If you've ever wondered about the existence or nature of God, but thought it
was illogical or unscientific to believe in a god, or have been turned off by
some of the messages projected by some churches, I think the following essays
(by Granville Sewell, a math professor) are worth considering. I don't
necessarily agree with everything in them, but they are my top recommendation
for a concise, reasonable discussion of this interesting and important topic.
Many of these essays, in modified form, can be found in the book "In the
Beginning", available here.
In the Beginning
In the introduction to his book "The First Three Minutes" [Weinberg
1977] Steven Weinberg wrote: "How then did we come to the 'standard
model'? And how has it supplanted other theories, like the steady state model?
It is a tribute to the essential objectivity of modern astrophysics that this
consensus has been brought about, not by shifts in philosophical preference or
by the influence of astrophysical mandarins, but by the pressure of empirical
data." To say that rejection of the steady state model in favor of the big
bang theory was not due to shifts in philosophical preference is an
understatement, because many scientists would agree with Weinberg that the
steady state model is "philosophically far more attractive." Einstein
introduced an arbitrary additional term into his equations of general
relativity in an attempt (which he later regretted) to avoid the expanding
universe solution. Robert Jastrow [Jastrow 1978] writes that: "Some
prominent scientists began to feel the same irritation over the expanding
universe that Einstein had expressed earlier. Eddington wrote in 1931, 'I have
no ax to grind in this discussion, but the notion of a beginning is repugnant
to me. The expanding universe is preposterous. . . incredible, it leaves me
cold.' The German chemist Walter Nernst wrote 'To deny the infinite duration of
time would be to betray the very foundation of science.'" The reason that
many scientists were reluctant to accept the big bang is obvious: it points out
the incompleteness of science. If the goal of science is, as Joseph Le Conte
[Le Conte 1888] put it, to explain how "each state or condition grew
naturally out of the immediately preceding", then this pursuit meets a
dead end in the big bang, for the chain of causality must end with the
beginning of time. The implications of the discovery that the entire universe
In an interview published in [Varghese 1984] Robert Jastrow discusses what he calls "the most theistic result ever to come out of science": "According to the picture of the evolution of the universe developed by the astronomer and his fellow scientists, the smallest change in any of the circumstances of the natural world, such as the relative strengths of the forces of Nature, or the properties of the elementary particles, would have led to a universe in which there could be no life and no man." As an example, Jastrow cites the forces binding the nuclei of atoms together. If the nuclear force were increased in strength by a small amount, he says, this attraction would have been sufficient to cause all hydrogen nuclei (protons) to fuse together into helium during the early stages of the universe, and there would be no hydrogen left to fuel the stars. On the other hand, if the nuclear force were slightly decreased in strength, the attraction would have been insufficient to drive the nuclear fusion reactions which created elements heavier than helium (such as carbon and oxygen), and it is impossible to imagine how any complex life forms could be constructed out of hydrogen and helium alone. Jastrow continues: "It is possible to make the same argument about changes in the strengths of the electromagnetic force, the force of gravity, or any other constants of the material universe, and so come to the conclusion that in a slightly changed universe there could be no life, and no man. Thus according to the physicist and the astronomer, it appears that the universe was constructed within very narrow limits, in such a way that man could dwell in it. This result is called the anthropic principle. Some scientists suggest, in an effort to avoid a theistic or teleological implication in their findings, that there must be an infinite number of universes, representing all possible combinations of basic forces and conditions, and that our universe is one of an infinitely small fraction, in this great plenitude of universes, in which life exists." Now the Darwinist would argue that a different universe, which might be hostile to life as we know it, would only have resulted in life forms which are adapted to different conditions. For example, if the Earth had been a bit further from the sun than it is, we might have evolved thicker skin to adjust to the cold, and if it were a little closer, we might have developed cooling fins. However, we are not talking about conditions which are hostile to life as we know it on Earth, but rather conditions so hostile that any imaginable form of life would be impossible. A.J. Leggett [Leggett 1987] lists several ways in which the development of life depends sensitively on the values of the universal constants, and says, "The list could be multiplied endlessly, and it is easy to draw the conclusion that for any kind of conscious beings to exist at all, the basic constants of Nature have to be exactly what they are, or at least extremely close to it. The anthropic principle then turns this statement around and says, in effect, that the reason the fundamental constants have the values they do is because otherwise we would not be here to wonder about them."
