No Engines

… continuation of “No Engines, No Wings – Won’t Fly” …

The first two definitions of evolution are not problematic. It is only evolution in the third sense that won’t fly. I will refer to this form of evolution as Evolution (with a capital ‘E’) because it is the prevailing view among the influential leaders of the scientific community. This is Darwinian (or neo-Darwinian) Evolution – the view that single-cell life emerged from non-life and, after billions of years of mutation and transformation, can account for all the diversity of life we see on Earth today. Before addressing the third (controversial) definition discussed above, Evolution must first prove capable of accounting for the Origins of Life. If it cannot do that, it can never get off the ground. This is Evolution’s greatest obstacle, and the reason it still sits quietly on the runway. There are several aspects of this problem.

First, natural selection is, by definition, a process that works by rewarding an organism’s advantageous mutations. This is the source of the “survival of the fittest” concept with which we have all become so familiar. Those mutations that provide the organism with some kind of benefit are “selected” and further enhance the propagation of the species. But the early, lifeless Earth contained no organisms! The logical problem that arises is that, before life existed, there were no advantageous mutations on which natural selection could work.

Second, Evolution presumes that first life must have emerged gradually after billions of years of geological and environmental preparation that transformed the planet into a life friendly Petri dish. The problem is that the geological and biological evidence shows that this presumption is wholly inaccurate. Instead, the scientific indications are that the Earth was being pounded by meteors and the like during the Late Heavy Bombardment which occurred between 3.8 and 3.9 billion years ago. Conditions during that time were so hostile that no form of life could possibly have survived it. However, most researchers also agree that was present on the Earth 3.86 billion years ago. In other words, life appeared almost simultaneously with the end of the heavy bombardment. This evidence runs completely counter to the Evolutionary model we are asked to accept. But that’s not all.

Third, Evolution also maintains that this first life would have been simplistic in form and chemical makeup, then gradually progressed into more complex structures. Instead, the evidence of life we see is exactly the opposite. Those organisms that popped up 3.86 billion years ago were incredibly complex – so complex that some researchers suggest there is evidence of photosynthetic processes in place from the very beginning.

Fourth, any form of life must, by definition, be able to utilize energy from its surroundings and transform that energy so that it can develop, grow and sustain itself. This we call metabolism. At the same time, the continued existence of life means that, no matter how simple the life form is, it must have the ability to replicate itself. Biologists wrestle over which of these processes must have arisen first. But, within that debate, there exists an even more intractable problem that has become a classic “chicken or the egg” scenario for Evolutionists. As biochemist Fazale Rana puts it:

This conundrum refers to the complete interdependence that proteins and DNA have on one another when it comes to their synthesis and biochemical roles in the cell … Even though scientists refer to DNA as a self-replicating molecule, its synthesis, and hence its replication, requires a suite of proteins. In other words, proteins replicate DNA [but] without DNA, the cell cannot produce proteins

In short, Evolution is left to explain how, if highly complex entities like proteins and DNA are said to emerge through painfully slow processes, one could have arisen without the other. To accept the claims of Evolution is to believe that both of these vital developments must have occurred simultaneously.

Fifth, Darwin conceived of the site where life must have first formed in a letter to his friend Joseph Hooker in 1871:

It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a living organism are present, which could ever have been present. But if (and Oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc., present, that a protein compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter would be instantly devoured or absorbed, which would not have been the case before living creatures were formed

We cannot fault Darwin for speculating about what has come to be known as the “pre-biotic soup” where life first sprang into existence. We can, however, call to task those who have failed to produce such a soup for their continued insistence that we accept its existence. Research based on the Oparin-Haldane hypothesis, like the much-touted Miller-Urey experiment, have done nothing but cast further doubt on the reality of Darwin’s “warm little pond.” Miller-Urey assumed environmental conditions on the early Earth that have since been proven to be incorrect. In discovering this, scientists have run up against yet another chicken-or-the-egg dilemma regarding the presence of oxygen in the early atmosphere. Rana again …

Oxygen’s presence, either in the atmosphere or dissolved in oceanic or subterranean water, shuts down prebiotic chemistry pathways … Ironically, oxygen’s absence would also have turned off prebiotic chemistry … either way, in the presence of oxygen or in the absence of oxygen, the soup is ruined because prebiotic molecule formation is stymied

Or, as one of Jerry Seinfeld’s most famous characters might have screamed at Darwin, “No soup for you!” [I couldn’t resist] Tying these Darwinian takeoff inhibitors together, Evolutionary scientists have gone to great lengths to try to recreate the conditions of the early earth to show how life could have emerged from non-life. Unlike their blind and purposeless friend, natural selection, these researchers know the outcome. They know what it takes to constitute life. They know how cells function. They know how amino acids, proteins, and DNA are constructed (this, by the way, constitutes another mountain Evolutionary biochemistry must climb which I have not even begun to address here). They stage trials that commence with pristine environmental factors and involve researchers that “tweak” various experimental parameters, but still they cannot reproduce the formation of even the simplest building block of single-cellular life. For all their blustery pronouncements and pitiful promises, Michael Behe shows that even those inside the field admit that:

More than 30 years of experimentation on the origin of life in the fields of chemical and molecular evolution have led to a better perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life on Earth rather than to its solution. At present all discussions on principal theories and experiments in the field either end in stalemate or in a confession of ignorance.

