Here’s what happened at the recent public discussion on Darwinism and intelligent design at Southern Methodist University.
Excerpt:
The evening started with a screening of Darwin’s Dilemma:The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record for a standing room only crowd in the theater of the Hughes Trigg Student Center, and was rounded out by four presentations and a question and answer period with the speakers.
CSC’s Stephen Meyer moderated the discussion after the film which included four serious challenges to Darwinian evolution. The first speaker was evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg, who presented the challenge of population genetics to Darwin’s Theory. He was followed by Biologic Institute’s Doug Axe, who spoke on the challenge of finding functional proteins, and CSC Fellow Paul Nelson, who explained why evolving animal body plans by random mutation and natural selection is probably impossible. CSC biologist Jonathan Wells concluded the short presentations by explaining the challenge of ontogenetic information. The evening closed with a robust 40 minutes of questions from the audience.
Is that crazy? Four scholars with Ph.Ds from Yale, Berkeley, Harvard, Cambridge, etc. – 6 Ph.Ds in all for FOUR speakers spoke. The four scholars presented information then had 40 minutes of unscripted public discussion with the audience.
Excerpt:
What do hox genes, gene duplication, evo-devo and ontogenetic information all have in common? They were among the subjects raised–in some detail–by audience members during the Q&A portion of 4 Nails in Darwin’s Coffin: New Challenges to Darwinian Evolution event at SMU last night.
Wow. Public, unscripted discussion of biological science between two opposing points of view.
I’ll bet that open discussion of controversial theories happens all the time in public schools, right?
Excerpt:
I was treated to a –sadly– all too typical story in the aftermath of the great 4 Nails in Darwin’s Coffin: New Challenges to Darwinian Evolution conference the other night at SMU. An SMU staffer told me about what happened to a student that wanted to let his friends know about the event.
Earlier this week the student asked his science professor if at the end of class he could make a quick announcement and the prof said no problem. At the end of the class the student stood up and very quickly announced the name of the event and that students could come and hear about some of the flaws in Darwin’s theory. At that point the professor put his hand on the student’s shoulder and said, in front of the whole class: “Hold on, if I’d known you were going to announce that I wouldn’t have let you stand up. There are NO flaws in Darwin’s theory!” The teacher continued to pontificate about how there simply are no flaws in Darwin’s theory and that any such claims are all myths.
Then yesterday I read the Nature blog about the new ID Centre that has just launched in the UK. There was a link to this story about the British Humanist Association which is lobbying for the government to grant what amounts to special status to Darwinian evolution in British schools. The ink has barely dried from the announcement and already British Darwinists are feverishly trying to stamp out any dissent.
Essentially, they want to put their hand on every British school student and tell them not to question Darwin’s theory.
Yeah, those secular humanists are as open-minded about dissent as Mao Zedong. He was a secular humanist, too.
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WINTERY KNIGHT 
A problem for the biologists that investigate evolution is that they are not respected as “real” scientists like physicists or chemists. They have been attacked so much during the last 100 years that they have become defensive, thin-skinned, and feel persecuted. So much so, that they do not welcome questioning of their theories. In the popular press such as Scientific American, those who raise questions about evolution are ridiculed as “ignorant” and worse. Not a very persuasive way to start a scientific argument.
A major value of high school science is not so much learning specific facts, laws or theories, but rather critical thinking skills, the “scientific method”, questioning and being exposed to the excitement of doing controlled experiments. The lesson now often being taught via the study of evolution is: “profess belief in evolution or be ridiculed”.
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I do find it hilarious that a christian would on one hand ridicule a theory they believe weakens their beliefs (evolution) when it’s the current best SCIENTFIC theory (remember, the “god did it” argument does nothing for science) while arguing for a theory that is incredibly weak and has at least half a dozen MAJOR flaws that science can’t yet explain – the big bang; yet the big bang (actually inflation, the single big bang theory has fallen out of favor except in christian circles) is still the best theory, so science sticks with it until it can definitively disprove it or correct its flaws.
You really do need to study how the scientific process and progress works before criticizing it. It is NEVER going to happen that scientists drop a theory in favor of magical processes.
What does a theory that can never be disproven or proven (ID) gain anyone? Science, loosely speaking, is about developing an understanding where predictions of future events can be made based on an understanding of past events – god did it does nothing.
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You just want to burn me at the stake because I won’t worship your Flying Spaghetti Monster.
