| Subject: To Pahu 3 |
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PGB
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Date Posted: 20:31:15 08/02/09 Sun
In reply to:
Pahu
's message, "Ape Men? 5" on 12:58:10 07/02/09 Thu
Hi Dan, sorry, I’ve been out and about for two months visiting a few other countries. This is the reply I should have posted before I left. Hope all is well with you.
Pahu: I have been sharing this information since 2000, and the “out-of-context” objection comes up quite often. I have replied by asking the skeptics to show how the quote changes the meaning of the context. So far, all have failed. Perhaps you will succeed.
PGB: I’m not sure if you’re asking for a quick course on what ‘out-of-context’ actually is, or if you’re asking for specific examples of how it applies to all things you’ve been posting since 2000. The quote doesn’t change the context, but sentences before and after that have been deliberately omitted can change the appearance of a sentence. It’s a deliberate attempt to distort someone’s words to suit your own argument, when the complete argument doesn’t suit you at all.
(Bad) Example: I’m talking to you on the street. You say to me “you know what? Atheists say there is no God. But that’s bull, and they’re clearly deluded.” Let’s say, a journalist overhears you, and the next day you open the local paper to see this staring back at you:
PAHU: THERE IS NO GOD!
Amazing admission by influential preacher.
You ring up the newspaper to complain. The Editor says “but we have it on tape. You definitely said ‘there is no god’. Are you denying you said ‘there is no god’?
You: “No I certainly said those words, but they were taken out of context. That’s not what I meant.”
Editor: “That maybe so, but I’ve been writing this stuff since 2000 and I don’t understand the concept of context. And besides, this headline suits my purpose, even if it’s not what you were trying to say.”
You: “Bah, a pox on you, you blaggard.”
That’s taking things out of context. Wiki the term ‘Quote Mining,” for better examples.
Pahu: It is true that most of the scientists quoted believe in evolution rather than creation, which makes their quotes all the more compelling, because they have found facts that disprove the myth.
PGB: These are soundbites. You can’t go through a newspaper and just read the headlines, then expect to have a full grasp of the issues of the day. You have to actually read the stories to tease out the detail. These soundbites you keep pasting prove nothing. They raise questions about detail which is something that science welcomes. Fossil rabbits in pre-Cambrian rock will disprove evolution, not this act of intellectual dishonesty. It’s a bit like, in Darwin’s Origin of Species he gives a few good paragraphs on the unlikelyhood of the eye developing naturally, but then goes on to explain how it could. You’ll find the first paragraphs reproduced all through creationist websites and texts, but not the paragraphs that follow that offer the explanation. Does that seem honest to you? Is it Christian?
Pahu: … most of the facts disprove evolution, which is the atheist’s main reason for not believing in Intelligent Design.
PGB: Again, they don’t disprove anything. Those that aren’t just straight out wrong raise questions about method and consequence - which have mostly been answered. And atheism was around long before Darwin so you can’t say that if there was no theory of evolution all atheists would be theists. And the Vatican ’s official line is that evolution is true and doesn’t conflict with faith – they’re hardly atheists. And the Rowan Williams – the Archbishop of Canterbury ! He believes evolution. I’m not saying that these people believing make it right, just that it shouldn’t be instantly equated with atheism.
Pahu: It’s good to see you do believe Yahweh is one possibility. When we are dealing with facts in the framework of known physics, most of those proposed alternatives resemble science fiction. Skeptics are convinced that God cannot exist and are willing to accept any notion to avoid Him.
PGB: Of course Yarweh’s a possibility. But on the same level as my Grandma, I mean, I don’t know she DIDN’T create the universe. I’ll have to ask her. Although I know the likelihood is very very very small. I’m just saying why Yarweh? Why not Zeus? What happens if you get to the pearly gates and find out God is a giant chicken? Eternal consequences that’s what. (I borrowed that from Calvin and Hobbes but it illustrates the point).
I don’t think most Skeptics are convinced that God cannot exist. But if you’re talking science then the single greatest advancement of mankind has been to take God out of the equation when it comes to scientific inquiry. At its very basic form then science is about making observations and drawing conclusions from those observations, free of outside and unrelated influence. Invoking God puts an immediate block on what we can know. So by all means you go and pray for God to lay off with the pestilence and disease while the rest of us start exterminating rats as a way of controlling the plague.
Pahu: Are you saying that truth depends on my opinion? Isn’t truth truth regardless of our opinions? A few hundred years ago most people were of the opinion that the earth is flat. Did their opinion change the fact it is a globe?
PGB: No Pahu I’m not saying that. You need to re-read the sentence. The truth doesn’t depend on your opinion, but your opinion should depend on the truth. And if you don’t understand the data then you shouldn’t really be articulating an opinion until you do. Otherwise you fall prey to faulty logic.
Pahu (a): Are you sure of your vastness? Even if you are right, does truth depend of majority vote? Scientists are also humans who want to believe whatever makes them comfortable. They have accepted evolution, not because they or others have proved it to be true, but because they assume it is true…
PGB: Sure of vastness? Yes, I’m sure. Do you have any information other than a couple of names to refute that? Agreed, the truth is not decided in a popularity contest and it’s not even decided by scientific consensus, but you’re the one who posted the large list of names, and put so much credence on the weight of numbers. And I don’t know anyone who would rather drop into the atheist abyss at death than pass into heaven so I don’t accept your claim that scientists will believe whatever makes them comfortable. For a non-scientist you seem to have a remarkable insight into what scientists want to believe. Do you have first hand experience or is it prejudice? You seem to believe in some sort of grotesque parody of scientists.
