October 11, 2009 by Dr. Mc.

Recently I cited the “tree of life” diagrams of Talking Squid in discussing assumptions of evolution. There they have done a good job of explaining past and current tree metaphors from an evolutionist point of view. I’d like to add a few comments to round out the value of the concept.
To begin, Talking Squid does not say, but one could take from the wording, that Darwin invented the tree concept for representing a common origin of all life. In fact we have a tree drawn by Porphyry (234-305 AD) in his introduction to Aristotle’s Categories. It was his graphic representation of what he had developed from Aristotle’s words, and it has been reworked by many over the centuries, including evolutionists seeking a pattern for life’s diversity. More likely Darwin’s drawing was his attempt to flesh out the concept he had been given with organisms he knew. What was new, as Talking Squid points out, is that Darwin included dead ends, a fundamental part of his natural selection concept.
But the tree concept is quite natural (no pun intended) when one begins categorizing anything. Take for example the rocks in my back yard. I can categorize them by type of material of which they are made, resulting in purer constancies being arranged around the edge (farther apart) and less distinct ones being toward the middle (and closer together). If I categorize them by shape, the same will happen, with round in the middle and all manner of shapes branching off at the edges. Whenever there are a variety of features to be considered (whether they be among organisms, sports equipment, or casseroles), distinct features become branches and commonalities become trunks. If you add the assumption that whatever-they-are evolved from each other, then a tree of origins can be easily had, at least at a tersery glance. Here is another difference between Darwin and many other uses of the Tree of Porphyry. Darwin was not seeking a metaphor. He was seeking real origins. Here I part with Talking Squid: the Tree of Life is not a metaphor to an evolutionist, if they in fact are seeking and believing in real, common origins.
If the categories of whatever didn’t actually evolve from each other, then the devil will be in the details. A closer look at the featureless (impure) rocks in my backyard will reveal that the ones with least distinct features actually have more variety in internal elements.
Interestingly enough, the same thing happens when one attempts to categorize life, except that the devil is not only complexity, but also differentiation. This is easily seen in at least three ways:
First, we have learned that small does not always mean less complex, as Aristotle had supposed when he first posited spontaneous generation. Single-celled organisms are still cells, complete with DNA, cell walls, etc., except they are often capable of more functions than cells of “higher” life forms, such as across-species transfer of DNA components.
Second, features can be found in common when common ancestry is impossible. One well-known example is the octopus, which is a mollusk with an eye quite similar to that of a human’s, except it works better than ours in filtered light. This is why Doolittle’s “tree of life” looks more like a banyan tree, which by the way, has multiple trunks only because it drops them DOWN from branches, not the other way around.
Third, on the most fundamental levels organisms are not more similar. They are more different. Archeans (archi-bacteria) are not just simple bacteria, they have an entirely different DNA language for reproduction than do bacteria. Biologically speaking, archeans are more different from bacteria than are you, the reader, from yeast.
The implications are pretty clear that where life is concerned common origin is an imposed concept on a natural phenomenon. The difficulty in accepting this would seem to stem from the requirement that there be no designer. It is too suggestive that it could be not just a designer but the Designer, even though ID never goes there.

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May 7, 2009 by Dr. Mc.

Recently you have probably heard the swine flu described in terms of deaths in Mexico, followed closely by words like “pandemic” and “quarantine.” Last time I heard, those deaths were in two digits. Any deaths are of course tragic, but for years the average lives lost to flu in the United States alone exceed 36,000. The world’s experience with swine flu hardly qualifies as a “pandemic.” As a matter of fact, people do not normally get swine flu. What people do normally get, however, is hype from the media. They got to keep you watching!
The part that amazes me is that it works. We do not get our medical information from science; we get it from popular media. Unfortunately we don’t even get most of what we call science from science. We believe and make our judgments based on a kind of “politically correct” science. By “politically correct,” I mean facts filtered and presented to the masses based on some group’s agenda. It is emotionally charged for some predetermined conclusion or action. I’m not even sure there is such thing as unbiased science, but I am sure we can do better. Does it matter? How about spending billions on finding a cure for a disease that is behaviorally correctable, while the number one killer, heart disease, receives about one eighth the funding?
Is there an agenda behind most of what we hear on global warming? I’ve seen the markers in Alaska where the glaciers once reached. No one doubts that the world is warmer than it was 200 years ago, but that was during what is now known as the “little ice age.” The earth’s temperature has fluctuated warmer and cooler as far as we can tell for all of recorded history–long before industrial pollution was invented. The cause of climate change is, to say the least, controversial. The leap that man is responsible is vanity. That we are thus able to fix it is arrogance. “You really can’t settle the issue by more heated debate…You need experimental data.”
But it sells newspapers, and it justifies research grants. It doesn’t boost either to point out that 95% of greenhouse gas is water vapor, or that CO2 is harmless to animals and essential for plants.
All my ranting so far is really about one thing: Our lives are so filled with other things, and we are so dependent on the digestion of ideas by other people, that we are suckers for someone else’s agenda. Could it be true of other “science”? Are the masses buying evolution because the evidence is so irrefutable, or could it be that the fit with secularism and research grants is not coincidental? After all, we must discover our self-made roots and whether other life has evolved out there. It’s too coincidental not to be questioned.