The failure of the Evolutionists in this area is so complete they have essentially given up on the project. They still refuse to surrender their naturalistic presumptions however. In a tacit admission that they have not found, and do not expect to find, any plausible explanation for the origin of life from on the Earth, the latest attempt to rescue naturalism from its abysmal failures centers on the claim that life must have arrived here from some extraterrestrial location. Panspermia they call it ...

a theory which holds that the stuff of life is everywhere and that we humans owe our genesis and evolution to a continual rain of foreign microbes. It means, simply, that we might all be aliens.

In the "non-directed" form of this theory these microbes originated elsewhere and were deposited here by interstellar “winds.” Though it is an interesting theory, it does absolutely nothing to alleviate the problems with the naturalistic case for the origin of life. It simply pushes all those problems off to some foreign world we have not yet found. But it gets better.

With "directed" panspermia the search for the origin of life is said to end with us behind bars. Here, life on Earth is posited to be the project of some extra-terrestrial intelligent agent who put us here for some kind of experiment. It ends up that Earth is a zoo. In the end, the meticulously regulated actions of our most prominent origin of life researchers cannot even fathom a working model for the origin of life. The most plausible explanation naturalism can offer ends up with humanity being the project of some cosmic zookeeper.

Naturalistic scientists scoff at those who suggest that the evidence for the origin of life may point to the actions of an Intelligent Designer. Yet, at the end of the day, that is exactly what they offer us in return.There is no plausible naturalistic explanation for the origin of life. And, for that reason, Evolution is a theory that never gets off the ground.

No Engines, No Wings -- Won't Fly

There is an environment that makes most of the pilots I know gag. It is the sound of whirring disk drives and hissing pistons. It is the smell of hydraulic fluid and heated computer hardware. Each of these reverberates within a boxy cavern that pilots cannot help but associate with anguish, stress, fear and despair. It is a place we loathe but cannot avoid. It is the simulator.

I understand the purpose and inevitability of simulator training. I am glad that my family rides on airplanes flown by pilots who are required to undergo simulator training. I get all that. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it. No one wants to endure any form of torture but that is exactly what the simulator is. Most of us call it the “sweatbox” for a reason.

That is the issue at the core of our hatred for simulators. The new, high-tech, high-speed generation of simulators is so well designed that, when you are in them, you begin to believe what you see. The picture that is projected on the windscreen in front of you looks real, right down to the last detail. The airports you land at have every light, and building, and taxiway perfectly represented. The flight and navigation instruments work just like they do in an airplane – complete with the wobbles and beeps and buzzes you would actually experience. The engines surge and push you into the back of your seat. The weather pounds you into submission. Birds fly by. Radios hiss and squeal. Your blood pressure rises. You sweat like a pig. You flinch when you hear a loud bang. You try to make smooth landings in a contraption designed to make you fail. It all looks very real – but it’s not.

They can do anything to you in the simulator. Engines catch on fire or blow up. Passengers have heart attacks. Generators fail. Hydraulic systems leak. Landing gear won’t retract, or extend. The weather can change from ice and snow to hot summer thunderstorms; from calm, opaque fog, to gusty turbulence, to driving rain – all in the space of a few minutes, or all at the same time. Pilots are used to dealing with inflight emergencies – but not with all the inflight emergencies you can think of, all at the same time.

And that is what we don’t like about simulators. On the surface, they are staggeringly convincing. But when it comes down to it, “flying” a simulator is not the real thing. A simulator looks good on the inside, but when you step back and look at the big picture, you see what an incomplete representation it really is. Pilots love to fly airplanes but simulators are not airplanes.

After you have spent four or five hours getting abused inside the "sweatbox" your instructor pushes a button to turn the “motion” off and makes the whole nightmare come to an end. You climb out of your seat in a frustrated ball of stress-induced paranoia, exit through a door that looks nothing like an actual airplane door, and walk over a narrow bridge back into the real world. If you were to turn around and look at the simulator (most of us don’t – we just want to get away from the thing as quickly as possible) you would see that it is nothing but a big, square box that sits on top of a tangle of spindly hydraulic legs and the thick, black cables that give it artificial life. It is propped up by a horde of engineers who force it to act like it is flying. But simulators will never fly. They can’t.

A simulator has no engines. A simulator has no wings.

Real airplanes need engines to get themselves off the ground. Real airplanes need wings to sustain themselves in flight. It is as simple as that. And for those two reasons, Darwinian Evolution looks an awful lot like a simulator. It has no engine to get it off the ground. It has no wings to sustain it in flight. Darwinian Evolution is a box that won’t fly, no matter how much we have been programmed to believe it really does.

