February 8, 2012 by Dr. Mc.

I usually avoid politically hot topics in this blog, but this one is so right-on-target with culture and science issues. “Obama Administration Defends Contraception Rule Amid Mounting Criticism,” Huffington Post article Feb 8, is Exhibit A, because it so misrepresents the real issue, thus illustrating the point. The Obama administration doesn’t get it either.
“White House spokesman Jay Carney also sought to diffuse criticism from church leaders, telling reporters later on Tuesday the administration would work with religious organizations ‘to see if the implementation of the policy can be done in a way that allays some of those concerns.’
So far in the article, several key points can be made about missing the point:

1. What the Administration and the Huffington Post call “Contraception,” the Catholic Church sees as contradiction to God’s intent within marriage and license outside of marriage.
2. When the Administration’s spokesman says, “the administration would work with.. to see if the implementation.. can be done,” it implies there is no compromise on the ruling,
3. And that the Catholic position is only a “concern,” not a mandate from God.

The White House thinks it can discuss with the Catholic Church how the Catholic Church can compromise its policy. It’s not a policy! What the White House doesn’t understand is that some people actually believe in God so much that it affects their behavior.
This is the cultural point: Our behavior is the result of what we believe, not what we say we believe. People can say they believe in God and be totally OK with contradicting what they say is God’s Word when they think the two realms are separate. Unlike Jefferson’s intent, that’s what some people mean when they use the phrase “separation of Church and State.” They mean that God has no practical effect on this world or our behavior in it.
Everyone does not agree. To some people God is real. He really matters. He is purpose, meaning, and direction in life. The current White House administration doesn’t believe that. That is why they are surprised at the Catholic outcry, and even if the Administration backs off, it hasn’t changed its worldview. It will happen again.
And if those who are OK with contraception think this isn’t their battle, what happens when the issue is abortion being required in Baptist hospitals for “female health?” What happens when corporations are required to counsel employees to get over their guilt when they actually want to escape from a homosexual life style?
If freedom of religion is only tolerated when it doesn’t affect behavior, then there is no freedom of religion.

Posted in Culture & society, Politics, Science and faith | No Comments »

January 24, 2012 by Dr. Mc.

Two days ago one of my online students emailed me that the Excel software that I make available to them would not open properly. I checked, and yes, the most recent version posted for them had somehow been corrupted. It opened in a way that could not be viewed full-screen, and would not accept data entries. I don’t know how this happened, but I quickly replaced it with a slightly older backup version.
I originally designed this particular software as a case study for my students about 12 years ago, and I have improved it almost every term since then. Students seem to continually find new ways to do it wrong, so I continually add failsafe responses to get them back on track. It has become quite complex, and very user friendly, but always by my design. Over those 12 years copies have become corrupted many times, but I am yet to have a corruption be an advantage to my students. As far as I can tell, no corruption has ever increased the software’s capacity to do anything, useful or not. They have only reduced capacities. I do find however, that the more complex I develop my software to be, the more easily it can be corrupted. There is more to corrupt, and less chance of it functioning after the corruption. Complexity increases vulnerability, and corruption shuts down function.
And yet the complexity of anything I program, or anybody else programs, for that matter, is so simple compared with the programming we find in DNA. When I think about it, it is incredible that any DNA programming became more complex or useful without design, or that corruption in DNA could do anything except make it less functional. The only way a person could possibly think that chance evolution has improved DNA after experiencing computer programming is for indoctrination to have shut down thinking.

Posted in Science and faith | 1 Comment »

January 11, 2012 by Dr. Mc.

Today Google commemorates the 374th birthday of Nicolas Steno, rightfully labeling him as the founder of modern geology. Wikipedia’s article correctly credits Steno with developing the first three principles of geological strata.
I once sat in a geology class where the teacher taught that Steno developed five principles, including that the layers of earth represent millions of years of earth history. The millions of years was actually added by Charles Lyell, devout atheist and mentor of Charles Darwin. Steno’s principles instead emphasize the role of water in depositing layers, because he saw the layers as the result of a world-wide flood as described in the Bible. Steno’s principles lead to prediction of coal deposits and the advancement of industry. Lyell’s addition of age to the equation adds to theory, but not necessarily to advancement in any practical way.

Posted in History, Science and faith | No Comments »

May 1, 2011 by Dr. Mc.

