Darwinism vs Facts

I was once challenged by a self-confessed atheist Darwinist in this way:

Are you holding back then?  Do you have some ground breaking evidence that shows that evolution is false?   I’m sure the the scientific community would love to hear about it.

Here is my initial response:

Definitions:
Information: For this entry we’re talking about biologically meaningful information, or semantic information or more specifically still biosemiotics. Shannon information is useful in biology as well but not at the level required for ID. That is, both descriptive info and prescriptive info.

Complexity: Here ID refers to specified complexity – and this is not an IDist invention – it was first used by Leslie Orgel. Complexity alone is insufficient. A long string of random letters for example is complex but not specified. A string of letters from a Shakespearean sonnet is both complex and specified.

Here I quote Dr David L. Abel; The Origin of Life Science Foundation:

Semantic (meaningful) information has two subsets: Descriptive and Prescriptive. Prescriptive Information (PI) instructs or directly produces nontrivial formal function (Abel, 2009a). Merely describing a computer chip does not prescribe or produce that chip. Thus mere description needs to be dichotomized from prescription. Computationally halting cybernetic programs and linguistic instructions are examples of Prescriptive Information. “Prescriptive Information (PI) either tells us what choices to make, or it is a recordation of wise choices already made.” (Abel, 2009a)

    Not even Descriptive semantic information is achievable by inanimate physicodynamics (Pattee, 1972, 1995, 2001). Measuring initial conditions in any experiment and plugging those measurements appropriately into equations (e.g., physical “laws”) is formal, not physical. Cybernetic programming choices and mathematical manipulations are also formal.
    …
    DNA strings are formed through the selection of one of four nucleotides at each locus in a string. These programming choices at quaternary decision nodes in DNA sequences must be made prior to the existence of any selectable phenotypic fitness (The GS Principle, (Abel, 2009b). Natural selection cannot explain the programming of genetic PI that precedes and prescribes organismic existence.

    No one has ever observed PI flow in reverse direction from inanimate physicodynamics to the formal side of the ravine—the land of bona fide formal pragmatic “control.” The GS Principle states that selection for potential function must occur at the molecular-genetic level of nucleotide selection and sequencing, prior to organismic existence (Abel, 2009b, d). Differential survival/reproduction of already-programmed living organisms (natural selection) is not sufficient to explain molecular evolution or life-origin (Abel, 2009b). Life must be organized into existence and managed by prescriptive information found in both genetic and epigenetic regulatory mechanisms. The environment possesses no ability to program linear digital folding instructions into the primary structure of biosequences and biomessages. The environment also provides no ability to generate Hamming block codes (e.g. triplet codons that preclude noise pollution through a 3-to-1 symbol representation of each amino acid) (Abel and Trevors, 2006a, 2007). The environment cannot decode or translate from one arbitrary language into another. The codon table is arbitrary and physicodynamically indeterminate. No physicochemical connection exists between resortable nucleotides, groups of nucleotides, and the amino acid that each triplet codon represents. Although instantiated into a material symbol system, the prescriptive information of genetic and epigenetic control is fundamentally formal, not physical.

If you understood that then you’ll realize that the above facts already by themselves refute Darwinism at the most fundamental level – encoded meaningful information.

Douglas Axe, for example, comments on the recent and controversial experiments by Durrett and Schmidt that supposedly contradict Behe’s Edge of Evolution:

By way of analogy, you might easily cause your favorite software to crash by changing a bit or two in the compiled executable file, but you can’t possibly convert it into something altogether different (and equally useful) by such a simple change, or even by a series of such changes with each version improving on the prior one. To get a substantially new piece of software, you would need to substantially re-engineer the original code knowing that your work wouldn’t pay off until it’s finished. Darwinism just doesn’t have the patience for this.

Furthermore, returning to the first question, it seems that even humble binding-site conversions are typically beyond the reach of Darwinian evolution. Durrett and Schmidt conclude that “this type of change would take >100 million years” in a human line [1], which is problematic in view of the fact that the entire history of primates is thought to be shorter than that [3].

Might the prospects be less bleak for more prolific species with shorter generation times? As it turns out, even there Darwinism appears to be teetering on the brink of collapse. Choosing fruit flies as a favorable organism, Durrett and Schmidt calculate that what is impossible in humans would take only “a few million years” in these insects. To get that figure, however, they had to assume that the damage caused buy the first mutation has a negligible effect on fitness. In other words, they had to leap from “the mutation need not be lethal” to (in effect) ‘the mutation causes no significant harm’. That’s a big leap.

What happens if we instead assume a small but significant cost—say, a 5% reduction in fitness? By their math it would then take around 400 million years for the binding-site switch to prove its benefit (if it had one) by becoming fully established in the fruit fly population. [4] By way of comparison, the whole insect class—the most diverse animal group on the planet—is thought to have come into existence well within that time frame. [5]

Do you see the problem? On the one hand we’re supposed to believe that the Darwinian mechanism converted a proto-insect into a stunning array of radically different life forms (termites, beetles, ants, wasps, bees, dragonflies, stick insects, aphids, fleas, flies, mantises, cockroaches, moths, butterflies, etc., each group with its own diversity) well within the space of 400 million years. But on the other hand, when we actually do the math we find that a single insignificant conversion of binding sites would reasonably be expected to consume all of that time.

The contrast could hardly be more stark: The Darwinian story hopes to explain all the remarkable transformations within 400 million years, but the math shows that it actually explains no remarkable transformation in that time.

If that doesn’t call for a serious rethink, it’s hard to imagine what would.

But it gets a lot worse.

Axe also, experimentally not theoretically (with site directed mutagenesis experiments on a 150-residue protein-folding domain within a B-lactamase enzyme) estimated that the probability of finding a functional protein among the possible amino acid sequences corresponding to a 150-residue protein is similarly 1 in 10^77!

If the universe is indeed some 13.7 billion years and since using the Plank length (smallest possible distance) which is 10^-33 centimeters, and the Plank time (number of possible events per sec.) which is 10^43 and then the number of elementary particles in the universe which is estimated to be 10^80 – calculating the number of possible events in the universe since the Big Bang gives ~10^139. That’s using Dembski’s very conservative calculation.

Other scientists have given much smaller results like University of Pittsburgh physicist Bret van der Sande’s estimate of the probabilistic resources available in the universe at 10^92 – a much less favorable number for the supposed evolutionary time frame than Dembski’s. Worse of course is that this is the number that applies since the beginning of the universe – not the beginning of Earth!

MIT computer scientist Seth Lloyd has calculated that the most bit operations the universe could have performed in its history (assuming the entire universe were given over to this single-minded task) is 10^120, meaning that a specific bit operation with an improbability significantly greater than 1 chance in 10^120 will likely never occur by chance. None of these probabilistic resources is sufficient to render the chance hypothesis plausible. Dembski’s calculation is the most conservative and gives chance its “best chance” to succeed. But even his calculation confirms the implausibility of the chance hypothesis, whether chance is invoked to explain the information necessary to build a single protein or the information necessary to build the suite of proteins needed to service a minimally complex cell.