There are many technical reasons why Darwinian Evolution falls short of offering us a realistic explanation for life on Earth. The more information scientific research gives us, the more the data undermines its dubious claims. The model looks great from the outside, but if you analyze the data without first assuming the truth of Darwinian Evolution, you soon realize that the data gives us a picture that materialistic Darwinian processes just can’t paint. You will never read that in a textbook or on the pages of Nature or Scientific American, but that does not change the utter inability of Darwinian Evolution to explain the existence of even the simplest forms of life.

The analogy stands. Darwinism’s missing engine is its inability to explain the origin of life. Without that, it can never get off the ground. Darwinism’s missing wings are the theory’s lack of credibility in explaining the diversity of life we see around us. Without that, it has no capability to sustain itself about even its most fundamental claims.

Fuzzy Definitions

We have to choose our words precisely when we talk about evolution. Before evaluating evolution as a theory, we have to be very careful about defining what we mean when we use the term “evolution.” There are several meanings for the word – some that are controversial and some that are not. The greatest misuse of the word occurs when these various definitions are applied interchangeably. The most common form of this is the bait-and-switch.

Here, the naturalistic scientist offers some evidence for a non-controversial version of evolution. When you agree that the evidence offered is valid you have taken the bait. While you have only been offered evidence of evolution in this non-controversial sense, the naturalistic scientist then makes the switch. She claims that by this evidence she has proven that evolution in another sense is true. The other sense is always some controversial form of evolution for which you have been offered nothing but a promise of future proof. This is easy to see once you are clear on the three definitions themselves.

The simplest definition of evolution is change over time. This is non-controversial. It would be silly to deny that our almost every aspect of our world changes over time. Mountains erode. Rivers flow. Fish spawn. Birds migrate. Plants grow. Middle age waistlines expand. The point is that "evolution" is not an evil word or one we should be afraid to utter. To say, for instance, that a human embryo evolves into a full-grown, adult human being is not in any way tantamount to admitting that we have agreed to the tenets of Darwinian Evolution.

The second definition of evolution can be called micro-evolution. This one becomes slightly more complicated even though most agree that it is non-controversial as well. This form of evolution can also be labeled adaptation. Charles Darwin wrote about it extensively and most famously in his discussion of the finches he encountered on the Galapagos Islands. Over long periods of observation, the finches’ beaks were noted to change size and shape in response to the availability of food and water on the islands.

Darwin made much of his finches and biologists have since continued the tradition. All of us can agree that it is fascinating to see the different ways that all forms of life are able to adapt to their environment in order to survive. Depending on your point of view, the implications of these observations can be used to “prove” completely different hypotheses. Evolutionists interpret this tendency in nature as offering support for their admiration for the efficiency of natural selection. Creationists interpret it as confirmation of the care and elegance with which the Designer infused His creation.

In either case the evolution in question is non-controversial, even though this example has become a classic case of the bait and switch. This is where our definitions of evolution become vitally important. By agreeing with, and even admiring, the fact that we have verification that finch beaks vary within finch populations, the Darwinian Evolutionist wants to say that, having observed the actuality of the second (non-controversial) definition of evolution, we are compelled to translate that observation as proof that a third definition of evolution is also true.

This third definition of evolution can be called macro-evolution or, in scientific parlance, speciation. This is the view that minute, incremental changes in species, amassed over long periods of time, result in changes to the original species so drastic that they constitute the appearance of a new species altogether. But, to use the example at hand, there is no scientific evidence to show that the beak morphing observed with Darwin’s finches led the birds to become anything other than finches with different sized beaks. Though the Darwinian Evolutionist wants us to accept the reality of the third definition of evolution, she is offering the second definition of evolution as her proof.

This is where the problems begin. And this is where Darwinian Evolution becomes a simulator that misrepresents topics much more important than the reality of flying real airplanes in the real world. Those topics include the foundation for our worldview and our understanding of what makes us human. The stakes are high – so high that we should not accept the Darwinian Evolutionist’s model for the appearance and diversity of life on Earth before we see it for what it really is. It is a simulator that can never get off the ground – a simulator with all the aerodynamic flying qualities of a set of car keys.

It just won’t fly.

... to be continued ...

Innovative Brits Propose Making Abortion More “Rare”

In keeping with the tenets of the Jocelyn Elders “every child a planned and wanted child” school of bioethics, England’s Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists has called for a public discussion regarding the “active euthanasia” of sick and disabled newborns. Their logic goes like this:

• “Active euthanasia” is illegal in England but apparently widely practiced
• Legalizing “life-shortening and deliberate interventions to kill infants” (their term) would allow parents the option of continuing pregnancies that threatened risky or questionable outcomes
• Parents would therefore be more confident in knowing that they would not be deprived of the option to terminate their sick or disabled infants if they so chose
• This would impact obstetric decision-making and prevent late term abortions

In summary, the promise of an unfettered right to infanticide might serve to reduce the occurrence of exercising one’s unfettered right to abortion.

In defending the proposed legal change, one member of the English government’s Human Genetics Commission, Manchester University’s Professor of Bioethics, John Harris, argues that:

“We can terminate for serious fetal abnormality up to term but cannot kill a newborn. What do people think has happened in the passage down the birth canal to make it okay to kill the fetus at one end of the birth canal but not at the other?”

