According to David Wheeler, author of a recent post at the Atlantic, more and more Evangelical homeschooling parents want their children exposed to evolution. At least one publisher—Christian Schools International out of Grand Rapids, Michigan—has responded with homeschooling and Christian school textbooks that do not “attempt to discredit the theory of evolution”:
This staunch rejection of modern science tends to characterize today’s leading homeschool textbooks. For example, Science 4 Christian Schools, a homeschool textbook published by Bob Jones University Press, doesn’t mince words when it comes to evolution and Christian faith. “People who accept the Bible believe that God made everything,” the book states. “They call God’s description of how things began the Creation Model. Those who disregard the Bible believe instead that everything got here by itself. They call this description of how things began the Evolution Model.”
The assertion that anyone who believes in evolution “disregards” the Bible offends many evangelicals who want their children to be well-versed in modern science. Jen Baird Seurkamp, an evangelical who homeschools her children, avoids textbooks that discredit evolution. “Our science curriculum is one currently used in public schools,” she says. “We want our children to be educated, not sheltered from things we are afraid of them learning.”
The rising number of homeschool families striving to reconcile belief in God with today’s scientific consensus has attracted the attention of at least one publisher – Christian Schools International in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “Most science textbooks that attempt to present the content from a Christian perspective also attempt to discredit the theory of evolution,” says Ken Bergwerff, a science curriculum specialist at Christian Schools International. “Some do it discreetly; others are quite blatant. The CSI science curriculum clearly presents science from a Christian perspective, but does not attempt to discredit the theory of evolution. The content presents God as the author of all of creation, no matter how he did it or when he did it.”
Christianity Today magazine has followed-up with a story of its own in which it notes that Ken Ham, the nation’s leading young-earth creationist and founder of the Creation Museum in Kentucky, has been disinvited from several homeschool conferences for “unnecessary, ungodly, and mean-spirited” comments about evangelical evolutionists.
Now it is time for the evangelical homeschool movement to offer a more balanced view of American history than the usual fare offered by David Barton and other Christian nationalists.
March 12th, 2013 | 10:35 pm
This is certainly a good sign. Evolution, simply put, is the best explanation for life’s diversity. This in no way implies, however, that religious explanations are incompatible with evolution. I think that Christianity can be clearly shown to be entirely compatible with evolutionary theory, much more compatible than the atheistic materialism that some evolutionists (e.g., Richard Dawkins, Jerry Coyne) claim is the best philosophical system that makes sense of evolution.
Any homeschooler who adopts the pernicious simplicity, quoted above, from the Christian Schools International”, will not be properly equipped to properly understand biology at the college level, and therefore be distinctly disadvantaged.
March 12th, 2013 | 11:50 pm
I can understand teaching children about evolution along with Creation so that they are informed, but we have a responsibility to teach the truth. Much of evolutionary teaching is ideological. True science will not contradict the Bible. Regarding history and David Barton, what do you mean by balanced? I think we should teach children to think and reason from Biblical principles. We should know where opposing views of science and history come from and evaluate them in light of Scripture.
March 13th, 2013 | 12:44 am
To truly offer a more balance view of science and American history would be to offer more American History from the likes of those listed. We live in a country that doesn’t even permit one side from presenting itself in the school systems. In many cases you can’t hear alternatives to Evolutionary Theory.
Darwinian Evolution is bankrupt. It doesn’t explain life’s diversity – it actually fails to explain itself with gaping holes in supportive evidence that it claims to be based on. In many respects it takes more faith to believe in Evolutionary theory than it does Creationism. We have a “white coat” mentality that accepts anything a “scientist” or “science documentary” presents without questioning their assumptions and examining their evidence.
Many of the core premise of evolution fails to deliver – the fossil record evidence is just not there. The number of “transitional life” doesn’t show up in the fossil record. Beneficial mutations is a weak premise because if anything there is a bigger case to make that supports the opposite conclusion. Evolution fails to explain how life started. Darwin himself questioned the lack of evidence in his theory. Some leading Evolutionist today question this also. Their questioning doesn’t occur in a popular forum but rather read directly from their writings – e.g. Read Darwin directly. One of the late leading Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould in his writings admits to the seemingly lack of much evidence to support the theory his writings. The Evolution Evangelist, Richard Dawkins, rambles on and on and on in his writings and speeches – he has his axe to grind with no intent of objectively examining the issues involved from both sides of the issue.
