Category: Creationism - franz kiekeben

IS “THE SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST” AN EMPTY TAUTOLOGY?

12/4/2017

A common objection to Darwin’s theory is that it depends on a truism and therefore fails to make a scientific, empirical claim. Darwin argues that those who are the fittest survive long enough to reproduce. But who are the fittest? According to creationists Henry and John Morris – and they are certainly not alone in saying this – “the only pragmatic way to define ‘the fittest’ is ‘those who survive’.”

But if “the fittest” are by definition those that survive, then “survival of the fittest” really means “survival of those who survive” – and that is completely unenlightening. Since it is a tautology, it is true no matter what, and therefore doesn’t tell us anything about the way things actually are: whether evolution or creationism is true, those that survive are those that survive.

As evolutionist Robert Pennock points out, the Morrises weren’t sufficiently logical to remain consistent in their criticism: shortly after raising the above objection, they claim that – as part of “the Creator’s plan” for preventing the spread of harmful mutations – natural selection does weed out the unfit. Yet on their view, who are the unfit if not those that die out? Other creationists have been more careful, however. And either way, the challenge remains: Why isn’t “the survival of the fittest” an empty tautology?

It’s not helpful to point out that the catchphrase “survival of the fittest” wasn’t Darwin’s, but Herbert Spencer’s. Other evolutionists – including Darwin himself – use the phrase. And besides, the same objection could be raised with respect to the concept of natural selection without using Spencer's expression.

The concept of natural selection is not circular, however, because “the fittest” are not really defined as “those that survive.” Rather, they are those that have traits that make them more likely to survive. And “survival of those that have traits that make them more likely to survive” is not an empty tautology. It means that there is a difference between those that usually survive long enough to reproduce and those that do not. The former have certain characteristics that the latter lack.

As to what these traits are, that’s an empirical question. But it’s important to realize that they are not defined as the single characteristic of “being more likely to survive.” Natural selection therefore is far from an empty claim.

[Originally published at Debunking Christianity]

EVOLUTON AND MORAL WORTH

6/23/2017

Often, critics of atheism argue that if we evolved from bacteria, it follows that we cannot have any more moral worth than those bacteria – and that evolution is therefore incompatible with such notions as that of human rights.

Now, if the argument is simply that, because we evolved from bacteria, we have no more moral worth than they do, it is obviously a non-sequitur. It’s the same as if one claimed that because Adam was made from the dust of the ground, he has no more value than that dust – or that Eve is at best worth one lousy rib. However, those who make the above argument are likely to insist that evolution presents us with something different: It’s not merely that we came from bacteria, it’s that we are “just like bacteria” in certain important respects. Adam was endowed with a soul, whereas the descendants of bacteria presumably are not.

But what is it about the soul that’s supposed to make a difference? Two possibilities come to mind. First, a soul is non-physical, whereas if naturalism is true, we are purely physical beings. Second, a soul is supposedly immortal. Let’s consider each one of these in turn.

Does being made of matter make one morally insignificant? I don’t see why it should. For suppose that what naturalism says is true, so that we humans, with our consciousness, our feelings, our desires, and so on, are no more than complex arrangements of matter. The fact remains that we are conscious, that we have hopes and dreams, that we care about others – in other words, that most of what we take to be important in our lives remains. What difference can it make, then, whether the ultimate substance that makes this possible is material or immaterial? And what’s so special about non-physical “stuff” anyway?

What about being immortal? If naturalism is true, then presumably our lives are finite. But does that mean that therefore it doesn’t matter what happens to any of us? That it is therefore okay to, say, torture innocent people to death? I doubt even the strongest critic of naturalism really believes such a thing. At any rate, how would immortality change anything? If life is worthwhile, that is because the temporal spans that it is made of are themselves, on the whole, worthwhile. And if so, then that’s true whether or not life continues indefinitely.

The fact that we evolved from bacteria does not mean we are “just like bacteria”. There are characteristics that we possess which bacteria lack – and those make us morally different from bacteria.

THE ATHEIST DELUSION

11/4/2016

I'm not sure how I got on their mailing list, but not long ago I received an email from Ray Comfort's people announcing his new film, The Atheist Delusion. It promised to destroy atheism with one simple question. I suspected bananas might be involved...

Apparently Ray is no longer depending on the banana to make his case, however – which was certainly something of a disappointment. Nevertheless, the argument remains essentially the same. His one question that “destroys atheism” is (are you ready?): Could a book come into being by accident, without having been put together by some intelligence? And if not, then how could DNA – the “book of life” – have come into being without an intelligent designer?