Physicist Steven Hawking discusses some of [the] fundamental constants of nature and says, "The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life." Edward Harrison [Harrison 1981], mentions some other bad things which would happen if certain constants were tampered with: "We first notice that alterations in the known values of c [speed of light], h [Planck's constant], and e [electronic charge] cause huge changes in the structure of atoms and atomic nuclei. Even when the changes are only slight, most atomic nuclei are unstable and cannot exist. . .We also find that slight changes in the values of c, G [gravitational constant], h, e, and the masses of subatomic particles cause huge changes in the structure and evolution of stars. The majority of universes will actually not contain any stars at all, and in the few that do, the stars either are nonluminous or are so luminous that their lifetimes are too short for biological evolution. . .Our universe is therefore finely tuned, and we would not exist if the constants of nature had different values."
But we have to ask ourselves not only, why do the gravitational, nuclear and electromagnetic forces have the strengths that they have, and why do electrons, protons and neutrons have the masses and charges they do, but why are there particles at all, and why are there forces between them? We need to wonder not only why the speed of light is 299,792 km/sec, but why are there photons? We should not only wonder why Planck's constant, which appears in the Schrodinger equations, has such a lucky value, but why are the motions of all particles governed by these partial differential equations?! One of the most amazing things about our universe is the beautiful way in which mathematical equations can be used to elegantly model physical processes. In the case of macroscopic processes, such as diffusion or fluid flow, we can derive the equations from more basic processes, so that in these cases we feel we "understand" why the mathematics fits the physics so nicely. But when we get down to the most fundamental particles and forces, we find they still obey elegant mathematical equations, and we have absolutely no idea why. There is no conceivable reason why the effect that the fundamental forces have on the fundamental particles should be given by the (complex-valued!!) solution to a wave or eigenvalue partial differential equation, except that it results in elements and chemical compounds with extremely rich and useful chemical properties, and gives partial differential equation software developers like me some very interesting applications to solve. Are we to assume that in all these other [postulated] universes there is still space and time, gravity and electromagnetic forces, electrons, protons, neutrons and photons, and Schrodinger equations, but their forces, masses and charges have different values, generated by some random number generator?. . . [N]ow some scientists, such as astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez [Gonzalez and Richards 2004], argue that our planet enjoys other "privileges" which are rare in the universe, which have nothing to do with survival, but seem to give us an ideal platform from which to view the universe.
It is difficult to argue with those who appeal to "anthropic
selection" to explain improbable circumstances; about all you can say is
that there is a simpler explanation...But other universes are by definition
beyond observation, so that the anthropic principle is untestable, and
therefore unscientific. It is interesting to see how those who for many years
have criticized the creationists for inventing a force external to our universe
to account for the appearance of man are now reduced to inventing other
universes to explain our existence. . .It seems much simpler to believe that
there is only one universe, and it appears to be cleverly designed because it
is cleverly designed.
A Mathematician's View of Evolution
Every living cell is loaded
with features and biochemical processes
Suppose an engineer attempts to design a structural analysis computer program, writing it in a machine language that is totally unknown to him. He simply types out random characters at his keyboard, and periodically runs tests on the program to recognize and select out chance improvements when they occur. The improvements are permanently incorporated into the program while the other changes are discarded. If our engineer continues this process of random changes and testing for a long enough time, could he eventually develop a sophisticated structural analysis program?. . .If a billion engineers were to type at the rate of one random character per second, there is virtually no chance that any one of them would, given the 4.5 billion year age of the Earth to work on it, accidentally duplicate a given 20-character improvement. . .But could he not perhaps make progress through the accumulation of very small improvements? The Darwinist would presumably say, yes, but to anyone who has had minimal programming experience this idea is equally implausible. Major improvements to a computer program often require the addition or modification of hundreds of interdependent lines, no one of which makes any sense, or results in any improvement, when added by itself. . .If archeologists of some future society were to unearth the many versions of my PDE solver, PDE2D, which I have produced over the last 20 years, they would certainly note a steady increase in complexity over time, and they would see many obvious similarities between each new version and the previous one. . .In fact, the record of PDE2D's development would be similar to the fossil record, with large gaps where major new features appeared, and smaller gaps where minor ones appeared. That is because the multitude of intermediate programs between versions or subversions which the archeologist might expect to find never existed, because- for example-none of the changes I made for edition 4.0 made any sense, or provided PDE2D any advantage whatever in solving 3D problems (or anything else) until hundreds of lines had been added...Whether at the microscopic or macroscopic level, major, complex, evolutionary advances, involving new features (as opposed to minor, quantitative changes such as an increase in the length of the giraffe's neck, or the darkening of the wings of a moth, which clearly could occur gradually) also involve the addition of many interrelated and interdependent pieces. (W.E.Loennig's article "The Evolution of the Long-Necked Giraffe," [www.weloennig.de/Giraffe.pdf] has recently convinced me that even this is far beyond the ability of natural selection to explain). These complex advances, like those made to computer programs, are not always "irreducibly complex"-sometimes there are intermediate useful stages. But just as major improvements to a computer program cannot be made 5 or 6 characters at a time, certainly no major evolutionary advance is reducible to a chain of tiny improvements, each small enough to be bridged by a single random mutation. . . .
