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The following are unclassified quotes posted in my email messages of May-June 2005. The date format
is dd/mm/yy.
See copyright conditions at end.
[Index: Jan-Feb, Mar, Apr], [May, Jun] [Jul (1), (2); Aug-Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec]
May
1/05/2005
"First, what actually happened. Early press reports tended to say that Kansas had banned evolution from
the classroom, had stripped all references to evolution from its curriculum guidelines, and so on. Some
reporters thought the school board was bringing creation science and the Bible into the science curriculum.
This was all a misunderstanding, which stemmed, in part, from two things. One is that the earliest reports
came before the decision was actually announced, and they were clearly from news sources on the science
educators' drafting committee. That committee had given the board a strongly pro-evolution draft. Members
of the committee were vociferously angry about the action the board had decided on, and they exaggerated
the story of the atrocity that was about to be committed. The second source of misunderstanding, I think, is
that this was the kind of story that reporters generally treat with a template. They start with Galileo, move on
to the Scopes trial, and go through the whole religion-versus-science routine. I think some of them hit the
`Bash Creationism' macro on the word processor. Many of the news reports and editorials could almost have
been written by the same person. The Kansas school board did not eliminate all references to evolution. In
the revised guidelines it accepted there were almost four hundred words on the subject, compared to fewer
than a hundred in the previous guidelines and more than seven hundred in the draft that the science
educators had proposed. The new guidelines covered natural selection, mutation, genetic drift, and all of
that. But the educators' draft had essentially said, These processes explain evolution at the micro level that
we observe and also evolution at the macro level; they explain how man and his universe came to be. By
contrast, the board majority drew a sharp distinction between micro-evolution--e.g., what occurs when
insects become resistant to a particular insecticide, or changes are produced in domestic animals through
breeding--and the origins story of how living things came to be in the first place. The gist of their final
version was that you can't infer the latter from the former. In certain ways, I would say that the board's
standards actually beefed up the treatment of the subject rather than watering it down. For example, they
added new clauses to the educators' draft saying that natural selection can maintain or deplete genetic
variation but does not add new genetic information." (Johnson, P.E.*, "Evolution and the Curriculum: A
Conversation with Phillip Johnson and Gregg Easterbrook," Ethics and Public Policy Center, February 2000,
No. 4)
1/05/2005
"For our present purpose, it is sufficient to recognize that these are the salient acknowledged elements of
the popular view of being scientifically methodical: empirical, pragmatic, open-minded, skeptical, sensitive to
possibilities of falsifying; thereby establishing objective facts leading to hypotheses, to laws, to theories;
and incessantly reaching out for new knowledge, new discoveries, new facts, and new theories. The burden
of the following will be how misleading this view-which I shall call `the myth of the scientific method'-is in
many specific directions, how incapable it is of explaining what happens in science, how it is worse than
useless as a guide to what society ought to do about science and technology. ... Thus geologists and
physicists tend to approach even scientific problems in disparate ways. They learn differently what it is to
be scientific, what the scientific method is; and so too do chemists and biologists and other scientists come
to different and even contradictory views of what science is. Yet these characteristic differences are but little
recognized, and the misconception remains widespread that there exists a single method whose utilization
marks the whole of science. In point of fact, as just illustrated, there is not any single thing that one can
usefully and globally call science; rather, there are many different sorts of science." (Bauer H.H., "Scientific
Literacy and the Myth of the Scientific Method," [1992], University of Illinois Press: Urbana & Chicago IL,
1994, reprint, pp.19-20, 28)
1/05/2005
"One reproductive strategy involves an individual alternating between male and female sex so that it does
not produce both eggs and sperm at the same time. In some species, there is a single change of sex. An
organism may start off as male, converting to female at some later stage, protandry, or as female, with a later
conversion to male, protogyny. In salmon, fish start life as males and over several years gradually get bigger
until they exceed a threshold size, at which time their gonads transform into ovaries .... There is a clear
advantage in this pattern of reproduction. Sperm are small, so even small males can produce sufficient sperm
to fertilise vast numbers of eggs. However, because eggs are large and yolky, the larger a female is, the
greater the number of eggs she can produce. ... Salmon are protandrous. After reaching a threshold size,
they change from male to female and begin producing thousands of yolky eggs ... A coral reef fish, the blue
wrasse, provides an example of protogyny. The large dominant male controls a harem of smaller, drab-
coloured females. The male alternates his colour between green and blue. About an hour before spawning,
the blue colour dominates and he commences mating.... This involves elaborate courtship behaviour
followed by spawning with each female in turn. His colour then changes back to green. If the male is lost
from a group, the largest female will undergo sex reversal and change colour to become the male with control
of the harem. Protogyny in the blue wrasse maximises reproductive output, since all but one of the
individuals is female and producing eggs, and the single male is able to fertilise eggs produced by all
females in its harem." (Knox B., Ladiges P. & Evans B., eds., "Biology," [1994], McGraw-Hill: Sydney,
Australia, 1995, reprint, p.259)
2/05/2005
"Australia's oldest human remains, found at Lake Mungo, include the world's oldest ritual ochre burial
(Mungo III) and the first recorded cremation (Mungo I). Until now, the importance of these finds has been
constrained by limited chronologies and palaeoenvironmental information. Mungo III, the source of the
world's oldest human mitochondrial DNA, has been variously estimated at 30 thousand years (kyr) old, 42-
45 kyr old and 62 ±6 kyr old, while radiocarbon estimates placed the Mungo I cremation near 20-26 kyr ago.
Here we report a new series of 25 optical ages showing that both burials occurred at 40±2 kyr ago and that
humans were present at Lake Mungo by 50-46 kyr ago, synchronously with, or soon after, initial occupation
of northern and western Australia. Stratigraphic evidence indicates fluctuations between lake-full and drier
conditions from 50 to 40 kyr ago, simultaneously with increased dust deposition, human arrival and
continent-wide extinction of the megafauna. This was followed by sustained aridity between 40 and 30 kyr
ago. This new chronology corrects previous estimates for human burials at this important site and provides
a new picture of Homo sapiens adapting to deteriorating climate in the world's driest inhabited
continent." (Bowler J. M., et al., "New ages for human occupation and climatic change at Lake Mungo,
Australia," Nature, 421, 20 February 2003, pp.837-840)
2/05/2005
"Creation scientists teach that all animals ate only plants until Adam and Eve rebelled against God's
authority. Because carnivorous activity involves animal death, they presume it must be one of the evil
results of human sin. Accordingly, they propose that meat-eating creatures alive now and evident in the
fossil record must have evolved in just several hundred years or less, by natural processes alone, from the
plant-eating creatures! The size of Noah's ark and the limited number of humans on board (eight) present an
equally serious problem for them. Even if all the animals aboard hibernated for the duration of the Flood, the
maximum carrying capacity by their estimates for the ark would : be about thirty thousand pairs of land
animals? But the fossil record indicates the existence of at least a half billion such species, more than five
million of which live on Earth today, and at least two million more lived in the era immediately after the Flood,
as they date it. The problem grows worse. Shortly after the Flood, they say, a large proportion of the thirty
thousand species on board - dinosaurs, trilobites [sic], and so on-went extinct; so the remaining few thousand
species must have evolved by rapid and efficient natural processes alone into seven million or more species.
Ironically, creation scientists (quietly) propose an efficiency of natural biological evolution greater than
even the most optimistic Darwinist would dare to suggest." (Ross H.N.*, "The Genesis Question: Scientific
Advances and the Accuracy of Genesis," NavPress: Colorado Springs CO, 1998, pp.91-92)
2/05/2005
"For all practical purposes, one could say that, at the outside, there was need for no more than 35,000
individual vertebrate animals on the Ark. The total number of so-called species of mammals, birds reptiles
and amphibians listed by Mayr is 17,600, but undoubtedly the number of original `kinds' was less than this."
(Whitcomb J.C.* & Morris H.M.*, "The Genesis Flood: The Biblical Record and its Scientific Implications,"
[1961], Baker: Grand Rapids MI, 1993, Thirty-Sixth Printing, pp.68-69)
2/05/2005
"And how many species of organisms are there on earth? We don't know, not even to the nearest order of
magnitude. The number could be close to 10 million or as high as 100 million. Large numbers of new species
continue to turn up every year. And of those already discovered, over 99 percent are known only by a
scientific name, a handful of specimens in a museum, and a few scraps of anatomical description in scientific
journals. It is a myth that scientists break out champagne when a new species is discovered. Our museums
are glutted with new species. We don't have time to describe more than a small fraction of those pouring in
each year. With the help of other systematists, I recently estimated the number of known species of
organisms, including all plants, animals, microorganisms, to be 1.4 million. This figure could easily be off by
a hundred thousand, so poorly defined are species in some groups of organisms and so chaotically
organized is the literature on diversity in general. More to the point, evolutionary biologists are generally
agreed that this estimate is less than a tenth of the number that actually live on earth." (Wilson E.O., "The
Diversity of Life," Belknap/Harvard University Press: Cambridge MA, 1992, pp.132-133)
3/05/2005
"It is interesting to note that even today pi cannot be calculated precisely-there are no two whole numbers
that can make a ratio equal to pi. Mathematicians find a closer approximation every year-in 2002, for example,
experts at the University of Tokyo Information Technology Center determined the value of pi to over one
trillion decimal places. But this is academic: the value determined by Archimedes over 2,000 years ago is
sufficient for most uses today." (Groleau R., "Approximating Pi," Infinite Secrets, PBS NOVA,
September 2003)
3/05/2005
"I knew the Kansas story was going to be a big one on Tuesday, August 10, 1999, when the telephone and
e-mail messages from reporters began to pile up. On the following day the ten-member Kansas state board of
education was scheduled to vote on its new standards for science education. For weeks the board had
reportedly been evenly divided over whether to accept a strongly proevolution draft proposed by a twenty-
seven-member committee of scientists and educators. The newspapers labeled one faction as creationists,
fundamentalists or religious conservatives. Their opponents were consistently called `moderates,' a label
signifying rationality and tolerance which journalists tend to apply to the side they favor. During the last
few days before the crucial vote, one of the moderates had turned out to be sympathetic to the creationist
side, and the new six-member majority was revising the committee's draft in a manner certain to displease the
scientific community. The media were poised to make a big story out of this latest outbreak of grassroots
dissatisfaction with the teaching of evolutionary science. What the reporters thought was about to happen
had been explained the Sunday before the vote in a front-page story in the Washington Post by reporter
Hanna Rosin, which was reprinted in newspapers around the country [Rosin H., `Creationism Evolves:
Kansas Board Targets Darwin,' The Washington Post, August 8, 1999, p.A01] Apparently relying on reports
from members of the original drafting committee who were bitterly at odds with the new majority on the
board, Rosin wrote that the Kansas board appeared about to `pass a new statewide science curriculum for
kindergarten through 12th grade that wipes out virtually all mention of evolution and related concepts:
natural selection, common ancestors and the origins of the universe:' Rosin said that the new curriculum
would not explicitly prohibit the teaching of evolution, `but its exclusion will severely undermine such
efforts when they come under attack from students, parents, principals or local school boards in a state
where fights over evolution are as commonplace as cornfields. And because all public schools in the state
are tested yearly according to the curriculum, teachers will be pressured to follow the new curriculum.'
According to Rosin, the pending expulsion of evolution from the curriculum reflected a change in tactics by
a persistently aggressive national creationist movement. ...Most of Rosin's story gave the impression that
the creationists were the aggressors in a programmed nationwide campaign in which Kansas was merely the
latest target. One paragraph acknowledged, however, that in reality it was the science educators who were
pushing for change on the basis of an organized nationwide campaign: `The century-old debate erupted
again, ironically, in part out of a push to improve science education. About five years ago, a craze for
national standards and accountability in every subject swept American classrooms. In response, national
groups of science educators wrote benchmarks for scientific literacy to serve as models for states. The idea
was to replace blind memorization of facts and figures with broad central concepts. With evolution, the
results were not what scientists had predicted. Religious conservatives tapped into skepticism from inside
and outside the scientific community to discredit evolution, seizing on routine disagreements among
scientists to disparage it as nothing more than a theory.' We can flesh out this picture of local creationists
reacting to an initiative from science educators with some facts. What was specifically at issue in Kansas
was a proposal from scientists and educators to replace the existing standards, last revised in 1995, with new
standards based on a model from national science organizations. The 1995 standards contained only sixty-
nine words directly about evolution. The draft proposed by the twenty-seven-member committee devoted
almost ten times as many words to the subject and added evolution to the list of basic `unifying concepts
and processes' which underlie all areas of science. So evolution was promoted from the status of a theory of
biology to that of a fundamental concept of science (ranking it with such other concepts as measurement
and evidence). The committee defined science as `the human activity of seeking natural explanations
for what we observe in the world around us,' thus linking scientific investigation explicitly with
philosophical naturalism. What the science educators described as `replacing blind memorization of facts
and figures with broad central concepts' looked to critics like a campaign to extend scientific authority to
questions of religion and worldview about which the public schools are supposed to be neutral. If a central
objective of science education is to instill a naturalistic way of thinking, then both the educators and their
critics were right." (Johnson, P.E.*, "The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism,"
Intervarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 2000, pp.63-67. Emphasis original)
4/05/2005
"The conservative board members also objected to the eagerness of the science educators to extrapolate
grandly from minimal evidence, turning a process that was observed to produce only cyclical variations in
fundamentally stable species into a mechanism capable of creating plants and animals in the first place. The
science educators' draft observed that `using examples such as Darwin's finches or the peppered moths of
Manchester helps develop understanding of natural selection over time.' It defined macroevolution
merely as `evolution above the species levels and provided no indication that there is a huge difference
between mere variation and creation of new types of complex organs or body plans. Feeling that they were
being subjected more to a sales pitch for naturalism than to a genuine educational proposal, the board
majority in its final product cut down on the emphasis (reducing the proposed 664 words to 392) and
distinguished sharply between microevolution (required) and microevolution (optional for local districts).
But the potentially most significant change involved only a single word and was overlooked by the
journalists. Whereas the drafting committee had defined science as the human activity of seeking
natural explanations, the board substituted that `science is the human activity of seeking
logical explanations for what we observe in the world around us' (emphasis added). If you think there
may be a difference in some cases between natural explanations and logical explanations for certain features
of life, then you are well on your way to becoming a creationist. Within the community of evolutionary
scientists, naturalism and rationality are considered to be virtually the same thing. ...the widespread reports
about the decision (probably influenced by the expectations raised in the Washington Post story) were
incorrect in stating that the board had virtually eliminated evolution and natural selection from the
curriculum. On the contrary, the board greatly improved the intellectual content of the standards on these
subjects by encouraging teachers to raise three important considerations that many science educators do
not want the students to think about: (1) the mechanisms of microevolution do not necessarily
explain how macroevolution can occur, especially when the latter category involves not merely speciation
but the creation of new complex organs; (2) natural selection adds no new genetic information to the
organism; and (3) a vast historical scenario like `evolution' necessarily involves a degree of speculation that
is absent from, say, the typical chemistry experiment. When educators say that science teaches that water is
made up of hydrogen and oxygen, they are making a very different kind of statement than when they say
that science teaches that life arose by chemical evolution without the need of assistance from God. If the
educators want to teach the students to think like good scientists rather than to believe uncritically
whatever `science says,' then they need to teach the students that sometimes the authority of `science' is
used to validate claims that are based largely on speculation." (Johnson, P.E.*, "The Wedge of Truth:
Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism," Intervarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 2000, pp.67-70. Emphasis in
original)
4/05/2005
"The informal leadership of the IDM has more or less come to rest on Philip Johnson, a distinguished retired
(emeritus) Professor of Law at Berkeley University who is a Presbyterian. Philosophically and theologically,
the leading lights of the ID movement form an eclectic group. For example, Dr Jonathan Wells is not only a
scientist but also an ordained cleric in the Unification Church (the 'Moonie' sect) and Dr Michael Denton is a
former agnostic anti-evolutionist (with respect to biological transformism), who now professes a vague form
of theism. However, he now seems to have embraced evolutionary (though somehow 'guided') transformism.
Dr Michael Behe, author of Darwin's Black Box, is a Roman Catholic who says he has no problem with the
idea that all organisms, including man, descended from a common ancestor." (Wieland C.*, "AiG's views on
the Intelligent Design Movement," Answers in Genesis, 30 August 2002)
4/05/2005
"Man is a primate, and in some ways not a very special one. He can do more than any other creature, but
has not changed much to do so. The strangest thing about human evolution is how little there has been.
Nothing else is so widespread and nobody fills so many gaps in the economy of nature. Many animals carry
out tasks almost as wonderful as those achieved by men, but through biology rather than intellect. For them,
success at one task means failure at all others. In the past hundred thousand - in the past hundred - years,
human lives have been transformed, but bodies have not. We did not evolve, because our machines did it
for us. As Darwin put it in The Descent of Man: 'The highest possible stage in moral culture is when we
recognize that we ought to control our thoughts'. Human progress has made a simple but crucial move, from
body to mind. That mind is built from genes but what it can do has long transcended DNA. Many
sociologists (and a few biologists) hope for a comparative anatomy of the mind; but that can never succeed.
When it comes to what makes us different from other creatures, science can answer all the questions except
the interesting ones. The human intellect stands alone. As there is nothing else like it, the rules of
classification come into play. If an object is one of a kind, it is impossible to know where to put it. The
problem with the mind, or any uniquely human attribute, is simple: it is, like the narwhal's tusk or the female
hyena's penis, unique." (Jones J.S., "Almost Like a Whale: The Origin of Species Updated," Doubleday:
London, 1999, p.351)
4/05/2005
"Creation scientists teach that all animals ate only plants until Adam and Eve rebelled against God's
authority. Because carnivorous activity involves animal death, they presume it must be one of the evil
results of human sin. Accordingly, they propose that meat-eating creatures alive now and evident in the
fossil record must have evolved in just several hundred years or less, by natural processes alone, from the
plant-eating creatures! The size of Noah's ark and the limited number of humans on board (eight) present an
equally serious problem for them. Even if all the animals aboard hibernated for the duration of the Flood, the
maximum carrying capacity by their estimates for the ark would be about thirty thousand pairs of land
animals? But the fossil record indicates the existence of at least a half billion such species, more than five
million of which live on Earth today, and at least two million more lived in the era immediately after the Flood,
as they date it. The problem grows worse. Shortly after the Flood, they say, a large proportion of the thirty
thousand species on board - dinosaurs, trilobites, and so on-went extinct; so the remaining few thousand
species must have evolved by rapid and efficient natural processes alone into seven million or more species.
Ironically, creation scientists (quietly) propose an efficiency of natural biological evolution greater than
even the most optimistic Darwinist would dare to suggest." (Ross H.N.*, "The Genesis Question: Scientific
Advances and the Accuracy of Genesis," NavPress: Colorado Springs CO, 1998, pp.90-91)
4/05/2005
"Light has been thrown upon the whole problem of animal distribution and adaptation-or what may be called
`a true evolution.' After the Flood each species began to `mutate' and new forms began to arise. Among the
cattle varieties were produced having short hair, such as is found in the Zebu of India or the Red Africander.
Such a coat being better adapted to a hot climate, these varieties migrated to warm, equatorial regions. Other
varieties were produced having long, warm coverings of hair, such as the West Highlander and Galloway, or
the prehistoric wild ox of northern Europe called the `auroch.' These varieties migrated northward. Natural
selection, working upon Mendelian or `genic' variations, produced all the evolution there is. Such evolution
is strictly in accordance with what is taught in all Scripture." (Nelson B.C.*, "After Its Kind," [1927],
Bethany Fellowship: Minneapolis MN, Revised edition, 1952, Nineteenth printing, 1967, pp.119-120)
5/05/2005
"About two years ago, I attended a public lecture presented by a young earth creationist speaker in a
church near where I live. His occasionally interesting talk included scientific `evidence' that he believed
supported his position. The speaker did present some valid points. ... However, much of his presentation
consisted of simplistic `scientific' arguments that would only be considered to be convincing by people
already committed to a young earth view. ... Towards the end of the presentation I attended, the speaker
said, `There is a person in America called Hugh Ross who claims to be a Christian but he is really an
evolutionist'. I was shocked. Dr Hugh Ross, as most readers would know is the founder of _Reasons to
Believe_. He has dedicated most of his Christian life to evangelism. For this speaker to even question Dr
Ross's Christian commitment is disgraceful. In supreme irony, and unknown to the audience, it is the young
earth speaker who actually believes that all of the cats mentioned above, in addition to your pet pussy at
home and even the extinct sabre-tooth tigers `evolved' from a single pair of ancestors. And further, this
hyper-evolution happened in only a few thousand years at most." (Neilson M.*, "Intellectual
Honesty," Reasons to Believe (Australia) Newsletter, March 2005)
5/05/2005
"In a modified form of materialism, epiphenominalism, the mind is not identical to the brain, but it is
dependent on the physical brain, the way a shadow is dependent on a tree. This again assumes, though it
does not prove, that the mind is dependent on the brain. Certain mental functions can be explained in
physical ways, but that does not mean they are dependent on physical processes. If there is a spiritual, as
well as a physical, dimension to reality, the mind shows every sign of being able to function in either.
Neurobiology is an empirical science, but these scientists freely admit that they have not come close to
isolating the "I" They can quantify mind-brain interactions, but there has been no success in learning the
qualities of emotional or self response." (Geisler N.L.*, "Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics,"
Baker Books: Grand Rapids MI, 1999, p.445. Emphasis original)
5/05/2005
"In a modified form of materialism, epiphenominalism, the mind is not identical to the brain, but it is
dependent on the physical brain, the way a shadow is dependent on a tree. This again assumes, though it
does not prove, that the mind is dependent on the brain. Certain mental functions can be explained in
physical ways, but that does not mean they are dependent on physical processes. If there is a spiritual, as
well as a physical, dimension to reality, the mind shows every sign of being able to function in either.
Neurobiology is an empirical science, but these scientists freely admit that they have not come close to
isolating the `I' They can quantify mind-brain interactions, but there has been no success in learning the
qualities of emotional or self response." (Geisler N.L.*, "Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics,"
Baker Books: Grand Rapids MI, 1999, p.445. Emphasis original)
5/05/2005
"epiphenomenalism. Group of doctrines about mental-physical causal relations, which view some or all
aspects of mentality as by-products of the physical goings-on in the world. The classic definition (e.g. in C.
D. Broad, The Mind and its Place in Nature (1925) ensures that epiphenomenalism is a species of dualism.
Whereas Descartes, an interactionist, held that mental things both cause and are caused by physical things,
the epiphenomenalist holds that mental things do not cause physical things although they are caused by
them. The epiphenomenalist then can accept that there are no causal influences on physical events besides
other physical events, and thus can escape one objection sometimes raised against dualism. But the
epiphenomenalist's picture of mental events as tacked on to the physical world, having no causal influence
there, is unappealing: she would seem to think that mental things feature in the world as accompanying
shadows of the physical-in the realm of `pure experience'." (Horn J., "epiphenomenalism," in Honderich T.,
ed., "The Oxford Companion to Philosophy," Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1995, p.241)
5/05/2005
"epiphenomenalism The view that some feature of a situation arises in virtue of others, but itself has no
causal powers. In the philosophy of mind this means that while there exist mental events, states of
consciousness, and experiences, they have themselves no causal powers, and produce no effect on the
physical world. The analogy sometimes used is that of the whistle on the engine, that makes the sound
(corresponding to experience), but plays no part in making the machinery move. Epiphenomenalism is a
drastic solution to the major difficulty of reconciling the existence of mind with the fact that according to
physics itself only a physical event can cause another physical event. An epiphenomenalist may accept
one-way causation, whereby physical events produce mental events, or may prefer some kind of parallelism,
avoiding causation either between mind and body or between body and mind (see occasionalism). A major
problem for epiphenomenalism is that if mental events have no causal relationships it is not clear that they
can be objects of memory, or even awareness. See also base and superstructure. epiphenomenon An
incidental product of some process, that has no effects of its own. See epiphenomenalism." (Blackburn S.,
"The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy," [1994], Oxford University Press: Oxford UK, 1996, pp.122-123)
5/05/2005
"The mechanistic theory postulates that all the phenomena of life, including human behaviour, can in
principle be explained in terms of physics. Apart from any problems that might arise from the particular
theories of modern physics, or from conflicts between them, this postulate is problematical for at least two
fundamental reasons. First, the mechanistic theory could only be valid if the physical world were causally
closed. In relation to human behaviour, this would be the case if mental states either had no reality at all, or
were in some sense identical to physical states of the body, or ran parallel to them, or were epiphenomena of
them. But if on the other hand the mind were non-physical and yet causally efficacious, capable of
interacting with the body, then human behaviour could not be fully explained in physical terms. The
possibility that mind and body interact is by no means ruled out by the available evidence: at present no
clear-cut decision can be made on empirical grounds between the mechanistic theory and the interactionist
theory; from a scientific point of view the question remains open. Therefore it is possible that human
behaviour, at least, might not be explicable entirely in physical terms, even in principle. Second, the attempt
to account for mental activity in terms of physical science involves a seemingly inevitable circularity,
because science itself depends on mental activity. This problem has become apparent within modern
physics in connection with the role of the observer in processes of physical measurement; the principles of
physics 'cannot even be formulated without referring (though in some versions only implicitly) to the
impressions - and thus to the minds - of the observers' (B.D. Espagnat 17). Thus, since physics presupposes
the minds of observers, these minds and their properties cannot be explained in terms of physics."
(Sheldrake R., "A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance," [1981], Park Street Press:
Rochester VT, 1995, reprint, pp.25-26)
5/05/2005
"eepiphenomenalism ... n. a theory about the relation between matter and mind, according to which there is
some physical basis for every mental occurrence. Mental phenomena are seen as by-products, as it were, of
a closed system of physical causes and effects, and they have no causal power of their own. (T. H. Huxley
likened them to the whistle on a steam train.) epiphenomenon ... (sing.); epiphenomena (pl.) n. a secondary
phenomenon; a by-product. (Musgrave A. epiphenomenalism," in Mautner T., "The Penguin Dictionary of
Philosophy," [1996], Penguin: London, Revised, 2000, p.174-175)
6/05/2005
"epiphenomenalism, n. the doctrine that states of CONSCIOUSNESS, including VOLITIONS, are merely
byproducts of the working of the brain, and, in the words of T. H. Huxley (On the Hypothesis that Animals
are Automata, 1874), are `as completely without any power of modifying that working as the steamwhistle
which accompanies the working of a locomotive engine is without influence upon its machinery'." (Vesey G.
& Foulkes P., "Collins Dictionary of Philosophy," HarperCollins: Glasgow UK, 1990, p.100. Emphasis in
original)
6/05/2005
"Epiphenomenalism. Empirical research gives every indication that the occurrence of any brain state can, in
principle, be causally explained by appeal solely to other physical states. To accommodate this, some
philosophers espoused epiphenomenalism, the doctrine that physical states cause mental states, but mental
states do not cause anything. Epiphenomenalism implies that there is only one-way psychophysical action -
from the physical to the mental. Since epiphenomenalism allows such causal action, it can both allow that we
perceive objects and events in the physical world and embrace the causal theory of sense perception - what
we perceive (i.e., see, hear, etc.) must cause us to undergo a sense experience (i.e., a visual experience, aural
experience, etc.). However, if combined with Cartesian dualism, epiphenomenalism, like Cartesian
interactionism, implies the problematic thesis that states of an extended substance can affect states of an
unextended substance. Moreover, it is hard to see how epiphenomenalism can allow that we are ever
intentional agents. For intentional agency requires acting on reasons, which, according to the causal theory
of action, requires a causal connection between reasons and actions. Since epiphenomenalism denies that
such causal connections are possible, it must either maintain that our sense of agency is illusory - or offer
an alternative to the causal theory of action. (McLaughlin B.P., "philosophy of mind," in Audi R., ed., "The
Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy," [1995], Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1996, reprint,
p.598)
6/05/2005
"What about the option, then, of concluding that mind stuff is actually a special kind of matter? In Victorian
seances, the mediums often produced out of thin air something they called "ectoplasm," a strange gooey
substance that was supposedly the basic material of the spirit world, but which could be trapped in a glass
jar, and which oozed and moistened and reflected light just like everyday matter. Those fraudulent trappings
should not dissuade us from asking, more soberly, whether mind stuff might indeed be something above
and beyond the atoms and molecules that compose the brain, but still a scientifically investigatable kind of
matter. The ontology of a theory is the catalogue of things and types of things the theory deems to exist.
The ontology of the physical sciences used to include "caloric" (the stuff heat was made of, in effect) and
"the ether" (the stuff that pervaded space and was the medium of light vibrations in the same way air or
water can be the medium of sound vibrations). These things are no longer taken seriously, while neutrinos
and antimatter and black holes are now included in the standard scientific ontology. Perhaps some basic
enlargement of the ontology of the physical sciences is called for in order to account for the phenomena of
consciousness. Just such a revolution of physics has recently been proposed by the physicist and
mathematician Roger Penrose, in The Emperor's New Mind (1989). While I myself do not think he has
succeeded in making his case for revolution, it is important to notice that he has been careful not to fall into
the trap of dualism." (Dennett D.C., "Consciousness Explained," [1991], Penguin: London, 1993, reprint,
pp.35-36)
6/05/2005
"Above the level of the virus, if that be granted status as an organism, the simplest living unit is almost
incredibly complex. It has become commonplace to speak of evolution from ameba to man, as if the ameba
were a natural and simple beginning of the process. On the contrary, if, as must almost necessarily be true
short of miracles, life arose as a living molecule or protogene, the progression from this stage to that of the
ameba is at least as great as from ameba to man. All the essential problems of living organism are already
solved in the one-celled (or, as many now prefer to say, noncellular) protozoan and these are only
elaborated in man or the other multicellular animals." (Simpson G.G., "The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of
the History of Life and of its Significance for Man," [1949], Yale University Press: New Haven CT, 1960,
reprint, pp.15-16)
7/05/2005
"I hope I have successfully illustrated the wide reach of Darwin's ideas. Yes, he established a philosophy of
biology by introducing the time factor, by demonstrating the importance of chance and contingency, and by
showing that theories in evolutionary biology are based on concepts rather than laws. But furthermore-and
this is perhaps Darwin's greatest contribution-he developed a set of new principles that influence the
thinking of every person: the living world, through evolution, can be explained without recourse to
supernaturalism; essentialism or typology is invalid, and we must adopt population thinking, in which all
individuals are unique (vital for education and the refutation of racism); natural selection, applied to social
groups, is indeed sufficient to account for the origin and maintenance of altruistic ethical systems; cosmic
teleology, an intrinsic process leading life automatically to ever greater perfection, is fallacious, with all
seemingly teleological phenomena explicable by purely material processes; and determinism is thus
repudiated, which places our fate squarely in our own evolved hands. To borrow Darwin's phrase, there is
grandeur in this view of life. New modes of thinking have been, and are being, evolved. Almost every
component in modern man's belief system is somehow affected by Darwinian principles." (Mayr E.W.,
"Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought," Scientific American, Vol. 283, No. 1, pp.67-71, July 2000, p.71)
7/05/2005
"A basic action is one which a person does intentionally just like that and not by doing any other
intentional action. My going from Oxford to London is a non-basic action, because I do it by doing various
other actions going to the station, getting on the train, etc. But squeezing my hand or moving my leg and
even saying 'this' are basic actions. I just do them, not by doing any other intentional act. (True, certain
events have to happen in my body my nerves have to transmit impulses if I am to perform the basic action.
