doing all manner of things, and the theorizing and conceptualization of the good or bad, right or wrong, and best practices compared to poor practices, were a part of the human experience long before the scientific method of research was invented in the 1500’s.

Scientific materialists cannot dogmatically insist that mankind has been wrong all this time by placing faith, confidence, and value in the first two realities in each of the three simple examples given above, and in countless other examples commonly observed and perceived in ordinary life.

Most people can detect the intelligence of design in good Italian spaghetti, world-class paintings in a museum, and pleasing architecture in buildings.

Most people can detect the presence of design in the natural world.  The question then becomes the plausibility of competing explanations for its source.

The recognition of intelligence that infers design occurs in the middle, second reality of the three examples given above.

It is not up to scientific materialists to tell us that methodological materialism defines the entirely of reality.

It is not the job of scientists to tell us about the limits of reality.

We are capable of making that determination ourselves.

It seems to me that the arguments made by scientific materialists that only natural causations and explanations are allowed in science, makes reasonable sense only until we reach the near end-point of the investigation of a particular area of research…when most or enough of the data is in.

Once we confidently reach the nearly complete, end-points of research projects that generate sufficient data to begin drawing final conclusions, then broader interpretations and the consequences of the evidence must be allowed that fall outside of the domain of materialistic explanations.

This is what happened in the example of the discovery by Edwin Hubble of an expanding universe that led to the theory of the Big Bang, which has definite theistic implications.

This is what we see in the fine-tuned constants of physics in the universe, that are too precise to be the product of blind chance.

This is what we see in the information content in DNA and in the nanotechnology at work in living cells that defies a materialistic explanation through a blind and undirected process.

            When and if the brilliant scientific method of research in the future discovers a complete matter-and-energy explanation of precisely how the creation of the universe occurred in terms of purely naturalistic causations…then the complexity, specificity, and coherently integrated systems of this information would be so magnificent in its scope and breadth as to be fantastically beyond any atheistic explanation.

            This is the dilemma for modern science today, in that the atheism of scientific materialism is incapable of recognizing the fundamental dichotomy of perception in the scientific method that when most of the factual data is in, this leads to valid inferences to the best explanations that go beyond the limited domain of materialism.

The more we learn about the information required to produce function and fit within living and non-living systems, the more difficult it is to make a plausible argument that the empirical, fact-based evidence derived through the scientific method can exclude agency from the theorizing and conceptualization drawn from this evidence.

This is based upon the reasonable, modern recognition that human scientific research is going in the positive direction towards the discovery of truth regarding the workings in the natural world, using our human thinking skills, while the realities we study deserve the same recognition and appreciation of the cognitive, analytical thinking skills that come from another direction in producing these phenomena, in the first place. 

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

Taking Things Too Much for Granted as We Look Backwards from an Orderly World

            One example of badly missing the big-picture as limited by an atheistic worldview, is to not recognize and factor-in the need for agency to overcome the difficulties in terms of directionally targeted trajectories and prior fitness, that the beginning Hot Big Bang is an explosion. 

            The fundamental question is not just how does something come out of nothing, but more precisely and profoundly how does something explode out of nothing.

            The more knowledgeable and informed question today is how does matter and energy explode out of nothing previously being non-material into physically existent matter and energy.

            If our materialistic, agency-excluding worldview requires that self-assembling matter and energy produced the orderliness and intelligibility we observe today in the natural world, how does non-existent matter and energy explode into existing matter and energy at the beginning of the physical universe? 

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 vantage point of the perfected order we observe today in the natural world.

            I live one street away from the Pacific Ocean in Southern California.  Today I am enjoying a clear blue sky, a moderate summer temperature, and a cooling, slight sea breeze.

            It is easy for me to take this for granted, having never lived farther than a mile from the beaches in Southern California.

            But how many factors must align and be properly sequenced to go from a massive explosion at the Big Bang origin of the universe, to a post-card perfect day along the beach in Southern California?

            Science correctly prides itself in saying that it questions and examines everything analytically without prejudice, that it digs deeper than surface appearances, and that it bases its conclusions and axioms on empirical, fact-based evidences.

            But the atheism in scientific materialism cannot crossover into contemplating the intelligent designing agency that is required to span the enormous gulf of 13.7 billion years from a beginning Hot Big Bang explosion, by definition being a chaotic event, to arrive at the pleasantness of a clear sunny day along a beach in Southern California.

            The number, coordination, and integration of the factors that must be fine-tuned to an inconceivable fit and function outcome of a beautiful sunny sky and pleasant weather at the beach, corresponding to our ability to appreciate this, defies any plausible explanation that leaves God out of the process. 

            From our current viewpoint 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 orderliness actualized in the natural world, that otherwise should be entirely counterintuitive originating out of a massive explosion.

            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, undirected, accidental, and chance-based, purely materialistic process.

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

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

            Italian spaghetti sauce will not make itself.

            The old example that 100 monkeys sitting at typewriters randomly banging on the keys for years would eventually by chance alone produce a Shakespeare play, is a bad analogy because 100 monkeys are not the same thing as starting from scratch with absolutely nothing.[1]

            Monkeys have the physical body-parts and dexterity to perform random typing, and typewriters are highly engineered and sophisticated instruments for communication.

            Time plus chance here is invalid even if successful because the experiment is rigged upfront to propel forward in a certain direction having the built-in means to communicate information.

            100 monkeys in a group all talking for a trillion years cannot possibly produce a Shakespeare play because spoken monkey-talk cannot reach the level of information understandable by humans that a typewriter might possibly generate (unless humans devise a way to translate monkey-talk into English).

            What should be an obvious fallacy in this analogy to monkeys by sheer chance typing Shakespeare is that we are starting with things that are already extremely complex.

            How difficult would it be to create a monkey from scratch capable of being trained to hit typewriter keys?

            The typewriter, that a monkey would produce a Shakespeare play on, is an ingeniously complex invention.

            This is a fundamental point that needs more attention in the evolution/creation debate that starting from absolutely nothing is not the same thing as progressive development from the simple to the complex.

            This is especially true when the simple is not simple at all.

            This argument imagining a pathway through time and chance for Darwinian evolution starts by assuming as a given the existence of complex, highly specified, and coherently integrated entities like monkeys and typewriters.