I couldn’t make this stuff up.

The fact that infanticide is already “widely practiced” in England makes one wonder what practical impact this law change would really have on reducing the number of abortions there. This proposal presumes that parents who are inclined to kill their infants are basing their decision to do so on legalities. But when the effort to defend such a practice centers on a utilitarian view of the infant’s worth, it hardly seems that it matters to them where their infant happens to be when they kill it.

Perhaps the measure would reduce both abortion and infanticide by allowing the possibility that the parents might be dissuaded once they actually see the infant about whom they are making their “choice.” One could only hope. But when a society descends to such a point that condoning infanticide is seen as a way to protect life, something is rotten in Britain.

Whose Nightmare, What Dreams?

Chuck Colson's "Breakpoint" essay today dealt with an issue near and dear to my heart. You can read the entire piece here. Colson reports on "a conference recently held in Costa Mesa, California, that turned into the secular materialist equivalent of a revival meeting." It apparently became so militant that even those who were presumably in favor of the agenda thought things went over the top. One such attendee described the conference as:

a "den of vipers" where the only debate [was] "should we bash religion with a crowbar or only with a baseball bat?"

Nice display of tolerance, eh?

These things are to be expected I guess. But what really gets me is the blatant hypocrisy of a guy like Steven Weinberg, author of The First Three Minutes. Weinberg was a speaker at the conference who told attendees:

that "the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief." According to Weinberg, "anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization."

Weinberg, some may recall, is also the guy who famously said (in the above referenced book) that:

It is hard to realize that [life on Earth] is just a tiny part of an overwhelmingly hostile universe. It is even harder to realize that this present universe has evolved from an unspeakably unfamiliar early condition and faces a future extinction of endless cold or intolerable heat . . . The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless (emphasis mine)

This is purely Mr. Weinberg's opinion of course, but I wonder why he would find these assertions of his so "hard to realize?" On his materialist view, the hostility and futility of the universe are not unexpected. Indeed, they are the only logical conclusions he should expect. Does Mr. Weinberg possibly betray an undeniable, intrinsic yearning for the reality of a world beyond what he can see?

And what about this? Mr. Weinberg claims that the scientific enterprise he so idolizes offers us only meaningless inferences about the nature of the universe. The more we learn about it, the more meaningless it becomes. We irrational religious types are just engaged in wishful thinking when we seek, or think we've actually found, otherwise. Silly us. But, as Jonathan Witt points out in A Meaningful World; in the very next paragraph of Mr. Weinberg's book, he also makes the following claim:

But if there is no solace in the fruits of our research, there is at least some consolation in the research itself. Men and women are not content to comfort themselves with tales of gods and giants, or to confine their thoughts to the daily affairs of life; they also build telescopes and satellites and accelerators, and sit at their desks for endless hours working out the meaning of the data they gather. The effort to understand the universe is one of the very few things that lifts human life a little above the level of farce, and gives it some of the grace of tragedy.

In other words, all those scientists to whom Mr. Weinberg addressed his comments in Costa Mesa spend their time engaged in an enterprise that, at its core, is a search for meaning in the data -- data which he just labeled as meaningless. So, who is being irrational? As Witt points out:

Science is a meaningful activity precisely because the universe itself is meaningful and human beings have the strange capacity to understand it.

It is sad that Mr. Weinberg holds such a view of the universe. But it is intellectually dishonest to vilify religious folks for seeing meaning when he, as a scientist, is engaged in an effort that does the exact same thing. That Mr. Weinberg does not accept the implications of that data is his own choice. But on what basis does he justify not only disallowing religious people that same endeavor, but demonizing them for trying?

Let's be clear. We theists welcome science, the data it brings us, and all the implications that go with it. Those who share Mr. Weinberg's view do not welcome the implications, or any debate about those implications. They cower from debate by vilifying their opponents before the debate starts. They disallow certain readings of the data not for scientific reasons, but for philosophical reasons. They want "the world to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief" while their worldview resulted in the Utopian dreams of Stalin, Hitler, Pol-Pot, Mao, and Hussein. The list goes on ... as does the hypocrisy and dishonesty of those who make statements like the ones made in Costa Mesa. If civilization needs a contribution, it certainly isn't from folks who think like these guys.

Holding Paradigms Too Ptightly

When the ancient astronomer Ptolemy (100-175 AD) woke up every morning, the Sun was coming up in the east. As his day wore on, the Sun moved across the sky and set in the west. All the stars and planets followed suit. It was perfectly obvious to Ptolemy and his contemporaries that the Earth was the pivot point around which the rest of the cosmos revolved. Copernicus’s so-called “revolution” (so-called because it wasn’t really the revolution it's been made out to be – but that’s a whole different story) stemmed from his claim that Ptolemy was mistaken and that the Earth actually revolved around the Sun. Later confirmation by Galileo proved the Copernican theory to be correct. But both Copernicus and Galileo were considered nutcases for challenging the “obvious,” expert-supported understanding of The Way Things Were. The idea that the Earth is the center of things was so ingrained in the minds of people it took a violent brain-shaking to overcome it.