The funny thing is that Ray seems convinced that atheists have never heard of this “problem” before. It's as if he expects us to be taken by surprise, and maybe even to immediately drop to our knees and ask Jesus for forgiveness. True, some of the unsuspecting random individuals he interviews seem unsure how to answer him. But does Ray really think that people like Lawrence Krauss (who is briefly featured in the movie) have never come across this old and tired argument? Or that they don't know what to say in reply?

I only watched the first 20 minutes or so – already way too much. I had to stop soon after Ray asked one of his interviewees, How did chickens see before they evolved eyes? And how did they search for food before they evolved a brain, or breathe before they evolved lungs? Moreover, he adds, this isn't just a problem with chickens: One has to explain the same thing with respect to “elephants, horses, cats, cows, human beings,” and so on. Yes, in Ray's fantasy version of evolution, each species had to evolve every one of its organs from scratch!

Maybe from now on he should just stick with bananas?

DIFFICULTIES WITH THE ADAM AND EVE STORY

2/18/2016

Debating whether Adam and Eve were real individuals is akin to debating the Easter Bunny hypothesis – it isn't something that anyone reasonable should get involved in. Just consider some of the “arguments” put forward by biblical scholars Norman Geisler and Thomas Howe in defense of the view:

“...Genesis 1-2 presents them as actual persons and even narrates the important events in their lives...”
“...they gave birth to literal children who did the same...”
“...logically, there had to be a first real set of human beings, male and female, or else the race would have had no way to begin. The Bible calls this literal couple 'Adam and Eve', and there is no reason to doubt their real existence.”

(Quotes are from The Big Book of Bible Difficulties, pp. 31-32.)

But unfortunately – and in spite of arguments as bad as these – many Americans (56% according to one recent poll) actually believe that Adam and Eve were real people. It follows that raising questions about the Adam and Eve story probably isn't a complete waste of time.

With that in mind – or just for the fun of it – I offer the following list of difficulties, which go a little further than the well-known “where did Cain's wife come from?”

If Adam and Eve didn't know the difference between good and evil prior to eating the forbidden fruit, then how could they be held accountable for what they did?

If God didn't want anyone having knowledge of good and evil, why did he create the stupid tree in the first place? Why make such knowledge available, in other words – and by means of the eating of fruit that was “good for food” and “a delight to the eyes” (Gen 3:6), of all things? This sounds like a clear case of entrapment.

What is bad about knowing the difference between good and evil anyway? Isn't that supposed to be a good thing to know?

If the serpent in the Garden wasn't just a snake but was in fact Satan disguised, then why did God punish snakes? If the devil came to me in the form of a talking puppy and convinced me to do something wrong, would God take the legs away from all dogs and make them crawl around in the dirt too?

Adam was warned (Gen 2:17) that on the day that he ate the forbidden fruit he would die, but instead lived several hundred additional years – an incredibly long time to be on death row even by the standards of our current legal system. Was the warning just an empty threat?

After Cain kills Abel, he worries that “anyone who meets” him might kill him (Gen 4:14). But this was before Adam and Eve had any additional children, as one can see by Gen 4:25. So who were these people that Cain feared?
How is it possible for 56% of the population to believe in any of this stuff?

RUSH LIMBAUGH ON GOD AND HEAVEN

11/9/2015

Rush Limbaugh rarely discusses the issue of the validity of religious belief, and a good thing, too. But today he did and, well, you be the judge:

He was talking about an argument made by his father when he, Rush, was a child – an argument that he apparently still finds persuasive today. It goes like this: A loving God, Rush's dad told him, would not have created us with the ability to imagine a place like heaven – or eternal life, for that matter – unless it were real. For, to create beings capable of imagining such a thing if it weren't real would simply be cruel.

(I can't help wondering if he thinks the same thing about hell.)

This is almost as bad as the argument he presents in his book The Way Things Ought to Be – and which I also once heard him make on his show – to demonstrate the reasonableness of belief in God:

“The human mind... is incapable of imagining the size of the universe, its origins, or even where it is. Although some incredibly arrogant scientists believe that they are capable of scientifically unlocking every mystery of the universe and of understanding everything in purely material terms, I believe there are certain things that the mind of man simply cannot discover or ascertain. There are certain things we were not meant to understand, cannot understand, and must accept on faith.” (pp. 153-154, italics in the original)

(I especially like that part about us not knowing where the universe is!)