Creationism provides a much more consistent story in many areas of science. Whether it is the fossil record, supposed animal transition, a great flood…
March 13th, 2013 | 5:16 am
Thanks for an interesting piece. It’s encouraging that more homeschoolers are realising that it is possible to both be Christian and embrace scientific consensus on the development of life: I would agree with Bret Lythgoe above that the Christian theology can be reconciled with evolutionary theory – there are many excellent books by Christian scholars – theologians and scientists – showing that acceptance of evolution does not imply Dawkins style atheism. When faced with these potentially difficult issues Christians need to trust the richness of the Christian intellectual tradition, and not retreat from the world.
March 13th, 2013 | 6:34 am
Evolution is a fact. We should teach students everything about God and the bible but we can not be intellectually dishonest and pretend that there is any controversy (other than sociological) over it being a fact. Who/what is behind it, why are we here, how did it all start – these are the questions the bible can provide answers for.
Evolution and Creationism are not two sides of a coin deserving equal time and respect and any attempt to present them as such is dishonest.
March 13th, 2013 | 8:37 am
David Simeone – I suggest you take a look at, say, “Evolution For Everyone” by David Sloan Wilson, or Jerry Coyne’s “Why Evolution is True”. I suspect the information you’ve received on this topic is biased.
March 13th, 2013 | 10:05 am
Evolution is not a fact. Whether it’s a reasonable theory depends on how it’s defined, and the definition changes depending on the agenda of the person discussing it. There’s no argument at all that creatures adapt and change in response to their environment, but serious controversy about the ability of gradual adaptations to form completely new organs and body plans. Both, and other ideas, are called “evolution”.
As a former home schooler, I’m glad to see removal of the emotional bias against people who don’t accept a particular version of the creation story.
March 13th, 2013 | 10:44 am
“We should teach students everything about God and the bible but we can not be intellectually dishonest and pretend that there is any controversy (other than sociological) over it being a fact. ”
That is an Appeal to Authority. It is also an Ad Hominem as it is based on the motives of the arguer. Both are of limited relevance and both are made by both sides. It is also false as by definition the fact that this is discussed assumes that there is controversy and the fact that other arguments then sociological(whatever the motives for making the arguments) are made is proof that there is controversy other then sociological. The arguments may be wrongheaded but that is not your claim. Your statement was “any”. And when there is SOME controversy that is not “sociological” it is obvious that the claim that there is “not any” controversy by definition cannot be a fact.
March 13th, 2013 | 1:24 pm
The post may be mixing some issues. Ken Ham is not universally beloved even among Creationists because of the theologically hard line he takes on it. For a group to distance themselves from Ken Ham is not necessarily to distance oneself from a very conservative take on Creationism — I’ve known instances where it was done for precisely the opposite reason, to protect the integrity of Creationism.
Also, I’ve seen some pretty dubious pro-creation stuff in creationist textbooks, and I know many creationist homeschoolers who nonetheless believe that it’s not necessary to indoctrinate kids into a scornful attitude toward those who believe in evolution, in order to teach a creationist view of science to children. It might be wrong to assume that seeking a less heavy-handed approach from less heavy-handed representatives equates to going soft on creationist belief.
March 13th, 2013 | 1:27 pm
“Now it is time for the evangelical homeschool movement to offer a more balanced view of American history than the usual fare offered by David Barton and other Christian nationalists.”
There are, and have been for over a decade, a handful of widely-used, homeschool history curricula dedicated to exactly that. Your clarion call is way behind the curve. Barton’s approach is popular among some, and is and has long been roundly rejected among others. Now is the time for writers in Christian publications to stop viewing the evangelical homeschooling movement as monolithically as secularists do.