            The real question is how to create a Shakespeare play starting with absolutely nothing.

            Chance cannot work with nothing.

            The concept of the Big Bang origin of the universe is that matter and energy materially arose out of nothing previously material…no monkeys and no typewriters in existence yet.

            The concept of the origin of life must start with the reality that DNA and the molecular nanotechnology inside the first living bacteria cell arose out of zero DNA, and no life previously existing on earth.

            In our normal experience, explosions do not produce the ordered complexity of coordinated things to the point of being discernable as such, to human investigation through science, like our universe amazingly is.

            But equally telling, explosions do not occur out of nothing.

            The late scientist Stephen Hawking can brilliantly investigate the origin of the universe through quantum mechanics, looking backwards through an intelligibly ordered, present-day reality.  

            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 outcome in this 21st century of cognitive, thinking human scientists. 

These scientists explore the physically material universe, exploiting with great success this feature of orderliness and intelligibility, arising out of the chaotic disorder of a massive explosion.

            Another clear example of atheism blindly sweeping the obvious under the rug, once we see it, is the idea that extra-large stars are needed to condense in size and implode through gravity to produce the exceptionally high 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 living organisms 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 first existence of the material universe to the beginning of life on earth.

            What quality of targeted foresight, absent intelligent designing agency, 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 these directionally targeted outcomes 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 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.

            As stated in the introduction in this book, the more we learn about the phenomena in the natural world, the weaker becomes the argument for naturalistic materialism.

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

            The correct answer is that of course there is no physically material 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.

            The difficulty of assembling all of the various parts in the right amounts to create another duplicate planet Earth-2, again highlights the impracticality of physically material creatures like ourselves marshaling the required knowledge and practical means to put together a functional, life-sustaining planet.

            The difficulty of building a planet from scratch highlights the inescapable reality that a transcendent, non-material, Spirit-Being of unimaginable capacity would be needed to create our planet earth, unencumbered by the practical limitations of physical existence. 

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

            The inference to the best explanation today has only one option.

The creator of this universe has to be a non-material, Spirit-Being possessing the wherewithal to produce a physically material universe, massive sized galaxies, and exquisitely magnificent planets like our earth.

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

[1] See the discussion of starting with truly nothing in The Science & Faith Podcast – James Tour & William Dembski: Information Theory, on the Internet, May 3, 2021 on DrJamesTour.

Neither God Nor Man Can Write Laws that Guarantee Good Moral Choices

            After his road to Damascus experience, Saul/Paul could have said to Jesus that yes, he had been entirely wrong and mistaken about persecuting the early Christian church, but that he was too offended that God had allowed him to go this far in error, to then step into this new mission-calling to preach Jesus as the risen Christ.

            After his exceptional education in Jerusalem under the acclaimed teacher Gamaliel, Saul/Paul could have complained to Jesus that God should have told him earlier about looking both ways before crossing the street, before being allowed to proceed in ignorance to create so much havoc in attacking the Christian church in Jerusalem.

            Saul/Paul could have reasonably responded to the new calling of Jesus to go out into the larger sphere of the Greco-Roman world to preach the gospel truth of a risen Christ, that he was both too mad at God and at the same time totally unable to forgive himself for being ignorant about the preeminence of faith in the biblical narrative stories, and in the proper role of the Law of Moses in Judaism.

            Saul/Paul could have justifiably complained that God should have given him the needed discernment upfront to be able to recognize Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ, without the extreme measure after-the-fact of a revelation by way of a blinding light on the road to Damascus, to learn this truth the hard-way.

            But this reveals possibly the whole point God is making in the creation of this physical universe, that in the Garden of Eden we were unable to parse the malicious half-truth that eating a piece of fruit from a specific tree would render us into gods having the knowledge of good and evil.

            God did not rescue us at that critical juncture because non-divine, free-thinking beings lacking timeless foresight are susceptible to the persuasively clever arguments delivered by a charismatic, outwardly beautiful liar…and this particular truth has to be demonstrated over time through human history in a variety of laboratory-type, empirically investigated lessons-learned.

            Whether it is Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Jim Jones of Jonestown, Guyana, or Satan in the holographic guise of a beautiful talking serpent, in the vast eternity of reality some of the moral concepts in the knowledge of good and evil are difficult to nail-down without the benefit of first-hand field research. 

            The divine brilliance revealed in the method of the calling of Saul/Paul through the road to Damascus experience, was that God was able to flip Saul into Paul the apostle in a moment of time, creating in an instant an exceptionally qualified rabbinical Pharisee yet having the super-humility to engage with the Gentiles without looking derisively down his nose at their ignorance about God.

            Without Saul/Paul’s colossal blunder in persecuting the early Christian church in Jerusalem, within the environment of a world having evil and suffering, there is no Paul the apostle to the Gentiles, and no Paul a new creature in Christ beloved widely in the early Christian churches he was instrumental in founding, as revealed in Romans 16.

            This conversion story of Paul the apostle displays at the very heart of the matter our deep need for Jesus Christ to be “the way, the truth, and the life” in our lives, to approach the deepest meanings in the broad array of moral concepts at their end-points of understanding.

            These arguments are not subservient to the factual empiricism of science, but are humanly understandable to be at the higher level of ultimate and eternal reality.

            The reason why Jesus the Son of God and the Second Person of the Trinity, the humble God/man from the obscure town of Nazareth, was on the cross that fateful Friday as the Passover Lamb of God sacrifice for sin, was missed by everyone including His disciples.

            The fact that we all missed this as a group is one of the main points God is trying to make through the cross and resurrection of Jesus.

            We need God to tell us to look both ways before crossing the street, and to show us how to use the brakes on our bicycles.

            We need this broken world with all of its evil and suffering, for exceptional goodness and brilliant virtue to immerge.

This is epitomized in the cross and resurrection of Jesus that inaugurates at the highest imaginable level God sacrificing Himself so that we can embark on a guided research program into the knowledge of good and evil, through the lens of a fallen yet redeemed, imperfect moral character.   

Even Peter has difficulty with discernment as he tries to figure-out his right course of action at the night trial of Jesus (Mt. 26:34-35, 69-75).

Before Damascus, Saul/Paul could not conceivably have imagined a way that God could extend to the undeserving, totally misguided, polytheistic and idol-worshipping Gentiles, salvation by grace through faith.

