Stephen
Sooo… for David and Steefen and anyone else who might have some interest in the way things really are. A bibliography.
Steefen
You were invited to participate in a Forum discussion: watch the video and speak to the points raised. You are there. Do you really think the four men Behe, Lennox, Meyer and Robinson need your bibliography? There discussion is the same. What, do you think Darwin will know more about cells, molecules, proteins, and genes because of your bibliography? Catch reality, Stephen. Just who do you think you are?
Use your reading of your bibliography to share with us what statements they make is flawed.
That is why this forum thread is so valuable. They are making a strong case against evolution. Some of the points raised should have precluded the big Science vs Religion/Faith discussions of the 1970s and 1980s which contributed to people leaving Religion/Faith for Science. We knew in the 1960s that Darwin had a low quality microscope and did not know much about gene sequencing.
Can we all be crzy to think such a thing?
I’m not saying you are crazy (perhaps mistaken, but not crazy), but it is pretty clear that lots of people believing something doesn’t make it true. Example: For most of history, most people were geocentrists–the sheer number of geocentrists over the course of history doesn’t make geocentrism true or even defensible.
Even today, most people are fooled by the Monte Hall problem (even though it is well understood and there is no room for argument).
In evaluating claims, one can’t just look at what lots of people–even a majority of people–have believed. One must evaluate the evidence and the arguments (and keep in mind the state of evidence is changing all the time–what was credible 100 years ago, or 500 years ago, may no longer be credible).
If we aren’t competent to judge the evidence directly (and there are many fields where I, personally, am not)| we should look at what the current experts say (those who best know the currently available evidence and who are best trained to interpret it).
This isn’t really getting to the issue of whether there is or isn’t a spiritual realm, but it is meant to address the argument that lots of people thinking there is one counts as evidence.
Judith wrote
Stephen, I think you are right when speaking of the physical world but there have been those since the beginning of time who believe there is a spiritual world, too. Can we all be crzy to think such a thing?
Everything is made out of something. You could say with perfect accuracy that the Taj Mahal is a big pile of sandstone and marble. True, but only in the most trivial sense. The object that is the Taj mahal is an arrangement of these materials, a pattern. The meaning comes out of the pattern, the arrangement, not the substance. Every thought any human has ever had, even those we call “spiritual”, was produced by an arrangment of neurons firing in that wondrous goo floating in a shell between our ears. “Spirituality” was a name we invented to describe how we respond to the mystery of being.
Steefen wrote
Just who do you think you are?
Who do I have to be? Simply an inquisitive human being. That’s the wonder of it. The universe reveals its secrets to those who show due diligence. No faith is required. No need to take anyone’s word. Do the work.
They are making a strong case against evolution.
These are the saddest words you’ve ever written. No they’re not. Not even close. To make that statement demonstrates that you don’t know anything about evolution.
THERE IS NO CONTROVERSY. THERE IS NO CONTROVERSY. Let me say it again. THERE IS NO CONTROVERSY. Outside of the YouTube echo chamber NO ONE TAKES ID SERIOUSLY AT ALL. Every science, biology, chemistry, physics, geology, all point in the same direction. That Darwin didn’t know about genetics speaks not to his weakness but to his utter genius. Darwin didn’t invent the idea of evolution. People had been speculating about change in nature for centuries. Thomas Jefferson shared his generation’s fascination with fossils. What Darwin did was delineate the mechanism by which life could diversify over time. Natural Selection. But evolutionary biology didn’t stop with Darwin. It began with him. Genetics was added to the mix.
Stephen: It can be a rich life, too, living as we believe it to be, with faith and useful, too. When my late son was being prepared for his first brain surgery (electrodes for computer), he said The Twenty-Third Psalm that I taught him helped in moments of anxiety (Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…) A second son with his partner enjoys hiking where they delight being where moose, bear, mountain lions can be nearby. Prayers help to think they are in God’s hands. Faith and prayer are such a comfort!
I’ve said my piece. Appreciate your trying to enlighten me but just as it’s impossible to change my loved ones political views, it’s the same with me here.
Stephen
Sooo… for David and Steefen and anyone else who might have some interest in the way things really are. A bibliography.
Steefen
Stephen: For
David
Steefen
and anyone else
Michael Behe
John Lennox
Stephen Meyer
who might have some interest in the way things really are…
Steefen
So Michael Behe, John Lennox, and Stephen Meyer are not further along than you and your biography knowing the way things really are.
Provw it, Stephen.
“and anyone else who might have some interest in _the way things really are_.
A bibliography.
Why Evolution Is True
Evolution: What the Fossils Say and Why It Matters
Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body
Evolution: The Triumph of an Idea
What Evolution Is
The Cell: A Visual Tour of the Building Block of Life
These books are intended for a non-specialist audience.
I can recommend any or all of them unhesitatingly”
Which if any of those books contains an impressive takedown of Michael Behe’s ‘irreducible complexity’ arguments?
Which if any of those books answers the question of:
how the enormous quantity of information encoded in biology’s DNA could have originated?
how the 1st biological lifeform could have originated?
what was responsible for the Cambrian explosion?
“‘Intelligent Design’ survives – on YouTube.
In the actual fields of biology, chemistry, geology, physics, etc, among folks with actual expertise, no one takes it seriously at all.
