It is a prejudicial mistake to use judgments as to

Comment on Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools by Sean Pitman.

It is a prejudicial mistake to use judgments as to the supposed motives of those proposing any scientific hypothesis as a basis for evaluating the hypothesis itself. How is the science affected by the various motives a scientist may or may not have that may or may not go beyond the hypothesis being presented? Such potential motives are completely irrelevant as far as determining the credibility of the actual hypothesis that is being forwarded. Who cares if someone wants to call the designer “God” or “Gertrude”? That’s irrelevant as far as determining that whomever was responsible for a particular phenomenon, he/she/it was clearly very intelligent. Such a conclusion is not at all outside of the realm of science.

Recognition of artefacts of creativity is not science or magic it is simply pattern recognition in a brain adapted to recognize something as an artefact of creative intelligence.

This is like saying that forensic science isn’t really a science or that anthropology and SETI aren’t real sciences. They’re all just “pattern recognition”. That’s patently absurd. The very same pattern exhibited in one type of material or medium may not require intelligence to explain its origin, while in another material intelligence is required to explain the origin of the pattern. Determining what patterns most likely mean in various contexts requires real science.

For example, consider highly symmetrical cubes of pyrite pictured below.

This pattern, in the form of pyrite, requires no hypothesis from deliberate design to explain its origin. However, this very same pattern, if created with the material of granite, would all of a sudden require the hypothesis of deliberate intelligence to reasonably explain its origin. You see, it’s a bit more than simple pattern recognition. Additional experience is needed with the material in which the pattern is exhibited and how this material interacts with various forces of nature…

So yes, the hypothesis of deliberate intelligent design (or creative intelligence if you prefer) is a real scientific hypothesis. It is testable and potentially falsifiable. Any demonstration of a non-intelligent mechanism producing a similar result would effectively falsify the hypothesis that only ID can reasonably explain the phenomenon in question. That is why SETI is a valid scientific enterprise.

Biological purpose has a natural explanation and that is a process of natural selection.

This “natural explanation” simply doesn’t work beyond very very low levels of functional complexity (like the difference between explaining the potential origin of a very rough granite cube vs. a very highly symmetrical polished granite cube). Natural selection is a preserving force, helping to maintain what already exists. It simply is not a creative force beyond very low levels of functional complexity. When it comes to multipart complex systems that require the fairly specific arrangement of a minimum of several hundred parts or fundamental building blocks (such as the “alphabet” of 20 amino acids forming protein-based systems), the Darwinian mechanism of random mutations and natural selection doesn’t create anything that is qualitatively new. It just doesn’t happen and is extremely unlikely to happen this side of trillions times trillions of years of time. There are no observable examples published anywhere nor is there a rational explanation as to how the vastness of sequence space at such levels can be effectively searched in a reasonable amount of time.

As I’ve explained to you before in some detail, such systems are located in truly enormous “sequences spaces” of options – the vast majority of which would not produce any benefit that could be positively selected by natural selection. The rare clusters of potentially beneficial sequences within such higher level sequence spaces are clustered together in extraordinarily isolated islands where the next closest island is universes away. It would be a star in an empty universe where the next closest star is not remotely visible, being hundreds of billions of light years away. Natural selection is absolutely no help in such a situation because natural selection cannot work, not at all, until something new and beneficial is actually discovered by random chance – i.e., by a purely random walk or leap into the vast surrounding ocean of non-beneficial sequences.

This is the very same reason that even you would recognize a highly symmetrical polished granite cube as a “blindingly obvious artifact” of creative intelligence. Because, such a pattern exhibited in the material of granite is found in only a tiny region of the “space” of options that could have been produced by mindless natural mechanisms – such a tiny space that the hypothesis of mindless natural production is very unlikely to be true this side of a practical eternity of time. However, such a “pattern” in granite can easily be explained by the hypothesis of deliberate intelligence guiding the formation of the piece of granite to such a high degree of symmetry within “structural space”. That is why the hypothesis of intelligent design would gain superior predictive value in such a situation – and thus be the most reasonable scientific explanation for its origin.

I’m sorry, but you just don’t seem to understand the math or the statistical problem for the Darwinian mechanism of RM/NS beyond the lowest levels of functional complexity that exist within every living thing – or at least you don’t want to understand it. Regardless, the fact of the matter is that taking just a few steps up the ladder of functional complexity leaves one with absolutely no rationally tenable “natural explanation” anymore – outside of intelligent design/creative intelligence that is.