This brilliant creativity of imaginative insight in crafting this life-script for the apostle Paul to enable him through super-humility to become the missionary evangelist to the larger Greco-Roman world at this time-period of the start of the Great Commission (Mt. 28:19-20), to my thinking is uncannily similar to the brilliance of the Big Bang creation of the universe, the origin of life, the nanotechnology inside living cells, and human thought that we examine through science.

            Saul/Paul made the right moral choice independent of the Law of Moses he knew so well, because the law that he revered so much had little to say about the right choice to follow Jesus Christ into an adventure of faith that was so profoundly at the outer edge of the knowledge of good and evil, beyond anything Saul/Paul could have previously imagined.

            Laws, rules, and precepts can only take Paul so far in contrast to the discernment of subtly shaded right and wrong in thinking he was in God’s will when he persecuted the early Christian church.

            Again, we need the Holy Spirit to guide us into all truth including parsing the subtleties in the broad array of moral concepts contained within the knowledge of good and evil.

            The revelation on the road to Damascus that Jesus was the Christ was a priceless gift to Paul that was beyond the human perception of one of Jerusalem’s young rising stars within its tight rabbinical group.

            This need for God’s light in this critical area of discernment was not lost upon Saul/Paul as he took the gospel message out to the Greco-Roman world in the first-century, that Jesus as the truth active in our lives will set us free beyond our wildest imagination.

            People have to want to do the right things from the heart.

            Create humans with free-will choice, and the bent of the heart then becomes key.

            Paul the apostle is the epitome of the Christian salvation by grace through faith message to the world, because he more than anybody recognized that he should have known better, but missed it.

            This revelation on the road to Damascus eliminates forever for Paul the program of self-salvation through the effort of performing good-works, because with all of his education and knowledge about the Law of Moses, he lacked the needed discernment to see that Jesus of Nazareth was and is the Christ (Mt. 5:17).

The fundamental question having eternally cosmic implications is why isn’t reaching the truth much easier than it is?

This is why Jesus says to Nicodemus: “Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” (Jn. 3:3).

This is why modern science is a search for truth regarding phenomena in the natural world.

This is why God-composed, adventure of faith life-scripts displace our ways with God’s higher ways and thoughts (Is. 55:8-9), a concept that is anathema to the philosophical worldview of humanism.

This is why, to be able to adjudicate the question of the competence of either Satan or God to be the King and ruler for an eternity of time to come, God has given to the believer the indwelling of His Spirit as a personally accessible PhD theology and life-coach professor, guiding believers through our research program into the knowledge of good and evil (Rev. 3:20; Heb. 11:6).

This is why there must be a fallen, broken world that contains evil and suffering, that with tragically unavoidable consequences is nonetheless necessary to separate-out the outcomes between self-sovereignty versus God-sovereignty, being the fundamental, primary issue within the broad array of moral concepts, first introduced at the temptation in the Garden of Eden.

The materialistic worldview has no explanation for the existence of good and evil in the human experience, and no explanation for the universal existence of imperfect moral character in every human person who has ever lived (with the exception of Jesus Christ), which the Bible calls sin, which is defined as missing the mark.

Redemptive salvation by grace through faith in Christ, that provides the impunity of being able to enter into a research program into the knowledge of good and evil, utilizing the lens of an imperfect yet redeemed earthen vessel to comprehend the subtle nuances contained within the broad array of moral concepts…to my thinking is the epitome of the concept of being an inference to the best explanation, based upon the evidence currently on the earth today.

            The cross and the resurrection of Jesus Christ enables believers to surgically investigate the knowledge of good and evil without ruining ourselves or the world.

            The bottom-line in the Bible is that we need God to craft life-scripts for us to lead and guide us into all truth (Jn. 16:13), assisted by spiritually born-again, new hearts and minds that have eyes to see and ears to hear (Jn. 3:3; Mt. 11:15).

            From the Christian viewpoint, this is one of the reasons why God created the universe. 

This is one of the seemingly inexplicable mysteries within human intellectual and moral reasoning for why some people succumb to the deceptive appeal of personality cult leaders (2 Sam. 15:6; Rev. 12:9). 

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

How Does the Creator God of the Universe End-Up on a Cross of Roman Crucifixion?

            The God of the Bible pays us the deepest compliment on our value and worth by engaging with us on a personal level, because God-composed journey of faith life-scripts are not easy, by necessity and design.

            This is comparable to the universal experience of young children going to school, with all of its challenges but also with all of its eventual upside benefits.

            The timeless foresight of God knows upfront that we are big enough to handle the challenges to be confronted within God- composed adventures of faith, long before our callings enlist us into the mission-plan destinies of our lives.

            Not a single positive person of faith in the Bible quits or gives-up early before fulfilling the overall purpose of their calling.

            God knows before we do that we are “man” or “woman” enough to persevere when the going gets tough, that believers encountering evil and suffering in their lives can press forward to be overcomers with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit to help us, like Jesus was an overcomer in His uniquely targeted life-script.

            But God also knows from eternity past that some aspects of the knowledge of good and evil are too difficult to divide and parse at their deepest subtleties, without some experiential examples actualized through life-events to provide illumination and understanding.

            Simply stated, we need experiential data through actual life-events to provide the discerning judgment to close the gap between the limits of normal, everyday human wisdom and the farthest end-points of each of the broad array of moral concepts as divinely understood by God…at the top of the vertical spectrum-line of brilliant pure light and absolute goodness.

            This is why in the biblical narrative stories of faith God displaces our ways with His higher ways (Isa. 55:8-9) through life-scripts we could not imagine or orchestrate.

            And the God of the Bible is too virtuous and honorable to ask us to do something difficult through basic field research into unraveling the mysteries of good and evil, that He is not also willing to do Himself by first leading the way.

            Solve this question of why the Creator God of the universe Jesus Christ is on a cross of crucifixion on Calvary Hill in first-century Jerusalem, and we will have partially come a long way towards figuring-out why there is evil and suffering in this world.

            One standard answer satisfying biblical orthodoxy for why Jesus is on the cross is that He is the singularly unique, morally perfect Passover Lamb of God atoning sacrifice for our sins.