I was about 10 yards from the discoverer of the inflationary theory of the Big Bang (Alan Guth of MIT), at a scientific conference when, in response to a question from the audience, he explained that inflationary theory is NOT an explanation for the origin of the universe, but it does remove a few of the fine-tuning problems. This was in a panel discussion with William Lane Craig at Baylor University in 2000. Inflationary theory is totally OK with Christians. If you want to deny that, then be my guest – cite me a scholar. I’m a Christian, and I am telling you it’s not problem for us since it has nothing to do with the origin of the universe from nothing.
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Jerry, it’s funny you should talk about “unprovable theories”. The term “hypothesis” would be more appropriate in such a case, given the scientific definition of a theory as something with strong evidential support which has a certain standing in the scientific community. Perhaps you should study the scientific process and how scientific progress works a little further… ;-)
If we are going to get into the genuinely unprovable, let us not neglect the fuss being made of the “multiverse”. That really IS unprovable. It is impossible to produce any empirical evidence for it. And yet it is the current darling of the atheistic community because it allows them to assert that our universe, which (much to their consternation) shows all the signs of being fine tuned for life, fortuitously came into being as one of an infinite number of universes and that somewhere else there really is a universe with pink unicorns. To believe this you will of course need to place blind faith in the Flying Spaghetti Monster… :)
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Oh my goodness! Stop! My cheeks hurt!
I added some links to the main post featuring atheists like Peter Atkins and Richard Dawkins so we can see what else atheists believe.I’m afraid it’s unicorns and aliens all the way, Mary.
I was just listening to the Unbelievable show featuring Oxford atheist mathematician Roger Penrose and Oxford Christian microbiologist Alister McGrath. They were discussing Hawking’s theory. McGrath criticized Hawking’s idea of a causeless universe as being a theory that is not testable. Penrose went one further and said that it is not a theory at all, since theories have to be testable. He said that Hawking’s view is really more like a set of aspirations or ideas. Not even a theory! Wow.
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Is Roger Penrose an atheist? Isn’t he one of the most famous proponents of fine-tuning?
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Yes, he is an atheist, and yes he is one of the most famous proponents of the fine-tuning. Some of these guys are OK because they see the problem and they understand it and they are just hoping and working on a naturalistic solution, and that is fine. Robert Shapiro at NYU works on the origin of life/biological information problem. He is very frank in saying that there is no naturalistic explanation at this time – they call him “Dr. No” because he is remarkably frank in dismissing all naturalistic theories. But he has his own theory that he is working on that is naturalistic.
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While I am neither confirming nor denying that I believe in the multiverse theory (as it’s obviously too soon to say one way or the other), but that it can’t be tested is quickly becoming a feature of the past. Sciencedaily.com has listed several researchers that are proposing experiments that could prove/disprove string theory and the multiverse – which is how science works and progresses. You put forth a hypothesis and then test it. This upsets christians – it’s why they wanted to execute galileo, copernicus, scopes and countless others – they proved the religious establishment wrong (or at least put forth a theory/hypothesis that established religion hated) and it’s a battle that has continued since…science says, hey, I have a cool idea and the christians/muslims/jews just plug their ears shouting “I can’t hear you. la la la la la!!!” Funny thing is, there is just as much evidence to support alien abductions as there is for most/all gods!!
Here’s just a single link to get you started:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100901091938.htm
So maybe the ‘IS’ isnt’…
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Here’s a Science Daily article about the FIRST TEST OF STRING THEORY! (January 2007)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/01/070124175443.htm
And here’s another Science Daily article about the FIRST TEST OF STRING THEORY! (February 2008)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/01/080128113207.htm
And here’s another Science Daily article about the FIRST TEST OF STRING THEORY! (September 2010)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100901091938.htm
I think that going almost four years from the first announcement without results should give us some grounds for being cautious about whether these results are forthcoming, or whether this is just hype to attract grant money like the Climategate scandal. As it stands, we do have massive amounts of observational data confirming the standard theistic arguments – the Big Bang, cosmic fine-tuning, the origin of life, the Cambrian explosion, galactic fine-tuning, stellar fine-tuning, planetary fine-tuning, irreducible complexity, and so on. What these observations show is that there are effects in the universe that require a Creator and/or a Designer. They are not explainable on the basis of matter, chance and time.
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whether you like it or not, science takes money, and it’s one of the major limiting factors.
