P.Z. Myers vs Intelligent Design

The spokesperson for the modern intelligent design movement wrote a review on a NY Times article concerning some genes in fish which might give evolutionists ideas on how fins turned to feet. This prompted P.Z. Myers who uses evolution often to try and discredit the existence of God and creationism in general to respond to the review. Myers writes…

“Stop, Casey, and think. Here’s this fascinating observation, that we keep finding conserved genes and conserved regulatory regions between mice and fish, which ought to tell you something, and your argument against a specific example is that it isn’t rare? It really tells you something when your critics’ rebuttal to a piece of evidence is that you’ve got so much evidence for your position that they’re tuning out whenever you talk about the detais.”

Here is what Casey Luskin who is the spokesperson for the modern intelligent design movement wrote in his review…

“The real story isn’t quite that interesting. According to the Nature paper, a particular region of DNA associated with a Hox gene cluster in the coelocanth genome showed sequence homology with a stretch of Hox gene-related DNA in tetrapods. Hox genes are known to be widely conserved among vertebrates, so the fact that homology was found between Hox-gene-associated DNA across these organisms isn’t very surprising.”

“The authors aren’t sure exactly what this particular segment of DNA does, though it’s probably a promoter region. In mice the corresponding homologous region is associated with Hox genes that are important for forming the placenta. Ergo, we’ve solved the mystery of how the placenta evolved. Right?”

“Not really. Again, all that was found was a little homologous promoter region in Hox-gene related DNA in these two types of organisms. Given that we don’t even understand exactly what these genes do or how they work, obviously the study offered no discussion of what mutations might have provided an evolutionary advantage.”

“No evolutionary pathway was proposed, or even discussed. So there’s not much meat to this story, other than a nice little region of homology between two shared, functional pieces of Hox-gene-related DNA. But of course, such shared functional DNA could be the result of common design and need not indicate common descent or Darwinian evolution.”

Casey Luskin is correct in this regard, there isn’t much to the discovery. No knowledge on how these genes work or why they work. All this paper claims is “homology” which isn’t hard evidence for evolution. Why? For one, similarities between organisms that evolutionists don’t believe are closely related!

Next Myers attacks intelligent design referring to it as “creationism”…

“The Intelligent Design creationist explanation requires that every extant species was specifically and intentionally stocked with a set of genes hand-chosen by a designer. God magically inserted IgM into each vertebrate species, except that he missed the coelacanths, and he magically inserted IgW into each and every shark, ray, coelacanth, and lungfish, but he intentionally left them out of every tetrapod and teleost.” 

Of course the modern intelligent design movement denies any reference to God, because to them that wouldn’t be scientific. But they don’t define what an intelligent agent or agents is, thus anyone guessing what they mean by that would be considered an ad hominem argument. But when you use intelligent agent or agents within your framework in which you call science, it is reasonable to challenge or question who or what that is! Of course Myers assumes its God and labels it creationism because the courts outlawed it being taught in the public schools. Myers then also assumes how a mind (in this case, God) would create nature which is interesting.

Myers uses uniqueness as proof for a creator, because evolution uses “homology” for its framework or another words God wouldn’t have created that way so it was evolution. However, he is wrong! For example, a car company often times uses the same parts in different cars. Does that mean cars are not intelligently designed rather they naturally evolved? No! You can tell that Ford models are similar. The Ford company doesn’t make each model drastically different from other models that it produces in that same year. Conversely, most of the genetic code for all living things is universal, because for one, it indicates a lone designer not many different designers. Also, it has a purpose, this makes the code optimal for protecting against errors!

Here is a challenge for Myers! What scientific research has produced hard evidence that an intelligent designer would only produce each species using totally different parts? Didn’t you believe that creationism couldn’t be tested therefore not a science then how could you come up with such a conclusion on how God would create? Didn’t you believe only evolution could be tested therefore a science? Myers uses evolution exactly like a spiritual cult does in order to try and disprove in what he doesn’t want to believe in, and that is God! This is why his argument is a bluff of complexity rather than logical. Science has not disproved God neither has P.Z Myers version of evolution disproved God!        

Will Science Destroy People’s Beliefs In God?