Posted in Culture & society, Politics, History, Science and faith | 4 Comments »

August 20, 2008 by Dr. Mc.

Israel is the epicenter of history. As Joel Rosenberg and many others before him have pointed out, it is not only Israel, but Jerusalem and even the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. This is not a religious conclusion; it is what the evidence says.

I used to dislike history more than any other required
subject in school, because the whole thing was just memorizing ransom dates and
wars. It wasn’t until I took a(nother) required church history class under
Kenneth Scott LaTourette that it all began to make sense. History is one
continuous story. Not only that, but it also has one continuous plot. Why is the
Middle East always in the news? No, it’s not the oil. That only accounts for
interest in the last 100 years. What about the previous 5,000?
Watch the 90-second video again if needed: Israel is always in the center–a
country with no natural harbor, no vast mineral reserves, no corner on any world
market, just the most fought-over land in the world. Why?

And then there are the people themselves. There is no other
people who lost their nation, were dispersed around the world, and yet continued
to exist as an entity for more than a few hundred years. The Jews remained a
distinguishable people for 1700 years before reclaiming their homeland in
1948. This in itself should be enough to conclude they are somehow unique,
but add to that the repeated and focused attempts to wipe them out, and the probabilities say
they are " chosen."

What can one do with these facts? We must either accept the
fact that history not only has a plot, but also a purpose; or we can deny the facts. Oh, but
there is another more powerful alternative besides accept or deny: ignore the
facts.

Probability is the foundation of scientific discovery, yet
it is ignored when it comes to evidence for God.

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August 3, 2008 by Dr. Mc.

Noting that Alexis de Tocqueville completed Democracy in America in the early 1800’s, I am
amazed that he foresaw the American war of secession over slavery (1860’s) and
even that America and Russia would some day become world superpowers with
competing world views (1960’s). His power of prediction stem not from religious
claims, but from uncompromised logic, applied to carefully investigated of
facts, with clear understanding of human nature.

That understanding of human nature is most clear to me in Book 2, Chapter 2
of Democracy, where he addresses a subject that I wrestle with regularly
in my century–The inevitability (and value) of dogmatism.

According to de Tocqueville, not only are we all dogmatic,
we all must be dogmatic in order to think clearly and deeply. There are too many
things to think through, so we must trust someone else’s conclusions in order to
build and think completely about anything. Anyone who has traveled overseas, or
even into a variant of our own culture, has discovered how fatiguing it is to
simply go through the day: How and when does one cross the street? Which
direction does the traffic flow? What does a mail box look like? Things we
previously took for granted must now be thought about, draining our ability to
cope. So we in our daily lives accept as true many things we have not
investigated in order to think on other things. Our society is allowed to
accumulate knowledge, instead of reinventing the wheel every generation. This
serves us well more often than not. It is a good thing to trust and build on
trustworthy sources. But what happens when people trust the wrong source?

De Tocqueville draws another conclusion: The nature of
democracy leads people to depend more on majority thinking than on accumulated
experience.  "At periods of equality men have no faith in one another, by
reason of their common resemblance; but this very resemblance gives them almost
unbounded confidence in the judgment of the public; for it would seem probable
that, as they are all endowed with equal means of judging, the greater truth
should go with the greater number." In other words, majority thinking becomes
more powerful than experience handed down from our forefathers. History is lost.

That is a scary thought. And I’m afraid de Tocqueville has
predicted again the state of America and the free world. Those who can think,
must.

Posted in Culture & society, Politics, History | 1 Comment »

July 20, 2008 by Dr. Mc.

Have you been following the science news recently about
Homo floresiensis, sometimes referred to as the Hobbit? Some science
news sources refer to this short too-maker as " another
human species" or even just " human-like,"
yet the name "Homo" means human. Some say the find
can all be explained by evolution theory, while others are more open about the
controversy.

This last reference points out that the dating clearly
places the bones within our own (Homo sapiens) time, yet comparisons are
made with fossils, human and not, dated millions of years ago. Homo
floresiensis was buried with advanced tools, no sign of other humans around,
had a cranial shape that justifies analytical thinking, and must have gotten to
the isle of Flores by navigation. The only problem is the credibility of a
person three feet tall. So what?

