I have already answered @pevaquark who asked the same thing.
Just apply it to all the examples you mentioned.
If anyone tells you Physical or chemical laws create anything. He has no idea what he is talking about.
Edit: in case you didn’t get the point. Physical and chemical laws are approximations made based on empirical observations. Their existence can depend on either
a) An underlying purely material/mechanical process (probably related quantum mechanics)
b) They are enforced by an immaterial will.
Quantum mechanics itself seems to have a strange relationship with consciousness. So that also might have something to do with it. Even in ancient times, theologians expected laws of nature to have an underlying mind sustaining them.
How about every one who acknowledges that gravity clumps together stars and galaxies and helps collect scattered elements that get sent out from various processes like supernova eruptions or merging neutron stars. Behold the creative power of gravity:
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Now you are indulging in more empty rhetoric.You are intelligent enough to understand exactly what I said.
Edit: The picture was a nice touch though… it helps when there is no substance to your point… learned that from evolutionists?
Honestly, I have no idea what you would say, because none of the examples I cited ascribe any power to create novelties out of nothing.
In addition, professional biologists like @glipsnort and @Sy_Garte have explained to you that natural selection does not have any creative power.
Moreover, I have also asked repeatedly for you to address each of these points about quantum mechanics:
- Like evolution, quantum mechanics ascribes a prominent role to randomness. Should Christians who believe in God’s sovereignty reject QM for that reason?
- Like evolution, quantum mechanics is widely used by atheist scientists and philosophers. Should Christians reject QM for that reason?
- Like evolution, over 90% of the leading scientists in its field of study are avowedly atheistic. Should Christians reject QM for that reason?
- Like evolution, QM provides an outcome selection function which is influenced by varying local conditions and is probabilistic in nature. Should Christians reject QM for that reason?
- Atheist scientists and philosophers claim that QM, like evolution, provides a natural, impersonal explanation for the “creation” of everyday phenomena small and large. Physicists like Hawking, Krauss, Feynman, and Stenger attribute to QM the existence of everything in the universe. They have stated unequivocally that impersonal QM operating without any divine thought, intervention, or contribution has in fact created you, me, and everything in the universe. Should Christians reject QM for that reason?
- Why should Christians believe the tiny minority of leading physicists who believe that QM is compatible with faith in God, but not believe vast majority of leading physicists who reject faith in God based at least in part on their understanding of the theories of physics?
- Why should Christians reject the view of prominent atheist scientists and philosophers who believe that QM excludes the possibility of God’s creation and involvement, but accept the view of prominent atheists scientists and philosophers who believe that natural selection and the other aspects of evolution exclude the possibility of God’s creation and involvement?
If you believe Christians can in good conscience accept QM in spite of all these issues, please explain in theological terms why they cannot also accept the theory of evolution. If you are tempted to say: “because natural selection”, please explain in theological terms how the impersonal force of natural selection–which according to every scientists on the planet is no more creative than QM, gravity, and sedimentation–is unacceptable.
Please note: your protestations to scientists like @pevaquark and @T_aquaticus that natural selection is not good science is not what I’m interested in discussing.
Thanks,
Chris
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Hi Ashwin,
I would really appreciate your answering those seven questions I asked. If the answer to all the questions turns out to be “No, Christians need not reject quantum mechanics,” then I would appreciate your answering the follow-up questions.
Thanks,
Chris
This is what you said in another thread:
“No matter what the good folks at Biologos say, a naturalistic/materialistic world view will only support athiesm or at best Pantheism/Panentheism… and if we stretch it, Deism.
So its important to resist such a world view starting from first principles.”
You also said:
““Evolutionary” processes are unguided natural processes. Its the same as saying God created life by guiding unguided natural processes.Its a self contradiction.”
You have been openly hostile to the idea of looking for natural mechanisms, calling it materialism. It’s kind of hard to believe that you would suddenly do an about face and accept these natural mechanisms.
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Laws are human constructs, I think we can all agree to that. However, do you think it is wrong to say that electrons moving between orbitals is the cause for matter releasing photons? That’s what atheists accept as the source of light, how about you?
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I have pretty limited time to respond today and I see the discussion has gone on some ways from here, but I sense that this may be a point of key importance to address.
