A Good Reason to Rally?

by Ronald Scott Smith. Posted with permission.

At the “Reason Rally” in Washington, secular, atheistic people gathered in support of “reason” over [mere] “faith” of religious people. Not so hidden in the background was the widely-held cultural mindset that science uses reason and uniquely gives us knowledge of truth (the facts). But religion gives us just personal opinions and preferences, not knowledge. This bifurcation often is called the “fact-value split.”

This science is naturalistic; only what is scientifically knowable (i.e., by the five senses) is real. In principle, such things as God, souls, and mental states (i.e., non-physical things like thoughts, beliefs, and experiences) cannot be known to be real. Or, simplifying, they don’t exist. Yet, we can test natural, physical stuff scientifically, so that is what is believed to be real. That view of reality is the philosophy undergirding atheistic evolution by natural selection (NS) – naturalism. There’s only the physical universe, without anything non-physical.

An Evolutionary Explanation for Morality

It seems as though college students want to be lectured more about morality these days. At least that's the impression we get at one community college in south Orange County. In addition to the February 26th McDowell-Corbett debate (organized by Apologetic Junkie) on the question “Is God the Best Explanation for Moral Values?” there was another moral-themed academic event on the Saddleback College campus on the same night, on the same topic, and in the same room that we used for the overflow crowd just a few hours later. World renowned evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala was a guest lecturer in a lecture series sponsored by the biology and chemistry departments in a talk entitled “Biological Foundations of Morality”.

Ayala’s argument is that morality comes from both biological and cultural evolution which he develops through two main contentions: 1) The human propensity for a “capacity for ethics” (ability to perceive moral actions as good or evil) is a result of biological evolution, and 2) the development of “moral norms” (socially acceptable conduct) comes about through cultural evolution.

Monkey Morality

This last Friday Sean McDowell debated Jim Corbett on the topic "Is God the best explanation for moral values?" If you have not listened to the debate you can download the audio here:

Full MP3 Audio here (HT: Brian Auten)

Dan Grossenbach also wrote a post debate review here.

Sean's contention during the debate was that God is in fact the best explanation for moral values. If there is no God there is no moral law-giver and hence no transcendent moral law which we can appeal to. In other words, without God we have no grounding or foundation for objective morality. We are left with mere subjective opinion.

It was not until late in the debate that Corbett actually offered an alternative explanation for the existence of objective moral values. Like many skeptics, Corbett  finally appealed to evolution as an explanation for morality. But does this work?

Ouch! Intelligent Design Guys Put the Sleeperhold on Darwin's Defenders

(Evolutionnews.org) by Robert Crowther

The great debate over the adequacy of evolution continues. Sort of. The latest head to head meeting had Dr. Stephen Meyer and Dr. Richard Sternberg debating Dr. Michael Shermer and Dr. Donald Prothero. Heading into the debate I was quite excited; these aren't lightweights, after all. The defenders of evolution are well known in science circles and to followers of the overall debate. Indeed, we've blogged a fair amount on Dr. Prothero who has, shall we say, a colorful and cavalier way with the facts. He is known more for polemical bromides and spurious personal attacks than for any serious science.

Waiting for the event to start, I was wondering if Prothero would be better behaved in person than he is hiding behind a keyboard. His partner was Skeptic magazine's head honcho, Michael Shermer, who has debated Stephen Meyer before, and is known for making more theological arguments against ID, as opposed to bringing any serious scientific criticisms bear. I expected he would be the good cop to Prothero's keystone cop. What I didn't know was that Prothero would be Ed McMahon to his Johnny Carson.

On the other side, the contenders are just as well credentialed — maybe more so — with one holding a philosophy of science degree from Cambridge (Meyer) being the less qualified, since Sternberg holds two degrees in evolutionary and theoretical biology. Not to mention that Meyer's new book, Signature in the Cell, is by far the most prominent book of any of the participants, having just been named a bestseller by Amazon.com, and last week honored in the Times Literary Supplement of the London Times as one of the best books of the year.

It was all shaping up to be a serious heavyweight bout. And then Meyer and Sternberg simply KO'd the competition in the opening round. If I were being generous I might say that Prothero tripped over his own arrogance and impaled himself on his condescension, but let's be honest; he was completely knocked out by Sternberg. I think Sternberg earned a third degree tonight, one in evolutionary bulldozing.

