Tag Archive for: Intelligent Design

Let’s Help Harvard Understand Intelligent Design

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Last week, my wife and I spent an afternoon at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, in Cambridge, MA, near where we live. We both were generally impressed by the exhibitions, particularly the dinosaur section, and would recommend the museum to anyone visiting Boston. I was, however, quite disappointed to see this notice at the entrance to the display on evolution:

It was disappointing to see the inaccurate representation of intelligent design (ID), along with the poor scientific epistemology.

A “Super-Natural Explanation”?

First, proponents of ID have long stressed that ID, in its purest sense, does not necessarily postulate a supernatural cause but is consistent with a natural or supernatural intelligence.

Furthermore, I would contend that the natural / supernatural distinction is problematic. What precisely is meant when a phenomenon is described as supernatural, and by what set of criteria is it distinguished from the natural? Often, the word “supernatural” is used to describe the capacity to perform miracles, defined as violations of natural law. I would, however, offer a more nuanced definition of a miracle, which is that a miracle describes an interruption in the way nature normally behaves when left to itself. A miracle does not violate natural law, because natural law only describes what happens when nature is left to itself – not what happens when there is an intervention by an external agent. I am not by any means the first to define a miracle in these terms. Indeed, the atheist philosopher John Mackie in his classic book, The Miracle of Theism, defines a miracle along similar lines.[1] As agents ourselves, we have the capability of interrupting the normal course of nature, determined by natural law. When I consciously choose to catch a ball with my hands, I am interrupting the trajectory it would have otherwise taken if left to itself. Agency itself is not governed by natural law, nor can it be reduced to material constituents. Human free will — my belief in which I take to be strongly justified by direct acquaintance — is, in my view, utterly incompatible with a materialistic reductionist perspective on the mind. Since, in my judgment, the strong burden of proof required to demonstrate that the strong appearance of free agency is merely illusory has not been met, this provides a strong prima facie justification for believing the mind to not be reducible to material components. Few would want to use the term “supernatural” to describe the human mind. A more helpful distinction, then, is between material and non-material causes. But non-material causes — assuming my judgment about the non-reducibility of agency to be correct — are already demonstrably a part of the natural world, since all of us have minds. Thus, the fact that ID postulates a non-material entity cannot be used to exclude ID from the natural sciences. Moreover, if our epistemology arbitrarily excludes one possible answer to an inquiry a priori, there is a real danger of being led to an incorrect conclusion about the natural world.

“Observation”

Second, the invocation of an unobservable entity should not be a demarcating factor that renders ID unscientific, for that would exclude other scientific disciplines, such as particle and nuclear physics, as well. Unobservable entities can often be detected by their effects, even without direct observation. For example, black holes are not directly observable since they do not emit electromagnetic radiation that can be detected with telescopes. Their existence and presence, however, is inferred by the effects that they exert on nearby matter, since gas flowing around a black hole increases in temperature and emits radiation that can be detected (their gravitational effects on surrounding objects, such as nearby stars,  and the bending of light passing by a black hole, can also reveal the presence of a black hole).

“Testing”

Third, ID is testable in the same way that other hypotheses purporting to explain events in the distant past (including evolution by natural selection) are tested — by the historical abductive method of inference to the best explanation.[2] Given that functionally specific information content is, in every other realm of experience, habitually associated with conscious activity and no other category of explanation has been demonstrated to be causally sufficient to account for its origin, ID is the most causally adequate explanation of the relevant data.

“Predictions”

Fourth, a scientific theory can be well justified even if it does not make strong predictions; it just needs to render the evidence significantly more probable than it would have otherwise been. For example, the hypothesis that you were in the vicinity of a nuclear plant does not strongly predict that you will have radioactive poisoning (few such workers suffer this). But if you did have radioactive poisoning, it would be significant evidence that you were in the vicinity of a nuclear plant since that data is more expected (or, less surprising) given the truth of the hypothesis than given its falsehood. Thus, even if ID only weakly predicts the observed data, it can still be strongly justified if the data is extremely unlikely if ID is false. ID, I would argue, also has a reasonably high intrinsic plausibility (what probability theorists call prior probability) given the independent evidence of there being a mind behind the universe who has an interest in creating complex life (that is, the evidence of cosmic fine tuning[3] and prior environmental fitness.[4] It shouldn’t be too surprising, then, if the data also indicate that life was purposely brought about.

An “Inherent Conflict”?

Fifth, ID is not postulated because there is a perceived incompatibility between evolution and religion, but rather because we understand it to be the best interpretation of the scientific evidence. That being said, the “many scientists and religious leaders” who “do not perceive an inherent conflict between religion and the scientific theory of evolution” are correct that God and naturalistic evolution are logically compatible. However, naturalistic evolution, if true, would constitute significant evidence against theism and by extension religion. Why? First, if the conclusion that teleology best explains biological phenomena is evidence for theism, it necessarily follows that the falsehood of this conclusion would be evidence against theism. Second, atheism, and in particular naturalism (which, I would contend, is the most consistent version of atheism), strongly predicts that there be a naturalistic evolutionary account of life’s origins and development on earth. However, this is significantly less well predicted by theism. Therefore, though not by itself sufficient grounds on which to reject theism, unguided evolution — being more surprising given theism than given atheism — would, if true, constitute significant evidence against theism.

It is unfortunate that the administrators of the Harvard Museum of Natural History seem to have failed to do their due diligence to understand the claims of ID, and how its advocates propose to test it, before dismissing it as being outside of the scope of science.

References: 

[1] John L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism: Arguments For and Against the Existence of God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), kindle.

[2] Stephen Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (San Francisco: HarperOne, 2010).

[3] Geraint F. Lewis & Luke A. Barnes, A Fortunate Universe: Life in a Finely Tuned Cosmos (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).

[4] Michael Denton, The Miracle of Man: The Fine Tuning of Nature for Human Existence (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2022).

Recommended Resources:

I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Paperback), and (Sermon) by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek 

Stealing From God by Dr. Frank Turek (Book, 10-Part DVD Set, STUDENT Study Guide, TEACHER Study Guide)

Macro Evolution? I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be a Darwinist (DVD Set), (MP3 Set) and (mp4 Download Set) by Dr. Frank Turek

Science Doesn’t Say Anything, Scientists Do by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD, Mp3 and Mp4)

 

Dr. Jonathan McLatchie is a Christian writer, international speaker, and debater. He holds a Bachelor’s degree (with Honors) in forensic biology, a Masters’s (M.Res) degree in evolutionary biology, a second Master’s degree in medical and molecular bioscience, and a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology. Currently, he is an assistant professor of biology at Sattler College in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. McLatchie is a contributor to various apologetics websites and is the founder of the Apologetics Academy (Apologetics-Academy.org), a ministry that seeks to equip and train Christians to persuasively defend the faith through regular online webinars, as well as assist Christians who are wrestling with doubts. Dr. McLatchie has participated in more than thirty moderated debates around the world with representatives of atheism, Islam, and other alternative worldview perspectives. He has spoken internationally in Europe, North America, and South Africa promoting an intelligent, reflective, and evidence-based Christian faith.

This article was originally published at Evolution News & Science Today (http://bit.ly/45uuqkO).

This version was originally posted at: https://bit.ly/46L71xL

 

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The Role of Intelligent Design in UNFORGETTING GOD: An Interview with Barry Arrington about his new book

Barry Arrington is a friend, colleague, and top-flight attorney who is deeply interested in how worldviews impact our society. He and I collaborated for close to two decades on the intelligent design blog UncommonDescent.com, which I started in 2005, which Barry managed for more than a decade as a 501(c)(3), and which we finally archived in 2023. In its first decade, Uncommon Descent was the premier blog for advancing the intelligent design movement, though in more recent years other blogs surpassed it in that role, notably EvolutionNews.org.

On May 6, 2025, Barry published with Inkwell Press a fascinating new book titled Unforgetting God: Defeating Culture-Destroying Materialism Through Christian Renewal (available at Amazon here). Barry’s perspective as a Christian, intelligent design proponent, and seasoned litigator (he has brought cases before the US Supreme Court) has given him a useful perspective from which to understand how materialism affects and infects our culture. Intelligent design provides an important tool in his arsenal for defeating materialism. I therefore proposed to him that we do an interview relating his book to intelligent design. Barry graciously agreed and gave the following interview.

Tell us about Barry Arrington.

I grew up in Texas and graduated from the University of Texas Law School (Austin) in 1986. I was admitted to the bar in 1987 and since then I have practiced mainly in complex civil litigation, including constitutional law, and nonprofit law.

I have been an allied attorney with the Alliance for Defending Freedom since 1994. I served in the Colorado legislature in the 1990s.

Some of my cases have been in the news. In 1999, I began representing several of the families whose children were killed at Columbine. In 2020, I represented a Colorado church in a case that went to the United States Supreme Court. We won that case and succeeded in opening the churches, which Colorado had shut down during COVID. I discuss my experiences with those cases in the book.

I have been involved in the intelligent design movement for many years. I ran the intelligent design website Uncommon Descent (UncommonDescent.com) for well over a decade, which in its heyday was the largest intelligent design discussion site on the internet. In 2023, we decided to shut UD down and archive it at the Discovery Institute’s website.

Currently, I have a case pending in which I sued the State of Colorado over its law making it illegal for licensed professionals to counsel teens struggling with gender dysphoria in any way other than “trans affirming.” The Supreme Court has agreed to hear that case and oral argument will be in the fall.

What was your purpose in writing Unforgetting God?

In 2020, I wrote a post for Uncommon Descent with the intentionally provocative title “Critical Theory is Certainly Correct.” The first sentence of the article is: “Indeed, it is more than merely true; it is an inexorable logical certainty if the premises of the theorists are true.” In that article, I went on to write:

“Critical theory is applied metaphysical materialism. Materialism posits that the physical is all there is. Its central premise is this: In the beginning there were particles, and the particles were in motion, and in the entire universe there is and never has been and never will be anything other than particles in motion. This means that human beings are not special. You and your family and your friends are also merely particles in motion, reducible to the chemicals that make up your bodies. Humans are clever hairless apes with no more ultimate significance than rocks. Yes, they have come up with this thing called ‘morality.’ But morality is an illusion foisted on us by material evolutionary forces because it gives us a reproductive advantage. Morality in any objective transcendent sense of the word not only does not exist, it cannot exist. There are no moral or immoral rocks. And humans — in their essence — are in the same category as rocks. Both rocks and humans are mere amalgamations of burnt out star dust. If this is true, it has profound implications for just about everything. One of those implications is that there are no universal truths guiding our relations in society. There is only power and those who have it and those who do not.”

That article in UD contained the seeds that would ultimately grow into the book Unforgetting God. The book is about premises. If materialist premises are true, then certain conclusions logically follow. This radically secular philosophy has come to dominate the minds of Western cultural elites and is at the root of tribalism in our politics, lawlessness in our courts, chaos in our universities, and the crisis of meaning rampaging among young people.

In my thirty-eight years of practicing law, I have had a front row seat watching materialism literally destroy lives and hollow out our once vibrant cultural institutions. In Unforgetting God, I try to shine a light on the path out of the soul-numbing materialist wilderness in which we find ourselves. The book is about demonstrating that materialism is false, even absurd, and pointing the way to a loving God who is our best hope for personal salvation and cultural renewal.

The cover of your book is striking. Tell us about that.

The cover features Friedrich Nietzsche and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn holding opposite ends of a rope as they play tug of war for the soul of the West. Nietzsche famously said “God is dead.” In contrast, Solzhenitsyn was a committed theist who called for spiritual renewal.

The title of the book is an allusion to Solzhenitsyn’s speech when he accepted the Templeton Prize in 1983. He said that he had spent 50 years working on the history of the Russian Revolution. He had read hundreds of books and interviewed hundreds of witnesses to try to gain an understanding of that unspeakable human tragedy. Then he concluded:

“But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some 60 million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: ‘Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.’”

Even a casual perusal of the headlines on any given day reveals that in the West, we too are rapidly forgetting God. The purpose of the book is to call for a reversal of that trend before it is too late.

You mentioned Columbine. How does that tragic event figure into your book?

This too has its roots in a UD article I wrote many years ago called “Darwin at Columbine.” Eric Harris was the leader in the Columbine shooting. Dylan Klebold was merely a follower. In the course of representing my clients whose children were killed that day, I spent hundreds of hours investigating Harris’s writings as well as his video and audio recordings. Contrary to popular myth, Harris was not insane. Nor was he a victim of bullying out for revenge. Harris was an intelligent young man who had even studied philosophy. And as I write in the book:

“[Harris] took the philosophical ideas he learned very seriously indeed. He often alluded to those ideas in his journals and recordings. That’s how we know that Harris affirmatively believed those philosophical ideas justified his actions. Unfortunately for those he murdered and maimed, those ideas were a toxic miasma of Charles Darwin funneled through Friedrich Nietzsche. . . . If there is one quotation that sums up Harris’s views, it is probably this one: ‘F**k money, f**k justice, f**k morals, f**k civilized, f**k rules, f**k laws . . . DIE manmade words . . . people think they apply to everything when they don’t/can’t. There’s no such thing as True Good or True evil, it’s all relative to the observer. It’s just all nature, chemistry, and math.’ Harris was a deeply committed materialist who believed that ‘morality’ is just a word; there is no such thing as good or evil, and everything ultimately reduces to chemistry and math.”

Harris took materialist evolution very seriously. It was not a coincidence that the shirt he wore the day of the shooting had “natural selection” emblazoned across the front. He believed he had evolved into a Nietzschean Übermensch, and as such he had no duty to respect his fellow students’ right to life.

Obviously, the overwhelming majority of materialists are not mass killers. My point is that Harris was taught to reject the existence of objective good and evil. The only difference between Harris and other materialists is that he acted on his metaphysical beliefs and they usually do not.

How does Darwin make an appearance in your book?

In the opening chapter, I discuss how the late philosopher Daniel Dennett compared the materialism that came to dominate the minds of Western intellectuals following the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species to a “universal acid” that ate “through just about every traditional concept” in Western culture and left in its wake “a revolutionized world-view.” Materialist evolution was not a new concept in 1859. The Greeks and the Romans had discussed forms of the theory (such as Epicurus and Lucretius).

Darwin’s genius lay in overcoming the fatal flaw in the classical theory — its prior invocation of sheer randomness to account for the exquisite design of living things. Darwin proposed a seemingly plausible materialistic explanation — natural selection acting on random variations in deep time — to account for the apparent design of living things. And the rest is history. As Richard Dawkins remarked in The Blind Watchmaker, he could not imagine being an atheist prior to 1859, the year Darwin’s Origin of Species appeared in print. But for Dawkins, everything changed in 1859 — Darwin now made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.