The probability of producing a single 150-amino-acid functional protein by chance stands at about 1 in about 10^164 (when including P for the requirements for having only peptide bonds and only L-amino acids) – “L-amino acids” dominate on earth, etc. “If you mix up chirality, a protein’s properties change enormously. Life couldn’t operate with just random mixtures of stuff,” – Ronald Breslow, Ph.D., University Professor, Columbia University).
Chirality: The term chiral is used to describe an object that is non-superposable on its mirror image. The concept of handedness – right, left
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality_%28chemistry%29 – section on biology

Thus, for each functional sequence of 150 amino acids, there are at least 10^164 other possible nonfunctional sequences of the same length. Therefore, to have a good (i.e., better than 50-50) chance of producing a single functional protein of this length by chance, a random process would have to generate (or sample) more than half of the 10^164 nonfunctional sequences corresponding to each functional sequence of that length. Unfortunately, that number vastly exceeds the most optimistic estimate of the probabilistic resources of the entire universe – that is the number of events that could have occurred since the beginning of its existence.

To see this, notice again that to have a better than 50-50 chance of generating a functional protein by chance, more than half of the 10^164 sequences would have to be produced. Now compare that number (0.5 x l0^164) to the maximum number of opportunities – 10^139 – for that event to occur in the history of the universe. Notice that the first number (.5 x 10^164) exceeds the second (10^139).

There is a better chance of pinpointing a single specific atom within the entire universe, entirely by luck, than the single functional 150 amino acid protein arriving by the same! And that’s a small protein.
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The above is partly from Stephen Meyer’s Signature in the Cell
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Remember that the above numbers are estimates since no one knows the exact age age of the universe, the earth and probabilities are often subject to other unknown variables. But the above calculations only apply to getting a single functional protein! Not a fully functional cell! Not even DNA.

Even if the odds are much better than this, they are still so bad as to merit a verdict against Darwinism’s chance and selection hypothesis! In Darwinism everything is super easy for evolution! Even if the final numbers are orders of magnitude off, their implications are still so far beyond the realm of reasonable expectations as to warrant a complete abandon of the whole chemical origin of life scheme.

Furthermore, if the origin of life is physically impossible by chance and necessity then what are the chances that the same processes could cause the evolution of some ancient ’self-replicator’ into more than 10 million highly specified, well adapted life forms? The answer is that the chances for that are not much better at all!

Add genetic entropy to the problem and you’ll understand why neo Darwinism is a waste of time and a real science stopper.
The facts, yes facts, about genetic entropy are devastating to NDE.  If the primary mechanism of mutations + selection is shown to be inadequate then the whole NDE is undone.  And this has already been shown to a degree requiring a negative verdict!  Mutations, the prime source of genetic variation, are largely near neutral (very slightly deleterious), many are deleterious (some fatal) and some, but very rare are beneficial. 

Atheist Sir F. Hoyle commented on this problem:

“I am convinced it is this almost trivial simplicity that explains why the Darwinian theory is so widely accepted, why it has penetrated through the educational system so completely. As one student text puts it, `The theory is a two-step process. First variation must exist in a population. Second, the fittest members of the population have a selective advantage and are more likely to transmit their genes to the next generation.’ But what if individuals with a good gene A carry a bad gene B. having the larger value of |s|. Does the bad gene not carry the good one down to disaster? What of the situation that bad mutations must enormously exceed good ones in number? … The essential problem for the Darwinian theory in its twentieth century form is how to cope with this continuing flood of adverse mutations, a far cry indeed from the trite problem of only the single mutation in (1.1). Supposing a favourable mutation to occur among the avalanche of unfavourable ones, how is the favourable mutation to advance against the downward pressure of the others?” (Hoyle, F., “Mathematics of Evolution,” [1987]

and  again…

“Two points of principle are worth emphasis. The first is that the usually supposed logical inevitability of the theory of evolution by natural selection is quite incorrect. There is no inevitability, just the reverse. It is only when the present asexual model is changed to the sophisticated model of sexual reproduction accompanied by crossover that the theory can be made to work, even in the limited degree to be discussed …. This presents an insuperable problem for the notion that life arose out of an abiological organic soup through the development of a primitive replicating system. A primitive replicating system could not have copied itself with anything like the fidelity of present-day systems …. With only poor copying fidelity, a primitive system could carry little genetic information without L [the mutation rate] becoming unbearably large, and how a primitive system could then improve its fidelity and also evolve into a sexual system with crossover beggars the imagination.” (Hoyle, F., “Mathematics of Evolution,” [1987], Acorn Enterprises: Memphis TN, 1999

Renown geneticist Dr. John Sandford’s recent work in this area is also highly revealing.  Here  is what he said on the endeavor itself (my bold):

Late in my career, I did something which for a Cornell professor would seem unthinkable. I began to question the Primary Axiom [neo Darwinism]. I did this with great fear and trepidation. By doing this, I knew I would be at odds with the most “sacred cow” of modern academia. Among other things, it might even result in my expulsion from the academic world.    Although I had achieved considerable success and notoriety within my own particular specialty (applied genetics), it would mean I would have to be stepping out of the safety of my own little niche. I would have to begin to explore some very big things, including aspects of theoretical genetics which I had always accepted by faith alone. I felt compelled to do all this, but I must confess I fully expected to simply hit a brick wall. To my own amazement, I gradually realized that the seemingly “great and unassailable fortress” which has been built up around the primary axiom is really a house of cards. The Primary Axiom is actually an extremely vulnerable theory, in fact it is essentially indefensible. Its apparent invincibility derives mostly from bluster, smoke, and mirrors. A large part of what keeps the Axiom standing is an almost mystical faith, which the true-believers have in the omnipotence of natural selection. Furthermore, I began to see that this deep-seated faith in natural selection was typically coupled with a degree of ideological commitment which can only be described as religious. I started to realize (again with trepidation) that I might be offending a lot of people’s religion!

To question the Primary Axiom required me to re-examine virtually everything I thought I knew about genetics. This was probably the most difficult intellectual endeavor of my life. Deeply entrenched thought pattern only change very slowly (and I must add — painfully). What I eventually experienced was a complete overthrow of my previous understandings. Several years of personal struggle resulted in a new understanding, and a very strong conviction that the Primary Axiom was most definitely wrong. More importantly, I became convinced that the Axiom could be shown to be wrong to any reasonable and open-minded individual. This realization was exhilarating, but again frightening. I realized that I had a moral obligation to openly challenge this most sacred of cows. In doing this, I realized I would earn for myself the most intense disdain of most of my colleagues in academia not to mention very intense opposition and anger from other high places.

In his book, which I will not attempt to quote extensively, he notes:

One of the most astounding recent findings in the world of genetics is that the human mutation rate (just within our reproductive cells) is at least 100 nucleotide substitutions (misspellings) per person per generation (Kondrashov, 2002). Other geneticists would place this number at 175 (Nachman and Crowell, 2000). These high numbers are now widely accepted within the genetics community. Furthermore, Dr. Kondrashov, the author of the most definitive publication, has indicated to me that 100 was only his lower estimate — he believes the actual rate of point mutations (misspellings) per person may be as high as 300 (personal communication). Even the lower estimate, 100, is an amazing number, with profound implications. When an earlier study revealed that the human mutation rate might be as high as 30, the highly distinguished author of that study, concluded that such a number would have profound implications for evolutionary theory (Neel et al. 1986).

