The philosophy behind Darwinists

This blog is a continuation of a summary of a powerful book, I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist by Geisler and Turek.. The last time I discussed the book I was working my way through a chapter about the complexity of life. This time I would like to finish that particular chapter, which talks about the philosophy behind Darwinism and materialism.

The authors say Darwinists have been successful in convincing the public that Darwinism represents science while those who oppose Darwinism represent bad science. However, Geisler and Turek say just the opposite. It's the Darwinists who are practicing the bad science because their science is built on a false philosophy.

Where does Darwinism go wrong? Many Darwinists start with the idea that God is not necessary because science can explain everything. But there are all sorts of rational beliefs that cannot be proven by science: mathematics and logic (science can't prove them because science presupposes them), metaphysical truths (for example, there are minds that exist other than my own), ethical judgments (you can't prove by science that Mother Teresa was good because morality is not part of the scientific method), aesthetic judgments (no one can scientifically prove something is beautiful), and science itself (the belief that the scientific method discovers truth ironically can't be proven by the scientific method itself).

The key point the authors wish to get across is that science itself is built on philosophy. So, if you have bad philosophy, you get bad science. How is it that science is built on philosophy? First, scientists use philosophical assumptions and the search for causes. For example, scientists assume by faith that reason and the scientific method allow us to accurately understand our world. You can't prove the tools of science by some sort of experiment – the laws of logic, the law of causality, the principle of uniformity. Secondly, philosophical assumptions can dramatically impact scientific conclusions. I think right now about the debate on climate change. Many scientists are getting a conclusion that they wish to get to keep the scientific funding going.

The authors say the bad science of Darwinists essentially comes from their false philosophy of naturalism/materialism. Geisler and Turek have five reasons why materialism is not reasonable. First, there is specified complexity in life that cannot be explained materially. Think about the DNA message. Secondly, human thoughts and theories are not comprised only of materials. How much does love weigh? Third, if life was simply material, then we could take these materials and make a living being. But we cannot do that. Fourth, if materialism is true, then all people of human history who had spiritual experiences have been completely mistaken. That's hard to believe considering the list of those who have had such experiences – think of Abraham, Moses, Kepler, Newton, Pascal, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Jesus Christ. Fifth, if materialism is true then reason itself is impossible. Why? If mental processes are nothing but chemical reactions in our brains, why should we believe that anything is true? Chemicals don't reason, they react. We would be doomed to conclusions based on chemical reactions rather than reason.

Well, that's a lot of heady material to consider, and it deserves further thought. But I think it's pretty powerful.

Language to mask failure

As you know, I'm an English teacher who likes our language. I was reminded once again of the power of words the other day. This time it has to do with politics.


The news was about Nancy Pelosi and her fellow Democrats. According to internet reports, they have dropped the word 'stimulus' from their vocabulary. This was reported shortly before President Obama's jobs speech before a joint session of Congress. He proposed another hugely expensive stimulus bill . . . oops, it's now being called a "jobs plan" much like his his $830 billion 2009 economic stimulus package. And we all know how lovely that turned out to be.


But since that previous program was so ineffective and ruinously expensive, a change in vocabulary was necessary. Democrats are now being careful to frame their job-creation agenda in language excluding references to that dreaded word "stimulus," even though their favored policies for ending the deepest recession since the Great Depression are largely the same--throw money at the problem.


The phrases used now will make people forget earlier failure, so get ready for new, uplifting language. It will now be "job creation" and "Make it in America" in lieu of "Recovery Act." Gee, I feel better about it already.


You know there's failure in the air when language has to change rather than the policies. The Democrats are wedded to the idea that money solves all problems. I hope this lesson in language wakes up the American people to the Democrats' lack of good ideas to solve our economic problems. I'm certainly not happy with the Republicans, but I think they have better plans to reduce our bloated government and return economic decisions to the people.

Al Gore as a prophet for profit

At the risk of irritating readers of this blog, I want to go back to global warming again. A previous blog mentioned the latest from CERN, the respected scientific group that has issued its findings that suggest cosmic rays may be a leading cause of climate change. Well, there goes the man-caused-only rants from the leftists around the world. Who leads them? Why, it's Al Gore, bless his soul.