It is no coincidence that belief in metaphysical materialism came to dominate the minds of Western elites in the decades after Origin of Species was published.

Describe the place of intelligent design in your book.

In the first third of the book, I draw on my experience as a lawyer and former legislator to discuss materialism’s corrosive impact on culture, politics, and law, especially constitutional law. I then make a plea for a reevaluation of the premises underlying the materialist worldview. I write:

“As late as the 1980s, when materialism’s iron grip on the minds of intellectuals was at its zenith, it would have probably been pointless for me to write a book like this. To be sure, many people continued to believe in God, but that belief was under assault from a militant and ascendant materialist elite that accused believers of clinging to superstitious myths. Times have changed, and we live in an exciting intellectual age for theists in general and Christians in particular. The materialist edifice has been crumbling for some time now. Nevertheless, while materialism is no longer intellectually ascendant, it remains culturally dominant, and the cultural course materialists have set us on is fraught with danger. Destruction and chaos lie at the end of our current path.”

I urge my readers to reevaluate the case for theism generally and for Christianity in particular. As Stephen Meyer discussed in his masterful Return of the God Hypothesis, which I cite extensively, ID can play a role in pointing to theism generally. Chapter six is in many ways the heart of the book. I sketch [out] many ID arguments and point to the work of ID theorists for more in-depth analysis. These ID arguments include how Big Bang cosmology, cosmic fine tuning, and the staggering specified complexity of living things point to a creator. Along the way, in addition to Meyer, I discuss Bill Dembski’s The Design Inference, Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box, Jim Tour’s work in the origin-of-life area, Douglas Axe’s work in protein folds, Granville Sewell’s insights into complexity theory and the work of other ID luminaries.

What convinced you that intelligent design is true?

In The Blind Watchmaker, Richard Dawkins wrote that “The complexity of living organisms is matched by the elegant efficiency of their apparent design.” Dawkins went on to argue in that book that this appearance of design is an illusion, but the point is that even an arch-atheist like Dawkins concedes that living things at least appear to be designed.

Is that appearance of design really an illusion as Dawkins argues? I have always been skeptical of that claim. So, to answer your question, I probably always had a deeply held intuition that intelligent design is true. The more important question in my mind is, “When did you come to realize there are solid empirical grounds confirming that intuition?”

For years I endured a constant onslaught of Darwinian/materialist indoctrination as I made my way through the education system. I had resisted that indoctrination but I constantly wondered whether I was just being stubborn. All the “smart” people believed in materialist evolution. Phil Johnson’s seminal book Darwin on Trial was, for me, epochal. Like many people, Darwin on Trial was my first introduction to the ID movement, and thirty-five years later, I still remember the excitement I felt reading that book.

Johnson demonstrated that the empirical support for the modern synthesis (neo-Darwinism) is really quite unimpressive. Then, in a stunning passage that literally changed my life, he provided an insight that finally made it all make sense. Why do “smart” people believe such a weak theory? Religion. I incorporated Johnson’s insight in the following passage in Unforgetting God:

“One of the consequences of a fervent religious commitment to materialism . . . is the belief that any evidence is a stunning confirmation of the materialist origins myth. Phillip Johnson pointed out that if materialism is true, ‘then some materialistic theory of evolution has to be true simply as a matter of logical deduction, regardless of the evidence. That theory will necessarily be at least roughly like neo-Darwinism, in that it will have to involve some combination of random changes and law-like processes.’”

Belief in Darwinian evolution is not a conclusion based on the evidence. It is a logical deduction from metaphysical materialism.

That was in the early 1990s. In the decade or so that followed, I continued my investigation into ID. At that time, Richard John Neuhaus was still in charge of First Things, and he provided an early forum for ID proponents. I remember Stephen Meyer’s “DNA and Other Designs,” in which he set forth an early version of the ideas that would appear in his book Signature in the Cell, having a particularly powerful impact. During this time, Dembski’s and Behe’s work also came to my attention. So, to answer the question, while I always believed design at an intuitive level, the ID pioneers confirmed my belief at an empirical level.

Opposition to intelligent design is a proving ground for atheism. How did your leadership for close to 20 years at Uncommon Descent in defending intelligent design against atheist critics help shape Unforgetting God?

Indeed. The late Cornell atheist professor William Provine (who often debated Phil Johnson) rightly stated that evolution is the greatest engine for atheism ever invented. This is true because Darwinian evolution has tremendous first-blush plausibility, and if one is inclined to go with the cultural flow, it provides a great jumping-off point.

Francis Bacon famously said that a superficial knowledge of science (which he called “natural philosophy”) would “incline the mind of man to atheism,” but a deeper understanding would bring him back to God. That is still true today. A superficial study of origins undermines theism, but the deeper study provided by ID theorists points the other way.

As I mentioned earlier, I have always believed in ID at an intuitive level, and ID theorists helped confirm that belief empirically. There is an obvious pitfall here. A natural human tendency is to believe what one wants to believe despite the evidence. There is a name for that tendency: confirmation bias.

After I had been running UD (Uncommon Descent) for several years, I addressed an earlier fear I had had that my belief in ID would one day be exposed as nothing but the result of intense confirmation bias. The name of that article was “No Bomb After 10 Years,” and it opens with this:

“I have to admit that when I first started debating the origins issue I did so with some trepidation. After all, there are a lot of highly educated, credentialed, intelligent professionals who say they believe the Darwinian narrative. To tell the truth, when I first started debating origins, I assumed not only that there was a very good chance that I was on the wrong side of the debate, but also that one or more of those highly educated, credentialed, intelligent professionals would come along and drop a science bomb on me that would destroy my naïve belief in ID.”

I go on to report that after 10 years of debating hundreds of materialists, no one had dropped a science bomb on me. My confidence in ID was as strong as ever, and I was beginning to suspect there is no bomb.

Leading UD all those years was valuable for several reasons. The first I have already mentioned. Exposing one’s ideas to criticism can be scary, but if those ideas come out intact through the crucible, one can hold them with much more confidence. Yes, confirmation bias will always remain a risk, but one way to mitigate that risk is to receive and deal with intense objections in good faith. That “good faith” part is important. You have to address the opposition’s real argument, not some straw man caricature. One thing I have found over the years is that when your opponent sets up and knocks over a straw man, it is a sure sign they are not so confident that they can beat your actual argument.

Second, debating origins all those years at UD not only strengthened my own position, but it also exposed me to materialist arguments that I might not otherwise have thought of. At UD, I learned that materialists tend to recycle the same arguments over and over. This prepared me to write one of the most important chapters in Unforgetting God entitled “Objection!” in which I address numerous materialist objections to theism.

How does your background as a lawyer impact your approach to atheism?

How many times have you heard someone say, “there is no evidence for God’s existence” or “you can’t prove that God exists.” After 38 years of litigation, I know a thing or two about evidence and proof, and in the book, I show how both of these claims are demonstrably false. You may not be persuaded by the overwhelming evidence for God’s existence. That does not mean that evidence does not exist. And while the existence of God cannot be proved to an apodictic certainty, the totality of the evidence proves his existence to a high degree of certainty. God permits doubt. He does not permit reasonable doubt.

In addition to my experience in evaluating evidence and proving facts, I hope I am following in the tradition of Phil Johnson in Darwin on Trial. Johnson said that he was a lawyer “with a specialty in analyzing the logic of arguments and identifying the assumptions that lie behind those arguments. This background is more appropriate than one might think, because what people believe about evolution and Darwinism depends very heavily on the kind of logic they employ and the kind of assumptions they make.” That is just as true today as it was in 1991 when Johnson published Darwin on Trial.

In a world without intelligent design, what happens to natural law? How does natural law undergird Unforgetting God?

There is a passage in chapter four of Unforgetting God entitled “Lawless Law,” in which I address the question of natural law:

“Prior to the Revolution, the colonists did not think of themselves primarily as ‘Americans.’ They thought of themselves as Englishmen living in America, and English common law was the law of the colonies. After the Revolution, English common law carried over as the law of the states of the new nation, and William Blackstone’s Commentaries were the preeminent authority on that law. It is difficult to exaggerate Blackstone’s influence on early American law. John Marshall, considered by many to be the greatest Chief Justice in our nation’s history, read the Commentaries four times by the time he turned twenty-seven. As one historian wrote, ‘In the first century of American independence, the Commentaries were not merely an approach to the study of law; for most lawyers they constituted all there was of the law.’ To this day, the Supreme Court cites Blackstone when it is seeking to understand the state of the law in the early republic.”

For Blackstone, all legal matters implicating a moral question must be resolved by reference to natural law principles that God infused into the fabric of the universe at creation. He wrote: “[When God] created man, and endued him with freewill to conduct himself in all parts of life, he laid down certain immutable laws of human nature, whereby that freewill is in some degree regulated and restrained, and gave him also the faculty of reason to discover the purport of those laws.” The Declaration of Independence speaks of the “Laws of . . . Nature’s God.” These are the immutable moral principles laid down by God of which Blackstone spoke.

A key idea in natural law theory is that men do not create natural law. Rather, like mathematical concepts that are discovered and not invented, the precepts of natural law have a freestanding existence and are discovered through human reason. This idea informed the founders’ view of law when they signed the Declaration of Independence. It is the view that dominated American law through the end of the nineteenth century.

In Unforgetting God, I describe how all of that changed largely through the work and ideas of one man, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. Holmes was a committed Darwinist, a brutal materialist, and a moral nihilist. For good reason, he has been called “the American Nietzsche.” Holmes’s great project was to sever the link between law and morality, which he believed had no objective existence. For Holmes, all human relations, including the law, boiled down to a Darwinian struggle. One consequence of Holmes’s ideas was that American legal thinkers developed the jurisprudential theory of “legal positivism,” which remains the hegemonic theory of law to this day. Under legal positivism, law is not “discovered.” It is made by the people with the power, and the laws they make will have no necessary connection to morality.

The prevalence of legal positivism is only possible in a legal culture that is thoroughly saturated with materialist presuppositions. In Unforgetting God, I point out the brutal consequences of judges imposing their will on the American people under the guise of interpreting the Constitution. The “living constitution” project is essentially materialism played out in constitutional law. I call for a reexamination of the materialist underpinnings of the modern legal project, and crucial to that reexamination is answering the following key question: Does God exist?

As I discussed earlier in this interview, intelligent design plays a critical role in answering that question. Again, it all comes down to premises. If God does not exist, the legal positivist view of law is almost certainly correct. Natural law — law based in a fundamental morality — is possible only if objective morality exists, and objective morality exists only if God exists.

What do you say to people who think that God created by Darwinian evolution? Can such “theistic evolutionists” still profit from your book, and if so, how?

As I discussed above, belief in the materialist worldview exploded after Darwin. Daniel Dennett was surely correct that Darwin’s “universal acid” dissolved ancient theistic beliefs, and for many Western intellectual elites (such as Holmes) those theistic beliefs gave way to a thoroughgoing materialism. For over 160 years, many Christians have been trying to reconcile belief in God with belief in Darwinian evolution. Many of them have settled on what’s come to be called “theistic evolution.” Today, the BioLogos Foundation, established by Francis Collins, promotes this theory relentlessly.

The essence of theistic evolution is that God uses Darwinian evolution to create all living things, including humans. The only difference between atheist Richard Dawkins and the typical theistic evolutionist is that the theist evolutionist adds the following footnote: “We accept on faith that all of this was caused by God in an empirically undetectable way.” Well, if science is the study of empirical phenomena, what is the purpose of that footnote? Good question. Theistic evolutionists are committed to the view that “theistic evolution” is, at the level of empirically observable phenomena, identical to “materialist evolution.”

I believe that theistic evolution is misguided in at least two respects. First, as ID theorists have convincingly demonstrated, a creator’s work is empirically detectable. Second, they are kidding themselves if they believe that theistic evolution will halt the culture’s slide into atheistic materialism in any meaningful way. It is a very short journey from “God is not empirically detectible in the process” to “God is not necessary to explain the process,” and it is an even shorter journey from there to “God is not necessary, full stop.”

In Unforgetting God, I rely on ID theory to demonstrate that the design inference is by far the most reasonable explanation for the staggering specified complexity of living things. Thus, there is no reason to retreat into the theistic evolution cul-de-sac.

What impact would you like your book Unforgetting God to have immediately and in the coming years?

In a word, I am calling for the revival of skepticism. This might sound odd coming from a theist because we have been conditioned by our culture to believe that only atheists can be true skeptics. While that might have been true at one time, as I explain in the following passage from Unforgetting God, that is no longer the case.

“’Fideism’ is a grit-your-teeth-and-believe-despite-the-evidence sort of belief. I am not asking anyone to retreat into an unreflective fideism. Indeed, I am calling for just the opposite – a revival of skepticism. For centuries, ‘skepticism’ was associated with unbelievers such as the Enlightenment thinkers David Hume and Voltaire. This is because they were skeptical of the dominant cultural narrative, which in their time was Christianity. In our time, materialism is the dominant narrative, especially in the media and academia, which are the joint heralds of our culture’s received wisdom. My purpose in writing this book is to urge everyone to re-examine the evidence for the existence of God with a skeptical perspective toward the secular received wisdom that has long dominated the discourse in our nation. . . .

I am calling for a renewal of an attitude of genuine skepticism toward the cultural hegemon of materialism. Again, I am not asking anyone to retreat into fideism. That is both irrational and unsustainable in the long run. I am not asking anyone to endure and believe despite all the evidence to the contrary. I am asking for the opposite. The point of this book is to encourage people to examine the evidence again, especially in light of the scholarship summarized in chapter six that demonstrates that accepting the existence of God and the truth of Jesus Christ’s message of love, peace, and redemption are the overwhelmingly more rational positions to hold.”

As the highlighted part of the passage states, my purpose in writing Unforgetting God is to call on people to examine the claims of materialism with a genuinely skeptical attitude. I understand this will be difficult for many. It takes true courage to stand up against the overwhelmingly dominant materialist narrative of our culture. While I do not agree with Hume’s and Voltaire’s conclusions, I cannot help but admire their courage in standing up to the dominant narrative of their culture. We must find the courage to do the same thing, because the stakes are very high. Indeed, they are nothing short of existential for Western Civilization.

