We have had the privilege over the last two evenings to have, on Monday evening, Dr Stephen Meyer join us on the nearby university campus to lecture on his book Signature in the Cell and take Q&A, and then last night Dr Jonathan Wells and Meyer showed the here pictured DVD, Darwin's Dilemma, and then took Q&A from the audience again.
Overall, one might say it was a pivotal moment for ID at this university. True, there's a long way to go, but whereas it seemed like a pack of wild dogs was barely restraining themselves from cussing William Dembski out the first time he came here, though he acquitted himself well in the exchanges despite being one-on-alot and suffering from a cold and from the lack of a moderator, this time around the Darwinians in attendance mustered little of any substance in response to the points made by Meyer, Wells, and the DVD.
Now, this time around, the IDEA Club (who invited the ID guys) was wiser and had assigned moderators to make sure that the pandemonium surrounding Dembski the 1st time would not be repeated during the Q&A sessions. So, what should any reasonable and smart scientific-type person conclude from the fact that each questioner would get limited time to ask a question and probably only one follow-up? Well, you've gotta make your question count! So, did our Darwinian friends do so?
Eh, not so much.
Let's take last night's DVD showing Q&A for a great example of Darwinian futility.
Question 1: Professor Vic Hutchison was the first to raise his hand (beat everyone else by a few minutes, literally) and asked why the DVD quoted Valentine and Morris in support of their position. Um, that's your question, really? If I were Meyer and Wells, I would have smiled broadly. (In fact, Meyer told me later that he was more or less chuckling on the inside.)
Question 2: One of those guys who's always showing up for these kinds of events (you know the type) (oh wait, I'm one of those guys! Crud. Except he's in his 50s) asked about the ID answer to the presence of ERVs in mammalian evolution (which is, for the uninitiated, AFTER the Cambrian explosion) (oh yeah, the DVD was about nothing but the Cambrian explosion). He was allowed far too many followups by the moderator, and acted offended and squelched when he was told no más, to the point that he got up, gesticulated wildly for a moment, then walked out. Good riddance to irrelevant questions and their questioners.
M&W's answer was, among other things: How do you build the new proteins, new protein folds and higher body structure; we don’t think viruses can account for that.
Question 3, my favorite, was asked by one Ola F (unless I misunderstood) who is apparently a prof of behavioral ecology at the university: Why did the DVD neglect to mention Hox genes and the fact that tons of organisms share the same genes, aka housekeeping genes?
I've noticed this about Darwinians, especially around here - they have some favorite buzzword/catch-all answers they like to throw out, and whenever someone mentions them, they dissolve into laughter and booyah pwn3d!-type reactions. It's sad and funny at the same time.
Anyway, I was laughing -again- b/c the presence of such genes doesn't give evidence for Darwinism over ID at all - the Designer put them there!
Further, why would anyone think it's a challenge to ID that many organisms share similar genes? Don't Windows 98, 2000, XP, and Vista share a lot of similar code?
On top of that, the DVD addressed that very question, comparing it to the similar form of automobiles since their invention 100 yrs ago.
Meyer correctly pointed out she's begging the question.
Wells steps up and says:
-Without those genes, we're not alive. There's a reason organisms share them.
-Hox genes' effect kicks in AFTER the formation of the body plan (I'll take his word for it on this one).
-And they're just on/off switches, telling the body whether to insert an eye/leg/antenna at a given part of the body.
The questioner then whined about "Why should humans share genes with other organisms like an oak, a bird, other more primitive organisms?" That question cracked me up b/c she was implying some sort of arrogant species-ism. And she's acting, again, like she or anyone else can access the mind or motives of the Designer, which ID has taken pains to say that they can't do. So, overwhelming evidence is...where?