You quote this statement as though you disagree with it, if I am reading you aright. This is fascinating to me because it seems completely intuitive to me that there are many, many examples in the world of processes which are creative but not conscious. For example, some cities have centralized urban planning and some do not, and others are in between. There are a lot of cities in the world whose growth has occurred as the result of many small, local-level decisions which did not significantly consider bigger-picture or longer-term factors. There was no single consciousness directing the growth of the city, and yet it grew and is more or less functional.
Heck, any plant or fungal growth can be considered creative without being conscious. But I suspect you would consider that an argument that recurs right back to the topic of evolution.
Evolutionary computer algorithms have been brought up before, though it is hard to say if you know what they are and how they work. Others have given better explanations and links than I could do, so instead let me present an example almost too simple to count. Think of a chess-playing computer, where it can brute-force many possible game possibilities to choose the best winning path. It is using random changes, filtered by fitness, to outplay human masters. So which method is superior? Are you sure it is not human arrogance to assume that the way our minds deduce a logical course of action is the best, and therefore what God would use? Why wouldn’t God give all possibilities an equal chance at existence?
I have seen people argue how cruel God would have to be, to allow a world full of creatures doomed to pain and suffering. How much crueler would God have to be to abort all possible ‘non-ideal’ living things before they even exist?
If natural selection doesn’t have any creative power, Darwinism wouldn’t work.
I would love to hear @glipsnort on this.He was clear in saying NS had sometging to do with creating novelties.let me give an analogue that explains what NS is supposed to do. If random mutation,drift etc create a block of stone, then NS is the sculptor that carves out a shape like Michaelangelo’s David from it.
It’s the designer in the scheme.
Science giving a role to random events is never a problem. I have addressed this before also. I don’t know why people keep harping on it.
Of course stochastic events cannot build anything.
As to your questions about QM, most of your claims are false. There are valid interpretations of QM which see immaterial things like consciousness or information preceding matter. This is not held by a minority of scientists. Though I do reject nonsense like the multiverse theory which is used to prop up materialism.
The only difference is that physicists wouldn’t call me antiphysics for that.(at least I hope so).
I thought I already did… the error in your claim is that scientists don’t claim it’s more creative that QM,gravity etc… that’s precisely what they claim.All scientists know random processes do not generate order. So the agency that actually creates by pushing random variation in a particular direction is NS. And hence NS has creative power such that it can move from a primitive cell to the most complex organisms we see given enough time.
I.e God is not the designer or creator.
Let me use an example. A programmer creates an AI to play chess. It evolves over time and becomes capable enough to beat a grandmaster at chess. So who beat the GM? the AI or the programmer?
The AI did… The programmer himself would loose if he played against the grandmaster.
In the same sense, in Darwinism, NS designed life and God is not the primary designer and so creation does not reflect God’s glory, it reflects the characteristics of a stochastic,mindless process.This is in direct contradiction to the claims of the Bible.
This is a theological problem.
God bless.
Provided you explain what you mean by matter.
I don’t have any problem with describing empirical processes.
By the way, how is the formal definition of common ancestry coming up?
Any progress?
It works quite well for the past 700 million years but gets a whole lot messier when the main mechanism before that was horizontal gene transfer.
The messy part would be 3.3 billion years according to what you said (considering the oldest evidence for life is said to be 4 billion plus years old).
And there are evidences of more recent messes too… Like how mammals got a placenta (that would be a virus + an animal)…
It incorporates key events like how plant stole photosynthesis (that’s a cyanobacteria +eukaryote+another eukaryote)… It could be claimed that pretty much every known incidence of novelty involves HGT like endosymbiosis, ERVs etc and is not accomplished through Darwinian mechanisms or descent with gradual modification.
So why be so aggressive and act like people who are skeptical of common descent with gradual modifications are anti science or something?
And make claims like evolution is a fact an das proven as Newtons theory of gravity?
What’s wrong with that? You do realize that your quip has absolutely nothing to do with somehow casting doubt or falsifying the mountain of evidence from fossils, genomes, etc.
You do realize that actually supports common descent— as in one of the ‘roots’ of the mammalian lineage we belong to has the same ERV insertion as every other placental mammal.