Recommended Resources:

I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Paperback), and (Sermon) by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek 

Stealing From God by Dr. Frank Turek (Book, 10-Part DVD Set, STUDENT Study Guide, TEACHER Study Guide)

Answering Stephen Hawking & Other Atheists MP3 and DVD by Dr. Frank Turek 

Person of Interest: Why Jesus Still Matters in a World that Rejects the Bible by J. Warner Wallace (Paperback), (Investigator’s Guide).

 

Bill Dembski holds doctorates in math and philosophy as well as an advance theological degree. He’s published in the peer-reviewed math, engineering, biology, philosophy, and theology literature. His focus is on freedom, technology, and education. Formerly almost exclusively an ID (intelligent design) guy, with most of his writing focused on that topic, he found that even though ID had the better argument, it faced roadblocks designed to stop its success. So his focus shifted to the wider social and political forces that block free human inquiry. Bill still writes a lot on intelligent design but his focus these days is broader.

Originally posted at: https://bit.ly/3FyCxE9

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Philosophy Disguised as Science

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One of the basic principles that atheistic scientists live by is that science is based on evidence and religion is based on faith. I scarcely have to provide examples of atheistic scientists telling us that for something to be scientific, it must be evidence-based, and it must rely on the time-honored methods of scientific inquiry. Nor do I need to provide examples of them telling us there is no scientific evidence for the existence of God or miracles, and that all religious doctrine is faith-based. Theism, we are told, is based on faith with no objective or valid (which, of course, means scientific) evidence to support it. Even a cursory reading of the publications of the [relevant] atheists will yield example after example of both of these claims.

 

Science, we are told, has found no evidence for the existence of God. The conclusion atheists have drawn from this is that science has discredited theism. If we theists would think scientifically, we would acquiesce to this line of thinking and abandon our belief in God. That we do not do so supposedly proves we aren’t committed to evidence-based ideology, but that we are instead committed to accepting vacuous assertions on blind faith.

I am, however, constrained to point out the following:

  1. There are numerous claims atheists make that are based on faith and faith alone.
  2. Many of the claims of the atheists are not scientific at all, but are purely philosophical, even though they are presented as profound scientific conclusions.

The Origin of Life

The first example of faith-based claims from the atheists is their belief in spontaneous abiogenesis. The truth is, we have no scientific evidence that spontaneous abiogenesis ever occurred.

Naturalist Karl Popper:

“What makes the origin of life and of the genetic code a disturbing riddle is this: the genetic code is without any biological function, unless it is translated; that is, unless it leads to the synthesis of the proteins whose structure is laid down by the code. But . . . the machinery by which the cell (at least the non-primitive cell, which is the only one we know) translates the code consists of at least fifty macromolecular components which are themselves coded in the DNA. Thus the code cannot be translated except by using certain products of its translation. This constitutes a baffling circle; a really vicious circle, it seems, for any attempt to form a model or theory of the genesis of the genetic code.”[1]

John Horgan:

“[Stanley] Miller’s results seemed to provide stunning evidence that life could arise out of what the British chemist J.B.S. Haldane had called the ’primordial soup.’ Pundits speculated that scientists, like Mary Shelley’s Dr. Frankenstein, would shortly conjure up living organisms in their laboratories and thereby demonstrate in detail how genesis unfolded. It hasn’t worked out that way. In fact, almost 40 years after his original experiment, Miller told me that solving the riddle of the origin of life had turned out to be more difficult than he or anyone else had envisioned. He recalled one prediction, made shortly after his experiment, that within 25 years scientists would ‘surely’ know how life began. ‘Well, 25 years have come and gone,’ Miller said drily.”[2]

The tragically credulous among us who have become convinced that Stanley Miller solved the puzzle of how life began on this planet do not understand the reality of the situation.

When I studied paleontology at the University of Colorado, my professor stood up in front of the class one morning and declared the following: “We scientists believe in spontaneous abiogenesis by a leap of faith.” It is a working hypothesis atheists must subscribe to, or their entire ideology concerning the origin and evolution of life on this planet comes crashing down. There is an elephant in the room during every debate concerning evolution vs creation and atheism vs theism: without spontaneous abiogenesis, evolution occurring on its own in the natural world is meaningless and not worth talking about. It is the basis on which the subsequent process of gradual evolutionary transmutation through natural selection rests. If spontaneous abiogenesis never occurred, it’s all over for evolution. Yet atheistic evolutionists accept this bedrock proposition by blind faith without a shred of scientific evidence to support it. That means their entire evolutionary framework is built on a bedrock of faith.

Atheists have made numerous attempts to cope with this inescapable reality. They tell us that spontaneous abiogenesis occurred through natural processes guided by natural law. We just don’t know what those natural processes and laws are yet. But someday scientists will discover what they are, because that’s what science does.

It doesn’t take long to realize that this is nothing more than another article of faith being used in a desperate attempt to rescue the first article of faith from public humiliation. The idea that “science” often discovers what we were previously unaware of does not mean it will eventually discover principles that will explain everything we don’t currently know. Further, there is no scientific evidence to support the claim that science will someday discover these answers. This is a vast array of faith at work. It is faith in the gaps and nothing more.

Some atheists give us a principle they claim to follow and insists we must follow as well if we are to navigate the waters of reasons to invest in our beliefs about these matters, specifically about miracle claims: absence of evidence is evidence of absence. The idea is that there is supposedly no scientific evidence for the existence of God or miracles, therefore this should count as evidence that they don’t exist. If we accept that principle, the atheists should follow it as well, n’est-ce pas? So let’s apply it to both of the claims we examined above. There is no scientific evidence that spontaneous abiogenesis occurred. I’ve never heard an atheist scientist dispute this. If absence of evidence is evidence of absence, they should reject the entire idea of spontaneous abiogenesis on the grounds that there is no evidence that it ever occurred. But have they rejected it? Absolutely not.

What about the claim that science will eventually discover the natural laws that supposedly caused spontaneous abiogenesis to occur? There is no scientific evidence that science will ever uncover them either. If absence of evidence is evidence of absence, the atheists who believe this should reject it just like they should reject the idea that spontaneous abiogenesis ever occurred. Have they rejected this one? Not on your life. They still believe with steadfast optimism without a scrap of evidence that science will someday come through for them. I remind the reader that the mere fact that scientists have discovered the answers to numerous questions does not mean they will eventually discover all of them.

Beginning of the Universe

When theists broach the topic of the beginning of the universe, we point out with Leibniz that anything that has a beginning must have a cause. The universe has a beginning, and therefore has a cause. Since the universe is made up of space, time, matter, energy, and physical or natural laws, the cause of the beginning of the universe cannot be any of those things, and must therefore be spaceless, timeless, immaterial, and beyond the scope of natural law, since none of those things, especially natural law, existed prior to the beginning of the universe. The cause of the beginning of the universe must therefore be supernatural. But atheists tell us there is another possibility: the multiverse. The multiverse (the existence of multiple universes) can allegedly explain the cause of the beginning of our universe, and the multiverse is considered eternal or infinite, with multiple universes all causing the “creation” of more universes in an endless cycle making up a kind of universe factory. (I’ll save the atheists who believe in this idea the embarrassment of asking them what the cause of the multiverse was. It can’t be infinite or eternal for the same reasons our universe can’t.) This is what Lawrence Krauss believes.

When we had a real-time discussion with him during a book club session in mid-2021, he told us our universe had a beginning: “The universe didn’t exist, and then it did exist.” He dismisses any discussion of God by telling us he is not necessary for the explanation of the beginning of “our” universe, since the other universes can fill in that blank without having to resort to supernatural explanations. When we asked him if he had any evidence for the existence of other universes, or that they could be the cause of ours, his answer was “not yet, but I’m working on it.” In other words, he refuses to believe in God based on rational evidence, and rather accepts the existence of the multiverse on the basis of raw faith, and is confident he will find evidence for it sooner or later—again, an unqualified expression of blind faith. I use the word “blind” here because he has no idea whether such evidence will actually materialize. He simply hopes it will . . . by faith.

It appears the principle of “the absence of evidence is evidence of absence” applies only to theism and miracles, and doesn’t apply to the ideology of the atheists who promote it. If it did, they would have to reject their own fundamental assumptions. But if they did that, their whole atheistic evolutionary framework would tank. Yet atheistic scientists continue to blast theists for our alleged faith-based beliefs. Breathtaking.

The irony is that faith plays no role in theistic or Christian epistemology whatsoever. In my debates with atheists, I would never offer any proposition and ask that it be accepted on blind faith with no empirical or analytic evidence to support it. We don’t say, “just have faith, my child,” or “we know God exists and he created the world because the Bible says so.”

Defining Faith

I don’t know how many atheists or even theists realize that there are always two definitions of faith involved in the dialogue. It is typical for this equivocation to undermine the clarity of these discussions, and to render them fruitless. The modern definition of faith is believing in something with no evidence to support it. The biblical definition of faith is altogether different: putting your trust and confidence in something that has proven itself to be trustworthy. We all have faith in airline pilots and mechanics because they have a track record of safety we can all live with. We don’t step on board that plane simply because someone told us to believe we will be safe when we have no reason to trust them. Biblical faith is not even remotely similar to modern faith. Modern faith is a putative basis for knowledge. Biblical faith is the basis for a relationship, not knowledge.

The modern concept of faith is substantially grounded in existentialism. Science and reason led to despair, so if anyone wanted to believe in anything having meaning, they had to make a blind leap of faith into the upper story where love and hope had meaning but were devoid of reason. Francis Schaeffer showed us that Christianity offers a unified field of knowledge that encompasses both the lower story of science and reason, and the upper story of love and hope. It is not necessary to abandon reason, or to abandon hope. Both are upheld in a comprehensive worldview that tells us what we need to know in all areas of knowledge, and forms a solid basis for scientific inquiry as well as philosophy. Schaeffer’s booklet No Final Conflict is quite helpful in understanding that authentic faith and reason are not at odds with each other, but actually reinforce each other in a way that brings a refreshing optimism to intellectual pursuits. Christianity has nothing to fear from science, and vice versa.

Alvin Plantinga further underscores this point:

If my thesis is right, therefore—if there is deep concord between science and Christian or theistic belief, but deep conflict between science and naturalism—then there is a science/religion (or science/quasi-religion) conflict, all right, but it isn’t between science and theistic religion: it’s between science and naturalism. [3]

Even though serious theism and Christian ideology is evidence-based, unfortunately there are still many Christians who exercise blind faith that looks more like existentialism. And there are many atheistic scientists who rely on pure faith for some theories, but routinely rely on evidence for many of their scientific conclusions. So instead of saying science is purely evidence-based and religion is purely faith-based, the point needs to be revised to say the following: scientists embrace ideas that can be both evidence-based and faith-based, and the same can be said of pedestrian theism. Scholarly theism, however, does not rely on blind faith. But atheistic science relies on a foundation of faith, even though much of its study is also evidence-based. Embracing this more realistic assessment of the situation takes the extremism out of it and allows for a more fruitful dialogue.

We also need to recognize that scientists, and those who are atheists in particular, often make observations that are purely philosophical rather than scientific. The fundamental thesis that science is exclusively evidence-based is one of them. That is not a scientific statement, it’s a philosophical statement about science. It’s a second-order proposition rather than a first-order conclusion about their primary subject of study derived from scientific means and methods. There are more examples:

  • Science has disproved God.
  • The idea that the universe can come from and by nothing is a valid scientific idea.
  • If the non-material world existed, there would be scientific evidence for it.
  • Scientists are the new torch-bearers in the pursuit of knowledge.
  • Empirical science is the proper discipline to address questions of God’s existence.

There are numerous others. All of the above propositions are false. That atheistic scientists pretend they are speaking as scientists when they say these things should be strongly discouraged. Either that or they should make it clear to their readers and listeners that what they are saying is philosophical and not scientific. I have no objection to scientists speaking as philosophers. But I do object to doing so without admitting it, and worse, without realizing it.

Improbability: A Theistic Objection

There is a deeper issue here that we must address. The most common objection theists have against the occurrence of the evolutionary process in the absence of intelligence is that it is immensely improbable. This is a strong objection, to be sure. But it’s not the strongest. What do I mean?

If you demonstrate that something is possible, you haven’t demonstrated that it’s actual. But if you demonstrate that something is actual, you have automatically demonstrated that it’s possible. What atheists must show is not that evolution could have occurred. They must show that evolution did occur. Based on this principle, if you can show that evolution is possible, you haven’t provided a scrap of evidence that it happened. That’s a completely different matter. At the end of the day, who cares if evolution is possible? The only thing we should be interested in is whether or not it happened, not whether it could have.

So, there are two categories of evidence evolutionists are interested in: evidence that it might have occurred, and evidence that it did occur. The only evidence that matters is the evidence that it did occur. And the evidence we are given that it did occur is in the form of a series of predictions which evolutionary theory makes. That those predictions occur, however, is not evidence for evolution, unless they are unique to evolution, which they are not. Every prediction coming from evolutionary theory is also consistent with other theoretical models describing the origin of the life forms in question. Predictions that are shared by competing theories are of no value in deciding which theory is sound, and therefore must be discarded. Since these predictions are not evidence for evolution, but are all we are given, the uncomfortable truth is there is no empirical evidence for evolution.

This is why the problem of faith is so central to the discussion. Atheists not only have faith that macroevolution could have occurred, they have an even stronger faith that it actually did. The second case of blind faith is more problematic than the first. We hear from the four horsemen that evolution is a fact, not just a theory. In an article in the prestigious Scientific American, we are told the following: “In addition to the theory of evolution, meaning the idea of descent with modification, one may also speak of the fact of evolution.”[4]

Richard Dawkins himself has this to say about the matter: “One thing all real scientists agree upon is the fact of evolution itself. It is a fact that we are cousins of gorillas, kangaroos, starfish, and bacteria. Evolution is as much a fact as the heat of the sun.” [5]

Apparently if a scientist doesn’t think evolution is a proven “fact,” they are not a “real” scientist.

I have a lot more sympathy for someone who believes in a possibility by faith than I do for someone who believes in a concrete actual occurrence by faith. If faith is not a valid basis on which to form a scientific theory, letting it be the basis for a fact is more of a disaster than it being the basis for a mere possibility. [6]

Atheists Are Dependent on Evolution

We also must address the uncomfortable reality that atheists are desperately dependent on evolution and an old universe for their worldview to survive. Without evolution and an old universe, atheism dies a billion deaths. That atheists need evolution and the old universe to be scientific facts does not mean they are false. But we must not forget that they are both based on articles of faith for the atheistic scientist. This means that their need for these theories does in fact play a role in their ideology, whether it’s comfortable to admit that or not. For evolution to occur, there must be enormous periods of time to accommodate it. If that kind of time isn’t available, evolution is rubble. I always urge serious caution when one dogma is absolutely necessary to support another one. If there is no God, evolution is the only option, whether it’s true or not. Therefore, it has to survive all intellectual scrutiny whether there is evidence for it or not, and whether other theories do a better job of accounting for all the data or not. Another way to put this is that atheistic naturalism demands and requires these dual ideas: evolution and the old universe. If either one or both are discredited, the dual ideologies of atheism and naturalism are nonsense.

