March 30, 2010 by Dr. Mc.

I just finished reading Anthony Flew’s There is a God. Because he has been a life-long defender of atheism, whatever he had to say about his change of mind would be interesting. He begins of course with how he became atheistic, so I was well into the book before I learned what began the change. There it was on page 68: he heard a scientific explanation for why Darwinian evolution is not a satisfactory explanation for the world we experience. This is not his whole argument, but it is apparently what got the ball rolling. Flew contends that at publication of this book he is not a Christian, but I am intrigued that he includes as an appendix a dialogue with N.T. Wright, who logically explains why Christ must be who He says He is (the Son of God) and that He did what the Bible says He did (died and rose to offer us eternal life).
What I find most interesting is that Flew is now toying with the claims of Christ. It illustrates what I think is the primary reason Darwin’s theory is so ravenously defended. It isn’t because alternatives are so illogical, or even that introducing a metaphysical cause into the equation ruins all hope of scientific explanations of cause-and-affect. It is because immediately upon the admission of a creator follows the need to justify one’s own self before that Creator, Whoever that is.
Oh, there are many defenders of Darwinism who honestly think any alternative is unscientific, simply because they have been taught to consider nothing else. Among them are some Christians. But they do not typically represent the almost frantic rebellion against alternative views that we see from prominent Darwin defenders like Eugenie Scott, Richard Dawkins, and Michael Ruse.
Admitting the possibility of a designer is not a door to some pantheistic, Star Wars-type “force.” The same logic that precipitates a creator of mind says it must therefore have one. The logic that admits that life and its environment is purpose-driven leads inevitably to the conclusion that the creator has purpose.
Throughout history and across the present a common trait of humans is belief in a supernatural. Darwinism is a man-made dam to stop the flood of accountability to some superior being that all the rest of mankind naturally senses and that modern science suggests. The barrier to belief is artificial, and so are the excuses for not admitting it.

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March 26, 2010 by Dr. Mc.

When Tom Woodward interviewed me for his March 24, 2010 weekly radio program,Darwin or Design, he mentioned the way the chimp Y chromosome discovery was handled by the media. I haven’t commented on that before, but I should:
For years you and I have heard that chimpanzee and human DNA are 90-something percent identical. (Usually it’s 98%, but you can see my comments on that in a former post.) Of course that was flaunted as proof that the two species were so close on the evolutionary tree, having climbed out on different branches very recently. Evolution must be true!
As Tom pointed out on the program, articles like the one in Science Daily taught that the wonderful discovery that drastic differences between chimpanzee and human Y chromosome is evidence for how fast we have evolved from common ancestors! So, similarity shows how we evolved from a common ancestor, and difference shows how we evolved from a common ancestor. Maybe Tom and I are missing something here, but if the evidence always proves evolution, no matter what the evidence says, I feel a little deceived. If the evidence can fall either way and still prove the same thing, I’m not falling for it.

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March 8, 2010 by Dr. Mc.

In the Monday, March 8 issue of The Chronicle of Higher Education, Michael Ruse wrote an article entitled, “Philosophers Rip Darwin,” in which he rips Jerry Fodor for his book, What Darwin Got Wrong.
It is easy to see from this article that Michael Ruse does indeed read the works of many who object to Darwinian evolution as a complete picture of biological origin, and I commend his many clear statements of their positions. Overall, however, I question his approach here to answering them.
First he states that new objections are coming from philosophy and then mentions his own connection with philosophy. Fine. But then he lists biological advancements that assume a Darwinian viewpoint. I see no connection. If there are holes in the logic (philosophy), then it doesn’t matter what the observations are (only one half of science).
He then addresses objectors by first positioning them as religious. What has that got to do with the validity of their arguments, unless they argue from religious texts? They don’t. He points out that Plantinga believes in ID and is committed to debunking evolution. If these disqualify him from participating in the debate, then Ruse is disqualified for his commitment to Darwinian evolution and his religious position.
Then Ruse begins his response. “What does one say about these critics? ..To say that a speckled moth is less likely to be eaten by a robin than a dark moth, because the robin can less easily see the speckled moth against the lichen-covered tree, is to say nothing about God or any other conscious being.” I agree. Why is he bringing it up? Plantinga and Fodor don’t. They stick to philosophy and science.
His barrage of current scientific investigations and findings are impressive, and cause me to be proud of human accomplishments, but I must disagree that “the bacterial flagellum, the blood-clotting cascade—[have] been shown to be the exquisite end result of evolution. “
And as for his “suspicion ..that Fodor doesn’t really give a damn about fruit flies or finches or anything else out there. But when it comes to Homo sapiens, he wants no part of a naturalistic explanation that reduces design to the workings of blind law”: So what? The point is that sufficient “blind laws” have not been found. And the philosophical arguments of Fodor, which I thought this article was to address, remain unanswered.

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March 7, 2010 by Dr. Mc.

Fascination with the language of DNA is getting a lot of press these days, especially with Stephen Meyer’s book pointing out the obvious implications of the Signature in the Cell. But there is at least one other bio-language, no less important to all animals, and it too, is seeing new light.
I was taught in high school biology that our bodies are commanded to move and that sight and other senses are possible because electrical impulses are fired from neurons (nerve cells) to various parts of our brain and throughout our bodies. As our knowledge of this realm grows exponentially, we now discover it is not just an impulse, but a neuronal code. One neuron can send different signals by means of impulse rates. The rates carry different meanings and thus result in different responses at the other end. Researcher terms such as “information,” “encoding” and “decoding” reveal that, like DNA, neurons are truly the medium of a language. In fact, we must develop a “dictionary” for the language! By learning this language scientists hope to someday provide paraplegics and quadriplegics with artificial limbs that they can command by thought, thought encoded into wires and decoded into metal and plastics. And like all languages that we must learn, it must have been designed.

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March 5, 2010 by Dr. Mc.

It’s always refreshing to see a paper like the New York Times publish a piece that makes a point I made in my blog months earlier. Yes, there is strong parallel between the way objections to the global warming belief system is being handled and the handling of objections to Darwinian evolution. People are noticing the parallel and viewpoint discrimination is being addressed in some state legislatures.
Interestingly enough, the author engages in another parallel herself. She positions opposition to the global warming belief system as religious, just as defenders of status-quo evolution position its objectors. This blankets all Darwin skeptics, even though their ranks include prominent agnostics, atheists, and people of other diverse religious positions. There is no reason to assume the same does not also hold for global warming scare objectors.
Notice that no science is ever alluded to in the Times article, only opinions and categorizing of the opponents (read that “name-calling”). Perhaps white evangelical Protestants are more likely to not believe the global warming dogma, because they already see the misconduct of orthodox scientists in squelching the evolution debate. Does this somehow mean the objectors are wrong? What does it matter what reason motivates a person to propose a scientific investigation. What should matter is if the hypotheses and subsequently accumulated evidence passes the rigor of the scientific method.
Why even talk about what some pole says about people’s opinions? Why is the evidence not the issue instead of opinions? The article frames white evangelical Protestants as bad guys because they are more skeptical of the global warming consensus than the general population. (We are given no information about what black evangelical Protestants think, so they may be more or less skeptical than white.) The way the argument is framed obscures the larger truth: Only 36% of the general population buys the idea that there is a human-induced global warming issue. In my math classes that would be considered quite short of a majority. Does the author of this article somehow miss that her politically correct view still represents the minority of Americans?

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