I later asked her what she thought was so strong about her citing the presence of Hox genes, and her response was precisely that - why would a Designer put them there? I patiently explained that the Christian position explains their presence just as well. She sort of lost her composure at that moment, started literally snapping her fingers near my face (which I did find sort of distracting, to be honest) and began ranting about how God couldn't possibly be the answer b/c He just poofs things, or how she could posit a Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc. Then "so I guess your God loves prokaryotes far more than you since they were around for billions of years!" and "if God loves these organisms, why do they go extinct so often? Huh? HUH?" Amazing.
I knew when she mentioned the FSM that she had nothing, and pressed her - that's irrelevant, and how do you know anything about the FSM? She then gave me a mini-lecture about how she has faith in God, but not THAT God, and then escaped. A professor of behavioral ecology at a major state(-funded) university.
Ironically, these were the most challenging questions of the entire session. A massive opportunity for the Darwinians to bring an intellectual beatdown of two pillars of ID, missed and missed badly.
Briefly, questions 5 and 6 were from acquaintances of mine, both solid and frequent attenders of these kinds of events, one a solid member of the local atheist club.
Question 5: The DVD said "designers" and "designer". Which is it?
While that's a technically relevant question, how is that any challenge?
Question 6: Your DVD assumes the normally-accepted geological time scale. Was this an intentional jab at YEC?
As if YEC-ists don't know what's what with respect to the ID movement. I, as a YEC-ist, simply see ID as a useful internal critique of evolutionary naturalism. ID grants naturalism and Old Earth and the usefulness and interpretability of the fossil record and all sorts of other freebies to Darwinism, then is still able to spank it soundly as a viable viewpoint. Tells me quite a lot about the internal strength of the worldview, and it's why I take an interest in this topic despite the fact that I differ with ID on age of the Earth and the utility of the fossil record.
After the formal Q&A and after Professor Ola F suffered her meltdown at my hands, my friend Biggs and I engaged Prof Hutchison in convo. He went on for some time about irrelevant topics - whether he believes in God (he does, for reasons we can't figure out), whether there are religious ppl who support Darwinism (which we know, obviously), and why ID gets so much support from Christian churches (irrelevant ad hominem). I later asked him how he knows what is true and he responded that he knows that which he accesses thru his 5 senses and thru experiments on material in the lab. I asked him how he knows, then, that it's true that one accesses truth successfully thru one's senses. He simply repeated himself. I tried to ask the question a different way, and he begged the same question the same way. Wow. And he'd had the gall to say "I've read your arguments, and they're not any good". Reading is not the same as understanding, Prof Hutchison.
Meyer's closing point was strong and trenchant - Darwinians have long been relying strongly on the "it's not science" argument to bolster its case. When the question turns away from "is it true?" to "is it in conformity with our ad hoc strongarming the rules to suit us?" it's a sign the Darwinian club is in trouble.
(HT: CharlesRansom at the IDEAClub for live-blogging the event and jogging my memory in certain places)
(Many thanks to Dr Meyer for giving me a copy of his book when I told him I was interested in this topic partly b/c I'm a Godblogger. He said "well, you're a member of the media!" Haha, right, sure I am. But I'll enjoy the book, for sure. He was a very nice and enthusiastic guy, and after an exhausting day still went out to eat with a bunch of us afterward.)
7 comments:
After the formal Q&A and after Professor Ola F suffered her meltdown at my hands, my friend Biggs and I engaged Prof Hutchison in convo. He went on for some time about irrelevant topics - whether he believes in God (he does, for reasons we can't figure out), whether there are religious ppl who support Darwinism (which we know, obviously), and why ID gets so much support from Christian churches (irrelevant ad hominem). I later asked him how he knows what is true and he responded that he knows that which he accesses thru his 5 senses and thru experiments on material in the lab. I asked him how he knows, then, that it's true that one accesses truth successfully thru one's senses. He simply repeated himself. I tried to ask the question a different way, and he begged the same question the same way. Wow. And he'd had the gall to say "I've read your arguments, and they're not any good". Reading is not the same as understanding, Prof Hutchison.