            But digging deeper, the research into the material workings of the natural world through scientific investigation is similar to the basic field research into the knowledge of good and evil through God-composed journeys of faith life-scripts as patterned for us in the Bible, because both research protocols are difficult to chart a navigational course that reaches absolute truth.

            Some of the broad array of moral concepts extended-out to their end-points are too subtle for us to perfectly discern and parse, in the same way that the mysteries of life, death, gravity, energy, the independent decision-making of human thought, and time are currently too profound for us to perfectly unravel through the reach of normal scientific inquiry.

            The realization that some realities require digging deeper than mere surface appearances, in both the physically material natural world and in the abstract, non-physical world of ideas and moral concepts, may be part of what is meant when Jesus is quoted as saying: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (Jn. 8:32).

            The remarkable thing about this statement by Jesus that the truth shall make us free, is that in another place in the gospels Jesus tells us that He is “the way, the truth, and the life.” (Jn. 14:6).

            We shall know the truth that shall make us free when we have Jesus in our lives, because He is the source of truth in every field of knowledge progressing forward in past centuries leading-up to today.

            If there is a genuine God-of-the-gaps, it exists between the limits of human reasoning capacity as non-divine sentient beings, and the divine reasoning capacity of God.

            This is evidenced through modern science today that reveals the easily discernable differences in the organized complexity in the workings of the natural world compared to the brilliant yet far simpler manufactured creations by human ingenuity.   

            The bottom-line lesson from modern science, philosophy, and biblical theology at the fundamental level of ultimate reality, may be that at every level of human existence we need to not impulsively jump at the first thing that sounds good on the surface, but to apply some amount of critical thinking and questioning, dig deeper, and research the facts whenever and as far as we can.

            Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden did not have to impulsively go with the option being presented by Satan in the beguiling, spiritually holographic apparition of a talking serpent.

            They could have answered simply by saying that what was being proposed sounded appealing, but that they next wanted to dig deeper by asking God in person why He told them not to eat this fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

            The entire program behind the creation of this universe may be simply to provide an empirically experiential environment for human beings to discover that we need the divine expertise, wisdom, and knowledge of God as an active participant in our lives (Heb. 11:6)…and that pushing Him away in rebellious self-sovereignty leads to chaos and mayhem.

            Jesus Christ is on the cross at Calvary because that is the one and only way for Him to extend justified immunity from condemnation for us, taking our place of punishment in divine non-rebellion for our obstinate rebellion, to be able to embark on a genuine research program into the knowledge of good and evil while inhabiting the earthen vessel (2 Cor. 4:7) of a fallen yet redeemed, imperfect moral nature.

            Some skeptical atheists have referred to the cross and the resurrection as being petty.

            This response to evil and suffering through the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ is anything but petty.

            There is more to reality than physically material things we study through science.

            I would again submit here that the mere existence of this discussion over the origin and causation of evil and suffering being debated by intellectual and moral reasoning human beings, must argue for the existence of God outside of and transcendent above the matter and energy universe.

            I would suggest that the question of why does God allow evil and suffering in this world, should be turned around to the question of how is it that there is exceptional goodness and brilliant virtue exhibited in human nature and in human history?

            Can exceptional goodness and brilliant virtue immerge out of an environment that does not have evil and suffering?

            How much evil and suffering would we choose to moderate if this also carried a corresponding reduction in the potential for exceptional goodness and brilliant virtue to actualize in response to evil and suffering?

            It is part of Christian theological orthodoxy that the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, displays absolute goodness at the highest imaginable level of intellectual and moral reality.

            What quality of madness would eliminate through Roman crucifixion a person capable of multiplying a few small fish and loaves of bread to feed a multitude of people sitting on a hillside, or is capable of instantly calming a dangerous storm at sea?

            What quality of poor judgment would eliminate through Roman crucifixion a person who is healing a large number of sick people in and around Jerusalem from serious illnesses, diseases, and physical injuries?

What degree of insanity would eliminate through orchestrating the crucifixion of a person who might otherwise be interviewed as to possible measures to improve international trade, or to even broker a deal with Rome that would lead to Jewish autonomy without going to war?

There is no stronger argument that evil and suffering are needed as factors in the equation of reality in this world, that the demonstration of the subtlety of parsing truth from error within the broad array of moral concepts requires discernment at an advanced level…than the crucifixion of Jesus Christ in the capital city of Jerusalem in the first-century.

Jesus Christ on the cross not only provides for forgiveness of sins and the impunity to embark on a God sanctioned research program into the knowledge of good and evil, but equally important Jesus on the cross demonstrates in actualized empiricism what went wrong for human beings in the temptation in the Garden of Eden.

What is so dangerous about Satan in the holographic, spiritual form of a beautiful talking serpent, is that what he is asserting in this temptation in the Garden of Eden is partially true.

God does know that if we eat this fruit we shall become as junior gods knowing good and evil.

But this is a half-truth, placed somewhere between absolute light at the top of the vertical spectrum-line of moral goodness and absolute darkness at the bottom.

Satan as a fallen angel is not absolutely evil.  There probably isn’t anything or anyone that is absolutely evil.  Evil is a corruption of goodness, a degrading of brilliant pure light into lower shades of gray still having some measure of light.

At the outer limits of the broad array of moral concepts within the knowledge of good and evil, our discernment needs a booster shot of divine wisdom to be able to accurately parse and divide right from wrong, and truth from error.

This is the strongest rebuke to the false notion that we are capable of going it on our own according to the worldview of humanism, without the divine wisdom and council of God (Isa. 53:5-6), because we can be deceived by the false narratives of half-truths.

That the way, the truth, and the life…that the eternal Word of God is crucified at Calvary…tells us that the discernment of good versus evil is a component that needs addressing within the context of this world, if eternal life is to proceed through voluntary self-government by the personal choice of virtue rather than rebellion and chaos.

God does not want a kingdom for eternity wherein He has to impose virtue from without to keep everyone in check.

Virtue, like love, cannot be imposed by force.  To have any meaning love has to be freely extended and reciprocated from one person to another.

Virtue stems from the highest form of self-imposed government wherein people voluntarily choose to do the right things, because they believe in virtue as the best possible way to live.

Nothing illuminates the need for people of good-will to know the truth that will set us free than the utter human failure of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ the Son of God.