Moreover, there are strong theoretical reasons for believing there is no truly neutral nucleotide position. By its very existence, a nucleotide position takes up space, affects spacing between other sites, and affects such things as regional nucleotide composition, DNA folding and nucleosome binding. If a nucleotide carries absolutely zero information, it is then by definition slightly deleterious – as it slows cell replication and wastes energy. Just as there are really no truly beneficial neutral letters in a encyclopedia, there are probably no truly neutral nucleotide sites in the genome. Therefore there is no way to change any given site, without some biological effect – no matter how subtle. Therefore, while most sites are probably “nearly neutral”, very few, if any, should be absolutely neutral.   – Dr. John Sanford, Cornell geneticist, Genetic Entropy The most recent paper on mutation rates is this : http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090827/full/news.2009.864.html – which basically confirms the 100-200 figure.

And so much for “junk DNA”:

The ENCODE consortium’s major findings include the discovery that the majority of DNA in the human genome is transcribed into functional molecules, called RNA, and that these transcripts extensively overlap one another. This broad pattern of transcription challenges the long-standing view that the human genome consists of a relatively small set of discrete genes, along with a vast amount of so-called junk DNA that is not biologically active.

Also – You still must account for semantic information in biological systems. And it is that information, along with the complex algorithms that process it, that makes Darwinism unfeasible.
Materialism, by very definition, cannot account for the existence of semantic information in living things. That kind of information absolutely requires intelligence – no exceptions exist.

I have repeated this next fact over and over again and never gotten any refutation other than mere denial!  – Code, by definition, implies intelligence and the genetic code is real code, mathematically identical to that of language, computer codes etc. all of which can only arise by intelligent convention of symbologies.

The fact that the genetic code is real code and not merely analogous to code is another devastating fact against NDE.
Moreover the genome contains meta information and there is now evidence of meta-programming as well.
Meta info is information on information and we now know the genome contains such structures. But meta information cannot arise without knowledge of the original information.

Meta programming is even more solid evidence of intelligence at work.
We now know that in yeast DNA alone there are more than 300 nano machines at work performing various tasks in the cell, many of which are performed concurrently. Yet concurrency in info processing systems cannot arise without pre-knowledge of tasks requiring coordinated action!

Stuart Pullen in his book Intelligent Design or Evolution (available for reading on line, rightly calls this information “molecular knowledge”.
Read his book to see why a chance and necessity OOL hypothesis is utterly impossible.
It is also viewable here
His mathematical analysis of the chance – necessity scenario is utterly devastating to any chance OOL hypothesis and thus could be equally devastating to the Darwinian evolution of life hypothesis merely by applying the sample principles to complex bio machines.

In short the nature of cellular information systems in the genome literally rules out chance and necessity for any viable origin theory.
An intelligence HAD to be intimately involved in its formation and function.

Worse still for NDE, we now know that the genome contains many poly-poly0functional and thus constrained sequences. But this poly-functionality really stretches the credibility of any chance + necessity hypothesis of ever having any chance at all of success!
In any poly-functional-constrained system, undoing – by random mutation – any one function necessarily undoes the whole.

As Sanford states,

    This “complex interwoven (poly-fuctional) network” throughout the entire DNA code makes the human genome severely poly-constrained to random mutations (Sanford; Genetic Entropy, 2005; page 141). This means the DNA code is now much more severely limited in its chance of ever having a hypothetical beneficial mutation since almost the entire DNA code is now proven to be intimately connected to many other parts of the DNA code. Thus even though a random mutation to DNA may be able to change one part of an organism for the better, it is now proven much more likely to harm many other parts of the organism that depend on that one particular part being as it originally was. Since evolution was forced, by the established proof of Mendelian genetics, to no longer view the whole organism as to what natural selection works upon, but to view the whole organism as a multiple independent collection of genes that can be selected or discarded as natural selection sees fit, this “complex interwoven network” finding is extremely bad news, if not absolutely crushing, for the “Junk DNA” population genetics scenario of evolution (modern neo-Darwinian synthesis) developed by Haldane, Fisher and Wright (page 52 and 53: Genetic Entropy: Sanford 2005

One of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th centuy was Kurt Godel.

The formation within geological time of a human body by the laws of physics (or any other laws of similar nature), starting from a random distribution of elementary particles and the field, is as unlikely as the separation by chance of the atmosphere into its components. The complexity of the living things has to be present within the material [from which they are derived] or in the laws [governing their formation] -Kurt Gödel

We could also add the implications of self correction mechanisms within the genome as further evidence of design since no correction can be made to any complex system without knowledge of its correct system state and thus no such mechanism can arise randomly.
I won’t get into apoptosis and the rest here but you can read my post on Programmed Cell Death.

ID is a necessity in OOL (origin of life) and OOS (origin of species) explanations. The only thing we can reliably say of Darwinian mechanisms is that adaptation and variation occur – but only in a limited way – within the “kind”.
Now, since evolutionists are always asking what taxonomic category the biblical kind is here is my own answer: The “kind” probably corresponds best with the taxonomic ‘family’.
I.E. – No lizard to dog, frog to prince, bacteria to banana, banana to monkey, Darwinist to squid, etc. is even possible given the above humongous improbabilities.

Programmed Cell Death

Cells have built-in error correction and repair mechanisms. Such mechanisms cannot be accounted for by any Darwinian hypothesis since error detection implies knowledge. Knowledge of correct system state and planning of appropriate repair measures.

Here’s one problem with the Darwinian “it just evolved” hypothesis :
Q: How can a repair mechanism arise without pre-knowledge of correct system state?
A: It cannot. Not when the damage caused interrupts and corrective facilities are this specifically complex

Implication? DNA had to be designed by an intelligent agent.

In software development, programmers build what we call “exception trapping” mechanisms.
Such mechanisms ‘watch’ a given function progress and trap errors (exceptional system events) when detected. The trapping code then directs program flow either to analysis functions and correctional code or if the error is minor simply continue processing after the code block that failed (caused the exception) and may possibly alert the user to a faulty input situation.

DNA has it’s own special codes for detecting and ‘catching’ the exceptions that occur. Triggered by a diverse range of cell signals.

Neo Darwinian evolution (NDE) cannot explain the existence of such built-in functions.

Worse (for NDE) : Not only is there repair of damage available to the cell’s system but there is even a last resort “correction” (but not repaired) measure called apoptosis – pre-programmed cell death! Apoptosis  is “a type of cell death in which the cell uses specialized cellular machinery to kill itself; a cell suicide mechanism that enables metazoans to control cell number and eliminate cells that threaten the animal’s survival” (also plays a role in preventing cancer). Its a key process in multicellular organisms.

This too is not explicable under NDE.

So, in a more engineering like term we can look at this process as something like a control-feedback loop. Such ‘loops’ exist in many places in the cell; like the circadian oscillator (Paely’s watch!) – “a clockwork mechanism that controls these global rhythms of transcription, chromosomal topology, and cell division.”

Well then, the evolutionary ancestor to that was what?

Darwinism utterly fails to predict sophisticated repair mechanisms like these. Only pre-knowledge of correct system state can foresee and then construct code sequences that operate repairs to or destruction of faulty parts in a complex machine.

DNA is such a machine.

True but Deadly

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once looked at Darwinism and it’s logical conclusions and did not like what he saw.  In “On the Use and Abuse of History for Life” (1873), Nietzsche panged at the consequences he foresaw:

If the doctrines of sovereign Becoming, of the liquidity of all…species, of the lack of any cardinal distinction between man and animal — doctrines which I consider true but deadly — are foisted on people for another generation with the frenzied instruction which is now customary, then it should take no one by surprise if people destroy themselves in egotistical trifles and misery, ossifying themselves in their self-absorption, initially falling apart and ceasing to be a people. Then, in place of this condition, perhaps systems of individual egotism, alliances for the systematic larcenous exploitation of those non-members of the alliance and similar creations of utilitarian nastiness will step forward onto the future scene.