March 13th, 2013 | 2:02 pm
The theory of evolution, viewed in terms of how the diversity of life forms we see today might have been brought about, should not present a problem for Christians, at least if one doesn’t view the biblical creation accounts as a scientific explanation of how that happened. Augustine was caustic in his criticism of insisting that the creation accounts of Genesis be taken literally (there are two contradictory accounts, which is a huge clue that it was not a scientific treatise), so there wasn’t unanimity among the Church Fathers on that score, leaving Christians – Catholics anyway – free to believe Adam was literally created from dirt in an instant, or to believe the body of Adam was the intended result of a divinely originated biological process.
Before a believing Christian scoffs at the notion that Adam was created from dirt in an instant, one should consider that the resurrection of the dead, which one must believe in to be Christian at all, requires God – in an instant – to fashion the bodies of everybody who ever lived from the dust to which they had returned. If the belief that Adam was created from the dirt is ridiculous, then why isn’t belief in the resurrection?
There are several legitimate scientific reasons to doubt Darwinian theory, but no good religious reason.
One major scientific reason to doubt it, it seems to me, is that we now know life is information-based, DNA being the repository of vast quantities of digital information. Darwinian theory offers no convincing explanation of how the massive amounts of new information required for the development of such a wild variety of life forms mindlessly came to be, since there is no known source of information other than an intellect.
March 13th, 2013 | 4:26 pm
Suzanne Levy
Much of evolutionary teaching is ideological.
If you wear tinted glasses, much of the world is tinted.
jason taylor
That is an Appeal to Authority. It is also an Ad Hominem as it is based on the motives of the arguer.
You cited no motives of the arguer and that’s not ad hominem.
This is ad hominem:
“Jason is a jerk, so don’t listen to him telling you smoking causes cancer”
This is not:
“Jason is a jerk, so don’t trust him when he asks for your password to your online trading account”
In the first the fact that he may be a jerk doesn’t alter whether or not smoking causes cancer. In the second, being a jerk makes it more likely that what he claims is good investment advice is not.
Likewise there is no argument from authority here. There’s argument from pre-established arguments. If you remember HS geometry you may recall once you proved a theorem true, you were free to cite the theorem in the proofs of future theorems. That is not argument from authority since the proof is not “This is true because Euclid says it was”. Any interested party is free to dig back the theorems and examine the proofs of each until he comes to the original assumptions and first proofs. Likewise anyone is free to dig back through all the multiple pieces of evidence and reasoning about evolution. But since we are limited to 1900 characters here we are not obligated to provide it to you.
March 13th, 2013 | 4:32 pm
One major scientific reason to doubt it, it seems to me, is that we now know life is information-based, DNA being the repository of vast quantities of digital information. Darwinian theory offers no convincing explanation of how the massive amounts of new information required for the development of such a wild variety of life forms mindlessly came to be, since there is no known source of information other than an intellect.
No sources of information other than intellect?! That’s clearly silly. Geological columns capture and preserve info on geological events. Tree rings capture info on climate. Yet no one thinks rocks and trees must have an intellect to do this. Blackholes consume information as matter falls into them, yet fans of the first Star Trek movie aside, there’s no compelling reason to think they are intellects.
March 13th, 2013 | 7:00 pm
Boonton, When I stated that much evolutionary thinking is ideological, I meant that my observations are that there is a suppression of truth in evolutionary assumptions, that is truth of God’s existence. My opinion on this topic is that students need to learn how to reason, not just be presented with facts on the other side of the issue just to prove some sort of balance. Christian teachers should teach Biblical principles, the Creation model, intelligent design as well as the history of evolutionary thought. In history they should teach the connection between the Bible and civil liberty and compare it with tyrannical governments. BTW, why are my glasses tinted because I believe the Bible is true? How do you know you see clearly?
March 13th, 2013 | 8:30 pm
Hi, Boonton,
What you described are some cases where upon close examination of natural phenomena we find that we that can tell something about the past. The details we discover in those phenomena aren’t really information in terms of having intended functionality, we have just learned what causes them, which allows us to do some interpretation.
