Some Thoughts On Origins

Even though the adherents of evolutionary naturalism claim cool scientific objectivity and attempt to color the opposition with shades of religious ignorance, the composition of the evolutionary side is not always empirically detached as some would think.

Quite frankly, none of us are completely objective, especially in regards to the question of the origins of life; we all have been indoctrinated to one degree or another, often to the point of inability to listen to coherent engagements of an alternative point of view.

We have our presuppositions. On one hand, one finds a naturalistic worldview that allows for nothing beyond the mindless and ultimately entropic dance of matter and energy. On the other hand, one finds a presupposition that there is something greater than the material world, something above and beyond the natural, something not necessarily confined to the limits of the scientific method.

The crux of the matter is that materialism will always be, without regards to observation, constrained to a naturalistic explanation for life in all its beautiful complexity. There are no options to evolution if a supernatural Creator is excluded a priori. Evolution is not a scientific theory at all, but more it is a metaphysical construct; it does not bear the hallmark of a scientific theory because it is not falsifiable. Not only is it not falsifiable due to the aforementioned and unprovable naturalistic assumptions, neither is it repeatable, and thereby not purely empirically scientific, because of the non-repeatable nature of the process; it happened unobserved in the past., and macro-evolution, if true, occurs too slowly to be observed. If evolutionary theory is not purely scientific, neither is the alternative, special creation. It is not observed to occur and happened in the past unobserved.

When we talk about the origins of life, we leave the world of pure science and enter the realm of the metaphysical, of philosophy. So, the often strident rhetoric of evolutionists attempting to frame the debate as one of science in opposition to religious myth is just that, emotionally manipulative and inflammatory rhetoric, a deceitful myth of objectivity. Both sides bear a heavy cargo of moral and religious implications. To ban one side from the world of academic debate, of academic credibility based on the subjective, un-provable metaphysical bias is pure censorship driven by the status quo. Open the doors wide open to critique. Now, we have only those rotating bars such as those found on a subway entrances that only allow passage in one direction. The only reason to not to open the door is to shield the weakness of the evolutionary framework from public view.

I understand how absurd one view appears to the other. I have been on both sides of the divide. Not to be churlish, but what instigated my doubts about evolution was sex. Before the phrase ‘irreproducible completely’ and ‘intelligent design’ entered the lexicon of the controversy, I wondered how two complex and mutually dependent reproductive systems could have arisen by natural processes. Try hard as I might, I could not fathom how random mutations and natural selection could produce two complex reproductive systems in parallel. Both male and female systems have to be completely functioning for sexual reproduction to occur. It seemed utterly absurd to think that complementary reproductive systems could have evolved by genetic mistakes and natural selection.

From there, I began to think about abiogenesis, of how life could arise from non-life. I found the odds against life arising from non-life stagger the imagination. The further I dug, the more evidence I found that seemed to argue against a purely naturalistic explanation for the origins and complexity of life.

What the naturalist will do when faced with data that seems to undermine macro-evolutionary theory is trot out the hoary ‘God of the gaps’ argument. It used to be that supernatural forces were used to explain natural phenomena. When lightning flashed and thunder rumbled across the night sky, the atavistic man could only suppose that some deity directly caused the phenomena. When pre-scientific people wondered why they became sick, they supposed spirits, the supernatural, was the cause. When ancient people observed someone who behaved bizarrely and claimed to have seen visions, it was supposed that the afflicted were possessed by a spirit rather than suffering from a malfunction of brain chemistry.

As science began to find natural causes for previously unexplained natural phenomena, the realm where the supernatural ruled began to diminish. Soon, science would be able to explain everything, leaving no room, no gaps, for God as an actor on the natural stage.

While the ‘god of the gaps’ argument is superficially effective, if fails on more than one level. First, it seems that evolutionary theory is becoming more a ‘metaphysics of the gaps.’ Given the increased understanding of the complexity of the simplest of single-celled organisms, it becomes increasingly difficult to explain the rise of RNA, of DNA, of the intricate cellular machinery, by natural processes. In light of the increased understanding that so many biological entities exhibit structures that seem to defy naturalistic origins, it is hoped that future developments in scientific understanding will reveal how these structures could have evolved. The problem is that more and more evolutionary myths are falling by the wayside as discovery marches on. Evolution becomes increasing based on the hope that validation will be found in future discoveries.

