In defiance of science
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
For years, the left has claimed to be the party of science, while casting religious conservatives as ignorant, superstitious louts. But evidence is mounting that it's the other way around, and has been for some time.
After all, who are the ones claiming that we should ignore biology and redefine a man as a woman if he feels like it?
Who still claims, despite graphic ultrasound evidence that a growing human being in a womb is a baby, that because we don't really know, we can dispose of it?
Underlying this defiance of science is the claim for a purely material, evolutionary origin of life without any creative design. Based on speculation, it depends heavily on ignoring things like irreducible complexity.
That's when something could not logically have developed piecemeal but had to have come into being with its complex machinery intact. Anything less would actually reduce a creature's viability and survivability. Think of an underdeveloped wing, without feathers. Until fully able to assist in flight, the wing would be a burdensome appendage that could hobble a creature fighting off predators. For better examples, check out Michael J. Behe's theory of irreducible complexity in his groundbreaking 1996 book Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution.
The sheer beauty and complexity of the universe indicated to Albert Einstein and other great scientists like Isaac Newton evidence of intelligent design, i.e., a Creator God who is outside our conception of time and space. Without a Creator, the Big Bang makes no sense whatever.
To believe that life itself came from nothing, you have to believe that random chance and time somehow magically create fantastically complex things like the human cell. It's like insisting that a Mercedes Benz convertible could turn up on the moon just by chance and enough billions of years.
Beginning with the union of egg and sperm, a human cell rapidly reproduces into millions and then billions of cells. Within two weeks, the cells differentiate in order to become everything from the retina to an earlobe. It all happens via DNA, which remains a mystery as to how it works.
In his remarkable book, More than Meets the Eye, Richard A. Swenson, M.D. presents a tsunami of facts about the human body and brain that leaves one open-mouthed in wonder. That is, unless you are unimpressed by analogies like this, concerning the constant destruction and reformation of the 10 to 100 trillion cells in the body:
"If your body were a house, and the house were the size of Texas, imagine knocking down the walls in a million rooms every second and hastily rebuilding them again with new materials." (Emphasis mine)
If that's not enough, consider the body's use of its two to four pounds of calcium. Nearly 99 percent is stored in the bones and teeth, but the rest is used in blood clotting, nerve transmission, muscle contraction and heart function. Here's the neat part. When the body needs some calcium for one of these applications, it draws from the "exceptionally large total surface area of the tiny mineral crystals within the bone, equal to one hundred acres." Meanwhile, marrow in those bones, of which the body has about 200 to go along with 600 muscles, creates a trillion blood cells daily that travel through 60,000 miles of blood vessels.
As for the brain, it holds 10 to the 14th power bits of information with a storage capacity 1,000 times that of a Cray-2 supercomputer. This means it can hold information equivalent to 25 million books, enough to fill a bookshelf 500 miles long.
Ah, but how to use all that? The brain apparently performs a "thousand trillion computations per second," according to Dr. Swenson, who notes that, "it makes you wonder why balancing the checkbook is so hard." Checkbook? Ah, yes. Those are the things that people pull out when they're in the supermarket line ahead of you when you're in a hurry.
What might help us have more patience with our fellow human beings is the growing body of knowledge of how we are "fearfully and wonderfully made," in David's words in Psalm 139.
I thought about this while scanning social media, with all the insults, name calling and utter lack of appreciation for differences of opinion. The sheer level of vitriol is stunning.
Yes, there are violators on both sides, but I've found that it's the left more often than not that's working overtime to shut down honest discussion and to deny scientific truth when it interferes with their brave new world of sexual anarchy, earth worship and socialist economics.
There's nothing on the right comparable to the black-hooded thugs of Antifa, for instance, or the white-coated "scientists" who characterize anyone questioning manmade climate change as "deniers" who should be barred from public forums.
When we see people with whom we deeply disagree, it tempers our anger to ponder that they, like us, were created by a God who loves people in spite of our rebellious pride and wants only the best for us.
Robert Knight is a contributor to The Washington Times and OneNewsNow. This column first appeared on the Times' website.
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It is funny (and sad) that some will literally follow any half-baked pseudoscience if it provides an excuse for religious beliefs.
