Philosophy of Science Archives | CrossExamined.org - Christian Apologetics Resources

I recently came across this article “10 Things You Should Know About Scientism” by Christian philosopher JP Moreland, and he dropped a truth-bomb that is too good to not share. But let me give you a trigger-warning. This is sure to rankle a lot of atheists who seem to unquestionably accept the philosophy of scientism.

Contrary to scientism, there are things we know with greater certainty in theology or ethics than certain claims in science. Consider these two claims:

1. Electrons exist.

2. It is wrong to torture babies for the fun of it.

Which do we know with greater certainty? The second claim is the correct answer. Why? The history of the electron has gone through various changes in what an electron is supposed to be. No one today believes that Thompsonian electrons (J. J. Thompson was the discoverer of electrons) exist because our views have changed so much. It is not unreasonable to believe that in fifty to one hundred years, scientific depictions of the electron will change so much that scientists will no longer believe in electrons as we depict them today.

Regarding the second claim, someone may not know how they know it is true, but nevertheless, we all, in fact, know it is true. If someone denies that, he needs therapy, not an argument. Now it is not hard to believe that in fifty to one hundred years, most people will no longer believe the second claim. But it is hard to see what kind of rational considerations could be discovered that would render the second claim an irrational belief. Thus, we have more certainty in the second claim than in the first. And the same is true for certain theological assertions—like that God exists.

When I shared this quote on social media immediately, I was met with a lot of guffawing from certain atheists. I have to wonder if it’s’s because it strikes a nerve against one of their most dearly held doctrines — that science can answer everything.

The Virtues Of Science?

If you think about it for a minute, what Moreland is saying is hardly controversial. One of the things that skeptics will often say is that one of the differences between science and faith is that science is humble. This is because science is provisional – it’s constantly willing to be wrong and revise its theories in the face of new evidence. Popular astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson speaks of the virtues in the scientific method:

“This adventure is made possible by generations of searchers strictly adhering to a simple set of rules: Test ideas by experiment and observation, build on those ideas that pass the test, reject the ones that fail, follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything.”

Faith, or so the argument goes, is the opposite. It’s often dogmatic in its assertions and not willing to change its stance in the teeth of evidence. It’s more of a “because I said so” vs. a “let me show you” type of thing. All of its arguments are appeals to authority, according to some skeptics.

So it should not be arguable that science, with all of its promises to give us knowledge, is something that should be held with a certain degree of tentativeness and a willingness to change its mind. The existence of gravity or the truth of quantum mechanics are empirical facts, but our understanding of the theories behind them is subject to change.

Right now, science doesn’t have a strong and confident answer for why there is consciousness or how life originated. And the answers in science regarding how human beings and animals evolved is constantly being revised in light of new discoveries. There are things that are unknown or are held with a lesser degree of certainty.

Moral Values: Not Scientifically Discovered And Not Created By Man

The statement “there is a vast moral difference between protecting the lives of defenseless, orphans, and using them for target practice” is not something that is going to ever be subject to revision. And here’s the kicker — science can’t begin to tell us why we should value one over the other, at best it can tell us about the brain states of the tortured versus the nurtured. It can’t tell us why we ought to care for the orphan and why we ought not torture them.

Ironically, science also can’t tell us why the humility of the scientific method is more virtuous than the dogmatism and exclusivism of religion! These are moral conclusions, not conclusions of science.

“If It Can’t Be Verified By My Physical Senses, I Can’t Know It.”

Some might argue that science gives us empirical knowledge — that which we can actually verify with our five physical senses. For example, we can verify with our eyes that spiders start having eight legs unless they lose a leg. That’s a scientific fact. But moral statements can’t be verified that way, so they’re not actually factual. We need to keep our moral jelly away from their scientific peanut butter.

But this is just the old, debunked philosophy of verificationism rearing it’s ugly head again. Verificationism had it’s heyday nearly a hundred years ago in philosophy departments, but it died out shortly after critics pointed out a fatal flaw: We can’t actually verify verificationism with our five physical senses. There’s no scientific experiment that you can run that shows that factual statements can’t be moral. Therefore, verificationism is self-defeating. And to say that there’s a difference between empirical facts and moral opinions just begs the question for verificationism. Somehow this flawed epistemology lives on among many modern skeptics.

But What About Moral Diversity?

Some might argue that morality is different in other cultures, and so, therefore, it’s’s relative and makes no truth claims. Science can at least tell us the facts eventually, while morality is just emotive. So, for example, in India, cows roam free because they’re considered to be sacred. But here in America, there’s a hamburger spot within driving distance for almost everyone.

But both cultures agree that it is wrong to eat other human beings. In America, when Grandma dies, we don’t eat her; we bury her. Hindus don’t eat beef because they think the cow could be Grandma reincarnated! So the moral difference doesn’t arise because of conflicting values but facts related to common values.

Every culture that has devalued innocent, human life has done so by dehumanizing the other side. Just look at our modern abortion debate — one side stridently says that the unborn are not human, so it’s’s permissible to kill them. The other side holds that life begins at conception and will argue from science, theology, and philosophy for their position. But neither side will explicitly say it’s’s morally permissible to murder babies because they’re inconvenient to us, because both camps consider them to be human.

On the subject of moral disagreement, C.S. Lewis wrote: “Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what people you ought to be unselfish to—whether it was only your own family, or your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked.”

Just because some objects in the moral landscape are harder to see than others, it doesn’t mean that we don’t see many moral facts very clearly. We clearly see that justice is to be preferred to injustice, kindness is to be preferred to cruelty, courage is better than cowardice, and that intellectual dishonesty is never going to be a virtue.

Ethical Truths Are More Certain Than Many Scientific Claims

If morality is just a matter of preference or expressions of our emotions, it becomes unclear why we should work to solve any moral “problems.” We could simply say, “Hey, this sense of distaste you have for genocide, kidnapping, sexually abusing children, rape, murder is just that — distaste. Let’s just agree that no moral problems exist and move on!” Obviously, that’s crazy.

The point is that there are universal moral values; they’re often glaringly self-evident and need no argument to support them any more than we need to argue for the laws of mathematics or logic. And science will never be able to tell us what they are.

Peter Singer, an atheist philosopher, says, “No science is ever going to discover ethical premises inherent in our biological nature, because ethical premises are not the kind of thing discovered by human investigation. We do not find our ethical premises in our biological nature, or under cabbages either.”

We come to science with this background belief as a properly basic foundation. And importantly, science depends on people acting ethically – like conducting their investigations safely and honestly. We take this for granted, just as much as take for granted the existence of the external world that we study in science. And ethics and science often intersect, like in questions about gene editing, population control, animal rights, and so forth.

To doubt the existence of the moral world is no more justifiable than to doubt the existence of the physical world. Many atheist philosophers agree with this — for example, Michael Martin, Russ Schafer-Landau, Erik Weilenberg, Louise Antony, GE Moore, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, and many more, even if I and many philosophers think they run into a “grounding” problem. And because of that, Moreland is absolutely correct. The notion that the assertions of the hard sciences are greatly superior to claims outside science is false.

“A wise man scales the city of the mighty and brings down the stronghold in which they trust.” (Proverbs 21:22)

Does The Cambrian Explosion Disprove Darwinism?

2. Does God Exist?, Philosophy of Science

By Ryan Leasure

In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin argued that “all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from someone primordial form.”¹ Darwin suggested that this primordial life form gradually developed into new life forms, which subsequently developed more life forms, eventually producing all the complex life forms we see today.

In short, Darwin asserted that all life descended from a common ancestor. And starting from that original ancestor, he believed nature selected the fittest species which would survive, reproduce, and last for generations. At the same time, nature would sift out the weaker species.

Darwin famously pictured the history of life as a tree. The first life form was the trunk, and all subsequent life forms are the branches. He was certain that the progression of life takes no sudden leaps, but evolves gradually with small-scale variations.

There was one small problem, though. When Darwin proposed his theory, some of the leading paleontologists rejected his theory based on the fossil record. More specifically, they didn’t believe Darwin’s theory could be reconciled with the Cambrian Explosion.

The Cambrian Explosion

The Cambrian Explosion refers to the abrupt appearance of animal life forms in the geological strata without any trace of prior transitional fossils. During this phenomenon, most of the major animal phyla appear in the strata in a geological blink of an eye.

Darwin was aware of the Cambrian Explosion. He noted, “If my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest [Cambrian] stratum was deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the [Cambrian] age to the present day; and that during these vast, yet quite unknown, periods of time, the world swarmed with living creatures.”² Meaning, if he’s right, we should find not just a few missing links, but innumerable links preceding the Cambrian era.

After all, Darwin adamantly declared that his theory could take no sudden leaps. He knew that large-scale variations inevitably resulted in deformity or death. Louis Agassiz, the leading paleontologist of Darwin’s day, put it this way: “It is a matter of fact that extreme variations finally degenerate or become sterile; like monstrosities, they die out.”³

Yet these Cambrian animals seemingly came out of nowhere. Of our twenty-seven different phyla — or macro-level animal classifications — at least twenty of them appear in the geological strata suddenly, not gradually as Darwin’s theory demands.⁴ Hence the name “Cambrian Explosion.”

So how did Darwin respond to this dilemma? He acknowledged, “To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer… The case at present must maintain inexplicable, and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained.”⁵

Darwin, however, was confident that future discoveries would vindicate his theory. Future geological discoveries have since come. Yet these discoveries continue to present fatal objections to his theory.

The Tree Turned Upside Down

Darwin’s tree of life suggests that small-scale differences among species would precede large-scale differences, eventually resulting in different phyla categories altogether. That is to say, as time progressed, and the branches formed, wholesale diversity would result among living species. Phyla categories would only emerge after lower classifications of animals — like species, orders, and families — evolved so much as to warrant macro-level distinctions.

Richard Dawkins put it this way: “What had been distinct species within one genus become, in the fullness of time, distinct genera within one family. Later, families will be found to have diverged to the point where taxonomists prefer to call them orders, then classes, then phyla.”⁶

Yet, the Cambrian Explosion turns this pattern on its head. Instead of species leading to families, orders, and eventually phyla, the Cambrian Explosion presents phyla first, followed by lower-level diversifications (microevolution).

The Burgess Shale, located along the Canadian Rockies and perhaps the most significant Cambrian dig in North America with more than a hundred thousand fossil discoveries, confirms this upside-down model. Stephen Meyer notes, “the large differences in form between the first animals appeared suddenly in the Burgess Shale, and the appearance of such disparity arose before, not after, the diversification of many representatives of lower taxonomic categories within each higher category, designating a new body plan.”⁷

Additionally, the Maotianshan Shale of southern China further confirms the upside-down model. Again, this site does not show the gradual emergence of species progressing toward the diversity of phyla. Rather, it shows full-scale diversity of phyla with subsequent diversification among the species.⁸

The Common Objection By Darwinists

Darwinists typically respond by suggesting that the older, Pre-Cambrian layers could not have preserved the transitional fossils. And they usually suggest one of two reasons. Either the fossils themselves were too small or soft to have fossilized, or the quality of the sedimentary rock was not conducive for preserving fossils.