While he may have correctly seen the inevitable consequences of Darwinian logic, taken to its logical conclusions, he nevertheless considered that doctrine ‘deadly’.  And he was right. Every time in the last 150 years (since Darwin’s OOS) that someone has seen those logical conclusions and decided to put them into practice ‘deadly’ and disastrous results have been witnessed.

As we can easily see in Richard Weikart’s book, “From Darwin to Hitler” World Was II was started because some men, backed and supported by the scientific elite of their time, believed that man should put Darwin’s ideas into social practice. Not only did this result in the holocaust but in the systematic slaughter of tens of thousands of mentally ill and physically deformed persons in Germany.In the description of Weikart’s latest book Hitler’s ethic was also see that:

Hitler was inspired by evolutionary ethics to pursue the utopian project of biologically improving the human race. This ethic underlay or influenced almost every major feature of Nazi policy: eugenics (i.e., measures to improve human heredity, including compulsory sterilization), euthanasia, racism, population expansion, offensive warfare, and racial extermination.

So Nietzsche’s “true but deadly” comment turns out to be true.

This necessarily requires of us that we answer the question – is it really true?

Thankfully, and in spite of the modern neo Darwinists persistent refusal to acknowledge these facts, we can now state with distinct, and yes scientific, authority that no, it isn’t true.

We know that evolution, as per “changes in allele frequencies over time” and as per “variation and adaptation” is true.
But over the time since Origin of Species, we still have no empirical evidence whatsoever that evolution is capable of doing anything more than the above, and that within the taxonomic family.

The only speciation events observable in the lab or the field are always within the family.  There are no examples of speciation as per a radical new change from one family into a completely different family – and that in spite of the hysterical ravings of such fanatical atheists as Richard Dawkins et al.

We now have Lenski’s 40,0000 generations of E. coli.  All that has been observed is minor adaptation.  They are still E. coli and not jelly fish.  Nor is there any reason to think they will ever become anything else.

Lenski’s experiments, if they demonstrate anything at all, show what Michael Behe calls the “edge of evolution” i.e. the limits of what random mutations and natural selection can accomplish.

The RNA world is a dead duck, mutations are notoriously negative in any organism and built-in error detection and correction mechanisms in the cell abound to assure as that neo Darwinism is also a dead duck. For, how can the very mechanisms which ensure a certain stability in cells and keep species in their respective families, also be the means by which they are mutated out of their own families!? It just doesn’t ring true.

So why do Darwinists persist in promoting it as though it were the ultimate truth?  But in their ill reasoning view it HAS to be true even if it is deadly!  As absolute materialists nothing else CAN be true!
As Harvard geneticist R. Lewontin stated so succinctly,

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.  It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.  Moreover the materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

Curiously Lewontin also admited another rather frightening view when he said,

Scientists, like others, sometimes tell deliberate lies, because they believe that small lies can serve big truths.
-Lewontin, R.C., The Inferiority Complex, New York Review of Books, 22 October 1981, p. 13.

So he at least, and supposedly many other scientists, blatantly lies? Is this not a strange statement? Scientists lie to your face and Lewontin condescends to give you  the benefit of the doubt of your stupidity by telling you that they lie? Yet are you still so willing to believe them!?  Hard to believe.  Why should anyone believe what the elite materialist scientists then tell us?

Thankfully not all scientists, and hopefully not all materialist (atheist) scientists lie to the public as easily as Lewontin.
But is this lying not also a part of the logic of Darwinism?  Indeed is it is.  For under Darwinism as Nietzsche saw clearly, there is no foundation for ethics, free will or morality of any kind other than a mere collective [or imposed] consent to any currently useful moral standard. A standard that can be changed upon any whim at all by the deciders.

Under such a baseless morality, anything goes.  This is nihilism.  The end of Darwinian thought is nihilism.  And that means that you have no more value than a worm with whom you allegedly share a common evolutionary heritage.

So why did Nietzsche and so many others nevertheless accept this nihilistic world view? Well Nietzsche was in love with his own sister and that clearly doesn’t fly with Judeo/Christian values; so, to remove the sting of conscience from such desires and willings Nietzsche with many thousands of others saw (and see) in materialist Darwinism a clear road out of all traditional taboos and the guilt of conscience and self-restraint that comes with it.

In other words, the real underlying reasons why many Darwinist remain incapable of abandoning their view is religious [metaphysical] and not scientific at all.

Darwinism has become a cult for many.  It MUST be true because there is no God or if there is he has nothing to care of his creation.

But Darwinism and its underlying, metaphysical materialist constructs are not true and can now be empirically demonstrated as such through legitimate design detection methods, statistical mechanics and the laws of probability, and indeed, lab and field experiments involving tens of thousands of generations wherein the opportunity for macro evolution abounds but none is ever observed.

However, as long as neo-Darwinism is continued to be promoted in public academia and the mass media, it will indeed remain deadly, no matter how untrue.

Biological Meta information

Meta information in DNA is another Darwinism killer. Meta information is information on information. “For example, a if a document is considered to be information, its title, location, and subject are examples of metainformation.” – SearchOracle.com Definitions

Or, to make a cake for example the list of ingredients is the primary information, and the instructions on how to assemble the ingredients is the meta-information.  “Evolution not only requires new information, it also requires extra new information about how to use that new information.” 

A biological case in point is the proverbial flagellum – again!

Q: How does the cell “know” how to assemble the 42 protein parts in the right order?
A: It doesn’t “know” anything. 

Yet, the information is there! It cannot be assembled in a random way without becoming virtually useless – and when assemblage errors do occur the results are immediately discarded by the cell!

So, there is meta information – behind the scenes information as it were. Information stored that indicates how other stored information is to be utilized. Meta information also tells the cell when errors occurred and to discard assembled pieces. 

Meta information = information on information = a Darwinists nightmare.

Of course there is no evolutionary explanation for the existence of meta in0formation.   Neither indeed can there be because it’s very existence implies intelligence and knowledge.   How is that, you may ask?  Because knowledge is an incontrovertible necessity of how to do the assembly and pre-knowledge is a intrinsic part of meta information!   Otherwise we get mere random processes – again. 

So in evolutionary randomness terms, where does this meta information come from? 

As an informatics professional, I know that random process do not create functional and useful (if not necessary) sophisticated machines like the flagellum or ATP synthase energy generator motors etc.   Random processes do not and cannot “know” when or if a machine is assembled correctly or not.   Thus random processes cannot create meta information!

Darwin isn’t feeling well at all now is he!  

Therefore, biological meta information is yet another large chunk of evidence for ID.  Is this not enough to convince the hard-line Darwinist of the error of his ideas?   Not usually because the hard-liner Darwinist has a hidden, or not so hidden, agenda of his own, and it is religious – materialism. 

That’s a problem in itself.   A metaphysical and psychological one and not logical or scientific at all.  

Now then, what about the other fact of redundant biological information?  The fact that the cell has information and structural backups! In case of error or failure we now know that the cell contains backup information and redundant parts – doubles that only come into play when errors or failures occur.

