In a conversation with a professor from McMaster Divinity School on the trustworthiness of science, he told me:
“I think the whole matter of trust in science has become quite a different issue than that of young earth and dinosaurs. Science in some areas continues to do a lot to discredit itself. There was quite a flap at Yale this year when their world renowned mathematician David Gelernter reviewed a book called Darwin’s Doubt (Stephen Meyer) and declared that Meyer was right. It is mathematically impossible to account for the explosion of life forms in the Cambrian period by the principles of natural selection and spontaneous mutation, the twin pillars of traditional Darwinism that are demanded presuppositions of every university student. Gelernter in some dismay referred to the response from Darwinists as “their religion” (I’ve attached the original review and a summary of a dialogue Gelernter had at the Hoover Institute, which you can see on YouTube). Just as it took 100 years, longer than most of us will live, to overturn the Ptolemaic theory of a geocentric universe (after all the theory accounted for all the data of planetary movements), so Gelernter thinks it will be at least that long before science can make any real progress on questions of evolution and DNA. Gelernter you will note has no inclination to believe in a Christian God.”
I will see if I can attach pdf below - I’m having difficulties doing that
Well, he’s a religious Jew. I’d argue Christians and Jews believe in the same God. He also has no training in biology, which sorry to say is kind of typical of smart people who become enamored with ID.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
4
The ‘math’ is utterly irrelevant to Dr. Malcolm’s axiom.
Gelerriter is correct. There is no way that random chance can give rise to order and design. Does this mean that evolution is without merit? Not necessarily.
What it means is this version of evolution has dome serious flaws. The problem we have is that is an all or nothing mindset, which means that we fail; to address the problems of evolution because we fear that any doubts about evolution will strengthen those who are anti-science, which is absurd.
My particular critique or Darwinian evolution is ecological natural selection which makes much more scientific sense than survival of the fittest. Evolution is a wonderfully designed process and to deny this as the working out of pure chance as Dawkins does is manifestly wrong. .
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
8
What is ‘random chance’? Apart from redundant phraseology? And what is design? Both in the context of physicalism. For you the latter, whatever it is, is not an effect of the former. Whatever that is. Is mathematics random? Is logic? And if they’re not, are they designed?
I listened to a podcast a while back, I’ll have to find it. I believe it was part of , In Defense of Plants, where it was argued there was not a explosion of life during the Cambridge but a explosion of factors that resulted in more fossilization. That several species that was attributed to the Cambridge has since been found in earlier periods.
Dawkins, does he qualify, seems to say that. He says that all events are meaningless and without purpose.
Math and logic are both a part of the rational structure of the universe, by which God created the universe and humans understand it. They are part of the design, so I would not say they were designed, but on the other hand they were created by God as God created the universe and all that is in it.
Physicalism has a fatal flaw in that it it has no place for the rational which is non-physical. Chance does play a role in evolution, but a secondary role in a rational designed process.
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I wasn’t discussing “meaningless” or “purpose.” I was responding to the silly sentence “There is no way that random chance can give rise to order and design,” which no biologist, and especially not Dawkins, ever claimed.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
14
Meaninglessness and ateleology don’t mean that random chance - the sound of one hand clapping - is the ground of being.
Maths and logic are instantiated in God before He does anything else. They are grounds of God’s being.
If maths and logis are grounds of God’s being, then why would they need to be instantiated. If they are the grounds of God’s being and God is the Ground of the Being of the universe, doesn’t that make math and logic superior to God.
If math and logic are rational being and they are fundamental to God and God’s Creation, then how can Physicalism make sense because it does not take into account the rational aspect of the universe which is basic to God’s action.
Do meaninglessness and ateleology mean that math and logic are the ground of being?
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
16
What do what mean?
Is God superior to truth?
By rational aspect of the universe you mean the fact that the universe is rationally apprehendable? Or something else?
Jesus said, “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.” Jesus is God. God is not superior to Truth. God is Truth.
The universe is rationally apprehensible, because it is structured in such a way that rational minds can apprehend it.
The universe was structured by a rational mind, not by random chance. We know this because science observes the the rational structure of the universe. Part of the Anthropic Principle is that the universe logically must be structured to be the Home of a rational observer is because a rational creator would not go out of His way to create a universe that could not be appreciated by anyone except a rational observer unless that observer was intended. Did God create the universe for Godself? Very unlikely. If not then for whom?
The universe is physical, rational. and spiritual. These three are all closely interrelated, but humans in our effort to understand the universe have unlinked them, which works up to a point, but now does not work any longer.
Physicalism tries to reduce the universe to the physical, matter/energy,. Idealism and maybe information science tries to reduce the universe to the rational, bits of information. Spiritualism tries to reduce the universe to the spiritual. The universe is not monistic, but it is basically relational which enables all three aspects to work together as one.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
18
Indeed. But of course order does not imply meaning.