As for the items you list, they are not theistic arguments, they are sceintific theories that christians latch onto because they think it helps prove an unprovable theory. There is NOTHING that will prove god exists. I know this doesn’t sit well with you, but it’s the cold hard truth. God, by the very christian definition, is a concept that exists outside of our time and universe, hence nothing we can do can prove he exists. Simply claiming that “science can’t yet explain this” doesn’t mean god is the cause, it simply means, science can’t yet explain it.
What they really show is that we haven’t had enough time to further explore and explain them. I know you dislike the “progress of science,” but if it’s proven one thing, it’s that every crack that religion has tried to inhabit, science has eventually evicted it. It’s only a matter of time.
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Jerry,
Even if science could explain the origin of the Universe, the fine-tuning of the Universe, the origin of life, and the evolution of all life from primitive cells, there are still plenty of great arguments for the existence of God.
Furthermore, I’m not sure that I accept your premise that science is slowly kicking God out of the picture. From my perspective, the more we learn from science, the more compelling the evidence is for God’s existence.
I am a former atheist myself who converted to Christianity because of the compelling scientific evidence. So I’m not really sure where you are coming from when you tout science as explaining away the God hypothesis.
Among the examples you mentioned, Galileo and Copernicus did nothing to falsify the teachings in the Bible. They did succeed in falsifying the notion that the Earth is the center of the Universe, but this is not taught anywhere in scripture. It was a false teaching taught by the Catholic church that is not supported by scripture. And Galileo and Copernicus were Christians! You also mentioned Scopes. How exactly did he falsify Christianity?
Finally, you seem to be picking and choosing your examples. You didn’t mention, for example, that Louis Pasteur was motivated by his Christian beliefs to oppose Darwinism and he falsified the absolutely horrible predictions made by Darwinists on the theory of spontaneous generation. His work was instrumental in forming the law of bio-genesis!
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I have to reply to myself since there is no reply button on wbutler’s post.
I wasn’t choosing the scientists I did because they “invalidated the bible” as you stated – I chose them as just a handful of the many that ignored the closed mindedness of the christian dogma that god did it and attempted to provide a sound, well thought out reason for what they saw. They ignored what even many christians even today want us to do – stop scientific progress. Even Pasteur helped science as you stated, and I love that. Christians don’t. He used scientific thought and principles to investigate something and found out it wasn’t true. Christians would have preferred he consult the bible and make predictions from that.
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“God, by the very christian definition, is a concept that exists outside of our time and universe, hence nothing we can do can prove he exists.”
But by the very Christian definition, God reached out to us and lived amongst us, and that can be proven.
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Gosh, Jerry. I didn’t know Christians were supposed to hate scientific progress. All the scientists in my church must be seriously misinformed as to their calling. Better rush off and tell the A-rated engineering prof who led the Bible study I was in last year. Better stop my friend who is in HIV research. Oh no!! Our church is practically teeming with engineers, computer scientists, doctors, microbiologists, and the like. Oh my hat! The main pastor is a trained engineer. BAD, BAD, BAD. Stop the nasty scientists! They’re corrupting the Christians. I went and studied computer science. Shame on me. What was I thinking?! I’d better give up my job in the software industry too. Worst thing of all is that once all the sciency people are removed, our church will be really small. What to do, what to do…?
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Mary,
That’s it – Christian’s aren’t suppose to hate it – from my limited understanding of Christianity, they shouldn’t be hating much.
A C.S. person should have had a lot of classes that will have taught critical thinking; someone with those skills would have clearly read my statement(s) and not jumped to the overreaching conclusions you did. Now maybe you didn’t fully understand my statements. But please, just take a step back and take a deep breathe – everything is going to be alright.
My statements would lead any reasonable reader to believe that I believe Christians are scared of science. Why you think Christians should hate science is beyond me, but I believe it’s what many would call a Freudian slip – it is what you believe. Unfortunately, your overreacting response is very common amongst most of the Christians I talk with (Wintery being an exception – he keeps logic close) – getting defensive doesn’t help your cause.
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Jerry,
Thanks for your latest response. Your position seems to be that Christians are against science and see it as a threat to their beliefs. I certainly don’t feel that way. I feel like science supports my religious beliefs and affirms it. I’m also held in awe by the magnificence and beauty of the creation and want to learn everything about it that I can.