The debate video will be made available at some point by American Freedom Alliance, the sponsors of the debate, along with Center for Inquiry, The Skeptics Society and Discovery Institute.

Shermer opened by denouncing intelligent design as not science and not to be confused with science, which is what he and Prothero apparently assumed to be the topic of the debate. (It wasn't, sadly.) Then he turned it over to Prothero, who — after repeatedly repeating that science cannot resort to the supernatural — proceeded to race through a litany of complaints against intelligent design and assertions about the creation of amino acids and proteins, most of which was non-controversial and also not evidence for Darwinian evolution. Prothero made a number of claims about RNA chains, about how the evidence of the fossil record is "ironclad" or would be if people treated it fairly, and about how the Miller-Urey experiment was right, "and even if they weren't it still works" (quit laughing, he was serious!). His Darwinian motivational rant went on about how the Cambrian explosion was really a "slow fuse," not an explosion. Amazingly, he claimed that almost all the major phyla had ancestors 50 million years before the Cambrian. Alas, he was so far wrong that it wasn't all that much effort to point it out, completely discredit him, and then let him hang himself with his twisted rope of unearned arrogance and condescension. If you're going to be arrogant, you'd better be able to back it up with something better than, "I climbed some rocks in Russia and read an article in The New Scientist."

To call the debate a massacre would be a discredit to Sitting Bull. The only thing I can say is that Shermer needs to add a point to his booklet on how to debate "creationists" — namely, leave Donald Prothero at home in his van by the river.

This guy is to be taken seriously? I had to remind myself not to laugh every so often during his presentation — it was so pathetic and ill-informed. Basically, Shermer and Prothero blathered on about supernaturalism, and Meyer ceded his time to Sternberg, who made an interesting presentation about whale evolution. Then he proceeded to point out the topic of the debate to Shermer and Prothero: Has Evolutionary Theory Adequately Explained the Origins of Life?, something which they never addressed because they were so busy falling all over themselves to denounce intelligent design.

Some of the best points came later in the debate, when Sternberg slammed Prothero with factual put down after factual put down, citing the current literature time and again. His command of the subject matter — from population genetics to junk DNA — was so far and above beyond Shermer and Prothero's knowledge, so far above their pay grade, that it was almost painful to watch him school them point after point. As I said before, shortly you'll be able to watch the debate for yourself. But be warned, it isn't pretty.
____________________________________________________

Brian at Apologetics315 recently posted the audio for the debate:

Full MP3 Audio here.

Enjoy!

Science Doesn't Say Anything - Scientists Do

(Townhall.com) by Frank Turek

You can’t put honesty in a test tube. 

“Science” doesn’t say anything—scientists do.

Those are a couple of the illuminating conclusions we can draw from the global warming e-mail scandal.

“You mean science is not objective?”  No, unless the scientists are, and too often they are not.   I don’t want to impugn all scientists, but it is true that some of them are less than honest.  Sometimes they lie to get or keep their jobs.  Sometimes they lie to get grant money.  Sometimes they lie to further their political beliefs.   Sometimes they don’t intentionally lie, but they draw bad scientific conclusions because they only look for what they hope to find.

Misbehavior by scientists is more prevalent than you might think.  A survey conducted by University of Minnesota researchers found that 33% of scientists admitted to engaging in some kind of research misbehavior, including more than 20% of mid-career scientists who admitted to “changing the design, methodology or results of a study in response to pressure from a funding source.”  Think of how many more have done this but refuse to admit it!   (The researchers said as much in their findings.)

Outright lies and deception certainly seem to be the case with “Climategate.”  The exposed e-mails reveal cherry picking; manipulating data; working behind the scenes to censor dissenting views; and doubting what the measurements say because they don’t fit their pre-determined conclusion.   Matt Drudge headlined this yesterday as the “Greatest scandal in modern science.”

I actually think there is another great scientific scandal, but its misrepresentations are not quite as obvious.  In this scandal, instead of outright lies, scientific conclusions are smuggled in as philosophical presuppositions.  Such is the case with the controversy over the origin of life and new life forms.  Did natural forces working on non-living chemicals cause life, or is life the result of intelligent activity?   Did new life forms evolve from lower life forms by natural forces or was intelligence needed?

Dr. Stephen Meyer has written a fabulous new best-selling book addressing those questions called Signature in the Cell.   Having earned his Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in the philosophy of science, Dr. Meyer is at the top of the science food chain.  In our August 8^th radio interview, he told me he’s been working on his 600+ page book—which isn’t short of technical detail—for more than a decade.