Contrast that lame excuse for information with genuine information like the digital information in the coding regions of DNA, which contain the assembly instructions for various protein machines used for metabolism and reproduction. Interestingly, this information is stored digitally in base four instead of in binary, which allows for information to be more densely packed. For example, in binary, 16 units of memory can contain 65,536 possible values. In base four, 16 units of memory can contain 4,294,967,296 possible values. Not a bad design for something with no designer. ;o)
Also interestingly, just like in a computer where a sequence of units of memory can represent a letter of an alphabet, there is a biological alphabet used to “spell” out information in DNA memory. We call the 4 possible states of a unit of DNA memory A, C, G or T, after the first letter of the name of a nucleic acid base or “nucleotide.” And just as in the ASCII specification for the representation of the English alphabet, there are different ways to specify a “letter,” called a “codon,” in the biological alphabet. According to the ASCII code the letter ‘A’ can be specified by 1000001 for uppercase and 1100001 for lowercase. In the biological alphabet, for example, TTA, TTG and several other codons specify the amino acid ‘leucine.’ Of course, there is also punctuation in the biological alphabet: there are codons for ‘stop,’ analogous to a period.
That’s information.
March 13th, 2013 | 11:48 pm
Ray Ingles – I suggest you expand your reading to include more thoroughly researched works. David Sloan Wilson claimed that the origin of laughter occurred 4 million years ago. His study in the the Quarterly Review of Biology, concludes that language as a means of communication did not appear for another two millions years or so after the first laugh. He said that laughter functioned ‘as a medium for playful emotional contagion’, helping to bind group members together, especially important ‘during the fleeting periods of safety and satiation that characterized early bipedal life’. Wow, what a story – do you take this seriously?
With Coyne’s book, he misrepresents the creationist position repeatedly. He actually believes were the Earth created several thousand years ago, Africa and South America would only be a few inches apart. He isn’t aware of much-publicized creationist development of catastrophic plate tectonics. Coyne misrepresents creationists position on baraminology, he is incorrect on his comments on the duration of the Noachian Deluge, he misrepresents speciation (p. 183) – again, there is a wealth of information on creationist research in this area and what their position is on these items. Most annoyingly, he repeats long-disproved stories such as – small as the Ark being too small and the Ark-released-carnivores-eliminate-herbivores. Is Coyne that naivete, irresponsible, ignorant or just purposely deceptive. He repeats the usual anti-creationism arguments that have been stated before without offering anything new to add to the discussion or confronting refutations to these stale arguments. The statement that “nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution” is delusional – simply stated, there is a very long history of achievement in biological science that predated Darwin’s theory. Then Coyne guesses on what a Creator would…
March 14th, 2013 | 7:21 am
Suzanne,
Boonton, When I stated that much evolutionary thinking is ideological, I meant that my observations are that there is a suppression of truth in evolutionary assumptions, that is truth of God’s existence
I’m not sure what you really mean by ‘evolutionary thinking’. I don’t think you are actually talking about standard biology textbooks that discuss evolution. Maybe you’re talking about popular takes on evolution from people like Dawkins, but these popular takes aren’t really textbooks meant for school study. Given the touchiness of the topic and how much trouble hardcore creationists like to me, most texts bend over backward to *not* emphasize that evolution requires one to adopt any atheistic view on God.
You can say that most texts don’t talk about God’s existence, but that’s hardly ‘suppression’. And if it is then you should also be complaining that many chemistry textbooks don’t talk about God, ditto for many cookbooks. Why is evolution signled out only?
March 14th, 2013 | 7:37 am
arry,
First this may sound like a quibble but what you describe isn’t digital info. Digital means two ‘letters’ (0 and 1), not 4. Of course you can use a digital language to translate 4 letter codes into a digital file, just as computers translate our text using the entire alphabet and numerous symbols into binary code.
second, it’s important to quibble about terms because you’re using a term ‘information’ that has many commonday meanings but you give a highly specialized meaning too….’functional information’.