I was reminded of the Ptolemy thing as I read a new book I would highly recommend to anyone interested in the topics discussed here – Benjamin Wiker & Jonathan Witt’s, A Meaningful World. The book is packed with scientific and historical insights about the abject failure of Naturalism/Materialism to account for the intricacy and wonder that exists in even the simplest forms of biological life. Their book is captivatingly successful in its mission to show “how the arts and sciences reveal the genius of nature,” but I particularly enjoyed the historical parallel they drew between previously accepted scientific “facts” and the presumptive acceptance of the Darwinist paradigm that pervades scientific inquiry today. Take phlogiston for instance.

In their primitive attempts to unmask and define the secrets of the elemental substances, the alchemists tried to unlock the compound relationships between the elements (earth, air and water) by using the fourth element (fire) to burn and melt all variety of things into investigatory submission. In this effort, Joseph Priestley became the primary promoter of Phlogiston Theory, a widely accepted explanation for the alchemists’ observations, in which flammable materials were held to contain phlogiston, a substance that was released in the burning process. Phlogiston theory made perfect sense ...

If, for example, you placed a lit candle under a glass globe, as Priestly and others had done so many times, eventually (so they maintained) all the phlogiston would be released from the candle and saturate the globe. When the air in the globe could hold no more phlogiston, the candle went out … [or, with] … regard to the burning of metal, since the pure metal burned red-hot, it must (supposedly) have phlogiston in it. As the phlogiston was steadily released, the metal degraded, like a burnt log. Thus, the metal was dephlogisticated … [and] turned to a whitish, chalky calx (Latin for chalk) that, when reheated with charcoal … would return to its pristine [re-phlogisticated] condition.

Priestly’s work in this area led to the discovery of oxygen, which we now know is the real culprit in answering the burning question. Interestingly, he is credited with discovering oxygen himself in most textbooks and history accounts. But Priestly actually went to his grave “vehemently denying that oxygen even existed.” He was too tied the phlogiston paradigm to accept the physical evidence provided by French chemist Antoine Lavoisier. Lavoisier explained not only the phenomena Priestly observed as being the result of burning oxygen, he devised a way to isolate oxygen, which led to the parallel discovery that oxygen and hydrogen combine to form water. He did so because he overturned the phlogistian paradigm that everyone else accepted. He insisted that phlogiston did not even exist and proved it experimentally.

Though I won’t go into it here, a similar story can be told about the existence of “ether.” Scientists (including Michelson and Morley) made all manner of attempts to explain the invariant measurements of the speed of light away by invoking ether-based explanations for their results. It wasn’t until the introduction of his Special Relativity theory that Einstein proposed the wildly controversial view that “there was no ether.”

Old theories die hard. In all these cases hold the following in common:

• The “commonly accepted” theory enjoyed popularity and unquestioned devotion among the scientific expert authorities of its day
• The old ideas were challenged by maverick researchers with evidence to back up their claims
• Those who held to the “commonly accepted” view belittled and ignored the new understanding primarily because it was a minority view
• The old view proved to be not only wrong, but wildly inconsistent with the real world

Twenty-twenty hindsight allows us to look back at Ptolemy and phlogiston as bizarre examples of goofy science. It’s hard to see from our point of view how in the world anyone could ever have been so stubbornly committed to them in the face of obviously condemning evidence. When you are firmly planted in a paradigm, human nature proves time and again that it is nearly impossible to extricate yourself from it. It’s hard to do. Human pride and the idolatry of human reason inhibit our ability to see things clearly. But good science, backed up by solid evidence, demands that we consider the possibility that we may be wrong.

Now it might be coincidence that both these examples of paradigm shift involve subjects (Ptolemy and phlogiston) with the weird silent and/or unusually pronounced “p” thing going on. There is no logical explanation for why this might be. But, considering the ramifications of these ideas and the parallels that can be drawn between them and the commonly accepted naturalistic worldview - vs - Intelligent Design debate, I would like to propose alternate spellings for some terms we have all come to so readily accept: Pnatural selection and Pneo-Pdarwinian evolution.

Thank You, Mr. Hyde

Pro-Lifers will be missing one of their greatest public advocates next month when the new Congress returns to Washington. Henry Hyde (R, Illinois 6) chose not to run for reelection. Hyde has served for 32 years in the U.S. Congress and has been one the pro-life movement’s staunchest advocates.

As Scott has argued here many times, the ways to achieve the pro-life agenda are many and varied. Sometimes they are not as obvious as they may seem and sometimes the politicians who can help achieve them are not the most obvious choices. We wrestle with these issues in the real world and must make our choices accordingly – even if it means having to swallow some pretty tough pills to back some less than optimal candidates along the way. Henry Hyde disappointed many of us when some of his moral failings came to light after the Clinton impeachment debacle. This proved nothing more than that Hyde, like the rest of us, is a fallible human being. But when it comes to advancing pro-life issues, few can hold a candle to him.