How do you reconcile that many famous scientists were inspired by the Christian beliefs to pursue a career in science?
For example, Newton wrote in the Principia Mathematica that:
“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centers of other like systems, these, being formed by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One, especially since the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature with the light of the sun and from every system light passes into all the other systems; and lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those systems at immense distances from one another.
This Being governs all things not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called “Lord God” . . . or “Universal Ruler.” . . . It is the dominion of a spiritual being which constitutes a God. . . And from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a living, intelligent and powerful Being. . . he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done. . . He endures forever, and is everywhere present; and by existing always and everywhere, he constitutes duration and space. . . In him are all things contained and moved; yet neither affects the other: God suffers nothing from the motion of bodies; bodies find no resistance from the omnipresence of God. . . As a blind man has no idea of colors so we have no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God preserves and understands all things. He is utterly void of all body and bodily figure, and can therefore neither be seen, nor heard, nor touched; nor ought to be worshipped under the representation of any corporeal thing. We have ideas of his attributes, but what the real substance of any thing is we know not…. Much less, then, have we any idea of the substance of God. We know him only by his most wise and excellent contrivances of things. . . We reverence and adore him as his servants, and a god without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature. Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and everywhere, could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being necessarily existing. . . And thus much concerning God, to discourse of whom from the appearances of things does certainly belong to Natural Philosophy.”
Kepler said that
“We astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature.” and “God is the beginning and end of scientific research and striving.”
Louis Pasteur was a strong Christian who said
“I shall express my belief that the earth, after having brought forth the first plants and animals at the beginning by order of the Supreme and Omnipotent Creator, has never produced any kinds of plants or animals, either perfect or imperfect; and everything which we know in past or present times that she has produced, came solely from the true seeds of the plants and animals themselves, which thus, through means of their own, preserve their species.”
and this motivated him to falsify the hypothesis of spontaneous generation. So in a sense, Pasteur DID consult the Bible and use it to make a prediction that spontaneous generation was a false scientific teaching, promoted by the Darwinists of his day!
Moving into more modern times, Richard Smalley, winner of the nobel prize in chemistry in 1996 for the discovery of a new form of carbon, made the following statements:
“Recently I have gone back to church regularly with a new focus to understand as best I can what it is that makes Christianity so vital and powerful in the lives of billions of people today, even though almost 2000 years have passed since the death and resurrection of Christ. Although I suspect I will never fully understand, I now think the answer is very simple: it’s true. God did create the universe about 13.7 billion years ago, and of necessity has involved Himself with His creation ever since. The purpose of this universe is something that only God knows for sure, but it is increasingly clear to modern science that the universe was exquisitely fine-tuned to enable human life. We are somehow critically involved in His purpose. Our job is to sense that purpose as best we can, love one another, and help Him get that job done….
The burden of proof is on those who don’t believe that “Genesis” was right, and there was a creation, and that Creator is still involved…..
Evolution has just been dealt its death blow. After reading Origins of Life with my background in chemistry and physics, it is clear that [biological] evolution could not have occurred…”
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Jerry… Dude, I was JOKING! :D My attempt at melodramatic humour was to demonstrate how ridiculous it is to imply that Christians hate or are scared of science when most of the Christians I know are scientists of one brand or another.
You said: “Even Pasteur helped science as you stated, and I love that. Christians don’t.” What’s the opposite of love? Hate. So you can hardly blame me for thinking you are implying that Christians hate science.
But we don’t! And we’re not scared of it either. :)
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Oh and Jerry, I understand that it’s a little difficult to pick up on humour over the ether. It took me a while before I cottoned on to Wintery’s lobstrosities. ;-)
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Mary: I understand about the humor being hard to pick up over the ether – it did seem like you were pretty defensive/mad:)
Wgbutler777:
“How do you reconcile that many famous scientists were inspired by the Christian beliefs to pursue a career in science?”