Neither of these claims, though, holds muster. First, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that older sedimentary rocks have fossilized both small and soft organisms. In several places around the world, Pre-Cambrian rocks have fossilized single-celled algae and other eukaryotes.⁹ Further discoveries in Western Australia show Pre-Cambrian rocks preserved fossilized bacteria of various kinds.

The Maotianshan Shale also preserved a great variety of Pre-Cambrian soft-bodied organism. Archeologist J. Y. Chen found several animals lacking exoskeletons, including corals, sponges, jellyfish, and worms. Chen and his colleague Paul Chien even discovered sponge embryos.

If the sedimentary rock can preserve soft-celled embryos, surely it could preserve the ancestors of the Cambrian animals. It should also be noted that many paleontologists call into question the claim that the ancestors of these hard-shelled animals would have been soft since the hard parts are necessary to protect their soft parts. In other words, the ancestors of these hard-shelled animals would have required a hard-shell to survive in nature. So, the soft-bodied hypothesis is far from certain. Be that as it may, the data still suggests that soft-bodied animals should have fossilized.

Conclusions From The Cambrian Explosion

Darwinism still dominates the biological landscape. But I believe the Cambrian Explosion gives us reason to pump the breaks.

As I’ve studied the Darwinian model, it seems to me that the strongest argument in favor of it is the similarity of genetic information across all living species. Meaning, the closeness of DNA and RNA suggests we all share a common ancestor. While this could be true, it’s also true that similarities in genes could suggest a common designer. For example, when one purchases a set of pots and pans, they all look similar despite their different sizes and shapes. The similarities of the handles and types of metal demonstrate not that they evolved from a common ancestor but that they share a common designer.

Meaning, the genetic similarities among living species is up for interpretation. It’s speculation at best. But the fossil record — especially the Cambrian Explosion — presents us with hard data that is difficult to square with Darwinism. Instead of slow, gradual variations, we see sudden leaps of full-bodied animals without any trace of transitional fossils below.

Darwin knew the Cambrian Explosion didn’t support his theory. But he hoped that future geological discoveries would vindicate him. The Burgess and Maotianshan Shale discoveries, however, create an even larger problem than he realized. For these reasons, I believe we have good grounds to doubt Darwinian evolution.

There’s More Than One Way To “Trust The Science”

Philosophy of Science, Theology and Christian Apologetics

I have made the case before that scientism is a dangerous belief system. And the COVID-19 Pandemic has done nothing but prove the point. In their response to the virus, many in power exhort us to “trust the science.” Listen to the doctors. Their wisdom should guide the trajectory of our collective futures. But accepting that view greatly depends on your understanding of what science is … and whose science you’re trusting. The truth is that science never provides answers to anything. Scientists do. And that means we not only have to know what branch of science they’re representing, we also have to trust the scientists’ judgment. Our leaders can make decisions using science as a tool. But we accept those decisions on other grounds. That’s because science is not the arbiter of anything. People are. We can’t just “trust the science.” We have to know how our leaders are using evidence, logic, and moral reasoning to reach their science-based conclusions.

Science -vs- Scientists

My point is that there is a vast difference between what science is … and what scientists say. The scientific data about this disease can tell us how to identify its DNA makeup, how it attacks our bodies, how transmissible it is, how long it lasts, how deadly it is, and how to create a vaccine to combat it. We can use that data to evaluate the threat the virus poses and generate statistical analyses from it. The science describes the physical and biological facts about COVID-19.

But scientists interpret that data. They analyze the statistics and suggesting measures to combat it. And those scientists have biases and opinions they bring to the table. Let me offer an example of what I mean.

The Scientists We Trust

During this pandemic, there is perhaps no one who we are being asked to trust more than Doctor Anthony Fauci. And let me be clear. I don’t envy his position or question his credentials. Fauci is a highly educated immunologist. He’s a brilliant man, probably the most qualified person in America to be in the position he holds. But he has also made some public policy statements about the pandemic.

When asked about restarting sporting events, for instance:

“The best way to perhaps begin baseball on TV — say, around July 4 — would be to get players tested and put them in hotels. Keep them very well surveilled … have them tested, like every week. Buy a gazillion tests. And make sure they don’t wind up infecting each other or their family.’”

So, Doctor Fauci endorses the continuous surveillance and monitoring of U.S. citizens. But there’s more.

As it pertains to social interaction during the crisis, Fauci was asked:

Interviewer: “If you’re swiping on a dating [hook-up] app like Tinder … or Grindr [its LGBTQ alternative], and you match with someone that you think is hot, and you’re just kind of like, ‘Maybe it’s fine if this one stranger comes over.’ What do you say to that person?”

Fauci: “You know, that’s tough … Because that’s what’s called relative risk … If you’re willing to take a risk — and you know, everybody has their own tolerance for risks — you could figure out if you want to meet somebody …”

Complicated Answers

Whatever you think of Doctor Fauci’s positions on the Bill of Rights or “relative risk,” one thing is clear. Neither of his answers has anything to do with a need to “trust the science.”

Fauci’s answers are a perfect example of the intersection of ideas that are in play. He is willing to accept the medical and moral risk of a hook-up, but not the risk of human suffering due to an economic collapse. The point is that these things are complicated, and not just because the science is complicated. The reality is that we are not only living with the opinions and biases of different scientists. We are also dealing with the intersection of different kinds of science.

Economics is a Science

Much has been written and said about the economic impact of shutting the world down for this virus. One Yale study shows that rising unemployment causes higher death rates. Another study reveals a link between unemployment and suicide. These are not hypothetical outcomes. The human suffering that will result from this shutdown may be more threatening than the virus itself.

If you’re a Christian, don’t be lured into denying this. And don’t accept the notion that to do so is to value your retirement account more than you value human life. As my friend, Scott Klusendorf argues persuasively, that is a false choice:

“Absent important qualifiers, ‘life over profits’ is moralistic reductionism masquerading as biblical ethics. Seen holistically, ‘profits’ are not just about money. Rather, wrapped up in our economic considerations are clusters of intrinsic goods, such as educating our children, providing for our families, giving to charity, building up our marriages, and pursuing Christian fellowship — all of which contribute to the common good.”

Political Science

On April 15, 2020, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy banned religious services in his state. Fifteen people were arrested as a result. It doesn’t take much thought to understand that this directly impacts both the right to assemble and the religious liberty that are guaranteed by the U. S. Constitution. When he was pressed on this issue, Murphy responded:

“I wasn’t thinking of the Bill of Rights when we did this … The science says people have to stay away from each other.” New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy

For those of us who value the Bill of Rights and the Constitution that enumerates them, this is not just an academic triviality. The whole point of those rights is that the government does not create them. God does. Our government exists primarily to protect them. And when it fails to do so, tyranny is the result.

If you have any doubts about the importance of that dichotomy, look at history. Tyranny crushes the human spirit. Liberty allows it to flourish. History is littered with the wreckage to human life that occurs when the powerful engage in the former.

Sociology is Science

Free market economics works because it is grounded in human nature. We are social beings. And we are meant to interact. Shutting off that aspect of what it means to be human also has devastating effects. When we are prohibited from interacting with other humans, it damages our souls. Anger and irritability run rampant. People are frustrated and short-tempered. Suicides increase.

There is a reason solitary confinement is considered such an awful punishment, even for the worst of criminals. And there are reasons infants deprived of human contact suffer long-term mental health effects or even death.

Defining Science

The dictionary defines science as, “a branch study … that gives systematic knowledge of the physical or material world gained through observation and experimentation.” It comes from the Latin word scientia, which means “knowledge.” And that may be where the corruption of our thought about it began. Before the scientific revolution that supposedly led to our “Enlightenment,” there was another branch of science that no one talks about these days. It’s a branch of knowledge that is the key to understanding every other branch.

Theology.

The Queen of the Sciences

They used to call Theology the “Queen of the Sciences” for a reason. Theology identifies the Creator and sustainer of all things. But it does more than that. It makes the case that the mind of God is the basis for truth and reason. And that means His character undergirds every other scientific discipline.

How so?

All matter, mind, power, and morality have their foundation in the nature of God. And we are made in His image. So, it follows that our ability to reason and create are reflections of God’s character. Knowing that changes the way we understand everything else. In the doctrine of the Trinity and the eternal relationship between the Persons of the Godhead, we have the basis for love itself. It’s the model for all human relationships. And that means it is foundational to how we understand community, sacrifice, and cooperation.

If you want to have a robust view of chemistry, biology, anatomy, anthropology, psychology, sociology — you name the discipline — you must understand that theology ties them all together.

Today it sounds absurd to call theology a “science.” But that’s not because we’ve found something wrong with theology. It’s because we have accepted a corrupted and truncated view of science itself. We’ve limited it to matter, energy, space, and time. But we’ve lost our souls and spirits in the process.

Holistic Science

Today, we’ve bought the lie that our study of the physical world is the only way to know things. But there are other ways to acquire knowledge. And each of them includes reason and rationality. It is human beings who practice science every day, whether they think of themselves as scientists or not.

Yes, we need to respect the scientific data. But data doesn’t make decisions. People do. Those people must analyze the data within a holistic view of the world — a view that incorporates all of what it means to be human into the solutions to our problems. Medicine and immunology are not the only important disciplines in play. We need discernment. And that means including everything from our basic human nature to our interpersonal relationships to the makeup of our social fabric in the decision-making process.

“Trust the science” is an empty slogan. When you hear it you should ask, “Which one?” And realize you are listening to someone who holds to a sterilized view of the world.

6 Ways Atheism Is A Science-Stopper

Atheism, Philosophy of Science, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Luke Nix

Introduction: Science vs. Christianity?

It is commonly claimed that Christianity is a science-stopper. What is usually put forth to justify this claim is that many Christians are content to look at nature and say, “God did it,” without looking further to discover how God did whatever “it” happens to be. For many Christians, questions about the origin and function of the natural world end with that answer. However, for many others, while they recognize that God did indeed do something, they seek diligently to discover how God did it. Christianity does not stop science, a lack of curiosity or concern (not necessarily a bad thing if those are not a person’s passion or pursuit) is what could stop science if no Christian exists who possesses that curiosity. Individual Christians can choose to stop scientific discovery for themselves, but because scientific discovery will continue for other individual Christians, scientific discovery will continue.

On the other hand, atheism actually does stop science. Not because an atheist is content to say “evolution did it” and cease exploratory research, but it is stopped rather for a few other reasons that the atheist cannot escape if their worldview is true. If atheism is true, scientific discovery does not cease just for the atheist whose curiosity and concern are satisfied by the answer “evolution did it,” but it ceases for everyone.

If you are a friend of science and an atheist, I implore you to take your thinking to the next level: think about how you can think about the discovery of the world around you. In today’s blog post, I will present six different ways that atheism mutually excludes science and stops all scientific discovery in its tracks.

Science vs. Atheism

The Laws of Mathematics vs. Atheism

A great deal of scientific research done today necessarily depends upon mathematics in its most advanced forms. It is used to describe chemical reactions, model the formation history of the universe, and even predict the spread of viruses. The reason that mathematics can be used in this way is because the universe is beholden to mathematics. This fact makes the universe describable, discoverable, and predictable (to some extent). If the universe produced mathematics, then there is no reason for the universe to adhere to mathematics, and its describability, discoverability, and predictability would not be possible.