Secondly, I believe there has been a bit of a false dichotomy in regards to religion and science. The ‘god of the gaps’ mindset infers that natural causes are the base for natural effects and thereby eliminate a place for God in the natural order. What we have to ask is why there is a natural order to begin with. From whence do these natural laws come? Why is there order instead of chaos? Why is there something rather than nothing? Again, when dealing with origins, we enter another realm of inquiry.

Thirdly, we all admit that life exhibits the characteristic of design. Richard Dawkins would say that millions of years of gradual accumulations of genetic errors and natural selection mimic design. I think Occam’s razor would infer a designer behind the design. When I view the Pyramids of Giza, I do not reflect on how amazing it is that eons of natural forces sculpted such magnificent and ordered structures. Rather, I reflect on the creative and ingenious skills of the builders and designers.

The bottom line is this: ideas have consequences and the more profound the idea, the more profound the consequences. I can think of no other arena in the world of thought that carries more ideological, metaphysical, and moral freight than that of the origins of life. I wish that people would care more about this issue and become equipped to understand the ramifications of the debate.

The ATP Synthase Enzyme

HT: Defending. Contending

Fascinating. The staggering complexity, the irreducibly complex mechanisms of the simplest single-cell organisms speaks volumes against abiogenesis.

Some interesting posts and links and podcasts…

“If God doesn’t judge America, He’ll have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah,” Huh?

Singing the Blues With Jesus

White Horse Inn podcast

Fighting for the Faith

Radical Grace

…by it I see every thing else.

If I swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole, then not only can I not fit in Christianity, but I cannot even fit in science. If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on bio-chemistry, and bio-chemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees. And this to me is the final test. This is how I distinguish between dreaming and waking. When I am awake I can, in some degree, account for and study my dream. The dragon that pursued me last night can be fitted into my waking world. I know that there are such things as dreams; I know that I had eaten an indigestible dinner; I know that a man of my reading might be expected to dream of dragons. But while in the nightmare I could not have fitted in my waking experience. The waking world is judged more real because it can thus contain the dreaming world; the dreaming world is judged less real because it cannot contain the waking one. For the same reason I am certain that in passing from the scientific point of view to the theological, I have passed from dream to waking. Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen, not only because I can see it, but because by it I see everything else. – C.S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry” in The Weight of Glory

HT: Tabula Plena

Marketing your morality

I have had the pleasure of engaging dialog on things of faith and science with atheist friends and family on more than one occasion. Either the conversation has centered around the evidence for a Creator, or it has centered on the foundation of morality. I am, in this post, more interested about atheism and inferred foundations of ethics and morality.

A while back, there was an advertising campaign in London, if I recall correctly, that questioned the need to believe in God to be ‘good.’

The question that should follow is this: why be good for goodness’ sake? For the sake of argument, let us assume a materialistic world-view: suppose there is no God. All that exists is matter that has collected itself into different forms by natural processes without any intervention outside of nature. This matter either created itself ex nihilo, from nothing, or has existed for eternity. Those options are all that is reasonably available to the materialist without regard to the cosmological flavor to the day.

Following that matter is all there is, then life must be a product of natural forces and processes, some inferred to be random, and is imbued with no special significance other than that found in the unimaginable enormity of the odds stacked against life rising from said undirected natural processes. We are here, to reiterate, due only to natural selection driven by random mutation and environmental pressures.

The bottom line is this: all there is…is matter. Following inexorably is death. All life ends in death and the annihilation of self, of consciousness, for the self-aware. All that remains is the decayed flesh and the memories of self carried by those who briefly remain after one departs, dies. Those memories, too, will be eventually be erased by time as will every edifice, every proud monument, constructed by the defiant, hairless ape. To assert otherwise is shear irrational romanticism, perhaps itself a survival mechanism born in light of consciousness, of self-awareness aware of death, before a vast, uncaring universe.

So then, we courageously exhort one another, given what ultimately lies before us, to be good for goodness sake. Again, why? How can anything be called evil, or good, in light of mere insensate matter being the ultimate arbiter? Do we call the actions, the effects, of tornadoes, chipmunks, and supernova good or evil? No, we do not. In a materialistic context, we can only say we prefer one action over another. We can only say some things are better for the functioning of society than others. Common good of society becomes the arbiter of good and evil. Again, why? Why should I care about the common good of society? Pragmatism, utilitarianism fail here. Who decides what is the common good? Society, a majority?   What about societies with differing standards?  Why should I, as an individual, even care about the common good? Is survival of the species the most important moral imperative? The earth, the universe, does not care on whit if humanity lives another moment or a thousand millennia. To state otherwise is, again, unabashed, irrational romanticism. Ultimately, there are no consequences for behavior if one can get away with it. Death is the common leveler and materialism is the ultimate reducing agent of morality.