But these are not events which I bring about intentionally. They just happen I may not even know about
them.) By a basic power I mean a power to perform a basic action. We humans have similar basic powers to
each other. They are normally confined to powers of thought and powers over the small chunk of matter
which each of us calls his or her body. I can only produce effects in the world outside my body by doing
something intentional with my body. I can open a door by grasping the handle with my hand and pulling it
towards me; or l can get you to know something by using my mouth to tell you something. When l produce
some effect intentionally (e.g. the door being open) by doing some other action (e.g. pulling it towards me),
doing the former is performing a non-basic action. When I go to London, or write a book, or even put a
screw into a wall, these are non-basic actions which I do by doing some basic actions. When I perform any
intentional action, I seek thereby to achieve some purpose normally one beyond the mere performance of
the action itself (I open a door in order to be able to leave the room), but sometime simply the performance of
the action itself (as when I sing for its own sake). ... God's basic powers are supposed to be infinite: he can
bring about as a basic action any event he chooses, and he does not need bones or muscles to operate in
certain ways in order to do so. He can bring objects, including material objects, into existence and keep them
in existence from moment to moment. We can imagine finding ourselves having a basic power not merely to
move objects, but to create them instantaneously for example the power to make a pen or a rabbit come into
existence; and to keep them in existence and then let them no longer exist. There is no contradiction in this
supposition, but of course in fact no human has such a power. What the theist claims about God is that he
does have a power to create, conserve, or annihilate anything, big or small. And he can also make objects
move or do anything else. He can make them attract or repel each other, in the way that scientists have
discovered that they do, and make them cause other objects to do or suffer various things: he can make the
planets move in the way that Kepler discovered that they move, or make gunpowder explode when we set a
match to it; or he can make planets move in quite different ways, and chemical substances explode or not
explode under quite different conditions from those which now govern their behaviour. God is not limited by
the laws of nature; he makes them and he can change or suspend them-if he chooses." (Swinburne R.G., "Is
There a God?," Oxford University Press: Oxford UK, 1996, pp.5-6)
7/05/2005
"An expert claims hard evidence that Matthew's Gospel was written while eyewitnesses to Christ were alive.
New Testament scholarship may be revolutionized by three old scraps of papyrus no bigger than postage
stamps. Unlikely as that seems, such are the possibilities swirling around Carsten Peter Thiede, an
assertively good-natured German specialist in ancient papyrus manuscripts. In an article to appear next week
in the world's leading papyrolory journal, Thiede will lay out his claim to have discerned the earliest New
Testament manuscript fragment-a portion of the Gospel of Matthew from upper Egypt that he says was
written in the 1st century A.D. Until now the oldest manuscript remnant was a bit of the Gospel of John, also
from Egypt, believed to have been written a half-century later, around A.D. 120. The 1934 John discovery
helped undercut theories that the fourth Gospel was a late 2nd century creation far removed from the time of
Jesus Christ. The implications of the new detective work on Matthew could be even more startling. If
Matthew made its way to Egypt so early on, the modern argument over the dating and authenticity of the
Gospels would have to be totally re- examined. With unmitigated gusto, the London Times calls Thiede "the
man who may transform our understanding of Christianity." Bible professors are initially, and typically,
skeptical, however. Graham Stanton of King's College, London, sniffs that Thiede's article "will not merit
serious discussion." American Paul Achtemeier editor of Harpers Bible Dictionary, says he would be
"mightily surprised if this turns out to be right" Thiede's proposed dating of the papyrus fragments, which
contain 10 scattered verses from Matthew 26 in Greek, is based on handwriting style. That would provide
the first hard external evidence for dating the original composition; previous timing opinions have been
based on the internal content of the Gospels. In Thiede's view, the writing of Matthew could be pushed
back just before or after A.D. 70, a decade or more earlier than the consensus date among most experts.
Earlier dating would considerably increase the number of eye- witnesses to Jesus who might have been alive
when Matthew was written. That, in turn, would strengthen conservatives, who read the Gospels as reliable
historical accounts, and tend to undercut liberal Bible critics who have long theorized that the Gospel
authors relied on shaky recollections of distant events or fabricated stories." (Ostling R.N., "A Step Closer
to Jesus?," TIME, January 23, 1995, p.47)
8/05/2005
"Darwin ... wrote in a letter to Sir Charles Lyell, the leading geologist of his day: `If I were convinced that I
required such additions to the theory of natural selection, I would reject it as rubbish...I would give nothing
for the theory of Natural selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent.' [Darwin,
C.R., Letter to C. Lyell, October 11, 1859, in Darwin, F., ed., "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," [1898],
Basic Books: New York NY, Vol. II., 1959, reprint, pp.6-7]. This is no petty matter. In Darwin's view, the
whole point of the theory of evolution by natural selection was that it provided a non-
miraculous account of the existence of complex adaptations. For what it is worth, it is also the whole point of
this book. For Darwin, any evolution that had to be helped over the jumps by God was not evolution at all.
... At first sight there is an important distinction to be made between what might be called 'instantaneous
creation' and 'guided evolution'. Modern theologians of any sophistication have given up believing in
instantaneous creation. ... many theologians ... smuggle God in by the back door: they allow him some sort
of supervisory role over the course that evolution has taken, either influencing key moments in evolutionary
history (especially, of course, human evolutionary history), or even meddling more comprehensively in the
day-to-day events that add up to evolutionary change. ... In short, divine creation, whether instantaneous or
in the form of guided evolution, joins the list of other theories we have considered in this chapter."
(Dawkins, R., "The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design,"
W.W Norton & Co: New York NY, 1986, pp.248-249, 316-317. Emphasis original)
8/05/2005
"WHEN WAS THE New Testament written? This is a question that the outsider might be forgiven for
thinking that the experts must by now have settled. Yet, as in archaeology, datings that seem agreed in the
textbooks can suddenly appear much less secure than the consensus would suggest. For both in
archaeology and in New Testament chronology one is dealing with a combination of absolute and relative
datings. There are a limited number of more or less fixed points, and between them phenomena to be
accounted for are strung along at intervals like beads on a string according to the supposed requirements of
dependence, diffusion and development. New absolute dates will force reconsideration of relative dates, and
the intervals will contract or expand with the years available. In the process long-held assumptions about
the pattern of dependence, diffusion and development may be upset, and patterns that the textbooks have
taken for granted become subjected to radical questioning. ... It is only when one pauses to do this that one
realizes how thin is the foundation for some of the textbook answers and how circular the arguments for
many of the relative datings. Disturb the position of one major piece and the pattern starts disconcertingly
to dissolve. That major piece was for me the gospel of John. I have long been convinced that John contains
primitive and reliable historical tradition, and that conviction has been reinforced by numerous studies in
recent years. ... It was at this point that I began to ask myself just why any of the books of the New
Testament needed to be put after the fall of Jerusalem in 70. As one began to look at them, and in particular
the epistle to the Hebrews, Acts and the Apocalypse, was it not strange that this cataclysmic event was
never once mentioned or apparently hinted at? And what about those predictions of it in the gospels - were
they really the prophecies after the event that our critical education had taught us to believe?" (Robinson
J.A.T., "Redating The New Testament," [1976], SCM Press: London, Second impression, 1977, pp.1,9-10)
8/05/2005
"ONE OF THE oddest facts about the New Testament is that what on any showing would appear to be the
single most datable and climactic event of the period - the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70, and with it the collapse
of institutional Judaism based on the temple - is never once mentioned as a past fact. It is, of course,
predicted; and these predictions are, in some cases at least, assumed to be written (or written up) after the
event. But the silence is nevertheless as significant as the silence for Sherlock Holmes of the dog that did
not bark. ... `We should expect ... that an event like the fall of Jerusalem would have dinted some of the
literature of the primitive church, almost as the victory at Salamis has marked the Persae. It might be
supposed that such an epoch-making crisis would even furnish criteria for determining the dates of some of
the NT writings. As a matter of fact, the catastrophe is practically ignored in the extant Christian literature of
the first century.' [Moffatt J., "Introduction to the Literature of the New Testament," Edinburgh, 1918, p.3]
Similarly C.F.D. Moule: `It is hard to believe that a Judaistic type of Christianity which had itself been
closely involved in the cataclysm of the years leading up to AD 70 would not have shown the scars - or,
alternatively, would not have made capital out of this signal evidence that they, and not non-Christian
Judaism, were the true Israel. But in fact our traditions are silent .' [Moule C.F.D., "The Birth of the New
Testament," Adam & Charles Black: London, 1962, p.123] Explanations for this silence have of course been
attempted. Yet the simplest explanation of all, that `perhaps ... there is extremely little in the New Testament
later than AD 70' [Moule, 1962, p.121] and that its events are not mentioned because they had not yet
occurred, seems to me to demand more attention than it has received in critical circles." (Robinson J.A.T.,
"Redating The New Testament," [1976], SCM Press: London, Second impression, 1977, pp.14-15)
9/05/2005
"In 1950, the fluorine test was applied to the [Piltdown man] skull and jaw to check if they were of the same
age, and to what stratum they should be attributed. The tests confirmed that they could both be attributed
to the middle or probably upper Pleistocene Age [Oakley, K.P. & Hoskins, C.R. `New evidence on the
antiquity of Piltdown man', Nature, 11th March, 1950. Vol. 165, pp.379-82]. These tests, however, were
completely contradicted by a second fluorine test three years later. The human skull and ape-like jaw of
Piltdown were the opposite form of development to that indicated by the Pekin man finds and others, which
were being excavated prior to the Second World War. These possessed an ape-like brain but were said to
have human characteristics in the jaw and teeth. These two lines of man's evolution appeared to contradict
each other, and eventually the possibility of fraud was considered. Further fluorine and other tests on the
Piltdown jaw and skull pieces in 1953 showed this time that they were of completely different ages, the skull
being upper Pleistocene, as originally believed, but the jaw was found to be quite modern although it had
been stained to appear old and the teeth had been filed [Weiner, J.S., Oakley, K.P. & Le Gros Clark, W.E.
`The solution of the Piltdown problem', Bulletin, British Museum (Natural History), Geol. 2, No. 3, 1953,
pp.139-46]. Investigation of the other fossils also found, showed that many of them were faked and imported
from other sites [Weiner, J.S., Oakley, K.P: & Le Gros Clark, W.E. `Further contributions to the solution of
the Piltdown problem', Bulletin, British Museum (Natural History), Geol. 2, No. 6, 1955, pp.228-88]. The
elephant bone `bat' was apparently shaped with a steel tool, probably a knife, in modern times. Publication
of the discovery of the fraud caused considerable embarrassment in scientific circles, for the experts of the
day, who had made such sweeping statements based on these bones, had been completely fooled by the
hoaxer. Such was the concern that a motion was tabled in the House of Commons, `That the House has no
confidence in the Trustees of the British Museum ... because of the tardiness of their discovery that the
skull of the Piltdown man is a partial fake.' The British Museum mounted a special exhibition of the methods
by which the fraud was exposed, which was presented as a `triumph of science', but the odium that the fraud
had lain undetected in their possession for forty years remained." (Bowden M.*, "Ape-Men: Fact or
Fallacy?," [1978], Sovereign Publications: Bromley, Kent UK, Second edition, 1981, reprint, 1988, pp.8-9)
9/05/2005
"Origin of the Soul. Augustine's reluctance to take sides in the debate on the origin of the soul was not
shared by his contemporaries. Some Greek church fathers shared Origen's theory that the soul preexisted
with God and that it was assigned to a body as a penalty for its sin of looking downward. Most, however,
accepted the creationist view that God created each individual soul at the moment that he gave it a body,
while some, like Tertullian, held the traducianist theory that each soul is derived, along with the body, from
the parents. Arguments cited in favor of creationism were (1) that Scripture distinguishes the origin of man's
soul and body (Eccl. 12:7; Isa. 42:5; Zech. 12:1; Heb. 12:9); (2) that creationism preserves the idea of the soul
as a simple, indivisible substance better than traducianism, which requires the idea of the division of the
soul and its derivation from the parents; and (3) that it makes more credible Christ's retention of a pure soul
than does traducianism. In behalf of traducianism it was said (1) that certain Scripture supports it (Gen. 2:2;
Heb. 7:10; cf. I Cor. 11:8); (2) that it offers the best theory for the whole race having sinned in Adam; (3) that
it is supported by the analogy of lower life in which numerical increase is obtained by derivation; (4) that it
teaches that parents beget the whole child, body and soul, and not just the body; and (5) that it was
necessary for Christ to have received his soul from the soul of Mary in order to redeem the human soul.
Augustine carefully weighed the arguments on each side of the controversy, leaning toward traducianism
for a time even while he saw the difficulty of retaining the soul's integrity with this hypothesis; later he
admitted that he was perplexed and baffled by the question. A contemporary theologian who takes
essentially the same stance is G. C. Berkouwer, who calls the controversy "unfruitful," inasmuch as it
wrongly assumes that the issue is one of horizontal or vertical relations. "Such a way of putting it is far too
feeble an attempt to render adequately the greatness of the work of God" (Man: The Image of God, 292). The
God of Israel does not create only in the distant past, but he is constantly active in human history, the
Creator in horizontal relationships as well as others. To speak about a separate origin of the soul he sees as
impossible biblically, inasmuch as this creationist theory sees the relationship to God as "something added
to the `essentially human,' which later is defined independently as 'soul' and `body.' Both soul and body can
then be viewed in different `causal' relationships without reference to some intrinsic non- causal relationship
to God. If, however, it is impossible to speak of the essence of man except in this latter religious relationship,
then it also becomes impossible to introduce duality into the origin of soul and of body within the unitary
human individual" (Osterhaven M.E.., "Soul," in Elwell W.A., ed., "Evangelical Dictionary of Theology,"
[1984], Baker Book House: Grand Rapids MI., 1990, Seventh printing, p.1037)
9/05/2005
"dualism. Any theory which holds that there is, either in the universe at large or in some significant part of
it, an ultimate and irreducible distinction of nature between two different kinds of thing. Examples are (1)
Plato's dualism of eternal objects (forms or UNIVERSALS), of which we can have true knowledge, and
temporal objects, which are accessible to the senses, and of which we can at best have opinions; (2)
Descartes' mind-body dualism, i.e. of mind, as conscious, and of body, as occupying space, the former
always infallibly, the latter never more than fallibly, knowable (see also MIND- BODY PROBLEM); (3) ethical
dualism, which holds, in conformity with the doctrine of the NATURALISTIC FALLACY, that there is an
irreducible difference between statements of fact and VALUE-JUDGEMENTS; (4) explanatory dualism,
which holds that, while natural events, including mere bodily movements, have causes, human actions do
not but must be explained by reference to motives or reasons; (5) sometimes called epistemological dualism
(see also EPISTEMOLOGY), the theory that a distinction must be drawn between the immediate object of
PERCEPTION (i.e. the appearance or SENSE- DATA) and the inferred, public, material objects. For further
reading: J. A. Passmore, Philosophical Reasoning (1970)." (Quinton A., "dualism," in Bullock A. & Trombley
I., eds., "The Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought," [1977], Fontana Press: London, Revised edition,
1988, p.240)
9/05/2005
"dualism. The theory that mind and matter are two distinct things. Its most famous defender is Descartes,
who argues that as a subject of conscious thought and experience, he cannot consist simply of spatially
extended matter. His essential nature must be non-material, even if in fact he (his soul) is intimately
connected with his body. The main argument for dualism is that facts about the objective external world of
particles and fields of force, as revealed by modern physical science, are not facts about how things appear
from any particular point of view, whereas facts about subjective experience are precisely about how things
are from the point of view of individual conscious subjects. They have to be described in the first person as
well as in the third person. Descartes argued that the separate existence of mind and body is conceivable;
therefore it is possible; but if it is possible for two things to exist separately, they cannot be identical. A
modern form of this argument has been presented by Saul Kripke, against recent forms of scientific
materialism which claim that the relation of mental states to brain states is like the relation of water to
H2O. What happens in the mind clearly depends on what happens in the brain, but facts
about the physical operation of the brain don't seem to be capable of adding up to subjective experiences in
the way that hydrogen and oxygen atoms can add up to water. Theoretical identifications of which both
terms are physical and objective don't provide a model for identifications where one term is physical and the
other is mental and subjective. However, while there are problems with the identification of mind and brain, it
is not clear what other kind of entity could have subjective states and a point of view, either. Substance
dualism holds that the mind or soul is a separate, non-physical entity, but there is also double aspect theory
or property dualism, according to which there is no soul distinct from the body, but only one thing, the
person, that has two irreducibly different types of properties, mental and physical. Substance dualism leaves
room for the possibility that the soul might be able to exist apart from the body, either before birth or after
death; property dualism does not. Property dualism allows for the compatibility of mental and physical
causation, since the cause of an action might under one aspect be describable as a physical event in :he
brain and under another aspect as a desire, emotion, or thought; substance dualism usually requires causal
interaction between the soul and he body. Dualistic theories at least acknowledge the serious difficulty of
locating consciousness in a modern scientific conception of the physical world, but they really give
metaphysical expression to the problem rather than solving it. The desire to avoid dualism has been the
driving motive behind much contemporary work on the mind-body problem. Gilbert Ryle made fun of it as
the theory of `the ghost in the machine', and various forms of behaviourism and materialism are designed to
show that a place can be found for thoughts, sensations, feelings, and other mental phenomena in a purely
physical world. But these theories have trouble accounting for consciousness and its subjective qualia.
Neither dualism nor materialism seems likely to be true, but it isn't clear what the alternatives are."(Nagel T.,
"dualism," in Honderich T., ed., "The Oxford Companion to Philosophy," Oxford University Press: Oxford,
1995, pp.206-207)
9/05/2005
"The mind-body problem is the problem of giving an account of how minds, or mental processes, are related
to bodily states and processes. That they are intimately related seems beyond doubt, and has not been
seriously disputed. Evidently, our perceptual experience depends on the way external physical stimuli
impinge on our sensory surfaces, and, ultimately, on the processes going on in our brain; your desire for a
drink of water somehow causes your body to move in the direction of the watercooler; and so on. But how,
and why, does conscious experience emerge out of the electrochemical processes occurring in a grey mass
of neural fibres? How does a desire manage to get the appropriate neurons to fire and thereby cause the
right muscles to contract? Schopenhauer called the mind body problem `the world knot', a puzzle that is
beyond our capacity to solve. The mind-body problem as it is now debated, like much else in contemporary
philosophy of mind, has been inherited from Descartes. Descartes conceived of the mind as an entity in its
own right, a `mental substance', the essential nature of which is `thinking', or consciousness. On the other
hand, the defining nature of the body, or material substance, was claimed to be spatial extendedness-that is,
having a bulk. Thus, Descartes envisaged two domains of entities, one consisting of immaterial minds and
the other of material bodies, and two disjoint families of properties, one consisting of mental properties (e.g.
thinking, willing, feeling) and the other of physical properties (e.g. shape, size, mass), in terms of which
members of the respective domains are to be characterized. However, the two domains are not to be entirely
unrelated: a mind and a body can form a `union', resulting in a human being. Although the nature of this
`union' relationship was never made completely clear, it evidently involved the idea that minds and bodies
joined in such a union are involved in intimate and direct causal interaction with each other. Thus,
Descartes's mind-body doctrine combines substance dualism, i.e. the dualism of two distinct kinds of
substances, with attribute or property dualism, i.e. the dualism of mental and physical properties. Substance
dualism, however, has largely dropped out of contemporary discussions; few philosophers now find the
idea of minds as immaterial substances coherent or fruitful. There has been a virtual consensus, one that has
held for years, that the world is essentially physical, at least in the following sense: if all matter were to be
removed from the world, nothing would remain-no minds, no `entelechies', and no `vital forces'. According
to this physical monism (or `ontological physicalism'), mental states and processes are to be construed as
states and processes occurring in certain complex physical systems, such as biological organisms, not as
states of some ghostly immaterial beings. The principal remaining problem for contemporary philosophy of
mind, therefore, is to explain how the mental character of an organism or system is related to its physical
nature. ... Recently, the Schopenhauerian pessimism has been resurrected by some philosophers, who argue
that the mind-body problem is insoluble, and that we will never be able to understand how consciousness,
subjectivity, and intentionality can arise from material processes. In any case, one thing that is certain is that
the mind- body problem is one of the deepest puzzles in philosophy, and that it will continue to test our
philosophical intelligence and imagination." (Kim J., "mind- body problem," in Honderich T., ed., "The
Oxford Companion to Philosophy," Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1995, pp.579-580)
9/05/2005
"mind-body problem, n. phr. the question how MIND and body are related. Are they two different things
(DUALISM), or two `aspects' of one thing (MONISM), or what? For ancient Greek philosophers the
question arose when they distinguished between eternal INTELLIGIBLE things (PLATO'S `FORMS') and
transient SENSIBLE things. Plato is a dualist for saying that before birth and after death the soul can have
an apprehension of the Forms that is pure because then the soul is `separate and independent of the body'
(Phaedo 67a), the bodily senses being an impediment to such apprehension. The question of how mind and
body can interact became pressing only when, with DESCARTES, the body had become a `SUBSTANCE',
and the mind a different kind of substance, the two having nothing in common save their dependence for
existence on GOD. The mind-body problem, as it occurs in modern philosophy, starts with Descartes. If the
mind is a substance, then ordinary utterances like `I think it will rain' become reports of mental events.
Awareness of these is said to be `IMMEDIATE', as opposed to the awareness of material things, which is
inferential, based on having sensations of them. However, this immediate awareness is also said to be like
sense, except that it is internal (LOCKE, Essay, II i 4). `Internal' is a metaphor, the literal meaning being that
only one person, the speaker, can be aware of his mental event of thinking it will rain. His access to his own
mental events is `privileged'. Saying that the awareness is like sense leads to talk of `mental phenomena'. To
those who accept these consequences there is no question that there are mental events; the only question
is how mental events, or phenomena, cause, and are caused by, certain physical or physiological events,
namely, what happens in the brain. Descartes suggested that mind and brain interact causally through a
gland in the brain called the `pineal gland'. However, this does not tell us how interaction takes place. The
model of causation with which scientists had come to operate was that of one body propelling another. The
mind, being immaterial, cannot be in spatial contact with, and so cannot propel, anything. When this point
was put to him (by a correspondent, Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, in a letter dated 6-16 May 1643)
Descartes replied that we can have some understanding of how mind and body interact in virtue of having a
notion of their `union', a notion we acquire just by means of ordinary life and conversation, by abstaining
from meditating and from studying things that exercise the imagination' (Descartes to Elizabeth, 28 June
1643). Others have taken this further in various ways. Roughly, treatments of the problem can be divided
into those that develop Descartes's CONCEPT of substance (one independently existing substance, GOD,
and two dependent substances, mind and MATTER), and those that avoid substance terminology but
accept a consequence of mind being a substance, namely that there are `mental events' or `mental
processes'. Finally, there are those who say that the mind should not be taken as a substance, so that the
above consequences disappear." (Vesey G. & Foulkes P., "Collins Dictionary of Philosophy," HarperCollins:
Glasgow UK, 1990, p.196-199)
10/05/2005
"dualism Any view that postulates two kinds of thing in some domain is dualistic; contrasting views
according to which there is only one kind of thing are monistic. The most famous example of the contrast is
mind- body dualism, contrasted with monism in the form either of idealism (only mind) or more often
physicalism (only body or matter)." (Blackburn S., "The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy," [1994], Oxford
University Press: Oxford UK, 1996, p.110)
10/05/2005
"dualism n. a theory that has at its basis two radically distinct concepts or principles. Examples of dualism
are: (1) the religious belief in two opposing principles or divine beings, one good and one evil. It was in this
sense that the word was first used about three centuries ago, to describe the ancient Persian religion; (2) in
metaphysics, the view that there are two kinds of reality: finite and infinite, matter and form, matter and spirit,
relative and absolute, etc.; (3) in the philosophy of mind, psychophysical dualism: the view that human
beings are made up of two radically distinct constituents (body, constituted by matter like other natural
objects, and an immaterial mind or soul). Another kind of psychophysical dualism, different from this
`substance dualism', is called `property dualism' or `attribute dualism', to the effect that there are two
radically different kinds of properties, physical and non-physical, belonging to the same brain or human
being; (4) in moral philosophy, fact/value dualism: the view that factual statements do not imply any
evaluative statement. Ant. monism, pluralism. Note: Dualism is also used in a different sense, as a synonym
ofduality, i.e. two-ness." (Mautner T., ed., "The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy," [1996], Penguin:
London, Revised, 2000, p.152)
10/05/2005
"dualism, the view that reality consists of two disparate parts. The crux of dualism is an apparently
unbridgeable gap between two incommensurable orders of being that must be reconciled if our assumption
that there is a comprehensible universe is to be justified. Dualism is exhibited in the pre- Socratic division
between appearance and reality; Plato's realm of being containing eternal ideas and realm of becoming
containing changing things; the medieval division between finite man and infinite God; Descartes's
substance dualism of thinking mind and extended matter; Hume's separation of fact from value; Kant's
division between empirical phenomena and transcendental noumena; the epistemological double- aspect
theory of James and Russell, who postulate a neutral substance that can be understood in separate ways
either as mind or brain; and Heidegger's separation of being and time that inspired Sartre's contrast of being
and nothingness. The doctrine of two truths, the sacred and the profane or the religious and the secular, is a
dualistic response to the conflict between religion and science. Descartes's dualism is taken to be the source
of the mind-body problem. If the mind is active unextended thinking and the body is passive unthinking
extension, how can these essentially unlike and independently existing substances interact causally, and
how can mental ideas represent material things? How, in other words, can the mind know and influence the
body, and how can the body affect the mind? Descartes said mind and body interact and that ideas
represent material things without resembling them, but could not explain how, and concluded merely that
God makes these things happen. Proposed dualist solutions to the mind-body problem are Malebranche's
occasionalism (mind and body do not interact but God makes them appear to); Leibniz's preestablished
harmony among noninteracting monads; and Spinoza's property dualism of mutually exclusive but parallel
attributes expressing the one substance God. Recent mind-body dualists are Karl R. Popper and John C.
Eccles. Monistic alternatives to dualism include Hobbes's view that the mental is merely the epiphenomena
of the material; Berkeley's view that material things are collections of mental ideas; and the contemporary
materialist view of J. J. C. Smart, D. M. Armstrong, and Paul and Patricia Churchland that the mind is the
brain. A classic treatment of these matters is Arthur O. Lovejoy's The Revolt Against Dualism. ... But
despite the extremely difficult problems posed by ontological dualism, and despite the cogency of many
arguments against dualistic thinking, Western philosophy continues to be predominantly dualistic, as
witnessed by the indispensable usu two-valued matrixes in logic and ethics and the intractable problem of
rendering mental intentions in terms of material mechanism or vice versa." (Watson R.A., "dualism," in Audi
R., ed., "The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy," [1995], Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK,
1996, reprint, p.210)
10/05/2005
"Mind-body dualism. While the doctrine that the soul is distinct from the body is found in Plato and is
discussed throughout the history of philosophy, Descartes is considered the father of the modern mind-
body problem. He maintained that the essence of the physical is extension in space. Minds are substances
that are not extended in space, and thus are distinct from any physical substances. The essence of a mental
substance is to think. This twofold view is called Cartesian dualism. Descartes was well aware of an intimate
relationship between mind and the brain. (There is, it should be noted, no a priori reason to think that the
mind is intimately related to the brain, and Aristotle did not associate them.) Descartes (mistakenly) thought
the seat of the relationship was in the pineal gland. He maintained, however, that our minds are not our
brains, lack spatial location, and continue to exist after the death and destruction of our bodies. Cartesian
dualism invites the question: What connects our minds to our brains? Causation is Descartes's answer:
states of our minds and states of our brains causally interact. When bodily sensations such as aches, pains,
itches, tickles, and the like, cause us to moan, or wince, or scratch, or laugh, they do so by causing brain
states (events, processes), which in turn cause bodily movements. In deliberate action, we act on our
desires, motives, and intentions to carry out our purposes; and acting on these mental states involves their
causing brain states, which in turn cause our bodies to move, and thereby (causally) influence the physical
world. The physical world, in turn, influences our minds through its influence on our brains. Perception of
the physical world with five senses - seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touch - involves causal
transactions from the physical to the mental. Thus, Descartes held that there is two-way psychophysical
causal interaction: from the mental to the physical (as in, e.g., deliberate action) and from the physical to the
mental (as in, e.g., perception). The conjunction of Cartesian dualism and the doctrine of two- way
psychophysical causal interaction is called Cartesian interactionism." (McLaughlin B.P., "philosophy of
mind," in Audi R., ed., "The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy," [1995], Cambridge University Press:
Cambridge UK, 1996, reprint, pp.597-598) #
11/05/2005
"Mixing religion with science is obnoxious to Darwinists only when it is the wrong religion that is being
mixed. ... Julian Huxley's religion of `evolutionary humanism' offered humanity the `sacred duty' and the
`glorious opportunity' of seeking `to promote maximum fulfilment of the evolutionary process on the earth.'
[Huxley J.S., "Religion Without Revelation," 1958, p.194] ... The continual efforts to base a religion or ethical
system upon evolution are not an aberration, and practically all the most prominent Darwinist writers have
tried their hand at it. Darwinist evolution is an imaginative story about who we are and where we came from,
which is to say it is a creation myth. .... In its mythological dimension, Darwinism is the story of humanity's
liberation from the delusion that its destiny is controlled by a power higher than itself. Lacking scientific
knowledge, humans at first attribute natural events like weather and disease to supernatural beings. As they
learn to predict or control natural forces they put aside the lesser spirits, but a more highly evolved religion
retains the notion of a rational Creator who rules the universe. At last the greatest scientific discovery of all
is made, and modern humans learn that they are the products of a blind natural process that has no goal and
cares nothing for them. The resulting `death of God' is experienced by some as a profound loss, and by
others as a liberation. But liberation to what? If blind nature has somehow produced a human species with
the capacity to rule earth wisely and if this capacity has previously been invisible only because it was
smothered by superstition, then the prospects for human freedom and happiness are unbounded. That was
the message of the Humanist Manifesto of 1933. Another possibility is that purposeless nature has
produced a world ruled by irrational forces, where might makes right and human freedom is an illusion. In
that case the right to rule belongs to whoever can control the use of science. It would be illogical for the
rulers to worry overmuch about what people say they want, because science teaches them that wants are
the product of irrational forces. In principle, people can be made to want something better. It is no kindness
to leave them as they are, because passionate stone age people can do nothing but destroy themselves
when they have the power of scientific technology at their command. Whether a Darwinist takes the
optimistic or the pessimistic view, it is imperative that the public be taught to understand the world as
scientific naturalists understand it. Citizens must learn to look to science as the only reliable source of
knowledge, and the only power capable of bettering (or even preserving) the human condition. That implies,
as we shall see, a program of indoctrination in the name of public education." (Johnson, P.E.*, "Darwin on
Trial," [1991], InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, Second Edition, 1993, pp.130-131, 133-134)
11/05/2005
"JUPITER AND Saturn, the farthest planets the ancients knew, patrol the vast domain of the outer, solar
system. .... As astronomers know today, these weighty names fit both worlds perfectly, for their most
impressive property is not color or beauty but sheer mass. Together, the two gas giants harbor twelve times
more mass than all the other planets combined. ... Although astronomers have assumed that other solar
systems resemble ours and thus have worlds like Jupiter and Saturn, this need not be the case. `There are all
sorts of ways you could mess up the formation of a Jupiter,' said George Wetherill, a planetary scientist at
the Carnegie Institution of Washington, `and maybe nature just doesn't care whether it makes a Jupiter or
not.' For this reason, most solar systems could lack such large planets. `If this is true,' said Wetherill, `it
might be surprising that we happen to live in a planetary system which has a Jupiter and a Saturn. But
maybe it's not so surprising, because perhaps if it weren't for Jupiter and Saturn, we wouldn't be here.' ...
Wetherill's idea actually followed from theories of how the solar system formed. When the planets were
developing, 4.6 billion years ago, countless comets roamed the solar system. Many of these collided with
one another to form the cores of the four giant planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune-but the mighty
gravitational force of Jupiter and Saturn tossed trillions of other comets away. As a consequence, few
comets remain to hit the solar system's planets today, sparing Earth in particular from the devastating
impacts that could have thwarted the development of intelligent life. ... If that idea is correct, however, it
raises the stakes in the search for extrasolar giant planets. If astronomers examine other stars and fail to find
Jupiters-the planets that are easiest to detect-those solar systems may possess no life at all, even if they
have warm, wet planets like Earth. Conversely, if planets like Jupiter abound, they will boost the hope that
life exists elsewhere." (Croswell K., "Planet Quest: The Epic Discovery of Alien Solar Systems, "Free Press:
New York NY, 1997, pp.161-163)
11/05/2005
"Today Wetherill uses a powerful desktop computer to simulate the formation of the Earth and the other
planets. `What I think is of some relevance to the search for extrasolar planets,' he said, `is to try to develop
a general theory for the formation of planetary systems, of which our solar system would be but one example
and might be similar to others in some ways and different in other ways. There'd be no specific need for all
planetary systems to develop in exactly the same way. So I've been looking into how variations of the initial
conditions for the formation of a planetary system might lead to variations from one system to another.'