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

How Do You Get a Perfect Person All the Way to the Cross?…Revised

            Skeptics and critics of Christianity raise the question of why Jesus Christ is not more prominent in the secular histories of the first-century, outside of the New Testament gospels.

            One observation that can be made historically about the Roman Empire during this time-period is that it was relatively tolerant of the diverse religious beliefs of the geographies and peoples it controlled, as long as this tolerance did not encourage political unrest.

            The New Testament gospels record as early as the ministry of John the Baptist that some Roman soldiers came to listen to his teaching (Lk. 3:14), and presumably participated personally in being water baptized, without risk or harm in any way to their careers in the Roman army, in the same way that soldiers in Ephesus might attend temple services honoring the goddess Diana (Acts 19:27-28), without jeopardizing their military careers.

            The gospel of Matthew records early in the ministry of Jesus a Roman centurion asking Jesus to supernaturally heal a servant sick of the palsy (Mt. 8:5-13; Lk. 7:1-5).

            Early in the ministry of Peter, another Roman centurion named Cornelius in the city of Caesarea is described as being a devout man who was a Gentile “God-fearer” along with all of his house, who sent for Peter to come and preach to them about Jesus and the Holy Spirit. (Acts 10).

            It can be reasonably assumed that some Roman soldiers were assigned to all large gatherings of Jews in Jerusalem going out to hear Jesus teach outdoors, and would have witnessed first-hand and up-close the miracles of multiplying the few fish and loaves of bread to feed thousands of people gathered on a hillside (Mt. 14:15-21, 15: 32-39).

            So, what would it have taken to get a contingent of Roman senators to travel all the way from Rome to the distant and unimportant province of Israel to view the supposed supernatural activities of an obscure prophet in the city of Jerusalem?

            What magnitude of notoriety would produce such international acclaim as to capture the interest of the world-at-large in the first-century, within the broad cultural tolerance of religious beliefs allowed to be practiced in the Roman Empire, that would generate more than only the small notice and slight concern over events occurring in Jerusalem, for the governing body then in Rome? 

            Even Pontius Pilate the Roman governor of Judea saw no threat in the ministry of Jesus, and proclaims after his first interview of Jesus: “I find in him no fault at all.” (Jn. 18:38).

            The fundamental point here for why the life of Jesus Christ is not a biography splashed all over the secular histories of the day, is that the humanism of going our own way (Isa. 53:6) that is central to worldly conventional normalcy and thinking…does not and never will mix with the concept of God displacing our ways with His higher ways in picking-up our crosses to follow God into journeys of faith.

            At the close of Paul’s ministry, as he awaits his trial in Rome, the local Jews who come to visit Paul say: “But we desire to hear of thee what thou thinkest: for as concerning this sect, we know that everywhere it is spoken against.” (Acts 28:22).

            This raises one of the most profound questions regarding the rise of Christianity in the first-century, of how do you get a perfect person all the way to the rejection of the cross of Calvary?

            How is it that the long-awaited Messiah of the Jews must be the person who is crucified for the sins of the world, and resurrected to be the brazen serpent for salvation fore-glimpsed by Moses in the Exodus in the desert (Num. 21:5-9; 2 Ki. 18:4).

            What this demonstrates for people today, is that the same Creator God in the Bible who utilizes prior fitness throughout the geological eras in natural history, to set-up prior conditions for living organisms to flourish, can also coordinate human moral reasoning capacity, the broad array of moral concepts, and the divine life-script for Jesus Christ the Son of God, and moderate all of these factors to get the Messiah to also be the Passover Lamb of God atoning sacrifice for mankind’s sins.

This actualizes into real-world experience the saying: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (Jn. 8:32).

            For people to know the truth they need to first have the intellectual and moral reasoning capacity to recognize truth, next the broad array of moral concepts active and in-play within human relationships, and finally “the way, the truth, and the life” demonstrated in the life of Jesus Christ the Son of God incarnate, all coming together in the first-century.

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

God-Composed Journey of Faith Life-Scripts are Too Deep for a Naturalistic Explanation for Their Origin…Revised

            The recent modern recognition in philosophy is that the human mind when reduced down to only a materialistic “brain” alone, made up of circuits and neurons, devolves into nonsensical relativism.

            The radical reduction into materialism undermines confidence in the reliability of all human thought, and thereby destroys rationality, scientific investigation, and even worldview philosophies such as atheism itself.

            Yet by simply asking the question and examining the evidence, this in and of itself declares at the outset that Jesus Christ the person we are investigating is in fact within the zone of moral perfection and sinless virtue by reason of the question being seriously entertained at all. 

            We would not even open such an investigation into the life of any other exceptional person past or present, because we already correctly acknowledge that only one person in all of history has made a credible, serious claim to have lived a perfect life, and that one person is Jesus Christ.  

            No sane person in all of recorded history has made a viable and well-substantiated claim to embody and demonstrate the moral attributes of brilliant pure light, absolute goodness, and perfect virtue, of being, speaking, and acting like a Deity.

            Jesus Christ as Messiah is proactively anticipated for centuries in the biblical Old Testament messianic prophecies fulfilled in the life, teaching, and ministry of Jesus Christ recorded in the New Testament gospels.

            This raises the probing apologetics question into the divine origin of the composition of the Bible, Old Testament Judaism, and New Testament Christianity, of how in the first-place we would “come by” the capacity to accurately judge whether the life and ministry of Jesus Christ exhausts the extent of the possible outer-limits of moral perfection.

            How would we determine that our current tool-kit of known virtuous characteristics, of well-defined moral attributes, is absolutely exhaustive, adequate, and complete enough for the in-depth moral reasoning needed to evaluate the life of Jesus Christ? 

            How would we know whether there are not some additional, outstanding moral characteristics that we are unaware of, in this current earthly context, above and beyond those demonstrated and exemplified in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ that would raise the bar higher?

            How would we know there are not some missing moral attributes in our reality that might call into question the impeccable qualifications of Jesus to be the blemish-free and sinless atoning sacrifice for our sins?

            The point here is not whether God has some additional, divine characteristics applicable in heaven that would not concern us presently, that are not relevant here on earth, but whether or not Jesus the Son of God in a human body (Isa. 7:14, 9:6-7) exhausts the limits of moral perfection as the God/man in order to qualify as the Passover Lamb of God, one-time atoning sacrifice for sin.

