Really? Why not start with the basic difference between …

Comment on The Creator of Time by Sean Pitman.

Really? Why not start with the basic difference between snowflakes and highly symmetrical granite cubes? – as far as their origins are concerned? Why not candidly respond to this question instead of dancing around it and ignoring it? – a seemingly simple question that I’ve presented to you a number of times in this forum? The best you’ve been able to do is ask:

“Snowflakes and perfectly symmetrical granite cubes…. which are designed, which are not?…

There is no guarantee that what humans deduce as design is what a supernatural designer would have done at all.” – george

The same is true regarding the motives of any kind of intelligent designer. Determining motives is not required before intelligent design can be rationally detected, by non-scientists and even professional scientists as well, at various levels of intelligence and creative power.

In any case, if you’re not able to admit that highly symmetrical granite cubes are obvious artifacts of intelligent design, and that higher-level artifacts are also recognizable by scientific investigation (such as the far far more finely tuned features of our universe), there’s really no point in discussing with you topics that are just a bit more complex – – such as the limitations of genetic mutations, natural evolutionary mechanisms, or the evidence for the recent arrival of life on this planet. Detecting design at higher and higher levels of creative power doesn’t definitively prove the existence of God (since definitive proof is beyond the power of science), but it does show, after a certain point, the rational need for the existence of such an extremely high level of intelligence and creative power that it cannot readily be distinguished from God-like creative power.

Now, if you want to try to move beyond snowflakes and granite cubes, fine. Tell me, where is your viable evolutionary mechanism for starters? Can you explain it to me? How do random mutations and natural selection create anything beneficial beyond very very low levels of functional complexity in what anyone would call a reasonable amount of time? What kind of understanding do you have of the biology of genetics and how mutations and function-based selection affect and/or change genetic functionality over various spans of time?

I mean, so far, I fail to see where you’ve presented an actual argument that counters anything I’ve said? Where have you presented of any kind of evidence or explanation as to why I might be wrong? – aside from a the usual mindless appeal to authority without any real personal understanding of the topic in question? Come on now, do you personally have something to contribute to this conversation beside to point out the obvious to me, yet again, that there are many who disagree with me when it comes to the origin and diversity of life on this planet? – Experts who themselves have absolutely no idea how the Darwinian mechanism actually works or could work, this side of a practical eternity of time, beyond the lowest levels of functional complexity? Certainly Ben Clausen has no idea (and I’ve personally talked to him about this). Do you know anyone, and I mean anyone, who does understand and can explain it? I mean, you make a fantastic claim here:

“Modern physics, chemistry and biology continues to provide answers to a cause and effect universe as to how physical reality including the emergence of organic life occurred.” – george

You’re actually trying to compare the emergence of snowflakes via natural mechanisms with the emergence of the extremely interdependent and functionally complex biomachines that comprise living things? – where far more precision is required than for the formation of the granite cubes, stacked rocks, and driftwood horses that are pictures above in this thread? Where have you been?! Where has the “emergence of organic life” been reasonably, much less scientifically, explained or demonstrated via any naturalistic mechanism? – before natural selection was even in play? Can you explain abiogenesis to me? – or do you know anyone else who can explain it or reproduce such a thing in the laboratory? You have to know that this claim is utter nonsense. No one has even come close to explaining abiogenesis via mindless naturalistic mechanisms – much less demonstrating it. Go back and look again at the debate between Stephen Meyer and Charles Marshall (Link) and actually read Meyer’s book, “Signature in the Cell“.

I mean, given your position, as stated, you shouldn’t be surprised if a highly complex quantum computer happened to self-assemble in the sands of the Sahara Desert. After all, such a demonstration would be far less difficult to explain via mindless naturalistic processes. And, you certainly shouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the origin of snowflakes and any kind of granite cube, driftwood horses, or stacked rocks! Consider, for illustration, a few fairly recent statements from James M. Tour, one of the ten most cited chemists in the world:

    Does anyone understand the chemical details behind macroevolution? If so, I would like to sit with that person and be taught, so I invite them to meet with me.