Wetherill starts his model with small bodies orbiting a star. These bodies collide and grow into larger ones,
which in turn become the planets of a solar system. Terrestrial planets-rocky worlds similar in mass to Earth-
form near their star, where the disk of gas and dust orbiting the star is hot and only substances with high
melting points, rock and iron, condense into solids. In 1991, Wetherill's work indicated that such planets are
fairly easy for nature to produce, if nature operates the same way that his computer simulations do.
Proponents of extraterrestrial life greeted Wetherill's result, since it meant that many if not most stars should
have small planets like Earth. Wetherill even found that a typical simulation produced four terrestrial planets
that match the pattern in our solar system: the first planet (e.g., Mercury) was small, the next two (Venus and
Earth) were larger, and the final one (Mars) was again small. Also in 1991 came the stunning discovery of the
first two pulsar planets, whose masses resemble Earth's and demonstrate that nature can indeed
manufacture terrestrial-mass extrasolar planets-even in exotic locales. The story changed, though, when
Wetherill turned to the giant planets. According to an idea that Japanese astronomer Hiroshi Mizuno and
his colleagues published in the late 1970s, these planets formed in a more complicated way than did the
terrestrial planets. Far from the star, the disk was cool, so ices of water (H20), methane
(CH4), and ammonia (NH3) condensed. These far outweighed the rock and
iron, because the ices contained three of the most common elements in the universe-oxygen, carbon, and
nitrogen joined with hydrogen, the most abundant element of all. Due to all this material and the large
volume of the outer solar system, enormous objects of ice and rock formed that had roughly 10 times more
mass than the Earth. In the case of Jupiter and Saturn, these objects formed quickly, and Mizuno said their
gravitational pull grabbed huge quantities of the hydrogen and helium gas that pervaded the disk. Today,
Jupiter has 318 times the mass of the Earth and Saturn 95 times, most of it hydrogen and helium. Uranus and
Neptune, which today have only 15 and 17 Earth masses, grabbed little if any gas, presumably because their
ice-rock cores formed later, after the Sun had blown away the hydrogen and helium gas in the disk. Mizuno's
model for the formation of the giant planets explains why all four have similar cores. It also agrees with the
planets' observed atmospheric abundances. For example, the theory correctly predicts that all four planets
should have more carbon relative to hydrogen than the Sun. This is because their cores had methane, which
contains carbon, and some of that leaked into the planets' atmospheres. Furthermore, the two planets that
captured the least hydrogen and helium - Uranus and Neptune-have the greatest carbon-to-hydrogen ratios,
just as the theory predicts, because their methane was least diluted by the infalling hydrogen and helium. In
1992, Wetherill ran his model on the computer-and it failed. `Instead of forming a system that looked like
Jupiter and Saturn,' he said, `I usually got a large number of objects moving in highly eccentric orbits, and
it's rather difficult for this to develop into the story we like to tell where a ten- Earth-mass core develops and
starts to capture gas. So the possibility occurred to me that maybe it doesn't arise very often. Maybe Jupiter
is a fluke, which actually did occur in some of my calculations, but only as a fluke rather than as a rule of
thumb. `Now this is very egotistical: to think that just because I don't know how to make Jupiter implies that
nature doesn't know how to make it. But this was at the same time that people were failing to find any
Jupiter-like planets around other stars. It began to look-and I think it still does look-as if Jupiter is an
unusual object. `So if that's the case, then that raised the question: why do we have a Jupiter? The
possible answer was that our solar system may be a highly biased sample, biased by the fact that we're here
to see it.' In contrast, a solar system that lacks a Jupiter and a Saturn is not self-observable, if it never gives
birth to intelligent life." (Croswell K., "Planet Quest: The Epic Discovery of Alien Solar Systems, "Free Press:
New York NY, 1997, pp.164-165, 167. Emphasis original)
11/05/2005
"Long ago, Jupiter and Saturn cleaned the solar system of most cometary debris, including comets that may
have been quite large, possibly as large as planets. Consequently, catastrophic impacts-such as the one that
killed the dinosaurs and most other species living 65 million years ago-now occur only rarely. In the early
solar system, said Wetherill, Jupiter and Saturn worked as a team, playing ball with comets and passing them
back and forth from one planet to the other, boosting the comets' velocities. Most of the comets got cast
clear out into interstellar space, while some were deposited in the Oort cloud, the vast comet reservoir that
surrounds the solar system. Uranus and Neptune, which are smaller than Jupiter and Saturn, treated comets
more gently. They transported comets toward Jupiter and Saturn, which then got rid of them. In 1994, the
world witnessed a dramatic event that symbolized Jupiter's role as protector of terrestrial life: the planet took
a direct hit from Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, an impact that left Jupiter's atmosphere scarred for months. Had
the planet not intervened, the comet might someday have collided with Earth. To see what would happen if
Jupiter and Saturn did not exist, Wetherill tried simulations in which the two planets failed to accrete much
hydrogen and helium. This could occur if a solar system lost its hydrogen and helium disk before the cores
of Jupiter and Saturn captured much gas. Many solar systems may therefore have `failed' Jupiters and
Saturns- planets with the masses of Uranus and Neptune, but located at the orbital positions of Jupiter and
Saturn. Wetherill found that such planets are dangerous. `Failed Jupiters and Saturns are not really effective
in removing material from the solar system,' said Wetherill, `but they're effective enough that they perturb
this material over the lifetime of the solar system into orbits which come into the inner solar system, into the
region of the Earth.' Comets would therefore bombard this hypothetical Earth as much as a thousand times
more often than they do the real one. On the real Earth, devastating impacts occur roughly once every 100
million years, leaving long intervals of relative calm, during which life can evolve. On an Earth without the
protective shield of a full-fledged Jupiter and Saturn, these catastrophes could strike every 100,000 years-a
time shorter than Homo sapiens is old. Life might still originate on such a world, Wetherill said, but it
might not develop into complex life. `Even on the Earth, it wasn't until around 600 million years ago that
multicellular organisms became common,' he said. `So we went for 4 billion years without doing much; it
might not take much more to prevent intelligent life from arising at all. Apparently, it's not really easy, even
on a very nice planet like the Earth.' Without Jupiter and Saturn, the Earth might also be buried under water.
Much of the water now on Earth came from comets, and even with Jupiter and Saturn protecting the planet,
seawater covers 71 percent of the Earth's surface. If Jupiter and Saturn did not exist, and comets rained
down on Earth more often, the Earth might be a completely water-covered world, and any life would forever
remain in the sea-another situation that might have prevented the emergence of intelligent life. Although
dolphins have a fair degree of intelligence, they have not developed a written language, preventing future
generations of dolphins from studying and building on the knowledge of their ancestors." (Croswell K.,
"Planet Quest: The Epic Discovery of Alien Solar Systems, "Free Press: New York NY, 1997, pp.167-168)
1/05/2005
"As a legal scholar, one point that attracted my attention in the Supreme Court case was the way terms like
`science' and `religion' are used to imply conclusions that judges and educators might be unwilling to state
explicitly. If we say that naturalistic evolution is science, and supernatural creation is religion, the effect is
not very different from saying that the former is true and the latter is fantasy. When the doctrines of science
are taught as fact, then whatever those doctrines exclude cannot be true. By the use of labels, objections to
naturalistic evolution can be dismissed without a fair hearing. My suspicions were confirmed by the `friend
of the court' argument submitted by the influential National Academy of Sciences, representing the nation's
most prestigious scientists. Creation- science is not science, said the Academy in its argument to the
Supreme Court, because `it fails to display the most basic characteristic of science: reliance upon naturalistic
explanations. Instead, proponents of `creation-science' hold that the creation of the universe, the earth,
living things, and man was accomplished through supernatural means inaccessible to human
understanding.' [National Academy of Sciences, `Science and Creationism: A View from the National
Academy of Sciences', 1984] Because creationists cannot perform scientific research to establish the reality
of supernatural creation-that being by definition impossible-the Academy described their efforts as aimed
primarily at discrediting evolutionary theory. `Creation-science' is thus manifestly a device designed to
dilute the persuasiveness of the theory of evolution. The dualistic mode of analysis and the negative
argumentation employed to accomplish this dilution is, moreover, antithetical to the scientific method. The
Academy thus defined science' in such a way that advocates of supernatural creation may neither argue for
their own position nor dispute the claims of the scientific establishment. What may be one way to win an
argument, but it is not satisfying to anyone who thinks it possible that God really did have something to do
with creating mankind, or that some of the claims that scientists make under the heading of `evolution' may
be false." (Johnson, P.E.*, "Darwin on Trial," [1991]. InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove IL, Second Edition,
1993, pp.7-8. Emphasis original)
12/05/2005
"I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural
Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr.
Herbert Spencer of the Survival of the Fittest is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient. We
have seen that man by selection can certainly produce great results, and can adapt organic beings to his
own uses, through the accumulation of slight but useful variations, given to him by the hand of Nature. But
Natural Selection, as we shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready for action, and is as immeasurably
superior to man's feeble efforts, as the works of Nature are to those of Art." (Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of
Species by Means of Natural Selection," [1872], Everyman's Library, J.M. Dent & Sons: London, 6th Edition,
1928, reprint, p.67)
12/05/2005
"As man can produce, and certainly has produced, a great result by his methodical and unconscious means
of selection, what may not natural selection effect? Man can act only on external and visible characters:
Nature, if I may be allowed to personify the natural preservation or survival of the fittest, cares nothing for
appearances, except in so far as they are useful to any being. She can act on every internal organ, on every
shade of constitutional difference, on the whole machinery of life. Man selects only for his own good:
Nature only for that of the being which she tends. Every selected character is fully exercised by her, as is
implied by the fact of their selection. Man keeps the natives of many climates in the same country; he
seldom exercises each selected character in some peculiar and fitting manner; he feeds a long- and a short-
beaked pigeon on the same food; he does not exercise a long-backed or long-legged quadruped in any
peculiar manner; he exposes sheep with long and short wool to the same climate. He does not allow the most
vigorous males to struggle for the females. He does not rigidly destroy all inferior animals, but protects
during each varying season, as far as lies in his power, all his productions. He often begins his selection by
some half-monstrous form; or at least by some modification prominent enough to catch the eye or to be
plainly useful to him. Under nature, the slightest differences of structure or constitution may well turn the
nicely balanced scale in the struggle for life, and so be preserved. How fleeting are the wishes and efforts of
man! how short his time! and consequently how poor will be his results, compared with those accumulated
by Nature during whole geological periods! Can we wonder, then, that Nature's productions should be far
"truer" in character than man's productions; that they should be infinitely better adapted to the most
complex conditions of life, and should plainly bear the stamp of far higher workmanship?" (Darwin, C.R.,
"The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," [1872], Everyman's Library, J.M. Dent & Sons:
London, 6th Edition, 1928, reprint, p.83)
12/05/2005
"Though Nature grants long periods of time for the work of natural selection, she does not grant an
indefinite period; for as all organic beings are striving to seize on each place in the economy of nature, if any
one species does not become modified and improved in a corresponding degree with its competitors, it will
be exterminated. Unless favourable variations be inherited by some at least of the offspring, nothing can be
effected by natural selection. The tendency to reversion may often check or prevent the work; but as this
tendency has not prevented man from forming by selection numerous domestic races, why should it prevail
against natural selection? (Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," [1872],
Everyman's Library, J.M. Dent & Sons: London, 6th Edition, 1928, reprint, p. 99)
12/05/2005
"Finally then, although in many cases it is most difficult even to conjecture by what transitions organs have
arrived at their present state, yet, considering how small the proportion of living and known forms is to the
extinct and unknown, I have been astonished how rarely an organ can be named, towards which no
transitional grade is known to lead. It certainly is true that new organs appearing as if created for some
special purpose rarely or never appear in any being-as indeed is shown by that old, but somewhat
exaggerated, canon in natural history of "Natura non facit saltum." We meet with this admission in the
writings of almost every experienced naturalist; or as Milne Edwards has well expressed it, Nature is prodigal
in variety, but niggard in innovation. Why, on the theory of Creation, should there be so much variety and
so little real novelty? Why should all the parts and organs of many independent beings, each supposed to
have been separately created for its proper place in nature, be so commonly linked together by graduated
steps? Why should not Nature take a sudden leap from structure to structure? On the theory of natural
selection, we can clearly understand why she should not; for natural selection acts only by taking
advantage of slight successive variations; she can never take a great and sudden leap, but must advance by
short and sure, though slow steps." (Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection,"
[1872], Everyman's Library, J.M. Dent & Sons: London, 6th Edition, 1928, reprint, p.180)
12/05/2005
"On the view of each organism with all its separate parts having been specially created, how utterly
inexplicable is it that organs bearing the plain stamp of inutility, such as the teeth in the embryonic calf or
the shrivelled wings under the soldered wing-covers of many beetles, should so frequently occur. Nature
may be said to have taken pains to reveal her scheme of modification, by means of rudimentary organs, of
embryological and homologous structures, but we are too blind to understand her meaning." (Darwin, C.R.,
"The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," [1872], Everyman's Library, J.M. Dent & Sons:
London, 6th Edition, 1928, reprint, p.454)
12/05/2005
"It was Charles Darwin who coined the master metaphor that eventually dominated evolutionary thinking.
Having decided to adopt the transmutation hypothesis shortly after his return from the voyage of the
Beagle, Darwin began the search for the natural means by which populations of organisms were
modified and kept adapted to changing circumstances. Finally, in the fall of 1838, after reading Thomas
Malthus' famous Essay on the Principle of Population, Darwin hit upon the idea of a general organic
struggle for existence in which those members of a species which happened to possess traits favorable to
survival in their particular circumstances would be most likely to reach reproductive age and hence would
spread those traits through subsequent generations, thereby gradually changing the character of the
population. Casting about for a suitable name for this process of variation, population pressure, differential
adaptedness, differential survival, and differential reproduction, Darwin chose the term `natural selection', in
order, as he said, to `mark its relation to man's power of selection' in producing new breeds of plants and
animals. There was, of course, no selection in nature. Selection implies intelligent choice, of which nature
knows nothing. What Darwin called natural selection might better have been called differential reproduction
through the luck of the hereditary draw. Why, then, did Darwin choose a metaphor implying intelligent
choice to designate a complex set of processes involving random variation, population pressure, and
differential survival to reproductive age? He did so, first, because the analogy to the selection practiced by
plant and animal breeders served him well, both as a research tool and as a method of making his theory
intelligible to fellow scientists and to the general public. But Darwin seems to have had another reason as
well, a reason connected with his evolutionary deism. His transmutation notebooks, his essays of 1842 and
1844, and the Origin itself all show that Darwin regarded what he called `natural selection' as a set of
processes designed by the Creator to produce adaptation and improvement in the organic world. In the
essays of 1842 and 1844 Darwin even personified natural selection, asking his readers to imagine `a Being
with penetration sufficient to perceive differences in the outer and innermost organization [of plants and
animals] quite imperceptible to man, and with forethought extending over future centuries to watch with
unerring care and select for any object the offspring of an organism produced under the foregoing
[environmental] circumstances.' Darwin could see no reason why such a being could not `form a new race
(or several were he to separate the stock of the original organism and work on several islands) adapted to
new ends.' `As we assume his discrimination, and his forethought, and his steadiness of object, to be
incomparably greater than those qualities in man,' Darwin continued, `so may we suppose the beauty and
complication of the adaptations of the new races and their differences from the original stock to be greater
than in the domestic races produced by man's agency.... With time enough, such a Being might rationally....
aim at almost any result.' Darwin was careful to say that this master Being was not the Creator Himself, but
the powers he ascribed to it made it at least the vicegerent of the Creator. In Darwin's Origin of
Species there is no explicit mention of the master Being, but he lurks behind the scenes in Darwin's
description of natural selection as `daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation,
even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and
insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in
relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.' The products of this constant, rigorous scrutiny,
Darwin observed, `bear the stamp of a far higher workmanship' than those of `feeble man' in his role of plant
and animal breeder. Note that, in Darwin's view, the variations `preserved' by natural selection are not merely
good in the sense that they promote survival to reproductive age. They are `improvements'. Darwin's
Origin abounds with `improvements' produced by natural selection. `The modified offspring from the
later and more highly improved branches in the lines of descent,' he wrote, `will.... often take the place of,
and so destroy, the earlier and less improved branches. Hence all the intermediate forms between the earlier
and later states, that is between the less and more improved state of a species, as well as the original parent-
species itself, will generally tend to become extinct.' The influence of the analogy to artificial selection and of
Darwin's evolutionary deism is evident in these passages. The variations selected by a plant or animal
breeder are improvements from the point of view of the breeder because they move the stock in the direction
desired by the breeder. But in nature there is no desired or intended direction of change unless one
postulates a master Being who has such a direction in mind. From the point of view of the organism
concerned it is doubtless good to survive and reproduce, but to consider the organisms that survive and
reproduce as `improvements' on those that do not is to introduce value judgments supposedly outside the
domain of science. Is the tapeworm an improvement on its ancestors that had a more complicated structure?
Is the modern horse an improvement on Eohippus? A standard of comparison would seem to be required,
and, as Darwin himself conceded in his correspondence with Joseph Dalton Hooker, the intuitive standard
of comparison is man himself. If human beings are considered higher than amoebas and chimpanzees and if
the fossil record seems to indicate an overall succession of forms leading eventually to human beings,
organic evolution may be described as a process of progressive improvement, however haphazard and
erratic. But without the fossil record and without the assumption that man is the highest organism on earth
what reason is there to think that differential reproduction of organisms happening to have traits favorable
to survival will produce improvement in the organic world? To Charles Lyell it seemed evident that the
improvement attested by the fossil record must have its source outside of nature, since nothing in Darwin's
theory of natural selection seemed to require it. Darwin, however, was convinced that his theory did imply
progressive improvement in the long run, although not in every instance of organic change through natural
selection. He explained his position as follows in a letter to Lyell: .... every step in the natural selection of
each species implies improvement in that species in relation to its conditions of life. No modification can be
selected without it be an improvement or advantage. Improvement implies, I suppose, each form obtaining
many parts or organs, all excellently adapted for their functions. As each species is improved, and as the
number of forms will have increased, if we look to the whole course of time, the organic condition of life for
other forms will become more complex, and there will be a necessity for other forms to become improved, or
they will be exterminated; and I can see no limit to this process of improvement, without the intervention of
any other and direct principle of improvement. All this seems to me quite compatible with certain forms fitted
for simple conditions, remaining unaltered, or being degraded. If I have a second edition, I will reiterate
`Natural Selection', and, as a general consequence, Natural Improvement. Darwin's Origin did indeed
have a second edition (and a third, fourth, fifth, and sixth), and Darwin continued to the end to insist that
the apparent improvement in organic forms disclosed in the fossil record was a necessary long-run
consequence of random variation, population pressure, and differential survival to reproductive age. In the
sixth edition, as in the first, these processes were represented as constituting `laws impressed on matter by
the Creator' and as working `by and for the good of each being', with the result that `all corporeal and mental
endowments will tend to progress towards perfection.' What better metaphor could Darwin have chosen to
designate these agencies of progressive improvement than the term `natural selection,' evocative as it was
of the benevolent selectivity of the improver of domestic stocks? True, nature's selection was much slower,
much more erratic and wasteful than man's, but its superior workmanship was evident in the `endless forms
most beautiful and most wonderful' it had produced. The struggle for existence was harsh, but Darwin found
consolation in the belief `that the war of nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally
prompt, and that the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.' Natural improvement,
although costly, slow, and spasmodic, was, happily, inevitable. Having produced the human species, natural
selection (aided by the inherited effects of mental and moral training) would, Darwin hoped, eventually
evolve creatures who would look back on him and Lyell and Newton as `mere Barbarians'. In Darwin's view,
natural selection was no mere mechanism of organic modification and co-adaptation. It was also the Great
Improver, blind but powerful and inexorable. It had, said Darwin, elevated man to `the very summit of the
organic scale' and had thereby given him `hope for a still higher destiny in the distant future.' Darwin's
metaphor had taken on a life of its own. Natural selection had become a being with many of the attributes of
deity. Its works were manifold, like those of the Biblical Jehovah. Its power was awesome, conferring life and
death, creating new and ever more complex organic forms, separating the wheat from the tares, rewarding the
efficient and punishing the ineffectual, giving hope of ultimate progress to those who believed in its power
and kept its commandments. " (Greene, J. C., "Grounding human values in evolutionary theory." Review of
"Debating Darwin: Adventures of a Scholar,' by John C. Greene. CNN, July 27, 1999)
12/05/2005
"In the following classification of the main theories of the mind-body relationship upheld by philosophers, it
is to be understood that the positions sketched are `ideal types' to which actually held positions may
approximate in different degrees. If we think of mind and body as two opponents in a tug-of-war, then we
can distinguish between theories which try to drag body, and matter generally, over into the camp of mind;
those which try to drag mind over into the camp of body; and those theories where an equal balance is
maintained. This yields a division into mentalist, materialist (physicalist), and dualist theories. It is
convenient to begin by considering dualism. The major position here is Cartesian dualism, named after
Descartes, the central figure in postmedieval philosophical discussion of the mind-body problem. For a
Cartesian dualist the mind and body are both substances; but while the body is an extended, and so a
material, substance, the mind is an unextended, or spiritual, substance, subject to completely different
principles of operation from the body. It was this doctrine that Gilbert Ryle caricatured as the myth of the
ghost in the machine. It is in fact a serious and important theory. Dualist theories are also to be found in a
more sceptical form, which may be called bundle dualism. The word `bundle' springs from David Hume's
insistence that when he turned his mental gaze upon his own mind, he could discern no unitary substance
but simply a `bundle of perceptions', a succession or stream of individual mental items or happenings. Hume
thought of these items as non-physical. A bundle dualist is one who dissolves the mind in this general way,
while leaving the body and other material things intact. Besides dividing dualism into Cartesian and bundle
theories, it may also be divided according to a different principle. Interactionist theories hold, what common
sense asserts, that the body can act upon the mind and the mind can act upon the body. For parallelist
theories, however, mind and body are incapable of acting upon each other. Their processes run parallel, like
two synchronized clocks, but neither influences the other. There is an intermediate view according to which,
although the body (in particular, the brain) acts upon and controls the mind, the mind is completely impotent
to affect the body. This intermediate view, especially when combined with a bundle theory of mind, is the
doctrine of epiphenomenalism. It allows the neurophysiologist, in particular, to recognize the independent
reality of the mental, yet acknowledge the controlling role of the brain in our mental life and give a
completely physicalist account of the brain and the factors which act upon it. Mentalist theories arise
naturally out of dualist theories, particularly where the dualist position is combined with Descartes's own
view that the mind is more immediately and certainly known than anything material. If this view is taken, as it
was by many of the greatest philosophers who succeeded Descartes, it is natural to begin by becoming
sceptical of the existence of material things. The problem that this raises was then usually solved by
readmitting the material world in a dematerialized or mentalized form. Berkeley, for instance, solved the
sceptical problem by reducing material things to our sensations `of' them. Berkeley thus reaches a mentalism
where the mind is conceived of as a spiritual substance, but bodies are reduced to sensations of these
minds. It is possible to combine Berkeley's reduction of matter to sensations with a bundle account of the
mind. In this way is reached the doctrine of neutral monism, according to which mind and matter are simply
different ways of organizing and marking off overlapping bundles of the same constituents. This view is to
be found in Ernst Mach, William 'James, and was adopted at one stage by Bertrand `Russell. The `neutral'
constituents of mind and body are, however, only dubiously neutral, and the theory is best classified as a
form of mentalism. Just as Cartesian dualism may move towards mentalism, so it may also move towards
materialism. Surprisingly, Descartes's own particular form of the theory lends itself to this development also.
Descartes was one of the pioneers in arguing for an anti-Aristotelian view of the material world generally
and the body in particular. First, this involved the rejection of all teleological principles of explanation in the
non-mental sphere. Second, it involved taking the then revolutionary, now scientifically orthodox, view that
organic nature involves no principles of operation that are not already to be found operative in non-organic
nature. Human and animal bodies are simply machines (today we might say physico-chemical mechanisms)
working according to physical principles. A view of this sort naturally leads on to the suggestion that it may
be possible to give an account of the mind also along the same principles. In this way, a completely
materialist account of nature is reached, and so a materialist account of the mind. The word `materialism'
sometimes misleads. The materialist is not committed to a Newtonian 'billiard-ball' account of matter. Keith
Campbell has spoken of the `relativity of materialism'-its relativity to the physics of the day. Materialism is
best interpreted as the doctrine that the fundamental laws and principles of nature are exhausted by the laws
and principles of physics, however `unmaterialistic' the latter laws and principles may be. Instead of
speaking of `materialism' some writers use the term `physicalism'. Materialist accounts of the mind may be
subdivided into peripheralist and centralist views. A more familiar name for the peripheralist view is
behaviourism: the view that possession of a mind is constituted by nothing more than the engaging in of
especially sophisticated types of overt behaviour, or being disposed to engage in such behaviour in
suitable circumstances. Behaviourism as a philosophical doctrine must be distinguished from the mere
methodological behaviourism of many psychologists who do not wish to base scientific findings upon
introspective reports of processes that are not publicly observable. Very much more fashionable at the
present time among philosophers inclined to materialism is the centralist view, which identifies mental
processes with purely physical processes in the central nervous system. This view is sometimes called
central-state materialism or, even more frequently, the identity view. Unlike behaviourism, it allows the
existence of `inner' mental processes which interact causally with the rest of the body. It remains to call
attention to one important variety of theory intermediate between orthodox dualism and orthodox
materialism. It is a 'one-substance' view, denying that minds are things or collections of things set over
against the material substance which is the brain. But it does involve a dualism of properties, because brain
processes, besides their physical properties, are conceived of as having further non-physical properties
which are supposed to make the brain processes into mental processes. Such views may be called attribute
or dual-attribute theories of the mind-body relationship. A theory of this sort could be said to be a variety of
identity view, since it also holds that mental processes are identical with certain brain processes. According
to the doctrine of panpsychism, not simply brain processes but all physical things have a mental side,
aspect, or properties, even if in a primitive and undeveloped form. Although the dual-attribute view is
important, it inherits the considerable difficulty and confusion which surrounds the philosophical theory of
properties. There are many difficulties in giving a satisfactory account of what it is for a thing to have a
property, and these difficulties transmit themselves to this sort of theory of the mind-body relationship."
(Armstrong D.M., "Mind-Body Problem: Philosophical Theories," in Gregory R.L., ed., "The Oxford
Companion to the Mind," Oxford University Press: New York NY, 1987, pp.490-491)
13/05/2005
"Our next task is to join the two kinds of robot together. Imagine that the walking, sucker-footed robot
carries, on its back, something like the industrial, hand-wielding robot that we saw earlier. The combined
machine is under the control of an on-board computer. The on-board computer has a lot of routine software
for controlling the legs and the sucker feet, and for controlling the arm and hand assembly. But it is under
the overall control of a master Duplicate Me program which fundamentally says: `Walk around the world
gathering up the necessary materials to make a duplicate copy of the entire robot. Make a new robot, then
feed the same TRIP [Total Replication of Instructions Program] program into its on-board computer and turn
it loose on the world to do the same thing.' The hypothetical robot that we have now worked towards can be
called a TRIP robot. A TRIP robot such as we are now imagining is a machine of great technical ingenuity
and complexity. The principle was discussed by the celebrated Hungarian-American mathematician John
von Neumann ... But no von Neumann machine, no self-duplicating TRIP robot, has yet been built. Perhaps
it never will be built. Perhaps it is beyond the bounds of practical feasibility. But what am I talking about?
What nonsense to say that a self-duplicating robot has never been built. What on earth do I think that I
myself am? Or you? Or a bee or a flower or a kangaroo? What are all of us if not TRIP robots? We are not
man-made for the purpose: we have been put together by the processes of embryonic development, under
the ultimate direction of naturally selected genes. But what we actually do is exactly what the hypothetical
TRIP robot is defined as doing. We roam the world looking for the raw materials needed to assemble the
parts needed to maintain ourselves and eventually assemble another robot capable of the same feats.
(Dawkins R., "Climbing Mount Improbable," Penguin: London, 1996, pp.256-258)
13/05/2005
"We are all TRIP robots, all von Neumann machines. But how did the whole process start? To answer that,
we have to go back a very long time, more than 3,000 million years, probably as long as 4,000 million years.
In those days the world was very different. There was no life, no biology, only physics and chemistry, and
the details of the Earth's chemistry were very different. Most, though not all, of the informed speculation
begins in what has been called the primeval soup, a weak broth of simple organic chemicals in the sea.
Nobody knows how it happened but, somehow, without violating the laws of physics and chemistry, a
molecule arose that just happened to have the property of self-copying - a replicator. This may seem like a
big stroke of luck. I want to say a few things about this `luck'. First, it had to happen only once. In this
respect, it is rather like the luck involved in colonizing an island. Most islands around the world, even quite
remote ones like Ascension Island, have animals. Some of these, for example birds and bats, got there in a
way that we can easily understand, without postulating a great deal of luck. But other animals, like lizards,
can't fly. We scratch our heads and wonder how they got there. It may seem unsatisfactory to postulate a
freak of luck, like a lizard happening to be clinging to a mangrove on the mainland which breaks off and
drifts across the sea. Freakish or not, this kind of luck does happen there are lizards on oceanic islands. We
usually don't know the details, because it is not a thing that happens often enough for us to have any
likelihood of seeing it. The point is that it had to happen only once. And the same goes for the origin of life
on a planet. What is more, as far as we know, it may have happened on only one planet out of a billion
billion planets in the universe. Of course many people think that it actually happened on lots and lots of
planets, but we only have evidence that it happened on one planet, after a lapse of half a billion to a
billion years. So the sort of lucky event we are looking at could be so wildly improbable that the chances
of its happening, somewhere in the universe, could be as low as one in a billion billion billion in any one
year. If it did happen on only one planet, anywhere in the universe, that planet has to be our planet -
because here we are talking about it." (Dawkins R., "Climbing Mount Improbable," Penguin: London, 1996,
pp.258-260. Emphasis original)
13/05/2005
"An origin of life, anywhere, consists of the chance arising of a selfreplicating entity. Nowadays, the
replicator that matters on Earth is the DNA molecule, but the original replicator probably was not DNA. We
don't know what it was. Unlike DNA, the original replicating molecules cannot have relied upon complicated
machinery to duplicate them. Although, in some sense, they must have been equivalent to `Duplicate me'
instructions, the `language' in which the instructions were written was not a highly formalized language
such that only a complicated machine could obey them. The original replicator cannot have needed
elaborate decoding, as DNA instructions and computer viruses do today. Selfduplication was an inherent
property of the entity's structure just as, say, hardness is an inherent property of a diamond, something that
does not have to be `decoded' and `obeyed'. We can be sure that the original replicators, unlike their later
successors the DNA molecules, did not have complicated decoding and instruction-obeying machinery,
because complicated machinery is the kind of thing that arises in the world only after many generations of
evolution. And evolution does not get started until there are replicators. In the teeth of the so-called 'Catch-
22 of the origin of life' ... the original self-duplicating entities must have been simple enough to arise by the
spontaneous accidents of chemistry. ... There are undoubted difficulties in this story. Among them I have
already alluded to the so-called Catch-22 of the origin of life. The larger the number of components in a
replicator, the more likely it is that one of them will be miscopied, leading to complete malfunctioning of the
ensemble. This suggests that the first, primordial replicators must have had very few components. But
molecules with fewer than a certain minimum number of components are likely to be too simple to be capable
of engineering their own duplication." (Dawkins R., "Climbing Mount Improbable," Penguin: London, 1996,
pp.261-263)
13/05/2005
"The original replication machines - the first robot repeaters - must have been a lot simpler than bacteria, but
bacteria are the simplest examples of TRIP robots that we know today .... Bacteria make their livings in a
great variety of ways, from a chemical point of view a far wider range of ways than the rest of the living
kingdoms put together. There are bacteria that are more closely related to us than they are to other, strange
kinds of bacteria. There are bacteria that obtain their sustenance from sulphur in hot springs, for whom
oxygen is a deadly poison, bacteria that ferment sugar to alcohol in the absence of oxygen, bacteria that live
on carbon dioxide and hydrogen, giving out methane, bacteria that photosynthesize (use sunlight to
synthesize food) like plants, bacteria that photosynthesize in ways that are very different from plants.