Why can’t they just be recognized as short people, as in this
photo? Is the difference any greater than that between a
Chihuahua and a Great Dane? The only reason all domestic dogs are considered
to be the same species is that we watched the breading take place in modern
history. It doesn’t mean that they are two different species or even that they
are in the process of becoming two different species. They are just swimming in
different corners of the same gene pool.  Because evolutionists must find
differences to justify crossing from one species to another, we are led down
these rabbit trails that have never led to discovery, but have led to the
justification of one human mistreating another.
Humans is humans. Enjoy the variety.

Posted in History, Science and faith | No Comments »

May 17, 2008 by Dr. Mc.

If global warming is so critical an issue today, why is not
more effort put into explaining it to people? I find little disagreement that
there is a warming trend world-wide or that it relates to the amount of CO₂
in the atmosphere. The debate seems to be over (#1) the cause, and (#2) should
we do something about it. Some would say, “Of course we should do something
about it! The ice caps are melting! The sea is rising! The
ocean conveyor belts might turn off!” Yes, the oceans have risen by about
0.6 inches recently, but we also know that the oceans were once much, much
lower, because we find
stalactites in underwater caverns, and stalactites only form in air, as
water evaporates from the ends of the columns. We also know that as CO₂
increases in the atmosphere, plant growth is stimulated. One of the “alarming”
signs of global warming is that
crops are growing in Greenland where they never grew before. Is that a
problem? Plants consumes CO₂ in the production of food for itself and
oxygen for us.

Maybe we should do something, but I’m still at Square 1:
What is causing it? One position is that we are. I see data online that our
fossil fuel consumption contributes to the total, but I would like to see a
comparison of our contribution with the total CO₂ that is out there.
What percentage of the whole do we contribute?

There is also a case that CO₂ content
follows warming, not the other way around. If that is the case, we can’t say
that CO₂ content causes the warming. If you watch that trailer it is
obvious that the producers have a political agenda behind presenting the data,
but don’t all presenters? Doesn’t the
CDIAC benefit with funding, if a “problem” must be monitored? (Financial
benefit to selective data is a subject I will probably write about later.)

Regardless of #1 or #2, CO₂ content in the air has
increased substantially in recent centuries. Has anybody put that fact
together with the concept of carbon-14 dating? Carbon-14 is a heavy form of
carbon (two extra neutrons in the nucleus), resulting from a reaction to cosmic
radiation in the upper atmosphere. Animals and plants take it in as air is
circulated down from the upper atmosphere, and the amount remains pretty much
stable until the organism dies. The molecule is unstable, and tends to
degenerate back to normal carbon(-12), so once the organism dies, the level
deteriorates at a predictable rate, suggesting that we can calculate how long
the organism has been dead. This would be valuable for computing dates for
bones, artifacts, etc. that defy written history, except that the ratio of
carbon-14 taken in depends on the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, and the
amount used to be substantially less than when the dating
rubrics were computed. That means all calculations based on carbon-14 are
suspect.

Global warming may or may not be our fault, and we may or
may not be able to do anything about it, but I am confident that we know less
about dating antiquity without the written word than most people think we know.

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January 19, 2008 by Dr. Mc.

One of the arguments I hear against allowing God in science
is that the Gap theory kills scientific investigation. The Gap theory they are
referring to is, "If we just say God did it, then there is no further reason to
investigate." This sentiment only makes sense to a person who is not motivated
by faith in God. The reality is that science as we know it is the product of
Christendom. Just as Christians once owned slaves as the world did, Christians
once believed in many superstitions.  For thousands of years people around
the world have believed superstitions because they believed that the "gods" were
whimsical and competitive, with natures hardly more honorable than our own. But
the Judeo-Christian God is not that way. He is understood to be orderly,
logical, purposive, and powerful enough to reflect that nature in all He has
made. That is why Christendom would not accept that the world around us was
incomprehensible. That is why it was Christendom that made alchemy into
chemistry. That is why it was Christendom that made astrology into astronomy.
That is why Johannes Kepler would not give up on discovering the mathematics of our
solar system. Kepler and many other founders of modern science believed in the God of John 1:1, where it says, “In the Beginning was the Word.” The Greek word used there in the original is not the only Greek option for “word,” it is LOGOS–the root of our English word “logic.” So read that verse, “In the beginning was the Logic, and the Logic was with God, and the Logic was God.” It says that the Judeo-Christian God is the logic behind the universe and all that we see. I just recently discovered the beautiful website of a Christian amateur astronomer, motivated by faith in that God to pursue his hobby. Check it out. Is it not motivational to think that when you look into a telescope that
you are looking into the face of God?