In the world of atheism, evolution is treated as a cult that opposes the supernatural and in time as their gaps supposedly fall into place, it will destroy the faith of other non-believers into their world-viewpoint of denying the existence of God.  Which is why they believe “science” is a tool that is more than just obtaining knowledge or updating or replacing theories, rather using that knowledge obtained through science as a means for  disproving Christianity.

Physicist Sean Carroll is one of those who believes in just that, in a recent article in yahoo news from Natalie Wolchover who is from live science, Carroll suggests that science will rule out God…

“Over the past few centuries, science can be said to have gradually chipped away at the traditional grounds for believing in God. Much of what once seemed mysterious — the existence of humanity, the life-bearing perfection of Earth, the workings of the universe — can now be explained by biology, astronomy, physics and other domains of science.”

“Although cosmic mysteries remain, Sean Carroll, a theoretical cosmologist at the California Institute of Technology, says there’s good reason to think science will ultimately arrive at a complete understanding of the universe that leaves no grounds for God whatsoever.”

Does anyone think the likes of Carroll believe that science and religion are separate? More like Carroll is suggesting that science is at odds with religion. It is what one suggests or interprets as science which determines agreement or disagreement with religion.

Did Carroll explain how science could demonstrate that God doesn’t exist? No.  Does Carroll mean that science could in principle show God does exist or not? No. But what he saying is a common belief among certain intellectuals who are atheists  when people are educated (indoctrinated) in their world-viewpoint, people will side with them.

Issac Newton, one of the greatest scientists of all time (the inventor of calculus and theory about gravity) said this in his writings called, General Scholium to Principia where Newton accepts the cosmological argument to God.

“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centres of other like systems, these, being formed by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One; especially since the light of the fixed stars is of the same nature with the light of the sun, and from every system light passes into all the other systems: and lest the systems of the fixed stars should, by their gravity, fall on each other mutually, he hath placed those systems at immense distances one from another.”

This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of his dominion he is wont to be called Lord God pantokrator , or Universal Ruler . . . .And from his true dominion it follows that the true God is a living, intelligent, and powerful Being; and, from his other perfections, that he is supreme, or most perfect…” 

“It is allowed by all that the Supreme God exists necessarily; and by the same necessity he exists always, and every where.” 

Newton no doubt views God as the architect and creator of the cosmos and of its unfolding, such that the laws of nature are the decrees of God. While seeing those laws as the work of an intelligent being, Carroll attempts to use those same laws as a means to get rid of understanding the cosmos through the work of an intelligent mind, very advanced intelligent mind, beyond all human understanding (not that we don’t understand any of it but continue to learn about it).

Evolutionary science hasn’t even been able to explain the existence of humanity (it remains a puzzle to them) let alone being able to explain away the existence of God.  Even trying to explain a finely turned universe by inventing infinite number of multiple universes combined with the anthropic principle is neither scientific nor an explanation. How the big bang popped out of nothing is another ‘theory’ which is neither scientific nor an explanation, but has caused complexity as the data doesn’t hold to its principles so you have other invented ideas such as “inflation” to try to rescue it, but it too has its own problems with the data causing more complexity.

Will science ultimately destroy people’s beliefs in God so they turn into atheists? No! We are not talking about operational science but rather historical science. We have over 150 years of evolution (along with many new discoveries that overturn its explanations), and the minority still remains with the atheists when it comes to denying the supernatural verses believing in the supernatural!

Cosmology: “In The Beginining” Controversy

In honor of Stephen Hawking’s 70thbirthday a conference was held.  And in this conference, there were two proposals posed being featured and one of which posed the greatest threat to the existing ‘models’ in cosmology.  You see, back in the 1970’s there was an uproar over a book called; “God and the Astronomers” by astronomer Robert Jastrow.

What was the uproar about? In the book, astronomer Robert Jastrow suggested that the universe had a beginning and he was very surprised on how much opposition came from cosmologists as a result. This is because they knew fully well if the universe had a beginning, this would suggest it was created out of nothing and they found that to be implausible therefore leaving the door open for a creator.  So  secular cosmologists embraced the idea of an eternal universe or universes that have no beginning.