Pahu (b) Many have taken a closer look and found it be by a myth. Michael Behe is one example. I can give others if you are interested.
PGB: Oh don’t worry mate, I’m fully aware of the work of Michael Behe, although I haven’t seen him since he was laughed out of court in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. If you’re looking for a decent, upstanding Christian scientist who doesn’t pedal junk, then look across the courtroom to Ken Miller. Behe’s arguments almost entirely boil down to “I can’t imagine how this could have happened by natural selection,” which all dedicated logical fallacy-watchers will spot as the Argument From Ignorance. To be honest I can’t imagine how God can exist in this universe, but that doesn’t mean He doesn’t. My ignorance is not proof against God, and Behe’s ignorance is not proof against evolution.
Pahu: When we set out to explain why and how something happens, we must use the evidence, facts and experience available to us if we are to arrive at a logical conclusion...
PGB: True.
Pahu: Using available evidence, experience, facts, observation and experimentation, we know that the universe had a beginning and that before that beginning there was no universe and therefore there was nothing.
PGB: Errr, hang on. Based on what you’ve said I can only say we have no way of knowing what was there before the big bang.
Pahu: We know this because of the Law of Causality (for every cause there is an effect and for every effect there is a cause).
PGB: In our tiny human brains within the framework of time yes but previous to the big bang there was no time, so saying something was “before” is like saying north of the north pole. The law of causality is a philosophical point, which takes in certain parts of science but not the area we’re talking about here. Quantum mechanics demonstrate that something can come from nothing. And since the big bang was a giant event of quantum mechanics then yes, something can come from nothing. Do I believe this? Well it all seems pretty far-fetched to me so I’ll reserve judgment on it. As the popular saying goes, “if you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don’t understand quantum mechanics.” All I’d have to say is that the big bang is so counter-intuitive, so lays so far outside our own experience and understanding that I’m not surprised people spring for God. But the thing is, if you’re going to plead the law of causality, then where did God come from? What made him? And if you’re going to say He’s eternal and universal and supernatural, and absent yourself from your law of causality, you can’t use it as an argument.
Pahu:
8. Life exists. (Amen to that…)
9. Life always comes from pre-existing life of the same kind (the Law of Biogenesis)
PGB: The law of biogenesis refers to modern organisms and was postulated in the 18th and 19th centuries to overturn the millennia-old assumption that life spontaneously generated (ie maggots in exposed meat, mice in haystacks – yes people actually believed that). The key word here though is modern. It never sought to deal at all with the origins of life, as the earliest forms of proto-life were certainly not modern, and would have arose from vastly different conditions that we now see today.
10. Life cannot come from nonliving matter by any natural cause.
PGB: I’m not here to say it can, as it’s not been observed. But there are plenty of pretty plausible theories that say that it can and one day, when our technology catches up we may see it, and even generate it. Until then I think the best we can both say is that we don’t know.
Pahu: Many people with a naturalistic worldview assume everything can be explained by natural causes. From the beginning, they reject the possibility of a supernatural cause. Because of this they are left with no scientifically valid answers to the question of how the universe could come from nothing, which is impossible by any natural cause of which we are aware. Many answers have been proposed that go beyond the realm of known evidence, experience, facts, observation and experimentation and therefore enter the realm of fiction.
PGB: I’m very glad you put in the line ‘which is impossible by any natural cause of which we are aware,” as it suggests you recognize that what we know now isn’t all there is to know, and isn’t all that we’ll ever know. What I love about science is that there seems no end to the things that can be discovered that will completely change the way we look at ourselves and the universe around us. And although I don’t reject the possibility of a supernatural cause, I discount it because it seeks to put limits on what can be known by imposing an equation that can’t be seen, can’t be tested, can’t be falsified and whose will can’t be questioned.
Pahu: “Spontaneous generation (the emergence of life from nonliving matter) has never been observed. All observations have shown that life comes only from life. This has been observed so consistently it is called the Law of Biogenesis. Evolution conflicts with this scientific law by claiming that life came from nonliving matter through natural processes” (From In the Beginning by Walt Brown, Ph.D. page 5). [http://www.creationscience.com/]
PGB: Ha! You can tell Walt Brown has a Ph.D in Mechanical Engineering, and not in anything relevant to evolution. This may shock you, but Evolution doesn’t claim life came from non-life. That’s abiogenesis – look it up. Evolution deals with the gradual change of life over time by natural selection – it actually makes no claims to the origins of life.
Pahu: Now … we need to see if He has revealed Himself to us. In the Holy Bible there are hundreds of prophecies given by God who is speaking in the first person. In both Bible and secular history we find that those prophecies have been accurately fulfilled. No other writing on earth comes close to doing this! Only God can accurately reveal the future…
PGB: I’d be interested to see any of these prophesies provided (a) it can be proven that they were written before the event they apparently predict (ie existing early text – carbon dated or something) and (b) they don’t rely on the bible for their confirmation. But again, if you have it, I’d love to see it.
Pahu: He is not subject to His creation. He created it and sustains it. It is a mistake to judge God by human standards and human perspectives. God reveals that He is omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent.
PGB: If that’s the case I’m not sure why you feel you’ve got a basis to use science to disprove evolution.
So in closing I’d have to reiterate, disproving evolution doesn’t prove God. Science is about drawing conclusions from observation, not making your observations fit your conclusion. I’m not sure why you feel it so important to show evidence of the falsehood of evolution anyway. I thought you found God through faith, and to try and prove His existence is a sin. Did you have a crisis of faith that put you on this path Pahu? I love that you’ve written a book and put it out there, I admire that passion and attention.
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