It all just happened by random mutations? Sorry, that is statistically and epistemologically impossible.  Knowledge (and thus intelligence) is a necessary ingredient.  And that both for error detection/correction as well as meta information.

If ID is true your car wouldn’t start

Old news but I was just re-reading this stuff.

James L. Powell, professor of geology and the former director and president of the L.A. County Museum of Natural History. In a video urging scientists to tell the public what’s what regarding intelligent design, he makes this ‘fatal’ argument against intelligent design :

    We have to say that if creationism is right and if there is an intelligent designer, then almost everything else we know about science is wrong. Then your flu vaccine wouldn’t work, your car wouldn’t start, there was no Hiroshima, and on and on and on.  – from youtube.com video

Q: How do guys like this get a degree!?!?

First he, like all other mis-informed and clumsy Darwinian fundamentalists, conflates creationism with ID. 

In fact, ID does not postulate a supernatural design.  ID does not rely on the bible for it’s central tenets.  ID can live with the possibility the design is the work of some super intelligent alien civilization.  ID can live without any proposal of any designer at all – it deals with evidence for design – not with identities of putative designers.

Many IDists are theists, some are deists and some agnostic.

Still, even pure creationism could not possibly lead to the strange conclusions proposed by Powell.  He speaks as though all real science has occurred in the last century, guided by materialism, rather than the historical fact that most of the great scientists who actually discovered the laws of physics and chemistry, were mostly creationists! Newton, Copernicus, Maxwell, Mendel…

So whence these incredible conclusions?  Obviously the prof. has a lot to learn about logic, cause and effect, the basis of science, the history of science and the nature of the universe.  His statement could not be more blatantly non sequitur (Latin for “it does not follow.” Describes a logical fallacy.  Most often used to indicate
something which does not follow logically, such as a stated conclusion
that is not supported by the facts.)  than it is.  Indeed, he makes no attempt to even justify his conclusions! No, reason, no evidence, nothing but hubris disguised as scientific authority.

Indeed, if a designer actually made the universe and decreed it’s laws, wherein does it follow that nothing works?! Powell obviously is suffering from the mental illness so eloquently described by Sir Fred Hoyle:

Although the new believers [Darwinists] had not a particle of evidence to support their statements on the matter, they asserted that the rabbit producing sludge (called soup to make it sound more palatable) was terrestrially located and that all chemical and biochemical transmogrifications of the sludge were terrestrially inspired. Because there was not a particle of evidence to support this view, new believers had to swallow it as an article of faith, otherwise they could not pass their examinations or secure a job or avoid the ridicule of their colleagues. So it came about from 1860 onward that new believers became in a sense mentally ill, or, more precisely, either you became mentally ill or you quitted the subject of biology, as I had done in my early teens. The trouble for young biologists was that, with everyone around them ill, it became impossible for them to think they were well unless they were ill, which again is a situation you can read all about in the columns of Nature [magazine].” (Hoyle, F., “Mathematics of Evolution,” [1987], Acorn Enterprises: Memphis TN, 1999, pp.3-4).

Clearly the level of intelligence demonstrated by so many fanatical Darwinists these days is drooping to all time lows.  Do any of them actually stop to think before opening their mouths?  Certainly isn’t showing if they do. 

Powell’s inane statement is surely one of the more outstanding among the mountainous slew of verbal diarrhea littering the Darwinist blogs – low down in the unfathomable depths of materialist ideological idiocy.

Darwinism and mental illness

 

Sir Frederick Hoyle said that for one to swallow Darwinism, one must need a certain amount of mental illness:

“So it came about from 1860 onward that new believers [in Darwinism] became in a sense mentally ill, or, more precisely, either you became mentally ill or you quitted the subject of biology, as I had done in my early teens.”  – Mathematics of Evolution, (1987) University College Cardiff Press (or Acorn Enterprises: Memphis TN, 1999, pp.3-4).  - my emphasis

Over the last 30 years or so I’ve had many occaisions to debate with evolutionists.  In person and on many various Internet forums and blogs. 

If there is one thing that occurs over and over again it the patent absence of keen logic amongst evolutions – theistic or atheistic. Thus over the past few years I’ve been compiling data and observing a glaring fact: Darwinists/atheists are unable to reason even the simplest forms of logical dialogue without getting bogged down in endless circles of typical logical fallacies.

Specifically, affirming the consequent, begging the question and the fallacy of the undistributed middle.

Over the past year I’ve discovered that I’m not alone in these observations.  And then just a few days ago I came upon this quote from astrophysicist Sir Frederick Hoyle. 

Hoyle’s comment was made many years ago but is more pertinent now than ever with the current controversy over Intelligent Design theory raging both in academia, in the courts and public debate forums.

I remember one such debate in which my atheist/Darwinist opponent claimed that there are no absolutes.  I asked him whether he thought 2+2 (in any conceivable universe) always = 4 or not and whether that was an absolute or not.

He claimed it was not an absolute.

He was a very bright young software developer & analyst.  So his very livelihood depended on the absolute truths of math.  Yet he would not change his mind for anything I could say.  His whole world view depended on denial of absolutes.

So we can see why a reversal of opinion on his part would have meant a powerful shock to his whole mental life and reason for living – a shock which in religious terms would be called “conversion”.

I’ve debated with many like him. The only ones who make the admission that indeed there are absolutes end up in the theist camp.

The very existence of logical absolutes is unaccountable under atheism. That’s why they almost invariably deny them (all while using them as such in their own argumentations – go figure).

So we see that indeed, atheist/Darwinist thinking cripples the mind and immunizes it against logic and common sense. 

And that is the logical consequence of denial of reality.  Psychiatric wards are full of people who started out denying realities. 

We witness this type of denial every day in the ID vs Evo debate.  Darwinists invariably ascribe to nature the powers of novel creation through random mutations + natural selection.  Mutations don’t usually create anything but problems or diseases (or nothing) so natural selection is assigned the role of creative agency. 

Then the ability to empirically detect design is rejected. But only in biology of course!   So who says biology can’t be included?  Darwinists do.  Why? Because they have some logical empirical method of demonstrating that design cannot be detected within biological structures?  Not at all.  No such method or even logical reason exists. 

So upon what basis do they auto-exclude ID detection from biological structures?  It is because to admit that design is detectable in nature as well as everywhere else is to admit the existence of the Designer once one determines that any natural system at all required an intelligence! 

To allow into one’s mind the fact that designed structures are detectable based on probabilistic methods and abductive reasoning applied to the incredible complex, coordinated concurrent information processing systems we now know are everywhere in living cells implies that Darwinism may not in fact be true.

But it MUST be true in their world view.  

Richard Lewontin – Harvard geneticist put as follows:

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.  It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.  Moreover the materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.

“Billions and Billions of Demons.”  Review of
“The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark,” by Carl Sagan. The New York Times Review of Books, January 9, 1997, pp.28-32,
p.31. Emphasis original)

- my bold

So therein lies the root of denial that leads Darwinists to that form of mental illness mentioned by Hoyle.  Hoyle was merely looking at the facts honestly. 

In his own words, 

“if one proceeds directly and straightforwardly in this matter, without being deflected by a fear of incurring the wrath of scientific opinion, one arrives at the conclusion that biomaterials with their amazing measure or order must be the outcome of intelligent design. “

Notice the bolded text.  This is a major factor in real life today for scientists.  Just look what they did to Dr. Richard Sternberg.  See Here.