This presents a serious problem for the atheist. For on the atheistic view, mathematics is a product of a feature within the universe (the human brain, to be exact), and the universe is not beholden to something it produced. On the atheistic view, mathematics is not objective, so there is no reason that we should expect the world around us to adhere to or be explainable by using mathematics. The present cannot be described; the past cannot be discovered, and future events cannot be predicted.

On the atheistic view, without a super-natural (outside this universe) foundation for mathematics that constrains this universe to its laws, this universe is nonsensical, and the entire scientific enterprise is ultimately doomed to being nothing more than a guessing game and unable to reveal knowledge about any point in time or space.

The Principle of Uniformity vs. Atheism

Similar to mathematics, the principle of uniformity is key to performing scientific research. This principle states that the past acted very much like the present, and the future will act very much like the present. This principle constrains the universe to a continuous connection across time that scientists can use to describe, discover, and predict. Based upon this principle, scientists understand that it is reasonable to extrapolate observations today into both the past and the future. Through this continuous connection, scientists can discover what happened in the past (historical science) with deductive certainty and make predictions about future events in the natural world (this is how different models of natural phenomena are tested- predictions of future discoveries are made based upon different understandings of the presently-observable data).

But also similar to mathematics, this principle cannot simply have come about with the appearance of human brains on the cosmic scene. If this principle is the product of a feature within the universe, then it necessarily cannot be governed by such a principle. Due to that necessary lack of governance, there is also no reason to think that the universe can be explained using the principle of uniformity.

Thus, if we are to continue scientific discovery using this principle and believe that anything discovered using it is true or meaningful, then it must have a foundation prior to this universe. This means that the principle of uniformity, like mathematics, has a transcendent (super-natural) foundation. Without such a foundation, scientific knowledge of the past and prediction of future events are impossible. On this second count, atheism renders scientific discovery dead on arrival.

For more on this, I highly recommend the book “Origin Science: A Proposal For The Creation/Evolution Controversy.”

The Laws of Logic vs. Atheism

Adding onto mathematics and the principle of uniformity are the laws of logic. It is through the laws of logic that we can connect the present to the past and discover the history of our planet, the solar system, the galaxy, the universe, and even the moments up to the creation event itself. But this level of scientific discovery is only possible if the universe is governed by transcendent laws of logic. Deductive reasoning and deductive certainty (mentioned above) are necessarily dependent upon the laws of logic. If the universe is not governed by laws that transcend its own existence, then there is no reason to act as if it is governed by such laws. These laws must have a foundation that exists outside of the natural universe; this means that they must exist super-naturally.

But according to atheism, nothing exists super-naturally, and laws of logic are no exception. Thus the universe is not required to and cannot be expected to follow any such laws on atheism. If we cannot expect the universe to necessarily follow such laws, then we cannot use such laws to make truth claims about the universe with any level of certainty, including its history or future. Without the laws of logic existing outside the universe, every scientific endeavor that attempts to expand our knowledge of the natural world beyond the present moment of observation in the immediate spacial vicinity is futile. Without a reason to believe that this universe is subject to the laws of logic, scientific discovery is impossible. Because atheism has no room for laws of logic that govern this universe, it has no room for claiming legitimate scientific discovery is part of its worldview.
For more on this, I highly recommend these two books:

Come, Let Us Reason

The Word of God and the Mind of Man

The Laws of Physics vs. Atheism

Atheism, without laws of mathematics and laws of logic, already cannot formulate or describe laws of physics. That is only one of the numerous implications of a worldview devoid of reality beyond this universe. But the problem for atheism regarding the laws of physics goes deeper than merely discovery and articulation. For lack of discovery and/or articulation do not necessarily imply a lack of existence. The lack of existence of laws of physics on the atheistic worldview is established independently, though similarly, to the lack of existence of laws of mathematics and laws of logic.

If there do not exist laws of physics that this universe is governed by, meaning that they are logically prior to or have a foundation outside of this universe, then there is no reason to use said laws of physics in any reasoning (using non-existent laws of logic) from present observations of this universe to the past history (using the non-existent principle of uniformity) of this universe. Again, without foundation outside this universe for laws of physics to govern the universe, this universe is under no constraint to follow any particular description (laws of physics). If atheism is true, science is, for yet another reason, dead on arrival.

Our Sense Organs And The Brain vs. Atheism

Of course, the applicability of the above features of reality does not come into play in scientific discovery until observations are made. While the above features of reality are observer-independent, this last feature is observer-dependent. Not only does atheism have no foundation for the observer-independent features of reality (and necessary features of the scientific enterprise) described above, but its explanation for one observer-dependent necessity of the scientific enterprise undercuts its own reliability.

Atheistic worldviews have only one possible explanation for the appearance of sense organs and the human brain: changes over time that are governed by (non-existent) laws of physics that govern natural selection. This is also known as “unguided evolution” or merely “evolution” in many circles. We must be careful to distinguish here between agent-guided and environment-guided. The “unguided” descriptor here refers to agent-guided. Evolutionists very much believe that evolution was guided, but that guidance was done by the environment and the (non-existent) laws of physics that governed the creation of and behavior of the environment.

With that in mind, this process that is ultimately guided by non-existent laws of physics results in the survival of populations, so features that serve for the survival of populations are what are passed down from generation to generation and remain in existence. In this view, a pragmatic advantage is the determining factor of a feature’s propagation, not truth-discovering abilities. The truth-discovering ability of a feature is purely accidental, and there is no way to independently test the truth-discovering abilities of such features that survived (especially since all the above features of reality, that may be used to independently test, have no foundation in reality if atheism is true). This means that our sense organs and brain have survived, not because of their truth-discovering abilities, but because they helped populations prior survive in their environment. The atheist cannot come around and say that we can independently test our sense organs scientifically via logic, mathematics, the principle of uniformity, or laws of physics because none of those have foundations in reality if atheism is true. If atheism is true, then even those “laws” are the product of our evolved brains, which, again, is the product of a process governed by non-existent laws of mathematics, logic, and physics.

For more on this, I recommend the book “Where The Conflict Really Lies.”

Conclusion

If something does not exist or is not true, it is not a valid launching point for any process of gaining knowledge. If the foundations are compromised, so are the results. If atheism is true…

…science cannot begin with laws of mathematics.

…science cannot begin with the principle of uniformity.

…science cannot begin with laws of logic.

…science cannot begin with laws of physics.

…science cannot begin with our own observations.

…science cannot begin with our own reasoning.

Science necessarily depends upon the reality and truth of these features of reality. If atheism is true, there is no foundation for any of these features of reality. If atheism is true, these are not features of reality, which means that they are neither true nor do they exist. Thus they cannot be launching points of any knowledge discipline, including science. If atheism is true, the scientific enterprise (among other knowledge disciplines) cannot legitimately claim to provide us with the truth about our world. If atheism is true (in whatever form), it is impossible to connect our subjective beliefs to objective reality.

Because atheism mutually excludes science, atheism is no friend of science; and science is no friend of atheism. If you are a friend of science, you know that these six concepts are features of reality and are true. I invite you to abandon the scientifically and philosophically naive worldview of atheism; embrace the reality of the Christian God, the One who provides a firm foundation for every one of these six realities that you already know exist and already depend upon for your scientific discoveries.

20 Myths About Old Earth Creationism

Philosophy of Science, Theology and Christian Apologetics

Podcast: Play in new window

By Luke Nix

Introduction

Last month I was alerted to a debate on Justin Brierley’s podcast “Unbelievable.” This debate was a discussion between a young-earth creationist (Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis) and an old-earth creationist (Jeff Zweerink of Reasons to Believe). This, of course, caught my attention because of my focus on science/faith issues. I decided to take a listen but found myself quite frustrated within just minutes of Justin giving his introductions. Here is a link to the episode for those who would like to hear it for themselves: Do we live on a young or old earth? Ken Ham vs. Jeff Zweerink

Throughout the discussion, Ken Ham presented many strawmen and misrepresentations of Zweerink’s old-earth creationist view in order to argue against the view. I recognized many of these myths as ones I’ve heard over the years that remain popular today despite their falsehood and countless attempts at correction.

In today’s post, I have compiled twenty of the myths that Ken Ham presented in the “Unbelievable” discussion, and I have provided a short, one-to-three paragraph explanation of how they are false and what the correctly understood old-earth creationist (OEC) position is. Since I have written on many of these topics in the past, I have included links to previous posts where they can offer a more detailed response. My intention for this post is three-fold for both believer and unbeliever.

First, for the unbeliever, I want them to understand that the young-earth view is not the only view held by Christians. They do not have to affirm young-earth creationism (YEC) in order to accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and remain logically consistent.

Second, for the believer, I want them to understand that claiming that a logically consistent Christian must hold to the YEC view is simultaneously a detriment to our evangelism and to worshiping the Father in spirit and in truth (John 4:23).

Finally, for those who are honestly investigating the biblical, philosophical, and natural data to resolve this issue (both believer and unbeliever), I pray that this post also serves as a quick stop for addressing many of the myths, strawmen, and other mischaracterizations of the OEC view in a single location.

But, before I get to the perpetuated myths of old earth creationism, it is important to recognize where Ken Ham (YEC) and Jeff Zweerink (OEC) hold much common ground in their two views. Even though there are significant differences, there are even more significant commonalities that they can shake hands with each other and give them a hardy “Amen, brother!” I compiled a list a while back that is certainly not comprehensive, but is a large list to see where the differences between YEC and OEC may be fewer than is commonly understood:

What Do Young Earth and Old Earth Creationists Agree Upon Regarding Origins?

Now, on to the myths of Old Earth Creationism!

Myth #1: The debate is not about whether the universe is young or old, it is about whether you believe God’s Word or not.

Fact:
Ken Ham began with this myth. It implies that anyone who disagrees with him on the interpretation of Genesis 1-11 does not believe God’s Word. This could not be further from the truth. It is the very belief that God’s Word is true and authoritative in the Christian’s life that Christians try to understand what it means. In order for a proposition (or collection of propositions, such as the Bible) to be believed and applied to our lives, we need to correctly understand the meaning of the proposition(s). If we did not believe that the collection of propositions that constitute God’s Word is true and authoritative over our lives, then we wouldn’t bother with trying to understand what the author (and Author) meant to communicate in it. Saying that a Christian, who interprets differently, does not believe God’s Word is simply false. The debate is not about belief but rather about correct meaning.
For more, see “Man’s Fallible Ideas vs. God’s Infallible Word.”

Myth #2: Big bang cosmology is based on naturalism.

Fact:
Naturalism holds that there is nothing that exists outside this physical universe. Big bang cosmology has two requirements that necessarily exist outside this physical universe. Firstly, because big bang cosmology posits an absolute beginning to the universe and nothing that begins to exist can cause its own beginning to exist, the big bang necessarily requires a cause that is outside itself (this physical universe). Secondly, because of the fact that the universe’s physical laws are finely-tuned to support advanced life, the cause of the universe not only has to be super-natural, but it also has to be intelligent and purpose-driving in His creative act. These are attributes of a purposeful agent, not just another mechanism (naturalism), or deism (we’ve now left naturalism behind), or even basic theism. These attributes of the Cause mirror those of the Christian God. Not only is it false that big bang cosmology is based on naturalism big bang cosmology necessarily implies that the Christian God exists by the attributes of the Cause required to produce what is observed in the universe.