The other day he implied that those who oppose his agenda were the same as the racists in the 50s who opposed equal rights for African-Americans. Now, you know when someone plays the race card, he is in trouble. By the way, we can expect that in next year's presidential election, can't we?


But I don't want to go over these issues. Instead, I'd like us to consider why Al Gore is so insistent on scaring us, ranting about the issue, smearing his opponents. Does he care that much more about the earth than the rest of us? Or is there more to his position? People always say, "Follow the money." Let's do that with Al Gore.


No one has made more money from climate change hype than Gore. According to the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper, just one of the "green" companies in which Gore has invested has received over half a billion dollars in subsidies from the Energy Department. Ah, scare people enough, and they throw money your way. Scientists learned that too--yell a lot and get more funding.


Financial disclosure documents released before the 2000 election put the Gore family's net worth at $1 million to $2 million. A mere decade later, estimates are that he is worth $100 million. He's been touted in the press as one day becoming the first "carbon billionaire." Now, there's a reason to keep the hysteria alive. It's good for the pocketbook.


According to the Science & Public Policy Institute, the U.S. government has spent over $79 billion since 1989 on policies related to climate change, including science and technology research, administration, education campaigns, foreign aid and tax breaks. And why are we doing this, considering that the rest of the world, especially China and India, have no plans to ruin their economy along with us? The net impact will be nil.


According to the World Bank, the value of carbon trading doubled from $63 billion in 2007 to $126 billion in 2008. Big money has been and can be made by conning governments into formulating policies based on fraudulently hyped climate hysteria.
We still remember "Climategate," right?


While many like Gore have profited handsomely, these policies cost the nation dearly in terms of jobs and economic growth. Let's see real proof before we unilaterally dismantle the American economy.

The amazing complexity of life

Back to my blog on I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. The last blog on this covered the design argument in which the authors claim the basic laws of the universe are set up to allow human life to exist. This time I'll focus on a second type of design in the universe -- the complexity of life. The authors point out that advancing technology has enabled scientists to discover a tiny world of awesome design and astonishing complexity.

The biggest problem for Darwinian believers is to explain the origin of the first life, which is not as simple as once thought. In 1953 James Watson and Francis Crick discovered DNA, the chemical that encodes instructions for building and replicating all living things. It's a blueprint, and Bill Gates called it the most complex computer code ever seen. DNA even in a one-celled amoeba is unbelievably complex in its message. Richard Dawkins, an atheist professor of zoology at Oxford University, admits that the message found in just the cell nucleus of a tiny amoeba is more than all 30 volumes of Encyclopedia Britannica combined, and the entire amoeba has as much information in its DNA as 1000 complete sets of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Darwinists have a difficult task. They have to say life came spontaneously from nonliving chemicals without intelligent intervention. The trouble is, all experiments designed to spontaneously generate life have failed. Another difficulty they have, besides the complexity of DNA, is the origin of DNA. It relies on proteins for its production, but proteins rely on DNA for their production. So which came first, proteins or DNA? One has to be in existence for the other to be made.

So why are Darwinists so committed to their viewpoint? Because they have a philosophy which rules out intelligent causes before they even look at the evidence. Since they have ruled out any possibility of God because of their philosophical foundations, Darwinism has be true since it's the only God-free theory.

A couple of key quotations make this very clear. Phil Johnson, a Christian law professor, states, "Darwinism is based on an a priori [prior] commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence." Richard Lewontin, a Harvard University atheistic professor, says, "It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenonal world but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute for we cannot allow a Divine foot in the door." That's an amazing statement, considering he is saying Darwinists start with a philosophical position of atheism and build their science on that. So much for the neutrality of science.



But Darwinists say that they have billions of years to work with, so that may allow spontaneous generation of life to happen. The problem is that nature disorders; it doesn't organize things. Atheists and theists alike have calculated the probability that life could arise by chance from nonliving chemicals. The results are staggering. One biochemist said that the probability of getting one protein molecule by chance would be the same as a blindfolded man finding one marked grain of sand in the Sahara desert three times in a row. And one protein molecule is not even life. You need about 200 of these molecules to get life going.


This is fascinating material, but there is a lot of it. So I'll save some for the next blog.

A CLOUD covers global warming fanatics

If you've read any of my blogs in the past, you know I'm skeptical of global warming. I wanted to share a recent news item that adds to my skepticism.