That fear factor plays an important role in the denial of reality associated with atheism and Darwinism.

A whole slew of other examples of the “wrath of the scientific community” have arisen in this single area over the past 20 years or so.

The Darwinian scientific elite claim to have a monopoly on truth. What arrogance motivates them in this!

Darwinism/atheism require a denial of reality to adhere to.  This denial leads to relativistic thinking.  And this kind of thinking, being counter logical, leads to mental illness.  The inability to reason correctly.

I therefore close with this quote from Michel de Montaigne:

I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly. 

Atheist society unveiled

Based partly on the article called Hellish Holland :
http://www.sspx.ca/Angelus/2004_FebMar/Hellish_Holland.htm

Here are a few excerpts :

“… its morals are the most corrupt in the whole world. Liberalism, the freedom to do whatever you want without regard to morality, is considered as a god, unrestrained by Catholicism or even natural law. If one tries to teach morality, he is labelled a fascist, because he is “imposing his own will upon all other free wills in the country.” When you respond that objective morality comes from God, they answer that this God is only “between your ears,” that “your god” is your choice and you “cannot impose Him on anyone else.”

“Holland’s Minister of Public Health, Mrs. Borst, recently spoke about a handicapped child who was killed after being born. (By the way, “borstis a Dutch word for “breast,” but in the minister’s case, she seems to have no heart beating in hers.) She said that, according to penal law, it is murder, but the Officer of Justice will not prosecute in this case because the mortal injection was given by the doctor after consultation with the parents. In any case, she declared this child had little chance of “achieving an acceptable level of value of human life.”

“My American readers will find very interesting the comment written me by one of their own:

This is exactly why America (morally speaking) is not as degenerated as Europe. As a people, we are not logical: we are sentimental. We cling to Christian morality not out of conviction, but out of very vague notions, some of which are good and some just feel-good sentimental. This is good in that it slows our fall into immorality, but it also makes it difficult for us to think correctly when given correct principles; we cling to our errors just as illogically as we cling to truth.“

“Liberalism has penetrated so deeply into Holland that, without inciting total chaos, its people have free access to all things-drugs, sex, and Satanism, etc. Few police patrol the streets because the Dutch believe too many police constitutes a fascist or “rightist” state. The result is that people are attacked, wounded, and killed in the streets without motive. Most crimes are committed by immigrants. The police arrive two hours later. “What’s the use?” they say, “If we arrest these criminals, the judge will set them free the next day because it is considered ‘racist’ to punish poor strangers.”

In one celebrated case, a man was keeping a house thief at bay with a samurai sword until police arrived. The police set the thief free because he was “a poor boy.” But the homeowner was incarcerated because he was “traumatizing the poor boy with a sword.”

 

Sounds like a great place to live and have a family huh? It ought to for the atheist at least!

Atheism, as I explain here, has no foundations for moral values except illusionary ones adopted for survival and convenience sake. There are no objective values in atheism inspite of the delusions atheists adopt to pretend there are.

The priest continues his witness :

“But hospitals in Holland are no longer places of healing. They are fearsome places where euthanasia is practiced nearly automatically. Doctors have invented a new kind of euthanasia called “mortification” where food and water are denied patients making them die of hunger and thirst, that is, they are starved to death. A 1997 report revealed that 55% of nursing home patients are dying from this lack of care called “mortification.”

Then he gives an example he knew of personally:

“…The woman was lying in the bed unable to move her hands because she was paralyzed. On the table was a cup of water. I gave her a drink and she drank voraciously. It was clear-she was dying from hunger and thirst. Nobody was there to feed her; this was the so-called mortification. And indeed, some days later, she died. I could do absolutely nothing to stop it because the entire social and political system has been organized this way. The only thing I could have done was put the woman in the trunk of a car and drive off to a normal country, but this was a crazy thought. There was nothing I could do but pray.

When I was in Holland, I was aware of three cases amongst our faithful caring for an ill family member because they did not want to give them over to these criminal medical facilities. Two men were each taking care of their mothers, and an elderly woman was taking care of her sister in the most difficult situation you can imagine. The woman ruined her back permanently; she will have terrible pains for the rest of her life because she damaged her back carrying her sister. Though he tended to his mother for years, one man was called a sadist by the nurses because he refused “mortification” for her. The other man was questioned for hours by ten doctors because he refused “mortification” for his mother.”

If you are not already shocked or enraged at this, that’s only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Atheistic Darwinism provides absolutely no grounds for putting any kind of true, ultimate value on human life. As the bio-text books state, “You are an animal…you share a common heritage with earthworms...”

So why are we so suprised and shocked when those who take that literally as the real truth act like animals? And find no scruples to killing? Atheists deny this as the outcome of their doctrines but the witness here shows that the truth is otherwise.

Not only do people lose touch with humanity through atheism’s sophisms and pernicious doctrines, but they also lose touch with real logic and clear reasoning. This will come to epidemic proportions if the course continues as is all across the world. We will see dementia of unprecedented proportions. Reason is already dying out in the Darwinist, atheist controlled public school systems. Slowly but surely. It takes decades for the effect to start manifesting itself outwardly.

This slowness is due to the fact that most people want Judeo/Christian values but not the Judeo/Christian God. So the moral values endowed upon formerly Christian societies linger on as the spread of relativist moralities grow. The wound festers long before gangrene sets in and visible evidence, like what is seen in Holland, comes to the front windows of the worlds events watchers.

Is anybody listening? Yes. A lot of groups of fighting this kind of moral insanity. But not enough.

The irony is that while these European nations have so adamantly striven to eliminate the last vestiges of God and religion from their midst, Islam has made it’s inroads and the quiet “invasion of Europe” by Islamic “conquerors” is slowly taking place before our eyes. Eurabia is just around the coner and the Europeans have so little moral fibre left in them that they are already destined to lose the battle.

God help them.

America is only a few deacades behind Holland. If the atheistic Darwinists have their will be done, it will not be as in heaven but as in hell on earth.

Better make sure you stay in good health and are ready to suffer the conseuqences of “mortification”, rape, crime without justice etc..

America is a falling nation. A declining cilture. And, as all declining cultures exhibit as they fall, the signs of decandance and the rotting of moral fibre are all there :

• the extreme emphasis on external beauty (with accompanying health and mental anamolies),
• the obsession with all things sexual,
• the turning of the justice system into farce where money rules,
• the devalorization of life where animals have better protection and more rights than humans,
• the qualifying as “art, that which is intrinsically ugly, vulgar and demeaning,
• the emphasis on superficiality,
• the degradation of the weak and disabled
• the easy access to drugs
• the rise of all forms of sexual abuse
• the treating of evil people as merely dysfunctional or “malfunctioning units” (R. Dawkins)
• …. goes on and on

Very clear these days.

WWIII is inevitable due to all this. God has always, historically speaking, arranged through war the downfall of rotting nations and decaying civilizations. We will be no exception to the rule.

“If at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, and if that nation, concerning which I have spoken, turns from its evil, I will relent of the disaster that I intended to do to it.
And if at any time I declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, and if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will relent of the good that I had intended to do to it. Jer 18:7 -10

This text describes in very concise terms, God’s governmental principle in dealing with the world’s nations. It’s simple. His patience is immense but not unquenchable.