What qualifies a man who has a Ph. D. in the “philosophy of science” to write on the origin of life or macroevolution?  Everything.  What some scientists, and many in the general public fail to understand is that science cannot be done without philosophy.  All data must be interpreted.  And much of the debate between Intelligent Design proponents (like Dr. Meyer) and the Darwinists (like Oxford Professor Richard Dawkins) is not a debate over evidence—everyone is looking at the same evidence.  It’s a debate over philosophy.   It’s a debate over what causes will be considered possible before we look at the evidence.

Scientists look for causes, and logically, there are only two possible types of causes—intelligent causes or non-intelligent causes (i.e. natural causes).   A natural cause can explain a geologic wonder like the Grand Canyon, but only an intelligent cause can explain a geologic wonder like the faces of the presidents on Mount Rushmore.  Likewise, natural laws can explain why ink adheres to the paper in Dr. Meyer’s book, but only an intelligent cause can explain the information in that book (i.e. Dr. Meyer!).

How does this apply to the question of the origin of life?  Long after Darwin, we discovered that “simple” single-celled life is comprised of massive volumes of DNA information called specified complexity—in everyday terms, a complicated software program or a really long message.  Richard Dawkins admits that the information content of the “unjustly called ‘primitive’ amoeba” would fill 1,000 volumes of an encyclopedia!

What’s the cause of this?  Here’s where the philosophy comes in.  Dr. Meyer is open to both types of causes.  Richard Dawkins is not.  Dr. Meyer’s book explains why natural forces do not appear to have the capacity to do the job, only intelligence does.  However, Dawkins and his Darwinist cohorts philosophically rule out intelligent causes before they look at the evidence.  So no matter how much the evidence they discover points to intelligence (as a long message surely does), they will always conclude it had to be some kind of natural cause.   In other words, their conclusion is the result of their philosophical presupposition.

While Dawkins has no viable natural explanation for life or the message contained therein, he says he knows it cannot be intelligence.  That philosophical presupposition leads to what appears to be an unbelievable conclusion:  To believe that 1,000 volumes of an encyclopedia resulted from blind natural forces is like believing that the Library of Congress resulted from an explosion in a printing shop.  I don’t have enough faith to believe that.

“This is a ‘God of the gaps’ argument!”  Dawkins might protest.  No it isn’t.  We don’t just lack a natural explanation for “simple” life—1,000 encyclopedias worth of information is positive empirically verifiable evidence for an intelligence cause.  Consider the cause of the book The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, for example.  It’s not merely that we lack a natural explanation for the book (of course we know that the laws of ink and paper couldn’t have written the book).  It’s also the fact that we know that messages only come from minds.   Therefore, we rightly posit an intelligent author, not a blind natural process.

Why is it so hard for Dawkins and other Darwinists to see this?  Maybe they refuse to see it.  Maybe, like global warming “scientists,” they have their own political or moral reasons for denying the obvious.  Or maybe they’ve never realized that you cannot do science without philosophy.  As Einstein said, “The man of science is a poor philosopher.”   And poor philosophers of science may often arrive at false scientific conclusions.  That’s because science doesn’t say anything—scientists do.

Why Evolution is True

Recently I re-posted a blog by Sean McDowell entitled An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design.

One reader left a comment on the blog recommending the book Why Evolution is True by Jerry Coyne in order to help non-scientists "understand the thousands of pieces of evidence for evolution." As it turns out, Sean had already reviewed this book as well. My thanks to him for allowing us to re-post it here.

(Conversantlife.com) Sean McDowell

• “Evolution is a fact. And far from casting doubt on Darwinism, the evidence gathered by scientists over the past century and a half support it completely.”
• “Today scientists have as much confidence in Darwinism as they do in the existence of atoms, or in microorganisms as the cause of infectious disease.”
• “Evolution is far more than a scientific theory: it is a scientific fact…scientists need no more convincing.”

These quotes all come from Professor Jerry Coyne’s recent defense of Darwinian evolution entitled Why Evolution is True (Viking Publishing, 2009). Like most books that defend Darwinian evolution (if not all), the author acts as if the evidence for evolution is simply overwhelming and conclusive. From his perspective, it’s only scientific novices or cranks that believe in creationism or intelligent design (ID). And the future of science itself rests upon defending Darwinian evolution against its critics.