I imagine the construction of a gigantic computer model which starts with
the initial conditions on Earth 4 billion years ago and tries to simulate the effects that the four known forces of
physics (the gravitational, electromagnetic and strong and weak nuclear forces)
would have on every atom and every subatomic particle on our planet (perhaps
using random number generators to model quantum uncertainties!). If we ran such
a simulation out to the present day, would it predict that the basic
forces of Nature would reorganize the basic particles of Nature into libraries
full of encyclopedias, science texts and novels, nuclear power plants, aircraft
carriers with supersonic jets parked on deck, and computers connected to laser
printers, CRTs and keyboards? If we graphically displayed the positions of the
atoms at the end of the simulation, would we find that cars and trucks had
formed, or that supercomputers had arisen? . . . Clearly something extremely
improbable has happened here on our planet, with the origin and development of
life, and especially with the development of human consciousness and
creativity.
See also this
list.
Evolution and the Second Law of Thermodynamics
The first formulations of the second law were all about heat: a quantity called
thermal "entropy" was defined to measure the randomness, or disorder,
associated with a temperature distribution, and it was shown that in an
isolated system this entropy always increases, or at least never decreases, as
the temperature becomes more and more randomly (more uniformly) distributed. If
we define thermal "order" to be the opposite (negative) of thermal
entropy, we can say that the thermal order can never increase in a closed
(isolated) system. However, it was soon realized that other types of order can
be defined which also never increase in a closed system; for example, we can
define a "carbon order" associated with the distribution of carbon
diffusing in a solid, using the same equations, and through an identical
analysis show that this order also continually decreases, in a closed system.
With time, the second law came to be interpreted more and more generally, and
today most discussions of the second law in physics textbooks offer examples of
entropy increases (or order decreases, since we are defining order to be the
opposite of entropy) which have nothing to do with heat conduction or
diffusion, such as the shattering of a wine glass or the demolition of a
building... The second law is all about probability; it uses probability at the
microscopic level to predict macroscopic change: the reason carbon distributes
itself more and more uniformly in an insulated solid is, that is what the laws
of probability predict when diffusion alone is operative. The reason natural
forces may turn a spaceship, or a TV set, or a computer into a pile of rubble
but not vice-versa is also probability: of all the possible arrangements atoms
could take, only a very small percentage could fly to the moon and back, or
receive pictures and sound from the other side of the Earth, or add, subtract,
multiply and divide real numbers with high accuracy...
The discovery that life on Earth developed through evolutionary
"steps," coupled with the observation that mutations and natural
selection - like other natural forces - can cause (minor) change, is widely
accepted in the scientific world as proof that natural selection - alone among
all natural forces - can create order out of disorder, and even design human
brains, with human consciousness... In his new book, The Edge of Evolution [Behe
2007], Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe looks in considerable detail
at the struggle for survival between humans and the malaria parasite where, in
the last 100 years, the evolution of more organisms, and not many fewer
generations, can be studied than were involved in the entire natural history of
mammals. He finds that natural selection can be credited with some very minor
change, but "Far and away the most extensive relevant data we have on the
subject of evolution's effects on competing organisms is that accumulated on
interactions between humans and our parasites. As with the example of malaria,
the data show trench warfare, with acts of desperate destruction, not arms
races with mutual improvements. The thrust and parry of human-malaria evolution
did not build anything - it only destroyed things." Behe also looks at
Richard Lenski's 20 year E.coli experiment, which a June 9, 2008 New Scientist
article now claims represents "the first time evolution has been caught in
the act", and concludes that "nothing fundamentally new has been
produced." Behe claims that the minor advances observed in this experiment
are all due to "breaking some genes and turning others off." In any
case, the New Scientist article contains a remarkable admission, that natural
selection has never before (and not even now according to Behe) been actually
observed to produce any significant advance! To claim that the mechanism which
produces such minor changes in bacteria and parasite populations is capable of
producing human brains is an incredible extrapolation, yet this claim is
routinely presented as being as well-established as gravity.