And whoever claims this would be wrong. For starters ERV insertions literally prove common descent and other phylogenetic relations. So I’m not sure what your point is. This is another straw man argument, your third of this post so far from what I see. But I’ll just leave this part with nobody nobody nobody claims that the only way to generate new genetic information is changing single base pairs each generation. Here’s one summary of gene duplication for example (another mechanism that most people see to ignore):
You say skeptical, which is a good thing to have as a scientist, but completely misunderstand and mischaractetize what actual scientists think. I would certainly be skeptical too if anyone suggested single base pair mutations did all the heavy lifting! (Though we do have evidence of that doing some heavy lifting!)
So Newton’s theory of gravity was actually not really any theory at all. Newton didn’t describe how gravity actually worked but just a quantitative Law (F=GmM/r^2). In other words, he didn’t provide a mechanism outside of some unknown intelligent Agent who got our solar system up and running and mediates the gravitational force. Well we got a mechanism with Einstein’s formulation of General Relativity and a more accurate set of equations.
So yes, the theory of evolution would be way more established than Newton’s theory of gravity because he provided no mechanisms outside of a intelligent agent and his theory has since been discarded.
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Hi Ashwin,
Natural selection is not the only component in the model of evolution. The other components in the model are the ones that generate new configurations.
The environment (ecosystem, presence of predators, competitors, mates, prey, food sources, etc.) in which the configuration is introduced exerts some influence on which configurations are perpetuated and which are not. The influence of the local environment is referred to as natural selection.
Evolution only has creative power in the same sense that quantum mechanics and general relativity have a creative power that explains the formation of the universe, galaxies, stars, etc. As a Christian I believe that evolution, quantum mechanics and general relativity only have capabilities because God designed them to work that way.
While we are talking about the influence of local environments on perpetuation or extinction of configurations, allow me to expand this theological perspective. As a Christian who believes in the sovereignty of God, I profess that God can and does control, regulate, sustain, and influence those local environments–which in turn exert influence.
Ashwin, do you believe that God can and does control, regulate, sustain, and influence local environments throughout the planet? If you do, then you should understand how the process that is referred to as natural selection cannot be excluded from God’s sovereign influence. If we understand that God’s sovereign direction and providence are at work in ecosystems, geographies, and climates, then we know that God’s sovereign direction and providence are at work in the selection pressure that ecosystems, geographies and climates exert on phenotypes (and indirectly on genotypes).
Regardless of what some scientists, philosophers, etc. might say to the contrary.
My friend Ashwin, you have evidently never written a simulation that includes a random walk together with a loss function. Perhaps that’s why you do not understand how stochastic events can be an important component in a multi-component process that designs something.
I have written those kinds of simulations, and they do a great job.
Like I said in a comment that you were unable to respond to, you are claiming that my code cannot work when you say that stochastic events cannot contribute to creation. But I affirm to you that I committed code to source control, and it works quite well.
Really? Let’s take a look at the claims:
True or false? You have already agreed with me, so this must be labeled true
You have already acknowledged that many misuse QM to construct nonsense like the multiverse hypothesis (note: not a theory), so you agree with me that statement #2 is true.
You haven’t made any claims about this statement. I supplied the evidence from a survey and gave the link, so I am going to take the liberty of classifying it as true until you supply some evidence to the contrary.
You have not disputed this, so I am going to take the liberty of classifying it as true.
While you have not mentioned Hawking, Krauss, et al. by name, you have acknowledged that physicists misuse the multiverse hypothesis to exclude the possibility that God created all of us. So you seem to agree with me that this is true.
This goes back to the survey data (that I already cited) that 93% of physicists reject theism. Since you have not disputed the validity of the survey, I am going to label this as true.
These are all of the claims that I have made about quantum mechanics. I fail to see how any of them are false.
Sure. But 93% of leading physicists do not agree with you.
What this means is that you, I, and the 7% of leading physicists who are theists are able to interpret QM in a manner that includes God, while 93% of leading physicists are able to interpret QM in a manner that excludes God.
This is not a surprising outcome because QM, like every other scientific theory including evolution, is defined in a manner that neither includes God nor excludes God as a scientific matter, and leaves the issue of inclusion or exclusion to other disciplines.
93% of leading physicists claim that QM, not God, is what created and designed the universe. But this does not prevent you and me from believing that God created and designed the universe.
I employ a similar approach with respect to evolution. Many scientists claim that it excludes God as designer and creator; I nevertheless believe that God is the creator and designer of life.
This analogy is not applicable for three reasons:
- God is not inferior to any grandmaster. If he chooses to play the game by programming a game-playing Turing machine rather than playing directly, who is Ashwin or Chris to argue with Him?