            The question is how this full and varied palette of moral concepts had an origin and came into existence within the reality of human life, to be able to make this assessment.

            The important point in this discussion is the fantastic notion that we would have the moral reasoning tools in terms of human mental capacity, but also in the complementary existence of the broad array of abstract moral concepts defined through the language of discrete and distinctive words, to be able to make a valid decision for or against salvation faith in Jesus Christ at this highly advanced level.

            The connection between the human capacity for intellectual and moral reasoning, with an external array of independent moral concepts is similar to what is called prior fitness in the scientific study of how biodiverse living species fit-in, in-the-moment to complex, pre-existing, environmental ecosystems.

            This connection that we so easily take for granted, argues compellingly for a human mind capable of recognizing and parsing the subtleties of informational concepts, that transcends above a mere, materialistic brain.

            But this well-timed connection in history between human capacity and an external array of independent moral concepts, also argues compelling for the presence of intelligent designing agency having the foresight to bring these two realities into existence at the same moment in time.

            Dr. John Lennox, Oxford mathematician and author suggests in some of his interviews and discussions online on the Internet, that the sudden immergence of human intellectual and moral reasoning capacity might be considered another example of being a singularity, in the same manner as the Big-Bang creation of the universe and the sudden immergence of life on earth can be understood as singularities.

            The mental capacity to technologically problem-solve at the advanced level to take us to the moon in 1969, and the moral reasoning capacity to differentiate and comprehend complex moral concepts, are two realities that define the essence of human beings.

            The point here is that human beings possess a complete and exhaustive array of tools within the broad assortment of moral concepts from which to make an intelligent and reasoned judgment as to the divine quality of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ.

            Just as orderliness and intelligibility are indispensably coordinated with our human capacity to conduct successful scientific investigations of the natural world, it would be pointless to be presented with the decision-making imperative regarding the truth-claims of Jesus Christ regarding His qualifications as Savior, King, and eternal Ruler if humans did not possess the incredible capacity to make an informed decision.

            It is therefore plausible to recognize that the origin of the entire array of moral characteristics appearing suddenly and fully defined in scope, that this recognition represents a sharp, near-instant vertical upwardspike on any conceivable graph-line for the time-duration of the human race.

             This is not anything remotely like incrementally gradual, small-step, evolutionary development.

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.

Architectural Body-Plans and Lifestyle Habits Do Not Arise Out of DNA…Revised

            One of the key points in a current, scientific understanding of the vast diversity of life in the natural world is that what defines the unique essence of what each living organism is, does not wholly reside within its DNA.

            The finalizing chapters of the architectural body-plans and lifestyle information exists somewhere else inside the cell.

            DNA contains the sequentially coded information that produces genes, that actualizes into amino acid folds to become proteins that are then built into individual cells.

            DNA is like the raw materials to make the concrete, 2×4 wood studs, structural steel, electrical wiring, plumbing pipes, drywall, stucco, and roofing to build a house.

            This area of building design and construction is called materials science, and is different from the field of architectural design.

            The size, shape, and distinctive design of a house comes from an entirely different but complementary database of information.

            The information database that tells the builder and tradespersons where in the house construction these various materials go is commonly called the blueprints.

            The information that builds living cells and tells them where to go to their assigned function in the developing embryo, to eventually become an elephant but not a giraffe, does not entirely come from the DNA information needed to manufacture the raw materials to make each unique cell-type…analogous to the concrete, studs, wiring, and plumbing pipes to build a house. 

            The architectural body-plan and lifestyle-habit, blueprint- information resides inside each cell, just not completely in the DNA.

            This means that the distinctive lifestyle habits that accompany architectural body-plans fall partially outside of the DNA genetic mutation and natural selection mechanism.

            This mechanism we now understand produces the microevolutionary adaptation of the varied beak sizes of the finch birds on the Galapagos Islands, and the varied ensemble of physical traits genetically mutated from a grizzly bear to a polar bear.

            The architectural designs of New England Cape Cod, Southern Colonial, or Contemporary style houses are different. The body-plans and lifestyle habits of an elephant, giraffe, and human being are different.  But the housing construction materials on the jobsite, and the DNA in living cells, are the same in each case.

            Elephants, giraffes, and humans all have roughly the same DNA for making the raw materials of their cell-types of bones, muscles, tendons, blood, hair, and skin.

            But the essence of what they are in terms of unique architectural body-plans and lifestyle habits comes from their blueprint plans, and not exclusively from the DNA that creates the raw materials.

            Mutating DNA alone therefore cannot be the main causal agent to explain the vast diversity of life, because the design of an elephant, giraffe, or human comes from the blueprint plans inside living cells that is not a part of the DNA.

            There is a reason why there is zero empirical evidence of incremental progressive development in an arms-race between the Asian honeybees and the giant Asian hornet in the wild, in the past or today.

This would involve the exceedingly complex combination of anatomical improvements with their accompanying lifestyle habits, all of which has to coordinate increasingly complex plateaus of informational inputs coming from two or more places within the cell.

The difficulty for scientific materialists to explain these increasingly complex plateaus of informational inputs, is like trying to bridge the physics and chemistry of how ink bonds to paper, with the conceptually opinionated headlines of the New York Times daily newspaper tracking a particular news story over some period of days or weeks.

There is no bridge connecting the empirical, materialistic mechanism of ink bonding to paper, with the entirely abstract and non-material information conveyed in the English language in a newspaper headlines.

            There is a reason why there is zero empirical evidence of transitional intermediates completely filling-in the huge gaps between the informational programs we see in the architectural body-plans and lifestyle habits of mammals, amphibians, fish, birds, reptiles, and insects in the fossil record.

            The reason is that the ever-increasing complexity of life from single-cell bacteria 3.8-billion years ago to human beings today, did not come about by the process of the incrementally progressive development of connected small steps, one new and different cell-type added at a time.

            If incremental progressive development in enumerable small steps was the true paradigm in the natural living world, this fact would have been overwhelmingly apparent long before the first moments of archaeological and paleontological excavations on or around the time of Darwin’s book On the Origin of Species in 1859.

            The branching tree-of-life simply did not happen the way Darwin theorized extrapolating microevolution into macroevolution.