It regards the latest revelations from CERN over its landmark CLOUD experiment, whose significance one journalist explains here:

"The science is now all-but-settled on global warming, convincing new evidence demonstrates, but Al Gore, the IPCC and other global warming doomsayers won’t be celebrating. The new findings point to cosmic rays and the sun — not human activities — as the dominant controller of climate on Earth."

First, a little background on where this article came from and the organization CERN. The research was published this week in the prestigious journal Nature, so this is not the result of some crackpot publication. And the research comes from CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, one of the world’s largest centers for scientific research involving 60 countries and 8,000 scientists at more than 600 universities and national laboratories. This is a hugely successful and respected organization. It was CERN that invented the World Wide Web, that built the multi-billion dollar Large Hadron Collider, and that has now built a pristinely clean stainless steel chamber that precisely recreated the Earth’s atmosphere.

So what happened during the research? In this stainless steel chamber, 63 CERN scientists from 17 European and American institutes have done what global warming doomsayers said could never be done — demonstrate that cosmic rays promote the formation of molecules that in Earth’s atmosphere can grow and seed clouds. If there are more clouds, the result will be a cooler Earth. Where do these cosmic rays come from? The sun. Because the sun’s magnetic field controls how many cosmic rays reach Earth’s atmosphere (the stronger the sun’s magnetic field, the more it shields Earth from incoming cosmic rays from space), the sun determines the temperature on Earth.

The idea that cosmic rays and the sun hold the key to the global warming debate was first proposed by two scientists from the Danish Space Research Institute, at a 1996 scientific conference in the U.K. Within one day, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Bert Bolin, denounced the theory, saying, “I find the move from this pair scientifically extremely naive and irresponsible.” Note that it was the IPCC that played a role in later incorrect announcements on global warming. Al Gore and his fanatic followers made sure that anyone who disagreed about the politically correct theory of global warming being humanity's fault alone were vilified, marginalized and starved of funding, despite the fact that many of the skeptics had impeccable scientific credentials.

But Jasper Kirkby, a CERN scientist became disenchanted with the standard line of the global warming crowd. He convinced the CERN bureaucracy of the cosmic ray theory’s importance and developed a plan to create a cloud chamber — he called it CLOUD, for “Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets.” Needless to say, the global warming establishment sprang into action, pressured the Western governments that control CERN, and almost immediately succeeded in suspending CLOUD. It took Mr. Kirkby almost a decade of negotiation with his superiors, and who knows how many compromises and unspoken commitments, to convince the CERN bureaucracy to allow the project to proceed. And years more to create the cloud chamber and convincingly validate the Danes’ groundbreaking theory.

So, despite the fact that Al Gore implied that anyone who opposed his version of global warming was a racist, the verdict is still out. Again, I caution everyone to investigate and think this thing through before we ruin ourselves economically by following the harsh mandates the global warming crowd has set up for us.

A just-right universe for us

I have been blogging on a book that our class at church will be reading together--I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Geisler and Turek. For this entry I want to cover what is probably my favorite section of the whole book. It involves the argument from design, also called the teleological argument. It looks like this: every design had a designer; the universe has highly complex design; therefore, the universe had a designer. In the last few years science has uncovered so much evidence of complexity in the universe that argues powerfully for the existence of God.

For one thing, the universe is specifically organized to enable life to exist on earth. Think about just the solar system--no other place is able to sustain life. We live, like Goldilocks, in a just-right position, neither too hot (Venus) or too cold (Mars).We have around us scores of improbable and interdependent life-supporting conditions that make earth a perfect home in a hostile universe. These highly precise environmental conditions go by the term "anthropic principle." The universe looks fine-tuned to support human life here on earth.

What are some of these conditions that are exactly right? I'll just list some, skipping the details, but the book explains each more fully: the percent of oxygen in the atmosphere, the transparency of our atmosphere, the moon-Earth gravitational interaction, the amount of carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere, the gravitational force in the universe, the expansion rate of the universe, the velocity of light, the level of water vapor in the atmosphere, the precise location of Jupiter in the solar system, the thickness of the Earth's crust, the rotation of the earth, the tilt of the Earth's axis, the rate of lightning in the atmosphere, seismic activity on the earth. There are something like 122 of these conditions both on earth and throughout the universe that have to be precisely right for us to exist.