Like many social conservatives, Hyde started out as a Democrat, became disillusioned with the left-wing agenda of that party, and switched to the Republican Party as a result. In a recent issue of National Review, Hyde admits that, like many of us in our younger days, he “had never really thought much about abortion.” But that all changed when a fellow Illinois state congressman asked him to co-sponsor a bill to liberalize Illinois abortion law. Hyde considered the legislation by reading a book: The Vanishing Right to Live, by Charles Rice “[and] became convinced that abortion was evil.” Hyde’s subsequent self-education on the issue led to the passage of the Hyde Amendment in 1977, a bill that, by the “fairly conservative estimate” of The National Right to Life Committee’s Douglas Johnson, “has saved 1 million human lives in the 30 years that it has been in effect.”

Henry Hyde’s success in this area can be traced to a couple self-evident truths on which he based his opposition to the so-called “pro-choice” agenda. In his 1984 rebuttal to a Mario Cuomo speech at the University of Notre Dame, Hyde condemned …

the rise of militant secular-separationist perspective on the constitutional questions that seek to rule religiously based values “out of order” in the public arena

and specifically targeted “abortion liberty” as …

a profoundly narrow-minded, illiberal position; it constricts rather than expands, the scope of liberty properly understood (emphasis mine)

On behalf of those million human beings he helped save, I would like to thank Henry Hyde for his commitment to protect the most vulnerable in our society. Would that there were more politicians with the same principled conviction.

No Pagans Here

Many Christians these days make a scene about boycotting Christmas. That's their choice but I'd like to humbly offer a rebuttal to the notion that all the Christmas symbols (trees, mistletoe, Santa Claus, gift-giving) and most notably the date, we use for Christmas are nothing but an acceptance of paganism with which no "real" Christian should agree. I don't accept that. Here's why ...

First, what's wrong with stealing stuff from the pagans? Before I go any further with this, please hear me out. I know that probably sounds flippant but I don't mean it that way at all. Not to mention, I don't accept it. But here's the thing -- if we co-opt some formerly pagan practices and use them to celebrate our holiday, I don't see a problem with that. The pagan connections have long since disappeared. I, and my family, have never even considered their pagan roots (if indeed they even have any). They have always, and will always, be Christian images, symbols and practices to us. We associate them with the incarnation of Christ and celebrate that fact in our home. We've never considered otherwise. So please don't accuse me of capitulating to paganism. That's not what I do.

Besides, in keeping with the often-invoked Great Commission, and with Paul's exhortation to "be all things to all men," I don't see a problem with using those pagan symbols to attract pagans, then redefining them in Christian ways. In this way, the pagans are redirected from their journey down the wrong path and onto the path to the real Truth. I think that's a good thing.

Second -- and this applies mainly to the date we use to celebrate Christmas -- who says it has pagan roots?! Many people claim that Christianity uses December 25th as the date because we have caved to the Sun worshippers who give spiritual significance to the Winter Solstice. Not so. For starters, the Winter Solstice occurs on December 21st. But that's just the beginning.
Additionally, there are very distinct Christian-based reasons for selecting December 25th as the date of Christ's birth. For an excellent analysis of those reasons, please read William J. Tighe's, Calculating Christmas. It is a fascinating article that chronicles the origin of the date. I offer a brief summary here:

• There was a common belief called the Integral Age of the great Jewish prophets that claimed they were born, or conceived, on the same day they died.
• "Modern scholars agree that the death of Christ could have taken place only in A.D. 30 or 33, as those two are the only years of that time when the eve of Passover could have fallen on a Friday, the possibilities being either 7 April 30 or 3 April 33."
• By the time of Tertullian the Western church had concluded that he died on Friday, 25 March 29. In keeping with the Integral Age theory, Christ's conception would be the same date -- putting his birth 9 months later -- on December 25
• The Eastern Church, for a different set of reasons (and with a different set of calendars), concluded that Good Friday was actually April 6. Using parallel reasoning, the Eastern church began celebrating Christ's birth on January 6th -- and still do today.

As shown above, calendar differences necessitate that these dates are probably not correct. But that is not the point. The point is that the date for Christ's birth was not adopted from pagan sources. It was the early church's best effort to get it right. It was a carefully calculated, conscientious decision, based on Jewish tradition that led to the dates we use today.

So I won't accept the pagan accusations or the scorn of those who try to put them on me. My family will celebrate Christmas on December 25th like we always do. We do so because we accept the historicity of the incarnation and the reality of the salvation it brings us all. We hope you'll do the same.

Merry Christmas!

Butting Heads (nicely)

Yesterday, a reader ("Mr. Dawkins") left the following comment regarding my previous post ("CopyCats") which I feel is worthy not just of a reply, but of its own dedicated post. Here is the entire comment in context. I will respond below ...

Your alleged case against naturalism is inherently flawed. Just because naturalism has not yet explained consciousness or thought life doesn't mean it never will. That is to say, your whole post forecloses on the possibility of a naturalistic explanation for these things when there is still a possibility naturalism can account for them. Or, to quote one of the favorite lines from you theists, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Given the extraordinary claims of theism, you bear an extraordinary burden of proof. Pointing out a few things naturalism has not yet explained won't make your case.

