Tag: scientific materialism

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.

Sequential Steps and Raw Data are Worldview-Free…Revised

The recipes…the sequential steps…in the classic Betty Crocker Cookbook are entirely neutral as to the theistic or atheistic worldview of the chef in the kitchen.

The mother or grandmother working all day in the kitchen preparing homemade Italian spaghetti sauce for a large family dinner gathering later that day, has absolutely zero connection to the quality of the spaghetti sauce based upon whether this mother or grandmother is a devoted Christian theist or a hard-core skeptical atheist.

The misrepresentation here is to lump all religions together on one side of the ledger as being subjective nonsense, and place the atheist all alone on the other side as being the clear-thinking, independent, superstition-free arbiter of empirical reality.

The truth is that theism and atheism are both philosophically intellectual constructions…are belief systems exercising faith in their particular viewpoints…and belong on the same side as equal competitors in the open marketplace of ideas.

Theism and atheism have nothing to do with the sequential steps of scientific investigations that generate empirical, factual evidence.

Introducing theism or atheism into the scientific conversation occurs in the upper-level realm of theorizing and conceptualization, which admits spinning of the narrative because this is the variable, non-empirical nature of storytelling.

The modern Scientific Revolution is justifiably credited with dispelling “old-wives” tales, superstition, witchcraft, soothsaying, and black magic as bogus explanations for the phenomena we see in the natural world.

But it is the sequential steps of the scientific research program that is responsible for producing empirical evidence, and not any particular worldview that by definition must be limited to the category of being skeletal explanatory frameworks that fall outside of hard, bench-top research methodology.

The distinction between the sequential steps of scientific research programs and the skeletal explanatory frameworks that attempt to describe temporarily provisional conclusions, emphatically requires that the atheism of scientific materialism be placed alongside Christian theism as both being unrelated issues in the sequential steps of the making of Italian spaghetti sauce or exploring the cosmos.

But it is important here to see that the qualitative character of the concept communicated through the word “agency” exists on a much higher and elevated plane than the derisive concepts of “old-wives” tales, superstition, and black magic.

It would be absurd to assert that the Scientific Revolution could or would remove the concept of agency from the contemplation of human observation and everyday experience.

The real truth here is that the philosophical worldview of scientific materialism can be jettisoned along with “old-wives” tales and superstitions today, without threatening at all the empirical quality of the sequential steps of scientific research or the raw data this generates.

Philosophical worldviews do not overlap with the specified steps in scientific research any more than the specified steps in following a cookbook recipe requires either a theistic or an atheistic viewpoint in order to be successful.

The modern, nonsensical culture-war issue of whether the conclusions drawn from scientific research must exclude the existence of God is illustrated in the now classic 2005 court case Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District.

In this court case, as an expert witness testifying against Intelligent Design, the philosopher Dr. Robert Pennock of Michigan State University argued: “science operates by empirical principles of observational testing; hypotheses must be confirmed or disconfirmed by reference to…accessible empirical data.”[1]

This statement says that hypotheses can be confirmed or disconfirmed by reference to accessible empirical data.

Scientific materialists assume upfront that hypotheses (conclusions) confirmed or disconfirmed by reference to accessible empirical data must be done solely within the skeletal explanatory framework of naturalistic materialism to be valid.

What is subtly being represented here is that the definition of what is science and what is non-science, is determined by the modern scientific method that can only generate accessible empirical data.

The fallacy in this reasoning is profoundly mistaken. 

Some things we understand in nature, and some things we don’t.

There is zero understanding contained within the exclusively empirical realm of fact-based evidence.

The statement: “The only way to truth is through science,” is a proffer of conceptualization and theorizing that has zero empirical fact-based evidence in support, in terms of some atomic material composition that can be measured, weighed, or heated in a test-tube.

This identifies a two-part dichotomy between the raw data of facts contrasted with the abstract understanding of what some particular ensemble of facts means.

The meaning of the facts that comes through understanding is an independent, stand-alone, fundament reality having a spatial reach as broad as the universe itself, and a duration as long as the eternity of time…being much broader than the raw database of empirical facts alone.

