RE: [asa] lock-picking tools

" Positing a natural explanation in the face of overwhelming evidence for design requires more faith (in naturalism) than faith in God."

True- and Darwin succeeded. If not for Darwin, we would still think that man did not descend from lower lifeforms... oops, most Christians probably still believe man did not evolve from lower life-forms...

...Bernie

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of james000777@bellsouth.net
Sent: Friday, October 17, 2008 6:15 AM
To: asa@calvin.edu
Subject: RE: [asa] lock-picking tools

I don't necessarily think that is a contradiction, but a semantic issue. The point is that, at the "wall" science fails to penetrate. The experiments being done and the hypotheses being tested "fail" to provide answers that meet the expected answers.

I think abiogenesis is the perfect example. Just today a read a news story about Miller-Urey's experiments providing "New Hints on the Origins of Life". The typical naturalist reply to the abiogenesis question is "we don't understand it yet". And that "yet" will always be a "yet", because they refuse to think outside the methodological naturalism box. Were they to do so, they would see a wealth of data that points right at God. Much of it published in scientific journals too! For instance, we have excellent evidence now that there was no pre-biotic soup...the first signs of organicity in the oldest rocks were biotic, not pre-biotic. This was shown, I believe, with both carbon and nitrogen ratios. Just recently, an article was published that pushed the date for the oldest rocks from 3.86 back to about 3.9 BYA, and there *may* be signs of life there. When you look at that in the light of the Late Heavy Bombardment, the fact that fully developed cyanobacteria have been found in!

  3.86 byo rocks, what you are left with is an incredibly short time period for evolution to generate 1500 active genes, proteins, cell wall, etc. The best estimate I have run across is about 10 million years. But even if we make that 100 million years - do the math with the genetic material required. 100 MY is a tiny fragment of the time that is required, under GOOD conditions, for life to evolve.

Taken all together, that is a wall. Sure, EC's can keep pecking at it. And they should. However, if the hypothesis that "God did it" is true, then naturalism will continue to fail.

There are multiple other walls in naturalistic Darwinian/neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory. Many of them are pointed out clearly in Fuz Rana's new book, "The Cell's Design".

The problem is and will continue to be that it is only an impassable wall on one side. On the other, it's just a barrier that needs to be overcome. I am all for continuing to try and leap over that wall. We are designed with that thirst for knowledge as a part of us.

The best reply for the GOTG fallacy in the case of a wall is the No-GOTG fallacy. Positing a natural explanation in the face of overwhelming evidence for design requires more faith (in naturalism) than faith in God.

Just positing that God did it does NOT mean that we have to stop experimenting and trying to figure out how God did it...and this is what most naturalists think we think, to their detriment.

My 2 cents.
James Patterson

-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: "Dehler, Bernie" <bernie.dehler@intel.com>
>
> Merv said:
"But being "discovered by a failure" is a bit of a self-contradiction, isn't it?
> "
>
I think you are right. As long as we are ever learning and constantly
developing new technologies (which is on an exponential growth curve), we can
> always try a new experiment or create a new hypothesis.
>
> ...Bernie
>
> ________________________________
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf
> Of Merv
> Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 5:16 PM
> To: David Campbell; asa@calvin.edu
> Subject: Re: [asa] lock-picking tools
>
> David Campbell wrote:
>
> So here is the interesting question for me: Can science find or map its own
>
> "rock wall" boundary or even conclude that such a boundary exists? IDs say, in
>
> principle, YES. ECs say, in principle: NO. And militant atheists say: "no
>
> such boundaries for science exist at all." IDs and ECs (as Christians) should
>
> at least be able to unite in their opposition to the last category and only
>
> differ in how such a boundary can be explicated.
>
>
>
>
>
> I would say that it is possible in principle that such a boundary
>
> exists. I would tend to draw a semantic line and suggest that such a
>
> boundary would probably be dicovered by the failure of science, rather
>
> than being discovered by science. I would also say that the
>
> ID-proposed ways of detecting boundaries are no good and that
>
> theological and empirical evidence suggests there probably aren't any
>
> gaps requiring unmediated intelligent intervention within the course
>
> of evolution or of forming the universe from big bang to now.
>
>
> But being "discovered by a failure" is a bit of a self-contradiction, isn't it?
> It's like saying that I can discover that an indeterminately long road has no
> road-blocks because I walked along it for a ways and found none. My failure
> to discover one doesn't establish the non-existence of any roadblocks because I
> could always walk farther. Given that the entire "domain-space" of possible
> scientific inquiries qualifies as an "indeterminately long road", failure is
> inconclusive on this.
>
> I tend to lean your way in thinking that unmediated gaps are at least rare if
> they exists at all in vast swaths of creative activity of history. But it is
> speculative either way. And I don't see how scientific tools can avail.
>
> --Merv
>

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Received on Fri Oct 17 12:13:26 2008