In a recent Mathematical Intelligencer article [Sewell 2000], I asserted that
the idea that the four fundamental forces of physics alone could rearrange the
fundamental particles of Nature into spaceships, nuclear power plants, and
computers, connected to laser printers, CRTs, keyboards and the Internet,
appears to violate the second law of thermodynamics in a spectacular way.
Anyone who has made such an argument is familiar with the standard reply: the
Earth is an open system, it receives energy from the sun, and order can
increase in an open system, as long as it is "compensated" somehow by
a comparable or greater decrease outside the system... According to this
reasoning, then, the second law does not prevent scrap metal from reorganizing
itself into a computer in one room, as long as two computers in the next room
are rusting into scrap metal - and the door is open. (Or the thermal entropy in
the next room is increasing - though I'm not sure what the conversion rate is
between computers and thermal entropy.) This strange argument of
"compensation" makes no sense logically: an extremely improbable
event is not rendered less improbable by the occurrence of other events which
are more probable... In Appendix D of my new book [Sewell, 2005]...I take a
closer look at the equations for entropy change, which apply not only to
thermal entropy but also to the entropy associated with anything else that
diffuses, and show that they do not simply say that order cannot increase in a
closed system, they also say that in an open system, order cannot increase
faster than it is imported through the boundary... [I]n [Sewell 2001] I
generalized the equation for open systems to the following tautology, which is
valid in all situations: "If an increase in order is extremely improbable
when a system is closed, it is still extremely improbable when the system is
open, unless something is entering which makes it not extremely
improbable."... If we found evidence that DNA, auto parts, computer chips,
and books entered through the Earth's atmosphere at some time in the past, then
perhaps the appearance of humans, cars, computers, and encyclopedias on a previously
barren planet could be explained without postulating a violation of the second
law here (it would have been violated somewhere else!). But if all we see
entering is radiation and meteorite fragments, it seems clear that what is
entering through the boundary cannot explain the increase in order observed
here...
In ... [Davis 2001], the author made an analogy with coin flipping and argued
that any particular sequence of heads and tails is extremely improbable, so
something extremely improbable happens every time we flip a long series of
coins. If a coin were flipped 1000 times, he would apparently be no more
surprised by a string of all heads than by any other sequence, because any
string is as improbable as another. This critic concedes that it is extremely unlikely
that humans and computers would arise again if history were repeated, "but
something would"...[T]he underlying principle behind the second law is
that natural forces do not do macroscopically describable things which are
extremely improbable from the microscopic point of view. A
"macroscopically describable" event is just any event which can be
described without resorting to an atom-by-atom (or coin-by-coin)
accounting...Natural forces may turn a spaceship into a pile of rubble, but not
vice-versa - not because the exact arrangement of atoms in a given spaceship is
more improbable than the exact arrangement of atoms in a given pile of rubble,
but because (whether the Earth receives energy from the Sun or not) there are
very few arrangements of atoms which would be able to fly to the moon and
return safely, and very many which could not. The reader familiar with William
Dembski's "specified complexity" concept [Dembski 2006], will
recognize similarities to the argument here: natural forces do not do things
which are "specified" (macroscopically describable) and
"complex" (extremely improbable)....If we toss a billion coins, it is
true that any sequence is as improbable as any other, but most of us would
still be surprised, and suspect that something other than chance is going on,
if the result were "all heads", or "alternating heads and
tails", or even "all tails except for coins 3i + 5, for integer
i"...There are so many simply describable results possible that it is tempting
to think that all or most outcomes could be simply described in some way, but
in fact, there are only about 230000 different 1000-word paragraphs, so the
odds are about 2999970000 to 1 that a given result will not be that highly
ordered - so our surprise would be quite justified...[W]ith 1023
molecules in a mole of anything, we can be confident that the laws of
probability at the microscopic level will be obeyed (at least on planets
without life) as they apply to all macroscopic phenomena...[Rosenhouse 2001]
wrote "His claim that 'natural forces do not cause extremely improbable
things to happen' is pure gibberish. Does Sewell invoke supernatural forces to
explain the winning numbers in last night's lottery?" But getting the
right number on 5 or 6 balls is not extremely improbable; in thermodynamics
"extremely improbable" events involve getting the "right
number" on 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 or so balls! If every atom on
Earth bought one ticket every second since the big bang (about 1070
tickets) there is virtually no chance than any would ever win even a 100-ball
lottery, much less this one. And since the second law derives its authority
from logic alone, and thus cannot be overturned by future discoveries, Sir
Arthur Eddington [Eddington 1929] called it the "supreme" law of Nature.