So, if you adopt the worldview of atheism, you automatically sign up for naturalism, and you have no choice but to sign up for both evolution and an old universe. The reality is, committed atheists would believe in evolution and the old universe whether there was scientific evidence for them or not. Their worldview demands it. Those who are trained in philosophy see this as a gigantic red flag. Suddenly, evidence has actually become superfluous and irrelevant. If an atheist who wants to hang on to his worldview will believe in these things even if there is no apparent evidence for them, he may as well not even concern himself with the evidence at all.

As usual, I am not the only one who has marshaled this observation. In his book Darwin on Trial, Philip Johnson relates a similar point:

“Darwinists who do not simply ignore the problem resort to bad philosophy to evade it. For example, Mark Ridley asserts that ‘All that is needed to prove [macro]evolution is observed microevolution added to the philosophical doctrine of uniformitarianism which (in the form that is needed here) underlies all science.’ But what sort of proof is this? If our philosophy demands that small changes add up to big ones, then the scientific evidence is irrelevant. ”[7]

When Johnson comments on Stephen Jay Gould’s theological musings, he describes the vacuity of such speculations:

“Gould here merely repeats Darwin’s explanation for the existence of natural groups—the theory for which we are seeking confirmation—and gives it a theological twist. A proper Creator should have designed each kind of organism from scratch to achieve maximum efficiency. This speculation is no substitute for scientific evidence establishing the reality of the common ancestors. It also does nothing to confirm the natural process by which the transformation from ancestral to descendent forms supposedly occurred.”[8]

This posture where philosophical commitments eclipse empiricism is as disturbing to the philosopher as it is embarrassing to the atheist, whose ideology is grounded more in the philosophy of evolution than the science of evolution. As uncomfortable as this is, it cannot be ignored by anyone involved. Not only is there no respectable evidence for evolution, the atheist scientist who believes in it would do so mainly on the basis of these philosophical presuppositions. Philosophy is primary; science is secondary, and only serves to induce the illusion of credibility. This is one of the main reasons atheistic evolutionists remain faithful to the Darwinian dogma even when empirical evidence and natural law fail to confirm it. That they are willing to wait indefinitely for new discoveries they hope will finally support what they have until now held by stubborn iron-clad faith tells us all we need to know about the status of evolutionary “science.” The evidence truly is lacking, and the situation has not improved since the time of Darwin. It has only become worse. [9]

Someone in the atheism school might object by saying it was the scientific evidence for evolution—among other things—that inspired him to abandon theism and not the other way around. But that ignores the fact we observed before: there is no scientific evidence that evolution actually occurred; it is an article of faith and not a conclusion derived from scientific evidence. The best that the evidence could ever do is show us that evolution could have occurred. Even that “evidence,” if it exists at all, is flimsy. If the alleged lack of evidence for the existence of God is what turned the former theist over, this is a faith-based maneuver as well: no amount of scientific evidence can show that God does not exist. So, all that the former theist who has abandoned theism for atheism has done is exchange one set of what he thought were faith-based beliefs for another set that actually is. He hasn’t traded in superstition for science. He’s done the opposite.

As for the old universe, it is necessary for atheism. But even though it’s necessary, it’s not sufficient, so it’s not relevant to the issue of abandoning any particular worldview. Theism is comfortable with an old universe or a young one. But a young one is fatal to atheism, which is one of the reasons why it is unthinkable for the atheist. This again renders the evidence superfluous. The real reason the committed atheist believes in an old universe is that he has no choice. If there is apparent evidence for it, it is secondary. If the evidence is valid, this is a matter of mere convenience, but it is not central to the discourse. What counts is the antecedent predisposition against the supernatural, and that’s a matter of philosophy, not science. Yet these philosophical considerations are nevertheless presented as hard science to audiences who are hardly capable of differentiating between the two. The atheists know full well that this works beautifully to their advantage.

Questioning Gould

When he visited Denver in the early 90s, I asked Harvard paleontologist Stephen J. Gould the following question: “How do you respond to the observation that the only evidence for punctuated equilibrium is the lack of evidence for gradualism?” His response was quite revealing: “I would respond by saying that it’s the only alternative. Well, there is another alternative, but that one is unthinkable. Hell, let’s just say there is no other alternative and leave it at that.” The audience erupts with thunderous laughter and enthusiastic applause. They looked at me as though my knuckles were dragging on the floor. But they were missing the elephant in the room: Gould didn’t correct me by saying there is positive evidence for punctuationism. His answer assumed there wasn’t, and that I was correct in pointing that out.

This illustrates what Gould has actually stated in his book Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History. Scientists are not completely objective in the sense that their worldview has a significant influence on their theories.

Consider the old universe ideology. That there is an enormous distance between celestial objects means it has to take untold millions of years for light to reach a potential observer far away from the source. This is considered scientific evidence for an old universe. But there are monstrous hidden assumptions beneath the surface here: that light has always traveled with the same velocity we observe today, and that the laws of physics (whether conventional or exotic) apply to the origin of the universe. In other words, there is an implicit adoption of uniformitarianism and naturalism involved. The idea that the origin of the universe could have been supernatural is verboten. That atheistic scientists rely on a naturalistic foundation scarcely needs to be questioned. But the old universe theory loses its footing if naturalism is abandoned. What we must understand here is that the ideology of an old universe is not ultimately grounded in science. Science may be involved, but it usually rests on naturalism, and naturalism is a philosophical disposition, not a scientific one. So, the old universe depends on philosophy at its core and not on science alone. The idea that there is scientific evidence for an old universe assumes the origin of the universe was naturalistic in nature and that naturalistic science has the last word on how it occurred. If naturalism is false, all bets are off. Strictly (and philosophically) speaking, natural law could not have caused the origin of the universe. As I state elsewhere, the origin of natural law cannot be natural law. This means the origin of the universe and natural law itself is by definition supernatural. If this is the case, we cannot necessarily trust our naturalistic assumptions in speculating on the age of the universe. Age is suddenly not even a coherent concept when it comes to measuring the nature and roots of the universe’s existence.

I want to avoid the confusion of thinking I’m talking about apparent age here. Even apparent age relies on some naturalistic assumptions, namely, that the speed of light is not subject to change as a result of the influence of supernatural forces. If naturalism is false, apparent age is extraneous. And the fact that the origin of natural law cannot be natural law proves that naturalism is false. What I am suggesting is not apparent age, but that the very concept of the “age” of the universe using conventional methods of measuring time may in fact be meaningless, especially as you approach the early stages of contingent existence. This does not mean the universe is ageless and had no beginning. But if God exists, and created the universe, we have no way of knowing when the supernatural forces ended and when the natural ones began, which means we may not be able to determine how long ago that beginning occurred. And there are no rules God would be obligated to obey in such a scenario—certainly none that we could invent.

That theism has nothing to fear from the outcome of the evolution debate or the old universe debate leaves the theist free to follow the evidence wherever it leads. It also leaves him free to follow evidence from a variety of intellectual disciplines without being confined to the physical sciences alone. This is made possible by the appropriate rejection of the self-contradictory sophistry of scientism. But the atheist has no such freedom if he is to remain an atheist. He is forced to accept evolution even if it’s false, and to reject some creation model even if it’s true. The same is true of the old universe.

Scientism

Once someone becomes an atheist, the most common sequel as far as I have seen is for him to adopt the ideology of scientism. Suddenly science becomes the only avenue through which to pursue truth. In fact, the adoption of scientism has sometimes even preceded the abandonment of theism and has led to it. It can occur in either order. But regardless, when you abandon theism, you seldom retain any confidence in theology or anything that would tend to support the possibility of miracles. So, the incipient atheist locks himself in a cage of truncated intellectual pursuits that render philosophy, certainly theology, and sometimes even history irrelevant. This dramatically decreases the chances the atheist will be swayed by the powerful philosophical arguments against atheism and thus bring him back from the abyss.

If there was a more serious consideration of the relevant and inescapable philosophical issues involved in this debate, more attention would be paid to the disparity between what we can observe in the present and what we can know of the past. The truth is, what has occurred in the past is more within the purview of history than science. I am not suggesting that science can’t address questions of what has occurred in the past. I’m saying only that theories about the remote past are a different kind of theory than theories about the present or the recent past. The former category has more to do with forensics than with experimentation or direct observation. Once you open the container marked forensics, you have broadened the scope of your investigation to include disciplines that are beyond conventional natural science.[10]

What is it that discourages this broader approach? The answer is simple: scientism. Another way of putting it is scientific arrogance, the kind that says science is the only source of truth, and that scientists are the torch-bearers of human knowledge—to the exclusion of historians, philosophers, and theologians. It used to be that the last two in the list enjoyed the respect of scientists. Historians still do to an extent, but even their discipline has been held in contempt in modern times for failing to be scientific enough.

An Engineering Problem for Atheism

To close, I want to briefly offer some insights on some scientific concepts for your consideration and to further illustrate the weight that philosophical considerations have on this discourse.

I would like to introduce an idea that we could properly call a cybernetic principle. The core ideas in this vein can be partly attributed to Dr. A. E. Wilder-Smith, author of The Natural Sciences Know Nothing of Evolution. It goes something like this: the more intelligence and energy an engineer has at his disposal, the less time it will take for him to complete a complex mechanical project. The inverse is obvious: the less intelligence and available energy (or power) the engineer has at his disposal, the longer it will take him to complete a complex mechanical project. So, if the engineer wants to build a teleonomic (e.g. von Neumann) machine, intelligence—i.e., knowledge of the principles of engineering—and a substantial power source will be his best friends.

Now let’s perform a thought experiment. Suppose we reduce the intelligence factor to zero. That would increase the length of time to complete the engineering project to infinity. In other words, it would never be completed. This would also be true if we reduce the available energy or power source to zero as well. The lack of intelligence and/or available rectified energy means that no machinery will be constructed—ever. This is an exact representation of the universe in the absence of a powerful intelligent creator. This means that nothing like the complex machinery we observe in nature such as the DNA molecule will ever emerge. It should be noted that this is exactly where Dawkins and company begin: a universe completely devoid of intelligence. Do the math.

But what if we increase the intelligence and specific available rectified energy to infinity? We would have an unlimited reservoir of intelligence and an unlimited usable power supply. What happens to the time required to complete the teleonomic project now? It reduces to zero. In other words, the idea that a powerful intelligent infinite being can create complex teleonomic forms instantaneously is hardly unscientific nonsense or superstition.

This is a valid scientific principle and it is properly supervised by concepts in the philosophy of science. There is one thing and one thing alone that can render this ideology absurd: naturalism. That’s it, and that’s all. Notice that it is not rendered absurd by science, but by philosophy, and as we have seen, philosophy that is intrinsically faulty and incoherent. I would recommend pointing this out the next time someone tells you that creationism is nothing more than ignorant superstition.

The typical atheist scientists would object to the above by saying we are invoking metaphysics in the explanation of these origins. My reply would be, “you’re catching on.” And the truth is, whether they know it or not, and whether they will admit it or not, so are they.

References: 

[1] Karl Popper, “Scientific Reduction and the Essential Incompleteness of All Science,” Studies in the Philosophy of Biology, Francisco Ayala and Theodosius Dobzhansky, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 270.

[2] John Horgan, Stanley Miller and the Quest to Understand Life’s Beginning, Scientific American, July 29, 2012.

[3] Alvin Plantinga, Where the Real Conflict Lies, preface, emphasis in the original.

[4] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/15-answers-to-creationist

[5] Richard Dawkins, The Illusion of Design, Natural History 114 (9), 35–37, emphasis mine.

[6] There are some scientists who reject this distinction between a fact and a theory. They will insist that a theory can be said to be as strong as a fact if there is enough support and consensus in favor of it. This is why we often hear an objection when someone points out that evolution is only a theory, and therefore does not need to be taken as seriously as it would if it was a more substantially grounded and reliable fact, and it therefore should not be the only explanation of origins taught in schools. The debate rages on. However, at the end of the day, we must be certain we recognize that the distinction between fact and theory is a philosophical debate, and not a scientific one. So the attitudes some scientists have concerning this issue are interesting, but they should be encouraged to make it clear that when they comment on this issue, they are speaking as philosophers, and therefore their credentials as scientists do not necessarily carry a great deal of weight on this question.

[7] Philip Johnson, Darwin on Trial, 92, emphasis mine.

[8] Ibid., 94, emphasis mine.

[9] See Stephen Meyer, Darwin’s Doubt (2013), Michael Denton, Evolution: Still A Theory In Crisis (2016), and Michael Behe, Darwin Devolves (2019).

[10] [Editor’s Note: The author seems to be distinguishing experimental science from historical science. This division separates fields like biology, chemistry, and physics, on one hand from all forms of historical study such as archaeology, history [proper], anthropology, and forensics. Both experimental and historical science are conventionally recognized as facets of natural science [i.e., the study of what has/does/will happen in nature, given natural causes]. The experimental sciences, however, involved controlled experimentation, and can involve rigorous methods of testing including repeatability. Historical sciences are inherently limited this way, since no past event can ever be repeated, strictly speaking (January 17, 1919 only happened once in all of human history). In that way, experimental science tends to carry more clout in certain naturalistic and anti-theistic circles. Informally speaking, experimental sciences are sometimes called “science” whereas historical sciences are called “history.” That seems to be how Blair is using the terms here, even if, strictly speaking historical science is still a legitimate field of science.]

Recommended Resources: 

How Philosophy Can Help Your Theology by Richard Howe (MP3 Set), (mp4 Download Set), and (DVD Set) 

When Reason Isn’t the Reason for Unbelief by Dr. Frank Turek DVD and Mp4

Why Science Needs God by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

Stealing From God by Dr. Frank Turek (Book, 10-Part DVD Set, STUDENT Study Guide, TEACHER Study Guide)

 

Phil Bair studied philosophy, technology, earth sciences, and music theory at the University of Iowa, the University of Colorado, the National Institute of Technology, and Simpson College in Indianola Iowa. He has been dedicated to independent study and research for over thirty years in a variety of subject matter pertaining to the Christian world view. He has written several monographs on the relationship between theology and hope, being true to the Word of God, the creation/evolution controversy, and critiques of alternative spiritual doctrine and practices. He has written multiple books (all available on Amazon by searching “Phil Bair”. He has delivered lectures, seminars, and workshops to churches and educational institutions on apologetics, textual criticism, creation science, ethics, critical thinking, the philosophy of science, understanding new age thought, and the defense of Christian theism, as well as current religious, philosophical, cultural, and political trends, with an emphasis on formulating a meaningful and coherent Christian response in those areas. His roles include author, speaker, Bible study leader and video editor. He has served as philosophy consultant and speaker for Rivendell, a cultural apologetics organization founded in Denver, Colorado and headquartered in Santa Barbara, California.

Originally posted at: https://bit.ly/3SWqvqX

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The Formation of Our Digits Points to a Process with Foresight

Have you ever wondered how our fingers and toes form during embryonic development? Our digits are, in fact, sculpted from a paddle-like structure in the embryo through the process of apoptosis — that is, programmed cell death. During early development, the hands and feet begin as solid, webbed structures. Through carefully controlled apoptosis, the tissue between them is eliminated, facilitating the separation of the digits. As one paper put it, “the role of apoptosis can be compared with the work of a stone sculptor who shapes stone by progressively chipping off small fragments of material from a crude block, eventually creating a form.”[1] Apoptosis, of course, serves other important biological functions as well — such as eliminating old, damaged, or infected cells.

When cells die as a consequence of acute injury, they tend to swell and burst, releasing their contents into the surrounding tissue. This is known as necrosis, and it can result in an inflammatory response that can be damaging to the cells around them. Death by apoptosis, by contrast, is much cleaner. During apoptosis, the cytoskeleton breaks down and the nuclear envelope disassembles, and the genetic material is broken down into smaller fragments. The surface of the cell is modified such that it attracts macrophages that phagocytose (engulf) the cell before its contents can spill out into the environment and cause damage.

The process of apoptosis is tightly regulated by genetic and biochemical signals, ensuring that the correct number of cells die in the right areas. But how could such a developmental process involving programmed cell death evolve in a gradual, incremental fashion without any awareness of where the target is? This presents a significant obstacle to unguided evolutionary mechanisms. Here, I will give a brief overview of how this remarkable process is regulated and controlled.

Initiation of Apoptosis

The zones of undifferentiated cells between what will become the digits are called interdigital mesenchyme. It is here that apoptosis is initiated by signaling molecules. For example, bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) are secreted signaling molecules that are critical for inducing apoptosis in the cells of the interdigital spaces.[2] Indeed, knocking out BMP molecules has been shown to result in webbed feet in chickens.[3] BMPs are upregulated in the regions between the forming digits, resulting in cellular death and tissue regression.

These BMPs bind to receptors on the surface of target cells in the developing limb bud.[4] This, in turn, activates intracellular SMAD proteins, which translocate to the nucleus and regulate the expression of pro-apoptotic and anti-apoptotic genes.[5] For instance, pro-apoptotic genes such as Bax and Bak (discussed later) are upregulated. Anti-apoptotic genes, such as Bcl-2, are also downregulated. This facilitates cell death in areas where tissue needs to be removed.

The activity of BMPs is regulated by antagonists, such as Noggin, which binds directly to BMPs, forming a complex that inhibits them from interacting with their receptors. This ensures that apoptosis only occurs in the interdigital spaces, while preserving the cells that will form the digits.[6]

Executioner Caspases

A family of proteases called caspases comprise the molecular machinery responsible for apoptosis.[7]  These proteases are initially produced as inactive precursors known as procaspases. In response to apoptosis-inducing signals, they are activated. Executioner caspases are responsible for dismantling essential cellular proteins — these are themselves cleaved (and thereby activated) by initiator caspases. One executioner caspase targets for destruction the lamin proteins that comprise the nuclear lamina, resulting in its disintegration.[8] This facilitates the entry of the nucleases into the nucleus where they degrade the cell’s DNA. Other targets of executioner caspases include the cytoskeleton and other critical cellular proteins.[9]

Execution of the Death Program: The Intrinsic Pathway

There are two ways in which the cell’s death program can be initiated — the extrinsic and intrinsic pathways. The extrinsic pathway is initiated by external signals through the binding of ligands to death receptors on the cell surface. The intrinsic pathway is triggered by signals from within the cell itself. Since the intrinsic pathway is associated with digit formation, it will be my focus here.

In nucleated animal cells, inactive procaspases roam, waiting for a signal to activate the death program and kill the cell. Unsurprisingly, then, the activity of caspases must be very carefully controlled. This presents another conundrum for their origins — how could they arise without a mechanism in hand for holding them in check until required?

The Bcl2 family of proteins is responsible for regulating caspase activation.[10] Some of these proteins promote activation of caspases and apoptosis, while others negatively regulate these processes. Two essential proteins for promoting cell death are Bax and Bak.[11] These proteins trigger the release of cytochrome c from the mitochondria. Other Bcl2-family proteins sequester apoptosis by inhibiting Bax and Bak from releasing cytochrome c.[12] Critical to a cell’s survival is the balance between the activities of the pro-apoptosis and anti-apoptosis Bcl2-family members.

Image credit: David Goodsell, CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Upon release of cytochrome c from the mitochondria, the cytochrome c molecules bind to Apaf-1 (apoptotic protease activating factor 1).[13] Apaf-1 has a specific region called the WD40 repeat domain that interacts with cytochrome c.[14] This binding induces a conformational change in Apaf-1, which allows it to oligomerize. The Apaf-1 monomers thus assemble into a large heptameric complex called the apoptosome (shown in the figure above). This wheel-like structure serves as a scaffold for further recruitment of procaspase-9 molecules.[15] Within the apoptosome, the proximity of multiple procaspase-9 molecules results in their autocleavage and activation.[16] This induces a caspase cascade (involving the activation of downstream effector caspases, such as caspase-3 and caspase-7), ultimately resulting in programmed cell death.[17]

The Need for Foresight

We began by comparing the role of apoptosis in digit formation to a stone sculptor, chipping off tiny fragments from a block with a view towards ultimately creating a form. Of course, an actual stone sculptor has a vision of the final form — the ability to visualize a distant outcome. Conversely, a feature of natural selection is that it lacks foresight, or any awareness of complex end goals. How can a mindless cause select for a process of carefully regulated programmed cell death during development, without knowledge of the target? It would seem that any process capable of producing this mechanism would have to possess intelligence and foresight — characteristics uniquely associated with a conscious mind.

This article was originally published at Evolution News & Science Today, on September 13 2024.

References: 

[1] Suzanne M, Steller H. Shaping organisms with apoptosis. Cell Death Differ. 2013 May;20(5):669-75.

[2] Storm EE, Kingsley DM. GDF5 coordinates bone and joint formation during digit development. Dev Biol. 1999 May 1;209(1):11-27.

[3] Zou H, Niswander L. Requirement for BMP signaling in interdigital apoptosis and scale formation. Science. 1996 May 3;272(5262):738-41.

[4] Ovchinnikov DA, Selever J, Wang Y, Chen YT, Mishina Y, Martin JF, Behringer RR. BMP receptor type IA in limb bud mesenchyme regulates distal outgrowth and patterning. Dev Biol. 2006 Jul 1;295(1):103-15.

[5] Gomez-Puerto MC, Iyengar PV, García de Vinuesa A, Ten Dijke P, Sanchez-Duffhues G. Bone morphogenetic protein receptor signal transduction in human disease. J Pathol. 2019 Jan;247(1):9-20.

[6] Guha U, Gomes WA, Kobayashi T, Pestell RG, Kessler JA. In vivo evidence that BMP signaling is necessary for apoptosis in the mouse limb. Dev Biol. 2002 Sep 1;249(1):108-20.

[7] McIlwain DR, Berger T, Mak TW. Caspase functions in cell death and disease. Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol. 2013 Apr 1;5(4):a008656. Erratum in: Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol. 2015 Apr 01;7(4):a026716.; Cohen GM. Caspases: the executioners of apoptosis. Biochem J. 1997 Aug 15;326 ( Pt 1)(Pt 1):1-16.

[8] Gheyas R, Menko AS. The involvement of caspases in the process of nuclear removal during lens fiber cell differentiation. Cell Death Discov. 2023 Oct 21;9(1):386.

[9] Vakifahmetoglu-Norberg H, Norberg E, Perdomo AB, Olsson M, Ciccosanti F, Orrenius S, Fimia GM, Piacentini M, Zhivotovsky B. Caspase-2 promotes cytoskeleton protein degradation during apoptotic cell death. Cell Death Dis. 2013 Dec 5;4(12):e940.

[10] Kale J, Osterlund EJ, Andrews DW. BCL-2 family proteins: changing partners in the dance towards death. Cell Death Differ.2018 Jan;25(1):65-80.

[11] Westphal D, Kluck RM, Dewson G. Building blocks of the apoptotic pore: how Bax and Bak are activated and oligomerize during apoptosis. Cell Death Differ. 2014 Feb;21(2):196-205.

[12] Dlugosz PJ, Billen LP, Annis MG, Zhu W, Zhang Z, Lin J, Leber B, Andrews DW. Bcl-2 changes conformation to inhibit Bax oligomerization. EMBO J. 2006 Jun 7;25(11):2287-96.

[13] Kim HE, Du F, Fang M, Wang X. Formation of apoptosome is initiated by cytochrome c-induced dATP hydrolysis and subsequent nucleotide exchange on Apaf-1. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2005 Dec 6;102(49):17545-50.

[14] Hu Y, Ding L, Spencer DM, Núñez G. WD-40 repeat region regulates Apaf-1 self-association and procaspase-9 activation. J Biol Chem. 1998 Dec 11;273(50):33489-94.; Shalaeva DN, Dibrova DV, Galperin MY, Mulkidjanian AY. Modeling of interaction between cytochrome c and the WD domains of Apaf-1: bifurcated salt bridges underlying apoptosome assembly. Biol Direct. 2015 May 27;10:29.

[15] Yuan S, Yu X, Topf M, Ludtke SJ, Wang X, Akey CW. Structure of an apoptosome-procaspase-9 CARD complex. Structure. 2010 May 12;18(5):571-83.

[16] Li Y, Zhou M, Hu Q, Bai XC, Huang W, Scheres SH, Shi Y. Mechanistic insights into caspase-9 activation by the structure of the apoptosome holoenzyme. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2017 Feb 14;114(7):1542-1547.

[17] Li P, Nijhawan D, Budihardjo I, Srinivasula SM, Ahmad M, Alnemri ES, Wang X. Cytochrome c and dATP-dependent formation of Apaf-1/caspase-9 complex initiates an apoptotic protease cascade. Cell. 1997 Nov 14;91(4):479-89.

Recommended Resources:

Why Science Needs God by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

Science Doesn’t Say Anything, Scientists Do by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD, Mp3, and Mp4)

Debate: What Best Explains Reality: Atheism or Theism? by Frank Turek DVD, Mp4, and Mp3 

Macro Evolution? I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be a Darwinist (DVD Set), (MP3 Set) and (mp4 Download Set) by Dr. Frank Turek

 

Dr. Jonathan McLatchie is a Christian writer, international speaker, and debater. He holds a Bachelor’s degree (with Honors) in forensic biology, a Masters’s (M.Res) degree in evolutionary biology, a second Master’s degree in medical and molecular bioscience, and a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology. Currently, he is an assistant professor of biology at Sattler College in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. McLatchie is a contributor to various apologetics websites and is the founder of the Apologetics Academy (Apologetics-Academy.org), a ministry that seeks to equip and train Christians to persuasively defend the faith through regular online webinars, as well as assist Christians who are wrestling with doubts. Dr. McLatchie has participated in more than thirty moderated debates around the world with representatives of atheism, Islam, and other alternative worldview perspectives. He has spoken internationally in Europe, North America, and South Africa promoting an intelligent, reflective, and evidence-based Christian faith.

Originally posted here:  https://bit.ly/3WmCxME

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The DNA Replisome: A Paradigm of Design

The DNA replisome is one of the most remarkable molecular machines, involving a complex of different proteins, each of which is very specifically crafted to fulfill its role in the process of replicating the genome in preparation for cell division. The rate of DNA replication has been measured at a whopping 749 nucleotides per second[1] and the error rate for accurate polymerases is believed to be in the range of 10-7 and 10-7, based on studies of E. coli and bacteriophage DNA replication.[2]

One of the best animations of this incredible process is this one by Australian animator Drew Berry. It is difficult to look at an animation such as this (which is drastically over-simplified) and not come away with the strong intuition that such an intricately choreographed machine is the product of masterful engineering. Stable and functional protein structures are astronomically rare in combinatorial sequence space, and DNA replication requires many of them. But not just any old stably folding proteins will do. These proteins have to be crafted very particularly in order to perform their respective jobs. Indeed, when one focuses on specific proteins, it takes the design intuition to new heights. For example, see these beautiful animations of topoisomerase, helicase, and DNA polymerase. One paper summarizes the engineering prowess of DNA replication thus [3]:

Synthesis of all genomic DNA involves the highly coordinated action of multiple polypeptides. These proteins assemble two new DNA chains at a remarkable pace, approaching 1000 nucleotides (nt) per second in E. coli. If the DNA duplex were 1 m in diameter, then the following statements would roughly describe E. coli replication. The fork would move at approximately 600km/hr (375 mph), and the replication machinery would be about the size of a FedEx delivery truck. Replicating the E. coli genome would be a 40 min, 400 km (250 mile) trip for two such machines, which would, on average make an error only once every 170 km (106 miles). The mechanical prowess of this complex is even more impressive given that it synthesizes two chains simultaneously as it moves. Although one strand is synthesized in the same direction as the fork is moving, the other chain (the lagging strand) is synthesized in a piecemeal fashion (as Okazaki fragments) and in the opposite direction of overall fork movement. As a result, about once a second one delivery person (i.e. polymerase active site) associated with the truck must take a detour, coming off and then rejoining its template DNA strand, to synthesize the 0.2km (0.13 mile) fragments.[3]

Irreducible Complexity on Steroids

DNA replication is an example of what we might call “irreducible complexity on steroids.” Genome duplication is a prerequisite of differential survival, which is necessary for the process of natural selection to even work. Thus, one can hardly appeal to natural selection to account for the origins of DNA replication without assuming the existence of the very thing one is attempting to explain. It is difficult to envision a viable replication system that is simpler than the DNA replisome shown in the animation above. Though the RNA world scenario (which maintains that RNA-based life predates life based on DNA and proteins) is a popular hypothesis, problems abound for this scenario, as has been discussed many times in various other publications (e.g., Meyer, Signature in the Cell, Ch. 14). For example, one of the foremost challenges is the inherent instability of RNA (being single-stranded, and possessing an additional 2’ OH group, rendering it prone to hydrolysis). RNA polymers are therefore extremely unlikely to have survived in the early earth environment for long enough to be of much value. Second, when RNA forms complementary base pairs to fold back on itself, part of the molecule no longer presents an exposed strand that can serve as a template for copying. Thus, there is a physical limitation on the capability of RNA to self-replicate.

A further reason why the DNA replication machinery exhibits irreducible complexity on steroids is that, by being so primitive, it is far more difficult to envision any kind of co-optation scenario than it would be for a system that arose much later, such as bacterial flagella. With the flagellum, one can at least point to alternative functions that might be performed by a number of the flagellar components (such as the Type-III Secretion System). However, with DNA replication, it is unclear what other systems any of the components might be co-opted from – since any other system would need to have arisen after the origins of DNA replication.

An even more striking enigma is that, across the three domains of life, the key enzymes (in particular, the replicative polymerases) are not homologous, which has led to the suggestion that DNA replication may have arisen more than once independently.[4] This observation sits more comfortably on a design paradigm than on one committed to naturalism.

Which Components Are Essential for DNA Replication?

What protein components that are involved in DNA replication are indispensable for function? First, there is the DNA polymerase that actually performs the copying of each strand. Without it, no replication would take place at all. But, the DNA polymerase is unable to begin replication without the presence of a free 3’ OH (hydroxyl) group. Thus, another enzyme — a form of RNA polymerase called a primase — creates a short RNA fragment (called a primer) from which the DNA polymerase can extend (unlike DNA polymerase, the primase does not require the presence of a free 3’ OH group). Thus, in the absence of the primase enzyme, no RNA primers would be laid down on either the leading or lagging strand, and DNA replication would be unable to commence. Furthermore, the DNA polymerase itself has to be attached to the DNA by a ring-shaped protein known as a sliding clamp (which prevents it from falling off the DNA template strand). But, the sliding clamp cannot directly attach to the DNA on its own. Instead, a protein complex called the clamp loader mediates the loading of the sliding clamp onto the DNA at the replication fork, utilizing the energy from ATP hydrolysis to open the sliding clamp ring and load it onto the DNA. In the absence of the sliding clamp or clamp loader, the DNA polymerase would frequently fall off the DNA template, rendering it extremely inefficient.

Of course, the replication process cannot begin unless the DNA double helix is unzipped, and this is accomplished by the enzyme helicase, which breaks the hydrogen bonds along the DNA molecule, thereby opening up and exposing the two strands for replication by the polymerase. In its absence, the DNA polymerase will stall, unable to separate the strands that lie ahead.

Even with the helicase enzyme separating the two strands, the strands are likely to reanneal during the copying process. Enter the single-stranded binding proteins which bind to the exposed DNA strands, preventing them from re-annealing during copying. Without them, the DNA strands would bind together again before they were able to be copied.

The topoisomerase enzymes are necessary for removing supercoils that are induced by the torsional stress. They do so by cutting one strand, passing the other strand through the gap, and then resealing the break. In the absence of the topoisomerase enzymes, the DNA would eventually break, thereby hindering the DNA replication process.

Because of the anti-parallel nature of DNA (and the fact that the DNA polymerase can only replicate in a 5’ to 3’ direction), one strand, the lagging strand, has to be replicated backwards (in order for the replication fork to move in a single direction). This is done discontinuously in small sections. RNA primers are laid down by primase, and from those are synthesized short fragments of DNA known as Okazaki fragments. The RNA primers are then removed and replaced with DNA, and the Okazaki fragments are stitched together by the enzyme ligase. We have already discussed the necessity of the primase enzyme for synthesizing RNA primers. It may be added that, in the absence of the RNA excision enzymes (which remove the RNA primers), the RNA fragments would remain covalently attached to the newly replicated fragments of DNA. Moreover, in the absence of ligase (which links the Okazaki fragments together), the newly replicated strands would remain as fragments.

If the removal of any of the aforementioned components would render the DNA replication machinery non-functional, how could such a system come about through an undirected Darwinian step-wise pathway, preserving selective utility at every step along the way? Whatever process produced the DNA replisome had to know where the target was. Such a cause would have to be teleological in nature.

A Paradigm of Design

The DNA replication machinery represents one of the most extraordinary examples of nanotechnology found in the cell. In any other realm of experience, such a complex and delicate arrangement of parts would be immediately recognized as reflecting conscious intent — that is, as being the product of a mind. Why should such an inference be disallowed when examining biological systems? For more detail on this fascinating molecular machine, see my interview on it from last summer on ID the Future. I also published an earlier series (more than a decade ago) exploring the various protein components in more detail. You can find these here:

If you enjoyed the animation by Drew Berry linked at the beginning of this article, here is a more detailed animation, produced by Oxford University Press. Here is a second animation which reveals how the DNA polymerases are coupled so that they can move in the same direction.

References: 

[1] McCarthy D, Minner C, Bernstein H, Bernstein C. DNA elongation rates and growing point distributions of wild-type phage T4 and a DNA-delay amber mutant. J Mol Biol. 1976 Oct 5;106(4):963-81.

[2] Schaaper RM. Base selection, proofreading, and mismatch repair during DNA replication in Escherichia coli. J Biol Chem.1993 Nov 15;268(32):23762-5.

[3] Baker TA, Bell SP. Polymerases and the replisome: machines within machines. Cell. 1998 Feb 6;92(3):295-305.

[4] Leipe DD, Aravind L, Koonin EV. Did DNA replication evolve twice independently? Nucleic Acids Res. 1999 Sep 1;27(17):3389-401; and Brown JR, Doolittle WF. Archaea and the prokaryote-to-eukaryote transition. Microbiol Mol Biol Rev. 1997 Dec;61(4):456-502.

Recommended Resources:

Why Science Needs God by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

Science Doesn’t Say Anything, Scientists Do by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD, Mp3, and Mp4)

Oh, Why Didn’t I Say That? Does Science Disprove God? by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Paperback), and (Sermon) by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek

 

Dr. Jonathan McLatchie is a Christian writer, international speaker, and debater. He holds a Bachelor’s degree (with Honors) in forensic biology, a Masters’s (M.Res) degree in evolutionary biology, a second Master’s degree in medical and molecular bioscience, and a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology. Currently, he is an assistant professor of biology at Sattler College in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. McLatchie is a contributor to various apologetics websites and is the founder of the Apologetics Academy (Apologetics-Academy.org), a ministry that seeks to equip and train Christians to persuasively defend the faith through regular online webinars, as well as assist Christians who are wrestling with doubts. Dr. McLatchie has participated in more than thirty moderated debates around the world with representatives of atheism, Islam, and other alternative worldview perspectives. He has spoken internationally in Europe, North America, and South Africa promoting an intelligent, reflective, and evidence-based Christian faith.

This article was originally published on March 21st, 2024, at Evolution News & Science Today.

And republished at: https://bit.ly/4f6pp5q

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Are Proponents of ID Religiously Motivated, and Does It Matter?

Recently, someone asked me to comment on an article, published in 2017, by John Danaher, a lecturer in the Law School at the University of Galway, Ireland. He is widely published on legal and moral philosophy, as well as philosophy of religion. In his article, Danaher alleges that proponents of intelligent design (ID) are religiously motivated. He also asserts that the argument for ID from irreducible complexity has conceptual problems, and that systems that we deem to be irreducibly complex can be adequately explained by co-optation of components performing other roles in the cell. In two articles, I will address his concerns about our supposed religious motives, and then tackle his specific objections to irreducible complexity.

Do We Have Religious Motives?

Danaher opens his essay by reminiscing about his days as a student when he first encountered ID.

When I was a student, well over a decade ago now, intelligent design was all the rage. It was the latest religiously-inspired threat to Darwinism (though it tried to hide its religious origins). It argued that Darwinism could never account for certain forms of adaptation that we see in the natural world.

What made intelligent design different from its forebears was its seeming scientific sophistication. Proponents of intelligent design were often well-qualified scientists and mathematicians, and they dressed up their arguments with the latest findings from microbiology and abstruse applications of probability theory. My sense is that the fad for intelligent design has faded in the intervening years, though I have no doubt that it still has its proponents.

These paragraphs betray the fact that the author is quite out of touch with the literature on ID.

Stronger than Ever

First, ID has come a long way since the early 2000s. Far from having faded, it is now stronger than ever, having more academic proponents (and many more peer-reviewed publications) than at any time in its history. Its arguments are far more developed and sophisticated than in the early 2000s and this trend is likely to continue.

Second, it is unclear in what sense Danaher refers to the “religious origins” of ID. It is certainly true that having a religious perspective, predisposing one towards theism, creates a plausibility structure that opens one’s mind to the possibility of there being measurable evidence of design in the universe, including in living organisms. Thus, being independently persuaded of the truth of a theistic religion (in my case, Christianity) is positively relevant to one’s assessment of the prior probability (or, intrinsic plausibility) of ID. However, even if one is not persuaded of theistic religion, the evidence of design in the natural world is, in my opinion, sufficient to overwhelm even a very low prior. Indeed, the cosmological evidence that our universe has a finite history; the fine-tuning of the laws and constants of our universe; the prior environmental fitness of nature for complex life; the optimization of the universe for scientific discovery and technology; and the biological evidence of design all point univocally and convergently in the direction of a cosmic creator. Thus, ID has attracted support from scholars who are not themselves adherents of any religion, including Michael Denton, David Berlinski, and Steve Fuller. Paleontologist and frequent Evolution News contributor Günter Bechly, though a Christian believer now, was not sympathetic to Christianity when he first came to be persuaded of ID.

Misguided on Many Levels

Later in the essay, Danaher further remarks,

The claim is not that God must have created the bacterial flagellum but, rather, that an intelligent designer did. For tactical reasons, proponents of intelligent design liked to hide their religious motivations, trying to claim that their theory was scientific, not religious in nature. This was largely done in order to get around certain legal prohibitions on the teaching of religion under US constitutional law. I’m not too interested in that here though. I view the intelligent design movement as a religious one, and hence the arguments they proffer as on a par with pretty much all design arguments.

These comments are misguided on many levels.

First, the claim that we ID proponents are not clear about our personal religious persuasions is patently false. Speaking for myself, I have been very clear that I am a Christian theist, though my grounds for being persuaded of that conclusion are wholly independent of the science of ID. And I am by no means unusual. Virtually every leading ID proponent — from Michael Behe to William Dembski to Stephen Meyer to Phillip Johnson to David Klinghoffer to Casey Luskin to Brian Miller to Ann Gauger and many others — has been totally open about his or her personal religious beliefs. In the world of intelligent design, no one is hiding anything about religious beliefs, including those who lack religious beliefs.

Second, ID is a scientific argument, and when evaluating a scientific argument, the motives of its proponents are irrelevant. As Casey Luskin writes,

[I]n science, the motives or personal religious beliefs of scientists don’t matter; only the evidence matters. For example, the great scientists Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton were inspired to their scientific work by their religious convictions that God would create an orderly, rational universe with comprehensible physical laws that governed the motion of the planets. They turned out to be right — not because of their religious beliefs — but because the scientific evidence validated their hypotheses. (At least, Newton was thought to be right until Einstein came along.) Their personal religious beliefs, motives, or affiliations did nothing to change the fact that their scientific theories had inestimable scientific merit that helped form the foundation for modern science.

To attack an idea because of the alleged religious motives of its proponents is to commit the genetic fallacy, and that is exactly what Danaher has done here.

Third, ID is not a religious argument. Though ID provides strong evidence for a broadly theistic perspective, the argument itself is grounded in the scientific method. ID does not aid in evaluating the merits of one particular religious tradition over another. ID does not even technically commit one to theism, though I would contend that God is the best candidate for the identity of the designer (as Stephen Meyer argues in his recent book, Return of the God Hypothesis). Thus, ID rightly attracts people of all religious persuasions and none (including Orthodox Jews, Muslims, and agnostics). This is important because it shows that ID is not about supporting one particular religion. We, therefore, strive to be honest about the limitations of ID while being careful not to overstate what the scientific evidence alone can tell us.

What About Evolution?

Finally, if Danaher wants to scrutinize the religious motives of ID proponents, we have to consider what such a line of attack would do to evolution. Casey Luskin has documented (see here or here) the extensive anti-religious beliefs, motives, and affiliations of many leading evolution-advocates. While I (and Luskin) would maintain that evolution is science, one must ask what would happen to evolution if the religious (or anti-religious) beliefs of its proponents suddenly became relevant to assessing its merits.

“Teach the Controversy”

Danaher’s statement that the claim that ID is scientific and not religious “was largely done in order to get around certain legal prohibitions on the teaching of religion under US constitutional law” is historically incorrect. Discovery Institute (the leading organization funding research into, and promoting the public understanding of, ID) does not support attempts to legally protect the teaching of ID in public schools. In fact, since Discovery Institute’s earliest involvement in major public education debates in the U.S. (in Ohio in 2002), it has not supported mandating the teaching of ID in public schools. This is not because we feel that ID is unconstitutional. ID, much like the Big Bang in cosmology, may be friendly to a broadly theistic perspective. However, this does not make the idea itself a religious one, just as the Big Bang theory is not a religious idea. Thus, there is nothing intrinsic to ID that would render it unconstitutional under the First Amendment (see here or here for legal discussions). However, attempts to legislatively protect the teaching of ID tend to politicize the theory, and we believe that the merits of ID ought to be debated in the scientific journals, not in the courtroom. Rather, Discovery Institute advocates a “teach the controversy” model, where the strengths and weaknesses of scientific theories (including evolution) are presented and discussed. All of this is stated clearly and openly on our Science Education Policy page:

As a matter of public policy, Discovery Institute opposes any effort to require the teaching of intelligent design by school districts or state boards of education. Attempts to require teaching about intelligent design only politicize the theory and will hinder fair and open discussion of the merits of the theory among scholars and within the scientific community. Furthermore, most teachers at the present time do not know enough about intelligent design to teach about it accurately and objectively.       


Instead of recommending teaching about intelligent design in public K-12 schools, Discovery Institute seeks to increase the coverage of evolution in curriculum. It believes that evolution should be fully and completely presented to students, and they should learn more about evolutionary theory, including its unresolved issues. In other words, evolution should be taught as a scientific theory that is open to critical scrutiny, not as a sacred dogma that can’t be questioned.

Thus, Danaher is ill-informed about Discovery Institute’s long-standing education policy. In a second article, I shall address his specific concerns regarding the argument from irreducible complexity.

Recommended Resources:

Science Doesn’t Say Anything, Scientists Do by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD, Mp3 and Mp4)

Oh, Why Didn’t I Say That? Does Science Disprove God? by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

Stealing From God by Dr. Frank Turek (Book, 10-Part DVD Set, STUDENT Study Guide, TEACHER Study Guide)

Macro Evolution? I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be a Darwinist (DVD Set), (MP3 Set) and (mp4 Download Set) by Dr. Frank Turek

Dr. Jonathan McLatchie is a Christian writer, international speaker, and debater. He holds a Bachelor’s degree (with Honors) in forensic biology, a Masters’s (M.Res) degree in evolutionary biology, a second Master’s degree in medical and molecular bioscience, and a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology. Currently, he is an assistant professor of biology at Sattler College in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. McLatchie is a contributor to various apologetics websites and is the founder of the Apologetics Academy (Apologetics-Academy.org), a ministry that seeks to equip and train Christians to persuasively defend the faith through regular online webinars, as well as assist Christians who are wrestling with doubts. Dr. McLatchie has participated in more than thirty moderated debates around the world with representatives of atheism, Islam, and other alternative worldview perspectives. He has spoken internationally in Europe, North America, and South Africa promoting an intelligent, reflective, and evidence-based Christian faith.

Originally published here: https://bit.ly/3zZJM4R

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Atheists’ Faith in Science is Misplaced

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Most atheists I have encountered demonstrate an amazing “faith” in the power of science. They will often accuse believers of wishful thinking – or outright foolishness – when believers conclude that an intelligent being is the only reasonable inference to draw from the evidence of design that surrounds us. They do this because they have come to believe that only through “science” can anything be known, and that science will someday answer all of life’s mysteries. That is what’s called “scientism.” There is no need for a God, they assure themselves, because “science” has not provided for one.

Is Science the Only Way to Know?

The flaw in this thinking is the assumption that science is the only way one can know something. This is flawed on many levels. Science, broadly speaking, is a method of examining and assessing the physical world around us, using instrumentation and methodology to achieve repeatable results so as to confirm or negate a hypothesis. It is, therefore, an endless process of knowledge acquisition, but only in the physical realm. We employ it because we are first convinced that reality is fixed, and that repeatability is possible. But that is a philosophical belief, not something that science has itself proven.[1] If we didn’t already “know” this there would be no point in attempting to conduct experiments in the first place.

Can Science Handle Moral Values?

Moreover, science does not attempt to provide knowledge as to good and evil, for it is simply incapable of doing so. After all, Nazi scientists were making use of science, but we would hardly accept that what they were doing was good. Indeed, we would not look to the scientific method at all for answers to such questions.

Can Science Address Anything Besides Physical Nature?

Finally, since science is limited to the physical realm, it cannot be used to assess the transcendent. What existed before “time” began can no more be measured by science than can the morality of a decision to use science to achieve a particular end.

What Other Options Do we have?

There are other ways to obtain knowledge besides experimental science, especially in areas where testing and repeatability are not possible. We do this all the time in the study of history, or when we make use of abductive reasoning to arrive at the best explanation from the available evidence. One example often used in courtrooms involves rain: clothing gets wet when we walk in the rain, and we rightly infer that it is raining outside when someone walks into a building wearing a raincoat that is dripping wet. We use abductive reasoning intuitively and we take as a given that our sense of reasoning operates correctly to allow us to reach valid conclusions. This is so even though we cannot use reason (or science) to prove the validity of reason. Simply put, if I try to use reason to prove that reason is valid, I have to presuppose the validity of the very thing – reason – that I am trying to prove. No, reason is a starting point, a given that we must all utilize if we are to discuss – to think – at all.

Christians are not imagining a creator when they look at the evidence of the universe. Quite the contrary: modern science is unlocking more and more of the secrets of the universe and finding that it is incredibly fined tuned to support the existence of life. Mathematical formulae can model what is occurring in nature with remarkable precision, amounting to a “language” scientists use to understand reality. Medical science has peered into the complexity of life, and the billions of lines of a computer-like code – found in DNA – that directs the building of proteins and ultimately structures that allow the vast variety of life we see on Earth. Whenever we see signs of something that is designed and operating according to a finely tuned set of instructions, we quite properly infer that there is an intelligence behind it. For something as massive and breathtaking as this universe, populated as it is with intelligent life, that something must itself be immensely intelligent and immensely powerful. Science certainly addresses this physical domain; it seeks to answer the question how things occur? And science performs a valuable function. But science as a tool for discovering processes cannot explain what first set in motion the forces that it is examining; what the designer sought to accomplish with the laws of nature; and what the ultimate meaning and purpose of life really is. Science addresses the “how” of whatever already exists, but not the “why.”

If Nature were a Note

Consider: imagine a scientist examining the mail he receives every day. Over time, he learns everything there is to know about the type of paper that is used, how the paper was formed, the type of ink, its place of manufacture and its ingredients. Imagine further that he determines how the letters are grouped to form words. Seeking knowledge of this type is laudable. But if the scientist concludes that since he knows all there is to know about ink and letters and envelopes, that there is no need for a letter-sender, then he has done something worse than making a blind leap of faith – he has closed his mind to the obvious reality of what he is examining. Indeed, the only way the scientist can learn the point of it all, the meaning of the message, is to read what was written, for in it is embedded information, something that simply cannot arise through random or blind processes.

As Christians, we bear witness to a personal God, not because we are grasping at myths, but because we believe the evidence of Jesus’s life, death and resurrection are sufficient for us to know him in a personal way. In other words, we personalize the source of what physicists describe as the creation event not by myth or wishful thinking but by a combination of abductive reasoning – a creator is the best explanation – and specific revelation – he is the God described in the Bible.

In the end, science and the Christian worldview are not in conflict. It is the one who insists despite the evidence that there is no God – and ultimately no one to whom we will one day be called to answer – that is persisting in ignorance.

References: 

[1] Editors Note: The fixity, repeatability, and knowability of nature are preconditions for science. One can’t do science without them. That is, one must assume such a framework before one can use the scientific method to discover facts about the natural world. Since these sorts of things have to be assumed beforehand they are, properly speaking, the domain of philosophy, namely philosophy of science.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Why Science Needs God by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

Science Doesn’t Say Anything, Scientists Do by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD, Mp3, and Mp4)

Oh, Why Didn’t I Say That? Does Science Disprove God? by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

Stealing From God by Dr. Frank Turek (Book, 10-Part DVD Set, STUDENT Study Guide, TEACHER Study Guide)

Al Serrato earned his law degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1985. He began his career as an FBI special agent before becoming a prosecutor in California, where he worked for 33 years. An introduction to CS Lewis’ works sparked his interest in Apologetics, which he has pursued for the past three decades. He got his start writing Apologetics with J. Warner Wallace and Pleaseconvinceme.com.

 

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The Sense of Hearing is a Masterpiece of Engineering

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By Jonathan McLatchie

The ear is responsible for two of our most fundamental senses — hearing and equilibrium — the receptors for which are all found inside the inner ear. For an incredible animation of how hearing works, I recommend this YouTube video.

Here, I will describe the anatomy of the ear and the biological basis of the sense of hearing. The information below can be found in any good anatomy and physiology textbook. You can also find a good discussion of this subject in Chapter 11 of Your Designed Body, by Steve Laufmann and Howard Glicksman. It might be helpful to refer to the illustration of the ear below as you read the description that follows. [1]

The Outer Ear

The outer ear is comprised of the auricle and ear canal. The auricle is composed of skin-covered cartilage. In dogs (who have movable ears), the auricle can serve as a funnel for sound waves. In humans, on the other hand, its absence would not negatively affect our hearing.

Skin containing ceruminous glands lines the ear canal (also called the external auditory meatus). The ear canal is a tube-like structure that extends from the outer ear to the middle ear. It is responsible for directing sound waves into the ear, which then travel through the ear canal and arrive at the eardrum (tympanic membrane) in the middle ear. The eardrum vibrates in response to these sound waves, and these vibrations are transmitted to the middle ear bones.

The Middle Ear

The middle ear is a cavity in the temporal bone that is filled with air. The tympanic membrane (popularly called the eardrum) is a thin, flexible membrane that separates the outer ear from the middle ear, and is stretched across the end of the ear canal. When sound waves enter the ear canal, they strike the eardrum, causing it to vibrate. Behind the eardrum, there are three small bones known as the ossicles — namely, the malleus (hammer), incus (anvil), and stapes (stirrup). The ossicles form a chain and are connected to each other. When the eardrum vibrates in response to waves, it causes the malleus to move, which, in turn, moves the incus and stapes. This mechanical linkage helps amplify the vibrations and transmits them from the eardrum to the inner ear.

The middle ear is also connected to the nasopharynx (back of the throat) through a tube called the eustachian tube. This tube helps to equalize air pressure on both sides of the eardrum. This is essential to maintain equilibrium of air pressure between the middle ear and external atmospheric pressure, to allow the eardrum to properly vibrate.

The Inner Ear

The inner ear is also a cavity within the temporal bone, and is also called the bony labyrinth. It is lined with a membrane called the membranous labyrinth. Between the bone and membrane is a fluid called perilymph, and within the membranous structures of the inner ear is a fluid called endolymph. Three of these structures (the utricle, saccule, and semicircular canals) are concerned with equilibrium. The other (the cochlea) relates to hearing.

The cochlea’s appearance is like the shell of a snail. The inside of the cochlea is partitioned into three canals, filled with fluid. The uppermost canal is called the scala vestibuli, and it is filled with perilymph (a fluid similar to cerebrospinal fluid). Sound vibrations travel through the cochlea and arrive at the scala tympani. The middle canal is called the scala media (otherwise known as the cochlear duct), and it is separated from the scala vestibuli by Reissner’s membrane, and from the scala tympani by the basilar membrane. The scala media contains endolymph and is where the sensory cells of the cochlea (known as hair cells) are located. These hair cells are of course not in fact hair, but, rather, are specialized microvilli that are responsible for converting sound vibrations into electrical signals that can be interpreted by the brain. Situated above the hair cells is the tectorial membrane which, as we shall see, is crucial for hearing.

The Sense of Hearing

The process of hearing begins with the production of sound waves, which are pressure fluctuations that are propagated through air. These waves are funneled into the ear canal by the pinna (the external part of the ear). The ear canal carries the sound waves to the eardrum (tympanic membrane), which causes it to vibrate. These vibrations are then transmitted to the malleus, incus, and stapes, which amplify the vibrations. The stapes is connected to the oval window, a membrane-covered opening to the inner ear. Vibration of the stapes bone against the oval window creates pressure waves in the fluid-filled cochlea. As the pressure waves pass through the fluid in the cochlea, they cause vibration of the basilar membrane. This results in the bending of hair cells against the tectorial membrane, which in turn triggers the release of neurotransmitters that convert mechanical vibrations into electrical signals. These electrical signals are transmitted to the brain by the auditory nerve, where they are interpreted as sound by the auditory areas in the temporal lobes of the cerebral cortex.

The auditory nerve fibers carrying information from one ear partially cross to the opposite side at a structure in the brainstem, known as the trapezoid body. This means that signals from both ears are sent to both sides of the brain. This plays an important role in sound localization and spatial processing, allowing the brain to compare the timing and intensity of signals from both ears, helping us to determine the direction of a source of sound. Impulses arriving from each inner ear are counted and compared by the auditory areas, to determine the direction of a sound. If there are more impulses coming from the right cochlea than from the left one, the brain projects the sound to the right, and vice versa.

The neurons of the auditory cortex are organized in a manner similar to a piano keyboard — being arranged from low to high pitch. The brain is also able to detect volume, rhythm, and tempo, as well as timbre, which is a quality of tone (a guitar playing a middle C and a piano playing the same note at the same volume will sound different due to the unique timbre of each instrument).

A Masterpiece of Engineering

The anatomy of hearing described above is of course the system found in humans and other terrestrial mammals. Many other organisms have less advanced hearing systems. For example, fish lack external ears and have structures called otoliths that detect vibrations and changes in water pressure. Reptiles, birds, and amphibians also often lack an external ear and have a single middle ear bone instead of the three found in mammals. And most invertebrates (such as crustaceans and mollusks) lack ears and a sense of hearing altogether. Typically, claims that the sense of hearing evolved by natural selection focus on these as intermediate stages. The incus, malleus, and stapes are thought to have arisen from three reptilian bones associated with the jaw — the quadrate bone, articular bone, and columella respectively.

However, the vertebrate sense of hearing involves several fundamental anatomical features that are common to all vertebrate hearing systems and cannot be removed without severely compromising (or completely eliminating) the ability to hear. For example, the cochlea (which contains the hair cells) is a critical component for transducing sound vibrations into electrical signals that the brain can interpret. Indeed, the leading cause of hearing loss is damage to the hair cells. Furthermore, the auditory nerve, which carries electrical signals from the hair cells in the cochlea to the brain, is crucial for transmitting auditory information to the central nervous system. In injuries or infections (such as meningitis) where the auditory nerve is damaged, the result can be a complete and permanent loss of hearing in that ear. The eardrum (tympanic membrane), which vibrates in response to sound waves, transmitting these vibrations to the middle ear ossicles, is also an essential aspect of the sense of hearing. If the eardrum is damaged or perforated, the consequence can be deafness. A minimum of one middle ear ossicle appears to be essential for hearing as well. Another crucial feature of the auditory system is the oval window, the membrane-covered opening between the middle and inner ear, located at the base of the stapes bone. Vibrations transmitted by the ossicles are transferred to the fluid within the cochlea through the oval window.

Thus, several different structural components are necessary for the vertebrate sense of hearing. It strains credulity to suppose that an unguided process of random variation sifted by natural selection could assemble such a delicately arranged system. It instead points to a cause with foresight.