Myth #3: You cannot see “age” in nature.

Fact:
One of the foundational beliefs of science (that allow it to discover events of even the recent past) is constant laws of physics. For the Christian, this foundational belief for science is even affirmed in Jeremiah 33:26 (see my post “How Naturalism Defeats Science As A Knowledge Discipline“). What is very nice about constant laws of physics is that if we have a correct understanding of processes from one moment to the next, we can work backward in time (via deductive reasoning) to come to sound (necessarily true) conclusions about the past, including the age of things. This is done for trees and corals using the number of rings and layers, respectively, and the well-understood rate of the formation of those layers. The idea that age cannot be determined by observing nature alone is correct, but when combined with the constant laws of physics and deductive reasoning, the ability to accurately determine age by observing God’s creation cannot be escaped by the Bible-believing Christian.

Myth #4: The same people who promote big bang cosmology deny the virgin birth of Jesus.

Fact:
This is quite a sweeping statement. In this myth, Ken Ham places all who affirm big bang cosmology into the same naturalistic category of those who deny miracles and God’s interaction with creation (including the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity and the Resurrection of Jesus). It is obvious, though, that Christians do not belong in the same category as naturalists when it comes to miracles. Some YECs who insist on this categorization, though, insist that Christians can believe both but only inconsistently.

The problem here is that affirmation of big bang cosmology in no way implies that supernatural miracles are not possible. In fact, as shown above, in Myth #2, the big bang assumes a supernatural miracle for the universe’s existence! If anyone is being inconsistent in their beliefs regarding the big bang and miracles, it is the naturalist who affirms the big bang yet denies supernatural miracles are possible. So, Christians who affirm big bang cosmology do not deny supernatural miracles such as the virgin birth of Jesus and are under no compulsion by logic to even entertain such a ridiculous claim. We do not deny the virgin birth of Jesus, and our view does not imply even the possibility of such a denial. While naturalists do deny the virgin birth of Jesus, inconsistently, the Christian affirms it consistently.

Myth #5: People only debate the meaning of the word “yom” in Genesis 1 because they want to fit millions of years into the Bible.

Fact:
Implied in this myth is the idea that “yom” was never debated until it was discovered that the universe was billions of years old and/or when Darwin came along and proposed evolution, which presumably would require billions of years of slow changes over time. However, this is demonstrably false. The meaning of “yom” has been debated for centuries before scientists posited billions of years for the age of the universe. St. Augustine, for instance, defended the contention that “yom” was different from a 24-hour day. Numerous other Church Fathers also debated “yom”‘s meaning. Since it was debated before scientists posited billions of years for the age of the universe and earth, such a discovery cannot serve as the motivation for the debate continuing to this day. For more on the Church Fathers and their debates over the meaning of the word “yom” in Genesis 1, I recommend checking out “Coming to Grips With The Early Church Fathers’ Perspective On Genesis” by Dr. John Millam.

Myth #6: The idea that the universe is young has been well-established in Church history; therefore, it is true.

Fact:
This is an interesting argument. The falsehood is not found in the first part; young-earth creationism (along with other views) we debated and held by many Church Fathers; the falsehood is found in the logic. A well-established doctrine is not necessarily a correct doctrine (this goes for all sides of the age debate). Ken Ham, as a member of the Protestant tradition of the Church, would hold that many well-established doctrines of the Church (Catholic Church, at the time) were false. So, being well-established does not mean true, even for Ken Ham. Anyone who argues this way is simply incorrect.

Now, many people try to claim that young-earth creationism originated with the Seventh Day Adventist “prophetess” Ellen G. White, but since some of the Church Fathers already held to this view, it can hardly be said to have originated recently. But, again, that early origin does not mean true. Young-earth Christians need to be careful about which conclusion they are drawing from the early articulation of their view, and old-earth Christians need to be careful about which conclusion they are drawing from a later (more developed) articulation of the young-earth view.

Myth #7: Believing that the universe is old undermines God’s Word.

Fact:
Many young-earth Christians (but not all) are not even open to alternative views because they have heard this myth so many times, presented in so many different ways, that they believe it. As mentioned in my response to Myth #1, this is not true, as demonstrated by the very attempt to reconcile God’s Word with God’s actions (creation). That recognition is enough to demonstrate the falsehood of the myth in general. But what about the more specific forms of the myth (additional myths, in themselves)? In a past post, I took on five common ways that this myth is articulated. Take a look at these additional myths in the post “Does Old Earth Creationism Compromise Scripture” to see if you have fallen victim to believing them.

Myth #8: You weren’t there to witness the creation; therefore, you cannot know what happened except by an eyewitness testimony (God’s Word).

Fact:
This myth attempts to strike at the foundation of scientific claims about origins: the ability to know origins. In this myth the young-earth creationist takes a hyper-empiricist view of knowledge that states that only the five senses can reveal truth about the physical world: in order to know anything that happened in the past, you had to be there to witness whether it happened or not, and since we were not there to witness the creation, we cannot know how it happened. They then say that we can only rely upon the eyewitness record in Genesis 1, which they assume is only compatible with their view (see Myths #1 and #7 above).

Even if we were to grant that the Genesis 1 account was only compatible with the young-earth view, they have a serious problem. If we cannot know something happened in the past unless we witnessed it, then how do we know that Genesis 1 was reliably handed down through the generations? We were not there to witness each transcription. In order to defend the reliable transmission of the text to today, we rely upon another source of knowledge that uses inductive and abductive reasoning (neither of which are sense-based). If those are valid sources of truth to discover past events, then the young-earth creationist must allow such sources of truth in the debate over origins. So, by their own epistemology (how we know what we know), this myth falls and falling further, their attempt to use the process of elimination to get to their view also fails. This myth is so prevalent in the origins debate that I have written quite a bit about this it in the past.

Myth #9: Only the YEC believes the eyewitness of God’s Word.

Fact:
As demonstrated in my answer to Myth #8, this myth falls flat immediately. However, it gets worse for the YEC, not only can they not know that they have the eyewitness account about origins as it was originally recorded, they cannot know that they have a reliable eyewitness account about the Resurrection of Jesus as it was originally recorded! The staunch YEC may be able to live with not having a reliable account of the events of creation, but I do not believe for one second that they are willing to follow the logic to its necessary conclusion and accept that we then also do not have reliable accounts of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. For such a necessary implication would give us no confidence whatsoever in the truth of Christianity, which would then give them no foundation for holding onto their YEC view. The ground crumbles beneath them.

This is not a problem of belief (I know Ken Ham believes that the Bible we have today was reliably transmitted through the generations), but rather it is a problem of a lack of a foundational explanation for the belief in the reliability of the transmission of the Bible. If Ken Ham is to maintain the “you weren’t there” mantra, then he has no explanation for the reliable transmission of the Bible, and worse he has unwittingly provided an explanation for precisely why the Bible he holds in hands cannot be trusted as what was originally inspired by God! This is the myth, among all other ones because it strikes at the very foundation of the Christian worldview, that must die in the Church:

Historical Science, Deception, and Blind Faith
Is It Biblical to Have An Evidential Faith?
The Historical Jesus
Cold Cast Christianity
Forensic Faith
Did The Historical Jesus Rise From The Dead?

Myth #10: Animal death and suffering are incompatible with the all-powerful and all-loving God of the Bible.

Fact:
I find it very interesting that young-earth creationists often raise the logical problem of evil against God in these discussions. Simply put, the logical problem of evil has been a go-to challenge to God’s existence for atheists for centuries (and still is today in popular/internet atheist circles), but such a challenge is no challenge at all. The challenge relies upon the idea that an all-powerful and all-loving God could not possibly have justifiable reasons for allowing evil, pain, and suffering in the world. However, since we cannot possibly know all of God’s purposes comprehensively, this challenge fails on epistemic grounds- no one has enough knowledge to make such a grandiose claim. And not only that, the Bible teaches that any suffering that God does allow does has an ultimate, eternal purpose.

So we do have enough knowledge to claim the very opposite: that God does have a purpose for allowing all pain and suffering, even if we cannot specifically identify that purpose with our current amount of knowledge. This would include any and all animal suffering. So for the young-earth creationist to be in the company of atheists with raising this challenge is to simply place the God of the Bible in the same box that the atheist attempts to place Him: “since I cannot see what purpose God may have for suffering, He must not have one.” This is only one way to demonstrate the falsehood of this myth, but others exist as well.

Myth #11: Having animal death before The Fall makes God responsible for moral evil.

Fact:
Related to Myth #10 above, Ken Ham tries to show how God is responsible for moral evil if animal death existed before the Fall of Adam and Eve. Since the Christian God is not responsible for moral evil, then if there is a view that necessarily implies that God is responsible for moral evil, then it is false, and its god is not the Christian God. Ken Ham argues that animal death is a moral evil, and since old-earth creation requires that God is responsible for it, then old-earth creationism must be false. He attempts to release God from the responsibility of animal death by saying that the Fall introduced death to the animal kingdom. Many YECs have proposed different models for the Fall introducing death into the natural order (changed laws of physics, attributing creative power to sin, and punctuated equilibrium are just a few) in order to escape the implications of their own accusation.
But all this effort is actually unnecessary because animal death is not morally evil. For an event, action, or behavior to be morally evil, the perpetrator must be a moral agent with the free will to choose to do otherwise, and the offended party must be of intrinsic value. Both of those features are necessary, but neither are present in the physical creation prior to God’s creation of Adam and Eve. Animals are not moral agents, and they are not created in the Image of God, which would be the source of intrinsic value. These are precisely why we do not classify animals killing other animals as murder. “Murder” is “killing” with moral status. Without the moral status, animal killing is just killing, not murder. Since animals killing animals is not performed by moral, free agents and animals are not intrinsically valuable, there is no foundation for calling such death “morally” evil. It does not matter how much death happened before the Fall of Adam and Eve; it was not morally evil. So even though God is the Creator of the natural order (which includes animal death), He is NOT responsible for any moral evil here. Thus this myth is demonstrably false. I go into more detail in these posts:

Myth #12: If you can understand the general message of the Gospel without the scholarship, then you can understand the details of creation without scholarship.

Fact:
This myth implies that because the basics of the Gospel can be understood and acted upon by the youngest and least educated among us, that the deeper and more refined details of the Gospel can also be discovered without the need for a scholarship. Ken Ham holds that the same applies to ideas of origins: if the basics of creation can be understood without scholarship, then so can the details be known without scholarship. In the podcast, Ken Ham appeals to biblical scholarship to make his case; then, he comes back later to deny the value of such biblical scholarship. He seems to hold that the “plain reading” (as would be understood the first time a person reads a passage) is the correct and comprehensive understanding- there is no need for further scholarship to determine details. Because Ham both uses and denies the value of biblical scholarship in the same conversation, it is hard to determine which of the mutually exclusive views he takes. But since he pounds the drum of “the plain reading” so much, it is reasonable to think that he (at least by his words and his actions) denies the value of biblical scholarship and affirms that there is no need to pursue further study beyond one’s initial reading of the text.