The evolutionist, therefore, cannot avoid the question of probability by saying
that anything can happen in an open system, nor can he avoid it by saying that
there are so many types of order that order is a meaningless concept. He is
finally forced to argue that it only seems extremely improbable, but really
isn't, that atoms would rearrange themselves into spaceships and computers and
the Internet... Darwinists believe they have already discovered the source of
all this order, so let us look more closely at their theory. The traditional
argument against Darwinism is that natural selection cannot guide the
development of new organs and new systems of organs...Consider, for example,
the aquatic bladderwort... In a Nature Encyclopedia of Life Sciences [Loennig
and Becker 2004] article on Carnivorous Plants, authors Wolf-Ekkehard Loennig
and Heinz-Albert Becker acknowledge that "it appears to be hard to even
imagine a clearcut selective advantage for all the thousands of postulated
intermediate steps in a gradual scenario. . .for the origin of the complex
carnivorous plant structures examined above." The development of any major
new feature presents similar problems, and according to Lehigh University
biochemist Michael Behe, who describes several spectacular examples in detail
in Darwin's Black Box [Behe 1996], the world of microbiology is especially
loaded with such examples of "irreducible complexity." It seems that
until the trigger hair, the door, and the pressurized chamber were all in place,
and the ability to digest small animals, and to reset the trap to be able to
catch more than one animal, had been developed, none of the individual
components of this carnivorous trap would have been of any use. What is the
selective advantage of an incomplete pressurized chamber? To the casual
observer, it might seem that none of the components of this trap would have
been of any use whatever until the trap was almost perfect, but of course a
good Darwinist will imagine two or three far-fetched intermediate useful
stages, and consider the problem solved. I believe you would need to find
thousands of intermediate stages before this example of irreducible complexity
has been reduced to steps small enough to be bridged by single random mutations
- a lot of things have to happen behind the scenes and at the microscopic level
before this trap could catch and digest animals... When you look at the
individual steps in the development of life, Darwin's explanation is difficult
to disprove, because some selective advantage can be imagined in almost
anything. Like every other scheme designed to violate the second law, it is
only when you look at the net result that it becomes obvious it won't work.
Interestingly, although the
similarities between species in the same branch of the evolutionary
"tree" may suggest common descent, similarities also frequently arise
independently in distant branches, where they cannot be explained by common
descent. This phenomenon, known as "convergence" suggests common
design rather than common descent: a designer, having once figured out how to
make eyes or wings, for example, applies the new design in other places, to
unrelated species. For example, in their above-cited Nature Encyclopedia of
Life Sciences article [Loennig and Becker 2004] on Carnivorous Plants,
Wolf-Ekkehard Loennig and Heinz-Albert Becker note that "carnivory in
plants must have arisen several times independently of each other. . .the
pitchers might have arisen seven times separately, adhesive traps at least four
times, snap traps two times and suction traps possibly also two times."
An analogy may be useful here. If some future paleontologist were to unearth
two species of Fords, he might find it plausible that one evolved gradually
from the other through natural causes. He might find the lack of gradual
transitions between automobile families more problematic, for example, in the
transition from mechanical to hydraulic brake systems, or from manual to
automatic transmissions, or from steam engines to internal combustion engines.
He would be even more puzzled by the huge differences between the bicycle and
motor vehicle phyla, or between the boat and airplane phyla. But if he is a
Darwinist, heaven help us when he discovers motorcycles and Hovercraft; that
will constitute spectacular confirmation of his theory that all forms of
transportation arose gradually from a common ancestor, without design.