Whenever I picked up a book of this sort I used to wonder, “What new evidence has been found? What does the author know that I don’t?” In the back of my mind I used to wonder if the author had discovered some evidence that would genuinely support Darwin’s theory. Now, since I have been doing this for some time, my fears have abated. I have read enough books of this sort to realize that most of the arguments are simply recycled from previous works.

Evidence for Evolution

The evidence Coyne offers for evolution includes vestigial organs, embryological similarities, the fossil record, imperfect design, and the geographical distribution of species. With the exception of the last point, William Dembski and I respond to ALL of these points in our book Understanding Intelligent Design (Harvest House, 2009).

Let’s consider one example from Why Evolution is True. Coyne says, “It is a remarkable fact that while there are many living species, all of us—you, me, the elephant, and the potted cactus—share some fundamental traits. Among these are the biochemical pathways that we use to produce energy, our standard four-letter DNA code, and how that code is read and translated into proteins. This tells us that every species goes back to a single common ancestor, an ancestor who had these common traits and passed them on to it descendants.” There are two problems with this “evidence” that Professor Coyne conveniently ignores.

First, evidence for common descent is decidedly not evidence for Darwinian evolution. There are many proponents of ID who believe in common descent, but they doubt that Darwin’s mechanism (natural selection acting on random mutation) is a sufficient causal explanation for all the diversity and complexity within the biological world. Coyne needs to show that a blind material process can generate all the biological information that pervades the natural world. The only evidence he offers is finch-beak variation and bacterial resistance, which demonstrate minor genetic shuffling rather than the generation of novel information and structures.

Second, it is true that the arguments Professor Coyne makes here are consistent with Darwinian evolution. But here’s the problem he overlooks: these considerations are also consistent with intelligent design. Here’s why: If there is a common designer, then it should be no surprise that we find a common “fingerprint” over all nature. Since the evidence Coyne cites is consistent with BOTH Darwinian evolution and ID it cannot be used as evidence solely for one.

Just-So Stories

In the final section of the book Coyne criticizes evolutionary psychology for trying to explain all human behavior through a Darwinian lens. Evolutionary psychologists try to explain everything—including altruistic behavior and sexual preference—as adaptive results of natural selection acting on our ancestors. Coyne is strongly critical of evolutionary psychology, claiming that “Imaginative reconstructions of how things might have evolved are not science; they are stories” (228).

Ironically, though, Coyne offers many imaginative reconstructions in defense of biological evolution throughout the book. For example, he offers a “possible” scenario for the evolution of the eye (141) and a “feasible” explanation for the evolution of the blood-clotting system after admitting, “We don’t yet know for sure…”

Coyne says that evolutionary biologists don’t need to give detailed explanations of the evolution of biological features. Rather, they merely need to give a “feasible” explanation (138). This raises a troubling question: How can Coyne get away with offering merely “feasible” scenarios in evolutionary biology and yet criticize evolutionary psychology for not giving detailed explanations? One can’t have it both ways.

Evolution is a “how” not a “that”

I am amazed at how frequently Darwinists admit that there is debate about HOW life evolved but not THAT life evolved. Coyne puts it this way: “These mysteries about how we evolved should not distract us from the indisputable fact that we did evolve” (209). Once again, this raises a troubling question: If there is debate about the how of evolution, then what right do Darwinists have to claim that we evolved with such confidence (as we saw above)? Evolution is a theory specifically about how life developed. The significant debate (and lack of evidence) for the mechanism of evolution undermines the theory itself.

I’m tempted to close this article by claiming that the evidence for evolution is underwhelming, weak, disputable, and unconvincing. But that would be to use the very tactics I criticize in Coyne. So here’s my question: Why can’t we have a balanced, thoughtful, non fear-mongering discussion about the question of our origins? What are (many) Darwinists afraid of?

If you are looking for a recent book that encapsulates the case for Darwinian evolution, then Why Evolution is True is probably a good place to start. Just make sure you balance it out with a book such as Understanding Intelligent Design, or The Design of Life (by William Dembski and Jonathan Wells). Don’t let the confident statement above fool you—the case for Darwinian evolution is not closed.

Richard Dawkins is releasing a book soon in defense of evolution called, “The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution.” Maybe this will finally be the conclusive evidence in favor of Darwin’s theory. I’m not holding my breath.

The Missing Link is Named...Ida??

I've been told that scientists have found the "missing link."