The bottom line is this: humanity has no intrinsic value if we are only products of blind natural forces and process; there is no firm foundation for morality. Atheism, in its reductionism and when honestly examined, places a value on humanity that is tenuous and at very best utilitarian. The question that follow is this, who, or what, imbues us with this utilitarian value? Progressive, secular, egalitarian, compassionate societies in the west engage abortion on demand, infanticide, and euthanasia. Do you remember the circumstances that bought about the death of Terri Schiavo?

I can’t let others off the hook. Just any theism won’t do. Pantheism -belief in a impersonal ‘all is god, god is all’ – , foundational to much of New Age spiritualism, and deism – belief in an uninvolved, impersonal ‘watchmaker god’-, what many embrace, acknowledged or not, in actual function, are really in little better, if any, condition to provide intrinsic value to humanity. Too, what of that errant offspring of orthodox Christianity, the progressive Universalist, those who assert that eventually all go to heaven? Essentially, this is just a weak-kneed flip-side to atheism. In some respects, I would love for Univeralism to be true, but if so, there would be no accountability for moral actions if there is no punishment, no retribution for evil, no justice. Here is an undemanding god of love, but without the absolute holiness of the triune God. Is Stalin in heaven with the god of Univeralism?

Also, I absolutely do not infer that atheists are better or worse than theists in their ethics and behaviors. All I am saying is that their moral foundation is, consciously or not, second-hand, pirated, derived from that which they have rejected. Also, I do not infer that belief in God equals high morality in practice. People obviously act in opposition to what they profess to believe all the time. That many have done evil in the name of religion does not invalidate the assertion that a personal, transcendental God is foundational for morality.

It is only the fact that mankind, even in our fallen state, is created in the image of the personal, holy Triune God of the Old and New Testament that we find any intrinsic value and worth.

I want to end on the following, on the day before Christmas, with these words from an earlier post:

As profound and foundational are the doctrines of the trinity and the physical resurrection of the Messiah, and absolutely in no means do I intend to diminish their import, it is the incarnation of our Savior that leaves me most breathtakingly at a loss for words. That Christ, fully almighty God, immutable and fully in transcendence over creation, Who spoke into existence, ex nihilo, the natural order, should step out of eternity and condescend to take on flesh, a sinless human nature, and, out of love, subject Himself to a fallen creation, leaves me wanting for words. Christ, God almighty, His incarnation realized by His conception and virgin birth to Mary, was obedient to Father God to the point of death on the cross to provide propitiation for sin and, after defeating death, will for eternity forward, walk with us as we behold His cross-scarred body. Here we find incomprehensible truths that followers of the Messiah will feast on for eons.

How unbelievable is this grace to the ears of those who think that God grades us on a curve. How odd to the ears is this grace to those we engage some sort of concept of karma. How unbelievable is the transcendent God is to those who engage a the fuzzy self-deification of new-age, neo-pagan pantheism. How daunting and unbelievable is the true, utterly independent and omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God of the Bible to those who engage those strains of liberal protestantism who travel with the impotent, dependent god of panentheism. How simply unbelievable it is to so many that we simply cannot approach and commune with the absolute holy God of creation on our own devices, on our own righteousness, but only through the cross of Christ.

Here is hope for a broken, sin ravaged world: Repent, acknowledge and turn away from your sin, your rebellion and disobedience to God, and believe, trust, in Christ, fully sinless man and fully God, who physically rose from the grave defeating death, for the forgiveness of sin so that God counts to you the righteousness of Christ when He looks upon you that you may spend eternity with Him. That is the Good News.

Wishing all a Merry Christmas!

On the rise of science…to the glory of the Creator

Stephen Snobelen Assistant Professor of History of Science and Technology,
University of King’s College,
Halifax, Canada

Here is a final paradox. Recent work on early modern science has demonstrated a direct (and positive) relationship between the resurgence of the Hebraic, literal exegesis of the Bible in the Protestant Reformation, and the rise of the empirical method in modern science. I’m not referring to wooden literalism, but the sophisticated literal-historical hermeneutics that Martin Luther and others (including Newton) championed. It was, in part, when this method was transferred to science, when students of nature moved on from studying nature as symbols, allegories and metaphors to observing nature directly in an inductive and empirical way, that modern science was born. In this, Newton also played a pivotal role. As strange as it may sound, science will forever be in the debt of millenarians and biblical literalists.