The development of life may have only violated one law of science, but that was
the "supreme" law of Nature, and it has violated that in a most
spectacular way. At least that is my opinion, but perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps
it only seems extremely improbable, but really isn't, that, under the right
conditions, the influx of stellar energy into a planet could cause atoms to
rearrange themselves into nuclear power plants and spaceships and computers.
But one would think that at least this would be considered an open question,
and those who argue that it really is extremely improbable, and thus contrary
to the basic principle underlying the second law, would be given a measure of
respect, and taken seriously by their colleagues, but we aren't.
Science and ID
Since the publication of "Origin of Species", science has discovered
that living things are far more complex and clever than Darwin could have ever
imagined, and Darwin's explanation for this complexity has become less and less
plausible, so the reasons for believing in Intelligent Design have only
increased in the last 150 years. Even atheist Richard Dawkins wrote that
"biology is the study of complicated things that appear to have been
designed."...When one becomes a scientist, one learns that science can now
explain so many previously inexplicable phenomena that one comes to believe
that nothing can escape the explanatory power of our science. When one becomes
a biologist, or a paleontologist, one discovers many things about the origin of
species, such as the long periods involved and the similarities between
species, that give the impression of natural causes... But notably absent from
any list of reasons why intellectuals reject Intelligent Design (ID) is any
direct scientific evidence that natural selection of random mutations or any
other unintelligent process can actually do intelligent things, like design plants
or animals...
Nevertheless, Le Conte's
axiom that everything must have a natural explanation has become the foundation
of all of modern thought - and indeed it has proven to be a very useful and
productive axiom. Even many people who believe in God accept Le Conte's axiom.
"Theistic evolutionists" argue that God created the universe and its
laws, and that these laws are sufficient to explain everything we see today. I
have no philosophical or theological problem with such a view: the laws God
created are very cleverly designed, and they alone probably are sufficient to
explain all of chemistry, geology, astronomy and atmospheric science, for
example, so it is not surprising that many would insist that it must be
possible to explain all of biology using these laws as well. The problem I have
with this view is logical: the known laws of physics are indeed very cleverly
designed, but they are obviously not clever enough to explain all of biology.
The atheistic evolutionist has decided a priori that there can be no design in
Nature; the theistic evolutionist has decided a priori that there can be design
only in the original laws of Nature. ID proponents argue that we should look at
the evidence before deciding where there is design. . . Many critics of ID today
still try to label ID as "creationism", because it was so much easier
to discredit the old "creationists" - all you had to do was produce
evidence for an old Earth, or for common descent; then you didn't have to deal
with their main point. Others avoid the real issue by simply dismissing ID as
"not science". Even some scientists who do acknowledge design in
biology still argue that ID is true, but not science!...
There is a question I
would like to see posed...to one of these critics who dismiss ID as "not
science": "suppose we did discover some biological feature that was
irreducibly complex, to your satisfaction - such a spectacular example of
irreducible complexity that you and every reasonable person would agree that it
could not have evolved through small improvements - would the design hypothesis
then be justified?" Of course, there are thousands of features in every
living cell which any unbiased observer would recognize as irreducibly complex,
but suppose we found one that was still more spectacular by far. If he answers,
yes, we just haven't found any such thing yet, then all the constantly-repeated
philosophical objections that "ID is not science" immediately fall,
because he has admitted that design is a legitimate, even if currently
unjustified, scientific hypothesis. If the answer is, no, then everyone will
finally understand that, as W.E.Loennig has stated, today's evolutionary theory
is completely unfalsifiable - there is no amount of evidence that will change
these people's minds...
