Again, if you personally don’t know why I’m wrong, or …

Comment on The Creator of Time by Sean Pitman.

Again, if you personally don’t know why I’m wrong, or why someone like James Tour, a renown synthetic chemist, is wrong, why are you arguing with me here? You personally don’t know why I’m wrong, but you’re sure someone else does? – by faith? That’s the best you have? How many times have I heard that one before? Come on now. Your position, as with certain religious fundamentalists, is based entirely on your blind faith in the correctness of the claims of others, not a personal understanding of the issues in play.

Now, this faith of yours is great for you, but completely unhelpful for me or anyone else who wishes to have a personal understanding based on a reasonable explanation (like James Tour for instance) – an explanation that goes beyond a had wave and an appeal to some authority figure(s) who have yet to come up with a reasonable explanation themselves and make Nobel Prize winners and synthetic chemists afraid to admit as much in public forum much less publish anything counter to the prevailing dogma of the day (Link). This is especially true for someone, like me, who has studied this topic in great detail for many years and who is in fact able to explain the clear limits of the evolutionary mechanism and precisely why, statistically, these limits exist at the lowest levels of functional complexity (Link).

I’m sorry, but your faith in the claims of scientists and your arguments from authority have no explanatory value and are therefore entirely unhelpful to me. As Carl Sagan once wrote: “One of the great commandments of science is, ‘Mistrust arguments from authority.’ … Too many such arguments have proved too painfully wrong. Authorities must prove their contentions like everybody else.” (Link).

Why not at least try to figure it out for yourself? – see if you can understand it in a way that allows you to explain it to others who at least have a background in and basic understanding of biology and genetics?

“You see I get the design argument…”

How is that? How do you “get” the design argument when it comes to the origin or diversity of living things? – or even non-living things? You’re not even able to admit a clear difference between the origin of snowflakes and highly symmetrical granite cubes. You actually believe that the evolutionary mechanism is viable and that the arguments for abiogenesis are at least plausible and that the fine tuned features of the universe are at least theoretically explainable via the multiverse concept. Why? Because of some personal understanding of the topics? No. Because of your blind faith in the claims of popular scientists – that’s it. Otherwise, you evidently have no real understanding as to what you’re talking about when it comes to the creative potential and/or limitations of the evolutionary mechanism – or any other possible mindless naturalistic mechanism to explain the origin of life or of the universe itself. You also claim that it’s absolutely “impossible” to produce the modern biodiversity of land animals in just a few thousand years, starting from what could fit on an Ark, but you evidently have absolutely no personal understanding as to why (even though I’ve given you some pretty good hints as to why it is possible).

“but miracles, prophets, Santa Claus, fairies, ghosts, goblins, arks and the like are not proper subjects for science in my opinion.”

Perhaps that’s because you don’t understand how science works? Consider, for example, that the existence of gravity was detectable before anyone had any idea as to how gravity actually works. You see, knowing how something exists isn’t required for you to know that it exists. This means, of course, that if, theoretically, Santa Claus, fairies, ghosts, goblins, or prophets or miracles in general, of any kind, where to actually exist in the empirical world, then science, or any rational person for that matter, would in fact be able to detect such things if and when something were to happen outside of what mindless natural mechanisms could themselves explain (after a detailed investigation of course). It is only when mindless naturalistic mechanisms can reasonably explain a particular phenomenon that the “miraculous” would not be clearly recognizable to the rational person behind that particular phenomenon. If, for instance, one has no more evidence for their god than for the “celestial teapot” or the “spaghetti monster”, then there’s no good reason to believe in that god.

In short, then, as previously pointed out, science is not limited in its ability to detect the existence of the miraculous, if it ever theoretically occurred, but only in its ability to explain the miraculous…

I ask you, again, if you personally saw someone raised from the dead, whom you knew for sure was dead and rotting in the grave, you still wouldn’t believe what you saw with your own eyes? Of course you would believe it and so would everyone else, even scientists – despite an inability to explain how it happened. You see, its just not reasonable to claim that scientists or otherwise rational people are unable to even detect the miraculous – even if it were to theoretically occur (even if they were to see it with their own eyes and touch and examine it with their own hands). You’re clearly mistaken here…

Remember also that the assumption that future discoveries will one day be able to explain everything via mindless naturalistic mechanisms is not science, but a philosophy of naturalism that is very similar to a blind faith religion.

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.

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    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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