Job also speaks of these principles of government of God :

“With him are strength and wise designs; he who is guided into error, together with his guide, are in his hands; He takes away the wisdom of the wise guides, and makes judges foolish; He undoes the chains of kings, and puts his band on them;
He makes priests prisoners, overturning those in safe positions; He makes the words of responsible persons without effect, and takes away the good sense of the old; He puts shame on chiefs, and takes away the power of the strong;” – Job 12:16-21

We can see these in our modern society – judges are fools, counsel is dying, reason is under persitent fire from those who think themselves most reasonable!

Sad but true. America as well all the other nations moving towards implemented atheistic world views need a return to Judeo/Christian values WITH their foundations in God. If the foundations are removed there can be no strength in the building. It will indeed be the “house built on sand”.

God make America blessable.

Darwinian discrimination at it’s worst

Here’s yet more examples of the idiocy of darwinian fundamentalist nerds.

As can be found here : “Robert Pennock is being paid by UCSD’s Council of Provosts and the Division of Biological Sciences to speak against intelligent design in a lecture that is free and open to the public in UCSD’s RIMAC Arena (which holds about 5000 people). Of course, these groups are all taxpayer-supported. Not only is this free event open to anyone, but TritonLink, the UCSD student website, on its main home-page, reports that Professor Pennock’s lecture is mandatory attendance for all freshmen: “All first-quarter freshmen are required to attend the event, which is open to the public”

Mandatory indoctrination. Good move huh? These people seem to have no end of the ridiculous, “hunt the witch” tactics they use to debunk contrary scienitific thought.

And to show there is no end of this glaring stupidity and censorship from these educated fools: Evoultion fundamentalist and bio text book author Larry Moran says,

Flunk the IDiots

Casey Luskin over at the Discovery Institute reported that University of California, San Diego Forces All Freshmen To Attend Anti-ID Lecture. Apparently, the university has become alarmed at the stupidity of its freshman class and has offered remedial instruction for those who believe in Intelligent Design Creationism.

Salvador Cordova has picked up on this at Dembski’s blog, Uncommon Descent in an article titled “Darwinian indoctrination required at UCSD? Or will the other side be heard someday?”. He notes that 40% of the freshman class reject Darwinism.

I agree with the Dembski sycophants that UCSD should not have required their uneducated students to attend remedial classes. Instead, they should never have admitted them in the first place. Having made that mistake, it’s hopeless to expect that a single lecture—even one by a distinguished scholar like Robert Pennock—will have any effect. The University should just flunk the lot of them and make room for smart students who have a chance of benefiting from a high quality education.

SOURCE: sandwalk.blogspot.com/2006/11/flunk-idiots.html

Worse still from this Moron : “Until you IDiots learn something about science you don’t deserve to take up space at a decent university. However, there’s still hope for you. There’s nothing in your comment to suggest that you’ve even reached the age of adulthood. Maybe you’ll get educated before you graduate from kindergarten. “

Here we are once again with the out-dated, easily falsified, BS that says ID scientists know nothing of science. Pure moronic drachenfutter. This guy should be thrown out on his butt and given a one way ticket to Baghdad.

Sore losers to say the best of these “scientists”, if one may abuse the term.

Hopefully none of them will be smart enough to figure out that these repressive actions will bring their own downfall. This kind of publicy funded brain washing and ill behavior, historically speaking, always tends to bring the opposite of the effect hoped for. So far, not only are none of them smart enough but they just keep making it worse!

Anyway,

Welcome to the Union of Soviet Socialist America

PS - Since I first wrote this article a lot has happened to confirm it’s truth.

I suppose one of the main widely publicized events is the denial of tenure at Iowa State to Guilmero Gonzalez – a highly respected astrophysicist with numerous peer-reviewed articles and awards. Denial based on prejudice entirely on Guillmero’s ID penchant – as can be seen on many articles across the web.
Evangelical atheist Hector Avalos started a smear campaign against him because he supports Intelligent Design theory. Avalos is an atheist and professor at ISU (head of the religious studies department… go figure) without the intellect to compete with the likes of Gonzalez.

More…

The Michael Reiss case in Britain.

The Euthyphro dilemma?

This is, and has been for centuries, considered by atheists and anti-moralists as the ultimate refutation of God. Specifically of Divine Command theory.

This dilemma basically goes as follows:

In Plato’s dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro, Socrates is attempting to understand the essence of piety and holiness:

Socrates: And what do you say of piety, Euthyphro? Is not piety, according to your definition, loved by all the gods?

Euthyphro: Certainly.

Socrates: Because it is pious or holy, or for some other reason?

Euthyphro: No, that is the reason.

Socrates: It is loved because it is holy, not holy because it is loved?

The dilemma Euthyphro faced is this: Is a thing good simply because the gods say it is? Or do the gods say a thing is good because of some other quality it has? If so, what is that quality? The problem stumped Euthyphro.

Russel put it this way:

If you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, you are then in this situation: Is that difference due to God’s fiat or is it not? If it is due to God’s fiat, then for God Himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God’s fiat, because God’s fiats are good and not good independently of the mere fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God

First, I refer interested parties to the following sites: http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5236
and : http://www.charlesgfinney.com/1840skeletons/sk_lecture23.htm

These 2 sites offer or some good responses to this issue and teh Moral Law of in general. I will quote from one or the other in some small measure here.

Basically, no being can make law. But no law can exist without sanctions. And no sanctions can exist without a Ruling, conscious Magistrate to adiminster them…reason it farther – the ultimate conclusions are obvious enough – God’s existence is necessary to the existence of ultimates moral values.

However, nothing is easier than defining this *dilemma* out of existence. Why? Because there is no dilemma in the 1st place!

The pretended dilemma argues what it does not understand and founds it’s argument on a falsity, an incorrect presumption – that the moral Law and God are two separate things.

So, in one phrase it may be undone – “God is the Law and the Law is God.”

God is the inspirited, incarnate, Living Law – they are one. Not independant entities.

What is said of God is exactly what may be said of the Moral Law “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature”. Every thing that one can discern of all true objective moral realities can also be said of God himself.

And of course, this is the view of the bible and Christianity. “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because *God is love*.”

Love is good willing. It is benevolence. It is seeking the highest good. “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

The Law is One. An indivisible unit all summed up in one word “love” – agape – disinterested, unselfish good willing. And that so describes who and what God is, that the two are inseparable, immutable, unchangeable and eternally, mutually existent – one in the other.

Thus no God = no law and no law = no God. And thus the existence of God = existence of Law vice versa. So the very existence of a real, objective Moral Law running everywhere where there are sentient, self-deteminingbeings, is evidence of the existence of God.

Just as both philosophers (check Kant on this) and theologians and simple everyday people have been saying from times immemorial.

“Do as you would be done by” is the worlds oldest, most universal command. It describes love which describes the Moral Law which describes who God is and what he is like.

As for the so-called tautologies and contradictions involved with the infamous “dilemma”, they are the very well documented territory of Darwinism and atheism as any one know if they’d really done any proper homework on the issue.

Objective moral foundations in atheism don’t exist

This is not to say that atheists have no moral values. Most do. Sometimes very good ones too. But they are borrowed values. Values usually taken from Judeo/Christian roots, or from simple conscience or some assumed value in collective cultural agreements.

The question is not, however, whether atheists have morals. The question is what is the foundation of those morals. Upon what grounds of logic or reason have these morals been founded?