More than one reasonable conclusion can sometimes be drawn from the empirical facts.

If a reasonable conclusion involves intelligent designing agency, then the limitations placed by naturalistic materialism upon the acceptable set of solutions becomes artificial and invalid.

I can look at the organized complexity in living cells, which involves DNA, amino acids that fold into proteins, developmental gene regulatory networks, and epigenetic factors, and reasonably conclude that this requires design, without ever touching or altering the empirical, factual data in the slightest.

The confusion occurs when the scientific materialist illogically intermixes the conclusion-neutral, factual data up into the conceptually abstract zone of non-material conceptualization and theorizing opinion where it does not belong, and at the same time lowers the concept of intelligent design down into the worldview-free, empirical zone of factual evidence where it does not belong.

Conceptualization and theorizing are not empirical, and databases of empirical facts are not conceptual and theoretical.

These two realities work together in tandem, but they do not crossover into each other’s territory, and they do not intermix.

This wizardly manipulation of reality excludes intelligent designing agency from the theorizing and conceptualization phase of the scientific enterprise.

It unjustifiably disallows drawing overall conclusions based upon the facts, conclusions that by definition necessarily can fall just above and outside of the domain of empirical, hard bench-top research.

This is a setting-up of the rules, a prior “rigging of the system” in favor of the atheism of scientific materialism which is incredibly misleading and untrue.

Scientific materialists are not allowed to set-up the rules that define what is science and what is non-science as argued in the conceptual zone of drawing conclusions.

Scientific materialists are not allowed to say that fact-based evidences must limit the conclusions drawn, to the domain of naturalistic materialism alone.

Mankind as a whole can and does make that determination, in the same way that the inference to design is commonly made every time we see the organized complexity in an automobile driving down the road, in a best-selling spy novel, or in the coded arrangement of information in DNA. 

There is no logical argument that connects the conceptually philosophical atheism of naturalistic materialism to the neutral, sequential steps of empirical, scientific research programs.

Atheism and research programs belong in two entirely different categories.

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

[1] Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (New York: HarperCollins, 2009), 426.

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

            I place the blame for this partially at the feet of the scientific materialists of the second half of the 20th century and our current 21st century, for the atheism of their philosophical worldview of scientism that attempts to prevent anyone, based upon science, from considering a broader and more rational view of the natural world.

            Richard Dawkins in his 1987 book The Blind Watchmaker wrote: “Darwin made it possible to become an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”[1]

            But this only works today if Darwinian evolution is actually true.  If Darwinism is false then atheists would have to look elsewhere for their fulfillment.

            It is not difficult to show that the atheism of naturalistic materialism or scientific materialism does not hold-up under close examination.

            Let’s start with the hypothetical example of humans as physically material beings trying to produce a duplicate, identical, Plan-B backup planet to colonize. 

This new planet would complement our own earth as human overpopulation now critically stretches the natural resources to their limits available on this planet.

This Earth-2 planet must be placed precisely within the same “goldilocks zone” orbit, distanced from the sun to enable water to exist as a liquid. 

It would have to be orbiting at the same speed so the two planets would not collide with one another.

            First, we would have to find enough cosmic dust and gases that contained all of the fundamental elements of the Periodic Table. 

We would then have to bring this material in the right quantities to coalesce together into close-enough contact for gravity to condense this material into a habitable, non-star planet yet having a hot, molten-iron core like that of earth.

            We might do this by searching through the asteroid belt for free, loose material hopefully already in the form of what is called a debris disc.

            We could not use atomic bombs to break-off large pieces of other planets in our solar system, as this material would then be radioactive and unusable.

            We would then have to figure-out how to get this material from where it currently is to its new location within the same elliptical orbit of the earth around the sun.

We could then set it in motion four days travel out ahead of us or four days behind us in our orbital rotation, for example, at the right speed while it is condensing into a planet. 

This would take some currently unknown length of time discoverable only through trial-and-error.

            And we currently do not know how to accelerate this process of building a planet by altering the strength of gravity.