All of this is funny, of course, but what isn't as funny is how Rush uses his religion to back up his political views. His belief in a creator is, he tells us, his principal reason for denying climate change: “My views on the environment are rooted in my belief in Creation... I don't believe that the earth and her ecosystem are fragile...” (p. 153)

One can certainly have a serious discussion about climate change. However, the religious approach of Rush and his followers is essentially to not even have a discussion, not even look at any evidence, because after all, we already “know” that climate change can't be true! And that's scary.

EVOLUTION IN ACTION

9/5/2015

(I found out about this in Jonathan MS Pearce's blog, A Tippling Philosopher.)

Creationists insist that no one has ever observed evolution taking place, but as National Geographic reported a few years ago (see link below), “evolution has been caught in the act” in the case of an Australian lizard that is currently transitioning between egg-laying and giving live birth.

The fascinating details also provide insight into how such a seemingly drastic change can occur. After all, a stumbling block for many when it comes to accepting evolution is to understand how a jump can be made from one state (e.g., egg-laying) to another (e.g., giving live birth) when no intermediate states appear possible. This little lizard provides us with an example of how it can be done. As one of the study's authors put it, "We tend to think of this as a very complex transition, but it's looking like it might be much simpler in some cases than we thought."

I wonder what creationists will say about all this. Maybe that God works in mysterious ways?

news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/09/100901-science-animals-evolution-australia-lizard-skink-live-birth-eggs/

A VISIT TO THE CREATION MUSEUM

1/20/2015

Ken Ham's “unnatural history” museum in Petersburg, Kentucky is, as you probably already know, devoted to a literal interpretation of the Bible. It claims to present evidence that the earth is about 6000 years old, that dinosaurs coexisted with humans, that there was a worldwide flood around 2348 BCE, and so on. It is a bizarre experience from the moment you walk in.

One of the first things you come across inside is an animatronic display of a child next to a couple of velociraptors. (Dinosaurs are a big part of the attraction here, starting with the stegosaurus on the parking lot gate: the owners know it's a way to get kids to want to visit the place.)

That velociraptor display is problematic, however, and not just because it's on the scientific level of The Flintstones. You see, according to Ham and his people, all creatures were vegetarian prior to the Fall: this means that lions could sleep with lambs and, apparently, children could play with velociraptors. It was the eating of the forbidden fruit that introduced hardship into the world and turned some animals into predators. The problem, though, is that there were no children until after the Fall. Up until then, only Adam and Eve were around. Moreover, the child in this display is clothed, which is something no one would be before the Fall, for as everyone knows, until they ate the fruit, the first man and the first woman were nudists.

Once you get past the velociraptor display, you enter the main exhibits. Here, visitors are first informed that different scientists can view exactly the same data yet come to radically different conclusions: some see fossils and think they are millions of years old, others understand them to have been around no longer than a few thousand years; some see the Grand Canyon and think it formed gradually, others see it and conclude it was the result of an immense flood; it all depends on how you interpret things. As one sign puts it, “dinosaur fossils don't come with tags.”

Skepticism about science is juxtaposed with claims about biblical authority. Since the empirical evidence is open to more than one interpretation, to truly know the past we need the evidence of one who was there and who wrote it all down: God. In one of the displays, a boy is shown saying (by means of a speech bubble) that he's never heard any of this stuff in school.

The message that one can either trust fallible human reason or God's infallible word is repeated throughout. The fact that one has to use human reason to conclude that the Bible is God's word is conveniently ignored, however.

Ignoring God's word is the cause of the modern world's problems, and this leads to the next section, the “Culture in Crisis” exhibit – a dark, subway-like tunnel in which all the evils of the modern, Darwin-believing world, are represented: there is lots of graffiti, and talk of teen pregnancy, infidelity, and abortions.

Visitors then go through a history of the world that takes them from the creation of light through the garden of Eden, the Fall (dramatically described as the worst day in the history of the universe), Noah's ark (where you can see dinosaurs embarking), the repopulating of the world after the Flood, the Tower of Babel, and finally a film (which I didn't see) about the last Adam, Jesus.

Many of the claims made throughout are supported by nothing more than the authority of scripture. For instance, to the question, “did dinosaurs evolve from birds,” the answer given is that “God made birds on day 5 and land animals on day 6. Dinosaurs are land animals, so they were created the day after birds.” This is obviously something that all those scientists who believe birds are descended from dinosaurs failed to consider.