Different groups of bacteria encompass a range of radically different biochemistries compared with which all
the rest of us - animals, plants, fungi and some bacteria - are monotonously uniform." (Dawkins R.,
"Climbing Mount Improbable," Penguin: London, 1996, p.263)
13/05/2005
"The original replication machines - the first robot repeaters - must have been a lot simpler than bacteria, but
bacteria are the simplest examples of TRIP robots that we know today .... Bacteria make their livings in a
great variety of ways, from a chemical point of view a far wider range of ways than the rest of the living
kingdoms put together. There are bacteria that are more closely related to us than they are to other, strange
kinds of bacteria. There are bacteria that obtain their sustenance from sulphur in hot springs, for whom
oxygen is a deadly poison, bacteria that ferment sugar to alcohol in the absence of oxygen, bacteria that live
on carbon dioxide and hydrogen, giving out methane, bacteria that photosynthesize (use sunlight to
synthesize food) like plants, bacteria that photosynthesize in ways that are very different from plants.
Different groups of bacteria encompass a range of radically different biochemistries compared with which all
the rest of us - animals, plants, fungi and some bacteria - are monotonously uniform." (Dawkins R.,
"Climbing Mount Improbable," Penguin: London, 1996, p.263) #
14/05/2005
"May not a future generation well ask how any scientist, in full possession of his intellectual faculties and
with adequate knowledge of information theory could ever execute the feat of cognitive acrobatics
necessary to sincerely believe that a (supremely complex) machine system of information storage and
retrieval, servicing millions of cells, diagnosing defects and then repairing them in a teleonomic von
Neumann machine manner, arose in randomness - the antipole of information? An information storage
and retrieval system allegedly arose in randomness, the opposite and antipole of the information with which
it deals! ... to propose that just one single book volume edited in a specific language and code wrote itself
by entirely random processes followed by selection would surely produce raised eyebrows even in
Darwinian scientific circles - but' that 1000 just such volumes should have arisen so, really does go a little
far. Yet the Darwinian Establishment still thinks this is the case, so it must be so!" (Wilder-Smith A.E.*, "The
Scientific Alternative to Neo-Darwinian Evolutionary Theory," T.W.F.T. Publishers: Costa Mesa CA, 1987,
p.iv. Emphasis original
14/05/2005
"A consequence of this fact is that simple machines (ie. machines which do not possess the functions of the
self-diagnosis of defects, self-repair of defects and self-reproduction, that is machines which are not von
Neumann machines) possess no autogenic evolutionary ability, i.e. they cannot improve or evolve
themselves with time. They all lose structure with time. To put this quite vital point in another way: the
simple non self-reproducing machine possesses no means of extracting any evolutionary progress from the
survival of the fittest (according to Darwin) in competition with other simple machines. It is only when
simple machines have become self-reproducing machines, that is, von Neumann machines (= self-
diagnosing, self-repairing and self-reproducing) that the possibility of upward machine evolution by
Darwin's postulate of the survival of the fittest coupled with mutatory changes and selection arises. This
postulate is the very basis of Darwin's evolutionary postulate and his explanation of creativity in nature by
natural law. Let us take a closer look at this sine qua non of Darwinian thought. Since a simple
machine does not reproduce itself, if does not pass on to any progeny any mutations good or bad - it has no
progeny. The less well adapted non-reproducing cell or machine (a cell is a machine, a metabolic machine, of
course) maybe will livefor a shorter time than the better adapted one. But both will cease to function (= die)
sooner or later and leave no progeny. So that no evolutionary advantages or disadvantages can accrue in a
simple non-reproducing machine by the alleged creative Darwinian process of mutation followed by natural
selection. It will thus be apparent that Darwin's small inherited changes (mutations) followed by natural
selection could on principle only become evolutionary after the cell (or machine) has reached the enormous
degree of complexity known as that of the von Neumann (self-reproducing) machine. Simple machines (i.e.
those not reproducing, repairing or diagnosing themselves) cannot evolve upwards by Darwinian creative
mutations followed by natural selection, simply because they do not reproduce. On simple theoretical
grounds, then, upward evolution can only occur in any machine, biological or otherwise, once it has reached
the truly enormous complexity of the von Neumann machine. This subject is treated more fully in the section
on von Neumann machines (pp. 38-39). That is, the evolution of any machine, including the biological one,
by the Darwinian scheme could only occur after the most important stages in biological evolution, namely
those up to the von Neumann self-reproducing stage, have already been reached. Darwin, then, has no
offers to make on just these vital and most intricate evolutionary stages and by what mechanism they may
have occurred simply because he never understood anything at all about these stages." (Wilder-Smith
A.E.*, "The Scientific Alternative to Neo-Darwinian Evolutionary Theory," T.W.F.T. Publishers: Costa
Mesa CA, 1987, pp.8-9)
14/05/2005
"But a second factor connected with time must now be taken into account. It is: the time required to
synthesize any given machine from its basic raw matter is inversely proportional to the quanta of suitable
bits of information applied. The time required to reach any synthetic or machine goal is certainly flexible, but
it usually shrinks as the amount of applied information or know-how expands. The more refined or
concentrated the know-how or information applied to matter in "machinogenesis" is, the less synthesis time,
in general, will be required. ... According to the theory governing the structure of von Neumann machines
(i.e. selfdiagnosing, self-repairing and self-reproducing machines) the number of bits of information required
to align each component part will be a multiple of the component parts themselves. That is, several bits of
information will be required to synthesize and place each component part in the hierarchy called the
machine. So that if the number of component parts of an average von Neumann machine approached infinity
(as von Neumann himself postulates ... the bits of information required to synthesize and place the
components into the machine hierarchy of such a complex machine will be a multiple of infinity! To blandly
propose (as Darwinians unwittingly do) that the von Neumann machine known as the biological cell or the
multicellular organism could have obtained the required multiple of infinity bits of information from the
stochastic processes of natural law, which information is not derivable from natural law, is simply to display
an abysmal lack of knowledge of information theory and of what is involved in the construction of a self-
diagnosing, self-repairing and selfreproducing machine, be it the biological cell or any other mechanical von
Neumann machine." (Wilder-Smith A.E.*, "The Scientific Alternative to Neo-Darwinian Evolutionary
Theory," T.W.F.T. Publishers: Costa Mesa CA, 1987, pp.10-11)
14/05/2005
"Similarly, the discipline of biology will not only survive but prosper if it turns out that genetic information
really is the product of preexisting intelligence. Biologists will have to give up their dogmatic materialism and
discard unproductive hypotheses like the prebiotic soup, but to abandon bad ideas is a gain, not a loss.
Freed of the metaphysical chains that tie it to nineteenth-century materialism, biology can turn to the
fascinating task of discovering how the intelligence embodied in the genetic information works through
matter to make the organism function. In that case chemical evolution will go the way of alchemy-abandoned
because a better understanding of the problem revealed its futility-and science will have reached a new
plateau." (Johnson, P.E.*, "Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law, and
Education," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL., 1995, pp.92-93)
14/05/2005
"Nowhere does Kauffman even attempt to establish a correspondence between the mathematical models he
runs on his computer and the actual processes matter must undergo to form a biological system. I find this
omission unconscionable, for it represents a descent into mysticism worse than any Kauffman claims to
avoid. Kauffman will write, "it is not implausible that life emerged as a phase transition to collective
autocatalysis once a chemical minestrone, held in a localized region able to sustain adequately high
concentrations, became thick enough with molecular diversity" (p. 274). This is not science, but alchemy (cf.
p. 277 where Kauffman actually uses the word "alchemy" to describe what he is doing). Indeed, once
Kauffman leaves the pristine world of mathematical modeling and computer simulations, and turns to the
messy world of matter in motion, he can do no better than alchemy. Kauffman's laws of self-organization
must do their self-organizing all by themselves. A supracritical mixture of diverse molecules (Kauffman's
"chemical minestrone") operating according to laws of self-organization must--if he is right--be able to work
the magic of life. Get the proper mixture and life will emerge. Nor can Kauffman's approach ever get beyond
alchemy. A very damning admission occurs when Kauffman considers a rather large NK Boolean network in
which N equals 100,000. Previously Kauffman has contended that life constitutes an attractor for an
autocatalytic set of chemicals. Such an auto-catalytic set will be exceedingly more complicated than the NK
Boolean network he is now considering. And yet Kauffman will admit that finding an attractor even for this
Boolean network will be all but impossible: "I cannot show you an attractor in such an unfathomable state
space" (p. 100). If Kauffman's stylized mathematical models are unfathomable, how much more nature
herself? Apparently oblivious to how it undercuts his program, Kauffman repeats this admission later on,
and even more forcefully: "It is one thing to talk about supracritical reaction systems blasting off into the
outer space of chemical creativity, but all confined to a computer model. It is quite another thing to fathom
what might go on in a real chemical system" (pp. 118-9). And fathom it he never does. Kauffman has not one
thing to say about real chemical systems except the unsubstantiated assertion that the right mixture of
chemicals governed by laws of self-organization will yield life. But the laws of self-organization he cites are
unknown. And even if they were known, there is no reason to think that we could ever apply them (after all,
we know the laws that govern toy examples like Boolean networks, and can't even apply them there).
Alchemy plus inscrutable laws of self-organization will ever remain alchemy. All the problems inherent in the
origin and development of life are still there after one finishes the book." (Dembski W.A.*, "Alchemy, NK
Boolean Style," Review of "At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self Organization and
Complexity," by Stuart Kauffman, Oxford University Press: New York, 1995. Origins & Design 17:2, Spring
1996. Access Research Network)
14/05/2005
"One of the greatest of these figures was the mathematician John von Neumann, who developed his model
of a self-replicating machine in the early 1950s before the actual self-replicating machinery of the cell had
been worked out. [Von Neumann J., "Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata," ed. A. W Burks, University of
Illinois Press: Urbana IL, 1966] Von Neumann ... visualized the surface of a vast body of fluid covered with
infinitely many copies of each kind of element required for the construction of the automaton, distributed in
random fashion over the surface of the lake. The automaton, like an animated erector set, floats on the
surface of the hypothetical lake and, by picking up elements from the fluid and assembling them together,
eventually constructs a copy of itself. The automaton consists of two components: an information bank and
a mechanical assembly unit capable of manipulative robotic activities-what von Neumann called the
`constructor.' The information bank provided all the information and instructions necessary to direct the
constructor to assemble a copy of itself. When the constructor had finished constructing a copy of itself, it
then made a copy of the information bank and inserted this new copy into the newly assembled offspring
constructor. Thus, the automaton makes a complete copy of itself." (Denton M.J., "Nature's Destiny: How
the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe," Free Press: New York NY, 1998, p.144)
14/05/2005
"Yet despite the dreams of artificial life and the gurus of nanotechnology, the undeniable fact remains that
many characteristics of living organisms are still without any significant analogue in any machine which has
yet been constructed. Every living system replicates itself, yet no machine yet possesses this capacity even
to the slightest degree. Nearly half a century after von Neumann, Claude Shannon, Norbert Wiener, and
their circle dreamed of self-replicating machines, the dream is nowhere near realization. Nor does there exist
even a well-developed, detailed blueprint in the most advanced area of nanotechnology for a machine that
could carry out such a stupendous act. In the case of von Neumann's model, for example, no serious
consideration was given to the fuel and energy supply problem. Von Neumann assumed conveniently that
his automata would have unlimited energy! The challenge is enormous. A self-replicating machine requires a
data storage system which must be accessible or comprehensible to the constructor device. It requires that
the constructor be assembled from a very small number of readily available substances. It requires a means
of energy generation,, storage, and distribution to its working components and so forth. None of these
problems has been solved. Yet every second, countless trillions of living systems from bacterial cells to
elephants replicate themselves on the surface of our planet. And since life's origin, as the earth has circled
thousands of millions of times around the sun, endless life forms have effortlessly copied themselves on
unimaginable numbers of occasions." (Denton M.J., "Nature's Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal
Purpose in the Universe," Free Press: New York NY, 1998, pp.147-148)
14/05/2005
"The human language capacity is rivaled only by another cascading network of representational systems,
the unfolding complexities of DNA, which provide the basis for all living things in the biosphere. Of the
many unsolved mysteries hidden within the delicately interrelated systems of DNA's biological language,
perhaps the most challenging mystery of them all is how the human language capacity is specified in the
human genome." (Oller J.W.* & Omdahl J.L.*, "Origin of the Human Language Capacity: In Whose Image?,"
in Moreland J.P., ed., "The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific Evidence for an Intelligent Designer,"
InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 1994, p.235)
14/05/2005
"We have examined the human language capacity from a scientific point of view and have seen how closely
it is connected with the distinctive abstract capabilities of human intelligence. We have seen that the
intricate and articulate structures of language are mirrored in the delicate arrangements of biological
representations in correspondence to information coded in DNA. We have shown logically that the
language capacity cannot have originated in any purely materialistic manner. The logical gulf that separates
mind from matter really is an uncrossable barrier to any materialistic origin. If the definitions of Peirce and
Einstein are accepted, the gulf they described cannot be crossed without the intention of a truly
transcendent Intelligence-a conclusion both of them accepted." (Oller J.W.* & Omdahl J.L.*, "Origin of the
Human Language Capacity: In Whose Image?," in Moreland J.P., ed., "The Creation Hypothesis: Scientific
Evidence for an Intelligent Designer," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 1994, p.265)
15/05/2005
"John von Neumann ... was interested in a robot that had a control message of sufficient information
content that it could direct its own actions and reproduce itself. ... Let us think of the protobiont as a kind of
von Neumann self-replicating machine (von Neumann, 1966). The built-in set of instructions that directs its
action has an information content and is analogous to a genetic message. Von Neumann (1966) thought that
there was a minimum degree of complexity below which the process of self- replication is degenerative.
Above this level, the process of self-replication was, as he put it, explosive. Thus the complexity of the built-
in algorithm must be sufficient to allow the operation of the robot but it must also have an additional
information content sufficient to allow it to self-replicate. ... The protobiont, like the self-replicating robot,
must have a genome of sufficient complexity both to metabolize and to self-replicate. ... Let us consider how
the information content of the set of instructions incorporated in the von Neumann machine leads us to an
estimate of the minimum information content of the protobiont. What is the smallest information content in
the instructions required to direct the actions and replication of the protobiont? We may draw our estimates
of its minimum information content from the genomes of the most primitive free-living organisms in order to
ascertain the lowest threshold the various scenarios for the origin of life must attain. ... The ... minimum
information content of the protobiont must be in the range of hundreds of thousands to several million bits.
Scenarios on the origin of life must show how a complexity of that magnitude, which is characteristic of
organisms, was generated (Yockey, 1977c, 1981)." (Yockey H.P., "Information Theory and Molecular
Biology," Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1992, pp.243-244)
15/05/2005
"alchemy The medieval combination of chemistry, philosophy, and secret lore aimed at transmuting base
metals into gold (by means of the philosopher's stone), and discovering the universal cure for disease and
mortality." (Blackburn S., "The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy," [1994], Oxford University Press: Oxford
UK, 1996, p.10)
15/05/2005
"alchemy n. a kind of theory about material substances, based on close analogies between material qualities
and relations on the one hand, mental or spiritual ones on the other. Among its practical applications was
the preparation of medicines, but best known is the attempt to make gold out of base metals. That process
required a catalyst, known as the philosopher's stone. Alchemy flourished in the late Middle Ages and the
Renaissance." (Mautner T., ed., "The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy," [1996], Penguin: London, Revised,
2000, p.11)
15/05/2005
"alchemy, a quasi-scientific practice and mystical art, mainly ancient and medieval, that had two broad aims:
to change baser metals into gold and to develop the elixir of life, the means to immortality. Classical Western
alchemy probably originated in Egypt in the first three centuries A.D. (with earlier Chinese and later Islamic
and Indian variants) and was practiced in earnest in Europe by such figures as Paracelsus and Newton until
the eighteenth century. Western alchemy ad dressed concerns of practical metallurgy, but its philosophical
significance derived from an early Greek theory of the relations among the basic elements and from a
religious-allegorical understanding of the alchemical transmutation of ores into gold, an understanding that
treats this process as a spiritual ascent from human toward divine perfection. The purification of crude ores
(worldly matter) into gold (material perfection) was thought to require a transmuting agent, the philosopher's
stone, a mystical substance that, when mixed with alcohol and swallowed, was believed to produce
immortality (spiritual perfection). The alchemical search for the philosopher's stone, though abortive,
resulted in the development of ultimately useful experimental tools (e.g., the steam pump) and methods (e.g.,
distillation)." (Trout J.D.T., "alchemy," in Audi R., ed., "The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy," [1995],
Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1996, reprint, pp.16-17)
16/05/2005
"Natural selection, acting over time, can lead to complex adaptations, but it can do so only if each small
change along the way is itself adaptive. While it is easy to assume that this is true in a hypothetical example
of character strings, many people have argued that it is unlikely for every one of the changes necessary to
assemble a complex organ like the eye to be adaptive. An eye is only useful, it is claimed, once all parts of
the complexity are assembled; until then, it is worse than no eye at all. After all, what good is 5% of an eye?
Darwin's answer, based on the many adaptations for seeing or sensing light that exist in the natural world,
was that 5% of an eye is often better than no eye at all. It is quite possible to imagine that a very large
number of small changes-each favored by selection-led cumulatively to the wonderful complexity of the eye.
Living mollusks, which display a broad range of light-sensitive organs, provide examples of many of the
likely stages in this process (Figure 1.14): 1. Many invertebrates have a simple light-sensitive spot (Figure
1.14a). Photoreceptors of this kind have evolved many times from ordinary epidermal (surface) cells-usually
ciliated cells whose biochemical machinery is light-sensitive. Those individuals whose cells are more
sensitive to light are favored when information about changes in light intensity are useful. For example, a
drop in light intensity may often be an indicator of a predator in the vicinity. ... Figure 1.14 Living gastropod
mollusks illustrate all of the intermediate steps between a simple eye cup and a camera-type eye: (a) The eye
pit of a limpet, Patella sp.; (b) the eye cup of Beyrich's split shell, Pleurotomaria beyrichi; (c)
the pinhole eye of a California abalone, Haliotis sp. ; (d) the closed eye of a turban shell, Turbo
creniferus; (e) the lens eyes of the spiny dye murex, Murex brandaris; (f) the lens eyes of the
Atlantic dog whelk, Nucella lapis. (Lens is shaded in e and f.) 2. By locating the light-sensitive cells
in a depression, the organism will get some additional information about the direction of the change in light
intensity (Figure 1.14b). The surface of organisms is variable, and those individuals whose photoreceptors
are in depressions will be favored by selection in environments where such information is useful. For
example, mobile organisms may need better information about what is happening in front of them than do
immobile ones. 3. Through a series of small steps, the depression could get deeper, and each step could be
favored by selection because better directional information would be available (Figure 1.14c). 4. If the
depression got deep enough, it could form images on the light-sensitive tissue, much the way pinhole
cameras form images on photographic film (Figure 1.14d). In settings in which detailed images are useful,
selection could then favor the elaboration of the neural machinery necessary to interpret the image. 5. The
next step is the formation of a transparent cover (Figure 1.14e). This might be favored because it protects the
interior of the eye from parasites and mechanical damage. 6. A lens could evolve either through gradual
modification of the transparent cover, or through the modification of internal structures within the eye
(Figure 1.14f). Notice that evolution produces adaptations like a tinkerer, not an engineer. New organisms
are created by small modifications of existing ones, not by starting with a clean slate. Clearly there will be
many beneficial adaptations that will not arise because they are blocked at some step along the way when a
particular variation is not favored by selection. Darwin's theory explains how complex adaptations can arise
through natural processes, but it does not predict that every, or even most, adaptations that could occur,
have occurred, or will occur. This is not the best of all possible worlds; it is just one of many possible
worlds." (Boyd R. & Silk J.B., "How Humans Evolved," [1997], W.W. Norton & Co: New York NY, Second
Edition, 2000, pp.17-18)
16/05/2005
"Dawkins's bold claims to tell us how Mount Improbable may be scaled offers no fundamental principles of
promise regarding how biological information of the scale needed to explain macroevolution might be
generated and absolutely no empirical support for his thesis that there is a footpath to the top of Mount
Improbable with sufficiently small steps. In a recent letter to the editor of The Independent Brian Josephson,
professor of physics at Cambridge University, summarizes Dawkins's approach: `In such books as the Blind
Watchmaker, a crucial part of the argument concerns whether there exists a continuous path, leading from
the origins of life to man, each step of which is both favored by natural selection, and small enough to have
happened by chance. It appears to be presented as a matter of logical necessity that such a path exists, but
actually there is no such logical necessity; rather, commonly made assumptions in evolution require the
existence of such a path." [Josephson B., Letter to the editor, The Independent, January 12, 1997]." (Bradley
W.L., "Designed or Designoid," in Dembski W.A., ed., "Mere Creation: Science, Faith & Intelligent Design,"
InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 1998, pp.47-48)
16/05/2005
"Using reasoning like this, Darwin convinced many of his readers that an evolutionary pathway leads from
the simplest light-sensitive spot to the sophisticated camera-eye of man. But the question of how vision
began remained unanswered. Darwin persuaded much of the world that a modern eye evolved gradually
from a simpler structure, but he did not even try to explain where his starting point-the relatively simple
light-sensitive spot-came from. On the contrary, Darwin dismissed the question of the eye's ultimate origin:
How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated." [Darwin
C., "Origin of Species", 6th ed., 1872, New York University Press: New York, 1988, p151]. (Behe M.J.,
"Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution," Free Press: New York NY, 1996, p.18)
16/05/2005
"The more pressing difficulty was theoretical. Many organs require an intricate combination of complex
parts to perform their functions. The eye and the wing are the most common illustrations, but it would be
misleading to give the impression that either is a special case; human and animal bodies are literally packed
with similar marvels. How can such things be built up by `infinitesimally small inherited variations, each
profitable to the preserved being?' The first step towards a new function-such as vision or ability to fly-
would not necessarily provide any advantage unless the other parts required for the function appeared at
the same time. As an analogy, imagine a medieval alchemist producing by chance a silcon microchip; in the
absence of a supporting computer technology the prodigious invention would be useless and he would
throw it away. Stephen Jay Gould asked himself `the excellent question, What good is 5 per cent of an eye?,'
(Gould S.J., "The Problem of Perfection," in "Ever Since Darwin," [1978], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint,
p.107) and speculated that the first eye parts might have been useful for something other than sight. Richard
Dawkins responded that: `An ancient animal with 5 per cent of an eye might indeed have used it for
something other than sight, but it seems to me as likely that it used it for 5 per cent vision. And actually I
don't think it is an excellent question. Vision that is 5 per cent as good as yours or mine is very much worth
having in comparison with no vision at all. So is 1 per cent vision better than total blindness. And 6 per cent
is better than 5, 7 per cent better than 6, and so on up the gradual, continuous series.' (Dawkins R., "The
Blind Watchmaker," [1986], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint, p.81) The fallacy in that argument is that `5 per
cent of an eye' is not the same thing as `5 per cent of normal vision.' For an animal to have any useful vision
at all, many complex parts must be working together. Even a complete eye is useless unless it belongs to a
creature with the mental and neural capacity to make use of the information by doing something that
furthers survival or reproduction. What we have to imagine is a chance mutation that provides this complex
capacity all at once, at a level of utility sufficient to give the creature an advantage in producing offspring."
(Johnson, P.E.*, "Darwin on Trial," [1991], InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, Second Edition, 1993, pp.34-
35)
18/05/2005
"It seems to be characteristic of the human mind that when it sees a black box in action, it imagines that the
contents of the box are simple. A happy example is seen in the comic strip `Calvin and Hobbes' .... Calvin is
always jumping in a box with his stuffed tiger, Hobbes, and traveling back in time, or `transmogrifying'
himself into animal shapes, or using it as a `duplicator' and making clones of himself A little boy like Calvin
easily imagines that a box can fly like an airplane (or something), because Calvin doesn't know how airplanes
work. In some ways, grown-up scientists are just as prone to wishful thinking as little boys like Calvin. ...
When a merely verbal [or even mathematical-SEJ] picture is painted of the development of such a complex
system, there is absolutely no way to know if it would actually work. When such crucial questions are
ignored we leave science and enter the world of Calvin and Hobbes. ... it's one thing to say an organism has
a completed, functioning system, and another to say how the system developed. ... in the end, it is a hop in
the box with Calvin and Hobbes. ... Calvin and Hobbes stories can sometimes be spun by ignoring critical
details ... ." (Behe M.J.*, "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution," Free Press: New
York NY, 1996, pp.23, 95, 137, 177)
18/05/2005
"Although evolutionary biology is committed to common descent (i.e., that all organisms trace their lineage
back to some last universal common ancestor), that is not its central claim. Indeed, there are design theorists
who cheerfully hold to common descent (e.g., Michael Behe). The central claim of evolutionary biology,
rather, is that an unguided physical process is sufficient to account for the emergence of biological
complexity and diversity." (Dembski W.A.*, "The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions
About Intelligent Design," Intervarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 2004, pp.260-261)
18/05/2005
"Theistic evolution, differs from special creation in that it postulates the evolution of man's body from
that of the simplest forms of life, and differs from Deistic evolution in that it invokes supernatural activity
to bring about the more radical changes in the human pedigree. Natural agencies, according to this view, are
adequate for minor evolution but require to be supplemented by supernatural agencies to provoke major
evolution. Wallace who shares with Darwin the credit for promulgating the theory of Natural Selection did
not believe that natural forces alone could account for the ascent of man. He suggested that there were
`three stages in the development of the organic world when some new cause or power must necessarily
have come into action, the first when the first living cell was created, the second when the animal kingdom
separated from the vegetable kingdom, and the third at the creation of man." (Lunn A.*, ed., "Is Evolution
Proved?: A Debate Between Douglas Dewar and H.S. Shelton," Hollis & Carter: London, 1947, pp.14-15.
Emphasis original)
19/05/2005
"The publication of 'The Alleged Fallacies of Evolutionary Theory' by Massimo Pigliucci and others in Issue
46 of Philosophy Now provides a convenient occasion for pointing out the limits of the negative
theological implications of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection. In the fourteenth and final
chapter of The Origin of Species Darwin himself - apart from noticing certain short (a mere handful of
million years long) geological periods in which the fossil record reveals the occurrence of inexplicably rapid
evolution - wrote: `Analogy would lead me one step further, namely to the belief that all animals and plants
have descended from one prototype.... Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic
beings that have lived on the earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first
breathed." (Flew A.G.N., "Letter from Antony Flew on Darwinism and Theology," Philosophy Now,
August-September 2004)
19/05/2005
"Analogy would lead me one step further, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants have descended
from some one prototype. But analogy may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless all living things have much in
common, in their chemical composition, their germinal vesicles, their cellular structure, and their laws of
growth and reproduction. We see this even in so trifling a circumstance as that the same poison often
similarly affects plants and animals; or that the poison secreted by the gallfly produces monstrous growths
on the wild rose or oak-tree. Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings
which have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one primordial form, into which life was first
breathed." (Darwin, C.R., "The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or The Preservation of
Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life," [1859], Penguin: London, First edition, 1985, reprint, p.455)
19/05/2005
"`Did you know that Charles Darwin became a Christian before he died? It's true. I read about it once in a
book - or was it a magazine? I forget. Anyway, my father told me about it first, when I was studying biology
in school. He said that Darwin gave up his theory of evolution on his deathbed and put his faith in the Bible.
No, I can't remember where Dad learned about it. I think he said it was in a tract he picked up at church. But
I've asked other folks and they know about Darwin's conversion, too. They say that a lady heard it from his
own mouth. Her name was "Hope", I think.. Isn't it wonderful? Darwin spent his whole life fighting against
creation, then at the last moment he read the Bible and believed. What a testimony to the power of God's
Word!' So I have heard countless times from wide-eyed believers. Their reports are routine. Whenever I
lecture or broadcast about Darwin in North America I am inevitably asked about his `deathbed conversion'.
Some inquirers are perplexed, others persuaded, but all devoutly hope that as a historian I can prove the
story true. My first reaction was total disbelief. I had studied Darwin's religion for years. I knew his
deathbed well: Darwin died as he had lived, an agnostic. The conversion story was an obvious myth, just
like so many deathbed tales - manufactured, malicious. ... The Darwin deathbed story was, I felt sure, just
one more dastardly fib.' ... Then I read the story for the first time - not one of the versions endlessly
recycled in tracts, but the story as originally published in 1915. To my amazement, it was a first-hand
account by 'Lady Hope'. The noble lady did not report a death scene or a conversion, but merely a strange
interview she had had with Darwin some months before he died. And fanciful as her story was, I saw at once
that parts of it might be authentic. This threw me completely. Perhaps all along I had been dismissing a
legend, not a myth. Myths grow up around famous (or infamous) historical figures because they seem to
stand apart from other mortals, out of time. Their lives acquire a numinous aura, their deaths an ominous
aspect, and weird tales about them circulate. One authentic Darwin myth is the local tradition that he 'still
lives and visits his old home...His aged and ghostly figure may still be observed' pacing the grounds.
Darwin's shade is even said to be one of seven haunting the house across the road. Stories like this have a
history, but their origin the province of folklorists and social psychologists, not professional historians.
Legends by contrast are about real events. Though unreliable, they have a factual basis that historians can
explore. ... Is the Darwin deathbed story a similar legend - a grotesque gloss on real historical events? I now
believe so. But I reached this conclusion only by the most awkward, circuitous route. It took many years
and miles of shoe leather to come up with the right evidence. ...In consternation I went back to the `Lady
Hope' who reported meeting Darwin. Was a woman of that name known at the time of his death? If so, what
was her occupation? Did she live until 1915, when the Darwin story was published? I fired off letters,
plundered my local library, and ransacked London archives. Within a few weeks I had brought the lady
vividly to life. She was born Elizabeth Reid Cotton on 9 December 1842, in the parish of Longford, near
Launceston, Tasmania, the eldest child of Captain (later General Sir) Arthur Cotton of the Royal Engineers
and Elizabeth Learmouth, from a local landowning family. Young Elizabeth married twice - in 1877 to Admiral
Sir James Hope (who died in 1881), and in 1893 to the philanthropist T. Anthony Denny (who died in 1909).
She bore no children but was a prolific author, leaving some thirty titles under her nom de plume, Lady
Hope, in the British Library Catalogue. These publications dealt with evangelistic and temperance themes;
many contained personal anecdotes reminiscent of the Darwin story. Lady Hope emigrated to the United
States in 1913 and eventually settled in California. She sailed for England a few years later but died en route,
on 8 March 1922 ... Australia. ... This tantalizing information prompted a torrent of questions. What sort of
person was Elizabeth Cotton, alias Lady Hope? Who were her friends? How did she spend her time? What
was she doing in the period when she claimed to have visited Darwin? Can her account of their meeting be
trusted? Is any of it credible? Why did she wait over thirty years before telling her story? Or did she? And
what happened after its publication? Did she repeat herself, or recant? How did the Christian public react? I
posed similar, searching questions about Darwin. How did his religious faith develop? When did he reject
Christianity, and why? Was he likely to have changed his beliefs in later years? What was his spiritual state
in the last months of his life? Did he receive visitors at that time? Was his wife also present? How did she
and the family handle religious issues? Would they have opened the door to Lady Hope? What did the
Darwin children and grandchildren make of her published story? ... This book reports my findings over the
past twenty years. It may be revised by further research, but at least it exposes the deathbed legend once
and for all. My sleuthing has taken me to three continents .... I have located over one hundred occurrences
of the legend in manuscript and print, including eleven original sources, at least two of which may be
unconnected with Lady Hope. I have also compiled the Darwin family's angry reaction to the conversion
story in ten private and published letters. .... The Darwins were not alone in opposing the deathbed legend.