You haven’t established that ‘functional info’ only comes from ‘intellect’. In fact, we see a lot comes from the randomness of life. Crystals, for example, create copies of their structure but that structure is not intellect. Likewise the idea of a ‘meme’ is revealing because it’s a concept that spreads without the aid of intellect. In other words memes spread best if you’re not giving any effort to trying to make them spread. Think of a YouTube video that goes virual. This is functional information whose function is to produce digital copies of itself. Yet the ‘intellect’ doesn’t make that happen. Many things people put a lot of intellect into creating with just that intent (ads, blog posts, first novels etc.) fail.
Finally you may object that the person who accidently posts a cat video that gets a billion views is in fact using intellect…even if the guy who posts a highly thought out poetry reading gets only a few views. That doesn’t help your case. You’ve argued that functional information cannot be created without intellect. That case is not demonstrated by showing examples of functional information being created by intelligence anymore than showing an infinite number of non-prime numbers demonstrates no prime numbers exist.
March 14th, 2013 | 9:43 am
David Simeone –
As seriously as I take the preposterous idea that time changes depending on how fast you’re moving. Or the notion that solid matter is actually mostly empty space, containing nothing but a few particles and force fields.
You can’t ridicule someone’s conclusions until – and unless – you address the arguments they use to reach those conclusions. Saying, “That’s counterintuitive!” is useless. Practically everything in modern science is counterintuitive in some way or another.
March 14th, 2013 | 10:00 am
harry –
We’ve gone around on that stuff before, but I’ll simply note that you never have properly defined your terms there. (Nor have other evolution skeptics, for that matter.) What, precisely, do you mean by the word ‘information’?
March 14th, 2013 | 1:50 pm
Boonton,
You are wrong about that.
Right. I just made that assertion. We are limited to 300 words in these posts.
Then I guess I won’t make an argument based on the accidental postings of cat videos.
March 14th, 2013 | 4:12 pm
Ray, Boonton,
March 14th, 2013 | 5:06 pm
I will describe here as the difference between what you get when you dump out a box of Scrabble pieces on the floor and what you have if the pieces are arranged such that they spell out an interesting short story.
But DNA doesn’t tell a story. It might be intereting if someone found the complete text of the KJV Bible encoded in our DNA (or any book for that matter), but it doesn’t.
But DNA does serve a function, the function of getting itself copied over and over again.
So let’s imagine it’s been a fad to dump Scrabble pieces on a table while taping it with a cell phone. In 2010 someone caught the bag dump spell out “Obama beat Romney Four More Yrs”. Imagine people are so amused by the random bag dump not only spelling out something coherent but something that actually came true that the video gets reproduced millions of times over on Facebook, Youtube, TV shows etc.
Well that would be ‘functional info’ per your definition! It serves the function of getting itself reproduced yet the scrabble bag and letters have no ‘intellect’ nor do the tiles. Granted the person who dumps the bag has an intellect as do the people who copy the message but they certainly didn’t create the message. The message exploited their intellects!
March 15th, 2013 | 2:41 am
Right. What is written in human DNA is not a composition of a story, written there instead is the composition of a being with the ability to write many stories.
Information-rich DNA presents a problem for modern materialistic science, but would have presented no problem at all for the science of, say, Isaac Newton, since his didn’t start with the assumption that God couldn’t possibly have been the source of this information.
The creation accounts of Genesis do record multiple creative acts by God after time began, not just one creative act and then God was done. When “God said let the earth bring forth” and said, “let the waters bring forth” various living creatures, that sounds like the launching of an ongoing process involving matter that already existed – matter incapable of mindlessly and accidentally assembling itself into the amazingly functionally complex, digital-information-based nanotechnology of which we now know life consists, and equally incapable of coming up with the vast amounts of new, very precise information required for modified, updated versions with additional functionality, like optical and auditory systems. It looks like God, in some mysterious way, periodically, creatively intervened with new information. That notion, by the way, at least does not contradict the fossil record, which is more than one can say for Darwinian theory.