Interestingly enough, the Apostle Paul denies such a view explicitly in 1 Corinthians 3:2. Paul tells the Corinthian church that he gave them the theological basics and called it “milk,” but affirmed that the theological details, which he called “solid food,” still remained to be grasped by them. A deeper study (scholarship) is required if we are to get to the truth of a view. If we eschew biblical scholarship, then we run the same risk of the Corinthian church and being satisfied only with “milk” and never graduating to “solid food.” When we look deeper into the first chapters of Genesis, we discover that the YEC view is not the only view compatible with the inerrant text. In fact, a range of views are fully compatible. If a person is to pursue the correct understanding, they must begin with the correct list of available options, then use further scholarship and sources of truth to determine which of those available options is the correct interpretation. This myth denies such a pursuit, which is in direct contradiction to Paul, so it must be false.

Myth #13: OEC takes something from outside the Bible to use it to reinterpret God’s Word.

Fact:
What is very dangerous about this myth is that it makes a simple statement but never explicitly states the conclusion or the logic to the conclusion. It is true that OEC takes something from outside the Bible and uses it to interpret God’s Word. What does OEC take from outside the Bible? God’s actions: His creation. Time after time, the Bible affirms that God’s actions (His creation) are a valid source of truth. Psalm 19 states that the heavens declare the glory of God; Romans 1 affirms that the knowledge (truth) available to all in creation is so reliable and visible that it is enough to condemn a person; and Jeremiah 33:25-26 states that the laws that govern the universe are as constant as God Himself! (see Myths #16 and #20 below for more on this).

Not only is it biblical to use God’s actions, it is perfectly logical to use a person’s actions to help interpret what their words mean. We do this every day. We even do this when trying to interpret what America’s Founding Fathers meant when they penned the Constitution (see my post “Deconstructionism, The Constitution, and Biblical Interpretation“)
This myth is simply an attempt at a scare-tactic. It is presented as if OEC is concluded because people have approached Scripture with an atheistic presupposition (see Myth #2 above and Myth #14 below) and are trying to make Scripture subject to atheism. If God tells us that His actions are reliable sources of truth, then it is perfectly legitimate to use His actions to help us interpret His words. And to refuse to allow God’s actions to guide our interpretation is another way that we refuse to accept “solid food” and remain satisfied with “milk” (see Myth #12 above).

Myth #14: OEC tries to fit millions of years into the Bible because the secularist needs it for evolution.

Fact:
Similar to Myth #2, Ken Ham attempts to discredit using God’s actions (His creation) to interpret His words by appealing to atheism. Myth #2 already demonstrated that big bang cosmology not only does not indicate atheism, but it requires theism. This myth is necessarily dependent upon the idea that the currently measured age of the universe (~13.7 billion years) is enough time for unguided evolution to produce what we see today. This could not be further from the truth.

Big bang cosmology and a 13.7 billion-year-old universe was not a relief for the naturalist when it was discovered; it was a brick wall that evolution slammed against then and continues to slam against today. This was one of the key reasons that big bang cosmology was rejected by naturalists for so long! 13.7 billion years is orders of magnitude too young for unguided evolution to produce what we see today! In fact, many naturalists are positing that an infinite multiverse exists that would provide them with enough time across all of reality just for evolution to produce what we see today even one time! Big bang cosmology is no friend to the secularist. Not only does big bang cosmology require a Cause and a Designer, it chronologically constricts the naturalist’s evolutionary story to suffocation! Big bang cosmology is rather a powerful enemy to the naturalist, which adds yet another reason for its truth (see my post “Evidence for the Empty Tomb of Jesus and Big Bang Cosmology“).

Myth #15: Allowing nature to interpret Scripture opens the doors to immoral, secular views (including gay marriage).

Fact:
Since Ken Ham is under the mistaken impression that allowing God’s creation to help us interpret Scripture sneaks in an amoral view (naturalism), I can understand why he would be scared of this myth (and propagate the same fear to his followers). However, it is not the act of allowing nature to interpret Scripture that is the source of moral conclusions; rather, it is the presupposition that one approaches the Scripture. If one already has the view that atheism is true, then all behaviors are permissible in their view. However, as seen in Myth #13, the usage of God’s actions (His creation) to help interpret His words is grounded in Scripture, which already holds that the Scripture (which includes the ethical claims) is inerrant and authoritative. A Christian allowing God’s creation to help them interpret God’s words does nothing to damage the ethical claims of God’s words and actually affirms their truth by affirming the truth of the biblical claims of the physical world.
Ham is also fond of saying that a Christian can follow biblical ethics and believe in the big bang, but they are doing so inconsistently. As discussed in Myths #2 and #14 above, though, big bang cosmology is not an atheistic but rather theistic view of the origin of the cosmos, so there is no logical inconsistency between the Christian who agrees with both biblical ethics and big bang cosmology. This myth is simply false.

Myth #16: Allowing nature to interpret Scripture undermines the authority of God’s Word.

Fact:
If it is not clear from the previous fifteen myths that this myth, too, is false, then allow me to offer these additional points. First, if Christians who affirm OEC did not believe that God’s Word was both true and authoritative, they would not bother with trying to find the correct interpretation. Nobody looks at a work of fiction (on a page or on-screen) and attempts to reconcile its claims with the real world. We simply do not do that for stories that we believe are false and have no moral authority over our lives. The very fact that Christians take so much time to dig into biblical and scientific scholarship (the “solid food” of 1 Corinthians 3:2) to find the correct understanding (what the author and Author intended to communicate to their respective audiences) demonstrates their respect, belief, and submission to the content of Scripture.

Second, the only thing that is undermined by deeper scholarship is falsehood. Unlike God, man is not infallible, so his interpretations can be incorrect. It is through deeper scholarship that these incorrect interpretations are discovered and can be rejected. While it is important to study God’s Word to discover the range of possible interpretations that are compatible with an inerrant (and reliably transmitted) text, it would be irresponsible of us to neglect God’s actions (His creation) to rule out possible interpretations or even positively identify the correct interpretation. To refuse to conduct such a study and submit ourselves to God’s actions (as well as God’s Word), and even encourage others not to as well, is to affirm one’s own infallibility- something that no humble Christian should do, even implicitly. This is not to say that deeper scholarship will always lead to what is true (many scholars hold many different views about origins, many of them are mutually exclusive), but the more knowledge we have from the sources of truth that God has given us, the more information we have to reason with and come nearer to the correct view in the details.

Myth #17: OEC is a compromise in the Church.

Fact:
By this time, one should see how this myth is completely unfounded. OEC has compromised, nothing true nor important. OEC does not compromise the truth of God’s Word nor its authority in the Christian’s life. OEC only compromises the YEC interpretation, which is a human interpretation that is not infallible anyway. What has been compromised is falsehood, which is precisely what the Christian wants to compromise! This myth may have rhetorical power on the surface, but when we dig deeper into the scholarship (again, the “solid food” of 1 Cor 3:2), we find that the myth loses its rhetorical power with us because it is a lie. Now, I know that many young-earth creationists are concerned about more than just the age of creation (as well they should), so I have two posts that directly addresses (40) areas of full agreement with YECs and other common areas where “compromise” is claimed against OEC:

Myth #18: OECs talk about nature as the 67th book of the Bible.

Fact:
This myth originates from a claim made by Dr. Hugh Ross back in the 90s (if I recall the timing correctly) that was misunderstood. He stated that nature, as a trustworthy and infallible source of truth (since it is from the infallible God), was akin to a 67th book in the inerrant Bible. But many Christians misunderstood and misrepresented his analogy as his attempt to “add to Scripture” and was trying to say that nature can provide enough information to save a person. Of course, Dr. Ross never intended for either of these to be communicated by his analogy because he does not believe them, nor does his view logically imply or even indicate them. His attempts to correct the misunderstandings over several years were not accepted by his critics, so because of these misunderstandings and to attempt to avoid further misunderstandings of his view, Dr. Ross abandoned this analogy in the mid-2000s. Ken Ham was one of these critics and, to this day, still claims that OECs use this analogy. Today, OECs do not talk about nature as a 67th book of the Bible and have not for well over a decade precisely because we do not wish to be further misunderstood and misrepresented. Because the myth is dependent upon a misunderstanding of an analogy, and that analogy is no longer even used, the myth is false on two counts.

Myth #19: The creation is cursed; therefore, it cannot be trusted to reveal the truth.

Fact:
If we refer back to myth #3, we see that this myth is false already on that count alone. However, when we further study the Bible, specifically Psalm 19 and Romans 1, we see that the authors affirm (through divine inspiration) that the creation can be trusted to reveal the truth. This is not a debate about over whether God’s creation reveals the truth or whether or not the creation is cursed (as also affirmed by the Bible). The debate is over the nature and extent of the curse. Since Jeremiah 33:25-26 affirms constant laws of physics, we must exclude limitations on the creation’s ability to reveal the truth (again, see Myth #3 above). If we are to include limitations of the creation’s ability to reveal the truth as part of the curse, then we essentially must deny biblical inerrancy since Psalm 19’s and Romans 1’s (along with the numerous other passages that affirm creation’s revelation of truth) would be false. The creation was not cursed in a way that prevents it from revealing the truth. Creation was indeed cursed, but its ability to reveal truth being removed was not part of that curse. The creation’s ability to reveal truth remains intact despite the curse.
While this myth is incorrect on biblical grounds, let’s also not forget that Ken Ham attempts to use the creation to demonstrate the truth that it was created by a Designer. Old-earth creationists agree with this; however, if the creation cannot reveal the truth, then Ken Ham’s appeal to it to tell us something true about its origins is a pointless appeal- why would Ken Ham use an untrustworthy source to reveal truth? The reality is that Ken Ham’s own defense of his view using God’s creation is logically incompatible with his view of the curse in Genesis- every “scientific” critique that he offers against big bang cosmology is without a foundation. If God’s creation cannot reveal truth, then it also cannot reveal a defeater or even a mere challenge to any view of reality because it would be challenging a truth-claim. Challenges to truth claims, based upon God’s creation, is philosophically off-limits on Ken Ham’s view of the curse. But, lucky for Ken Ham, this myth has been biblically demonstrated to be false, so he can continue to bring his critiques, see them undermined, and be faced with what God’s creation actually reveals about its supernatural and awesome history.

Myth #20: Children are leaving the Church because they see the conflict between millions of years and the Bible.