In the end, they have none. At least, nothing objective. Nothing truly, solidly or binding. And of course they have, in their own heads, no one to whom they are ultimately accountable.

There are a great many atheists who attempt to find grounds for their moral values without reference to any absolute Moral Law. This is normal. They want to have moral values but, not believing in God or absolutes, they are forced to find their grounds in something else. Invariably this something ends up being untenable and sometimes very illogical.

Some invent “objective” values based on materialist evaluations of the material consequences of actions. Others become relativists who, of course, can’t really practice what they claim to believe.

Relativism is self-contradictory by nature.

In my experience in debating moral foundations with atheists I’ve found that people who persist in attempting to demonstrate that there are no objective moral values, invariably dig in further to proving there are.

Obviously these types of people believe they are objectively “right”. But then , if what they say is true, they cannot be “right” or “wrong” about anything if what they state is true!

Relativism cuts its own throat.

They will often try to debunk objective moral values by pointing, as usual, at religions and the differences between them as being being immense. They tend to completely ignore the universality of morals and the universality of belief in a higher authority throughout all ages and in all peoples tribes and nations. Instead, they will focus on generally insignificant details in differences between one religion’s set of morals and anothers. Almost always centering attention on the outward workings of the underlying principles instead of the underlying principles themselves.
They will say something like the following I heard recently, “And where it [religion based morality] differs, all claims to objective morality vanish, because the claims are dependent upon a subjective opinion as to which deity is correct.“

Bad logic of course. This assumes that every specific religions deity is fundamentally different and opposite to every other. Another falsehood. They are in fact very similar in all fundamentals.
Moral values – their very existence – can easily lead us to conclude there must of necessity be some over-governing power to moral law. Atheists, of course, must deny this or become theists.
One of them said to me, “Like it or not, consensus response to material consequences is the way societies decide right from wrong.“

Frankly this is very off the mark. The way humans judge of morality is not according to material consequence but according to reason and then every consequence, material of other. But material consequence alone can never be the rule of judgment. It also requires some objective rule of evaluation for determining what consequences or more important than others.

Now one thing that has always both bothered me and amused me is this – atheists will often invade Internet debate forums on the subject and squeal and whine like little pigs, profanities and insults included, trying to tell you that there are no objective values. And the funny thing about this is that they are all objectively sure! They claim there are no absolutes and they are at once absolutely sure!

Do they think they’re doing some objective “good” in the universe by attending forums and debates to denounce objective morals, absolute values and/or God? Of course they do otherwise why do they bother?!

But how strange is this since, according to their own dogma, they really cannot because they also claim that there is no fundamental right or wrong! No fundamental truth or moral standard external to man. Thus what possible real “good” can debating the matter accomplish? None. All views are relative and the universe has no meaning. (Of course they all believe their own life has some inherent meaning which they invent out nothingness for themselves regardless of the universe being meaningless)
So what’s the point? It’s all useless in the end, in their view, and all views will perish in short time.

So their very presence is indication enough that they do indeed perceive a real objective absolute “truth” to exist. Otherwise they would know they are wasting time trying to objectively prove there is none.

And worse is that, like I said before, they focus on external details – (usually minor; polygamy, sanctions, how women are treated amongst various religions and etc.) – in the actual out-workings of law, to find their arguments against objectivity.

But even in this they must assume an underlying rule over-riding all. Thus any persistence in focusing on outward details is clearly a wrong approach.

Why don’t they focus on child rape? Find me a religion that has approved of this besides satanism or its cousins! There is none and never has been – except of course certain atheistic or demon sex cults who believe there are no objective morals and so they need not answer to anyone – like the NAMBLA member who was so insulted in a TV interview when the host asked him about the moral legitimacy of men in “love” (ie sexual) relations with very young boys.

Atheists assume underlying values which they are use to argue against objective values! Very strange indeed.

One said to me, “It is the human response to results that is the basis of what we consider ‘right’ and ‘wrong’“.

But again, Reason is what brings the moral considerations, not human response to material consequences. And upon what basis would the mere human response be sufficient for establishing an objective rule? Is this the way they live every day? I don’t think so, nor could they – they’d end up in the cell block of the asylum.

The atheist claims that we are the results of billions of unlikely concurrent, conjunctive
accidents – random mutations + selection. (Darwinism is it’s science.) So where do they get off inventing objective morals for themselves, or any morals at all? Or, where can they find a solid rule of moral action since they themselves are nothing like “solid” or meaningful? It never adds up.

We are, in the materialist view, without soul, spirit, heart (let all the artists in the world weep). Without free will (see Dawkins or Provine). Without anything but bio-chem processes in our brains and nervous systems that dictate what we are and even what we believe (Dawkins’ memes), yet they boldly state the contrary — when it serves their own purpose of course.

Again I was told, “All such claims [to a real objective morality] are comprehensively dismantled by studying the basis for any specific set of claims, the irreconcilable contradictions between competing claims, and the fluidity of claims over time. Every religion has its own ‘objective’ morality, and they are, to significant extents, mutually exclusive. “

First, their own proofs of being objectively right, are thus dismantled by the same rule of logic!
But no, their moral values are nothing like significantly different. Rather significantly similar!!

Thankfully there are virtually no “irreconcilable contradictions” nor is there any significant “fluidity over time”. All the most basic, fundamental Moral values remain unchanged over millennia.

It’s rather surprising they can’t see how obvious this is.

CS Lewis gives a quick list of fundamental values amongst very different religions through the ages in his book, “The Abolition of Man” now on-line here :

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition1.htm#1

and the comparative list is here : http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition4.htm

a few short quotes :
“I have not slain men” – ancient Egyptian – confession of a righteous soul – book of the dead

“in Nastrond I saw murderers” – Old Norse – Volospa 38,39 (nastrond=hell)
“do no murder” – Hebrew -exodus 20

“Slander not” – ancient Babylonian – Hymn to Samas
“do not bring a false witness against your neighbour” – Hebrew exodus 20
“utter not a word by which anyone could be wounded” – Hindu
“never do to others what you would not like them to do to you” – ancient Chinese – Analects of Confucius

“speak kindness…show good will” – Hymn to Samas
“men were brought into existence for the sake of men that they might do one another good” – roman Cicero De Off.
“man is mans delight” – Old Norse Havamal 47
“what good man regards any misfortune as no concern of his?” – roman Juvenal15, 140

“love your wife studiously. gladden her heart all your life” – ancient Egyptian – ere
“has he appraoched his neighbour’s wife?” – babylonian – List of Sins
“you shall not commit adultery” – Hebrew
“In Nastrond I saw beguilers of others’ wives” – Old Norse Volospa

“take no vengeance though they do you wrong” – Old Norse Sigdrifumal, 22
“do not avenge yourselves” – christian Paul

“I have not stolen” – Egyptian – confessions… ibid.
“do not steal” – Hebrew
“to wrong, to rob, to cause to be robbed” – Babylonian List of Sins
It simply isn’t true that there are so many contradictions in the base principles of morality. There is always and universally an underlying belief in justice, goodness, mercy, truth, faithfulness, loyalty, kindness, patience, love, humility, candor, honesty, fair play, benevolence…..

No exceptions outside of satanism and it’s relatives. And even the “values” of satanism prove atheists wrong!

In summary, the atheist ought to re-think his life. Perhaps : “Oh God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul.” would be an adequate prayer for him.

You don’t have a soul, you ARE a soul, you have a body.