It is not without reason that this ultra-sophisticated nanotechnology is light years beyond anything modern science knows how to build from scratch. One doesn’t even get crude technology mindlessly, let alone nanotechnology that surpasses that of the best minds of science. An explanation for the initial existence and gradual development of such technology, if it is to avoid being laughable, must include an intellect as a…
March 15th, 2013 | 7:08 am
harry,
Fair is fair, you’re right about the term digital. Digital means ‘discreat units’ as opposed to continuous. It doesn’t have to mean just two units (that would be ‘binary’).
March 15th, 2013 | 9:51 am
harry –
Ah, but can you reliably detect it? Can you measure it? Do you think you might ever get around to identifying which mutations in the development of the ossicles added such ‘functional information’, as I’ve asked you before?
A story, we know, has an intelligent designer. The whole point of the discussion, though, is the question of whether that holds for the kind of ‘functional information’ in something like DNA. You can assert that, but that’s not the same thing as establishing it.
March 15th, 2013 | 8:25 pm
Information-rich DNA presents a problem for modern materialistic science
Notice here after showing using his own definition of ‘functional information’ that it’s very easy to see functional info forming without intellect in many plausible real world cases, he reverts back to simply making bold assertions with terms that are now getting fuzzy again (what is ‘information rich’ and how is it different from ‘functional information’?)
This is a sure sign you’re NOT dealing with a real attempt at serious argument let alone science.
March 16th, 2013 | 12:44 am
Let’s start with an excerpt from a Wikipedia article on information and go from there:
Note the language used above:
“information” – Only intellects can be informed.
“interpreted” – Only intellects interpret.
“symbols” – Only intellects can know what is symbolized.
It takes an intellect to devise a set of symbols and an intellect to be “informed” by the interpretation of a particular arrangement of those symbols upon receipt of a message, or, a message can be received by some mindless, dynamic system that does not comprehend the message but is affected by it according to what the one who devised the symbol set is conveying by that particular arrangement of the symbols. An intellect is involved at both ends of the communication, or the originating end only, but an intellect must be involved any time symbolic information is in use. There is no known source of symbolic information other than an intellect, where the use of symbols distinguishes it from “information” of the type that Boonton mentioned.
In the case of the coding regions of DNA we find an alphabet – symbols – arranged such that the messages conveyed direct the assembly of various intricate protein machines. This symbolic, functional information can only have been put in place by an intellect.
March 16th, 2013 | 12:58 pm
There’s another problem with the Scrabble analogy. Say you toss some tiles out of the bag and you do in fact get a story! Great, but if you do it again you almost certainly won’t get a story. While stories serve the intellect, they do not fit the definition of ‘functional info’ presented.
Now consider a chance mutation in a bacteria that allows it to better tolerate salt water. If it happens to live in an environment with salty water, this ‘information’ will likely get duplicated and passed down many times. If it lives in totally clear water the mutation does nothing and it would be no more than a random scrabble letter dump.
Yet this is a counter example to the claim that ‘functional info’ cannot come from anything but intellect. The ‘functional info’ is discovered by a ‘scrabble dump’ and then preserved by the environment. Just like someone who claims prime numbers don’t exist is refuted by citing just a single prime, someone who claims func. info cannot be created by any process but ‘intellect’ is refuted by a single counter example.
March 17th, 2013 | 12:30 pm
harry,
Your’re trying to make an argument that’s based on very nuanced meanings of words that have very broad everyday meanings. Now you’ve tossed in a wikipedia definition that says information is a set of symbols that can be interpreted as a message.
Yet DNA doesn’t fit your definition very well. DNA is not ‘interpreted’ by an intellect. It’s used by RNA to make proteins and no one thinks RNA is an ‘intellect’. DNA doesn’t have symbols, it has chemicals which behave the way they do because of the rules of chemistry.
Perhaps most troublesome, you didn’t bother to issue a definition for ‘message’. This is pretty important but since you’re swapping around definitions left and right maybe it isn’t.