            If incremental progressive development in enumerable small steps was the true cause behind the vast diversity of life on earth, it would not be that difficult to fill-in the tens of millions of transitional intermediates that should easily link birds, fish, amphibians, reptiles, and mammals together in unmistakable common descent.

            But progressive development, by adding change through blocks of new cell-types grouped together to enable instant function and fit, maintains the evidence of common descent in the geological record but replaces random and undirected materialistic processes through continuous gradualism, instead with intelligent designing agency allowing discontinuities.

            The skeletal explanatory framework regarding the discontinuities at the dividing nodes of the branches of the tree-of-life, resides within the analytical reasoning capacity of human beings, which can philosophically go in a number of theoretical directions.

            Skeletal explanatory frameworks are based upon the facts of empirical data, but are not themselves the empirical data.

            The observable continuity of similar features in the natural living world needs small-step gradualism only if we are committed to a materialistic worldview.

            This is where the scientific field of biology took a wrong turn in 1859.

            Since 1859, the cart has been driving the horse. 

Since 1859, the philosophical worldview of naturalistic materialism has been driving the field of biology based upon the hunch that variant traits are produced by random and undirected processes, one small step at a time through then unknown internal causes.

            Today, we still do not know why particular genes have critical DNA units broken or damaged that beneficially produce a polar bear from a grizzly bear.[1]

            To assign this to chance mutations at the genetic level is pure speculation based upon the worldview of materialism.

            Charles Darwin at the time could just as easily have interpreted the variant traits being put-out by living organisms as a number of internally generated informational inputs coordinated as a group, rather than as what would later be identified as single-point mutations.

            Continuity in biology can be maintained just as easily by allowing an ever-increasing, upward incline of the complexity of architectural body-plans and their accompanying lifestyle habits, through the process of genetic information being released in blocks of grouped clusters to produce mature function as each living organism comes into existence in their biodiverse and balanced ecological environments.

            We see this confirmed in the design and fabrication of a new model of automobile.

            The front-left side body panel is introduced with its entire informational package complete, in terms of aesthetic shape, thickness of metal, strength-to-weight ratio, and paint color, to produce optimum function when actualized into physical reality.

            Every new automobile model offered to the car buying public has each and every part of the automobile road-tested, containing blocks of clustered groups of informational inputs exhausting all applicable areas of automotive design to achieve optimum function.

            But this input of new cell-types in groups requires the broad-minded introduction of non-random and personally directed intelligent agency at the theorizing and conceptualization level of skeletal explanatory frameworks, which is philosophically opposed to the atheism of naturalistic materialism.

            This requires the acknowledgment of an architect/engineer behind the origin of species.

            There is no factual evidence to compellingly support behavioral adaptation for how the Asian honeybees and the giant Asian hornet reached the dialectical, back-and-forth equilibrium of their advanced lifestyle-habits, because this is a hypothetical, provisional explanation based upon the philosophical worldview of naturalistic materialism.

            Again, the fundamental question for modern biology is where does the genetic information in living cells come from that produces the incredibly varied, instinctual predator/prey relationships that actualize through architectural body-plans of mind-boggling specificity and function, that produce a mature fit within biodiversity and ecosystems, in the first-place?

            Once the “nature makes no sudden leaps” of Darwinism, one new and different cell-type at a time, is replaced with the concept of blocks of new cell-types coming into existence as a unit to produce new architectural body-plans and lifestyle habits at the level of immediate function and ecological fit, then the difficulty of the program of attempting to fill-in the “missing-links” between fish, birds, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, and insects in small steps…disappears entirely.

            Once the database of information in the cell that crafts the defining essence of each living organism is differentiated from the database of information coming from DNA that forms the building-block materials of the different cell-types, then genetic mutations acted upon by natural selection can more correctly be defined as the smaller but still important role of being microevolutionary adaptation that changes a grizzly bear into a polar bear.

            The answer to the riddle that scientists have been searching for over the last 160-plus years since 1859 to explain biological development, may simply be that the innovation of ever-increasing complexity in the natural living world is produced through the introduction of new and different cell-types as groups rather than one new cell-type at a time. 

            Science is legitimately allowed to use “just-so” stories like Rudyard Kipling’s fanciful story of how the tiger acquired its stripes, to theoretically connect-the-dots between data-points in their initial working hypotheses, until further investigation fills-in more facts.

            This is simply a part of the scientific method that encompasses the human psyche, the methodology of constructing a skeletal explanatory framework upon which to hang the varied pieces of data.

            These “just-so” stories theorized by professional scientists are sometimes given an uncritical pass in their simple-to-complex explanations characteristic of scientific materialism.

            Just because Dr. Jerry Coyne explains the defense tactic of the native Asian honeybee colonies against the attack of the giant Asian hornet as the product of behavioral adaptation, as Christians or non-Christians we do not have to buy into this viewpoint based on the authority of a scientist’s word alone.

            We have the intellectual license to think this through and to arrive at a different conclusion regarding the skeletal explanatory framework that is being used.

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

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

Skeletal Explanatory Frameworks Enable Spinning the Narrative…Revised

            At this point someone will logically suggest the Darwinian explanation that given millions of years for development, would not a series of trial-and-error failures and successes eventually lead to the perfected defense strategy of the Asian honeybee?

            This assumes that length of time is the beneficially determining factor.

            The skeletal explanatory framework upon which to connect the various factual data-points used in the standard methodology for all scientific research, is in scientific jargon called a theoretical hypothesis, but is always based upon the known factual evidence available at that time-period in human history.

            In defense of Charles Darwin in 1859, he was basing his theoretical hypothesis upon the idea that the physical universe was eternal, that he had unlimited time to work with to extrapolate microevolution into macroevolution.

            Darwin did not know that in 1929, an expanding universe would be discovered by Edwin Hubble peering through the massive telescope at the Mount Wilson Observatory, that looking backwards in time would pinpoint a beginning of the physical universe that now limits the length of time for progressive development down to a finite amount. 

            But the issue isn’t length of time, but instead philosophical interpretations as selected by humans to create skeletal explanatory frameworks…being theoretical hypotheses. 

            One of the themes of this book is to say that the theorizing and conceptualization that is an essential part of science, is disconnected from the quite-different empiricism of the scientific method of research that follows sequential step-by-step protocols, that produce raw databases of fact-based evidence.