            Next, we would have to produce a similar moon like our own, having just the right size and distance from the new planet. 

We would need to tilt this Earth-2 planet to spin on its axis at the same 23-degree angle to produce seasonable, temperate climate.

            We would have to find somewhere enough nitrogen, oxygen, and carbon dioxide in the right quantities to form a comparable atmosphere, having enough carbon so that the gravity of Earth-2 could hold the atmosphere in place without drifting off into outer space.

And we would have to find enough hydrogen and oxygen to produce water to create oceans, lakes, and rivers.

            It would take unimaginable control over geography to duplicate exactly the size and shape of our continents on earth to successfully mimic our functional ecosystems. 

We would have to develop the technologies to get the crust of Earth-2 to be the same thickness as our planet, and to encourage the formation of plate-tectonics with geological uplift, to form higher elevations of dry land plateaus and mountains, and lower elevated depressions to form oceans, lakes, and rivers.

            The atmosphere that we created would have to consist of the exact same proportions of elements and have the same depth as on earth, to allow photosynthesis to occur. 

The HշO water we created out of hydrogen and oxygen would have to possess exactly the same properties of transparency to allow sunlight to penetrate to the same depths within the oceans, lakes, and rivers for fish to be able to see, and for underwater plant-life to flourish.

            Once we got the hydrological cycle functioning, starting with evaporation from the oceans, to clouds, to rain over the land, to the breaking-up of rock into soils, and the erosion that puts nutrients into the soil, then we could begin transporting land plants from earth to produce terrestrial life on the new planet.

            Then things get even more complicated.

            How large a percentage of each ecosystem of living organisms would be required to sustain an ongoing and self-sufficient environment on the new planet?  Would we copy exactly the pattern of the varied, living environments like the Amazon rainforest, the African savanna plains, the North American plains, the Sahara Desert, the Canadian tundra, the Australian Outback, or the mountainous regions of Tibet?

            This simplistic example of breaking-down into a bare minimum of details some of the coordinated steps needed to make a new planet Earth-2 using the universal dictum in biology of “like begets like,” reveals the extreme complexity of creating a life-sustaining planet earth.

We can so easily take this popularly for granted or as scientists, because our understanding always comes from looking backwards through the viewpoint lens of the existing orderliness and intelligibility currently in place.

            This example illustrates the obvious impossibility of a single living organism or multiple organisms in however large a number, existing as physically material beings, from a purely practical perspective even theoretically being unable to build planets, solar systems, galaxies, or a universe.

            This recognition narrows the field of possible candidates for the position of creator of the universe down to a non-physically material, thinking Spirit-Being.

This conclusion holds as long as we first eliminate as plausible candidates matter and energy as non-thinking entities being incapable of the organized complexity of self-design and self-assembly needed at the Big Bang beginning of the universe.

            But this real-world difficulty only becomes apparent when we take a fresh look from the direction of starting from scratch with nothing.

We need to look from the past to the present and from the present to the future, through the series of complex, sequential steps to reach function and fit for some particular phenomenon, like in this hypothetical example of humans creating a new and nearby planet Earth-2.

            Apply this looking-forwards approach to the creation of the universe or the creation of life on earth starting from scratch with nothing, and the same acknowledgment of the difficulties involved quickly eliminates naturalistic materialism as being hopelessly implausible as the causal explanation behind the existing order, function, and fit we presently recognize in the natural world.

            Acknowledging and discussing the realistic difficulties in creating a complementary, backup planet Earth-2 is not a God-of-the-gaps surrender to giving-up on scientific advancement.

            It is not out of the question that human beings at some time in the future could develop the technologies to harness gravity to pull together the gases and particles needed to create a new nearby planet, having all of the qualities required to support ecosystems that are favorable to human colonization. 

            I think as difficult as this would be that it is not out of the realm of possibility in the far distant future.

            But I will go out on a limb here and say that humans as physically material beings, limited by the spatial realities of distance and time, will never create a galaxy like the Milky Way.

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

[1] Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (New York: Norton, 1987), 6.

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.

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.

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.

%d bloggers like this: