William Paley
Charles Darwin
Wallace
Darwin
Competition
Variation
The New Atheists
1. Darwin has made “the God
hypothesis” redundant.
2. Religion is dangerous.
3. Miracles are unscientific.
4. What sort of God would create
suffering?
Reductionism
• “The universe is nothing but a collection of atoms in motion, human
beings are simply machines for propagating DNA, and the
propagation of DNA is a self-sustaining process. It is every living
object’s sole reason for living” (Dawkins)
• “What shall we think then , of human love and fear? Are they
meaningless neural behaviour patterns? Or what shall we make of
the concept of beauty or truth?(Lennox)
• Darwin’s Doubt – “With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether
the convictions of a man’s mind, which has been developed from the
mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy”
• “… the very assertions of the reductionist himself are nothing but
blips in the neural network of his brain. The world of rational
discourse dissolves into the absurd chatter of firing synapses. Quite
frankly, they cannot be right and none of us believes it to be so”
(Polkinghorne)
Darwinism and morality?
Is Evolution a Fact?
“Fact: In science, an observation that has
been repeatedly confirmed and for all
practical purposes is accepted as “true”.
Truth in science, however, is never final,
and what is accepted as a fact today may
be modified or even discarded tomorrow”
(National Academy of Sciences).
Not Science by Definition?
“Creation-Science … fails to display the most
basic characteristic of science: reliance upon
naturalistic explanations. Instead, proponents
of “creation-science” hold that the creation of
the universe, the earth, living things, and man
was accomplished through supernatural
means inaccessible to human understanding”
(US National Academy of Sciences)
The Faith of Evolutionists?
“Philosophical naturalism is so
deeply ingrained in the thinking of
many educated people today, including
theologians, that they find it difficult to
imagine any other way of looking at
things”
(Phillip Johnson)
“When discussing organic evolution the only
point of agreement seems to be: It happened.
Thereafter, there is little consensus, which at
first sight must seem rather odd … Given,
therefore, this history and the most recent and
spectacular advances in molecular biology…”
Simon Conway Morris, “Bringing Molecules into the
Fold”. Cell, 100, 1-11, 2000
Misleading the public – microevolution
presented as macroevolution
Scant search for the Maker
• TES 20 April 2001
• The Triumph of Evolution and the Failure of Creationism
• … But where is the experimental evidence? None
exists in the literature claiming that one species has
been shown to evolve into another. Bacteria, the
simplest form of independent life, are ideal for this
kind of study, with generation times of 20 to 30
minutes, and populations achieved after 18 hours. But
throughout 150 years of the science of bacteriology, there
is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed
into another … Since there is no evidence for species
changes between the simplest forms of unicellular
life, it is not surprising that there is no evidence for
evolution from prokaryotic to eukaryotic cells, let
alone throughout the whole array of higher
multicellular organisms.
• Alan H. Linton is emeritus professor of bacteriology,
University of Bristol
1. The Moral Law
2. A sense of the divine
1. The Moral Law
2. A sense of the divine
3. The origins of the universe
“… scientists have been unable to interpret the very
earliest events in the explosion …
1. The Moral Law
2. A sense of the divine
3. The origins of the universe
4. The Anthropic Principle
"The more I examine the universe, and the details
of its architecture, the more evidence I find that the
Universe in some sense must have known we
were coming." — Freeman Dyson
"A bottom-up approach to cosmology either
requires one to postulate an initial state of the
Universe that is carefully fine-tuned — as if
prescribed by an outside agency — or it requires
one to invoke the notion of eternal inflation, a
mighty speculative notion to the generation of
many different Universes, which prevents one from
predicting what a typical observer would see." —
Stephen Hawking
Fine-Tuning and Pointers to God
• The fine-tuning of the universe is seen most
clearly in the values of the constants of
nature. There are many such constants, the
best known of which specify the strength of
the four forces of nature: the strong nuclear
force, the weak nuclear force, the
electromagnetic force, and gravity. If these
forces took on even slightly different
strengths, the consequences for life would be
devastating…
The
Universe
is “just
right”
”There is now broad agreement among physicists and
cosmologists that the universe is in several respects ‘finetuned' for life.”
P. Davies Int. J. of Astrobiology 2(2): 115, (2003).
1. The Moral Law
2. A sense of the divine
3. The origins of the universe
4. The Anthropic Principle
“It would be very difficult to explain why the
universe should have begun in this way, except as
the act of a God who intended to create beings like
us” – Stephen Hawking
“The best data we have are exactly what I would
have predicted, had I nothing to go on but the five
books of Moses, the Psalms, the Bible as a
whole" — Arno Penzias
• Complexity of DNA and Schroeder’s
answer to the “monkey theorem” (pg 76)
•On Dawkins – “If any of this were true
there would be no use to go on …”Let us
try to teach generosity and altruism,
because we are born selfish”. No
eloquence can move programmed robots.
But in fact no of it is true – or even faintly
sensible”.
1. Nature obeys laws – the rational
universe.
2. Origin of intelligently organized life – life
from non-life.
3. The existence of nature – how did the
universe begin.
1. Nature obeys laws – the rational
universe – did the universe know we
were coming - a Divine Lawmaker.
Stephen Hawking - “The overwhelming
impression is one of order. The more we
discover about the universe, the more
we find that it is governed by rational
laws”.
Albert Einstein – “Whoever has
undergone the intense experience of
successful advances in this domain is
moved by profound reverence for the
rationality made manifest in existence
… the grandeur of reason incarnate in
existence”
2. How did life go live?
Paul Davies – “Life is more than just
complex chemical reactions. The cell is
also and information stiring, processing
and replicating system. We need to
explain the origin of this information,
and the way in which the information
processing machinery came to exist”.
George Wald – “We chose to believ e
the impossible: that life arose
spontaneously by chance”
3. Did something come from nothing?
“If the universe had a beginning, it
became entirely sensible, almost
inevitable, to ask what produced this
beginning… Modern cosmologists
seemed justas disturbed as atheists
about the potential theological
implications of their work”.
ie.Everything from nothing
or
Something always has been
or
Something was created by a power
outside of the universe
But what about the evolution of life once
created?
Homologies
”Richard Owen (1848) introduced the term
homology to refer to structural similarities
among organisms. To Owen, these similarities
indicated that organisms were created following
a common plan or archetype. … Nevertheless,
if every organism were created independently, it
is unclear why there would be so many
homologies among certain organisms, while so
few among others. It is also hard to make
sense of the fact that homologous structures
can be inefficient or even useless. Why would
certain cave-dwelling fish have degenerate
eyes that cannot see? Darwin made sense of
homologous structures by supplying an
evolutionary explanation for them: A structure is
similar among related organisms because
those organisms have all descended from a
common ancestor that had an equivalent trait.”
http://www.zoology.ubc.ca/~bio336/Bio336/Lect
ures/Lecture5/Overheads.html
“Sequences”
“Biologists Nilsson and Pegler
have performed a sophisticated
calculation to show that an eye
capable of casting an image could
evolve gradually, possibly within a
few hundred thousand years …
Because the eye is composed of
soft tissue, we do not have fossil
evidence of the evolution of eyes
in this way. Nevertheless, every
step that appears in the calculation
is represented in some animal
known today. The inference that
eyes evolved roughly as suggested
in the calculation is therefore
supported by hard evidence … the
eye is not irreducibly complex …”
Young and Edis, Why Intelligent
Design Fails, Rutgers University
Press, 2005, pg 24
Vestigial Organs
Common
genetic code
Homeotic genes
complexes
Primordial soup
Cambrian Explosion
Convergence
The
Adaptation
Package
– Evolutions gaps
• New information
• Origin of life
• Speciation
– Natural selection a
force for conservation
– Intermediary forms
– Cambrian explosion
• Intelligence, mind,
language and
morality
– Evidence of design
• Inescapable teleological
language
• Fine tuning of the
conditions for life
• “extreme perfection and
complication”
• The adaptational package
• Improbability– “Convergence” eg
marsupials and placental
mammals.
– Irreducible complexity
• Intelligence and morality
The problem of goodness v the problem of evil
The Test of Evolution and
Irreducible Complexity
“If it could be
demonstrated that any
complex organ existed
which could not possibly
have been formed by
numerous successive,
slight modifications, my
theory would absolutely
break down”
“A single system which is
composed of several
interacting parts that
contribute to the basic
function, and where the
removal of any one of
the parts causes the
system to effectively
cease functioning”
Charles Darwin
Michael Behe
"IMAGINE A NANOTECHNOLOGY MACHINE far
beyond the state of the art: a microminiaturized
rotary motor and propeller system that drives a tiny
vessel through liquid. The engine and drive
mechanism are composed of 40 parts, including a
rotor, stator, driveshaft, bushings, universal joint, and
flexible propeller. The engine is powered by a flow of
ions, can rotate at up to 100,000 rpm ... and can
reverse direction in a quarter of a rotation. The
system comes with an automatic feedback control
mechanism. The engine itself is about 1/100,000th of
an inch wide -- far smaller than can be seen by the
human eye. (Peterson D., "The Little Engine That
Could...Undo Darwinism," The American Spectator,"
8 May 2005).
Intelligent Design
• Irreducible complexity
• Specified complexity
D_E_S_I_G_N
309 million goes at
getting this out of a
scrabble bag in 6 letters
“Biology is the study of complicated things that give the
appearance of having been designed for a purpose”
Richard Dawkins
•
Teleological Notions in Biology
•
Teleological terms such as "function" and "design" appear frequently in
the biological sciences. Examples of teleological claims include:
A (biological) function of stotting by antelopes is to communicate to
predators that they have been detected.
Eagles' wings are (naturally) designed for soaring.
Teleological notions were commonly associated with the pre-Darwinian
view that the biological realm provides evidence of conscious design
by a supernatural creator.
Opinions divide over whether Darwin's theory of evolution provides a
means of eliminating teleology from biology, or whether it provides a
naturalistic account of the role of teleological notions in the science.
Many contemporary biologists and philosophers of biology believe that
teleological notions are a distinctive and ineliminable feature of
biological explanations but that it is possible to provide a naturalistic
account of their role that avoids the concerns above.
•
•
•
•
Isn’t Mother Nature Wonderful!
• “It illuminates the mechanisms and processes that evolution uses,
and tells us more about how Mother Nature engineers life.“
• “But despite our ever constant desire to do better than nature, we
recognize that evolution has had an immense head start as far as
biological design goes. To an engineer, each time an organism
adapts to changing environmental conditions it represents a
successful design solution, providing no less than its continued
existence as proof of success. "The natural selection and
evolution of species provides us with the longest engineering
design test of all time," said Jeannette Yen, professor in Georgia
Tech's School of Biology. "By studying how organisms solve the
problems they face, we get to benefit from the millions of years of
knowledge embedded in the DNA of each creature."
• Teleonomy
• From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Teleonomy is the quality of apparent purposefulness and of
goal-directedness of structures and functions in living
organisms that derive from their evolutionary history and
adaptation for reproductive success.
• The term was coined to stand in contrast with teleology, which
applies to ends that are planned by an agent which can
internally model/imagine various alternative futures, which
enables intention, purpose and foresight. A teleonomic process,
such as evolution, produces complex products without the
benefit of such a guiding foresight. Evolution largely hoards
hindsight, as variations unwittingly make "predictions" about
structures and functions which could successfully cope with the
future, and participate in an audition which culls the also-rans,
leaving winners for the next generation. Information
accumulates about functions and structures that are successful,
exploiting feedback from the environment via the selection of
fitter coalitions of structures and functions. Teleonomy is related
to past effects instead of present purpose.
Design as a metaphor!
• “This then is the paradox …Darwin seems to have
expelled design from biology, and yet we still go on
using and seemingly needing this way of thinking.
We still talk in terms appropriate to conscious
intention, whether or not we believe in God. In
biology, we still use forward-looking language of a
kind that would not be deemed appropriate in
physics or chemistry…
• Michael Ruse, Darwin and Design – does evolution
have a purpose? Harvard University Press, 2003
Design as a metaphor!
• ….“Now that things have been spelled out, we see
there is nothing very mysterious about purpose in
evolution. At the heart of modern evolutionary biology
is the metaphor of design, and for this reason
function-talk is appropriate. Organisms give the
appearance of being designed, and thank’s to Charles
Darwin’s discovery of natural selection we know why
this is true. Natural selection produces artifact-like
features, not by chance but because if they were not
artifact-like they would not work and serve their
possessors’ needs.