I want to thank Mr. Dawkins for his comment. I really do appreciate it and have only chosen to respond in this way because it displays such a textbook example of the naturalistic paradigm, it sets itself up as a great example of why I began this blog in the first place.

First, the post he mentions is not in any way intended to be my "case against naturalism." Maybe I wasn't clear, or maybe Mr. Dawkins missed my point, but the case against naturalism is vastly greater than the small observation I made here. Actually, the article I cited just caught my eye because of the creativity issue. But Mr. Dawkins' comment brings up several points I'd like to make:

First, the primary shortfall I addressed really only requires a short rejoinder. In this specific case, I was just pointing out that it is not just that science has not explained "thought life or consciousness." The point is that, under the naturalistic worldview, such things cannot even exist. I would not demand that Mr. Dawkins (unless he is THE Mr. Dawkins) provide a scientifically verifiable solution to the problem. I'm just asking that those who share his view offer some minimal philosophical justification for a phenomenon that is internally incoherent within that view.

Second, Mr. Dawkins, like many who share his view, makes an appeal to wait a little longer for our proof by asserting that "just because naturalism has not yet explained consciousness or thought life doesn't mean it never will." True. Maybe science will eventually explain such things. If it does, it will be self-refuting because it will require a complete admission that Naturalism must be re-defined to include the actual existence of non-physical entities. When theists try to offer, "God did it" (a phrase that makes me cringe, by the way) as an explanation for things that are otherwise inexplicable, naturalists call it an appeal to "The God of the Gaps." So, in fairness, I would say that Mr. Dawkins is appealing to a parallel " Science of the Gaps." No matter who makes the Gap appeal, it is an intellectual evasion. My view is that we should all examine the evidence and take the evidence where it leads. An intellectually honesty search for the truth demands it.

Third, Mr. Dawkins accuses me of "foreclosing on the possibility of a naturalistic explanation." But I do no such thing! I am open and waiting for such an explanation but if someone were to find one it would not in any way threaten my worldview. The naturalist, on the other hand, DOES fear a theistic explanation for anything and therefore denies its possibility by eliminating it BEFORE he examines the evidence. Darwinists do this all the time. They disparage the Intelligent Design movement not due to the evidence they find in complex biological systems, but in spite of it. This is what disturbs me about naturalists. Their presuppositions eliminate explanations BEFORE they examine the data.

Finally, Mr. Dawkins demands that my view requires an "extraordinary burden of proof." I agree. So does his. I do not presume Mr. Dawkins to be an atheist when I say this, but the burden to "prove" that God does NOT exist is greater than mine. No one denies the "appearance of design" in the universe. In the same way, no one can deny the existence of the non-physical thoughts/ideas/imaginings we all share. So, as obvious as the evidence for those things is, on what basis would Mr. Dawkins "prove" the non-existence of immaterial reality in general or God specifically? Let's be fair -- we both bear an extraordinary burden of proof. And, once again, I believe that intellectual honesty, devoid of the presupposed elimination of possible explanations, requires that we examine the evidence and accept the implications of that evidence.

I thank Mr. Dawkins for challenging me to do so and I hope he accepts my challenge for him to do the same. I believe that an honest pursuit of the truth will lead us to theistic conclusions and I think the evidence weighs heavily in my favor or I wouldn't be spending my time writing here. I look forward to more dialog along these lines in the future.

CROSSPOSTED AT: truehorizon.org

CopyCats

Look around you. Everything you see: Space Shuttles, computers, DVDs, cell phones, automobiles, skyscrapers ... the physical materials needed to make those things has always been laying around in the very fabric of the very earth beneath our feet …

• Noah could have built an aircraft carrier.
• Joshua could have used his cell phone to let the boys in Jericho know their time was up.
• Paul could have emailed his letters to the churches at Ephesus and Corinth.
• Shakespeare could have marketed his work as a reality TV show.
• Christopher Columbus could have taken the red-eye from Rome to New York.

... the potential for each of these people to have done each of these things has always existed – in someone’s untapped imagination. None of those things was made manifest until it first popped into the mind of someone just like you ... as a thought.

Most of us never consider the profound and powerful nature of our thoughts. Thoughts are the fountainhead of human creativity. Once you do consider it however, the concept should not be terribly controversial. It is not even very profound – unless you subscribe to the naturalistic paradigm. In that case you have to explain how non-physical things can give rise to physical manifestations. It is naturalism’s greatest challenge.

Human creativity is grounded in the thought process – in the imagination of each and every one of us. But there is no physical explanation for the existence of this process. Inanimate electrons pinging around in the synapses of our gray matter offer us no physical explanation for the ethereal existence of abstract ideas, let alone how it is that those ideas can lead us to construct physical creations. Though naturalism claims that our thoughts somehow “emerge” from the actions of electrons, the claim is inconsistent with the parallel claim that non-physical entities don’t even exist. If hardcore Darwinian evolution is true, it is relegated to act on random variations in physical properties. Such a process offers no credible justification for the “emergence” of non-physical imaginings about physical entities that do not even exist in the “real” world!