I am mostly interested in your view that asking Dr. Hutchison, "how he knows what is true" is evidence of some kind? I don't follow what exactly it proves? Are you claiming that we truly cannot know anything? Or are you using the argument that because he doesn't know how he knows something that his views are invalid?
Hi George,
Mostly, yes, he cannot know anything, but here's the key - he can't know anythg if his worldview is true. It's self-refuting. If materialism is true, there's no reason to think our cognitive faculties are reliably aimed at producing thoughts that correspond with reality.
Here are three posts to help explain, only the third of which is my words:
http://rhoblogy.blogspot.com/2009/02/bahnsen-on-skeptics-worldview.html
http://rhoblogy.blogspot.com/2007/09/god-of-bible-lives.html
http://rhoblogy.blogspot.com/2008/08/evidentialisms-bloody-nose.html
Also, www.proofthatgodexists.org
It's a more thought-provoking site than one might expect from the title. Give it a try.
http://rhoblogy.blogspot.com/2009/02/bahnsen-on-skeptics-worldview.html
1) What are the laws of logic? (I actually do not know what the author is intending as a Law of logic)
2) I'm curious how the idea of something arising seemingly by chance implies there is an underlying irrationality involved? I think of radioactive decay as a counter example. There's a physical rational process occurring, but there's no way to predict when the atom will decay, but you can predict that it will decay. So though it seems that it's random chance and completely irrational, there's a rational explanation.
http://rhoblogy.blogspot.com/2007/09/god-of-bible-lives.html
1) I don't understand the claim that without god it's impossible to prove anything
2) "The atheist world view is irrational and cannot consistently provide the preconditions of intelligible experience, science, logic, or morality" - I don't understand how there must exist preconditions for the above concepts.
http://rhoblogy.blogspot.com/2008/08/evidentialisms-bloody-nose.html
1) Part of my confusion with this discourse is that "If the claim that evidence is a good way to discover truth" is true, then it is dependent upon what collectively is decided as evidence to support the idea of truth. That is to me recursive and somewhat qualitative. However if you rephrase it to say that: Evidence is a way to discover truth. The the statement is completely non recursive and it is possible to test the idea, either refute it or find a way to support the claim.
I'm sure you'll ask me where is my evidence for the evidence to support that claim.
2) I agree his first principal seems arbitrary, but no less arbitrary than the assumption that without god there cannot be rationality.
3) "There is no absolute truth" -
The thing that confuses me about this line of reasoning is that truth seems to me to be a set of criteria to distinguish one set of things from another set of things so to say there is or isn't absolute truth is a statement that cannot be tested for truth value because of the very definition of what it entails for something to be true or false.
Hi George,
The laws of logic are the law of identity, of non-contradiction, of excluded middle, etc.
So you have to ask yourself about the laws of logic. What are their nature? Have they always been? How do you know?
Perhaps even more importantly, if chance is in charge, how do you know the laws of logic will hold in even one second from now?
If you can't acct for the laws of logic in your proposed worldview, like materialism, then why should I accept that they exist? And how does one prove anythg without them?
If you don't understand them, then just look at it like I do - as a skeptic. "Oh, you're a materialist? I doubt that intelligible experience, science, logic, and morality exist. Prove they do."
You said:
I agree his first principal seems arbitrary, but no less arbitrary than the assumption that without god there cannot be rationality.
I have an argument for mine. He has faith, but claims it's not faith. Where's the disconnect there?
Now that I understand what you mean by laws of logic. I am again confused, but that happens easily. I still don't follow your line of reasoning.
If the laws of logic entail:
1)law of identity 2)Law of non-contradiction 3)The law of excluded middle.
These laws were first derived from our perceptions and then verified by the invention of the computer.
I don't understand what you mean by "what are their nature"
"have they always been" - it's an interesting question, but it seems a more interesting question is, are they independent of human thought?
"how do you know"- well, this comes back to the how do you know anything argument...how do you know anything?