After warning an audience against buying into Darwinian evolution too easily, I overheard someone in the audience say, “Well, I guess we could just scrap all progress and throw out evolution. (The sarcasm was obviously meant for me to overhear.) She didn’t realize how opposite the truth really is.
Take for instance the current case of the dune sagebrush lizard, or sand dune lizard (sceloporus arenicolus), proposed for the endangered species list by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. If it becomes classified as endangered, then its habitat becomes “protected,” and economic progress stops.
Don’t get me wrong. I love lizards, and enjoyed catching and keeping his cousin the eastern fence swift (sceloporus undulates) when I was a kid growing up in Alabama. They are found all over the southeast, and are very similar, as is the Western fence swift (Sceloporus occidentalis ), found from Texas to California, and the sagebrush lizard (Sceloporus graciosus), found everywhere between Texas and Idaho.
And that’s my point: One word you will find in all the above citations except the Fish & Wildlife report is “common.” We are holding up progress for a lizard that has abundant replacements.
Some scientists make a living by identifying “species,” even naming them after themselves on occasion, without ever drawing up a clear definition of what a “species” really is. They leave us with the mistaken impression that every species is unique, took millions of years to “evolve” (another poorly defined word), and is irreplaceable. In fact each of these lizards only differ by concentrations of certain options (alleles) in the same genomic structure. It’s like pigmentation differences in humans, and we are not different species for it.
It seems strange to me that scientists are all about clarification until it comes to these two terms, species and evolution. If the clarification there would be faced and dealt with, we could then get some real progress in other areas. Why not do it? Because once those terms became clear, then Darwinian evolution itself might become an endangered species.

Posted in Politics, Science and faith | 2 Comments »

February 9, 2011 by Dr. Mc.

Somewhere between the language of DNA and the fine-tuning of the universe is another level of design that deserves our awe.
I spent yesterday afternoon tweaking the Excel case I’ve written for my students, and I will spend all this morning doing the same. It is tedious, but there is a rush when an argument (conditional formula) finally does what I intend. I have written before about the amazing assumption that the arguments expressed in DNA so far surpass what I attempt in Excel, but it just dawned on me: What about the platform?
I’m impressed with my own successes at writing a program that is executed in Excel, but this is nothing compared with the Excel platform itself. It is so exact and yet so versatile as to allow me to write these arguments, sometimes allowing me to achieve my complex commands in a number of different ways.
The parallel is there with the chemical structure of the universe. DNA is indeed amazing, but it is merely a language made possible by the innate capacity designed into atoms and molecules. They may be assembled in such a way as to both inform and carry out instructions.
Simplistically speaking, they are like Legos, designed in many different sizes and shapes for maximum assembly possibilities. But unlike Legos, atoms have no need for new foundational parts being added, such as Star Wars or Harry Potter kits, as the audience matures or gains new cultural icons. As our cultures gain information, we simply discover new ways to assemble the original parts (and ways that they are already assembled beyond our imagination).
The original “kit,” which we picture as a periodic chart, gives every indication of being inexhaustible in possibilities. This suggests not only a designer, but one that might even be inexhaustible in qualities.

Posted in Science and faith | 3 Comments »

December 27, 2010 by Dr. Mc.

How do you take down Christmas tree lights? I’ve been doing it for years. You’d think I would have come up with a system sooner than this, but it just dawned on me! After first getting all the ornaments off (my first rule, discovery early in my un-decorating career), I usually just started looking around the tree for an end and then started rolling each strand up on a piece of cardboard (my last innovation, several years ago). But then I would find that as I rolled up a strand, it was tangled with other strands, and I’d be weaving them in and out of each other, or laying that one aside and finding another end to begin again. My new discovery is that if I go to the wall outlet where all the strands are plugged in, the plug at the top of the stack, the one farthest from the wall outlet, is the last one strung, and therefore is the one that lies on top of all the other strands that it crosses! Duh! Now I have three steps: remove ornaments, begin with the strand plugged in last, and roll from the wall outlet onto a square of cardboard.
While rolling the lights back onto the cardboard squares for storage, I began thinking about how easily tangles occur, if you just role one strand out of order. Then I began thinking about DNA and how it is coiled for storage. The process is inconceivably fast and accurate, with coil upon coil upon coil, and yet organelles inside each cell are capable of finding just the right portion of the coil, accessing it, duplicating it for reproduction or converting it to RNA for manufacturing a protein, and then returning it to exactly the right place, where it can be retrieved again later, with incredibly few mishaps.
Check out this website. Scroll down to the video and watch the first portion, which illustrates the coiling process. Now, I ask you: which is more complex, DNA coiling, or Christmas tree light rolling? Now, is there likely to randomly occur a machine to quickly and accurately uncoil and then re-hang Christmas tree lights? I don’t think so, and I’m quite confident that millions of years wouldn’t help. Why would anyone believe that DNA coiling is done by an organelle that occurred through random chance before being “naturally selected” in Darwinian evolution? That takes more faith than I’ve got. Watch the rest of the video, and remember that the entire process has to work before any organism can even be there for natural selection to select. Have a happy New Year, and keep thinking.