It is based, not on evidence, but on attempts to point out the gaps in our knowledge and scientific accounts of reality.
The reasoning is thus – _Science can’t explain it, therefore God did it_.
‘Intelligent Design’ is a paean to ignorance”
Nick Berryman, in
_Coming to Faith Through Dawkins: 12 Essays on the Pathway from New Atheism to Christianity_ (2023), 271pp., 143-159, on 152-153
The third area where I came to disagree with Dawkins was over digital information in nature.
I owe a debt of gratitude to Richard Dawkins for the understanding of genetics that I have.
As already mentioned, I found _The Selfish Gene_ incredibly helpful.
Digital information piqued my interest.
A lot of what I do in engineering involves transmission and reception of digital information.
All the building blocks of life contain vast swaths of digital information.
RNA and DNA both contain incredible amounts of coded, or digital, information.
“A set of instructions” is such a good analogy for DNA that it is perhaps more accurate to say it is a definition.
Even the simplest life-forms contain a quantity of coded information that is hard to comprehend.
This information tells the living structures how to build a copy of itself.
At the heart of the matter is the question of the source of that information.
The Christian explanation is that an intelligent designer is the ultimate source.
This is not a “God of the gaps” argument.
Coded information when found is always regarded as evidence of an intelligent source.
This is true when archaeologists discover ancient symbols.
It would be true if scientists discovered a coded message from outer space.
Dawkins admits that chance alone could not explain this digital information.
“They are making a strong case against evolution”
“No they’re not. Not even close. To make that statement demonstrates that you don’t know anything about evolution”
Meaning of [Stephen]”evolution”?
Some people over the decades have performed a shell game with ‘evolution.’
They’ll demonstrate that
‘evolution’ (as in say, ‘shifting allele frequencies’) occurs,
and then they’ll allege that
‘evolution’ (as in ‘totally-mindless processes that produced all of biology’) is proven.
Judith at no point have I ever tried to convince you of anything. I am reporting where I am and how I got here.
Steefen and David, friends, nothing would be more delightful than to tutor you both in the deep mysteries of the universe, I’m sure. But there is no need. The jewels of understanding lie scattered everywhere. All it requires is that you gather them up.
Do the work. I did. What greater pleasure can there be than to find out a new thing? Ignorance is a choice.
Stephen, you have zero credibility on this topic.
You want us to be friends? You’re the weakest link. You have zero credibility, so you want to impoverish us and set your ignorance up as a tutor. I will stick with the Hoover Institution while you think you are superior to the Hoover Institution in this instance; you are not.
Steefen I have an authorized certificate of adroitness from the Zebulon Pike Barber College. On parchment! I read classics (you know, Gone With the Wind and such) and studied animal husbandry. (How many people do you know who can herd goats?) They don’t just give that out to anybody! I really honed my critical thinking skills while roaming through the fields. After graduation I was immediately offered a tenure track position down to the feed store but as I admitted, I didn’t have the discipline and focus.
Google: certificate of adroitness and Zebulon Pike Barber College
Google: It looks like there aren’t many great matches for your search
What did Zebulon Pike do for the Louisiana Purchase?
Why was Zebulon Pike important in the Battle of York?
What did Zebulon Pike say?
= = =
Going on: Darwin did not write Evolution of Breeds, Races, and similar Plants.
John is referring to a meeting in 2016 that was convened by members of the Royal Society and evolutionary biologists who doubt the standard neo-darwinian model and who are saying we need a new theory of evolution and they called the meeting to explore new evolutionary mechanisms that could either replace or supplement natural selection because of its lack of creative power.
(I finished watching the video.)
= = = = = =
The Magician’s Twin, with David Berlinski, Stephen Meyer, and James Orr | Uncommon Knowledge
446K views 3 weeks ago
Hoover Institution
940K subscribers
pick up at 18:20 of 1:11.54
Suzan Mazur, _The Altenberg 16: An Exposé of the Evolution Industry_ (2010)
Written by Suzan Mazur—a print and television journalist whose reports have appeared in the Financial Times, The Economist, Archaeology, Omni, and many other publications—the book is a front row seat to the thinking of the great evolutionary science minds of our time about the need to reformulate the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution.
We hear from world renowned scientists such as Richard Lewontin, Lynn Margulis, Niles Eldredge, Richard Dawkins, the “evo-devo” revolutionaries, NASA astrobiologists, and others.
The book grew out of a story Mazur broke online in March 2008—titled “Altenberg! The Woodstock of Evolution?”—about the now famous meeting at Konrad Lorenz Institute in Altenberg, Austria in July 2008, where 16 scientists discussed expanding evolutionary thinking beyond outdated hypotheses.
(MIT will publish the proceedings in April 2010.)
Science magazine noted that Mazur’s reporting “reverberated throughout the evolutionary biology community.”
Mazur says she was punished for getting out in front of the story and banned from the symposium but realized the story was bigger than Altenberg (which covered events beginning 500 million years ago) and spoke to scientists who were not invited, including those investigating pre-biotic evolution.
She came to the conclusion that evolutionary science suffers because many in the scientific establishment refuse to acknowledge that the old science has served its purpose and there is disagreement about what the new evolution paradigm is.
She thinks the dam is now breaking because the public (who funds science) has become a party to the discourse via the Internet and seeks answers to fundamental questions about evolution that scientists so far can’t definitively answer.
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