Freethinkers and other evolutionists have debunked it repeatedly. But they still find Lady Hope to be a
`shadowy figure' and a `mystery'. So also, ironically, do evangelicals. In recent years some of them have
jumped on the evolutionists' bandwagon. Anxious that their belief in creation should appear `scientific', they
have rushed to distance themselves from the legend. The story attributed to Lady Hope is `completely false'
and has `no basis in fact', they say. Lady Hope's existence is irrelevant. None of these parties has got it right
- not the neocreationists, not the evolutionists, not even the Darwins. Lady Hope was a real person; the
story she told has some historical merit, though it immediately launched a legend. Now, for the first time, her
story can be traced to a precise period in Darwin's life, and its significance for understanding his
posthumous reputation can be assessed. There may be crumbs of comfort for all concerned in what follows,
but there are also faults to be found on every side. The historical Darwin is no one's monopoly. My account
begins with a narrative of Darwin's religious development, from prospective parson to closet agnostic
(chaps. 1-2). It was a tortuous passage: as an evolutionist Darwin feared for his respectability, while his wife
Emma feared for his eternal salvation. The tensions he experienced - most evident in his famous illness -
were recreated after his death when the family quarrelled bitterly over publishing the religious part of his
private autobiography (chap. 3). A compromise was struck to protect Emma, requiring that the most personal
and pointed passages be suppressed. In the family's Life and Letters the world was given a moderate,
respectable, agnostic `Darwin' long before Lady Hope spoke out. Lady Hope's status as a national
temperance campaigner was at a peak in the period when she allegedly met Darwin. And there are good
reasons for placing her in or around his village at the time she claimed to have visited him (chap. 4). She first
published her account of their interview in the United States, doubtless because it was opportune. The
story, though imaginative, cannot be dismissed as pure invention. It contains striking elements of
authenticity, to which Lady Hope privately added convincing new detail (chap. 5). The religious press
picked it up and it spread like wildfire, provoking heated protests by the Darwins, who referred inquirers to
the Life and Letters (chap. 6). Their promotion of the official `Darwin' was just as opportune as Lady Hope's
promotion of hers. In 1929, through the family's good offices, the Darwin home was presented to the nation
as a shrine to respectable, evolutionary agnosticism. The uncensored text of Darwin's autobiography finally
appeared in 1958, showing his definitive rejection of Christianity. Two years later the deathbed legend was
first tentatively exposed by a sympathetic unbeliever. Evangelicals have scarcely noticed. The old, stale slur
on Darwin still circulates, even on television. `The children of this world are in their generation wiser than
the children of light.' [Luke 16:8]" (Moore J.R., "The Darwin Legend," [1994], Hodder & Stoughton: London,
1995, reprint, pp.1-7. Emphasis original)
19/05/2005
"If living matter is not, then, caused by the interplay of atoms, natural forces and radiation, how has it come
into being? There is another theory, now quite out of favour, which is based upon the ideas of Lamarck: that
if an organism needs an improvement it will develop it, and transmit it to its progeny. I think, however, that
we must go further than this and admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation. I know that this is
anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the
experimental evidence supports it. An animal - particularly the human animal - is a beautiful example of a
carefully contrived and subtly engineered design. The word 'design' comes naturally even in evolutionist
books. The Designer must know infinitely more science than we shall ever know. He started off with a few
simple examples and, learning from them, introduced new and improved species. He gradually incorporated
new properties, imagination and free will being the latest ones. He is probably learning that these are not
enough, since they seem to cultivate a propensity to self-destruction. I find these ideas comforting, for if we
do destroy ourselves, a superior model will be created, whereas according to the theory of evolution we are
doomed. I should be happy to know what my fellow physicists think of these admittedly extraordinary ideas.
In putting them forward I can claim to be in good company. According to Darwin, when Newton put forward
his theory of gravitation, Leibnitz accused him of introducing 'occult qualities and miracles into philosophy.'
What was this gravitation? How could two inanimate bodies attract each other? Newton replied laconically
'Hypotheses non fingo'. When I am asked describe my ideas of the Creator I also say
'Hypotheses non fingo'!" (Lipson, H.S., "A physicist looks at evolution", Physics Bulletin, Vol. 31,
No. 4, May 1980, p138)
19/05/2005
"Thus the ID movement has become a `big tent,' attracting people from a variety of religious backgrounds.
CRSC fellow David Berlinski, who has published Commentary articles critical of Darwinism, is Jewish. In
Kansas, board supporters included local Muslims and a group of Hare Krishnas, who showed up at a
meeting wearing saffron robes. Even agnostics who believe the universe is in some sense teleological have
teamed up with the ID movement--figures like Michael Denton, author of the influential Evolution: A
Theory in Crisis. His most recent book, Nature's Destiny, argues that purpose pervades the
universe at all levels. `The power of ID is precisely its minimalism,' says Todd Moody, an agnostic and
professor at St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia. `It travels light, with no theological baggage.' Among
Christians, ID shows promise of uniting often hostile factions, from young-earth creationists to theistic
evolutionists and everyone in between." (Pearcey, N.R.*, "We're Not in Kansas Anymore," Christianity
Today, May 22, 2000, Vol. 44, No. 6, p.42)
20/05/2005
"... Langton confirmed that yes, he really did adhere to the view known as `strong a-life,' which holds that
computer simulations of living things are themselves alive. He described himself as a functionalist, who
believed life was characterized by what it did rather than by what it was made of. If a programmer created
molecule-like structures that, following certain laws, spontaneously organized themselves into entities that
could seemingly eat, reproduce, and evolve, Langton would consider those entities to be alive-'even if
they're in a computer:' Langton said his belief had moral consequences. `I like to think that if I saw
somebody sitting next to me at a computer terminal who is torturing these creatures, you know, sending
them to some digital equivalent of hell, or rewarding only a select few who spelled out his name on the
screen, I would try to get this guy some psychological help!' I told Langton that he seemed to be conflating
metaphor, or analogy, with reality. `What I'm trying to do, actually, is something a little more seditious than
that,' Langton replied, smiling. He wanted people to realize that life might be a process that could be
implemented by any number of arrangements of matter, including the ebb and flow of electrons in a
computer. `At some level the actual physical realization is irrelevant to the functional properties,' he said. `Of
course there are differences,' he added. `There are going to be differences if there's a different material base.
But are the differences fundamental to the property of being alive or not?' ... He finally conceded that the
question of whether computer simulations are really alive was also, ultimately, a philosophical, and
therefore unresolvable, issue. `But for artificial life to do its job and help broaden the empirical database for
biological science and for a theory of biology, they don't have to solve that problem. Biologists have never
really had to solve that:' The longer Langton spoke, the more he seemed to acknowledge-and even welcome
the fact-that artificial life would never be the basis for a truly empirical science."
(Horgan J., "The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age,"
[1996], Little, Brown & Co: London, 1997, pp.200-201. Emphasis original)
20/05/2005
"If life can be thought of as an intricate system of symbols, then it is tempting to turn the tables and ask
whether the structures that arise in Fontana's simulation are in some sense alive, examples of what has come
to be called artificial life. ... Embracing this belief that life is a process that can be skimmed from its
carboniferous substrate and transplanted into a world of pure abstraction, some of the visitors to the A-life
conference in Santa Fe-the one where Fontana and Buss gave their presentationdemonstrated artificial
ecologies in which digital creatures compete for `resources': memory space and processing time. In a
simulation called Tierra, developed by an ecologist named Tom Ray, self-replicating digital organisms hone
themselves through random mutation and selection into more efficient forms. An original Ancestor,
consisting of eighty lines of computer code, is supplanted by simpler self-replicators of seventy-nine lines,
then seventyeight and seventy-seven. They flourish because they can live on less `energy': they can
duplicate themselves using fewer cycles of the computer's central processor. These programs then give way
to even smaller versions, but at some point a profound change occurs. The organisms are preyed on by.
parasites, compact little programs that, like viruses, have developed the ability to copy themselves using
their hosts' replicating machinery. But the hosts then develop defenses against the parasites, and the
parasites develop defenses against the defenses. An evolutionary arms race ensues. By releasing his self-
replicating programs into a more complex, unpredictable environment, consisting of a web of computers
linked by the worldwide system called the Internet, Ray hopes to create a digital wildlife preserve. Driven by
the need for nourishment-free cycles of processing time-the creatures would migrate in search of idle
computers, always staying on the dark side of the earth. What he hopes will evolve is a menagerie of
creatures with different specialties, which might unite to form a multicellular organism. Can Ray's creations
be considered alive? In the construction of systems like these, there is always the danger of confusing the
map with the territory, of mistaking the network of concepts we lay over the world for the world itself. If life
is simply a process-an orchestration of bits-then it is hard to see why a self-sustaining, self-reproducing
structure inside a computer would not be alive. Or is this a hideous case of reification, in which we have
become so enamored of a concept-information-that we have elevated it to the status of a real thing? At the
A-life conference in Santa Fe, the psychologist Steven Harnad argued that it is ridiculous to confuse
artificial creatures with biological ones. To be real, a simulated creature would have to interact with the
environment, he said, and simulated ones don't count. What is being billed as artificial life may mimic some
biological processes, but unless it has contact with reality it is nothing but a simulation. A robot with
artificial intelligence programmed into its silicon brain and the ability to sustain itself by seeking out energy
and to reproduce itself with random variations, allowing for the gradual improvement of the species-now
that might qualify as life, Harnad argued, for it would be living in what is still widely considered the real
world. Very few A-life enthusiasts find this argument convincing. So sure are they that information is
fundamental, not just an abstraction, that they have little trouble believing that the environment inside a
computer is every bit as real to its information-based creatures as ours is to us. Harnad bases many of his
arguments against artificial life on the ones the Berkeley philosopher John Searle has aimed against artificial
intelligence. Searle is well known among both philosophers and computer scientists for provocative remarks
like this: A simulation of a rainstorm won't get anybody wet; why in the world would anyone think that a
simulation of intelligence would really think? Now the A-lifers believe they have an answer: simulated
creatures would experience the conditions that, in their world, qualify as wetness. How very parochial of us
to believe that ours is the only universe that counts. ... Thinking in terms of bits has allowed us to develop
the field of computer science, in which we learn how to represent the world with patterns of information. So
successful are our endeavors that some physicists and computer scientists believe that perhaps information
is not a human invention but something as real, as physical, as matter and energy. And now a handful of
researchers have come to believe that information may be the most real of all. Simulated creatures would
have no way of knowing they are simulations, the argument goes. And, for that matter, how do we know
that we are not simulations ourselves, running on a computer in some other universe? Nature, it seems, has
honed us into informavores so voracious that some can persuade themselves that there is nothing but
information. Samuel Johnson rejected Bishop Berkeley's solipsistic views of reality by kicking a rock. Little
did Johnson know that he might have been pure information himself, `kicking' a data structure called rock,
`feeling' processes referred to as hardness and pain. " (Johnson G., "Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the
Search for Order," [1995], Penguin Books: London, 1997, pp.256-257)
20/05/2005
"Order Tends to Disorder The first law of thermodynamics states that energy can be neither created nor
destroyed. The second law qualifies this by adding that in transformations, energy `deteriorates' from more
useful forms to less useful forms. Energy becomes more diffuse and ultimately degenerates into waste.
Another way to say this is that organized energy (concentrated and therefore usable energy) degenerates
into disorganized energy (nonusable energy). The energy of gasoline is organized and usable energy. When
gasoline burns in a car engine, part of its energy does useful work and part is `thrown away' as wasted heat
in the cooling system and exhaust. Even the part that goes into useful work ultimately makes its way into
disorganized heat energy as the car encounters friction with the road and the air and the brakes. Organized
energy in the form of electricity that goes to the electric lights in homes and office buildings degenerates
into heat energy. This is a principal source of heating in many office buildings where the climate is moderate,
such as the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco. All the electrical energy in the lamps, even the part that
briefly exists in the form of light, is turned into heat energy, which is used to warm the building. This
explains why the lights are on most of the time. The energy so generated has no further use. All the heat in
the buildings cannot be reused to light a single lamp. Heat, diffused into the environment as thermal energy,
is the graveyard of useful energy. We see that the `quality' of energy is lowered with each transformation.
Organized forms of energy tend to turn into disorganized forms. With this broader perspective, the second
law can be stated another way: Natural systems tend to proceed toward a state of greater disorder. You
finally straighten up your room. Everything is dust-free and in its proper place. A week later it is cluttered
again. You stack a pile of pennies on your table, all heads up. Somebody walks by and accidentally bumps
into the table and the pennies topple to the floor below, certainly not all heads up. You're on the job at a
large company and a co-worker puts up a joke sign that reads, `If you thing thinks are confused now, just
wait.' These are examples of the tendency of the universe and all that is in it to become disordered. In the
broadest sense, that is the message of the second law of thermodynamics. By disordered, we mean more
random. For example, molecules of gas all moving in harmony make up an orderly state-and also an unlikely
state. On the other hand, molecules of gas moving with haphazard directions and speeds make up a
disorderly state-a more probable state. If you remove the lid of a bottle containing some colored gas, the gas
molecules escape into the room and disappear from view as they mix with the air molecules. They have
changed from a more orderly to a less orderly state. You would not expect the reverse to happen; that is,
you would not expect the molecules that were released to spontaneously fly back into the bottle and
thereby return to the more ordered containment. Processes in which disorder changes spontaneously to
order are simply not observed to happen. Disordered energy can be changed to ordered energy only at the
expense of some organizational effort or work input. For example water in a refrigerator freezes and becomes
more ordered because work is put into the refrigeration cycle; gas can be ordered into a small region if a
compressor supplied with outside energy does work. But without some outside energy input, processes in
which the net effect is an increase in order are not observed in nature." (Hewitt, P.G., "Conceptual Physics,"
[1971], Addison Wesley Longman: Reading, MA, Eighth edition, 1998, pp.316-317)
20/05/2005
"Order to Disorder The concept of entropy, as we have discussed it so far, may seem rather abstract. To get
a feel for the concept of entropy, we can relate it to the concepts of order and disorder. In fact, the entropy
of a system can be considered a measure of the disorder of the system. Then the second law of
thermodynamics can be stated simply as: Natural processes tend to move toward a state of greater disorder.
Second law of thermodynamics (general statement) Exactly what we mean by disorder may not always be
clear; so we now consider a few examples. Some of these will show us how this very general statement of
the second law actually applies beyond what we usually consider as thermodynamics. Let us first look at the
simple processes mentioned .... A jar containing separate layers of salt and pepper is more orderly than
when the salt and pepper are all mixed up. Shaking a jar containing separate layers results in a mixture, and
no amount of shaking brings the orderly layers back again. The natural process is from a state of relative
order (layers) to one of relative disorder (a mixture), not the reverse. That is, disorder increases. Similarly, a
solid coffee cup is a more `orderly' object than the pieces of a broken cup. Cups break when they fall, but
they do not spontaneously mend themselves. Again, the normal course of events is an increase of disorder.
When a hot object is put in contact with a cold object, heat flows from the high temperature to the low until
the two objects reach the same inter mediate temperature. At the beginning of the process we can
distinguish two classes of molecules: those with a high average kinetic energy and those with a low average
kinetic energy. After the process, all the molecules are in one class with the same average kinetic energy,
and we no longer have the more orderly arrangement of molecules in two classes. Order has gone to
disorder Furthermore, note that the separate hot and cold objects could serve as that hot- and cold-
temperature regions of a heat engine and thus could be used to obtain useful work. But once the two
objects are put in contact and reach the same temperature, no work can be obtained. Disorder has increased,
since a system that has the ability to perform work must surely be considered to have a higher order than a
system no longer able to do work. This example illustrates the general concept that an increase in entropy
corresponds to an increase in disorder. .. In general, we associate disorder with randomness: salt and pepper
in layers is more orderly than a random mixture; a neat stack of numbered pages is more orderly than pages
strewn randomly about on the floor. We can also say that a more orderly arrangement is one that requires
more information to specify or classify it. When we have one hot and one cold body, we have two classes of
molecules and two pieces of information; when the two bodies come to the same temperature, there is only
one class and one piece of information. When salt and pepper are mixed there is only one (uniform) class;
when they are in layers, there are two classes In this sense, information is connected to order, or low
entropy. This is the foundation upon which the modern field of information theory is built. The remaining
example of those we discussed earlier was that of a stone falling to the ground, its kinetic energy being
transformed to thermal energy; and we noted that the reverse never happens: a stone never rises into the air
of its own accord. This is another example of order changing to disorder. For although thermal energy is
associated with the disorderly random motion of molecules, the molecules in the falling stone all have the
same velocity downward in addition to their own random velocities. Thus, the more orderly kinetic energy of
the stone is changed to disordered thermal energy when it strikes the ground. Disorder increases in this
process, as it does in all processes that occur in nature." (Giancoli, D.C., "Physics: Principles with
Applications," [1980], Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs NJ., Third Edition, 1991, pp.402-403)
21/05/2005
"The first flawed belief is that most psychological processes generalize broadly. Therefore, many believe it
is not terribly important to specify the agent being studied, whether rat, monkey, or human, or the context in
which the subject acts, whether laboratory, natural habitat, work place, or home, because broad conclusions
can be drawn regardless of the agent and context. Instances of this loose thinking can be found in every
technical journal, but especially in books written for the general public. A quality called intelligence, for
example, is applied to animals, human infants, college students, and software programs. The evidence used
to infer this quality includes rats running mazes, the survival of species, infants staring at novel pictures,
possession of a large vocabulary, fast decision times, the ability to recall a long string of numbers, and
correct application of logical rules. The notion that one mental process could mediate such a diverse set of
phenomena should strain the imagination of the most open mind. This permissive attitude is widespread.
When a man pushes ahead of us in a queue, we are prepared to attribute a general trait of aggressivity to
him, believing that he is similarly aggressive at home, in the office, and on family picnics. Not surprisingly,
perhaps, we are much more conservative when we ourselves commit the very same act. If I push ahead in an
airport line, I will explain my rudeness as an uncharacteristic reaction that happened to be provoked by
special conditions-the flagrant incompetence of the airline's booking agent, or snarled traffic in the airport
tunnel, or a last-minute medical emergency at home. Social psychologists call this type of asymmetric logic,
in which we assign broad stable traits to others but explain our own behavior as due to local conditions, the
attribution error. Our attraction to broad categories is most obvious when we name concrete things in the
world. A mother points to a tall, crimson-leafed maple and says, `Look at the tree,' not `Look at the big,
colorful maple.' The preference for underspecifying an event and, therefore, overgeneralizing is probably
rooted in the biological nature of the human mind and is one of the oldest and best-established phenomena
in the psychological laboratory. If a rat or human is shown a red light, followed a second later by a reward-
food for the rat and perhaps money for the human-each agent will display a conditioned excitability to a
variety of red hues, not just the particular wavelength of red used in the original conditioning. The human
brain, like the brain of a rat, is biased initially to attend to generality rather than particularity. Experience
must teach us to prune our initial understanding. This fine-tuning is a seminal purpose of the empirical
sciences. Over the last five hundred years much of our progress in the study of nature has occurred
because investigators analyzed abstract concepts and replaced them with families of related but distinct
categories. The cosmos, we now know, contains not just the visible stars in galaxies but also the
mysterious, massive `dark matter' that surrounds them. Reproduction occurs sexually in some species,
asexually in others, and both ways in a few. Viruses are distinguished from retroviruses, and sharks are not
close relatives of whales. Scientists have just begun to appreciate the advantages of analysis for cognitive
phenomena. For example, the unitary competence that psychologists had regarded simply as memory is now
recognized to consist of a set of distinct processes mediated by different brain circuits. Despite these few
victories, too many social and behavioral scientists retain a deep a communication, love, and
consciousness, trusting that each term faithfully describes a coherent commonality in nature. The first
chapter of this book probes this problem by analyzing four popular words that are used so abstractly as to
render them almost useless: fear, consciousness, intelligence, and temperament." (Kagan, J.S., "Three
Seductive Ideas," Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA, 1998, pp1-3)
21/05/2005
"When a person, plate, or poplar tree falls to the ground, our verbal description of the event is usually
accurate, and almost all listeners know what we mean. Statements like `Mary had an argument with her
mother- in-law' are less certain, because the nature and intensity of the argument are not completely clear;
nonetheless, most adults will share a common conception of what happened. But understanding recedes
quickly if a sentence refers to invisible qualities that are attributed to large numbers of people, animals, or
objects. These are the sentences of science. What distinguishes scientific language from most conversation
is the use of words to describe hypothetical events not perceived directly but intended to explain those that
are. Trouble arises, however, when psychologists, sociologists, economists, and others in the social and
behavioral sciences use abstract words for hidden psychological processes. Often, these words fail to
specify critical information such as the type of agent, the situation in which the agent is acting, and the
source of evidence for the ascription. All three are critical to understanding. Whether the phenomenon is
learning, communication, depression, externalization, extroversion, cooperation, avoidance, fear, regulation,
or memory, scholars who study animal and human behavior prefer to use words suggesting that a
psychological process operates in essentially the same way in different agents acting in varied situations.
And they stubbornly resist replacing the single abstract word with a set of related but specific terms that fit
nature more faithfully. Examples of this passion for abstraction abound, not just in popular writing but in the
technical literature as well. For example, a recent book on cooperation implies that insects, fish, birds,
monkeys, and humans all engage in a behavior ('cooperation') that shares a common evolutionary
mechanism. Similarly, in a paper recently published in one of psychology's premier journals, the authors
concluded from a laboratory study of college students playing a gambling game that `people select the
gamble that minimizes negative affect.' This unconstrained statement ignores the age, social class, and
ethnic background of the subjects, the specific nature of the gambling situation, the artificiality of a
laboratory setting, and the specific emotion the students experienced. By using the adjective `negative,' the
authors appear to be telling us that it is not very important whether the subject's emotion was guilt, shame,
fear, anger, anxiety, or boredom." (Kagan, J.S., "Three Seductive Ideas," [1998], Harvard University Press:
Cambridge MA, 1999, Second printing, pp.13-14)
21/05/2005
"It is easy to see that communication is possible, even without any previous agreement or contact between
transmitting and receiving civilizations. There is no difficulty in envisioning an interstellar radio message
that unambiguously arises from intelligent life. A modulated signal (beep, beepbeep, beep-beep-beep ...)
comprising the numbers 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31 - the first dozen prime numbers - could have only
a biological origin. No prior agreement between civilizations and no precautions against Earth chauvinism
are required to make this clear. Such a message would be an announcement, or beacon, signal, indicating the
presence of an advanced civilization but communicating very little about its nature. ... Thus, even before we
decode such a message, we will have gained an invaluable piece of knowledge: that it is possible to avoid
the dangers of the period through which we are now passing. ... The receipt of a single message from space
would show that it is possible to live through such technological adolescence: the transmitting civilization,
after all, has survived. Such knowledge, it seems to me, might be worth a great price." (Sagan, C.E., "Broca's
Brain: The Romance of Science," [1974], Coronet: London, 1980, reprint, pp.337,340)
21/05/2005
"Before discussing how the relationship of `creation' and `evolution' might be best understood, it is useful
first to define the terms. In my discussion below, `evolution' refers to the descent with modification of all
living things from a common ancestor. That is, the history of life can be envisioned as a branching tree of
life in which all living things are linked together in a genealogical relationship that extends back to the first
living cells. Understood in this way, the word `evolution' includes any of a number of proposed mechanisms
by which evolutionary change occurred. Furthermore, evolutionary theory does not address whether, or
how, God might act to guide such processes. `Creation' refers to everything to which God has given being.
As a verb, `creation' refers to the past and continuing action of God to bring into existence all that is and has
been. A closely related theological concept is that of `providence:' This doctrine includes several distinct
aspects: God's sustaining and upholding of creation; divine cooperation with creaturely action; and the
governance of creation toward God's desired ends. As thus defined, are the concepts of evolution and
creation really antithetical as often portrayed? Is the idea of an evolving creation truly an oxymoron, or
might it just prove to be a fruitful source of theological reflection?" (Miller, K.B., ed., "Perspectives on an
Evolving Creation," Eerdmans: Grand Rapids MI, 2003, p.3)
25/05/2005
"In his book Darwin is actually presenting two related but quite distinct theories. The first, which has
sometimes been called the `special theory', is relatively conservative and restricted in scope and merely
proposes that new races and species arise in nature by the agency of natural selection, thus the complete
title of his book: The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races
in the Struggle for Life. The second theory, which is often called the `general theory', is far more radical. It
makes the claim that the `special theory' applies universally and hence that the appearance of all the
manifold diversity of life on Earth can be explained by a simple extrapolation of the processes which bring
about relatively trivial changes such as those seen on the Galapagos Islands. This `general theory' is what
most people think of when they refer to evolution theory. The first five chapters deal mainly with evidence
for the special theory and microevolutionary phenomena. One of the primary goals Darwin was aiming at in
these chapters was to demolish the concept of the immutability of species, and no one who has read the
Origin can deny the skill and force with which he marshals the evidence and presents his arguments. ...
Although all Darwin's evidence, even the evidence of geographical variation, was in the last analysis
entirely circumstantial, nevertheless, the arguments and observations he assembled in the first five chapters,
as well as in Chapters Twelve and Thirteen, enabled him to build a very convincing case for his special
theory - that speciation, the origin of new species from pre-existing species, can, and does, occur in nature
as a result of perfectly natural processes in which natural selection plays a key role. If the Origin had dealt
only with the evolution of new species it would never have had its revolutionary impact. It was only
because he went much further to argue the general thesis that the same simple natural processes which had
brought about the diversity of the Galapagos finches had ultimately brought forth all the diversity of life on
earth and all the adaptive design of living things that the book proved such a watershed in western thought.
Much of the Origin, especially the later chapters, dealt not with the special theory which gave the book its
title, but with a defence of its general application. One of the key arguments Darwin advances, and one to
which he returns at least implicitly in many places in the Origin, is that once it is conceded that organisms
are inherently capable of a considerable degree of evolutionary change, then might they not, especially if a
great length of time is allowed, be potentially capable of undergoing practically unlimited change sufficient
even to bridge some of the seemingly most fundamental divisions of nature? ... It is clear, then, that Darwin's
special theory was largely correct. natural selection has been directly observed and there can be no
question now that new species do originate in nature; furthermore, it is now possible to explain in great
detail the exact sequence of events that lead to species formation. Moreover, although there are some areas
of disagreement among students of evolution as to the relative significance of natural selection as opposed
to purely random processes such as genetic drift in the process of speciation, no one doubts that natural
selection plays an important role in the process. The validation of Darwin's special theory, which has been
one of the major achievements of twentieth-century biology, has inevitably had the effect of enormously
enhancing the credibility of his general theory of evolution. For Darwin, all evolution was merely an
extension of microevolutionary processes. Yet, despite the success of his special theory, despite the reality
of microevolution, not all biologists have shared Darwin's confidence and accepted that the major divisions
in nature could have been crossed by the same simple sorts of processes. Scepticism as to the validity of
the extrapolation has been generally more marked on the European continent than in the English speaking
world. The German zoologist, Bernhard Rensch [Rensch B., "Evolution above the Species Level," Columbia
University Press: New York, p.57], was able to provide a long list of leading authorities who have been
inclined to the view that macroevolution cannot be explained in terms of microevolutionary processes, or
any other currently known mechanisms. These dissenters cannot be dismissed as cranks, creationists, or
vitalists, for among their ranks are many first rate biologists. ... However attractive the extrapolation, it does
not necessarily follow that, because a certain degree of evolution has been shown to occur therefore any
degree of evolution is possible. There is obviously an enormous difference between the evolution of a
colour change in a moth's wing and the evolution of an organ like the human brain, and the differences
among the fruit flies of Hawaii, for example, are utterly trivial compared with the differences between a mouse
and an elephant, or an octopus and a bee. ... There is no doubt that the success of the Darwinian model in
explaining microevolution invites the hope that it might be applicable also to macroevolutionary phenomena.
Perhaps in the end this might prove to be the case; but, on the other hand, there is the depressing
precedent, as the history of science testifies, that over and over again theories which were thought to be
generally valid at the time proved eventually to be valid only in a restricted sphere. Newtonian physics, for
example, which accounted perfectly for all the empirical data available in the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries and is still used for calculating the trajectory of a space rocket, is absolutely inapplicable to
phenomena at the subatomic and cosmological levels. Theories are seldom infinitely extendible." (Denton,
M.J., "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis," Burnett Books: London, 1985, pp.44,46-47, 85-87, 92)
25/05/2005
"Spencer's belief in the universality of natural causation was, together with his laissez-faire political creed,
the bedrock of his thinking. It was this belief, more than anything else, that led him to reject Christianity,
long before the great conflict of the eighteen-sixties. Moreover, it was his belief in natural causation that led
him to embrace the theory of evolution, not vice versa. ... His faith was so strong that it did not wait on
scientific proof. Spencer became an ardent evolutionist at a time when a cautious scientist would have been
justified at least in suspending judgement. ... for him the belief in natural causation was primary, the theory
of evolution derivative." (Burrow, J.W., "Evolution and Society: A Study in Victorian Social Theory," [1966],
Cambridge University Press: London, Reprinted, 1968, pp.205-206)
25/05/2005
"And exactly what does Moses teach? First, that the unit of life which God originally created, which is
expected to remain 'fixed,' is not the 'species' of science, but, rather, the 'kind' of the book of Genesis, such as
'herbs yielding seed,' `trees bearing fruit,' 'birds,' 'cattle,' 'creeping things,' and 'beasts.' Observe, therefore,
that the conservative may scrap the doctrine of the 'fixity of species' also, without jeopardizing his major
premise in the least. The Christian, thus, can accommodate a 'threshold' evolution, i. e., a wide and varied
change within the 'kinds' originally created by God. We shall return to this in a moment. Secondly, man is
one of these original 'kinds,' and consequently is not genetically related to the lower 'kinds.' Man was made
out of the dust by a special ab extra, divine act, with a body which is structurally similar to the higher
Vertebrata, and a soul formed after the image and likeness of God. Now, observe that both Christianity and
science can accommodate the datum that the functional and structural aspects of man and of certain animals
are similar. The problem, therefore, cannot turn upon this issue. Next, the doctrine of the 'fixity of species' is
not required by either structure. The real crux, we feel, is the Bible's rejection of the evolutionary hypothesis
that the basic 'kinds' of Genesis are related to still more primitive orders by their having evolved from them.
On the 'threshold' evolution view, there are gaps which exist between the original 'kinds,' while on the 'total'
evolution view, each 'kind' can be traced back to a more primitive type, and that, to a still more primitive, ad
infinitum. But let us challenge the validity of the 'total' evolution scheme. Paleontology reveals that there are
actual gaps in our knowledge of the relation between the 'kinds,' a datum which 'threshold' evolution can
account for more smoothly than can 'total' evolution. `There are no fossil animals to connect the order of
insectivores (containing moles and shrews) and the order of rodents (mice, beaver). Not a single order of
mammals (hairy animals) has transitional forms between it and any other order.' When science is faced with
these gaps, it resorts to such hypotheses as 'missing links' (which are still missing!) and 'mutations,' while
the Christian needs only to point to the fact that God, in the original creation, decreed that gaps should exist
to mark off the original 'kinds'-herbs yielding seed, creeping things, beasts, etc." (Carnell, E.J.*, "An
Introduction to Christian Apologetics," [1948], Eerdmans: Grand Rapids MI, Fourth Edition, 1952, pp.238-
239)
31/05/2005
"In the middle sits the lone figure of Steve Jones, a man so universally sceptical that unless he had his birth
certificate he would doubt his own existence." (Hurst L., "The darling of the masses," New Scientist, 6 June
1998, p.50)
31/05/2005
"In 1953, a twenty-three-year-old University of Chicago graduate student named Stanley Miller discovered
the origin of life. Or so it seemed. Using an apparatus specially built for the purpose, Miller set out to
simulate Earth four billion years ago. His contraption was made of two glass flasks joined by tubing. Into the
smaller of the two flasks it poured water to represent the primeval ocean. The larger flask he pumped full of
hydrogen, methane, and ammonia, volatile gases then thought to be present in the early atmosphere. He
boiled the water, letting the vapor circulate with the atmospheric gases, then zapped the mixture with
electricity, the equivalent of ancient lightning. Within a week the water grew deep red and yellow with
organic compounds, among them amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, which in turn make up cells.