So where would such a thing as “creativity” come from? In her new book, The Creating Brain: The Neuroscience of Genius, neuroscientist Nancy Andreasen describes the source of creative genius as:

the process that starts with a person – an artist, musician, inventor or even someone who's trying to figure out a better way of doing a task at work or at home ... the process can go by in a flash or it can take years.

Agreed. But defining creativity as a “process” does nothing to identify the source or trigger mechanism that serves as the impetus for the process. What would prompt an irrational, undirected batch of neurons in my brain to suddenly want to find a “better way” of doing something?

I don’t know Andreasen’s philosophical point of view (I haven’t read her book) so I have no intention of disparaging her well-established expertise. I simply read her interview and found it to be a good example of the nearly universal mindset that prevails in our society – a mindset that assumes everything can, and must, be reduced to a scientific explanation.

Maybe creativity is swimming around in your gene pool? Andreasen notes that Johann Sebastian Bach was only the most famous member of a family of more than 20 other eminent musicians. Fascinating. But, in the next paragraph, Andreasen admits that:

…creativity is not limited to the masterpiece work of art but can be found in everyday tasks such as cooking or gardening

In other words, every one of us shares some degree of creativity. It is a common human trait. Not everyone is a creative master but every one of us creates. And, therefore, every human being possesses the mind-blowing, naturalistically-inexplicable, easily-taken-for-granted, potential to imagine things which don’t yet exist in the material world and find a way to bring them to manifestation.

Creativity is a reflection of the Creator – a small but not insignificant trait He has allowed us to share. He creates a universe. We create a tossed salad. He creates real things out of nothingness. We make copycat representations and call it talent (even genius!). In our own pipsqueak way, our creativity is one aspect of our being made in the image of God (imago dei). We should honor that capacity within us, hone it, and recognize it for what it is to every one of us – an unimaginably generous gift.

Lead Singer

Though my initial reaction is to retch at the ideas of Peter Singer as discussed in the October issue of Touchstone magazine (“Livestock Exchange”), I must admit I have grown to appreciate his writing for one reason: the tactical and strategic advantage he gives to our side. Singer is a rare commodity. He is an articulate, consistent, coherent spokesman for the materialist worldview. Unlike many of his ilk, he is forthright in taking his philosophical presuppositions to their logical conclusions. Many who hear his views tend to dismiss them as being extreme, grotesque, or absurd.

Exactly.

I offer a sampling of some of those views for consideration:

Singer proposes, in his tome, "Practical Ethics," that the abortion debate does not hinge on the ethical considerations surrounding the status of the unborn as being valuable in virtue of the kind of thing they are. Instead, the worth of a human in Singer's view rests on its instrumental usefulness -- its functionality.

Singer comes to this conclusion because he holds that "that the right to physical integrity is grounded in a being's ability to suffer and ... among other things, the ability to plan and anticipate one's future." Attacking the common syllogism …

It is wrong to kill an innocent human being;
a human fetus is an innocent human being;
therefore it is wrong to kill a human fetus.

Singer challenges the second premise, on the grounds that an unborn baby is not rational or self-conscious, is owed no moral protection, and therefore has no intrinsic value.

Following this reasoning, Singer avoids even the most universally accepted squeamishness most of us feel when discussing partial-birth abortion. Singer argues that it is not only non-controversial for the attending physician to kill a newborn on the spot, but that it is also ethically acceptable to do so for 30 days after birth.

Precious, isn't it? But that's not all ...

Singer also believes that there should be no ethical concern regarding "mutually satisfying activities" of a sexual nature between humans and animals and that such activity should remain legal unless it involves what he sees as "cruelty." (Here one has to wonder how Singer could establish the definition of such a thing as "cruelty"). Though he admits that sex between species is not normal or natural, he insists that it should not be objectionable because humans are not different in kind from animals. We are only different in degree to which we have evolved.

There is plenty more where this comes from, but all of Singer's views are based on the underlying presupposition that naturalism is true; That only the physical world exists; That there are no such things as abstract ideas about values and morals, and that only materialistic processes define us. Most hard-core naturalists are not so bold or consistent in following their philosophical views to their logical ends. Most people, because they cannot escape the fact that they are made in God's image, have an inherent, inescapable intuition that Singer's ideas are grotesque. Even if they can't describe why, they know that there is something horribly wrong with accepting such notions. Singer seems to repress these natural inclinations, either for the notoriety it gains him or because he honestly doesn't feel them. Either explanation is sad but the result is that he offers us a bold proclamation of what we should expect from a worldview devoid of deity.

He is the lead Singer on the naturalistic bandwagon many are blindly following to their own destruction. For that reason, I think Peter Singer has unwittingly become one of our most powerful allies in the culture war. He provides us a perfect example of where, if left uncontested, naturalism will lead us. We should pray for him, show him respect and kindness – and quote him loudly and often.