Posted in Science and faith | No Comments »

July 23, 2010 by Dr. Mc.

On July 22, 2010 The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a story by Peter Schmidt entitled, “Augusta State U. Is Accused of Requiring a Counseling Student to Accept Homosexuality.”
The first line reads, “A graduate student in school counseling is accusing Augusta State University in federal court of violating her constitutional rights by demanding that she work to change her views opposing homosexuality.”
The article seems factual and written with balance. Though the entire article is only 539 words, it had by midnight of that day received 52 comments, totaling 7,375 words. A few were well thought out; most were not. I didn’t spot any in favor of the plaintiff’s position. One (the next day) said that all Christians were not as narrow minded as those fundamentalists that hold such positions as “wives obey thy husbands.” (Which is nowhere in the Bible.) In any case, the very first comment pretty well illustrates the major problem with the popular view of science today:
July 22, 4pm: “If she believes that the earth is flat and the moon is made of green cheese will she pass science? It seems to me that the issue is that she accepts what is shown to be true by the weight of scientific evidence. Where scientific consensus is lacking, she may be more free to assert her individual (or ideological) views.”
It’s hard to get along in the world, let alone make progress, unless we trust general consensus to be true most of the time. It is sad, however, when people assume that general consensus is fact, proven by science. How about assuming consensus, just because objections are not heard? This is not just a testimony to gullibility; it is far worse. It is an indication of how low science has gone in the minds of the public. Search the web. Search your libraries. There are no (as in zero) defendable research articles out there that have identified a homosexual gene. Remember that the people who subscribe to, and are therefore available to comment on articles in, The Chronicle of Higher Education are presumably higher educators. We should not assume therefore that all higher educators hold their views from true science. They may in fact be blind to it.

Posted in Culture & society, Science and faith | No Comments »

June 27, 2010 by Dr. Mc.

I have notices for some time in ID-evolution debates (or evolution-ID debates, if you prefer), that while ID defenders stick with arguments based on empirical evidence, defenders of evolution are more often veering off into arguments about the nature of God: For example, “Why would God make an organ that..” I first noticed this theology problem with evolutionists claiming that ID theorists were just trying to sneak God back into science (the main reason why evolutionists try to push ID theory into a subheading under creationism). Early on, when ID theorists responded that ID does not specify who or what the “designer” is, Eugenia Scott’s quip was, “If it’s not God, then it’s someone with the same job description!” How does an atheist come off drawing conclusions about the job description or any other characteristic of God?
Now, as Jay Richards of the Discovery Institute points out, the evolutionists’ argument has digressed so far as to call ID “bad theology.” When asked why he thinks this is happening, he proposes that there are strategic reasons for atheistic evolutionists to build alliances with theists who have bought into evolution. “Religious people are falling for intelligent design,” and the majority of evolution’s outspoken critics are Christians (though not all). Jay Richards does a good job of pointing out that there line of reasoning is not reasoning at all. What business do atheists have telling Christians, or any other theists for that matter, what they should believe about the nature of God?
I kept waiting for another point to come out in this broadcast, but it didn’t. I guess one point per broadcast is best, but I found it frustrating.
That other point is not minor. It should be irrelevant what spurs one into investigation. What do the data say in relation to the hypotheses? The assumption by neglect is that belief trumps findings. Excuse me, but isn’t that supposed to be a hallmark difference between science and theology?
Why a person originally proposes a theory could be based on materialism, revelation, superstition, whatever. It’s irrelevant to the scientific method: Theory > refutable hypothesis > observation > findings consistent with hypothesis or no. Suppose I theorize, for whatever reason, that the earth rests on the back of a giant sea turtle that moves our planet around the solar system. I hypothesize that if this is true, then we should detect that the earth moves in relation to other planets. There is evidence of this, so that hypothesis can be submitted as evidence supportive of the theory. It is evidence, regardless of whether one thinks it is conclusive, and the scientific response is to pursue other hypotheses, whether one agrees with the theory or not.
I quickly follow this line of reasoning by acknowledging that there are many other hypotheses that could be proposed with observations from public data to refute the theory, for example, photographs of earth from space (no turtle). Notice that this refutation requires no theological arguments. Science needs no theological arguments to do good science, and the fact that evolutionists are gravitating to theological arguments to debunk ID is a strong evidence that they can no longer find strong scientific arguments to refute ID! The evidence for ID is building in science, and the evidence for ID is also building in the kinds of arguments that evolutionists are choosing.

Posted in Science and faith | 3 Comments »

May 9, 2010 by Dr. Mc.