If chance isn't in charge how do you know the laws will hold true from one second from now? I don't see how that because something is random inherently means there's no way to know anything about it. (conf. radioactive decay) How do you know the sun will be there tomorrow? How do you know that you will take your next breath? There's a lot of things that are completely reliant upon chance. In fact, you don't "know" the outcome of any of those events until after they have occurred, but you can use probability (chance) to give an estimate as to whether or not they will occur based on past experience.
I don't understand by what you mean by account for the laws of logic. There are examples of those laws being used on a daily basis, the sheer fact that you are reading this is an example that points to their existence. Being unable to account for why something exists is no reason to believe it doesn't exist nor is it reason to believe it does exist.
I cannot say if there is a way to prove something without using those rules of logic, but the problem with that question is that it uses the very principals you ask to be proven to make your statement. Thus, it is an example of a contradiction. Can I prove a contradiction, well I can use a physical example of one, is that proof? No, but it's evidence, and as was said before, evidence is a way to find truth, it may not be truth but it's a path to it.
Meyer's closing point was strong and trenchant - Darwinians have long been relying strongly on the "it's not science" argument to bolster its case. When the question turns away from "is it true?" to "is it in conformity with our ad hoc strongarming the rules to suit us?" it's a sign the Darwinian club is in trouble.
You could turn that on its head - because ID knows a lot of its claims are no better than those of astrologers (ie vague, unverifiable, self-sealing etc etc), then they need to change the 'rules' normally used in order to prop them up.
However, certain parts of ID certainly are science by any normal definition:
a. the idea that irreducibly complex structures can't evolve is a testable claim
b. the idea that a structure is irreducibly complex is a testable claim (ie the parts either can or cannot be found to be involved in other functions not exclusively related to the function they were supposedly 'designed' for eg blood clotting, parts can be removed and the system either will or will not still function and the investigation of simpler systems doing the same or similar job would also disprove this)
On the other hand, if we imagine a designer that can do anything it feels like, does that merit the conclusion
a. that the designer therefore actually exists, simply because because we can imagine that if one did it could have done X,Y or Z or whatever else it felt like? Nope, that doesn't follow.
b. even if we accepted it did exist, how does it follow that it was therefore also interested in getting involved in creative biological endeavours or that we therefore can decide on what it does and doesn't do without any support for that?
Myers' complaint would equally be applied by an astrologer - because its claims are so vague as to be untestable, does this mean that the alignment of Jupiter, Venus and several stars in the month of June was actually responsible for the marriage breakup of someone born between 20th March and 19th April and the only reason this isn't accepted as fact by everyone is because of some conspiracy by some faceless group of anti-astrologers? or is it because there's no way of investigating the claim by examining real world facts seeing as they neither lend support to nor disprove the claim?
"great many Russian Protestants, Baptists mainly, did indeed end up in Stalin's Gulag. Actually in greater percentage"
Yeah, there was probably one Baptist, and he ended up in the Gulag.
"A great majority of pre-Soviet Orthodox population surrendered to the new godless system either actively (giving up their faith) or passively"
How do you know? Russia wouldn't be an Orthodox country today if great numbers hadn't kept the faith. Some kept it in the open, and others in underground churches. In 1957 there were 22000 active and open churches, at the height of Soviet power. In 1987 immediately prior to the fall of the Soviet state, 50% of babies were baptised, and 60% received a Christian burial service. Neither of those statistics sound like the great majority surrendering to the atheist state.
"Generally speaking, the Soviet atheists mopped the floor with the Orthodox church, even turning it into an obedient tool of the state"
Seemingly, but it was actually the church getting the better of the situation. Stalin started off wanting to obliterate the church, but then he found the church as helping him to win WWII, and he gave up trying to destroy it. The Church had the last laugh.
"The "only true church" simply failed to stop the rise of Communism."
Why you lay this obligation at the feet of the Church? Did Protestantism in the West stem the tide of godless atheism? As the bible says, anyone wanting to live a godly life will be persecuted.
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