HT: Creation on the Web

Some brief thoughts, skeletal in scope, on the above quote:

I have participated in more than one conversation wherein the assertion is made that Intelligent Design (ID) is no more than a sophisticated ‘God of the gaps’ argument. Further, I have been told that ID has no practical application; it predicts nothing, and, in fact, science could not have arisen from a milieu where religion, inferred to be synonymous with superstition, predominates.

In counterpoint, I find it interesting that many of the fathers of modern science were Christian. They inferred that natural laws pointed towards a Law Giver. They understood on a fundamental level that the universe was coherent and, given time and application of proper methodology, understandable because there was a Divine origin to the material world. Indeed, could science, dependent on, among other things, repeatability of phenomena, have risen in a milieu where the universe was understood to be random and driven by chaos? Quite frankly, much of modern physics seems so counter-intuitive and bizarre (to me), but, and again, I do not think we could not have gotten to where we are in our understanding of the created order without a foundational inference of a Creator. Could ramble for hours and flesh these thoughts out more (and, given I will have some time off for the holidays, perhaps I will), but it is 4:00AM, I am sick, and the cold and sinus meds are kicking in. Becoming soooo sleepy……..

Psalm 19:1 (English Standard Version)

The heavens declare the glory of God,
and the sky above proclaims his handiwork.

Some thoughts on, among other things, the incarnation of Christ

Within our confession of faith as followers of the Messiah, there are truths, necessary, profound, and most often apprehended with some measure of difficulty, without which the redeeming work of Christ on the cross has no coherency. While natural revelation, the revealing His divine attributes and His power through His created order, holds the world accountable to God in the world’s falleness and suppression of truth, there comes a point, as our Father calls us to Him, where we reach the limits of usefulness of natural revelation.

Our Father calls us by His Holy Spirit to step onto revelations found in the words of the authoritative and inspired Old and New Testament canon. Though, as aforementioned, God reveals some of His characteristics and truths in nature, foundational doctrines, the doctrine of the trinity of the Godhead, for example, cannot be found in observations of nature, in natural theology. Even common analogies used to illuminate the concept of the triune nature of the Godhead are often, at best, vague, and sometimes, at worst, may unintentionally lead to heretical concepts of the trinity such as that of modalism. However, the triune nature of God is revealed clearly in the New Testament, and though I may not be able to fully grasp and understand this truth, I accept it, one, because I hold the Bible as authoritative, and two, as previously mentioned, without it, the Gospel looses coherency and effectiveness. I hold to the truth of the trinity, in all its mystery, without much tension. Too, the concept of the trinity seems almost impossible to have been born in the minds of men.

The historicity of the physical resurrection of Christ, unlike the concept of the trinity, is a doctrine that can be reasonably validated by accepted methods of historical inquiry. I do not intend to construct an apologetic defending the physical resurrection of Christ. Others have done so far more convincingly than I am able. I affirm, however, that it requires no giant leap of blind faith to validate the physical resurrection of the Messiah. What I do with this formidable knowledge is another matter. I think of the early followers of Christ finding at the foot of the cross their grand cause crushed, in ruins. How did they summon the courage to die horrible deaths rather than recant their bold proclamation of a risen Messiah? After the cross and before Easter, they succumbed to fear. Post Easter, they left the paralysis of fear behind. Their remarkable transformation was the result of something the happened in time, in history. They were eyewitness to the risen Savior. We, two millennia later, marvel at what they beheld with their eyes. We read of Thomas, after he touched the wounds of the risen Christ, giving words to his wonder: “My Lord and My God!“

As profound and foundational are the doctrines of the trinity and the physical resurrection of the Messiah, and absolutely in no means do I intend to diminish their import, it is the incarnation of our Savior that leaves me most breathtakingly at a loss for words. That Christ, fully almighty God, immutable and fully in transcendence over creation, Who spoke into existence, ex nihilo, the natural order, should step out of eternity and condescend to take on flesh, a sinless human nature, and, out of love, subject Himself to a fallen creation, leaves me wanting for words. Christ, God almighty, His incarnation realized by His conception and virgin birth to Mary, was obedient to Father God to the point of death on the cross to provide propitiation for sin and, after defeating death, will for eternity forward, walk with us as we behold His cross-scarred body. Here we find incomprehensible truths that followers of the Messiah will feast on for eons.

• Romans 1:18-21

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened.

• John 20:27-29

Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

• Ephesians 1:16-23

I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe,according to the working of his great might that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.