Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Objection 1 - Evolution Debate (Part 5)

It is ironic that Darwin's book is called Origin of the Species when evolution has no explanation for how life started. It is interesting that the actual title for Darwin's book is:

On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.

Darwin himself said that:

There is really no probability that the "races" would be equal. In fact, the whole notion runs counter to all evolutionary theory and to the whole science of biology.

At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes... will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will intervene in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla. (The Descent of Man , 2nd ed, 1874 p178)


Darwin's doctrines of racial superiority and eugenics had a major influence on Hitler. In Mein Kampf, Hitler used the German word for evolution (Entwicklung) many times, citing "lower human types." He criticized the Jews for bringing "Negroes into the Rhineland" with the aim of "ruining the white race by the necessarily resulting ization." He spoke of "Monstrosities halfway between man and ape".

Darwin didn't only believe that white people were more highly evolved. He thought that men were more highly evolved than women. In his autobiography he described a future wife as an:

object to be beloved and played with – better than a dog anyhow. (The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1958, pp. 232–233)

Charles Darwin's education was not in science. He quit medical school and studied theology . . . just so you know. But his title "Origins of the Species" is ironic because Darwin and Evolution provide no natural explanation for how things began or how life started.

Objection 1: No natural explanation For Origins

[The Big Bang] represents the instantaneous suspension of physical laws, the sudden abrupt flash of lawlessness that allowed something to come out of nothing. It represents a true miracle . . . (Paul Davies, physicist and evolutionist , The Edge Of Infinity 1995).

Evolutionists are open to a miracle coming from nothing. That is not only unscientific, it is also a very strange religion. I don't have enough faith to believe that. Let me ask you – is it more logical to believe that everything is Created by nothing or by a God?

Continued next week . . .

Go On To Part 6
Go Back To Part 4
Go Back To Part 1

4 comments:

Randy said...

Have you ever really sat back and contemplated "nothing?" I mean there was NOTHING. Then NOTHING exploded and created EVERYTHING. Makes perfect sense right? Just say it out loud - NOTHING exploded and created EVERYTHING. And they want to call my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ a fairy tale?

Kristoffer Haldrup said...

Nice ad hominem attack on Darwin/Evolution ;)

I hope you realize, that Darwin could be a child-buggering sociopath theologian who beat his wife, drank too much and never bathed, and that the Origin of Species could have been read aloud at each meeting of the Nazi party AND the central committee of the communist party everywhere....and it wouldnt make the slightest difference? Well, Darwin might have had a harder time getting published and the Soviet Union migh have had a better agricultural system, but the merits of the theory of evolution is utterly independent on the personal qualities of the guy who first got the idea and also independent of whoever liked it afterwards...which the Nazis really didn't, as books about Darwinism were on the "forbidden" list along with jewish literature etc. But how I digress...

You mention that The Origin of Species does not deal with the _true_ origin, namely where life came from originally. This is good, as Darwin did not have any kind of access to data on this issue, which would leave that part as pure speculation. Luckily, today we DO have access to data dealing with the origin of life, both from a genetic/biomolecular point of view as well as from awfully difficult investigations of ancient rocks. For this reason, it is nowadays well established that all life on this planet has a single, common ancestor that looked a little bit like some of the most primitive bacteria alive today. Invstigations into how this little fellow came to be is a vibrant research area, with theories put forth, tested, turned down, refined and so on. REALLY exciting stuff, drawing on insights from biology, polymer chemistry and many other fields! It´s hardly a miracle, but it IS fascinating how chemistry becomes biochemistry becomes biology:)

I dont know if you will return to the Big Bang and such later, but let me just add that this: That all matter and energy in the universe originally was concentrated in a tiny volume of space is not just a fancy idea, but is based on many different kinds of observations all leading to this one conclusion. From the relative amounts of hydrogen and helium in the universe to the movement of the galaxies to the spectrum of the microwave background, it all confirms this idea of a Big Bang. -And today, there is less reason to be concerned with the "something from nothing"-notion, as we now know that this is just how the world actually works at the most basic levels -- sometimes something DOES pop into existence out of nowhere (confirmed by many experiments) and some things DO happen without any cause at all, and also this breakdown of causality has been established and confirmed by thousands of experiments. And just as an interesting aside, the universe didnt necessarily just pop into existence -- there are quite a few theories out there that deal with our universe having its origin in a "larger" reality stretching infinitely far back in time. But, I am almost sorry to say, none of these quite speculative theories seem to invoke any kind of God or gods;)

Bill Honsberger said...

"The breakdown of causality has been established and confirmed by thousands of experiments?"
The Zombie David Hume has resurrected (I thought Hume denied that possibility though?...hmm)
Lets make this simple - no causality = no science period. Lets explain this for the philosophically challenged - How do thousands of experiments show ANYTHING if there is no such thing as causality? Hume was so desperate to trash Aquinas/Aristotle that he lamely denies cause and effect. It took Kant to "save science" and re-establish some sense of sane thinking back into the conversation. Your entire response to the article is filled with causality claims and then at the end you throw causality under the bus???
Think of what you said when you stated "based on many different kinds of observations all leading to this one conclusion". Did you mean by that statement that different sorts of observed effects might have had a single cause? Of course you did - and this is obviously dripping with causality. Think this true and try again.
And as an aside, most of the "theories" you mentioned have one wonderful strength to them - they solve problems in other speculative theories, but then they all have one terrible problem with them - not a single one of them is observable in any way. So is physics now really metaphysics and just another religious take on things? Is that the direction you want to go?
Something does pop into existence? Show that one to us please. Even if that were true ( I deny it categorically) but even so that undermines science completely. Science is now just magic. One of the ways civilization learned to distinguish between alchemy and science is one this very point. If there is no observable and repeatable chain of connection between hypothesis x and conclusion z then you have to go back and try again.
If there is no first cause, then you have to have an eternal reality. Given that we KNOW that not to be the case (thermodynamics and all that fun stuff) than you have to have a energy gas station somewhere in the universe. Given the lack of evidence for that, then physics gets just as weird as psychics and is that really were you want to go?
That is why most atheists cosmologists are reluctant big bang theorists - they know the universe had to have a beginning, but hate the obvious implication that something had to light the fuse.
Ball is in your court now.
Have fun.

Kristoffer Haldrup said...

Hi Bill, as at least one other apologist (of the old-earth variety, but still...;) can tell you, I don´t really care what some dead philosopher or other has said about science:)

In any case, I am glad that it seems we can agree on the fact that causality seems to work just fine on the macroscopic levels of reality:) When I say that causality now always holds, I am exclusively referring to systems where quantum effects are important, systems which are almost all microscopic in size. However, the mere existence of such causality-breaking effects demonstrates that our pre-conceived notions about how the universe SHOULD work are not relevant when discussing phenomena where quantum effects may play a role...such as the start of our universe from a truly sub-microscopic region of space(-time).

So are we agreed, that we can trust causality on our scale of events, the macroscopic scales, and that science thus "works", but that many experiments on the microscopic (quantum) scale establish that causality MAY be broken on these scales?