The `lightning' had reconstituted the mix of molecules in the `atmosphere' and `ocean' to Produce elements
of life. Declared Miller's advisor, Nobel Prize-winning chemist Harold Urey, `If God didn't do it this way, He
missed a good bet.' Well, perhaps it was Miller who missed the bet. Today his scenario is regarded with
misgivings. One reason is that geologists now think that the primordial atmosphere consisted mainly of
carbon dioxide and nitrogen, gases that are less reactive than those used in the 1953 experiment. And even if
Miller's atmosphere could have existed, how do you get simple molecules such as amino acids to go through
the necessary chemical changes that will convert them into more complicated compounds, or polymers, such
as proteins? Miller himself throws up his hands at that part of the puzzle. `It's a problem,' he sighs with
exasperation. `How do you make polymers? That's not so easy.' But perhaps not so impossible. German
chemist Gunter Wachtershauser and his colleague Claudia Huber recently combined chemicals that exist
where molten lava boils up through fissures in the ocean floor, and the results were startling. Rather than
simply producing end products that include organic compounds, their experiment actually set in motion a
series of chemical reactions found in all living organisms. In their view, these reactions might have
culminated in the creation of life. `You don't mind if I brag a little, but something like this has never been
done in the entire field,' Wachtershauser says. Yet not everyone searching for life's origin agrees with this
assessment. `Those conditions don't exist anywhere,' says geochemist Jeffrey Bada of the Scripps
Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. He argues that Wachtershauser/s and Huber's laboratory
chemistry does not represent what really happens at vents. Their differences spring from the fact that it's
awfully tough to prove or disprove something that happened billions of years ago. Still, origin of life
theories abound. Perhaps life was seeded from outer space. Perhaps life simmered beneath ice-capped
primitive oceans. Or perhaps life began in the cauldrons of volcanoes or undersea hydrothermal vents. One
thing is for certain: No one has solved the mystery. In this contentious field of study, scientists rarely see
things the same way and are not shy about saying so. There is something that everyone can agree upon: for
life to endure, it must perpetuate itself. It must figure out a way to keep itself going and pass its success on
to the next generation. And so that there can be a next generation, life also has to make copies of itself,
copies that can adapt to changes in the environment, that can evolve. The copies cannot be identical,
cookie-cutter replicas. If life is to evolve, the replication process must be imperfect-life must make mistakes.
`The origin of life is the origin of evolution,' says Miller.'" (Radetsky, P., "Life's Crucible," Earth, Vol. 7, No. 1,
February 1998, pp.34,36)
31/05/2005
"The question of how life began is more specifically about the genesis of prokaryotes. Sometime between
about 4.0 billion years ago, when Earth's crust began to solidify, and 3.5 billion years ago, when the planet
was inhabited by bacteria advanced enough to build stromatolites, the first organisms came into being.
What was their origin? ... Most biologists subscribe to the hypothesis that life on Earth developed from
nonliving materials that became ordered into molecular aggregates that were eventually capable of self-
replication and metabolism. As far as we know, life cannot arise by spontaneous generation from inanimate
material today, but conditions were very different when Earth was only a billion years old. The atmosphere
was different (there was little atmospheric O2, for instance), and lightning, volcanic activity, meteorite
bombardment, and ultraviolet radiation were all more intense than what we experience today. In that ancient
environment, the origin of life was evidently possible, and it is likely that at least the early stages of
biological inception were inevitable. However, debate abounds about what occurred during these early
stages.. According to one hypothetical scenario, the first organisms were products of a chemical evolution
in four stages: (1) the abiotic (nonliving) synthesis and accumulation of small organic molecules, or
monomers, such as amino acids and nucleotides; (2) the joining of these monomers into polymers, including
proteins and nucleic acids; (3) the aggregation of abiotically produced molecules into droplets, called
protobionts, that had chemical characteristics different from their surroundings; and (4) the origin of
heredity (which may well have been under way even before the "droplet" stage). It is possible to test the
plausibility of these stages of chemical evolution in laboratory experiments." (Campbell, N.A., Reece, J.B. &
Mitchell, L.G., "Biology," [1987], Benjamin/Cummings: Menlo Park CA, Fifth Edition, 1999, pp.492-493)
31/05/2005
"The cell is the basic unit of biology. Every organism either consists of cells or is itself a single cell.
Therefore, it is only as we understand the structure and function of cells that we can appreciate both the
capabilities and the limitations of living organisms, whether animal, plant, or microorganism. ... The cell is the
basic unit of structure for all organisms. ... By 1855, Rudolf Virchow, a German physiologist, was able to
conclude that cells arose in only one manner-by the division of other, preexisting cells. Virchow
encapsulated this conclusion in the now-famous Latin phrase omnis cellula e cellula ... All cells arise only
from preexisting cells. Thus, the cell is not only the basic unit of structure for all organisms but also the
basic unit of reproduction. In other words, all of life has a cellular basis. " (Becker, W.M., Kleinsmith, L.J. &
Hardin, J., "The World of the Cell," [1986], Benjamin/Cummings: San Francisco CA, Fourth edition, 2000,
pp.2,4)
31/05/2005
"The key to persuading people was the portrayal of the cells as `simple.' One of the chief advocates of the
theory of spontaneous generation during the middle of the nineteenth century was Ernst Haeckel, a great
admirer of Darwin and an eager popularizer of Darwin's theory From the limited view of cells that
microscopes provided, Haeckel believed that a cell was a `simple little lump of albuminous combination of
carbon,' [Farley J. `The Spontaneous Generation Controversy from Descartes to Oparin,' Johns Hopkins
University Press: Baltimore MD, 1979, p.73] not much different from a piece of microscopic Jell-O. So it
seemed to Haeckel that such simple life, with no internal organs, could be produced easily from inanimate
material. Now, of course, we know better." (Behe, M.J.*, "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to
Evolution", Free Press: New York NY, 1996, p.24)
31/05/2005
"A number of colorful and exotic places have been suggested for the origin of life: the clouds, the bottom of
the sea, tidal pools, comet interiors, and alien planets circling other star systems. These suggestions have
been so spectacular that they have caused the problem of the site of the origin to overshadow a more
fundamental question: What process was involved when life originated? The advocates of each location
have usually argued that their site is the most appropriate one for Miller-Urey type chemistry. The proper
reducing environment would be present there, and the reactions would work as well as they do in the
laboratory. But even if they did so, little would have been accomplished. An immense gap separates a
chemical mixture that contains a few amino acids and the highly organized complexity of the simplest cell
alive today. The smallest free-living organisms are probably the mycoplasmas ... Yet these tiniest creatures
still possess cell membranes, ribosomes, DNA, hosts of enzymes, and the other complexities associated with
all life on this planet. ... If life originated from a simple chemical mixture, then we want to know the steps that
led from this mixture up the ladder of organization to the first cell. This same question would remain whether
the mixture were formed in some environment on earth or anywhere else in the universe. We have seen that
replication and natural selection provide a reasonable mechanism for the further evolution of the common
ancestor. This creature, however, may have been close to a bacterium in its complexity. Unfortunately, we
are uncertain about the processes that produced it." (Shapiro, R., "Origins: A Skeptic's Guide to the Creation
of Life on Earth," Summit Books: New York NY, 1986, pp.117-118)
31/05/2005
"The basic difficulty in explaining how life could have begun is that all living organisms are extremely
complex, and Darwinian selection cannot perform the designing even in theory until living organisms
already exist and are capable of reproducing their kind. ... The simplest organism capable of independent life,
the prokaryote bacterial cell, is a masterpiece of miniaturized complexity which makes a spaceship seem
rather lowtech. Even if one assumes that something much simpler than a bacterial cell might suffice to start
Darwinist evolution on its way-a DNA or RNA macromolecule, for example-the possibility that such a
complex entity could assemble itself by chance is still fantastically unlikely, even if billions of years had
been available." (Johnson, P.E.*, "Darwin on Trial," [1991], InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, Second
Edition, 1993, pp.103, 105-106)
31/05/2005
"The question of the origin of life is not simple. It is not possible to go back in time and watch how life
originated; nor are there any witnesses. There is testimony, in the rocks of the earth, but it is not easily read,
and often this record is silent on issues crying out for answers. Perhaps the most fundamental of these
issues is the nature of the agency or force that led to the appearance of the first living organisms on earth-
the creation of life. There are, in principle, at least three possibilities: 1. Extraterrestrial origin. Life may not
have originated on earth at all but instead may have been carried to it, perhaps as an extraterrestrial infection
of spores originating on a planet of a distant star. How life came to exist on that planet is a question we
cannot hope to answer soon. 2. Special creation. Life-forms may have been put on earth by supernatural or
divine forces. This viewpoint, common to most Western religions, is the oldest hypothesis and is widely
accepted by non-scientists. ... 3. Evolution. Life may have evolved from inanimate matter, with associations
among molecules becoming more and more complex. In this view, the force leading to life was selection;
changes in molecules that increased their stability caused the molecules to persist longer. In this book we
deal only with the third possibility, attempting to understand whether the forces of evolution could have led
to the origin of life and, if so, how the process might have occurred. This is not to say that the third
possibility is definitely the correct one. Any one of the three possibilities might be true. Nor does the third
possibility preclude religion: a divine agency might have acted via evolution. Rather, we are limiting the
scope of our inquiry to scientific matters. Of the three possibilities, only the third permits testable
hypotheses to be constructed and so provides the only scientific explanation, that is, one that could
potentially be disproven by experiment, by obtaining and analyzing actual information." (Raven, P.H. &
Johnson, G.B., "Biology," [1986], Wm. C. Brown: Dubuque IA, Third Edition, 1995, p.62. Emphasis original)
31/05/2005
"The essence of being alive is the ability to encompass change and to reproduce the results of change
permanently. Heredity, therefore, provides the basis for the great division between the living and the
nonliving. Change does not become evolution unless it is passed on to a new generation. A genetic system
is the sufficient condition of life. When we look at any living organism, we are seeing its history, carried
through its genes from the earliest time. Some changes are preserved because they improve chances of
survival in a hostile world, whereas others are lost. Not only did life evolve, evolution is the very essence of
life. All living things on earth are characterized by cellular organization, growth, reproduction, and heredity.
These characteristics serve to define the term life. ... When a means occurred to facilitate this transfer of new
ability from parent to offspring, heredity - life-began." (Raven, P.H. & Johnson, G.B., "Biology," [1986], Wm.
C. Brown: Dubuque IA, Third Edition, 1995, pp.68-69)
31/05/2005
"On September 20, 1948, John von Neumann delivered a lecture at Caltech titled "On the General and Logical
Theory of Automata," in which he laid the foundations for a functional theory of life. Von Neumann's
interest at the time was in explicating the logical principles permitting construction of a machine that would
be capable of manufacturing copies of itself if placed in an environment sufficiently rich in the necessary
raw materials. ... What von Neumann discovered was that any selfreproducing object must contain
four fundamental components: A. A blueprint, providing the plan for construction of offspring B. A
factory, to carry out the construction C. A controller, to ensure that the factory follows the
plan D. A duplicating machine, to transmit a copy of the blueprint to the offspring In living cells
these properties are physically manifested, roughly speaking, in the DNA (the blueprint), the process of
translation (the factory), the specialized replicase enzymes (the controller), and the process of replication
(the duplicating machine). It's worthy of note that von Neumann discovered these abstract properties
necessary for any living form more than five years before the far more publicly celebrated work of Watson
and Crick, which dealt with the very special case of the kind of life we now see on Earth." (Casti, J.L,.
"Paradigms Lost: Images of Man in the Mirror of Science," Cardinal: London, 1989, pp.131-132. Emphasis in
original)
31/05/2005
"Von Neumann himself proved that it was possible for a pattern in a cellular automaton to reproduce itself.
To do so it would have to include a blueprint of itself, a genome coded within the colored squares of the
cellular array. Referring to these instructions, the pattern would grow arms into an unoccupied region of its
environment and reconstruct itself piece by piece, including its genetic code. Von Neumann didn't actually
make one of these abstract beasts-according to his proof it would have required a cellular automaton
consisting of some 200,000 cells that could each be in one of twenty-nine states. It was left for later
mathematicians and computer programmers to design simpler self-reproducing cellular automata. One of
Langton's claims to fame is a small loop of cells, shaped like the letter Q, which can extend its tail into
unoccupied territory and duplicate itself." (Johnson, G., "Fire in the Mind: Science, Faith, and the Search for
Order," [1995], Penguin Books: London, 1997, p.255)
31/05/2005
"Another great property of living systems is that they are self-constructing (as when a chick is formed from
an egg, by internal actions directed by self-contained instructions) and self-reproducing. It has often been
thought that no automaton could have these properties, i.e. that a machine could construct only things
simpler than itself. This, however, is known to be false, at least in principle. Turing proved in 1937 that a
"universal digital computer", composed of a finite number of parts, was possible which, by scanning and
acting on information fed to it bit by bit, from an arbitrarily long tape, was unlimited in its ability to process
mathematically expressible information. Later, von Neumann applied this theorem to computer-controlled
constructional machines. A Turing computer is made of a finite number of parts and so needs a finite
amount of information to describe its construction. This information, set down on a tape, could thus be
processed by another such computer and if this were designed like a numerically controlled machine tool, so
as to act on its processed information instead of merely recording its output on paper, then one such
computer could construct its fellow. It could even make one more complicated than itself! Needless to say, a
computer with such properties would be a very complex system indeed (200 pages of von Neumann's book
were needed to describe it!). But the key to its properties lies in a simple consideration: since a system of N
parts can in principle have of the order of N2 distinct binary cross-connections, versatility
can increase rapidly with complexity. Thus, von Neumann concluded that there is "a minimum number of
parts below which complication is degenerative; in the sense that if one automaton makes another, the
second is less complex than the first, but above which it is possible for an automaton to construct other
automata of equal or higher complexity". In other words, selfconstructibility is an emergent property of a
complex system." (Cottrell, A., "Emergent Properties of Complex System," in Duncan, R. & WestonSmith, M.,
eds., "The Encyclopaedia of Ignorance: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Unknown,"
[1977], Pergamon: Oxford UK, 1978, reprint, pp.133-134)
31/05/2005
"And we can begin to see how it must be that organisms reproduce. They reproduce through copying the
messages that specify them - those very messages that are passed on between generations. Now it is true
that over the shorter term messages are not the only inheritance. There must also be goods, if only the
actual books or tapes that hold the messages. Indeed much more than that is needed. The tapes must be
read and acted on: a certain amount of automatic equipment will be needed to do this. You can imagine
those kinds of machines in automatic factories that carry out instructions fed to them on a magnetic tape.
Such machines convert a message into a specific activity. Hence everything can be made by following
sufficiently voluminous instructions. Among other things, of course, we have to imagine that these
automatic manufacturing machines are able to hammer together brand new automatic manufacturing
machines... Then at least one of these machines has to be handed on with the messages to the next
generation. One can see, indeed, that when a cell divides more is divided out than just the books of
instructions: material over and above the chromosome material is included in each of the two new packages.
It is clear that this additional material must contain prefabricated reading and manufacturing equipment. But
the supremacy of the messages remains. Everything in the cell, including all that automatic manufacturing
equipment, must be written about somewhere in the Library. If some of these messages happen to have to
be read and acted on before a new cell is formed, that is a matter of timing that does not affect the long-term
outcome. In the long term, after many generations, all that persist are the messages. Every actual thing,
every particular collection of atoms, every particular piece of equipment, every particular water molecule,
even every piece of every message tape, will eventually be destroyed or mislaid. Only the messages will
survive, the messages themselves: because they are forms. and forms of a particular sort. They can be
copies of copies of copies..." (Cairns-Smith, A.G., "Seven Clues to the Origin of Life: A Scientific Detective
Story," [1985], Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1993, reprint, pp.12-14. Emphasis and ellipses in
original)
31/05/2005
"The man in the street still believes that Darwinism ranks with Copernican astronomy as a scientific
certitude which fought its way to recognition in spite of ecclesiastical opposition, but it is at least arguable
that Darwinism was accepted, in spite of the weakness of the scientific evidence, for theological or rather for
theophobic reasons. Darwin has been anticipated by Buffon, Lamarck and Erasmus Darwin in the
promulgation of evolution, and by Patrick Matthew in his advocacy of Natural Selection as the principal
agent in the evolutionary process, and his immense success was partly due to the fact that he happened to
restate these theories at the precise moment when theophobia (the fear or dislike of God) was on the
increase, and when a majority of scientists were looking for some alternative to what Huxley calls the
`untenable theory of special creation.'" (Lunn, A.*, "Introduction," in Lunn A., ed.*, "Is Evolution Proved?:
A Debate Between Douglas Dewar and H.S. Shelton," Hollis & Carter: London, 1947, p.4)
31/05/2005
`I am thoroughly persuaded,' wrote the great biologist Yves Delage in 1903, `that one is or is not a
transformist not so much for motives deduced from natural history, as for motives based on personal
philosophic opinions. If there existed some other scientific hypothesis besides that of descent to explain
the origin of species many transformists would abandon their present opinion as not being sufficiently
demonstrated ... If one takes his stand upon the exclusive ground of facts it must be acknowledged
that the formation of one species from another species has not been demonstrated at all.' [Delage Y.,
"L' Heredite et les grand problemes de la biologie generale," 1903, p.204] This same Delage, after pointing
out with infinite regret the weak points in Darwinism, added: `Whatever may befall this theory in the future,
Darwin's everlasting title to glory will be that he explained the seemingly marvellous adaptation of living
things by the mere action of natural factors without looking to a divine intervention, without resorting to
any finalist or metaphysical hypothesis.' [Delage, 1903, p.322] In other words, Darwin's everlasting title to
fame is that he provided the atheist with a plausible if untenable answer to Paley's argument from design."
(Lunn, A.*, "Introduction," in Lunn A., ed.*, "Is Evolution Proved?: A Debate Between Douglas Dewar and
H.S. Shelton," Hollis & Carter: London, 1947, p.6. Emphasis Lund's)
31/05/2005
"Biologists deserve respect when they tell us what they know as biologists. But when biologists presume to
tell us what philosophical concepts we must accept, they have stepped far outside of their legitimate expert
role. At that point outside critics must step in to separate the genuine biology from the philosophical
prejudice." (Johnson, P.E.*, "Interview with Christian Book Distributors, Inc.," August 14, 2000, Access
Research Network)
31/05/2005
"I hope I have made it sufficiently clear that nothing in this analysis is meant to be anything but respectful
towards Van Till and other scientists who have been trying their best to be faithful both to God and to the
integrity of the scientific method. Christians who are scientifically inclined have been faced with an
apparently hopeless dilemma: either accept a rigid Biblical literalism or accept a science whose assumptions
are fundamentally naturalistic, whether those naturalistic assumptions are explicit or implicit. What any
sensible person wants to do in such a situation is to find a third alternative, and it is in that spirit that Van
Till attempts to separate an autonomous realm of science from its association with naturalism." (Johnson,
P.E.*, "Comparing HostageTakers," Pascal Centre Notebook, 1990)
31/05/2005
"Here I will briefly summarize four very different approaches. Ex nihilo and de novo creation
mean the creator formed the species out of nothing, or out of nonliving matter, respectively. The species
were not formed as derivatives from preexisting species. This is the most interventionist of all approaches,
and there has been substantial religious feeling against it for this reason. Many feel that God would not be
so involved with the details of creation. The fact that the world is not always harmonious has served to
increase the opposition. Despite its metaphysical opposition, I believe this approach continues to provide
the best empirically-based and parsimonious explanation for the origin of species. An approach that requires
slightly less intervention might be called descent with design. Here the evolutionary process is
modified or guided along the way with exterior inputs. Design is injected into the process. This idea is
motivated, at least in part, by the paradigm of perfection. What we believe are suboptimal designs are
viewed as designs that have not yet been updated or replaced. For example, similarities in different species
that do not seem optimal are viewed as unmodified by the design process. An approach with even less
intervention is the front-loaded creation idea. Here, all the design is injected into the first living cell (or cells),
and the evolutionary process takes over from there. The potential for all the species is implicit in the first
organism, and it is realized by the action of natural laws. Finally, there is design via secondary
causes. Here there is no detectable injection of design. Design is not imputed all at the beginning or at
discrete points along the way. Instead, the design is in the initial arrangement of matter and the action of
natural laws. And we should not underestimate the power of those natural laws, given quantum mechanics,
chaos theory, and who knows what else that will be discovered in the future. Those laws may be able to
control and manipulate creation in far more subtle ways than we have imagined. Indeed, some may argue
that design via secondary causes is an interventionist approach every bit as much as ex
nihilo creation is. For instance, weather systems continually evolve. On the one hand, we say they move
according to natural laws, but because they are so chaotic we cannot say a divine hand is not controlling
them. Natural laws and the systems they operate on are so complex that it could be that God can actively
control the world without violating what we perceive to be the actions of natural laws. These are but a
sampling of the metaphysical ideas that lie behind ID. Each idea can be said to be consistent with biblical
creation, although different levels of symbolism may he required. For example, Genesis tells us that Adam
was made before Eve. This poses no problem for ex nihilo creation but must be read allegorically in
the other approaches. Because Darwin's theory of evolution is currently dominant in the life sciences, it may
seem natural to assume that ex nihilo creation is less scientific and more religiously motivated than
the other approaches. But as we have seen, evolution has its own religious motivations and is full of
scientific problems. Indeed, though the evaluation of scientific evidence is ultimately subjective, I believe it
supports ex nihilo creation better than the other approaches. It is, I believe, the religious motivations
rather than scientific motivations that have kept those other approaches popular." (Hunter, C.G.*, "Darwin's
Proof: The Triumph of Religion Over Science," Brazos Press: Grand Rapids MI, 2003, pp.124-125. Emphasis
in original)
June [top]
2/06/2005
"So, macromutations do happen. But do they play a role in evolution? People called saltationists believe
that macromutations are a means by which major jumps in evolution could take place in a single generation.
Richard Goldschmidt ... was a true saltationist. If saltationism were true, apparent 'gaps' in the fossil record
needn't be gaps at all. For example, a saltationist might believe that the transition from sloping-browed
Australopithecus to dome-browed Homo sapiens took place in a single macromutational
step, in a single generation. The difference in form between the two species is probably less than the
difference between a normal and an antennapaedic fruitfully, and it is theoretically conceivable that the first
Homo sapiens was a freak child - probably an ostracized and persecuted one - of two normal
Australopithecus parents. There are very good reasons for rejecting all such saltationist theories of
evolution. One rather boring reason is that if a new species really did arise in a single mutational step,
members of the new species might have a hard time finding mates." (Dawkins, R., "The Blind Watchmaker,"
[1986], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint, p.231)
2/06/2005
"We can well imagine such a non-Darwinian theory of discontinuous change-profound and abrupt genetic
alteration luckily (now and then) making a new species all at once. Hugo de Vries, the famous Dutch
botanist supported such a theory early in this century. But these notions seem to present insuperable
difficulties. With whom shall Athena born from Zeus's brow mate? All her relatives are members of another
species. What is the chance of producing Athena in the first place, rather than a deformed monster? Major
disruptions of entire genetic systems do not produce favored or even viable creatures." (Gould, S.J., "The
Return of the Hopeful Monster," in "The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History," [1980],
Penguin: London, 1990, reprint, pp.158-159)
2/06/2005
"`Evolution' can mean anything from the uncontroversial statement that bacteria `evolve' resistance to
antibiotics to the grand metaphysical claim that the universe and mankind `evolved' entirely by purposeless,
mechanical forces. A word that elastic is likely to mislead, by implying that we know as much about the
grand claim as we do about the small one. That very point was the theme of a remarkable lecture given by
Colin Patterson at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981. Patterson is a senior paleontologist at
the British Natural History Museum and the author of that museum's general text on evolution. His lecture
compared creationism (not creation-science) with evolution, and characterized both as scientifically vacuous
concepts which are held primarily on the basis of faith. Many of the specific points in the lecture are
technical, but two are of particular importance for this introductory chapter. First, Patterson asked his
audience of experts a question which reflected his own doubts about much of what has been thought to be
secure knowledge about evolution: `Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing . . .
that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only
answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology seminar in the
University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long
time and eventually one person said "I do know one thing-it ought not to be taught in high school."
Patterson suggested that both evolution and creation are forms of pseudo-knowledge, concepts which seem
to imply information but do not. One point of comparison was particularly striking. A common objection to
creationism in pre-Darwinian times was that no one could say anything about the mechanism of creation.
Creationists simply pointed to the `fact' of creation and conceded ignorance of the means. But now,
according to Patterson, Darwin's theory of natural selection is under fire and scientists are no longer sure of
its general validity. Evolutionists increasingly talk like creationists in that they point to a fact but cannot
provide an explanation of the means. Patterson was being deliberately provocative, and I do not mean to
imply that his skeptical views are widely supported in the scientific community. On the contrary, Patterson
came under heavy fire from Darwinists after somebody circulated a bootleg transcript of the lecture, and he
eventually disavowed the whole business. Whether or not he meant to speak for public attribution,
however, he was making an important point. We can point to a mystery and call it `evolution,' but this is
only a label. The important question is not whether scientists have agreed on a label, but how much they
know about how complex living beings like ourselves came into existence. ... Colin Patterson's 1981 lecture
was not published, but I have reviewed a transcript and Patterson restated his position, which I would label
"evolutionary nihilism," in an interview with the journalist Tom Bethell. (See Bethell, "Deducing from
Materialism," National Review, Aug. 29, 1986, p. 43.) I discussed evolution with Patterson for several hours
in London in 1988. He did not retract any of the specific skeptical statements he has made, but he did say
that he continues to accept `evolution' as the only conceivable explanation for certain features of the natural
world." (Johnson, P.E.*, "Darwin on Trial," [1991], InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, Second edition,
1993, pp.9-10, 173)
3/06/2005
"Perhaps the most prevalent of the misconstruals of creationism involves the Second Law of
Thermodynamics. There are several ways of stating the Second Law, but for present purposes the following
intuitive characterizations will be adequate. In a system that neither loses nor gains energy from outside of
itself (a closed system), although the total amount of energy within the system remains constant, the
proportion of that energy which is no longer usable within the system (measured as entropy) tends to
increase over time. An equivalent formulation is that in a closed system there is over time a spontaneous
tendency toward erosion of a specified type of order within the system. Creationists nearly unanimously
claim that this Second Law poses a nasty problem for evolution. Unfortunately, exactly what creationists
have in mind here is widely misunderstood. Creationists are at least partly at fault for that confusion. One
reason is that as noted earlier ... most popular creationists use the term evolution ambiguously-sometimes to
refer to the cosmic evolutionary worldview (or model) and sometimes to refer to the Darwinian biological
theory. Although a coherent position can be extracted from some of the major creationists (such as Morris,
Gish, Wysong and Kofahl), this ambiguity has rendered some parts of their writings monumentally unclear.
One has to read extremely carefully in order to see which evolution is being referred to, and some critics of
creationism either have simply not noticed the ambiguity or perhaps have misjudged which meaning specific
creationists have had in mind in specific passages. And critics are not the only people who have sometimes
been bamboozled. Other creationists who take their cues from those above have also sometimes missed
some of the key distinctions and have advanced exactly the original misconstrued arguments that critics
have wrongly attributed to major creationists. In a word or two, we have a four-alarm mess here. But let's see
if we can clear up at least some of it. First, when claiming that the Second Law flatly precludes evolution,
major creationists almost invariably have in mind evolution in the overall cosmic, `evolution model' sense.
The clues to that meaning are the almost invariable use (especially in Morris's writings) of phrases like
philosophy of evolution or cosmic or universal or on a cosmic scale. The universe as a whole system is
taken to be a closed system (classically), and according to the creationist definition of evolution model, that
model is unavoidably committed to an internally generated overall increase in cosmic order, since on that
view reality is supposed to be self-developed and self- governing. What Morris and others mean to be
claiming is that any such view according to which the entire cosmos is itself in a process of increasing
overall order is in violation of the Second Law. Critics of creationism almost without exception take this
initial creationist claim to be about purely biological evolution on the earth and respond that the Second
Law applies only to closed systems, whereas the earth, receiving energy from the sun, is thermodynamically
open. But since the system actually in question here is the entire universe, which is the `prime example' of a
closed system, the response that the Second Law only applies to closed systems is beside the point
creationists mean to be making in this case. That is not to say that the creationist argument is ultimately
correct here, but only that if it is defective the problem is not the one initially proposed. When discussion
turns to evolution in the more restricted sense- biological evolution on the earth-then obviously it is highly
relevant to point out that the earth is not a closed system and that thus the Second Law by itself does not
directly preclude evolution. But Morris, Gish, Wysong and others admit that, and have for decades,
although not always in a terribly clear manner. How does that admission emerge? Morris, for instance,
claims in numerous of his writings that a system being open is not alone enough to cause a reversal of
disorder or a decrease in entropy. There are, Morris claims, some additional requirements that must be met
before that can happen For instance, the flow of energy coming into the system must be adequate, and there
must be some already-existing `code' and `conversion mechanism' by which the incoming energy can be
harnessed, turned into some form that is useful and usable in the system, and then properly directed and
productively incorporated into the system experiencing increasing order. These additional requirements are
not requirements of the Second Law itself but are requirements that Morris thinks we have good empirical
grounds for accepting. Simply throwing raw energy into a system generally does not produce increased
order but destroys some of the order already there. So the view is that special conditions-codes, conversion
mechanisms and the like-are needed before growths in order can occur even in open systems. That raises
the question, How do these codes and conversion mechanisms themselves arise? Some creationists may
hold that the Second Law itself flatly precludes such codes and mechanisms arsing naturally. Others take
the odds against the codes and mechanisms being generated naturally to be massively overwhelming. But
Morris says that the natural development of such codes and mechanisms may, for all he knows, be possible,
although it is unlikely. So although the Second Law does impose some conditions, and although other
empirical experience seems to impose some additional constraints, at least in principle, according to Morris,
all of those conditions and constraints can perhaps be met: `It is conceivable, although extremely unlikely,
that evolutionists may eventually formulate a plausible code and mechanism to explain how both entropy
and evolution could co-exist.' [Morris H.M., "King of Creation," 1980, p.117] `This objection does not
preclude the possibility of evolution.' [Morris H.M., "The Troubled Waters of Evolution," 1974, p.101] `It
may of course be possible to harmonize evolution and entropy.' [Morris H.M., "The Troubled Waters of
Evolution," 1974, p.99] `This of course does not preclude temporary increases of order in specific open
systems.' [Morris H.M., "The Biblical Basis for Modern Science," 1984, p.207; Morris H.M., "Biblical
Cosmology and Modern Science," 1970, p.127]. Morris says similar things elsewhere-from at least 1966 on.
[Morris H.M., "Studies in the Bible and Science," 1966, p.146; Morris H.M., "The Biblical Basis for Modern
Science," 1984, p.207; Morris H.M., "King of Creation," 1980, p.114; Morris H.M., "Does Entropy Contradict
Evolution?," Impact, 141, March 1985, pp.i-iv]. So what, then, is the problem? A major one, according to
Morris, concerns the required codes and mechanisms: `No one yet has any evidence that any such things
exist at all.' [Morris H.M., "Creation and the Modern Christian," 1985, pp.155-56]. `Neither of these has yet
been discovered.' [Morris H.M., "The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth," 1972, p.20]. `So far, evolutionists
have no answer.' [Morris H.M., "The Troubled Waters of Evolution," 1974, p.100]. `[The special conditions
are] not available to evolution as far as all evidence goes.' [Morris H.M., "Science and the Bible," 1986, p.60].