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December 30, 2007 by Dr. Mc.

Recently a friend pointed out to me how many "supposed
Christians" in history owned slaves, including the
Puritans and George Washington. He pointed to
verses in the Bible that seem to indorse slavery. Of
course his reason was to argue that if God is real and if God changes people,
how come these things are found in Christian history? This is a two part
objection: first is the Bible’s text, second is the behavior of Bible followers.

First, just because the Bible says to treat your slaves
well does not mean it endorses the concept. It also gives instructions on
divorce procedures, but
Jesus Himself said it was not because divorce was a good thing. This is not
intended to be a theological blog, so let me quickly move on to the second
objection.

To scoff at Christians in history for owning slaves is to
target one group for what all of mankind shares guilt. The real question is not
"Who was doing it?" (everybody), but "Who stopped it?" This world-wide scourge
was first halted in Christendom through the efforts of devout Christians, such
as Thomas Clarkson, John Newton, and William
Wilberforce. This Christmas I caught for the first time the words of the
hymn, "O Holy Night."
The third stanza begins

Truly He taught us to love one another;
His law is love and His Gospel is peace.
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother
And in His Name all oppression shall cease.

This was penned in France in 1847, only one year before
France finally ended slavery. It was 40 years afterBrittan banned the
trade of slaves, 15 years afterall British slaves
were freed, but 12 years before theAmerican Civil
War. Yes, it took a while, and much blood was shed in attacking a plight
that permeates all of human history, but correction began in Christendom, and I’m
afraid the battle must still continue.

Posted in Culture & society, History | No Comments »

December 16, 2007 by Dr. Mc.

Ron Hubbard is convinced man is basically good; the
Bible says man is basically sinful. I have come to believe that where one
falls on this issue bears on how one sees virtually every other issue. Gun
control is for those who see man as basically good, because if we take away
guns, people will be good. It’s the weapons that are bad. It’s the same concept
that Obid
expressed in verse 2,000 years ago, when he said that the Iron Age began strong
weapons and thus the corruption of man. If man is basically good, then we should
be able to talk out our differences with other nations instead of going to war.
If man is basically good, then we should not have a death penalty, because the
criminals are just misguided. If man is basically good, then welfare should work
smoothly, because people will not take advantage of the system. Democracies will
flourish, because no one will seek power over others. If man is basically good,
then there will be a Utopian government some day, because the basic building
blocks of government are all the good people. And evolution must be true,
because every generation is a little better than the one before. The very idea
that somewhere in the distant past man chose to go into a fallen state is
perfectly unacceptable to any of the above. It makes more sense that if man is
basically good, then man is moving toward God. No, better yet: Man is becoming
God.

But the only democracy that lasts is one that has a balance
of power. Three branches of government work not because the rulers are good, but
because no one branch can overpower the other two. The
"invisible hand" of economics works not because people produce for the sake of others, but because
competing self-interests drives up production and drives down prices. It works
for people to bear arms, because no one will let anyone else take control.

Posted in Culture & society, Politics, History | No Comments »

December 9, 2007 by Dr. Mc.

OK, if you go to this website, the painting is grotesque, but don’t let that distract you from the point here: In the last paragraph of this critique of a book on ugliness, the article’s author makes the following criticism of the book’s author: "If he had included the writings of evolutionary biologists, he might have told us why [universal disgust of certain sensations] could be so. That he shows no awareness of post-Darwinian science can mean only that he isn’t serious about locating the sources of aesthetic feelings." The author of the article is saying that he cannot respect a researcher who makes no reference to evolution, even if the subject matter is art. The article’s author is probably eluding to writings by biologists such as Edward O. Wilson and his theory that our sense of what is aesthetic comes from evolution toward what provides us food, shelter, and security.

My question is, why should evolution be invoked if aesthetic expression (and therefore aesthetic feeling) has never been observed to evolve? And it has not. Sure, technology has advanced, such as available media and geometry of perspective, but not expression of the heart nor talent of the artist. No one who really knows art can look at the cave paintings of Chauvet and say they are "primitive" in terms of aesthetic expression or talent. As a matter of fact, when they were first discovered in about 1835, they were assumed to be the work ofCelts, only a thousand or so years earlier. That being the case, I would suggest that the article’s author may need to look outside his box for what aesthetics really are.

To require reference to a particular theory in order to be taken as "serious" is to require a mind that is closed to ideas outside the theory. He is saying that the theory is fundamental to understanding anything and everything, and no theory can hold that ground. That requirement belongs within a given world view. That requirement is a religious requirement, not a universal one, and certainly not a scientific one.

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