Fact:
This myth capitalizes on Christian parents’ greatest fear: that their children will reject Christ. As we’ve seen, though, there is no actual conflict between the universe being billions of years old and the Bible. The reason children see conflict is because Ken Ham still perpetuates the idea that there is a conflict by consistently presenting these myths as fact. By perpetuating these myths, Ham is essentially presenting children the false dichotomy of “accept YEC or deny Christ.” God’s creation denies YEC (both deductively and abductively), yet God’s Word (and history) affirms Christ, so our children are caught between a rock and a hard place. Their sinful nature tends to make this decision easy, though: deny Christ. By presenting the false dichotomy of “YEC or atheism,” Ken Ham is unwittingly setting up our children for spiritual failure; it is this false dichotomy combined with their sin nature that is the reason our children are leaving the Church. Ken Ham perpetuates this problem then complains about it saying that his view is the cure, but if he is perpetuating the problem using a false dichotomy, false accusations against competing views, and a scientifically (the testimony of God’s creation, itself) demonstrably false alternative, how in the world can he hold the cure? Are our children leaving the Church because they see this conflict? Yep! But the conflict they see is a false conflict, perpetuated by Ken Ham. This is the only myth in this list that is true, but the myth testifies not against old-earth creationism but against the false dichotomy of “believe YEC or reject Christ” that Ken Ham claims that logically consistent people must choose between.

Conclusion – Post-Modernism Has Sneaked Into The Church

None of these myths are new. I remember hearing many of them in my teens when I first became aware of the origins debate within the Church. What is really disheartening, though, is that while Ken Ham has been corrected numerous times over the decades, he still insists on using these strawmen to argue against a view he disagrees with.

I recently finished reading the book “Time for Truth: Living Free In A World of Lies, Hype, and Spin” by Os Guinness. As I was reading through the part of this book where Guinness talks about the importance to the post-modernist of controlling the narrative (whether with truth or falsehood) in order to preserve and promote a relative or subjective “greater good,” I couldn’t help but think of how so many Christians misrepresent and communicate myths about views they disagree with, in an effort to defeat that view in the market place of ideas. As Christians, when we refuse to correct our own misrepresentations of a view we’re critical about, we treat truth with no more respect than does the post-modernist. Let’s ensure that we are not guilty of this ourselves.

How to Work through Doubt and Uncertainty

Philosophy of Science, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Matthew Slama

In the guide to Expression of Uncertainty in Measurement from JCGM, it defines uncertainty as meaning doubt. It specifically defines uncertainty of measurement as meaning doubt about the validity of the result of a measurement.

I recently presented at a technical conference on methods of computing measurement uncertainty and was thinking about the applicability of these concepts to other areas of knowledge. We don’t see doubt and uncertainty in science the same as we do in religion. In religion, it is often viewed as a bad thing. But in science, it is often viewed as a good thing. The reason for this is in scientific endeavors; you are trying to achieve an end result – knowledge. In the scientific community, when one realizes that there is uncertainty, that is not the end. You do not just drop everything and realize you can’t go anywhere. That would be antithetical to the human tour de force or spirit. No, when we arrive at some level of doubt or uncertainty, we create a new test, we develop new methods, we try harder, we think smarter. We realize that we want to know something and use our innovative and inventive mind to reach that goal. When we have spent that effort, we end up with more confidence and more certainty in our end goal – knowledge.

But in the religious community for some reason, we think that if we have doubt it is something unpardonable and we must stop doubting. So instead of taking some guidance from the thinking faculties that God gave us (reason), we take our guidance from the pre-enlightenment era. This is a cultural affliction in many believing groups and has caused many to fall away. I have seen it first-hand.

Why has religion not followed up with science in terms of how we behave and respond to uncertainty or doubt?
Why is it that we don’t see uncertainty or doubt in religion as a stepping stone to the next breakthrough in our lives?
Why do we not plunge forward with the resolve that investigating uncertainty and doubt will result in something better, something stronger, or something greater?

I think that this is from the sinful nature of man – slothfulness and fear.

I should note that the scientific community is far from perfect… I have seen this slothfulness and fear time and time again in the scientific community. I’ve seen organizations run tests with no uncertainty analysis and make decisions off faulty data. They didn’t address the doubt or rather uncertainty that they had their measurement. I’ve seen this go sour many times and cost corporations millions of dollars. It’s because people didn’t do the due diligence of finding out what their uncertainties really are. I get it. I really do. It’s difficult to be prudent. It takes a lot of effort to survey the weak points in our systems. Sometimes it takes great humility. It’s hard to put together one’s uncertainties and find out what and where you need to improve

However, I see clients that do the hard work of finding out where there are uncertainties are then address these areas of uncertainty. These corrective actions result in measurement and knowledge that has lower uncertainty and results in moving forward in confidence that they’re making the right decision for their product development. I think it’s time we do the same in the Christian church community.

To do this, we need communities that are able to open up and share the struggles that they’re going through in their relationship with God. It takes asking the hard personal questions.

Do I know the core concepts of Christianity? Write down a core Christian concept without consulting a guide. How did you do?
Can I defend my faith? Look up a common Atheist, Muslim, or Jewish attack on Christianity and answer it without consulting a guide. Afterward find a theological solution and learn it
Why do I think that Christ is God? Describe a historical fact that gives credence to the authenticity of Christ as God without consulting a guide
Are there emotional issues I have that prevent me from Evangelizing? Go and share Christ with someone. If you are too afraid, find out why. Ask why am I scared? Create one action step to work on that “why” and do it.
What emotional issues am I bringing into my faith? Take the survey howwelove.com to find any childhood links that shape how we love and receive love. Anxiety can also drive mad amounts of doubt. This and other mental illnesses can shape very impoverished views of God.
What distortions of Christianity do I believe? Think of our cultural Christianity that did not exist in 1st or 2nd century Christianity. Think of how our country’s wealth shapes our thinking. Are you in the 1% of the world? ~43% of Americans are ( data from ASEC data 2017-2018)
What habitual sins do I need to talk with someone about? Find a close friend, pastor, or counselor to confess and work through sins and emotional baggage.

That only happens in small groups and communities that are showing the love of God because it takes a lot of patience and love to work through other people’s issues (and our own). We need to work on these things if we want to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”

Yes, it is difficult, but it’s totally worth it.

This week, ask yourself one of the questions above and ask a friend a question. You might be surprised.

Clearing Up Cosmos: Fact and Fiction in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Landmark Series

2. Does God Exist?, Atheism, Philosophy of Science, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Terrell Clemmons

Douglas Ell became an atheist as a youth because of misinformation handed down to him in the name of science. It took him thirty years “to climb out of the atheist hole.” Sadly, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, the 2014 series brought to you by Neil deGrasse Tyson, Family Guy’s Seth MacFarlane, and a host of like-minded celebrity atheists, served up thirteen dazzling episodes containing similar misinformation. The series mixed, quoting Jay W. Richards, “one-part illuminating discussion of scientific discoveries, one part fanciful, highly speculative narrative, and one-part rigid ideology disguised as the assured results of scientific research.”

If you like science—science done well, that is—you’ll find invaluable help making sense out of Cosmos with The Unofficial Guide to Cosmos: Fact and Fiction in Neil deGrasse Tyson’s Landmark Science Series, an easily readable volume co-authored by Ell, Richards, David Klinghoffer, and Casey Luskin. The Unofficial Guide to Cosmos sorts out, episode by episode, the legitimate science from the liberal doses of materialist philosophy, revised history, and brazen ideology the makers of the series have carelessly (or intentionally?) stirred into the mix. Here’s a sampling:

Materialist Philosophy. Without acknowledging it, Cosmos presupposes a priori the materialist worldview. This should come no surprise. But the makers deceive themselves if they think they’ve dispensed with the religious. Scientific thought, according to Tyson, is the “light” that has “set us free.” And discovering our “long lost cousins” (organisms with similar DNA sequences) can be a “spiritual experience.”

Science History. With respect to history, there are errors of commission, a deceptive retelling of the Giordano Bruno affair, for example, clearly designed to paint Christianity as a mortal enemy of science. And there are errors of omission, such as the utter desacralization of many revered fathers of science (Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, and more), who were men of open Christian piety.

Ideology. In later episodes, Tyson lectures viewers about a dire need to save the planet, and he casts climate dissenters, who are “in the grip of denial,” as either ignorant or evil—this against a backdrop of cheering Nazis, to round out the propaganda package.

An especially insidious error of omission involves the makers’ failure to even hint that a vigorous debate rages today among scientists. “Cosmos has done a wonderful job of recalling how old mistaken ideas were overturned—ideas about geocentrism, stellar composition, continental drift…and more,” writes Luskin. “However, these are all tales from the annals of scientific history. Cosmos presents current scientific thinking as if it were all correct, with everything figured out…Tyson never discusses evidence that challenges the prevailing evolutionary view.” This is inexcusable.

Even scientists sympathetic to the makers’ agenda have pointed out serious flaws. “Cosmos is a fantastic artifact of scientific myth making,” wrote science historian Joseph Martin of Michigan State University. Yet, he defends the series, including the myth making. Why? Luskin parses Martin’s defense: because Martin thinks it’s permissible to lie if the lie helps “promote greater public trust in science.” Martin calls this kind of useful lie a “taradiddle.”

Luskin furthermore puts his finger on the million-dollar question the thinking public should be asking: If the science academy is condoning telling us ‘taradiddles’ to curry our trust in science, why should we blindly trust them when they claim that only their “science” can explain the origin of life and the cosmos?

Peripheral Visions: Even Science Needs More Than Science to Work Properly

Philosophy of Science, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Terrell Clemmons

Jon Headley has a confession to make. “I’m a 30-year-old man, but until a few years ago, I had no real understanding of the theory of evolution.”

“Ah,” the ex-Christian continues after relieving himself of this confessional burden, “it feels good to get that off my chest.” And with that, the musician and producer expounds upon his religious deconversion in a lengthy Medium.com essay titled “How I Learned to Trust Science: On the difference between dogma and evidence.” “I was taught that capital-S Science was our enemy,” Headley writes, and that there were “three big lies that Science had introduced to the world [that were] especially dangerous.” These are the Big Bang, an old earth, and evolution. As a kid, he was ready to argue with any science teacher because “I was sure of what I believed.”

But in truth, he now confesses, “I didn’t know s***.”

The essay starts out with a potentially helpful dismantling of what might be called “packaged” religion—that is, religious teachings pre-assembled somewhere up the hierarchy and disseminated with the expectation that they will be accepted on church authority. As he explains his upbringing, Headley paints a picture of insulated social groupthink, with the whole package propped up by confirmation bias.

He brings this up to compare and contrast “two foundational ways of looking at the world.” He was raised to look at the world by way of religion, he says, which is based on authority, dogma, and assumptions. The problem with this way, he continues, “was that I had been handed a set of beliefs, and I had never questioned them fully for myself.” By contrast, he now looks at the world by way of the scientific method, the key idea of which goes like this: “Any hypothesis about the world must be tested and proved by repeated experiment.”

He’s right about the problem he identifies with his first way, but sadly, after starting out so well, his second way leaves him in a place that is arguably worse. This is because, while the key principle of proving hypotheses by experimentation is reasonable and works well in the practice of science, it’s highly problematic when taken as the primary way of knowing truth about the world—which is what he has done.

Headley’s second way is what’s called scientism, and he is far from the only one succumbing to it. In Scientism and Secularism: Learning to Respond to a Dangerous Ideology (Crossway, 2018), J. P. Moreland defines scientism as “the view that the hard sciences—like chemistry, biology, physics, astronomy—provide the only genuine knowledge of reality.” Whether expressed in the strong form, which says that science and its methods provide the only valid route to knowledge, or in some weaker form that allows other ways of knowing to have some lesser validity (as long as they bow to science), scientism has become a part of the pseudo-intellectual air we breathe. I say “pseudo” because scientism isn’t intellectual, but is rather, at its very core, intellectually unsound.