    I will tell you as a scientist and a synthetic chemist: if anybody should be able to understand evolution, it is me, because I make molecules for a living, and I don’t just buy a kit, and mix this and mix this, and get that. I mean, ab initio, I make molecules…

    Still, I don’t understand evolution, and I will confess that to you. Is that OK, for me to say, “I don’t understand this”? …

    Let me tell you what goes on in the back rooms of science – with National Academy members, with Nobel Prize winners. I have sat with them, and when I get them alone, not in public – because it’s a scary thing, if you say what I just said – I say, “Do you understand all of this, where all of this came from, and how this happens?” Every time that I have sat with people who are synthetic chemists, who understand this, they go “Uh-uh. Nope.”

    These people are just so far off, on how to believe this stuff came together. I’ve sat with National Academy members, with Nobel Prize winners. Sometimes I will say, “Do you understand this?” And if they’re afraid to say “Yes,” they say nothing. They just stare at me, because they can’t sincerely do it.

    If you understand evolution, I am fine with that. I’m not going to try to change you – not at all. In fact, I wish I had the understanding that you have.

    But about seven or eight years ago I posted on my Web site that I don’t understand. And I said, “I will buy lunch for anyone that will sit with me and explain to me evolution, and I won’t argue with you until I don’t understand something – I will ask you to clarify. But you can’t wave by and say, “This enzyme does that.” You’ve got to get down in the details of where molecules are built, for me. Nobody has come forward.

    The Atheist Society contacted me. They said that they will buy the lunch, and they challenged the Atheist Society, “Go down to Houston and have lunch with this guy, and talk to him.” Nobody has come! Now remember, because I’m just going to ask, when I stop understanding what you’re talking about, I will ask. So I sincerely want to know. I would like to believe it. But I just can’t.

    Now, I understand microevolution, I really do. We do this all the time in the lab. I understand this. But when you have speciation changes, when you have organs changing, when you have to have concerted lines of evolution, all happening in the same place and time – not just one line – concerted lines, all at the same place, all in the same environment … this is very hard to fathom.

    I was in Israel not too long ago, talking with a bio-engineer, and [he was] describing to me the ear, and he was studying the different changes in the modulus of the ear, and I said, “How does this come about?” And he says, “Oh, Jim, you know, we all believe in evolution, but we have no idea how it happened.” Now there’s a good Jewish professor for you. I mean, that’s what it is. So that’s where I am.

    Link Link

Do you think you can explain it to Tour? If so, by all means explain it to me while you’re at it!

In short, let me know when you can personally explain the Darwinian mechanism beyond very very low levels of functional complexity or when you can personally explain the existence of soft tissues along with sequenceable proteins and DNA fragments in dinosaur bones, or the existence of high levels of radiocarbon in these same bones, or the very high detrimental mutation rates in slowly reproducing creatures (like most multicellular organisms), or a host of other features of this world that strongly speak for a very recent arrival of life on this planet and a very specific limit to the creative potential of random mutations and natural selection.

What do you personally really know and understand here? – if you can’t even admit an obvious difference between the origin of a snowflake and a highly symmetrical granite cube?

Sean Pitman Also Commented

The Creator of Time
It’s been enjoyable having you. I wish you all the best. Someday, if I’m right, everything will be made clear and you will see your Maker face-to-face. Of course, if I’m wrong, neither one of us will be the wiser…

By the way, I am not a “young Earth creationist” or “YEC”, but something a bit different – a young life creationist (YLC). Of course, from your perspective it makes little difference. 😉


The Creator of Time
A “Rational Wiki” quote? – about proof and disproof? 😉

First off, science isn’t about absolute proof, but the weight of evidence. Nothing can be absolutely proved in science – only disproved. The power of science is in the ability for the hypothesis in question to resist disproof, thereby gaining predictive value. This means, of course, that a valid scientific hypothesis must be testable in a potentially falsifiable manner.

Now, as far as the particular claim that ID hypotheses are not and cannot be falsifiable (and by extension any notion or hypothesis of God-like activity isn’t falsifiable either), it’s clearly not true or modern sciences that actually detect ID wouldn’t be possible – like forensics, anthropology, and SETI. As previously noted for you, the ID-only hypothesis can be tested in a potentially falsifiable manner – quite easily. All you have to do to falsify the ID-only hypothesis is show how something else could more reasonably explain the phenomenon in question – and the ID-only hypothesis is neatly falsified.