Not only was the conference honoring Stephen Hawking’s 70th birthday but also it was a conference that was trying to carefully explain the universe with a beginning while being concerned about making any inferences towards God being the creator. In New Scientist, “the universe is not eternal, resurrecting the thorny question of how to kick-start the cosmos without the hand of a supernatural creator.”

Stephen Hawking told his audience in a pre-recorded speech, “A point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God,’   Sadly, Hawking is wrong, science doesn’t break for a creator, science has broken down for natural causes being the creator of the universe. Take the big bang ‘theory’ for an example, if it was true then scientists would be observing a chronological structure of different stages concerning galaxies development as one looks deeper into space. But like in biology, this hasn’t been the case, astronomers have discovered galaxies and stars that are more fully ‘evolved’ in a segment of distant space where it was thought to represent the early, immature universe. One such discovery was discovered not long ago, a cluster of galaxies known as CL J1449+0856.

Stephen Hawking likes to invoke the “M-theory” at the very core of his beliefs.  But calling “M” a theory is a bit misleading because currently M-Theory is really not a theory at all, rather it’s a collection of different ideas (stories) with no observational or experimental data. He also invokes physical laws as the origin for the beginning of the universe.

However…

“… physical laws can never provide a complete explanation of the universe. Laws themselves do not create anything, they are merely a description of what happens under certain conditions.”  -Professor and creationist at Oxford, John Lennox

John is correct, giving natural laws such profound abilities is not science but merely a man-made story in attempt to replace an intelligent creator namely, God. Back to “in the beginning”, there is a reason why a proposal of this kind has come out despite many objections for suggesting similar things in the past. New Scientist states this about the current status about an eternal universe, “cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Boston explained last week, that hope has been gradually fading and may now be dead.”

Here are some of the reasons why these models have failed and considered to be “dead”…

The “cosmic egg” model where the universe hatches out of an existing eternal state.  Last year, “Vilenkin and graduate student Audrey Mithani showed that the egg could not have existed forever after all, as quantum instabilities would force it to collapse after a finite amount of time (arxiv.org/abs/1110.4096).” 

The universe bouncing eternally in an organized state from expansion to contraction. This doesn’t fit the laws of the physical universe, because “disorder increases with time.”  So after each cycle the universe increases in chaos, so given the old universe time frame, it would have already reached maximum disorder.

Inflation with eternal life.  Extrapolated from Alan Guth’s 1981 inflation proposal where universes forming and inflating spontaneously forever and ever. Why does this model fail? Because equations still require a boundary in the past as pointed out by Vilenkin and Guth back in 2003.

No model of an eternal universe has been shown to work. New Scientist calls it a “Genesis Problem”. Science has not broken down, it’s as good as ever and it is confirming God’s word! What is breaking here are these man-made stories from unbelievers who are bent on disproving God.

Disturbing Developments In Cosmology

Dark matter has always been a controversial subject in this blog, often times it’s refer to as a factual phenomena due to consensus in order to fill in a problem concerning secular cosmology. For years scientists have been looking for it with a vast amount of expensive research tools. With such very weak inferences, and then trying to make predictions (from the “cosmological standard model”) with something that hasn’t been discovered directly which makes it invalid for it to be considered as factual but rather it’s mere speculation.

CDM particles is something different than physics describing the atomic nucleus with specific concepts governing matter and energy. Then coming up with new particles that are defined very tightly constrained like quarks when previous data cannot explain observed phenomena. As creationists, we agree that particles of this nature do not behave arbitrarily because they were created by a God of order.

Observational data is becoming a problem for the gap filling model of dark matter. At the science festival in England, leading cosmologist Carlos Frenk and the BBC says that “research on dwarf galaxies suggests they cannot form in the way they do if dark matter exists in the form that the most common model requires it to.” CDM particles haven’t been proven despite what some would say. More disurbing developments in cosmology in relation to a possiblity, “that CDM does not exist, and the predictions of the standard model relating to it are false.” 

But the disturbing developments with observational data and the computer model, Frenk insists this is not a dead thing and no shift is required but rather he makes a bold prediction of his own, “Dark matter is poised for big developments in the next few months,” he said. Sorry Frenk, it’s highly unlikely that such results will come in a few short months that vindicates the model of dark matter. More like increasing complexity will begin to plague it even more because it is not matching up with observational data whether it be soon or later.