The authors quote a Nobel Laureate, Arno Penzias, who has this to say after examining the conditions like the ones in the previous paragraph: "Astronomy leads us to a unique event, a universe which was created out of nothing and delicately balanced to provide exactly the conditions required to support life. In the absence of an absurdly-improbable accident, the observations of modern science seem to suggest an underlying, one might say, supernatural plan."

The skeptic's response comes in several flavors. One popular one today is called the Multiple Universe Theory. This theory says there actually is an infinite number of universes in existence, so it's no wonder that at least one looks like the one that we are in. There are significant problems with this explanation. First, there is no evidence for it. Secondly, an infinite number of finite things like universes is an actual impossibility. Third, even if there were other universes, they would need fine-tuning to get started just as ours did.

This chapter in Geisler and Turek's book discusses design of the universe, but there is much more to this design argument. The other area of design that is so powerful today has to do with the microscopic level. Design that went unnoticed in Darwin's day is being revealed in exiting ways. I'll cover those in the next blog.

The Cosmological Argument for God

I want to return to an important book called I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist by Geisler and Turek. The first couple of chapters dealt with arguments for the existence of truth. The authors move to a new chapter in which they attempt to prove that God exists. Their first argument is called the Cosmological Argument.

t\They start with a story of Albert Einstein. It was in 1916 when Einstein's calculations revealed the universe had a definite beginning. This upset Einstein as well as other physicists who wanted the universe to be static and eternal. Why should they care about the beginning of the universe? Because it allowed for God as creator.

Einstein's work hinted at the possibility of God for a simple reason. His theory of General Relativity supported one of the oldest formal arguments for the existence of a theistic God -- the Cosmological Argument. It sounds complicated but it's very simple. In logical form, the argument looks like this: everything that had a beginning had a cause; the universe had a beginning; therefore, the universe had a cause. This cause came to be called the Big Bang.

The authors give five reasons to prove the universe had a beginning with this Big Bang. First, the Second Law of Thermodynamics, also called the Law of Entropy, says that nature tends to bring things to disorder. We see that the universe still has some order left with some usable energy, so the universe cannot be eternal. Secondly, we have found over the last 75 years that the universe is expanding; if we could watch a video recording of the history of the universe in reverse, we would see everything in the universe collapsing back to point. Another piece of scientific evidence is the cosmic background radiation, which is actually light and heat left over from the initial explosion of the Big Bang. A fourth clue was the discovery of slight variations in the temperature of the cosmic background radiation. These temperature ripples enabled matter to congregate by gravitational attraction into galaxies. A fifth supporting fact is Einstein's theory of General Relativity, which shows that time, space, and matter are interdependent; you can't have one without the others. This theory demands an absolute beginning for all three.

The book contains an interesting quotation from Robert Jastrow, the director of Mount Wilson and founder of NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies. He is an agnostic when it comes to religious matters, so this is not someone in the camp of Christianity. He writes, "Now we see how the astronomical evidence leads to a biblical view of the origin of the world. The details differ, but the essential elements in the astronomical and biblical accounts of Genesis are the same: the chain of events leading to man commenced suddenly and sharply at a definite moment in time, in a flash of light and energy." In other words, Genesis seems to give a good picture of the Big Bang.

Why does God have to be dragged into this? Couldn't natural forces have produced the universe? Here's the key point -- natural forces, in fact all of nature, were created at the Big Bang. There was no natural world or natural law prior to the Big Bang. Something outside of nature had to do the job, and that's where the term "supernatural" comes into the picture.

At this point, when God is suggested as the Beginner, atheists come up with an age-old question: "Then who made God? If everything needs a cause, that God needs a cause too." But the Law of Causality does not say that everything needs a cause. It says that everything that comes into being needs a cause. God did not come into being. No one made God. He is unmade. As an eternal being, God did not have a beginning, so he didn't need a cause.

What characteristics of God can be seen from the evidence discussed in this chapter? He must be self existent, timeless, non-spatial, and immaterial. He must be unimaginably powerful. He must be supremely intelligent. He must be personal in order to choose to convert a state of nothingness into the time-space-material universe.

The authors end the chapter with a key question: "If there is no God, why is there something rather than nothing?" Good point.