(sorry, I didn’t read all of your comment – it’s long and I’m 3 days now on just a few hours of sleep – the joy of parenthood:)
It’s a great question and something I love to talk about. I don’t think there is any one answer that applies to all people, but here are some of my thoughts. Great thinker doesn’t always equate to great leader. Hence, when you’re taught (even brainwashed) one fact that you see everyone around you believing fully, you tend to follow their lead. most people are brought up to respect and revere their elders – if you see mom and dad doing something, if you have kids, you know they copy very readily. Now, I know what some may be thinking – oh, so it’s only people who want to rebel against their parents, etc that become atheists – this too is hogwash. While it may be the case that some do this, to paint with such wide strokes is for the simple minded. Another idea I have is the political/religious environment of most regions, even the US up until a few decades ago. Even if some of these people didn’t believe, you would being risking your reputation, fortunes, and even your freedom/life (and that of your closest loved ones) to talk about believing in anything but god. Who was it, Pope Paul II that declared that torture was acceptable, even encouraged, to change religious beliefs and “discover” witches, etc.
I will have to stop here, I have a two year old that just keeps shouting, “daddy, read book” – and it’s something I want to encourage!
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Jerry,
Thanks for your reply. I’m not sure that I buy into your theory that people hold Christian beliefs in order to fit in or to preserve their reputations or fortunes.
I mean, think about it. If you are a scientist, especially in the biological disciplines, it is basically the kiss of death to say that you think Intelligent Design is true. You can kiss tenure goodbye and look forward to a lifetime of people in the blogosphere and mainstream media making you out to be an idiot and a charlatan.
In many parts of the world, Christians are persecuted for their beliefs. For example, Christianity is one of the fastest (if not the fastest) growing religion in China, which is a nation based on atheistic values. Christians over there face beatings and persecutions from the government for meeting in house churches and preaching the gospel. So that kind of blows your theory out of the water.
Also, if you look at the history of the early church, those Christians had absolutely nothing to gain as they were viciously persecuted by the ancient Roman empire. What was their incentive?
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You’re looking at it from an protestant point of view. The catholic church (and I think some others but I don’t care enough to research that) supports evolution – they believe that such a process had to be the work of god.
As for china, I’m not sure which theory you’re talking about getting blown out of the water. what little I did talk about in my previous posting would not have applied to a modern country that has a void of religion, not even remotely. That would have been covered by some of my other thoughts/ideas that I tend not to talk too much about since I live in a country where more people would rather live by a muslim (terrorist) than an atheist (USA – it was a U. of Minnesota study), so I face beatings and persecution at home – I do exaggerate a little, but when I was in the Navy, you couldn’t even mention atheism without ending your career and/or being brought up on some bogus/trumped up charge for being a deviant.
The early church – I’m surprised you would say they had nothing to gain by dying for their religion…do you believe our soldiers dying in Iraq and Afghanistan have nothing to gain by dying there. What about the nobody muslim terrorists – do they have nothing to gain? In the strictest sense, you’re right, they personally don’t, but in a much broader context, that is one of the most untrue statements I have ever read. All have something to gain, even if the perceived gain, say entry into heaven, is false.
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Here is a great (modern) story that proves a lot of what I was saying:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/39392563/ns/us_news/
it talks about how atheists and agnostics (among others – Jews and Mormons) knew more about Christianity and other religions than those who practiced! Blind faith – people are weak creatures that will do and believe as they’re told – some of my other beliefs that I said I don’t generally talk about because too many people will say, “look at this one historical example of a brilliant person that chose Jesus, it must therefor apply to the ignorant masses…” But I will stop here, if I continue, I will offend too many and face beatings and persecution from wintery.
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Great comment, Jerry. I think the other atheist are perplexed about why I don’t approve anything they write, but you get everything approved. Because you write good comments and don’t take cheap shots. You’re snarky without being gratuitously insulting.
Two Christians sent me that same article, so I’ll have to write about it tonight for tomorrow.
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Why does the article say that these experiments you’re touting won’t prove string theory? All it would show is that string theory is compatible with another specific theory. Is there anything else that we can test it against?
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Um…here in Canada (University of Guelph, Laurentian University, and University of Toronto at least) ID speakers and YECs are not uncommon (although usually invited by campus religious groups rather than faculty). I have never heard of any profs hiding that information at all. The quoted third hand account seems a bit far fetched to me. I went to one of these talks last spring/winter – Kirk Durston at Laurentian. Um, it didn’t really warm me to ID, let’s put it that way. However, I could see how it might be convincing to someone who is less familiar with the topic. Which is the problem with this whole critical thinking/teach the controversy issue. I somehow doubt that most Christians would feel that it is appropriate and in the interest of fairness to send their kids for lessons with an Imam who would advocate for Islam or to an athiest to hear arguments against religion. Wouldn’t exposing them to these issues teach them critical thinking skills?
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