You may respond that you and I do not do so, but some scientists see the programmer as inferior to the grandmaster. To which I say: such a view is not inherent to the scientific method, but is a philosophical/religious commitment. And we are not constrained either by the scientific method or by any other principle to agree with atheist scientists about their philosophical/religious viewpoints. - God providentially sustains the evolution process at every moment and every location. If He did not, the process (and indeed the whole universe) would collapse. This could not be said about the Turing machine in your analogy.
- To the extent that the analogy is apropos to biology, it is also apropos to physics. Remember, 93% of leading physicists are atheists, and they see QM and relativity as the AI that defeat the grandmaster in your analogy.
Since your analogy is deeply flawed, I do not feel inclined to give it any weight in decision making. So I will choose to accept the book of nature that God has written in genomes and fossils, a book that points to evolution as a scientific explanation of the life all around us.
For several hundred reasons, including the eyes of A. mexicanus and marsupial moles and all the evidence summoned by biologists in this forum, I believe you have misunderstood the book of nature and what biologists say about it. I suppose that the community of biologists who have collectively dedicated millions of years of thought and research to the question might be wrong, and you might be right. Some day we’ll know all the answers, and we won’t care about this discussion any more.
Grace and peace,
Chris
P.S. Unless you want to introduce evidence or arguments that haven’t been introduced before, I will leave the last word to you. Have a great Lord’s Day!
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Hi Ashwin,
A better way of thinking about the chess-playing Turing machine example is this: the scientific method is like a debugger that is only able to create hypotheses, gather evidence, and formulate theories about the details of how the Turing machine is able to play chess. The debugging tool is unable to say anything about the capabilities of a designer or whether he/she even exists. The code could have been written by a code-generating Turng machine, for all the debugger knows. The questions of code creation must be answered on different grounds and with different tools.
Last word is yours.
Grace and peace,
Chris Falter
Then why do you have a problem with evolution?
Common ancestry means inheriting a homologous feature through vertical inheritance, the very reason that you and your relatives share homologous genes.
What exactly is common descent? If it is a scientific theory it must have a formal definition.
All definitions is was able to come across say that “new species arise from one ancestor species”.
Without a formalisation, it would be unfalsifieable and untestable. Let me give you an example of an untestable generalisation of common descent - “All DNA based life forms are genealogically related”… can this be tested? It can only be assumed.
Even finding non-DNA based lifeforms wouldnt falsify this assumption. Even if life came about through special creation, it still wouldn’t falsify the idea (because De-Novo genes wont be the measure, the presence of existing genes would be what is considered).
How is this cience?
@T_aquaticus : This is why i asked for formal definition of common descent.What is happening is a bait and switch. When it comes to falsification, a general idea of common descent is promoted… and its taught as speciation through gradual/graded modification of an existing species.
Provided you can state this theory formally… Comon why dont you share a fromal version of what common descent is?
@BoltzmannBrain
Edit: Atleast Newton had the lucidity to clearly define his theory… Darwin also had this quality… However, moder evolutionary biologists have refined his theory to generalisations… which are essentially unfalsifiable.
So you don’'t believe it says anything about speciation? This could be true of special creation also… Once an organism is created, genes are inherited through vertical inheritance.
After all inheritance of existing genes cannot say anything about De-novo genes… and pretty much all genes came in existence at some point… the vast majority not being shared among all living beings.
Except for the fact that generations might be lost because of this. Evolution (as it is and has been taught) is one of the major causes of athiesm.
If you are right. Then there is no way a person can study nature and come to an inference of God as creator.
I dont think we will have to wait till Christ Comes for answer, if his return tarries, then the scientists might sort themselves out on their own,
Anyway, i have decided to wind up this discussion. I think we have covered all possible angles in detail.
Thanks to @Chris_Falter, @pevaquark, @Bill_II, @T_aquaticus, @T.j_Runyon, @AMWolfe, @Mervin_Bitikofer, @jpm,@gbrooks9, @Randy … I hope i have mentioned everyone i have interacted with.
Thanks for the civil discussion.Lets review this again in a few years… I think the scientific understanding of evolution is rapidly changing.
Regards
Ashwin.
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Thanks for stopping by, Ashwin.
“Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.” - Joshua 1:9
Chris
Welcome Chris.
God bless.