Other times, though, they try to provide more elaborate explanations. Mostly, these hardly make sense. For instance, the reason they give for why marsupials “were the first mammals buried and preserved after the flood” is that marsupials, “which have pouches, can nurse their young while moving,” whereas placental mammals, “which nurse their young in the womb, spread out more slowly.” Other times, the claims are just outlandish. My favorite is their suggestion that the super-continent Pangaea broke apart to form today's continents as a result of the Flood.

The burning question I most wanted answered was why there are no longer any dinosaurs. After all, according to the Creation Museum, they were taken aboard the ark, so they didn't all perish in the Flood. One possible answer they give is that people “killed them for food or sport.” Another display, however, actually claims that, though unlikely, there might still be dinosaurs around today that no one has yet found.

It must be admitted that the Creation Museum is entertaining for nonbelievers. With so much emphasis on dinosaurs, it feels sort of like a cross between the Bible and the old Raquel Welch movie One Million Years B.C. But even though it is funny, it's also sad, especially when one sees the children who are taken there to be misinformed and who will no doubt become confused when they are taught real science in school. If only they didn't have all those animatronic dinosaurs.

DINOSAURS INSIDE NOAH'S ARK

PAT ROBERTSON AND SCIENCE

11/17/2014

In an earlier post, I mentioned Pat Robertson's criticism of young-earth creationist Ken Ham. Robertson pointed out the earth cannot be merely 6000 years old (“the dating of Bishop Ussher just doesn't comport with anything that is found in science”) and even said to his fellow Christians, “Let's be real, let's not make a joke of ourselves.”

If only he had listened to his own advice.

On his Oct. 28 program, Robertson, forgetting all about science, discussed why human lifespans were so much longer in antediluvian times. You see, prior to Noah's flood, it was common for people to live for hundreds of years; Methuselah made it to the ripe old age of 969.

So what is the explanation? According to Robertson, it might have had something to do with nice weather: “Apparently until after the flood there wasn't as much moisture in the air, there weren't as many bacteria, microbes, and things like that, and maybe the climate was such that assaults on our bodies weren't as severe.”

Ken Ham should be pleased.

THE RETURN OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN?

9/10/2014

Once again, a proposal that may allow for the teaching of unscientific creationism in science classrooms is making the rounds, this time in Ohio. The language of the proposed bill is (deliberately?) unclear, leading some to dispute the claim that it is an attempt to sneak intelligent design into public education. However, at least one of the bill's sponsors has made his intentions perfectly clear. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, State Representative Andy Thompson said that “the language allows districts to teach faith-based beliefs as part of science classes.”

The courts almost certainly won't allow it, of course, but the ensuing debate could once again lead some religionists to believe their views are not being fairly represented. One statement in particular by Rep. Thompson caught my attention: the Columbus Dispatch reported him as saying that he thinks “it would be good for [students] to consider the perspectives of people of faith. That's legitimate.”

To many, this will seem only fair. After all, leaving out the perspectives of some people because of their religious beliefs is discriminatory, isn't it? But that's not what is going on in science teaching. The perspectives of people of faith are not left out provided they are scientific perspectives. For instance, the scientific views of such religious scientists as Kenneth Miller and Francis Collins are perfectly admissible in the classroom. But that's not what Rep. Thompson means; he wants the unscientific views of people of faith to be taught. And that's as inadmissible as teaching the unscientific views of anyone – theist or atheist – in a science class.

The article in The Plain Dealer is here.

KEN HAM VERSUS E.T.

7/25/2014

Ken Ham, the young-earth creationist who recently debated Bill Nye (and the principal figure behind the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky.), is now arguing that the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence is misguided and a big waste of money. The reason? Because only earthlings can be saved, of course! “God’s Son,” Ham pointed out, “stepped into history to be… the ‘Godman’”… not “the ‘GodKlingon’ or the ‘GodMartian’!” Thus, it is highly unlikely that there is intelligent life out there.

The search for ET’s, Ham thinks, is a misguided attempt by secularists to find answers to “the deepest questions of life.” We secularists are apparently “desperate to find life in outer space” in order to “supposedly prove evolution!” The whole thing is of course “driven by man’s rebellion against God…” (Only this time, God can’t simply confound our language in order to spoil our plans – for we now have translators!)

It’s hard to imagine a parody about creationists more outlandish than this. But then again, we are talking about a man whose views are so backward that even Pat Robertson thinks he’s ridiculous.

Ham’s blog post can be found here.

Pat Robertson’s criticism of Ham (regarding the debate with Nye) is here.

And the best reply to Ham I've heard so far is here.