For example, if you can find a mindless naturalistic mechanism that can reasonably explain the origin of a highly symmetrical granite cube, you would neatly falsify the hypothesis that only ID can explain the origin of the cube. Short of this, however, the ID-only hypothesis gains a great deal of predictive value based on the strong weight of evidence that is currently in hand. That is why it is possible to tell the difference between the most likely origin of such a granite cube vs. a snowflake or the like.

The same is true for the God-only hypothesis. As I’ve explained for you multiple times now, there are various levels of phenomena that require various levels of intelligence to explain. As higher and higher level phenomena require higher and higher levels of intelligence and creative power to explain, one eventually comes to a point where the level of required intelligence and creative power is so high that it cannot be readily distinguished from what one would normally attribute to a God or God-like being. It is for this reason that if you yourself saw someone you knew was dead and decaying in the grave, raised to life at the word of someone claiming to be God, even you would tend to believe this claim – and rightly so. That means, of course, that the detection of God-like creative power is rationally detectable, at least in theory, given the presentation of such evidence.

Philosophical naturalism, on the other hand, is not at all testable in a potentially falsifiable manner. It is not even theoretically possible to falsify a theory that is dependent upon evidence that you have yourself proposed will show up at some undetermined time in the future. It is therefore not a science or otherwise rational, but is on the same level as wishful thinking – just not helpful.

_______

    As an aside, I have to also point out that the claims for the creative potential of the evolutionary mechanism presented on this particular “Rational Wiki” webpage are not backed up by demonstration or reasonable statistical analysis or workable genetic theories – at least not beyond very low levels of functional complexity. They’re nothing but just-so stories. I mean, why hasn’t James Tour been convinced by this stuff? Because, there’s simply no science here… as you would know if you did your own independent research into the potential and limits of the evolutionary mechanism. Their claims regarding “flagellar evolution” are a case in point when it comes to glossing over the details and not understanding the exponentially growing problem of finding novel beneficial sequences in the vastness of sequence space with each step up the ladder of functional complexity: Link


The Creator of Time
How long should you look for a mindless naturalistic mechanism to explain a highly symmetrical granite cube before it becomes obvious that such a mechanism will most likely never be discovered? – that intelligent design is by far the most likely reason for its existence regardless of when or where such a cube might be found? – even if found on an alien planet like Mars?

Suggesting, at this point, that a mindless mechanism must be the answer for the origin of our granite cube, and that one day such a mechanism will be discovered, is not science – but faith that is deliberately blind to the strong weight of evidence that is currently in hand which puts a clear statistical limit on what all known mindless mechanisms are able to achieve, or are ever likely to achieve this side of eternity, with the material of granite.

Likewise, any religion that is based on the same blind faith, faith that is directly opposed to the weight of empirical evidence that is currently in hand, is no more helpful or trustworthy than the religion of philosophical naturalism. Such a religion would be “effectively indistinguishable from atheism” (William Provine, 1987).

As with science and any helpful hypothesis or theory, any useful religion which aims to establish a solid hope in rational people must be based on the weight of evidence which establishes the credibility and predictive power of the religion. If God exists, He is the creator of rational thought and scientific investigation and would not give these reasoning powers to us if He expected us to “forgo their use” (Galileo, 1615) – particularly when searching for Him and His signature in the works of nature or the inspiration of texts claiming to be derived from Him.


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I fail to see where you have convincingly supported your claim that the GC leadership contributed to the harm of anyone’s personal religious liberties? – given that the GC leadership does not and could not override personal religious liberties in this country, nor substantively change the outcome of those who lost their jobs over various vaccine mandates. That’s just not how it works here in this country. Religious liberties are personally derived. Again, they simply are not based on a corporate or church position, but rely solely upon individual convictions – regardless of what the church may or may not say or do.

Yet, you say, “Who cares if it is written into law”? You should care. Everyone should care. It’s a very important law in this country. The idea that the organized church could have changed vaccine mandates simply isn’t true – particularly given the nature of certain types of jobs dealing with the most vulnerable in society (such as health care workers for example).

Beyond this, the GC Leadership did, in fact, write in support of personal religious convictions on this topic – and there are GC lawyers who have and continue to write personal letters in support of personal religious convictions (even if these personal convictions are at odds with the position of the church on a given topic). Just because the GC leadership also supports the advances of modern medicine doesn’t mean that the GC leadership cannot support individual convictions at the same time. Both are possible. This is not an inconsistency.