Actually, Einstein was an agnostic atheist. Newton, however, was indeed a theist (as were most everyone in his day).
Some people block facts. If one blocks relevant facts it is largely impossible to make sense of things.
What do Einstein's or Newton's religious beliefs have to do with disproving the point that the author is making that the fact that the existence of two VERY intelligent people is evidence of a Creator God?
You just blocked a fact by trying to point to the fallacy that someone's beliefs make the point of using that someone's existence as evidence of a God completely wrong. It's like saying that Communism's atheist beliefs make it so that there is no Evil and that all actions are inherently neutral despite the untold millions killed in the name of Communism for just not being in step with the rulers.
The existence of two very intelligent people is evidence of a creator??? Where do you see that claim? I think you need to rephrase.
What? I made no such claim.
I do not know where you are getting this, but that is not the point I made.
I can address a part of your question ...
The author mentions Einstein and Newton as two extremely intelligent individuals who see the beauty and awesome complexity of reality.
So why is this significant? Countless billions of people see this. Who has claimed that there is not an abundance of what we consider to be beauty and complexity in reality?
Their religious beliefs have nothing to do with science (realistically). And to disabuse anyone of thinking otherwise I noted that while Newton was religious (as were most everyone in his day), Einstein was in fact an agnostic atheist.
Who has stipulated that life came from nothing?
Again, if one refuses to listen to explanations then one will continually drown in incredulity. The information is available, those who do not avail themselves are willfully ignorant. Worse, however, are those who work hard at being willfully ignorant (like the author Robert Knight).
Life forms such as human beings are truly incredible. No doubt about it. And much of how we work remains to be discovered. Plenty of answered questions but plenty more that remain unanswered.
The author is making an argument from incredulity. Quite common problem. It is the core of 'Intelligent Design'.
ALL of the main examples of 'irreducible complexity' have been reduced, and therefore debunked. People haven't bothered with every one of them because it takes 10 times as much effort to refute BS as it takes to create it.
Evolution is not random. It has the unique property that a mutation that serves a purpose survives and is built upon. Anti-evolutionists often use the example of a tornado going through a junkyard assembling a plane. What they miss is that if something useful is created this way, it will almost certainly be destroyed by the next tornado. Life first appeared on Earth 3.5 billion years ago; lots of time for useful building to occur.
The rest of the seed is a look at how complex humans are. You can buy a cell phone with 256 times as much memory as the Cray-2. So, if your computation is correct, 4 phones can hold as much information as person. The expectation is that by 2050 we will have computers of equal complexity to human brains.
That pretty much sums up the argument for "ID" and its flawed claim of "irreducible complexity".
Is there any "God" or gods not based on speculation?
And if organisms are too complex to have evolved, and they must have required a designer, who designed the arguably far more complex designer? If the argument is that complexity requires a designer, then by that logic, their God would also require a designer, and that designer would require a more complex designer, and so on into infinity. The only answer I've ever seen has been that their God basically breaks all the rules of science even though they tried to use the rules of science to prove their Gods existence.
Lol I was thinking of jumping in on this thread but you all have so utterly destroyed the seed and seeder without any sort of worthwhile rebuttal that there really is no need. Good job everyone
Go right ahead. Don't let us stop you.
To be fair, it's not really difficult to do. And there is never any worthwhile rebuttal, if i can even be called that.
I see you have nothing but sweeping generalizations and finger pointing because rational people don't buy your BS as valid explanations for anything. The fact that you can't even address challenges or questions to your claims only proves that.
What you put forth is not discussion. Claims are not discussion — especially when they are ridiculous (e.g. your chant that evolution is pseudoscience). Further, countering a scientific point with the likes of ...
... is not honest discussion. It is proselytizing in lieu of a factual rebuttal. It is, in effect, 'I am right because God says so, so there'.
It doesn't address or refute anything I said and the fact that you support and quote his position makes you equally culpable.
Speculation: noun - the forming of a theory or conjecture without firm evidence
Faith: noun - strong belief in God or in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual apprehension rather than proof
I find those two words definitions interesting since they appear to be two sides of the same coin. Faith is really nothing but the strong desire for religious speculation to be true.