Notice the invariable qualifications: `yet,' `so far' and so on. And what that all means, according to Morris, is
that `the necessary `law' of evolution, if it exists, still remains to be discovered and evolutionists must in the
meantime continue to exercise faith in their model in spite of entropy.' [Morris H.M., "The Troubled Waters
of Evolution," 1974, p.101]. Those last five quotes, incidentally, come from four different books written from
1972 to 1986, hardly an obscure brief departure from Morris's usual views-and this same sort of view is
found in Gish, Wysong, Pearcey, Bird, and Kofahl and Segraves, from 1976 to the present." (Ratzsch D.L.,
"The Battle of Beginnings: Why Neither Side is Winning the Creation-Evolution Debate," InterVarsity
Press: Downers Grove IL., 1996, pp.91-93)
3/06/2005
"The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that all energy systems run down like a clock and never rewind
themselves. But life not only 'runs up,' converting low energy sea-water, sunlight and air into high-energy
chemicals, it keeps multiplying itself into more and better clocks that keep 'running up' faster and faster.
Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen
struggle for billions of years to organize themselves into a professor of chemistry? What's the motive? If we
leave a chemistry professor out on a rock in the sun long enough the forces of nature will convert him into
simple compounds of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen, calcium, phosphorus, and small amounts of
other minerals. It's a one-way reaction. No matter what kind of chemistry professor we use and no matter
what process we use we can't turn these compounds back into a chemistry professor. Chemistry professors
are unstable mixtures of predominantly unstable compounds which, in the exclusive presence of the sun's
heat, decay irreversibly into simpler organic and inorganic compounds. That's a scientific fact. The question
is: Then why does nature reverse this process? What on earth causes the inorganic compounds to go the
other way? It isn't the sun's energy. We just saw what the sun's energy did. It has to be something else.
What is it?" (Pirsig R.M., "Lila: An Inquiry Into Morals," Bantam: London, 1991, pp.144-145)
3/06/2005
"Where is the Garden of Eden? In Gen 2:10-14 the exact location for the Garden of Eden are described. It was
in the headwaters of the four rivers Pison, Gihon, Tigris and Euphrates. These rivers rise on the plateau
heights of Eastern Turkey. Around it is a rim of mountains rising to 12,000ft with the main peak- Mount
Ararat towering above them all. Eden was at the source of rivers and therefore has to be in a mountainous
region. What about the four rivers- two are unheard of aren't they? Identity of Pison and Gihon are clearly
given in the London Geographical Institute maps. They are now known as Halys and Araxes. The Halys
rises in Eastern Turkey and flows north into the Black Sea. The river Araxes rises in Eastern Turkey and
flows North East into the Caspian Sea. They along with the Euphrates and Tigris rose from a massive
mountain lake on the plateau over a thousand metres high. This lake has long since dried up although it
remains in a much smaller form known as Lake Van. Was there such a thing as rain? Archaeological
evidence proves that this lake fed waterways all over the area. 'God did not cause it to rain upon the ground'.
How then was the garden watered? Streams of water coming out of the rocks were kept in the garden by clay
walls. The water of the ancient lake seeps through porous rock. This is called Flood water farming which is
not dependant upon rain and is an accurate description in Genesis of the method. ... The name 'Eden' is very
similar to the Babylonian word 'Edinnu' which denotes a plateau or steppe. This would be a piece of land in a
mountainous region, which is flat. This would also relate to the 'cool evenings mentioned in Gen 3:8 which is
typical of a high plateau climate. Even today the area is famed for the quality of it's soil which allows great
amounts of plant growth due to the richness of plant nutrients." (Pearce E.K.V., "The Garden of Eden,"
Barnabas Youth, 2001)
3/06/2005
"The question is not concerning evolution, but as to the main cause which has led to evolution in such and
such shapes. To me it seems that the `Origin of Variation,' whatever it is, is the only true 'Origin of Species,'
and that this must, as Lamarck insisted, be looked for in the needs and experiences of the creatures varying.
Unless we can explain the origin of variations, we are met by the unexplained at every step in the
progress of a creature from its original homogeneous condition to its differentiation, we will say, as an
elephant; so that to say that an elephant has become an elephant through the accumulation of a vast
number of small, fortuitous, but unexplained, variations in some lower creatures, is really to say that it has
become an elephant owing to a series of causes about which we know nothing, whatever, or, in other words,
that one does not know how it came to be an elephant." (Butler S., "Life and Habit," [1910], Wildwood
House: London, 1981, pp.263-264. Emphasis original)
3/06/2005
"The advantageous micromutations postulated by neo-Darwinist genetics are tiny, usually too small to be
noticed. This premise is important because, in the words of Richard Dawkins, `virtually all the mutations
studied in genetics laboratories-which are pretty macro because otherwise geneticists wouldn't notice them-
are deleterious to the animals possessing them.' (Dawkins R., `The Blind Watchmaker,' [1986], Penguin:
London, 1991, reprint, p.233) But if the necessary mutations are too small to be seen, there would have to be
a great many of them (millions?) of the right type coming along when they are needed to carry on the long-
term project of producing a complex organ. The probability of Darwinist evolution depends upon the
quantity of favorable micromutations required to create complex organs and organisms, the frequency with
which such favorable micromutations occur just where and when they are needed, the efficacy of natural
selection in preserving the slight improvements with sufficient consistency to permit the benefits to
accumulate, and the time allowed by the fossil record for all this to have happened." (Johnson, P.E.*,
"Darwin on Trial," [1991], Second Edition, InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 1993, p.38)
3/06/2005
"Can blind watchmaker evolution as described by Dawkins actually produce complex adaptive
improvements like the bat's wings? The answer depends on the validity of the factual assumptions that
underlie the model. Several conditions must be met before evolution of the blind watchmaker sort can occur,
and each one is highly problematical. First, gene mutations of the necessary complexity-building type must
occur sufficiently frequently to build the improvement. Unfortunately, mutations having a favorable effect
on the organism are extremely rare. Dawkins himself says that the mutations in question would probably
have to be too small in effect to be observable, because "virtually all the mutations studied in genetics
laboratories-which are pretty macro because otherwise geneticists wouldn't notice them-are deleterious to
the animals possessing them." (Dawkins R., "The Blind Watchmaker," [1986], Penguin: London, 1991,
reprint, p.233) The mutations that the blind watchmaker model requires must be not only favorable, but
favorable in the very strong sense that they provide exactly what is needed for the next stage of the
wingbuilding project. That each individual mutation is supposed to produce only a slight effect in the
desired direction implies that there will have to be an enormous number of exactly the right kind of mutations
to finish the job-and wings are only one of myriad alterations needed to modify a tree climber into a bat. The
only reason to believe that mutations of the kind and quantity needed for blind watchmaker evolution
actually occur is that the theory requires them." (Johnson, P.E.*, "Reason in the Balance: The Case Against
Naturalism in Science, Law and Education," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 1995, pp.80-81)
4/06/2005
"In 1926 the British biologist Heslop Harrison reported that the industrial melanism of moths was caused by
a special substance which he alleged was present in polluted air. He called this substance a "melanogen,"
and suggested that it was manganous sulfate or lead nitrate. Harrison claimed that when he fed foliage
impregnated with these salts to the larvae of certain species of light-colored moths, a proportion of their
offspring were black. He also stated that this "induced melanism" was inherited according to the laws of
Mendel. Darwin, always searching for missing evidence, might well have accepted Harrison's Lamarckian
interpretation, but in 1926 biologists were skeptical. Although the rate of mutation of a hereditary
characteristic can be increased in the laboratory by many methods, Harrison's figures inferred a mutation
rate of 8 per cent. One of the most frequent mutations is nature is that which causes the disease hemophilia
in man; its rate is in the region of .0005 per cent, that is, the mutation occurs about once in 50,000 births. It is,
in fact, unlikely that an increased mutation rate has played any part in industrial melanism. At the University
of Oxford during the past seven years we have been attempting to analyze the phenomenon of industrial
melanism. We have used many different approaches. We are in the process of making a survey of the
present frequency of light and dark forms of each species of moth in Britain that exhibits industrial melanism.
We are critically examining each of the two forms to see if between them there are any differences in
behavior. We have fed large numbers of larvae of both forms on foliage impregnated with substances
polluted air. We have observed under various conditions the mating preferences and relative mortality of
the two forms. Finally we have accumulated much information about the melanism of moths in parts of the
world that are far removed from industrial centers, and we have sought to link industrial melanism with the
melanics of the past. Our main guinea pig, both in the field and in the laboratory, has been the peppered
moth Biston betularia and its me (Kettlewell H.B.D., "Darwin's Missing Evidence," Scientific American, Vol.
201, No. 3, March 1959, pp.48-53, p.48)
4/06/2005
"The peppered moth, Biston betularia, comes in various shades of gray. One hundred and fifty years ago,
most peppered moths were "typical" forms, which have predominantly light gray scales with a few black
scales scattered among them (hence the name, "peppered"). As early as 1811, however, the species also
included some coal-black "melanic" forms. During the industrial revolution, the proportion of melanic forms
increased, and by the turn of the century more than 90% of the peppered moths near the industrial city of
Manchester, England, were melanic. A similar increase in melanic forms was reported in many other species
of moths, ladybird beetles, and even some birds. It was also reported near other industrial cities such as
Birmingham and Liverpool. Obviously, this was not an isolated phenomenon, and the name "industrial
melanism" was used to denote all its manifestations. In 1896 British biologist J.W. Tutt suggested that
industrial melanism in peppered moths might be due to differences in camouflage. Tutt theorized that in
unpolluted woodlands, typicals are well camouflaged against the light-colored lichens that grow on tree
trunks; but in woodlands where industrial pollution has killed the lichens and darkened the tree trunks,
melanics are better camouflaged. Since predatory birds could be expected to find and eat the more
conspicuous moths, the proportion of melanic forms would increase as a result of natural selection. In the
1920s another British biologist, J.W. Heslop Harrison, rejected Tutt's theory and proposed that melanism
was induced directly by airborne industrial pollutants. Although he did not work on Biston betularia,
Harrison reported that melanism could be produced in several other moth species if their larvae were fed on
leaves contaminated with metallic salts. Critics were unable to reproduce Harrison's results, however, and
pointed out that some of the species Harrison tested did not exhibit industrial melanism in the wild. There
was a theoretical problem with Harrison's work, as well. If melanism could be induced it meant that the
organism acquired it after birth. But there was also clear evidence that melanism was inherited, so Harrison's
view implied that acquired characteristics could later be inherited. According to neo-Darwinian theory,
however, the inheritance of acquired characteristics was impossible; all new heritable variations arose from
genetic changes such as mutation. As neo-Darwinism rose in popularity, the influence of Harrison's ideas
declined, and most biologists adopted the theory that industrial melanism in peppered moths was due to
natural selection. It wasn't until the 1950s, however, that British physician and biologist Bernard Kettlewell
set out to test the theory empirically." (Wells J., "Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth?: Why Much of What
We Teach About Evolution is Wrong," Regnery: Washington DC, 2000, pp.140-141)
4/06/2005
"The concept of natural selection had remarkable power for explaining directional and adaptive changes. Its
nature is simplicity itself. It is not a force like the forces described in the laws of physics; its mechanism is
simply the elimination of inferior individuals. This process of nonrandom elimination impelled Darwin's
contemporary, philosopher Herbert Spencer, to describe evolution with the now familiar term `survival of the
fittest.' (This description was long ridiculed as circular reasoning: `Who are the fittest? Those who survive.'
In reality, a careful analysis can usually determine why certain individuals fail to thrive in a given set of
conditions.)" (Mayr E.W., "Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought," Scientific American, Vol. 283, No.
1, July 2000, pp.67-71, p.68)
5/06/2005
"In Britain and America there were a small number of scientists who refused to accept evolution. Professor
Fleeming Jenkin, an engineer, in an article on the Origin in the North British Review in 1867 remarked that
Darwin's idea that a species could be modified by a favourable variation occurring in an individual was the
same as arguing that the arrival of one ship-wrecked European sailor on an island populated by negroes
would result in the population gradually turning white in the course of a century or two (vide Mivart's
Genesis of Species, p. 58). Fleeming Jenkin said he did not anticipate this little difficulty would embarrass the
`true believer' in evolution, for: `He can invent trains of ancestors of whose existence there is no evidence;
he can call up continents, floods, and peculiar atmospheres; he can dry up oceans, split islands, and parcel
out eternity at will; surely with all these advantages he must be a dull fellow if he cannot scheme out a series
of animals and circumstances explaining our assumed difficulty quite naturally.' (Darwin's Life and Letters,
iii, 108). Darwin in the next edition of the Origin set to work and tidily patched up this rent in his theory. He
said there could be no doubt that owing to similar organisms being similarly acted on by external conditions,
`the tendency to vary in the same manner has often been so strong that all the individuals of the same
species have been similarly modified without the aid of any form of natural selection.' Any theory needed
could be supplied on demand apparently. An analysis of the various repairs effected in the six editions of
the Origin would be instructive." (Field A.N., "The Evolution Hoax," [1941], Tan: Rockford IL., 1971, reprint,
p.54)
6/06/2005
Col. 2:8 (NIV) "See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which
depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ."
6/06/2005
"The proliferation of wildly varying body plans during the Cambrian, scientists reason, therefore must have
something to do with Hox genes. But what? To find out, developmental biologist Sean Carroll's lab on the
University of Wisconsin's Madison campus has begun importing tiny velvet worms that inhabit rotting logs
in the dry forests of Australia. Blowing bubbles of spittle and waving their fat legs in the air, they look, he
marvels, virtually identical to their Cambrian cousin Aysheaia, whose evocative portrait appears in the
pages of the Burgess Shale. Soon Carroll hopes to answer a pivotal question: Is the genetic tool kit needed
to construct a velvet worm smaller than the one the arthropods use? Already Carroll suspects that the
Cambrian explosion was powered by more than a simple expansion in the number of Hox genes. Far more
important, he believes, were changes in the vast regulatory networks that link each Hox gene to hundreds of
other genes. Think of these genes, suggests Carroll, as the chips that run a computer. The Cambrian
explosion, then, may mark not the invention of new hardware, but rather the elaboration of new software that
allowed existing genes to perform new tricks. Unusuallooking arthropods, for example, might be cobbled
together through variations of the genetic software that codes for legs. `Arthropods,' observes
paleoentomologist Jarmila Kukalova-Peck of Canada's Carleton University, `are all legs'-including the `legs'
that evolved into jaws, claws and even sex organs. BEYOND DARWINISM Of course, understanding what
made the Cambrian explosion possible doesn't address the larger question of what made it happen so fast.
Here scientists delicately slide across data-thin ice, suggesting scenarios that are based on intuition rather
than solid evidence. One favorite is the so- called empty barrel, or open spaces, hypothesis, which compares
the Cambrian organisms to homesteaders on the prairies. The biosphere in which the Cambrian explosion
occurred, in other words, was like the American West, a huge tract of vacant property that suddenly opened
up for settlement. After the initial land rush subsided, it became more and more difficult for naive newcomers
to establish footholds. Predation is another popular explanation. Once multicelled grazers appeared, say
paleontologists, it was only a matter of time before multicelled predators evolved to eat them. And, right on
cue, the first signs of predation appear in the fossil record exactly at the transition between the Vendian and
the Cambrian, in the form Even more speculative are scientists' attempts to address the flip side of the
Cambrian mystery: why this evolutionary burst, so stunning in speed and scope, has never been equaled.
With just one possible exception-the Bryozoa, whose first traces turn up shortly after the Cambrian-there is
no record of new phyla emerging later on, not even in the wake of the mass extinction that occurred 250
million years ago, at the end of the Permian period. Why no new phyla? Some scientists suggest that the
evolutionary barrel still contained plenty of organisms that could quickly diversify and fill all available
ecological niches. Others, however, believe that in the surviving organisms, the genetic software that
controls early development had become too inflexible to create new life- forms after the Permian extinction.
The intricate networks of developmental genes were not so rigid as to forbid elaborate tinkering with details;
otherwise, marvels like winged flight and the human brain could never have a risen. But very early on, some
developmental biologists believe, the linkages between multiple genes made it difficult to change important
features without lethal effect. `There must be limits to change,' says Indiana University developmental
biologist Rudolf Raff. `After all, we've had these same old body plans for half a billion years.' The more
scientists struggle to explain the Cambrian explosion, the more singular it seems. And just as the peculiar
behavior of light forced physicists to conclude that Newton's laws were incomplete, so the Cambrian
explosion has caused experts to wonder if the twin Darwinian imperatives of genetic variation and natural
selection provide an adequate framework for understanding evolution. `What Darwin described in the Origin
of Species,' observes Queen's University paleontologist Narbonne, `was the steady background kind of
evolution. But there also seems to be a non-Darwinian kind of evolution that functions over extremely short
time periods- and that's where all the action is.'" (Nash J.M., "When Life Exploded", TIME, December 4,
1995, pp.77-78)
7/06/2005
"With the Bible playing a central role in Christianity, the question of Scripture's historic validity bears
tremendous implications. Brown claims that Constantine commissioned and bankrolled a staff to manipulate
existing texts and thereby divinize the human Christ. Yet for a number of reasons, Brown's speculations fall
flat. Brown correctly points out that "the Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven." Indeed, the Bible's
composition and consolidation may appear a bit too human for the comfort of some Christians. But Brown
overlooks the fact that the human process of canonization had progressed for centuries before Nicea,
resulting in a nearly complete canon of Scripture before Nicea or even Constantine's legalization of
Christianity in 313. Ironically, the process of collecting and consolidating Scripture was launched when a
rival sect produced its own quasi-biblical canon. Around 140 a Gnostic leader named Marcion began
spreading a theory that the New and Old Testaments didn't share the same God. Marcion argued that the
Old Testament's God represented law and wrath while the New Testament's God, represented by Christ,
exemplified love. As a result Marcion rejected the Old Testament and the most overtly Jewish New
Testament writings, including Matthew, Mark, Acts, and Hebrews. He manipulated other books to
downplay their Jewish tendencies. Though in 144 the church in Rome declared his views heretical,
Marcion's teaching sparked a new cult. Challenged by Marcion's threat, church leaders began to consider
earnestly their own views on a definitive list of Scriptural books including both the Old and New
Testaments. Another rival theology nudged the church toward consolidating the New Testament. During
the mid- to late-second century, a man from Asia Minor named Montanus boasted of receiving a revelation
from God about an impending apocalypse. The four Gospels and Paul's epistles achieved wide circulation
and largely unquestioned authority within the early church but hadn't yet been collected in a single
authoritative book. Montanus saw in this fact an opportunity to spread his message, by claiming
authoritative status for his new revelation. Church leaders met the challenge around 190 and circulated a
definitive list of apostolic writings that is today called the Muratorian Canon, after its modern discoverer.
The Muratorian Canon bears striking resemblance to today's New Testament but includes two books,
Revelation of Peter and Wisdom of Solomon, which were later excluded from the canon. By the time of
Nicea, church leaders debated the legitimacy of only a few books that we accept today, chief among them
Hebrews and Revelation, because their authorship remained in doubt. In fact, authorship was the most
important consideration for those who worked to solidify the canon. Early church leaders considered letters
and eyewitness accounts authoritative and binding only if they were written by an apostle or close disciple
of an apostle. This way they could be assured of the documents' reliability. As pastors and preachers, they
also observed which books did in fact build up the church-a good sign, they felt, that such books were
inspired Scripture. The results speak for themselves: the books of today's Bible have allowed Christianity to
spread, flourish, and endure worldwide." (Hansen C., "Breaking The Da Vinci Code: So the divine
Jesus and infallible Word emerged out of a fourth-century power-play? Get real," Christian History,
November 7, 2003)
7/06/2005
"The ... release of a new Gallup Poll, reporting on the state of American opinion regarding evolution and
creation. According to this survey, approximately 47 percent of Americans can be described as creationists,
in that they say they believe that God created mankind in pretty much our present form sometime within the
last 10,000 years. (The wording of the question did not rule out a long period of animal evolution before the
appearance of man, however.) Another 40 percent agreed with the following statement: `Man has developed
over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God guided this process, including man's
creation.' Only 9 percent of the sample said that they accepted the naturalistic view of evolution, which in
Gallup's wording was that man has developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, with
God having no part in this process. ... When Darwinists speak of `evolution,' they mean the creed of the 9
percent. Science educators frequently obscure this point in order to avoid further arousing political
opposition to the teaching of evolution as fact in the public schools, but they are perfectly explicit about it
when candor suits their purpose. For example, one of the founders of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, Harvard
paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson, explained the `meaning of evolution' in the following widely quoted
language: `Although many details remain to be worked out, it is already evident that all the objective
phenomena of the history of life can be explained by purely naturalistic or, in a proper sense of the
sometimes abused word, materialistic factors. They are readily explicable on the basis of differential
reproduction in populations (the main factor in the modern conception of natural selection) and of the
mainly random interplay of the known processes of heredity... Man is the result of a purposeless and natural
process that did not have him in mind.' [Simpson G.G., "The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of the History
of Life and of its Significance for Man," (1949), Yale University Press: New Haven CT, 1960, reprint,
pp.343,344] The literature of evolutionary biology contains countless statements to the same effect.
`Evolution,' honestly understood, is not just a gradual process of development that a purposeful Creator
might have chosen to employ. It is, by Darwinist definition. a purposeless and undirected process that
produced mankind accidentally. ... Now, through an educational system insistent upon uncritical acceptance
by students at all levels of the claim that purposeless material mechanisms were responsible for the creation
of all forms of life, scientific naturalism is becoming the officially established religion of America." (Johnson
P.E., "Creator or Blind Watchmaker?," Reprinted from First Things, January 1993, Access Research
Network, November 2, 1998)
8/06/2005
"In the weeks since the release of Mel Gibson's controversial film, The Passion of the Christ, critics
have expressed outrage over what they claim is an overly bloody, brutal depiction of the sufferings of
Christ. It makes you wonder if they understand what really took place during the scourging and crucifixion.
Somebody who does know is former journalist Lee Strobel. A few years ago, Strobel researched one of the
most persistent claims against Christianity: Did Jesus survive the scourging and crucifixion? Was it
possible, he wondered, to examine 2,000-year-old medical evidence and determine if Jesus really died on the
cross? Well, to get an expert opinion, Strobel went to Dr. Alexander Metherell, a research scientist.
Metherell has studied the medical data concerning Christ's death, and he's convinced there's no way anyone
could have survived what the Romans put him through. First, there was the flogging. Soldiers used whips of
braided leather thongs. The metal balls woven into the lash caused deep bruises, which broke open during
the torture. Often the victim's back, in such a beating, was so shredded that his spine was exposed. Those
who didn't die from the flogging went into hypovolemic shock, brought on by blood loss. There would be a
loss of blood pressure, leading to faintness and collapse. And the loss of fluids would result in tremendous
thirst. The Gospels indicate that Jesus was in shock as He carried His cross to Calvary: He collapsed in the
road, and Simon of Cyrene had to carry the cross for Him. Later, Jesus said, `I thirst.' And there was the
agony of the crucifixion itself. The Romans drove spikes through the wrists and feet of Jesus-spikes that
traveled through the median nerves. This caused such enormous pain that a new word was invented to
describe it: excruciating, literally meaning, `out of the cross.' Metherell believes that Jesus, like other
crucifixion victims, eventually died of asphyxiation. The stresses on the muscles and diaphragm put the
chest in the inhaling position; in order to exhale, the victim had to push up on his feet to ease the tension in
the muscles for just a moment. It would be enormously painful, and exhaustion would eventually set in. As
his breathing slowed, the victim would go into respiratory acidosis, leading to an irregular heartbeat and
eventual cardiac arrest. Then, in the case of Jesus, to ensure that He was dead, a Roman soldier thrust a
spear into His side. The flogging, the massive blood loss, the shock, the crucifixion, the stabbing: Could
Jesus have suffered all of this and survived? Not a chance, Metherell told Strobel." (Colson C.*, "Brutal and
Bloody Is The Passion Too Violent?," BreakPoint, April 9, 2004. Emphasis original)
8/06/2005
"The truly outstanding achievement of the principle of natural selection is that it makes unnecessary the
invocation of `final causes'-that is, any teleological forces leading to a particular end. In fact, nothing is
predetermined. Furthermore, the objective of selection even may change from one generation to the next, as
environmental circumstances vary." (Mayr E.W., "Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought," Scientific
American, Vol. 283, No. 1, pp.67-71, July 2000, p.68)
9/06/2005
"Because of the importance of variation, natural selection should be considered a two-step process: the
production of abundant variation is followed by the elimination of inferior individuals. This latter step is
directional. By adopting natural selection, Darwin settled the several-thousand-year-old argument among
philosophers over chance or necessity. Change on the earth is the result of both, the first step being
dominated by randomness, the second by necessity." (Mayr E.W., "Darwin's Influence on Modern
Thought," Scientific American, Vol. 283, No. 1, pp.67-71, July 2000, p.68)
13/06/2005
"But Naturalism, even if it is not purely materialistic, seems to me to involve the same difficulty, though in a
somewhat less obvious form. It discredits our processes of reasoning or at least reduces their credit to such
a humble level that it can no longer support Naturalism itself. The easiest way of exhibiting this is to notice
the two senses of the word because. We can say, `Grandfather is ill to-day because he ate lobster
yesterday.' We can also say, `Grandfather must be ill to-day because he hasn't got up yet (and we
know he is an invariably early riser when he is well)' In the first sentence because indicates the
relation of Cause and Effect: The eating made him ill. In the second, it indicates the relation of what logicians
call Ground and Consequent. The old man's late rising is not the cause of his disorder but the reason why
we believe him to be disordered. There is a similar difference between, ` He cried out because it hurt
him ` (Cause and Effect) and ` It must have hurt him because he cried out' (Ground and Consequent).
We are especially familiar with the Ground and Consequent because in mathematical reasoning:
`A=C because, as we have already proved, they are both equal to B.' The one indicates a dynamic
connection between events or ` states of affairs'; the other, a logical relation between beliefs or assertions.
Now a train of reasoning has no value as a means of finding truth unless each step in it is connected with
what went before in the Ground-Consequent relation. If our B does not follow logically for our A, we think in
vain. If what we think at the end of our reasoning is to be true, the correct answer to the question, `Why do
you think this?' must begin with the Ground-Consequent because. On the other hand, every event in
Nature must be connected with previous events in the Cause and Effect relation. But our acts of thinking are
events. Therefore the true answer to ` Why do you think this?' must begin with the Cause-Effect
because. Unless our conclusion is the logical consequent from a ground it will be worthless and
could be true only by a fluke. Unless it is the effect of a cause, it cannot occur at all. It looks therefore, as if,
in order for a train of thought to have any value, these two systems of connection must apply
simultaneously to the same series of mental acts. But unfortunately the two systems are wholly distinct. To
be caused is not to be proved. Wishful thinkings, prejudices, and the delusions of madness, are all caused,
but they are ungrounded. Indeed to be caused is so different from being proved that we behave in
disputation as if they were mutually exclusive. The mere existence of causes for a belief is popularly treated
as raising a presumption that it is groundless, and the most popular way of discrediting a person's opinions
is to explain them causally.' You say that because (Cause and Effect) you are a capitalist, or a
hypochondriac, or a mere man, or only a woman.' The implication is that if causes fully account for a belief,
then, since causes work inevitably, the belief would have had to arise whether it had grounds or not. We
need not, it is felt, consider grounds for something which can be fully explained without them." (Lewis C.S.*,
"Miracles: A Preliminary Study," [1947], Fontana: London, 1960, Revised edition, 1963, reprint, pp.18-20.
Emphasis original)
15/06/2005
"Darwin's theory clearly emerged as the victor during the evolutionary synthesis of the 1940s, when the new
discoveries in genetics were married with taxonomic observations concerning systematics, the classification
of organisms by their relationships. Darwinism is now almost unanimously accepted by knowledgeable
evolutionists. In addition, it has become the basic component of the new philosophy of biology." (Mayr
E.W., "Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought," Scientific American, Vol. 283, No. 1, pp.67-71, July
2000, p.69)
22/06/2005
"One way to explore the minimum complexity of independent life is to survey the microbial database for the
smallest genome. .... The data indicate that the microbes possessing the smallest known genomes and
capable of living independently in the environment are extremophilic archaea and eubacteria. ... These
organisms also happen to represent what many scientists consider to be the oldest life on Earth. This crude
estimate seems to suggest that, to exist independently, life requires a minimum genome size of about 1,500 to
1,900 gene products. (A gene product refers to proteins and functional RNAs, such as ribosomal and
transfer RNA.) The late evolutionary biologist Colin Patterson acknowledges the 1,700 genes of
Methanococcus are `perhaps close to the minimum necessary for independent life.' [Patterson C.,
"Evolution," Comstock: Ithaca NY, Second edition, 1999, p.23] ... So far, as scientists have continued their
sequencing efforts, all microbial genomes that fall below 1,500 belong to parasites. Organisms capable of
permanent independent existence require more gene products. A minimum genome size (for independent life)
of 1,500 to 1,900 gene products comports with what the geochemical and fossil evidence reveals about the
complexity of Earth's first life. ... Theoretical and experimental studies designed to discover the bare ,
minimum number of gene products necessary for life all show significant agreement. Life seems to require
between 250 and 350 different proteins to carry out its most basic operations. That this bare form of life
cannot survive long without a source of sugars, nucleotides, amino acids, and fatty acids is worth noting."
(Rana, F.R.* & Ross, H.N.*, "Origins of Life: Biblical And Evolutionary Models Face Off," Navpress:
Colorado Springs CO, 2004 pp.161-163)
26/06/2005
"The following illustration is my (Norman Geisler) updated version of William Paley's famous `watchmaker
argument' in light of modern molecular biology and information theory. It deliberately borrows the format
and language of Paley to make the point. `In crossing a valley, suppose I come upon a round stratified stone
and were asked how it came to be such. I might plausibly answer that it was once laid down by water in
layers which later solidified by chemical action. One day it broke from a larger section of rock and was
subsequently rounded by the natural erosional processes of tumbling in water. Suppose then, upon walking
further, I come upon Mount Rushmore where the forms of four human faces appear on a granite cliff. Even if
I knew nothing about the origin of the faces, would I not come immediately to believe it was an intelligent
production and not the result of natural processes of erosion? Yet why should a natural cause serve for the
stone but not for the faces? For this reason, namely, that when we come to inspect the faces on the
mountain we perceive-what we could not discover in the stone-that they manifest intelligent contrivance,
that they convey specifically complex information. The stone has redundant patterns or strata easily
explainable by the observed natural process of sedimentation. The faces, however, have specially formed
features, not merely repeated lines. The stone has rounded features like those we observe to result from
natural erosion. The faces, on the other hand, have sharply defined features contrary to those made by
erosion. In fact, the faces resemble things known to be made by intelligent artisans. These differences being
observed, we would rightly conclude there must have existed at some time and at some place some
intelligence that formed them. Nor would it, I apprehend, weaken the conclusion if we had never seen such a
face being chiseled in granite, if we had never known an artisan capable of making one, or if we were wholly
incapable of executing such a piece of workmanship ourselves. All this is no more than what is true of some
lost art or of some of the more curious productions of modern technology. Neither, secondly, would it
invalidate our conclusion that upon closer examination of the faces they turn out to be imperfectly formed. It
is not necessary that a representation be perfect in order to show it was designed. Nor, thirdly, would it
bring any uncertainty in the argument if we were not able to recognize the identity of the faces. Even if we
had never known of any such person portrayed, we would still conclude it took intelligence to produce
them. Nor, fourthly, would any man in his senses think the existence of the faces on the rock was accounted
for by being told that they were one out of many possible combinations or forms rocks may take, and that
this configuration might be exhibited as well as a different structure. Nor, fifthly, would it yield our inquiry
more satisfaction to be answered that there exists in granite a law or principle of order which had disposed it
toward forming facial features. We never knew a sculpture made by such a principle of order, nor can we
even form an idea of what is meant by such a principle of order distinct from intelligence. Sixthly, we would
be surprised to hear that configurations like this on a mountainside were not proof of intelligent creation but
were only to induce the mind to think so. Seventhly, we would be not less surprised to be informed that the
faces resulted simply from the natural processes of wind and water erosion. Nor, eighthly, would it change
our conclusion were we to discover that certain natural objects or powers were utilized in producing the
faces. Still the managing of these forces, the pointing and directing them to form such specific faces,
demands intelligence. Neither, ninthly, would it make the slightest difference in our conclusion were we to
discover that these natural laws were set up by some intelligent Being. For nothing is added to the power of
natural laws by positing an original Designer for them. Designed or not, the natural powers of wind and rain
erosion never produce human faces like this in granite. Nor, tenthly, would it change the matter were we to
discover that behind the forehead of a stone face was a computer capable of reproducing other faces on
nearby cliffs by laser beams. This would only enhance our respect for the intelligence that designed such a
computer. And, furthermore, were we to find that this computer was designed by another computer we
would still not give up our belief in an intelligent cause. In fact, we would have an even greater admiration
for the intelligence it takes to create computers that can also create. In addition, would we not consider it
strange if anyone suggested there was no need for an intelligent cause because there might be an infinite
regress of computers designing computers? We know that increasing the number of computers in the series
does not diminish the need for intelligence to program the whole series. Neither would we allow any
limitation on our conclusion (that it takes intelligence to create such specific and complex information) by
the claim that this principle applies only to events of the near past but not the most remote past. For what is
remote to us was near to those remote from us. And would we not consider it arbitrary for anyone to insist
that the word science applies to our reasoning only if we assume the face had a natural cause, such as
erosion, but not if we conclude it had an intelligent source? For who would insist that an archaeologist is
scientific only if he posits a non-intelligent natural cause of ancient pottery and tools?' Neither, lastly, would
we be driven from our conclusion or from our confidence in it by being told we know nothing at all about
how the faces were produced. We know enough to conclude it took intelligence to produce them. The
consciousness of knowing little need not beget a distrust of that which we do know. And we do know that
natural forces never produce those kinds of effects. We know that the faces on the rock manifest a form
such as is produced by intelligence. For as William Paley remarked, `Wherever we see marks of contrivance,
we are led for its cause to an intelligent author. And this transition of the understanding is found upon
uniform experience.'"(Geisler N.L.* & Bocchino P.*, "Unshakable Foundations," Bethany House:
Minneapolis MN, 2000, pp.127-130)
26/06/2005
"If we want to postulate a deity capable of engineering all the organized complexity in the world, either
instantaneously or by guiding evolution, that deity must already have been vastly complex in the first place.