• Still, is it a concern that we have a metaphor here, a
human-based metaphor? … But as Darwin pointed
out, we use metaphors all the time in science …
• Michael Ruse, Darwin and Design – does evolution
have a purpose? Harvard University Press, 2003
“For the invisible things of him from the
creation of the world are clearly seen,
being understood by the things that are
made, even his eternal power and
godhead; so that they are without excuse”
(Romans 1:20)
“Paley’s argument is wrong,
gloriously and utterly wrong”
Richard Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker
“Go to the ant …”
Psalm 8
O LORD our Lord, how excellent is
thy name in all the earth! who hast
set thy glory above the heavens…
3 ¶ When I consider thy heavens,
the work of thy fingers, the moon and
the stars, which thou hast ordained;
4 What is man, that thou art mindful
of him? and the son of man, that thou
visitest him?
5 For thou hast made him a little
lower than the angels, and hast
crowned him with glory and honour.
6 Thou madest him to have
dominion over the works of thy
hands; thou hast put all things under
his feet…
9 O LORD our Lord, how excellent is
thy name in all the earth!
Dysteleology and cruelty
• “Why should the
respiratory and digestive
systems be associated?
There is, in fact, a good
reason for them not to be
associated: the doubleduty pharynx makes it
possible for pony fish,
and vertebrates in
general, to choke on
food”
• George Williams, Plan
and Purpose in Nature,
1996.
• The total amount of
suffering per year is
beyond all decent
contemplation … no
design, no purpose, no evil
and no good, nothing but
blind, pitiless indifference”
• Richard Dawkins, River out
of Eden, 1995.
• Romans 8
• 20 For the creation was
subjected to vanity, not of its
own will, but by reason of him
who subjected it, in hope
• 21 that the creation itself also
shall be delivered from the
bondage of corruption into the
liberty of the glory of the
children of God.
• 22 For we know that the whole
creation groaneth and
travaileth in pain together until
now.
• 23 And not only so, but
ourselves also, who have the
first–fruits of the Spirit, even we
ourselves groan within
ourselves, waiting for our
adoption, to wit, the redemption
of our body.
“he humbled
himself and
became obedient
unto death …”
“… even the
death of the
cross”
The Wonder of
Bible Prophecy!
“We have a more sure word of prophecy; whereunto ye
do well that ye take heed, as unto a light that shineth in
a dark place … no prophecy of the scripture is of any
private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old
time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as
they were moved by the Holy Ghost.” 2 Peter 1:19-21
Shew us what shall happen!
• Isaiah 41
• 21 ¶ Produce your cause, saith the
LORD; bring forth your strong reasons,
saith the King of Jacob.
• 22 Let them bring them forth, and shew
us what shall happen: let them shew
the former things, what they be, that
we may consider them, and know the
latter end of them; or declare us
things for to come.
• 23 Shew the things that are to come
hereafter, that we may know that ye are
gods…
Isaiah 43
9 Let all the nations be gathered
together, and let the people be
assembled: who among them can
declare this, and shew us former
things? let them bring forth their
witnesses, that they may be justified:
or let them hear, and say, It is truth.
10 Ye are my witnesses, saith the
LORD, and my servant whom I
have chosen: that ye may know and
believe me, and understand that I am
he: before me there was no God
formed, neither shall there be after
me.
11 I, even I, am the LORD; and
beside me there is no saviour.
12 I have declared, and have
saved, and I have shewed, when
there was no strange god among you:
therefore ye are my witnesses, saith
the LORD, that I am God.
God’s future is salvation
Isaiah 45
18 For thus saith the LORD that created the heavens; God
himself that formed the earth and made it; he hath
established it, he created it not in vain, he formed it to be
inhabited: I am the LORD; and there is none else.
19 I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the
earth: I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek ye me in
vain: I the LORD speak righteousness, I declare things that
are right.
21 Tell ye, and bring them near; yea, let them take counsel
together: who hath declared this from ancient time? who
hath told it from that time? have not I the LORD? and there
is no God else beside me; a just God and a Saviour; there is
none beside me.
22 Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the
earth: for I am God, and there is none else.
“The land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish
people…Here they first attained to statehood… and
gave to the world the eternal Book of Books…”
May 14, 1948
Hatikva - The National Anthem
As long as deep in the
heart,
The soul of a Jew yearns,
And towards the East
An eye looks to Zion,
Our hope is not yet lost,
The hope of two thousand
years,
To be a free people in our
land,
The land of Zion and
Jerusalem