From the Ivory Towers to the Streets

We’ll return to that point momentarily, but first, let’s look at a few scenarios that demonstrate how deeply this assumption of scientism has become embedded in the substrate of public life:

In academia: Sir A. J. Ayer, knighted professor of philosophy at Oxford University, taught that a proposition can be meaningful only if it’s true by definition (for example, “A = A”) or if it’s empirically verifiable, meaning testable by the scientific method. This is the reigning paradigm in Western education.
In government: Robert B. Reich, who served under Presidents Ford, Carter, Clinton, and Obama, said in 2004 that “the greatest conflict of the 21st century [will be] between those who believe in science, reason, and logic and those who believe that truth is revealed through Scripture and religious dogma.” Reich’s prognostication reflects the false narrative that knowledge through science and knowledge through revealed religion are inherently in conflict.
On the streets: The inaugural annual March for Science took place on Earth Day 2017, with an encyclopedic display of smarmy slogans such as, “Science is our Future,” “Science is Real,” “Defiance for Science” (complete with the raised-fist symbol for Communism), and “Science is the most precious thing we have.”

Celebrity scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson especially tipped his scientistic hand when he was asked about the politics of climate change in the era of Trump. He defended the authority of science to the point of expressing his exasperation with those who resist bowing to it: “What will it take for people to recognize that a community of scientists are learning objective truths about the natural world?” he asked CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria.

An emergent scientific truth, for it to become an objective truth, a truth that is true whether or not you believe in it, it requires more than one scientific paper. It requires a whole system of people’s research all leaning in the same direction, all pointing to the same consequences.

Do you hear the intellectual imperialism in that little sermonette? The high priesthood of science (with himself as a figurehead, of course) learns and then dictates to the rest of us what is objectively true. (This from a man who also wrote, “After the laws of physics, everything else is opinion,” but I digress.)

Hollywood got the memo. In the wake of the 2017 hurricane season, actress Jennifer Lawrence said it’s “scary to know—it’s been proven through science that human activity—that climate change is due to human activity and we continue to ignore it and the only voice that we really have is through voting.” Has Ms. Lawrence tested and proved the climate catastrophe hypothesis by experiment? No, as Derek Hunter clarifies in Outrage, Inc. How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism, and Hollywood (Broadside Books, 2018); “an exhaustive search of the Internet could find no record of Lawrence studying meteorology or weather or even studying beyond high school.” No, she believes in climate change based on the authority of science.

Similarly, what Headley has done, apparently blithely unaware, is merely exchange one way of knowing based on a claim to authority for the same way of knowing, only based on a different authority. Instead of “believing Religion,” he now “believes Science.” (On the upside, though, with this way you can announce your enlightened state of consciousness with a $35.00 t-shirt or $19.00 coffee mug from MarchForScienceShop.com, but again, I digress.)

Disambiguating Science from Scientism

In defense of the scientific-method way, Headley writes, “Science begins with no assumptions.” But this is utterly false because the very practice of science is itself based on several assumptions, and those assumptions are not scientific but philosophical.

Moreland identifies six presuppositions that underpin the empirical sciences. Here are the first four:

A natural world exists independent of any mind, language, or theory. In other words, reality consists of real entities and objects outside of observers. (We’re not in the Matrix.)
There is a rational order to the structure of that world.
Objective truth about that world exists.
Human sensory and cognitive faculties are capable of discovering and grasping truth about that world.

The remaining two have to do with ethical, mathematical, and logical truths, and Moreland shows how all six are necessarily a priori assumptions underlying the scientific enterprise that science itself cannot justify because they are philosophical, not scientific, in nature. “Just as the structure of a building cannot be more reliable than the foundation on which it rests,” he writes, “so the conclusions of science… cannot be more certain than the presuppositions of science.” Thus, in the end, scientism ends up being a foe, rather than a friend, of science.

This should suffice to demonstrate that scientism is unreliable as a comprehensive epistemology (“epistemology” means “way of knowing”), but it gets worse for Headley and his epistemological kin. Moreland identifies two more criticisms of scientism, the most devastating one being that scientism is, itself, self-refuting. Here’s how: Scientism asserts that the only propositions that are even capable of being true are scientific propositions. But as we have already seen, scientism is not itself a scientific proposition but is rather a philosophical proposition about science. Thus, on its own terms, scientism is incapable of being true.

But we’re still not done. There is one more coup de grace to be dealt. Scientism denies the existence of true, reasonable beliefs outside of science. And thus, all those moral posturings by Tyson and the marchers for science (and for “climate justice” and for whatever other “justice” cause you might see on a political placard) are rendered null and void according to scientism.

This is no laughing matter. Not only does scientism throw the very foundation of such essential values as human rights under the hegemonic steamroller of “Progress… because Science,” but it also blinds people to potentially liberating and more comprehensive paradigms for conceptualizing reality.

Astrophysicist Robert Jastrow conceded before his death in 2008 that the evidence he saw from Big Bang cosmology implies a creator, and that he found it hard to believe human life is “all a matter of atoms and molecules.” But because of what “my science tells me,” he could not incorporate the concept of a creator into his understanding of reality. It was a situation he found unsatisfactory. “I feel I’m missing something. But I will not find out what I am missing within my lifetime.”

Indeed, given his epistemological constraints, he could not. With apologies to 1970s music fans, Jastrow was so close, and yet so far. Since he couldn’t know God through the methods of science, he found himself, by his own admission, “in a completely hopeless bind.”

Restoring the Mind by Restoring Philosophy First

Whatever Headley was told in his youth about science, being an enemy is false. None of the empirical disciplines we call science are anyone’s enemy. Neither are the Big Bang, an old earth, or evolution. It is the untested, unproven presumption of scientism that is the free mind’s enemy and the dogma that should be dropped.

Still, Headley’s essay raises important questions for parents and churches about how to apprehend and propagate truth in an information-glutted society. Authoritative claims to knowledge won’t cut it (and never should have, anyway) in the absence of other reasons to believe.

“Religion often attracts people by selling certainty,” Headley says, but we don’t know anything for certain. Instead, he recommends “a large dose of humility.” Because “we are all human beings, with limited and treacherous brains, trying to figure out an infinite and complex universe that is way bigger than we are.”

And that, indeed, is excellent advice. All of us would do well to take this wise counsel and direct it toward the self-appointed, certainty-selling high priests and priestesses of scientism.

Yale computer science professor David Gelernter expresses doubts about Darwinism

Philosophy of Science, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Wintery Knight

How did life begin?

I had to learn about David Gelernter when I was doing my Masters in computer science. We studied his book “Mirror Worlds”. A few weeks ago, I blogged about his impressions of the difficulty in forming a simple protein by chance – something that naturalistic mechanisms would have to do in order to avoid intelligent agency as a cause in nature. He found it very unlikely. But there’s more!

Recently, my friend Terrell sent me a video featuring Peter Robinson (who hosts the splendid Uncommon Knowledge show out of Stanford University), and three interesting people. First, there was Dr. Stephen C. Meyer, who is one of my two favorite thinkers. I’ve blogged on his work about the origin of life and the Cambrian explosion here many times. Then, there was Dr. David Berlinski, a secular Jewish professor of mathematics, who has studied origins issues. And then Dr. David Gelernter, who teaches computer science at Yale University, and is a legend in computer science research.

Here’s the video: (H/T Terrell)

Here is an article by Jennifer Kabbany in The College Fix about the video.

She writes about his recent Claremont Review of Books article, as well as the interview above:

In May, the Claremont Review of Books published a column by Gelernter headlined “Giving Up Darwin.” In it, he explained how his readings and discussions of Darwinian evolution and its competing theories, namely intelligent design, have convinced him Darwin had it wrong.

In particular, he cited Stephen Meyer’s 2013 book Darwin’s Doubt as well as The Deniable Darwin by David Berlinski. The professor expanded on his views in an interview with Stanford University’s Hoover Institution that was published last week.

Gelernter stops short of fully embracing intelligent design, both in his essay and during his interview. He said in his interview he sees intelligence in Earth’s design, and has no quarrel with ID proponents, but notes the world a mess, its suffering far outweighs its goodness.

“My argument is with people who dismiss intelligent design without considering, it seems to me — it’s widely dismissed in my world of academia as some sort of theological put up job — it’s an absolutely serious scientific argument,” Gelernter said during his interview. “In fact it’s the first and most obvious and intuitive one that comes to mind. It’s got to be dealt with intellectually.”

I found this part the most interesting, since we are seeing so much intolerance from the secular left, whenever anyone disagrees with their dogma:

Gelernter said he likes many of his colleagues at Yale, that they are his friends, but when he looks at “their intellectual behavior, what they have published — and much more importantly what they tell their students — Darwinism has indeed passed beyond a scientific argument as far as they are concerned. You take your life in your hands to challenge it intellectually. They will destroy you if you challenge it.”

“Now, I haven’t been destroyed, I am not a biologist, and I don’t claim to be an authority on this topic,” Gelernter added, “but what I have seen in their behavior intellectually and at colleges across the West is nothing approaching free speech on this topic. It’s a bitter, fundamental, angry, outraged rejection [of intelligent design], which comes nowhere near scientific or intellectual discussion. I’ve seen that happen again and again.”

Gelernter acknowledges “I am attacking their religion and I don’t blame them for being all head up, it is a big issue for them.”

Dr. Gelernter cited three arguments in his article: the origin of life, and the Cambrian explosion, and genetic entropy. In the first two problems, there is a problem of huge amounts of biological information coming into being. We know that software engineers can write code like that, but there is no Darwinian mechanism for writing that much code and that short of a time period. The third problem shows that Darwinian mechanisms not only don’t produce functional code – they actually break it down.

I’ve covered both of the arguments before on this blog, but if you really want the details, you should pick up the books that convinced Dr. Gelernter: Dr. Stephen C. Meyer’s “Signature in the Cell” and “Darwin’s Doubt”. Each book tackles one of the arguments. For the third problem, a good book is Dr. Michael Behe’s “Darwin Devolves”. Even if you just read something about each book, then you’ll know about the arguments for intelligent causes being the best explanation for the history of life on this planet.

Original Blog Source: http://bit.ly/2ZF1Sll

August 13, 2019/by Guest

Safeguarding Yours from the Modern Cult of Experts

Philosophy of Science, Theology and Christian Apologetics

By Terrell Clemmons

[Although this essay was written at another time, Cross Examined considers its content to be current and relevant to share]

Few years ago, Current Biology, a research journal published by Cell Press, carried an article titled, “The Negative Association between Religiousness and Children’s Altruism across the World.” The report, authored by seven psychologists from four continents, related the findings of experiments with approximately 1,200 children ages 5-12 from six nations. The study was funded by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation, Science of Philanthropy Initiative.