            The theorizing and conceptualization part of the scientific enterprise is philosophically analytical, and produces provisional conclusions that are not themselves empirical, fact-based, raw data. 

The theoretical hypothesis from a philosophically naturalistic viewpoint says that the only acceptable route for the Asian honeybee to achieve defensive survivability against the giant Asian hornet, over a long time-period is through the small steps of gradual, progressively continuous development.

            But length of time as the controlling factor in the equation unjustifiably assumes that change without aimed guidance will always go in a positive direction, leading eventually to function.  This is a reasonable philosophical projection based upon the factual evidence that change in the geological record of life on earth actually does go in a positive direction over time.

            But time cannot be the explanatory causation here, because change in a random and undirected process could go forwards, backwards, sideways, or in endlessly repetitive circles.

            An ever-increasing, upward incline of complexity in life-forms over time can best be explained through intelligent agency rather than genetic mutations acted upon by natural selection.

            This is because an overall program is needed that has the inherent foresight to connect the mutation/selection events from isolated occurrences into an integrated series from A to Z.

            The obvious problem that should shout-out to us here in this example is that given millions of years to work with, the Asian honeybees in route towards a functional defense strategy this brilliantly original and well-conceived, would be annihilated in the naturalistic process of gradual, incrementally progressive steps before ever reaching successful function.

            Time plus mutation/selection does not lead to function when the systems of information for survival are as complex as the defense strategy of the Asian honeybee.

            Time plus mutation/selection cannot reach a successful outcome when there is too much complexity, specificity, and coordination required to get there.

            The fundamental problem in looking at the myriad of diverse, instinctual lifestyle habits prolific in the natural living world, is that from a materialist worldview it presumes on philosophical grounds that these end-point maturities must be arrived at through the gradual process of small incremental steps…assuming that time plus mutation/selection equates to an unbroken chain of continuity in a positive direction to reach function.

            The skeletal explanatory framework (theoretical hypothesis) connecting the factual data-points is what is wrong here, when the philosophical worldview of scientific materialism is imposed.

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

Constrained Optimization…Revised

            Our modern Age of Information tells us that the only thing capable of the engineering concept of the constrained optimization of a sequential series of decisional yes/no choices aimed specifically at reaching targeted end-point outcomes in the future, using foresight…is intelligent agency.

            As argued here, this is not fact-based evidence that supports the loosely termed “behavioral adaptation” used by Jerry B. Coyne to enlist the defense strategy of the native Asian honeybee into the doctrinal camp of Darwinian macroevolution.

            The concept of Asian honeybees immobilizing and taking-out the lone scout wasp mirrors the capture of an enemy spy in human warfare over the long course of human history.

            How would and could this intelligence-based military defense tactic of catching and taking-out a spy on reconnaissance for the enemy army, be functionally operative within the instinctual program of an insect like the Asian honeybee?

             The more plausible analysis of this remarkable reality in nature is that the balanced predator/prey relationship between the giant Asian hornet and their native honeybee counterpart cannot be explained through an incrementally escalating arms-race of competing features over time, using small-step improvements. 

            The trial-and-error approach of materialism produces an oscillating, back-and-forth battleground of colossal failure for one side or the other until they both reach the equally balanced, competing features we observe today between these two native, Asian insect combatants.

            To posit the purely materialistic explanation of gradual development for this mature predator/prey relationship in the insect world, requires the genetic make-up of these two insects to have a nearly self-conscious, lessons-learnable quality of ever-improving informational plateaus, subtly importing the intelligent decision-making choices of thoughtful agency into the otherwise mindless mutation/selection methodology of Darwinian evolution.

            The forward looking, intelligent foresight inherent in yes/no choice-making locking-in function in evermore complex plateaus to reach an optimum end-point of equilibrium between the giant Asian hornet and Asian honeybees, is not allowed in a mindless, purely materialistic universe of accidental trial-and-error.

            For a system of gradual development in the natural living world to be materialistic it must be mindless and undirected.

            For the Asian honeybees to reach defensive parity against the attacking giant Asian hornets, this involves a series of physically structural changes leading to improved function, over and over in reaction to structural changes and improved function in the giant Asian hornet.

            It is implausible to have two independent genetic tracks putting-out seemingly coordinated structural changes in the form of beneficial escalating traits, each acted upon in synchronized natural selection in the wild.

Yet without this feature of thoughtfully discerning choice-making stealthily smuggled-in, natural selection could not coordinate the forward-moving trajectories of newly added genetic information that displaces previously less advantageous iterations, that could reach the functionally balanced strategies of this predator/prey relationship for the giant Asian hornet and the Asian honeybee.    

            We do not have to uncritically swallow the idea that the European honeybees imported into the foreign environment of Japan will over time (thousands of years?) through the accidental method of trial-and-error likewise discover this singular, successful defensive strategy on their own in isolation, all the while suffering heavy losses in route to finding the very specific information that 115-117º F combined with CO² will defeat this otherwise unstoppable predator.

            This complex, highly specified, and coherently integrated information is intelligently designed upfront into the DNA and the gene regulatory networks of the native Asian honeybees, but is clearly absent in the European honeybees, evidenced when they are imported across the continent to Japan.

            This highlights an original intent found in the molecular biochemical information that must reside within the living cells of the Asian honeybee, being unnaturally overridden through the independent intervention of the agency of unknowing human beekeepers in Japan and Europe importing foreign, European honeybees into Asia.

            In this case of importing European honeybees into Asia, the playing-field of environment is not a factor.  The challenge for the European honeybees is not adaptation to a changed external environment, but adaptation to a lethally superior predator.

            The key question then in biology is how and when does the critical survival strategy get introduced at the genetic level, to produce in the living honeybees this distinctive lifestyle habit supported by their architectural body-plans, that can actualize into viable function a military defense strategy from abstract information to a winning outcome in the real world?

            Will the mutation/selection mechanism of Darwinian evolution in small-step, incremental gradualism be up to the job, or is it self-evident that upfront, instantaneous function and fit is the more plausible explanation?

            I would argue from the evidence that the input of this genetic information to produce function and fit occurs at the inception of the Asian honeybee.

I would argue that the materialistic program of an unbroken continuity of a small-step, incrementally progressive series of back-and-forth improvements in the arsenals of the Asian honeybees and the giant Asian hornet…is plausibly unworkable.

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