Perhaps nothing
illustrates just how "unfalsifiable" today's evolutionary theory
really is than the reaction (or rather, lack of reaction) to the
"front-loading" being discovered by modern science in the genes of
primitive animals. Consider, for example, this report from a recent article in
Science [Pennisi 2008]: "Trichoplax adhaerens barely qualifies as an
animal. About 1 mm long and covered with cilia, this flat marine organism lacks
a stomach, muscles, nerves, and gonads, even a head. . .yet this animal's genome
looks surprisingly like ours, says Daniel Rokhsar, an evolutionary biologist at
the University of California, Berkeley. Its 98 million DNA base pairs include
many of the genes responsible for guiding the development of other animals'
complex shapes and organs, he and his colleagues report in the 21 August issue
of Nature. . . Adds Casey Dunn, an evolutionary biologist at Brown University,
'It is now completely clear that genomic complexity was present very early on'
in animal evolution. . . 'Many genes viewed as having particular functions in
bilaterians or mammals turn out to have a much deeper evolutionary history than
expected, raising questions about why they evolved', says Douglas Erwin, an
evolutionary biologist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in
Washington." Front-loading should be completely fatal to Darwinism: there
is no possible selective advantage for the possession of genes for traits which
would not evolve until millions of years later! Yet for today's evolutionary
biologists, such discoveries only "raise questions about why they
evolved." They seem completely incapable of drawing the obvious
conclusion, that without design it is impossible to explain the appearance of
genes long before the traits they control appear. Even if we concede that ID is
not science, and thus should not be taught in the science classroom, that does
not justify teaching bad science as established fact. How about simply
admitting we know hardly anything about the causes of "evolution"? In
any case, you can always define science to exclude ID, but the real question is
not whether it is "science", but whether it is true - is there, or is
there not, clear evidence for design in Nature?
The Supernatural Element in Nature
Le Conte's axiom [that
everything that happens in our world is
Methods of Design
Why would God have to create
simpler organisms,
The Light of the World
I believe that my faith in God rests on a very solid foundation of reason. It
is hard to imagine anything more improbable than the idea that the universe as
we know it, with its marvelous laws of physics and mathematics, and the
magnificent forms of life which are to be found on our Earth, could have arisen
without intelligent design. My faith in Jesus Christ, on the other hand, is not
backed up by nearly so much reason or logic. There are, of course, some logical
reasons for believing
Difficult Christian Doctrines
Both resurrection and
judgment are ideas which are very difficult for modern
In the great commission,
and in many other places in the New Testament, we are told to joyfully share
the "good news" with others. Is this the good news, that after all
the trials they go through in this life, most of the world is headed--without
knowing it--for an even worse place, unless they accept a Savior they have
heard little or nothing about? No, I believe the good news shared by the early
apostles is not that the world can be saved from a punishment they didn't know
awaited them, but that they can be saved from a separation from God that they
are well aware of, and that to be reconciled to God they don't have to follow
His will perfectly, only to accept His forgiveness. Though the very word
"gospel" means "good news", the gospel many churches are
trying to spread today is certainly not good news, and Christianity will never
set the world on fire again until we start preaching good news again. If we
read the Bible like a law book, pouring over each verse looking for a precise
formula by which God will judge us, we will find it very confusing. For
example, sometimes God's standards seem impossibly high ("Be perfect,
therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect"), while sometimes God is
portrayed as much less demanding ("Come to me all you who are weary and
burdened, and I will give you rest. . .for my yoke is easy and my burden is
light").When a rich young ruler, who had kept all the commandments since
his youth, asked "what must I do to inherit eternal life?", Jesus
answered, "Go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will
have treasure in heaven." Yet he said "today you will be with me in
paradise" to a thief who first repented of his sins and believed in Jesus
as he was dying on the cross next to Jesus. To make sense of the apparently
conflicting statements in the New Testament as to what God expects of us, we
need to think of Him, not as a judge who is required to administer justice
according to some set of rules, but as a loving father. God has high
expectations for His children, and sometimes He scolds us or even threatens us
for not living up to them. But when we fall short of His standards, and feel
badly about it, like a father He comforts us and tellsus He still loves us.
Jesus clearly taught that there will be a judgment, where those who were evil,
and made their brothers' and sisters' lives on Earth unbearable, will be
punished in some manner. But in the story of the prodigal son, and in many
other teachings, Jesus pictured God as "our Father in heaven", so one
thing we can be sure of is that God will not disown any of His children for
disobeying a command they did not understand or did not even hear. No parent
would do that.
See also John 15:22-24: "[Jesus
said] If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not have been guilty of
sin, but now they have no excuse for their sin. Whoever hates me hates my Father also.
If I had not done among them the works that no one else did, they
would not be guilty of sin, but now they have seen and hated both me and my Father."
Why it was necessary for
Jesus to die on the cross
The Bible
Much of the world seems to
gravitate toward either
The Problem of Pain
Why do bad things happen to
good people?. . .I think most people who claim not to believe in God, say this
not because of
References