Footnotes: 

[1] Image credit: Blausen.com staff (2014). “Medical gallery of Blausen Medical 2014”. WikiJournal of Medicine 1 (2). DOI:10.15347/wjm/2014.010. ISSN 2002-4436., CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

 

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Science Doesn’t Say Anything, Scientists Do by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD, Mp3 and Mp4)

Oh, Why Didn’t I Say That? Does Science Disprove God? by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

Stealing From God by Dr. Frank Turek (Book, 10-Part DVD Set, STUDENT Study Guide, TEACHER Study Guide

Why Science Needs God by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

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Dr. Jonathan McLatchie is a Christian writer, international speaker, and debater. He holds a Bachelor’s degree (with Honors) in forensic biology, a Masters’s (M.Res) degree in evolutionary biology, a second Master’s degree in medical and molecular bioscience, and a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology. Currently, he is an assistant professor of biology at Sattler College in Boston, Massachusetts. Dr. McLatchie is a contributor to various apologetics websites and is the founder of the Apologetics Academy (Apologetics-Academy.org), a ministry that seeks to equip and train Christians to persuasively defend the faith through regular online webinars, as well as assist Christians who are wrestling with doubts. Dr. McLatchie has participated in more than thirty moderated debates around the world with representatives of atheism, Islam, and other alternative worldview perspectives. He has spoken internationally in Europe, North America, and South Africa promoting an intelligent, reflective, and evidence-based Christian faith.

Originally posted at: Evolution News & Science Today

 

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Improbable Planet by Hugh Ross- Audio Book Highlight

Improbable Planet by Hugh Ross ― Audio Book Highlight

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By Luke Nix

Introduction

If you consume a large portion of your material through audio, it is hard to get past a good deal on an excellent audiobook. Twice every year ChristianAudio.com runs a sale on most of their collection, and you can usually pick up these great audio resources for $7.49. The time has come for the first sale of 2021 (and beyond), so I will be highlighting some of my favorite audiobooks. I’ll include a few of my favorite quotes from the books, my recommendation from my chapter-by-chapter reviews, links to posts that were inspired by the books, and, of course, I will include links to the audiobook deal throughout the article. Today, I am highlighting Improbable Planet: How Earth Became Humanity’s Home by Dr. Hugh Ross.

Improbable Planet by Hugh Ross– My Recommendation

Improbable Planet: How Earth Became Humanity’s Home is the highly anticipated “sequel” to Dr. Hugh Ross’ book Why The Universe Is The Way It Is. In the first work, Dr. Ross examined several biblical purposes God has for this creation and how these purposes are evidenced in the history of the universe. In this new book, Dr. Ross zooms in from the perspective of the entire universe and multiple purposes to the earth and God’s purpose of redemption. Dr. Ross’ goal in this volume is to demonstrate how the history of our planet is not merely some naturalistic “just-so story” but rather a complex, multi-stage project with an explicit purpose as its end-goal. He intends to marshal the latest scientific discoveries from numerous scientific disciplines to make his case for the design of our planet.

It is an amazing listen. I work with several project managers at my job, and they have shown me representations of the schedules of their various projects. These include the necessary order of numerous steps, deadlines for the steps, the goals of each step, and the final purpose. Many of the steps must be done together and within certain time periods; otherwise, the project will fail. If you have ever mapped out a project or have seen one mapped out, you may be familiar with Gantt charts and how complex they can be. As I was only a couple chapters into this book, I could not help but imagine the incredible complexity behind the project that God planned and executed perfectly to accomplish His purposes. The projects that I have seen at work do not compare to the project that was our planet. If it is reasonable to think that the smaller and less complex projects at work were the product of designers, then it is even more reasonable to understand the project that was our planet is the product of a Designer.

Dr. Ross skillfully brings numerous discoveries of numerous disciplines of science together to give the big picture of the project of our planet. He then shows from the Bible what the end purpose was, and how it all comes together into a cohesive worldview that ends with Christian evangelism. He shows how God did not merely start the process at the big bang and wait for natural processes to eventually and accidentally complete each step. Rather God initiated each step at the earliest moment possible after the previous step was completed, and while certain steps were being completed, God was working on other necessary steps. Dr. Ross shows how it was necessary that each step be completed within precise boundaries and deadlines that, if crossed or missed, we would not exist.

Dr. Ross masterfully demonstrates God’s patient yet highly active execution of His cosmic project. The argument from design in this book is awe-inspiring scientifically and theologically. The way the argument is presented makes it nearly impossible to be intellectually dismissed, especially by those even remotely involved in engineering or project management. I highly recommend that all Christians pick up a copy of this book. It will give you a new appreciation for the creation and the power, care, patience, and love of our Creator and Savior. It will also give you a tremendous tool to discuss and defend the truth of the Christian worldview from the latest discoveries in the hard sciences.

I especially recommend this audiobook to Christian apologists interested in arguments from design. This book takes the teleological argument to the next level. It goes beyond just identifying the finely-tuned constants of the universe to show how, even within a finely-tuned universe, in order for the arrival of advanced life such as humans, the processes that formed the final site of advanced life had to be meticulously planned and actively guided. The argument in the book appeals directly to what is known about the necessity of a designer behind projects, and implied throughout the book is the exponentially decreasing probabilistic resources available to the naturalist to explain our existence. Scientists, every day, are discovering new features of the history of our planet that cry out for a purposeful explanation. Improbable Planet needs to be in your personal library and part of your collection of tools to defend the truth that God created this universe and us for a purpose: to redeem us through the death and bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.

You can read the complete chapter-by-chapter summary review by clicking or tapping here.

Improbable Planet by Hugh Ross ― Favorite Quotes

“Only in a spiral galaxy is a long history of life possible. A spiral galaxy of the just-right size and the just-right structure can yield adequate heavy elements for life as well as a possible location where a planetary system can reside for billions of years without being exposed to deadly radiation and without gravitational disruptions from adjacent stars and molecular clouds.”

“The Local Group represents a rarity. As far as astronomers are able to see, the Local Group is the only grouping of galaxies wherein a host galaxy can sustain a planet on which a long history of diverse, complex, and abundant life is possible.”

“The list of rarities, all of which serve the eventual needs of long-enduring life, up to and including advanced civilization, starts with the [solar] system’s origin cluster and goes on to include its ejection from that cluster, the Grand Tack sequence, the Moon-forming event, the late veneer, the late heavy bombardment, the fifth planet’s timing, and jumping Jupiter. The existence and locations of our planetary system’s five asteroid and comet belts simply add to the already long list of features that must be in place before life can originate on Earth and possess any possibility of survival for a few billion years. The ‘coincidences’ compound with each new discovery.”

“Destructive mean motion resonances are nearly ubiquitous. As it is, Uranus is close to a 7:1 resonance with Jupiter, a 2:1 resonance with Neptune, and a 3:1 resonance with Saturn. Meanwhile, Jupiter and Saturn are very close to a 5:2 resonance. If any of these gas giant planets’ orbital positions were to shift even slightly, that shift would generate instabilities in the orbit of one or more of the solar system’s eight planets. Such instabilities would shatter the possibility of a long history of life on Earth, a history leading to human life and civilization.”

“The conditions under which the Moon formed seem so unlikely, from a naturalistic worldview, as to defy credibility.”

“The ideal place for any kind of life as we know it turns out to be the solar system like ours, within a galaxy like the Milky Way, within a supercluster system like ours, within a galaxy like the Milky Way, within a supercluster of galaxies like the Virgo supercluster, within a super-supercluster like the Laniakea super-supercluster. In other words, we happen to live in the best, perhaps the one and only, neighborhood that allows not only for physical life’s existence but also for its enduring survival.”

“Ongoing research tells us that Earth has been shaped not only by an intricately orchestrated interplay of physical forces and conditions but also by its vast abundance and diversity of life-forms. By means that no depth and breadth of scientific research can explain, life arose early in Earth’s history under anything but the benign conditions it would seem to require and somehow persisted through multiple mass extinction events, always appearing or reappearing at just-right times and in just-right forms to meet the needs and demands of the revised environment.”

“Both plate tectonics and life must remain at certain levels at different times throughout the past 3.8 billion years so that the history of life and of plate tectonics will produce all the resources for humanity’s eventual existence and launch of global, technologically advanced civilization.”

“The great diversity and abundance established early in life’s history drove the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur cycles to levels eventually sufficient for the entry of advanced life. The sulfate-reducing bacteria played an especially critical role. Their metabolic reactions transformed much of the soluble metal resources in the oceans and crust into insoluble concentrated metal ore deposits. Thus, a potentially poisonous environment for advanced life became an optimal resource repository, one that would later allow humanity to quickly transition from Stone Age machinery and tools to metallurgy-based technologies.”

“Without abundant photosynthetic life, plate tectonic activity on Earth would have shut down relatively quickly, making the crust a stationary lid over anything and everything beneath it. Without plate tectonics, the removal of greenhouse gases from Earth’s atmosphere would have shut down. Without removal of greenhouse gases, the Sun’s increasing luminosity would have raised Earth’s surface temperature beyond what life can tolerate. Earth would have become permanently sterile.”

“Unless plate tectonics had become established as a sustained, aggressive, globally manifested phenomenon as early as 3.0 billion years ago, Earth’s surface might never have attained the necessary conditions for advanced life in the time window between the Late Heavy Bombardment and the Sun’s brightening to catastrophic levels.”

“Thanks to the long history of progressively more advanced life-forms, the mineral inventory in Earth’s crust grew from 250 minerals up to its present stock of 4,300 distinct minerals. Many of these minerals have made possible the technology and standard of living humanity enjoy today. Billions of years of life appearing in progressively more advanced forms also provided humanity with an enormous treasure chest of biodeposits. This treasure includes several feet of rich topsoil and humus (amorphous organic matter) on sedimentary plains all over Earth’s landmasses–essential for extensive, intensive cultivation. Earth’s long history of life and tectonic activity also laid down vast stores of fossil fuels and building materials. That history speaks of a rich endowment that built up over billions of years of speciation events, deaths, and extinctions, new speciation events, more deaths and extinctions, and more life.”

“When research runs head-on into nature’s limits only scientism, not science, would rule out consideration of any cause other than nature. At such places, to invoke the possibility of a power and intelligence beyond nature may be the most rational response.”

Recommended resources related to the topic:

Why Science Needs God by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

Science Doesn’t Say Anything, Scientists Do by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD, Mp3, and Mp4)

Oh, Why Didn’t I Say That? Does Science Disprove God? by Dr. Frank Turek (DVD and Mp4)

Stealing From God by Dr. Frank Turek (Book, 10-Part DVD Set, STUDENT Study Guide, TEACHER Study Guide)

 

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Luke Nix holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and works as a Desktop Support Manager for a local precious metal exchange company in Oklahoma.

Original Blog Source: https://cutt.ly/YnP2QRU

 

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Giving Atheists a Hand

Giving Atheists a Hand

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By Al Serrato

My seventh-grade nephew needed some help the other night on social studies. He was working on the Paleolithic Age – the Old Stone Age – a time when man first started working with stone and bone tools. That got me thinking about the greatest “tool” of all – the human hand. It’s something that most people take for granted, but I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that modern civilization would never have arisen without it.

How can the atheist explain something as complex as the hand? Like the human reproductive system that I discussed in my last post, in his worldview, the hand is the product of a slow, random set of mutations occurring over a long period of time. We just happened to be lucky enough for everything to fall into place so that we – modern humans – are the beneficiaries of this entirely happenstance outcome. But think for a moment about the staggering complexity of the hand. Consider first the intricacy of the nerves that allow not just for feeling but for the fine sensitivity of feeling that exists in the fingertips. Consider the placement of the hand at the end of a flexible wrist on an arm that is also flexible. Five fingers provide the ability to grip and to manipulate objects, and the five can be used in unison or individually. Two matching hands are vastly superior to one, and the hands just happen to match in size, shape, and function. The opposable thumb may be its greatest feature, as it allows for tools to be gripped. There is a versatile muscular system that allows for objects to be firmly, or lightly, gripped, and a feedback mechanism in the nervous system that allows us to know whether we are gripping something so hard as to crush it or softly enough to caress it. All the while, it provides information on warmth and cold. On and on the list goes. It is truly a marvelous tool, and despite the best efforts of modern-day scientists, there is no way at present to even begin to replicate its complexities.

Yet we are to believe, according to the atheist, that this amazing feature of human beings is not the product of an intelligent designer, who foresaw and anticipated our use of tools to build and shape the world around us, but was instead the result of random processes occurring over time. By why should this be so? Well, the atheist will say, the hand is simply the descendent of more primitive appendages. Small, random changes conferred an advantage on some descendents, which allowed them to succeed and pass on this modification. Really? If this is so, then why haven’t monkeys, and these other more primitive forms, gone extinct, if their appendages were so unhelpful to their survival? Clearly, the development of a hand that could use tools, as opposed to one suited for climbing trees, was not needed by them in order to thrive and reproduce. Or conversely, why haven’t modern monkeys, which apparently predate humans, not yet evolved human hands, hands finely suited for using and manipulating tools?

More importantly, what happened before monkeys with primitive hands evolved? What was that earlier mammalian life form from which the arm and hand emerged? A squirrel? A rodent? What were these life forms doing, earlier still, when they had mere stumps on the ends of their limbs? Or no limbs at all? How did they survive? And why aren’t there other examples in nature of animals who randomly produced hands? Or animals that have partial hands that are somewhere on the road to evolving a complete hand?

To be fair, atheists probably think they are doing the believer a favor by arguing that science is the source of all knowledge, and that with enough time and study, answers to the questions I pose will someday be found. I suspect that most have not considered deeply the difficulty with this position. After all, the human hand is just one of dozens of fine-tuned systems in the body, each of which was constructed according to instructions embedded in the millions of lines of coded DNA information that directs the body to grow from a single cell to an adult person.

To conclude that the evolution of life forms happened randomly might have made sense in Darwin’s day, when those considering the question had no idea that information-rich DNA was directing the process of building and sustaining life. But today? Science can tell us many things about DNA and how it works. But the original source of the code, and the identity of the coder who wrote the language of DNA to provide for the life that is teeming on Planet Earth, is not something that science will find, certainly not if scientists insist on assuming that DNA assembled itself.

Recommended resources related to the topic:

I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (Paperback), and (Sermon) by Norman Geisler and Frank Turek 

Answering Stephen Hawking & Other Atheists MP3 and DVD by Dr. Frank Turek 

Tactics: A Game Plan for Discussing Your Christian Convictions by Greg Koukl (Book)

Defending the Faith on Campus by Frank Turek (DVD Set, mp4 Download set and Complete Package)

So the Next Generation will Know by J. Warner Wallace (Book and Participant’s Guide)

 

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Al Serrato earned his law degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1985. He began his career as an FBI special agent before becoming a prosecutor in California, where he continues to work. An introduction to CS Lewis’ works sparked his interest in Apologetics, which he has pursued for the past three decades. He got his start writing Apologetics with J. Warner Wallace and Pleaseconvinceme.com.

 

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