I think that's great.

Now all they need to do is explain the existence of matter and energy, the beginning of the universe, cosmological constants, the anthropic principle, the origin of life, DNA, irreducible complexity, the Cambrian explosion, transitions between invertebrates and vertebrates, origin of the sexes, consciousness...etc. ad nauseam...and they will finally have a complete worldview which can compete in the marketplace of ideas. You are almost there guys!

There are already a number of great resources and commentaries in response to this fossil find:

Answers in Genesis has a couple articles: Ida: the Missing Link at Last? and Ida: the Real Story of this "Scientific Breakthrough"

Sean McDowell: Missing Link Brouhaha.

Melinda Penner at Stand to Reason: Grandma Ida? Greg Koukl will also be addressing this issue on his radio show which should be available here after 05/24/09.

Reasons to Believe has a page you can check out here.

Gary Demar at American Vision: Pigs, Lemurs, and 'Proving' Evolution

Randy Thomasson at SaveCaliornia.com: The Missing Link? Not!

Alli Martin at Onenewsnow: 'Ida' an extinct primate - and that's all

Earth Day for Evolutionists?

(www.str.org) Greg Koukl

Has anyone else but me noticed an inherent contradiction in the underlying convictions that drive annual “Earth Day” celebrations? The vast majority of those who attend such fetes are Darwinists who believe humans have a moral obligation to protect the environment? My question is: Why?

For millions of years “Mother Nature” has spewed noxious fumes and poisonous gasses into the atmosphere and littered the landscape with ash and lava. Indeed, the most “natural” condition in the universe is death. As far as we know, Earth is completely unique; death reigns everywhere else.

Species have passed into extinction at a steady rate from the beginning of time, the strong supplanting the weak. Why shouldn’t they? Each is in a struggle-to-the-death for survival. It is a dance of destruction that fuels the evolutionary process as every creature exploits every other creature for its own benefit. That’s evolution.

No locust swarm stops short of denuding a field because it ought to “leave a bit for the crickets. After all, we all have a right to be here.” The logic of naturalism and the rules of evolution dictate human beings rape our environment, just as everything else does, not protect it.

The moral obligations underpinning Earth Week activities simply do not follow from the naturalistic world view that embraces Darwinism. It follows, rather, from a theistic world view in which God has created man as unique and given him responsibility over the Earth to care for it. Earth Week makes sense for Christians, not for Darwinists.

You can read a longer take on this in "Worldviews & Earth Day."

Suggested STR resource on evolution: Why I'm Not an Evolutionist

Evolution Cannot Explain Morality

(Awakengeneration.com) Frank Turek

Some atheists, such as Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, insist that morality is simply the product of evolution. Common moral sensibilities (Don't murder, rape, steal, etc.) help ensure our evolutionary survival. There are a number of problems with this view:

1. Rape may enhance the survival of the species, but does that make rape good? Should we rape?

2. Killing the weak and handicapped may help improve the species and its survival (Hitler's plan). Does that mean the holocaust was a good thing?

3. Evolution provides no stable foundation for morality. If evolution is the source of morality, then what's to stop morals from evolving (changing) to the point that one day rape, theft, and murder are considered moral?

4. Dawkins and Hitchens confuse epistemology with ontology (how we know something exists with that and what exists). So even if natural selection or some other chemical process is responsible for us knowing right from wrong, that would not explain why something is right or wrong. How does a chemical process (natural selection) yield an immaterial moral law? And why does anyone have a moral obligation to obey a chemical process? You only have a moral obligation to obey an ultimate personal being (God) who has the authority to put moral obligations on you. You don't have a moral obligation to chemistry.

As I mentioned in an earlier post (Atheists Have No Basis for Morality), several atheists at a I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist event at UNC Wilmington struggled greatly when I asked them to offer some objective basis for morality from their atheistic worldview. They kept trying to give tests for how we know something is moral rather than why something is moral. One atheist said "not harming people" is the standard. But why is harming people wrong if there is no God? And what if harming people enhances your survival and that of most others?

Another said "happiness" is the basis for morality. After I asked him, "Happiness according to who, Mother Teresa or Hitler?," he said, "I need to think about this more," and then sat down. This says nothing about the intelligence of these people--there just is no good answer to the question. Without God there is no basis for objective morals. It's just Mother Teresa's opinion against Hitler's.

See also Neil's post: Does our Morality come from our DNA?

crossexamined.org