The article highlighted three findings: (1) that children from religious households are less altruistic than children from secular households, (2) that they are more harsh and punitive than children from secular households, and (3) that their parents don’t see them as less altruistic and more punitive but rather as kinder than other children in terms of empathy and sensitivity to injustice. “Together these results reveal the similarity across countries in how religion negatively influences children’s altruism, challenging the view that religiosity facilitates prosocial behavior,” the summary concluded. In other words, if you’ll pardon the snark, kids exposed to religion are anti-social, and their parents are clueless. Religion is a social pathogen.

As you can imagine, this was a windfall for the secular press. “Religious upbringing linked to less altruism,” announced Science Daily. “Children from nonreligious homes are more generous, altruistic than observant ones,” trumpeted Newsday. And the UK Guardian‘s header bordered on the childish: “Religious children are meaner than their secular counterparts.” Science Codex at least showed enough restraint to headline its report in the form of a question, “Does religion make kids less generous?”

Well, does it? Science said it. Does that settle it?

Of course, it doesn’t. As apologist Frank Turek says, science doesn’t say anything. Scientists do. And because scientists, science writers, and mainstream journalists are all fallible human beings, a level-headed response calls for some critical thinking every time a new finding is being heralded in the name of science.

Experts, Shmexperts

Critical thinking begins with examining exactly what is being said and by what authority. Let’s start with the question of authority. In Shmexperts: How Ideology and Power Politics Are Disguised as Science, Marc Fitch addresses what he calls “the modern myth of experts.” He begins by defining “experts” for his specific purpose. (Personally, I like “shmexperts” better, but I will go with his terminology for now.) First, an expert is not the working professional informed by relevant experience and skill—the man or woman “whose motivation in their work is to produce a result: an actual, testable piece of hardware or a theory that can be proven empirically.” A professional whose product is subject to external standards in this way is not what Fitch is talking about. Second, he’s not necessarily referring to intellectuals—those who make their living in the realm of ideas, although the lines between intellectuals and experts are apt to get blurred.

Experts, for Fitch’s treatment, are primarily defined by their transgression of the boundaries inherent to their fields of expertise. For example, a cell biologist may have a perfectly good, morally sound opinion on the social advisability of religion-based models of childrearing. Or he may be a cold-blooded moral monster. The point is, knowledge in the realm of science does not make him a credible authority in the realm of values. This should not need pointing out, but apparently, it does. Whenever anyone makes statements about non-material realms of thought, or pushes a moral argument, under the banner of science, then the science is not being used in its proper context. It is being coopted to advance an agenda.

When expert “authorities” advance an agenda this way, they are “avoiding an ethical, moral, or political argument,” Fitch points out, and are imbuing “the realm of human ideals with the faulty notion that somehow chemical, biological, or physical sciences can offer an answer to the human condition.” When scientists do this, they are not acting as scientists. They are acting as philosopher kings. The same goes for the gullible (or complicit) media granting them platforms from which to reign.

Critical Examination 101

Now let’s take a look at the Current Biology report on children, religion, and altruism. The first question that ought to come to mind is, What exactly does religion have to do with biology? What has philanthropy to do with biology? Or altruism? Or generosity? Of course, the answer is nothing. Although the study itself was done by psychologists, its publication in a biomedical journal raises a glaring red flag. Realms of thought have been mixed, boundaries blurred.

Now, let’s look at how the experts reached their findings. To assess altruism, they conducted an experiment called the Dictator Game. Children were allowed to choose ten stickers, which they were told: “are yours to keep.” They were also told that not all the children in their group would get stickers because the experimenters didn’t have time for everyone. The children were then given an opportunity to share the stickers they were given, right there on the spot. The experimenters counted the number of stickers each child shared, and that number became the measure of that child’s altruism. So, if a child opted to take his stickers home to share with his little sister or his buddy next door, he did not count as altruistic.

Here’s how they measured moral sensitivity. The children were shown short videos depicting mean actions—one child shoving another, for example. Then their reactions were somehow categorized according to how they judged the mean act they’d been shown. So if the same child exhibited judgment when he saw a boy shove a girl to the ground—if he said, Hey, that’s not fair; that boy should be punished! For example—then he counted as harsh and punitive.

Technically, that may be accurate, but ponder the perverse moral reasoning by which moral sensitivity is being assessed here. Those children exhibiting an indifference to injustice are being appraised as the “nice” ones, the pro-social ones. Meanwhile, those who censured meanness counted as, well, mean.

Should nothing be punished? We might ask. Toward whom should the child have shown sensitivity? Toward the boy doing the shoving? Or toward the girl who was shoved? Wouldn’t a fair-minded observer say the child objecting to meanness is actually more sensitive to injustice than the one who’s indifferent?

To be sure, these are judgment calls. And that is precisely the point. Judgment calls were factory-installed into this study. Either the experts knew it and have not been upfront about it, or they’re blithely clueless regarding their own massive bias.

How they defined “religiousness” is equally overripe for critical deconstruction, but you get the point.

Bad Science

If psychologists want to try to map people’s altruism or generosity or philanthropy in relation to their religiosity—however, they choose to define and quantify such non-exact entities—that’s fine. They can define their terms and presuppositions and have at it. But “The Negative Association between Religiousness and Children’s Altruism across the World” is, at best, bad psychology. And whatever it is, it certainly isn’t biology. It might better be called secular snobbery masquerading as objective science.

Cell Pressbills itself as “a leading publisher of cutting-edge biomedical research and reviews.” How such bunk qualified as biomedical research is a question every self-respecting biologist should be asking every sitting member of Current Biology‘s editorial board. All 103 of them. Anyone with a working baloney-detector can see the egregious transgression of boundaries.

In his book, Fitch touches on several agenda-driven narratives that have been or are (still) being foisted on the public by “experts”: population control; the supposed scientific basis for a host of “victimhood” narratives; the politics of health care; pot legalization; and—the granddaddy of global political agendas—environmentalism. And there are others that he doesn’t take up, but we should: psychiatry, for example, and the deluge of sex and gender “science” flooding the pipeline. To avoid subversion by shmexperts, everything must be put through a critical filter—everything.

Bad Religion

There’s a lot at stake. The ramifications of the modern cult of experts include:

A heightened generalized anxiety. How does one know whom among the “authorities” or what out of the swarming buzz of opinions to believe? The cacophony is enough to tempt anyone to tune it all out because it’s just too hard or too upsetting or too confusing. But tuning out leads to—

A softening of the mind. Widespread outsourcing of thought—and worse, of moral reasoning—renders the public increasingly subject to demagoguery, fear-mongering, and mob mentality. Groupthink sets in like dry rot and totalitarian thought control follows. This creates an environment hostile to sustaining basic political liberties. We already see a soft tyranny suffocating freedom of thought and conscience at the university.

A devaluing of the individual. When awe-inspiring reverence is conferred on those with degrees and titles over the non-academic-but-supremely-practical working Joe, a gap—real or perceived—widens between the intellectual haves and have-nots. This serves no one’s best interest. It breeds narcissism among the elite and a menacing mix of servile dependency and brooding discontent among the rest.

An outsourcing of salvation. The media cite and defer to experts who, for various reasons, sow fears and recommend government interventions. Politicians for their part are happy to promote policies they see as contributing to their immortal legacy. And they will, of course, need the experts to administer the policies, so the ruling class expands. “We rely on a small troupe of Chicken Littles,” Fitch writes, “each telling the world that the sky is falling, the earth is warming, markets are collapsing, diseases are spreading, and people are starving. They present the world of death as a great beast slouching toward your homes [and] they call upon the government to intercede and take further control to alleviate the ‘crisis.'”

It is just assumed that we unthinking, unwashed masses need the anointed elites to save our poor, helpless souls from the big bad world out there. Fitch doesn’t frame it in religious terms, but at some point, the would-be ruling class does assume the role of in loco savior and lord. Except that it can never save. It can only lord.

Sound Minds, Sound Society

Fitch offers some good suggestions for filtering shmexpert fare. Learn to separate empirical data from ethics and morality, and the hard sciences from the inexact, soft humanities. In many cases, bad science doesn’t so much need to be countered as it needs to be exposed to the light of scrutiny and deconstructed, as we have done with the Current Biology mashup on religiousness and altruism.

Most of all, learn to think in broader worldview terms. It is true that the world is not a safe place, and there is a role for government and legitimate experts to play in meeting the challenges people face. And while it is also true that we all stand in need of a savior, no government nor any shmexpert is up to that task.

Terrell Clemmons is a freelance writer and blogger on apologetics and matters of faith.

This article was originally published at salvomag.com: http://bit.ly/33l73Jm

August 12, 2019/by Guest

The Virtues Of Science?

Moral Values: Not Scientifically Discovered And Not Created By Man

“If It Can’t Be Verified By My Physical Senses, I Can’t Know It.”

But What About Moral Diversity?

Ethical Truths Are More Certain Than Many Scientific Claims

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The Cambrian Explosion

The Tree Turned Upside Down

The Common Objection By Darwinists

Conclusions From The Cambrian Explosion

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Science -vs- Scientists

The Scientists We Trust

Complicated Answers

Economics is a Science

Political Science

Sociology is Science

Defining Science

The Queen of the Sciences

Holistic Science

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Introduction: Science vs. Christianity?

Science vs. Atheism

The Principle of Uniformity vs. Atheism

The Laws of Logic vs. Atheism

The Laws of Physics vs. Atheism

Our Sense Organs And The Brain vs. Atheism

Conclusion

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Introduction

Now, on to the myths of Old Earth Creationism!

Myth #1: The debate is not about whether the universe is young or old, it is about whether you believe God’s Word or not.

Myth #2: Big bang cosmology is based on naturalism.

Myth #3: You cannot see “age” in nature.

Myth #4: The same people who promote big bang cosmology deny the virgin birth of Jesus.

Myth #5: People only debate the meaning of the word “yom” in Genesis 1 because they want to fit millions of years into the Bible.

Myth #6: The idea that the universe is young has been well-established in Church history; therefore, it is true.

Myth #7: Believing that the universe is old undermines God’s Word.

Myth #8: You weren’t there to witness the creation; therefore, you cannot know what happened except by an eyewitness testimony (God’s Word).

Myth #9: Only the YEC believes the eyewitness of God’s Word.

Myth #10: Animal death and suffering are incompatible with the all-powerful and all-loving God of the Bible.

Myth #11: Having animal death before The Fall makes God responsible for moral evil.

Myth #12: If you can understand the general message of the Gospel without the scholarship, then you can understand the details of creation without scholarship.

Myth #13: OEC takes something from outside the Bible to use it to reinterpret God’s Word.

Myth #14: OEC tries to fit millions of years into the Bible because the secularist needs it for evolution.

Myth #15: Allowing nature to interpret Scripture opens the doors to immoral, secular views (including gay marriage).

Myth #16: Allowing nature to interpret Scripture undermines the authority of God’s Word.

Myth #17: OEC is a compromise in the Church.

Myth #18: OECs talk about nature as the 67th book of the Bible.

Myth #19: The creation is cursed; therefore, it cannot be trusted to reveal the truth.

Myth #20: Children are leaving the Church because they see the conflict between millions of years and the Bible.

Conclusion – Post-Modernism Has Sneaked Into The Church

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Restoring the Mind by Restoring Philosophy First

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Critical Examination 101

Bad Science

Bad Religion

Sound Minds, Sound Society