We all know about the employee-of-the-month and the bunny-of-the-month. I just learned of a new one: the molecule-of-the-month. Check out this month’s centerfold at the RCSB Protean Data Bank.
One of the reasons Charles Darwin could propose his theory of evolution by mutation and natural selection as the explanation for the diversity of life was the assumption that less complex organisms were first, and that less complex means simpler. This suggests the tree of life, i.e., that simpler organisms are the ancestors of multiple more complex organisms, forever branching until we reach the most complex varieties of today. This train of thought was logical 150 years ago, because the cell was thought to be “simply” a blob of goo held together by a thin skin. Since one bag of goo seemed pretty much like another, new arrangements of the same goo bags could yield different animals. Right?
The one thing that has for sure evolved is our understanding of the goo. Today we estimate that the human body contains about 100,000 different molecules in its cells, and none of them are what we might call “simple.” As a matter of fact, the simplest of all viruses, are not simple either. Each one is a tiny machine part or tool with a specific function. That function is not only facilitated by the shape and size of the molecule, but also by the strength and positive and negative charges distributed about the molecule.
Today there seems to be no shortage of new discoveries of the complexity of life-related molecules, as evidenced by two molecules being featured for May, 2010, the month of this post. One is a virus that causes distemper in cats, parvoviruses; and the other is a repair molecule in humans, Mre11 Nuclease. The parvovirus neutralizes one cell in cats. With two modifications it can neutralize the same cell in dogs. Mre11 nuclease prevents mutation by repairing the ends of broked DNA strands. Both are pretty specific in function.
No life is made of goo. No life is simple. No explanation for it can be either.

Posted in Science and faith | 1 Comment »

May 1, 2010 by Dr. Mc.

Carlin Romano obscured his message with rabbit trails and sophist language, but the message is there and it is good. I can’t agree with everything he says in his review of Massimo Pigliucci’s Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science From Bunk in The Chronicle Review April 25, 2010, but I must agree with his main point. The article is entitled, ”Science Warriors’ Ego Trips”. His point of contention begins with that “warrior” idea:
“The problem with polemicists like Pigliucci is that a chasm has opened up between two groups that might loosely be distinguished as ‘philosophers of science’ and ‘science warriors.’ “
Romano defines philosophers of science as having varying viewpoints, and their debates are necessary for advancement of science. He defines science warriors as attaching those who view things differently in unscientific ways, so they instead shut down debate and therefore advancement of science. With that foundation, he takes the attack on ID as Exhibit A.
“Pigliucci similarly derides religious explanations on logical grounds when he should be content with rejecting such explanations as unproven. ‘As long as we do not venture to make hypotheses about who the designer is and why and how she operates,’ he writes, ‘there are no empirical constraints on the ‘theory’ at all. Anything goes, and therefore nothing holds, because a theory that ‘explains’ everything really explains nothing.’
Here, Pigliucci again mixes up what’s likely or provable with what’s logically possible or rational. The creation stories of traditional religions and scriptures do, in effect, offer hypotheses, or claims, about who the designer is—e.g., see the Bible. And believers sometimes put forth the existence of scriptures (think of them as “reports”) and a centuries-long chain of believers in them as a form of empirical evidence. Far from explaining nothing because it explains everything, such an explanation explains a lot by explaining everything. It just doesn’t explain it convincingly to a scientist with other evidentiary standards.”
Here Romano mixes up something himself. He conflates ID with creationism. ID in fact makes no claims about what the designer might be like, because it uses only scientific observations of the natural world to draw its conclusions. Creationism stands on Scripture—e.g., see the Bible. But Romano’s point is well taken. Creationism does have a place in knowledge, because it answers questions that science cannot touch (something that science warriors cannot seem to admit).
“A sensible person can side with scientists on what’s true, but not with Pigliucci on what’s rational and possible. Pigliucci occasionally recognizes that. Late in his book, he concedes that “nonscientific claims may be true and still not qualify as science.” But if that’s so, and we care about truth, why exalt science to the degree he does? If there’s really a heaven, and science can’t (yet?) detect it, so much the worse for science.
As an epigram to his chapter titled “From Superstition to Natural Philosophy,” Pigliucci quotes a line from Aristotle: “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” Science warriors such as Pigliucci, or Michael Ruse in his recent clash with other philosophers in []The Chronicle], should reflect on a related modern sense of “entertain.” One does not entertain a guest by mocking, deriding, and abusing the guest. Similarly, one does not entertain a thought or approach to knowledge by ridiculing it.”
Romano is right to call Pigliucci down for ridicule. Though he doesn’t personally buy the merits of ID, and apparently doesn’t even understand it, Romano defends ID’s right to be considered as a position of knowledge, as a true philosopher of science would. One in the article Romano abandons his dominant style to state his main point in simple words, which by contrast makes the point even more powerfully:
“Tone matters. And sarcasm is not science.”

Posted in Notable Quotes, Science and faith | 1 Comment »