The creationist, whether a naive Bible-thumper or an educated bishop, simply postulates an already existing
being of prodigious intelligence and complexity.: (Dawkins R., "The Blind Watchmaker," [1986], Penguin:
London, 1991, reprint, p.316)
28/06/2005
"Imagine, says Darwin, that we extrapolate the tiny microevolutionary changes we see in domesticated
breeding-a pea with extra-large pods made larger, or a short horse bred shorter. Imagine if we extend those
slight changes caused by selection over millions of years; we add up all the minute differences until we see
major change. This is what makes coral reefs and armadillos out of bacteria, Darwin said-accumulated
microchange. Darwin asks that we extend the logic of microchange to cover the grand scale of Earth and
Time. The argument that natural selection can be extended to explain everything in life is a logical
argument. But human imagination and human experience know that what is logical is not always what is so.
To be logical is a necessary but insufficient reason to be true. Every swirl on a butterfly wing, every curve of
leaf, every species of fish is explained by adaptive selection in neodarwinism. There seems to be absolutely
nothing that cannot be explained in some way as an adaptive advantage. But, as Richard Lewontin, a
renowned neodarwinist, says, `Natural selection explains nothing, because it explains every thing. `
Biologists cannot (or at least they have not) ruled out the role of other forces at work in nature producing
similar effects in evolution. Therefore, until evolution is duplicated under controlled conditions, in the wild,
or in a lab, neodarwinism remains a nice `just-so' story-more like history than science. Philosopher of science
Karl Popper said bluntly that neodarwinism is not a scientific theory at all, since it cannot be falsified.
`Neither Darwin, nor any Darwinian, has so far given an actual causal explanation of the adaptive evolution
of any single organism or any single organ. All that has been shown-and this is very much [sic]-is that such
an explanation might exist-that is to say, [these theories] are not logically impossible." (Kelly K., "Out of
Control: The New Biology of Machines," Fourth Estate: London, 1994, p.473. Emphasis original)
28/06/2005
"Returning to the platypus, the sting in the tale is actually in the hind claws of the male platypus. True
venomous stings, with hypodermic injection, are found in various invertebrate phyla, and in fish and reptiles
among vertebrates - but never in birds or mammals other than the platypus (unless you count the toxic
saliva of solenodons and some shrews that makes their bites slightly venomous). Among mammals, the male
platypus is in a class of its own, and it may be in a class of its own among venomous animals too. The fact
that the sting is found only in males suggests, rather surprisingly, that it is aimed not at predators (as in
bees) nor at prey (as in snakes) but at rivals. It is not dangerous but is extremely painful, and is
unresponsive to morphine. It looks as though platypus venom works directly on pain receptors themselves.
If scientists could understand how this is done, there is a hope that it might give a clue to how to resist the
pain caused by cancer. This tale began by chiding those zoologists who call the platypus `primitive' as
though that were any kind of explanation for the way it is. At best it is a description. Primitive means
`resembling the ancestor' and there are many respects in which this is a fair description of a platypus. The
bill and the sting are interesting exceptions. But the more important moral of the tale is that even an animal
that is genuinely primitive in all respects is primitive for a reason. The ancestral characteristics are good for
its way of life, so there is no reason to change. As Professor Arthur Cain of Liverpool University liked to
say, an animal is the way it is because it needs to be." (Dawkins R., "The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to
the Dawn of Evolution," Houghton Mifflin Co: Boston MA, 2004, p.242)
29/06/2005
"... The Da Vinci Code contains many more (equally dubious) claims about Christianity's historic origins and
theological development. The central claim Brown's novel makes about Christianity is that `almost
everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false.' Why? Because of a single meeting of bishops in 325,
at the city of Nicea in modern-day Turkey. There, argues Brown, church leaders who wanted to consolidate
their power base (he calls this, anachronistically, `the Vatican' or `the Roman Catholic church') created a
divine Christ and an infallible Scripture-both of them novelties that had never before existed among
Christians. Watershed at Nicea Brown is right about one thing (and not much more). In the course of
Christian history, few events loom larger than the Council of Nicea in 325. When the newly converted
Roman Emperor Constantine called bishops from around the world to present-day Turkey, the church had
reached a theological crossroads. Led by an Alexandrian theologian named Arius, one school of thought
argued that Jesus had undoubtedly been a remarkable leader, but he was not God in flesh. ... In The Da Vinci
Code, Brown apparently adopts Arius as his representative for all pre-Nicene Christianity. Referring to the
Council of Nicea, Brown claims that `until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a
mortal prophet a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless.' In reality, early Christians
overwhelmingly worshipped Jesus Christ as their risen Savior and Lord. Before the church adopted
comprehensive doctrinal creeds, early Christian leaders developed a set of instructional summaries of belief,
termed the `Rule' or `Canon' of Faith, which affirmed this truth. To take one example, the canon of prominent
second-century bishop Irenaeus took its cue from 1 Corinthians 8:6: `Yet for us there is but one God, the
Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ.' The term
used here-Lord, Kyrios-deserves a bit more attention. Kyrios was used by the Greeks to denote divinity
(though sometimes also, it is true, as a simple honorific). In the Greek translation of the Old Testament (the
Septuagint, pre-dating Christ), this term became the preferred substitution for `Jahweh,' the holy name of
God. The Romans also used it to denote the divinity of their emperor, and the first-century Jewish writer
Josephus tells us that the Jews refused to use it of the emperor for precisely this reason: only God himself
was kyrios. The Christians took over this usage of kyrios and applied it to Jesus, from the earliest days of
the church. They did so not only in Scripture itself (which Brown argues was doctored after Nicea), but in
the earliest extra-canonical Christian book, the Didache, which scholars agree was written no later than the
late 100s. In this book, the earliest Aramaic-speaking Christians refer to Jesus as Lord. In addition, pre-
Nicene Christians acknowledged Jesus's divinity by petitioning God the Father in Christ's name. Church
leaders, including Justin Martyr, a second-century luminary and the first great church apologist, baptized in
the name of the triune God-Father, Son, and Holy Spirit-thereby acknowledging the equality of the one
Lord's three distinct persons. The Council of Nicea did not entirely end the controversy over Arius's
teachings, nor did the gathering impose a foreign doctrine of Christ's divinity on the church. The
participating bishops merely affirmed the historic and standard Christian beliefs, erecting a united front
against future efforts to dilute Christ's gift of salvation." (Hansen C., "Breaking The Da Vinci Code,"
Christian History, November 7, 2003)
30/06/2005
"Hope of reconstructing the ancestor from its inferred genes received new impetus three years ago when the
first full DNA, or genome, of a bacterium was decoded. Since then, the genomes of a dozen microbes have
been sequenced, including at least one from each of the three main branches of the evolutionary tree. The
three kinds of genome offered a broad basis for triangulating back to the ancestral genome. But the
emerging picture is far more complicated than had been expected, and the ancestor's features remain ill-
defined though not wholly elusive. `Five years ago we were very confident and arrogant in our ignorance,'
said Dr. Eugene Koonin .... `Now we are starting to see the true complexity of life.' Despite the quagmire in
which their present efforts have landed them, biologists have not in any way despaired of confirming the
conventional thesis, that life evolved on earth from natural chemical processes. But a ferment of rethinking
and regrouping is under way. Until now, searchers in the universal- ancestor treasure hunt have followed a
hallowed chart known as the ribosomal RNA phylogenetic tree. This is a family tree drawn up by Woese and
based on a gene used by all living cells to specify ribosomal RNA, or ribonucleic acid, a component of the
machinery that translates genetic information into working parts. It was this tree that led Woese to recognize
the tripartite division of living things and to realize that one of the three kingdoms belonged to the archaea,
previously assumed to be a weird sort of bacteria. Many of the deepest branches in Woese's tree, those that
join nearest to the three-way junction of the kingdoms, turned out to belong to organisms that live at high
temperatures, as in the fuming springs in Yellowstone Park or the volcanic vents that gash the ocean floor.
That clue fit well with new ideas holding that life originated at volcanolike temperatures. With the new
ability to decode the full DNA of a microbe, it is these hightemperature microbes that biologists have
chosen for some of their first targets. Aquifex aeolicus, a denizen of Yellowstone Park that lives at 5 degrees
below the boiling point of water, is the deepest branching of all known bacteria. In the light of evidence
suggesting that the oldest region of the ribosomal RNA tree lies on the branch leading into the bacterial
kingdom, Aquifex provided grounds for the claim that it was the nearest living cousin of the universal
ancestor. But the sequence of the Aquifex genome, reported last month in the journal Nature, has yielded
only disappointments. For one thing, the microbe appears to have only one gene, called a reverse gyrase,
that is not found in organisms that live at ordinary temperatures. ... A second blow is that with the full
genome sequence in hand, for Aquifex and a dozen other microbes, biologists can draw up family trees
based on other genes besides the ribosomal RNA gene that provided the original map. And the trees based
on other genes show different maps that do not agree with the ribosomal RNA map. `Each picture is
different, so there is tremendous confusion,' Woese said. A basic source of the confusion is that in the
course of evolution whole suites of genes have apparently been transferred sideways among the major
branches. Among animals, genes are passed vertically from parent to child but single-celled creatures tend
to engulf each other and occasionally amalgamate into a corporate genetic entity. ... Horizontal transfer of
genes between kingdoms would severely tangle up the lines in family trees. ... `It's possible that bacterial
genes have swept all over the world and replaced everything else that existed, so some of the features of the
last common ancestor may have been erased from the face of the planet,' Koonin said. But no one is
abandoning the search for the ancestor. `My biggest fear is that evolution would be indecipherable because
of all the random changes that took place,' said Craig Venter .... `The good news is that that is clearly not the
case. I think it will be completely decipherable but because of horizontal transfer the tree may look more like
a neural network,' he said, referring to the criss-cross pattern of a neural computing circuit. Venter, who
pioneered the sequencing of microbial genomes, estimated that 50 to 100 more genomes needed to be
sequenced to help triangulate back to the last common ancestor. Evolutionary biologists are working on
several approaches for seeing beyond the confusion caused by lateral transfer. Computational biologists
like Koonin believe that it is already possible to identify 100 or so genes that the common ancestor must
have possessed -- mostly ones that manage DNA and its translation into proteins -- and that others can be
added with varying degrees of certainty. Most biologists still favor the standard view that the universal
ancestor, already a quite sophisticated organism that had come a long way since the origin of life, first
branched into the bacteria and the archaea. Later the eukarya branched off from the archaea, but accepted
many genes from the bacteria. Koonin describes the eukaryotic cell as a `palimpsest of fusions and gene
exchanges,' referring to a manuscript that has been written over with new text. But some important
eukaryotic genes have no obvious predecessors in either the archaean or the bacterial lines. The family of
genes that make the stiff framework of eukaryotic cells, known as the cytoskeleton, seems to appear out of
nowhere. `The absence of sequences closely related to the slowly changing proteins of the eukaryotic
cytoskeleton remains unsettling,' Dr. Russell Doolittle ... wrote in the March 26 issue of Nature. Another
evolutionary biologist, Dr. Ford Doolittle ... has an explanation, though one that he concedes does not yet
enjoy the company of evidence. He argues there might have been many lost branches of the tree of life
before the universal ancestor. One of these branches, a fourth kingdom of life, might have contributed the
cytoskeleton genes to the eukarya before falling into extinction. A new and far- reaching theory about the
universal ancestor has been developed by Woese. Though he declined to discuss it, because his article is
due to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences [Woese C., "The universal
ancestor," PNAS 95(12), 6854-6859, June 9, 1998], colleagues said the theory envisages that all three
kingdoms emerged independently from a common pool of genes. The pool was formed by a community of
cells that frequently exchanged genes among themselves by lateral transfer. The price of membership in the
community was to use the same genetic code, according to Woese's theory, which is how the code came to
be almost universal. The community of proto-genomes quickly shared innovations among themselves, in
Woese's new view, and the system evolved by producing more complicated proteins, the working parts of
the cell. The genetic code was at first translated rather inaccurately, so the proteins it produced were short
and limited in capability. But the code became more accurate, and the proteins more complex, driven by the
advantage that more capable proteins conferred. At a certain stage of complexity, design decisions may
have limited cells' ability to exchange genes, and the ancestral pool would have split into the three kingdoms
seen today, the new theory suggests. It is possible, of course, that evolution's early traces have become too
faint to decipher. And at the back of researchers' minds is another worry, one that makes them throw up their
hands since it cannot be addressed scientifically: that life may have arrived on earth from elsewhere. Life
seems to have popped up on earth with surprising rapidity. The planet is generally thought to have become
habitable only some 3.85 billion years ago, after the oceans stopped boiling off from titanic asteroid impacts.
Yet by 3.5 billion years ago, according to the earliest fossil records, living cells were flourishing, and there
are indirect signs of life even earlier, in rocks that are 3.8 billion years old. `There's the gee-whiz point of
view, how can life possibly have evolved in 300 million years, which I think is still a problem,' said [Russell]
Doolittle .... But life arriving from outer space is a hypothesis, he said, that `leaves you stunned -- there is
nothing more you can say after that.' This narrowing window of time may be less embarrassing than it
seems. Biologists are warming to the view that the emergence of life from chemical precursors is a quite
probable event which does not require billions of years to get under way. `You put a selective hammer on it
and it happens fast,' said Norman Pace, an evolutionary biologist ... referring to the force of natural selection
`It's shockingly fast, maybe just tens of millions of years.' Still, many more years of evolution presumably
passed before the universal ancestor, a quite sophisticated genetic system, attained its final form. If the
ancestor was a pool of organisms as Woese suggests, and not a definable species, it may be even harder to
capture its likeness. But knowledge about this distant era at the dawn of life is moving so fast that few
biologists are troubled by setbacks like the Aquifex dead end or the discordant family trees. `I'm unwilling to
say we'll never know about anything, because we have come so far in the last two decades,' Pace said."
(Wade N.J., "Tree of Life Turns Out to Have Complex Roots," The New York Times, April 14, 1998)
30/06/2005
"Rejecting all these unseen, unmeasurable "forces," paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson wrote in his
Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1944): the progress of knowledge rigidly requires that no non- physical
postulate ever be admitted in connection with the study of physical phenomena ... the researcher who is
seeking explanations must seek physical explanations only ... Simpsons proscription excludes not only
consciousness, spirit and God, but also Platonic ideals-patterns, types, archetypes-that such naturalists as
Richard Owen and Lorenz Oken had believed to be as real as bones." " (Milner R., "Materialism," in "The
Encyclopedia of Evolution: Humanity's Search for Its Origins," Facts On File: York NY, 1990, p.293)
30/06/2005
"As a matter of personal philosophy, I do not here mean to endorse an entirely mechanistic or materialistic
view of the life processes. I suspect that there is a great deal in the universe that never will be explained in
such terms and much that may be inexplicable on a purely physical plane. But scientific history conclusively
demonstrates that the progress of knowledge rigidly requires that no nonphysical postulate ever be
admitted in connection with the study of physical phenomena. We do not know what is and what is not
explicable in physical terms, and the researcher who is seeking explanations must seek physical explanations
only, or the two kinds can never be disentangled. Personal opinion is free in the field where this search has
so far failed, but this is no proper guide in the search and no part of science." (Simpson G.G., "Tempo and
Mode in Evolution," [1944], Columbia University Press: New York NY, 1949, Third printing, pp.76-77)
30/06/2005
"But most scientists who adopted the Materialist postulate did not abandon Judeo-Christian values and
many professed a belief in God. Newton himself spent more time studying the Book of Revelation than he
did physics. Yet, Materialist scientists shocked Victorian lecture audiences by asserting that "thought is as
much a secretion of brain as urine is of kidneys." Thomas Henry Huxley liked to compare the mind to the
whistle on a steam engine-a noisy adjunct to the body, driven by the same force." (Milner R., "Materialism,"
in "The Encyclopedia of Evolution: Humanity's Search for Its Origins," Facts On File: York NY, 1990, p.293)
30/06/2005
"Physical explanation as the only scientific one is a legacy of Newtonian physics, which by the 19th century
was the only accepted scientific model of the universe. However, modern physics has changed the picture
drastically. Critic of anthropology William R. Fix writes: "quantum physicists have been led more and more
to consider models of consciousness and theories of perception as part of the 'stuff' that the new physics is
about." Subatomic particle behavior, uncertainty principles and other recent developments have led
quantum physicists to "describe 'reality' in terms that are often restatements of Buddhist metaphysics." "
(Milner R., "Materialism," in "The Encyclopedia of Evolution: Humanity's Search for Its Origins," Facts On
File: York NY, 1990, p.293)
30/06/2005
"Fix's critique is that modern evolutionary biologists accept as their "reality" a "naive realism" based on
outdated Victorian science: an old- fashioned Materialism that was daring and appropriate in Darwin's day
but is no longer the model used in physics. (In one of his private notebooks, Darwin had written to himself:
"Why is thought being a secretion of brain, more wonderful than gravity a property of matter? ... Oh, you
materialist!")" (Milner R., "Materialism," in "The Encyclopedia of Evolution: Humanity's Search for Its
Origins," Facts On File: York NY, 1990, p.293)
30/06/2005
"Now I quote all this not merely because Gould holds a chair at Harvard and I do not; although this made
the target all therefore tempting, but because Gould represents a charming intelligence corrupted by a
shallow system of belief. No distinction in kind rather than degree between ourselves and the chimps? No
distinction? Seriously, folks? Here is a simple operational test: The chimpanzees invariably are the ones
behind the bars of their cages. There they sit, solemnly munching bananas, searching for lice, aimlessly
loping around, baring their gums, waiting for the experiments to begin. No distinction? Chimpanzees cannot
read or write; they do not paint, or compose music, or do mathematics; they form no real communities, only
loose-knit wandering tribes; they do not dine and cannot cook; there is no record anywhere of their
achievements; beyond the superficial, they show little curiosity; they are born, they live, they suffer and
they die. No distinction? No species in the animal world organizes itself in the complex, dense, difficult
fashion that is typical of human societies. There is no such thing as animal culture; animals do not
compromise and cannot count; there is not a trace in the animal world of virtually any of the powerful and
poorly understood powers and properties of the human mind; in all of history no animal has stood staring at
the night sky in baffled and respectful amazement. The chimpanzees are static creatures solemnly poking for
grubs with their sticks, inspecting one another for fleas. No doubt, they are peaceable enough if fed, and
looking into their warm brown eyes one can see the signs of a universal biological shriek (a nice maneuver
that involves hearing what one sees) but what of it? One may insist, of course, that all this represents
difference merely of degree. Very well. Only a difference of degree separates man from the Canadian Goose
Individuals of both species are capable of entering the air unaided and landing some distance from where
they started." (Berlinski D., "Good as Gould," in "Black Mischief: Language, Life, Logic, Luck," Harcourt
Brace Jovanovich: Boston MA, Second Edition, 1988, pp.293-295)
30/06/2005
"By the time of the Darwin Centennial celebrations at the University of Chicago in 1959, Darwinism was
triumphant. At a panel discussion, Sir Julian Huxley (grandson of Thomas Henry) affirmed that `the
evolution of life is no longer a theory; it is a fact.' He added sternly: `We do not intend to get bogged down
in semantics and definitions.' At about the same time, Sir Gavin de Beer of the British Museum remarked that
if a layman sought to `impugn' Darwin's conclusions it must be the result of `ignorance or effrontery.' Garrett
Hardin of the California Institute of Technology asserted that anyone who did not honor Darwin `inevitably
attracts the speculative psychiatric eye to himself.' Sir Julian Huxley saw the need for `true belief." (Bethell
T., "Darwin's Mistake", in "The Electric Windmill: An Inadvertent Autobiography", Regnery Gateway:
Washington DC, 1988, p.185)
30/06/2005
"Darwinian natural selection was based on a few concepts all obviously true true once they have been
pointed out. After Darwin had pointed them out, honest biologists agreed they had been extremely stupid
not to see them before. ... All organisms vary, some being more and others less fit for survival. Much of that
variation is heritable by their offspring. All organisms tend to produce more offspring than can possibly
survive in the long run. On an average, more offspring will survive from those parents whose heritable
variations make them more fit. Therefore, on an average and in the long run, characteristics that adapt
various lineages of organisms to the different environments available to them will accumulate progressively
within them. Q.E.D. The conclusion follows from the objective facts of nature as inexorably as the proof of a
theorem in Euclid follows from his subjective axioms. We now see clearly what Darwin also sensed, but more
vaguely, that the essential point is differential success in contributing offspring to the next reproducing
generation and that individual survival is only one of numerous factors contributing to that result. This
broadening of the concept has only enhanced the importance of natural selection." (Simpson G.G., "This
View of Life: The World of an Evolutionist," Harcourt, Brace & World: New York NY, 1964, pp.51-52)
30/06/2005
"Using Popper's criterion, we must conclude that evolutionary theory is not testable in the same way as a
theory in physics, or chemistry or genetics, by experiments designed to falsify it. But the essence of
scientific method is not testing a single theory to destruction; it is testing two (or more) rival theories, like
Newton's and Einstein's, and accepting the one that passes more or stricter tests until a better theory turns
up. So we must look at evolution theory and natural selection theory in terms of their performance against
their competitors. I will deal with evolution first, the belief that all organisms are related by descent and have
diverged through a natural, historical process. This theory has only one main competitor, creation theory,
though there are different stories of how the Creator went about His work. All creation theories are purely
metaphysical. They make no predictions about the activities of the Creator, except that life as we know it is
the result of His plan. Since we do not know the plan, no observation can be inconsistent with it. At one
extreme there is the fundamentalist view that evidence of evolution, such as fossils, was built into the
newly-created rocks to tempt us or test our faith. At the other extreme is the person to whom evidence of
evolution only pushes the activity of the Creator further and further into the past. Both these modifications
of the original creation myths are typical evasive moves, avoiding refutation or confrontation by modifying
the original theory, or erecting subsidiary defensive theories around it." (Patterson C., "Evolution," British
Museum of Natural History: London, 1978, pp.147-148)
30/06/2005
"To see that the Darwinian mechanism is incapable of generating specified complexity, it is necessary to
consider the mathematical underpinnings of that mechanism, to wit, evolutionary algorithms. By an
evolutionary algorithm I mean any well-defined mathematical procedure that generates contingency via
some chance process and then sifts it via some law-like process. ... Given the popular enthusiasm for
evolutionary algorithms, to claim that they are incapable of generating specified complexity may seem
misconceived. But consider a well-known example by Richard Dawkins in which he purports to show how an
evolutionary algorithm can generate specified complexity." He starts with the following target sequence, a
putative instance of specified complexity: METHINKSoIToISo LIKEoAoWEASEL (he considers only
capital Roman letters and spaces, spaces represented ... If we tried to attain this target sequence by pure
chance ... the probability of getting it on the first try would be around 1 in 1040 .... But
consider next Dawkins's refraining of the problem. In place of pure chance, he considers the following
evolutionary algorithm: (1) Start out with a randomly selected sequence of 28 capital Roman letters and
spaces, such as WDLoMNLToDTJBKWIRZREZLMQCOoP; (2) randomly alter all the letters and spaces in
the current sequence that do not agree with the target sequence; and (3) whenever an alteration happens to
match a corresponding letter in the target sequence, leave it and randomly alter only those remaining letters
that still differ from the target sequence. In very short order this algorithm converges to Dawkins's target
sequence. ... ... in 43 steps. In place of 1040 tries on average for pure chance to generate the
target sequence, it now takes on average only 40 tries to generate it via an evolutionary algorithm. Although
Dawkins and fellow Darwinists use this example to illustrate the power of evolutionary algorithms, in fact it
raises more problems than it solves. For one thing, choosing a prespecified target sequence as Dawkins
does here is deeply teleological (the target here is set prior to running the evolutionary algorithm and the
evolutionary algorithm here is explicitly programmed to end up at the target ... A more serious problem then
remains. We can see it by posing the following question: Given Dawkins's evolutionary algorithm, what
besides the target sequence can this algorithm attain? ... Clearly, the algorithm is always going to converge
on the target sequence (with probability 1 for that matter). ... In general, then, evolutionary algorithms
generate not true specified complexity but at best the appearance of specified complexity. This claim
is reminiscent of one made by Richard Dawkins. On the opening page of The Blind, Watchmaker he states,
"Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a
purpose." Just as the Darwinian mechanism does not generate actual design but only its appearance, so too
the Darwinian mechanism does not generate actual specified complexity but only its appearance. " (Dembski
W.A., "No Free Lunch: Why Specified Complexity Cannot Be Purchased without Intelligence," Rowman &
Littlefield: Lanham MD, 2002, pp.181-183)
30/06/2005
"Genesis 1-2:4a (NIV) [1] In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. [2] Now the earth was
formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the
waters. [3] And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. [4] God saw that the light was good, and
He separated the light from the darkness. [5] God called the light "day," and the darkness he called "night."
And there was evening, and there was morning-the first day. [6] And God said, "Let there be an expanse
between the waters to separate water from water." [7] So God made the expanse and separated the water
under the expanse from the water above it. And it was so. [8] God called the expanse "sky." And there was
evening, and there was morning-the second day. [9] And God said, "Let the water under the sky be gathered
to one place, and let dry ground appear." And it was so. [10] God called the dry ground "land," and the
gathered waters he called "seas." And God saw that it was good. [11] Then God said, "Let the land produce
vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their
various kinds." And it was so. [12] The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their
kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. [13] And
there was evening, and there was morning-the third day. [14] And God said, "Let there be lights in the
expanse of the sky to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days
and years, [15] and let them be lights in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth." And it was so. [16]
God made two great lights-the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He
also made the stars. [17] God set them in the expanse of the sky to give light on the earth, [18] to govern the
day and the night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. [19] And there was
evening, and there was morning-the fourth day. [20] And God said, "Let the water teem with living creatures,
and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky." [21] So God created the great creatures of
the sea and every living and moving thing with which the water teems, according to their kinds, and every
winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. [22] God blessed them and said, "Be
fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas, and let the birds increase on the earth." [23]
And there was evening, and there was morning-the fifth day. [24] And God said, "Let the land produce
living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals,
each according to its kind." And it was so. [25] God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the
livestock according to their kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds.
And God saw that it was good. [26] Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let
them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all
the creatures that move along the ground." [27] So God created man in his own image, [in the image of God
he created him; [male and female he created them. [28] God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and
increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over
every living creature that moves on the ground." [29] Then God said, "I give you every seed-bearing plant
on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. [30]
And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds of the air and all the creatures that move on the ground-
everything that has the breath of life in it-I give every green plant for food." And it was so. [31] God saw all
that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning-the sixth day. [2:1]
Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. [2] By the seventh day God had
finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. [3] And God
blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had
done. [4a] This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created."
30/06/2005
"The discovery of the principle of natural selection made evolution comprehensible; together with the
discoveries of modern genetics, it has rendered all other explanations of evolution untenable. So far as we
now know, not only is natural selection inevitable, not only is it an effective agency of evolution, but
it is the only effective agency of evolution. " (Huxley J.S., "Evolution in Action," [1953], Penguin:
Harmondsworth, Middlesex UK, 1963, reprint, p.42. Emphasis original)
30/06/2005
"Since the rise of genetics it has become important to emphasize that the phenotype of the individual as a
whole is the target of selection. The emphasis on single genes in the work of most mathematical population
geneticists and their definition of evolution as `a change in gene frequencies' has led to the unfortunate
misunderstanding by certain outsiders, that the selection of individual genes is the basic thesis of
neoDarwinism. It is not!" (Mayr E., "Darwin, intellectual revolutionary," in Bendall D.S., ed., "Evolution
From Molecules to Men," [1983], Cambridge University Press: Cambridge UK, 1985, reprint, pp.34-35)
30/06/2005
"Evidence and Bias Bias is a negative word for viewpoint. I have a rational viewpoint; you have a bias; he is
hopelessly prejudiced. Consider this statement (from a Christian college science professor): Just as Phil is
concerned with `naturalistic' biases which cause me to find the data convincing, theistic critics of Phil are
concerned with his biases which cause him to find the data unconvincing. ... Whether my evaluation of the
evidence is `biased' depends on whether TR as defined above is a `bias.' For example ... I do not think that
the Cambrian explosion illustrates anything I would call `evolution.' I do not think that the variation
illustrated by the peppered moth and finch-beak examples convincingly demonstrates a process that either
could or did produce new body plans or complex organs. Each of these judgments is based on evidence-
evaluated from the TR perspective. Everybody has a viewpoint. The negative word bias is appropriate for
viewpoints that unduly constrict the possibilities that the mind may consider. Thus racial or religious bias
may lead an employer to reject the most qualified employee. Science always has to fight the prevalent bias of
the age if it is to be free to follow the evidence where it leads. In the past geology had to free itself from
religious bias so that it could consider possibilities like an old earth or the occurrence of ice ages rather than
a worldwide flood. That job was accomplished long ago, and now scientific thought is restricted by
naturalistic bias. Methodological naturalism is a bias in the sense that it constricts the mind, by limiting the
possibilities open to serious consideration. Theistic realism opens the mind to additional possibilities,
without preventing the acceptance of anything that really is convincingly demonstrated by empirical
evidence." (Johnson, P.E.*, "Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law and
Education," InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove IL, 1995, pp.217-218)
30/06/2005
"Lastly, you refer repeatedly to my view as a modification of Lamarck's doctrine of development and
progression. If this is your deliberate opinion there is nothing to be said, but it does not seem so to me.
Plato, Buffon, my grandfather before Lamarck, and others, propounded the obvious views that if species
were not created separately they must have descended from other species, and I can see nothing else in
common between the 'Origin' and Lamarck." (Darwin, C.R., Letter to Charles Lyell, 12 March, 1863, in Darwin
F., ed., "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," [1898], Basic Books: New York NY, Vol. II., 1959, reprint,
pp.198-199) [top]
* Authors with an asterisk against their name are believed not to be evolutionists. However, lack of
an asterisk does not necessarily mean that an author is an evolutionist.
[top]
Copyright © 2005-2010, by Stephen E. Jones. All rights reserved.
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Created: 1 May, 2005. Updated: 6 June, 2010.