An intellect is involved at both ends of the communication, or the originating end only, but an intellect must be involved any time symbolic information is in use
Using my example of a gene that gives better tolerance to salt water, I’m at a loss to understand who the intellects are at each end of this ‘message’? The random mutation of DNA is not an intellect. The bacteria is a vehicle for information perhaps but isn’t an intellect ‘receiving’ a message’. The salt water isn’t an intellect either. You have no sender, no receiver and no message which seems to imply by your definitions ‘information’ has nothing to do with biology here.
March 17th, 2013 | 2:05 pm
Francis Crick and James Watson are the co-discoverers of the thread-like DNA molecule. Crick described himself as agnostic, with a “strong inclination towards atheism”. In 2003, Watson spoke at Youngstown State University and was asked by one student, “So you don’t believe in God?” The scientist answered, “Oh no, absolutely not. The biggest advantage to believing in God is you don’t have to understand anything, no physics, no biology. I wanted to understand.”
Yet thousands of years ago the psalmist wrote: “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb…your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” (Psalm 139: 13;16). The phrase “you knit me together” anticipates that we are literally knitted or woven together at the molecular level.
March 17th, 2013 | 4:33 pm
Let’s also say that volcanos, earthquakes, tornados and massive asteroid hits all start plaguing midwestern farmlands at the same time; through a lucky combination of wheat spilled from earthquake-fractured grain elevators being pulverized into flour by asteroid hits, and heat from volcanic activity, and tornados going through beef packing plants and grocery stores, we end up with millions of mindlessly created baloney sandwiches. Or we could be reasonable and just admit that that isn’t going to happen, and neither are we going to get a story from dumping out Scrabble pieces on the floor.
Mindless, lifeless, dumb matter cannot be “informed,” so it possesses no information, much less the ability to translate that knowledge into symbols. Yet we have massive amounts of information represented symbolically in biological memory. We know it is information and not gibberish because cellular processes directed by it produce functional protein machines, the functionality of which is useful and not destructive.
March 19th, 2013 | 8:23 am
harry,
Such ‘chance’ things do happen and if the universe is infinite in respect to space then they have to happen for the same reason sooner or later somone will win the lottery even if the odds are very tiny for any one ticket. Anyway there’s a small industry of people finding ‘messages’ in random things like discoloration on potato chips, water stains etc.
But you neglect the dynamics at play here. The first living thing doesn’t need to be a baloney sandwhich, it simply needs to be a very basic system that is able to reproduce copies of itself with some measure of random variation. The first such entity to come out the ancient chemical soup would have the whole planet to itself with no competition from peers, predators etc. Such a cell would have had a great time of it, but even the most basic organism by today’s standards would trump all of its merits making it impossible for it to survive today.
Mindless, lifeless, dumb matter cannot be “informed,” so it possesses no information, much less the ability to translate that knowledge into symbols. Yet we have massive amounts of information represented symbolically in biological memory.
A book has information yet it is made of ‘lifeless matter’. Looking at the atom by atom transfer of information in DNA is likewise lifeless matter. Your DNA is not alive.
March 19th, 2013 | 11:15 am
harry –
Weather prediction.
Meteorologists gather a great deal of information about the weather – temperature, pressure, humidity, wind direction and velocity, cloud cover, the rates of change of all those variables, etc. etc., repeated over large regions.
Are they interpreting a message when they gather and analyze this information? If so, from whom?
March 22nd, 2013 | 12:54 am
Hi, Ray, Boonton,
I was occupied for a few days and just got back to this.
We find vast quantities of complex, precise information represented systematically, symbolically and digitally in DNA memory. We find that the simplest single-celled, reproducing life form has the complexity of an automated factory, a factory guided in its production by the contents of DNA memory. We find that this factory, far beyond the capabilities of our own, can also manufacture more instances of itself. If such elegant, ultra-sophisticated nanotechnology were discovered in another context, say, in that of an extraterrestrial drone of some kind, instead of in the context of life, nobody would argue that such sophisticated technology came about mindlessly and accidentally. That is because there wouldn’t be negative implications for atheism in that case.
Atheism is faith-based. One can’t proved God isn’t there. Your endless gainsaying only reveals that you have abandoned the relentless objectivity true science requires in order to defend your atheistic faith.
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