Table of Contents

1 Sean Pitman Also Commented
- 1.1 Recent Comments by Sean Pitman
2 Related

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools
As I’ve pointed out before, there are a lot of books claiming to be “The Word of God”. How do you know that the Bible’s claim, among so many competing options, is true? – based on a feeling? That’s how you know? Did an angel show up and tell you that the Bible’s claims are true? – or how to interpret it? Were you born with this knowledge? or did you have to learn it? If you had to learn that the Bible’s claims are true, upon what did you base your learning? – and how did this basis of your learning help you distinguish the true from the false?

At first approximation, the Bible is just a book making a bunch of claims. How can you tell the difference between the origin of the Bible and the Book of Mormon or the Qur’an? In order to determine that God had anything to do with its creation, you have to read it and make judgments about it. If you base your judgments on some kind of deep feeling or gestalt sensation of truth, I say that this isn’t a reliable basis for a leap of faith. However, if you base your acceptance of the claims of the Bible on rational arguments that make sense given what you already think you know to be true, then you have yourself a much more useful and helpful basis for faith… as the Bible itself recommends.

God does not expect us to believe or have faith without sufficient evidence to establish a rational and logical faith in the claims of the Bible. Have you not read where the Bible challenges the honest seeker for truth to “test” even the claims of God? (Judges 6:39; Malachi 3:10; John 14:11; etc…). We are not called to blindly accept anything as true, not even the Bible. The claims of the Bible must be tested to see if they truly are what they claim to be – i.e., the Words of God.

Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools
I haven’t changed my mind. I still see atheism as the most logical alternative to Christianity and any other view of God if such views of God are only based on a wishful-thinking type of fideistic faith. Why should one be a Christian or believe that the Bible is anything more than a good moral fable? – or believe that God exists any more than Santa Claus or the Flying Spaghetti Monster exists? For me, it’s because I see real empirical evidence for God’s existence as well as His Signature within the pages of the Bible and within the universe and the world in which I find myself.

You see, we are called to have an “intelligent trust” in God’s Word – a trust that is based on something more than a deep feeling or internal gestalt. Otherwise, you’re really in the same boat as my LDS friends with their “burning in the bosom” argument for faith in what is or isn’t true.

Now, it is possible to doubt the Divine origin of the Bible while still recognizing the Divine origin of the universe – based on the weight of empirical evidence. This is where quite a number of modern physicists are in their view of God. And, it is a reasonable position given the honest conviction that life and its diversity can evolve via the Darwinian mechanism of random mutations and natural selection over long periods of time to produce what we have today on this planet.

So, there are different “levels” of recognition when it comes to seeing God’s hand behind various phenomena. And, once His Signature is recognized at a different level, the implications and responsibilities change for us. It’s a “first step” toward God to recognize a Divine Signature behind the origin of the universe and the natural laws that govern it. However, once one recognizes the Divine Hand behind the origin of the Bible and the credibility of the Bible’s empirical claims, one is called to experience different responsibilities and privileges in a higher level walk with God – “in Spirit and in truth”.

Ted Wilson: No Room for Evolution as Truth in Adventist Schools
Again, there are somethings that, if seen in vision, cannot be easily misinterpreted. If you see that “there was light” then “there was darkness” and that this pattern of was used to mark off a series of seven days, that’s pretty hard to get wrong or misinterpret. Mrs. White also confirms these biblical claims by arguing that God specifically showed her that the creation week was a literal week “like any other”.

So, what needs to happen now is see which claims among competing claims are most likely true. Where does the “weight of evidence lie”? If the claims of neo-Darwinism are true, then the claims of the Bible aren’t just a matter of honest misinterpretations – they are either completely made up fabrications or they are outright lies – from God.

I will say, however, the Darwins observations did help to shed light on the Bible. For example, there were those who believed in the absolute fixity of the species – that nothing could change and that no new species of any kind could be produced by natural mechanisms. Darwin showed, quite clearly, that this interpretation of the Bible was false. So, Darwin’s discoveries did shed light on the Bible’s comments about reproduction “after their kind”. However, the Bible sheds light on Darwin’s claims by showing the clear limitations of Darwinian-type evolution – to very low levels of functional complexity over a short period of time (i.e., not hundreds of millions of years of evolution).

Again, we have science and Scripture shedding light on each other…