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I have long struggled with the point of view of those on the left of the political spectrum. I have tongue-cheek suggested that alien body snatching has been at work. I have also idly speculated on the existence of a morbidity which selectively arrests the development of susceptible brains, keeping those who have them in a state of childhood. The average brain takes 25 years until it properly matures. Imagine having a brain stuck at 12 years. Likely you would become a Green. If at 16 to 17, a Laborite. And 18 to 20 years, a wet Liberal of whom there are many.
A common symptom of arrested development is supporting grand schemes without investigating any downstream consequences. Having all hat and no cattle is an analogy. Emotion sans nous is another way to sum it up. The NDIS is the most prominent current example of such a grand scheme; aside, that is, from Chris Bowen’s unanchored delusional fantasies about Australia ditching fossil fuels and becoming “a renewable energy superpower”. Now, you just must have a child’s brain to believe in that fairytale.
My brain must have been stuck at one time. I admit to voting for Gough, twice. Luckily for me I was saved by a road to Damascus experience, inexplicable in earthly terms, which gave my brain a late growth spurt. Thus, overnight, I became a conservative. It was and is a tremendously freeing thing. Agendas lose their power over you. It means boldly going into the unseen, à la Frédéric Bastiat, where consequences lurk, to search for the truth. It means being an adult or, at least, trying to be.
This all sprang to mind when watching a video on evolution sent to me by a friend. This chap, Dr Mario Fasoli, who you can view here if you wish (about 30 minutes’ worth), is sceptical about evolutionary theory, as am I. For me, it is not primarily a religious thing. I just don’t think it rings true.
Given the irreducible complexity of the simplest life form (i.e., many interdependent moving parts without one of which the organism is kaput) it seems a stretch to imagine it being spontaneously created out of primordial soup or some such. Also it is hard to accept, even over billions of years, that one species will spawn another as a result of blind mutations and natural selection.
It seems to me that hedgehogs mating with other hedgehogs will beget just hedgehogs, however many years go by. And if hedgehogs are prone to spawn a mutant hedgehog which will eventually turn into another critter, then among the extensive fossil record where are the in-between critters? No, some very clever scientist in future will likely develop a better theory and Darwin will go the way of Ptolemy. Or will he? Not, necessarily, if we are becoming dumber.
One of the objections Fasoli makes to natural selection turns on the second law of thermodynamics. That is, that things become disordered if left unattended. Entropy rules, in other words. This would mean that, say, a jellyfish can’t spontaneously spawn some changed version of itself which goes on to turn into a more sophisticated life form. Equally, our imaginary ape-like common ancestor could not have produced us due the self-evident fact that humans are much cleverer than apes. It would confound the second law, according to Fasoli.
Disquietingly, however, Fasoli says that one consequence of the second law is that we humans are becoming less robust and intelligent over time. Entropy will have its way. Sure, better sanitation, nutrition, and healthcare have delayed and camouflaged the inevitable decline, but it is happening just the same. Have you more vigour than your great-great-grandfather? Are you wiser? Apparently not. Art modern-day playwrights better or inferior to Shakespeare?
Becoming dumber. Hmm, it’s a theory. It would surely account for the evident decline of our civilisation. How can we tell it is in decline, objectively speaking?
One way is to compare Biden with JFK or FDR or Honest Abe; Albanese with Hawke, Curtin or Fisher; Sunak with Thatcher or Churchill or Disraeli; Michael Mann with Sir Isaac Newton. It seems self-evident. For more proof consider the enthusiasm for killing prenatal babies among large sections of society; the mutilation of children as part of the beat-up transgender fad; the shameless appetite among men purporting to be women to compete in women’s sports; the politicisation of the rule of law in the United States; the cult of climate change and the attendant witless destruction of affordable energy; and, finally, in my severely condensed list, the antisemitic chanting on the very steps of the Sydney Opera House.
A general dumbing down could also be an added factor to that of arrested development among leftists. How else to account for Adam Bandt and company. How else to account for “Queers for Palestine.” Rebellious teenagers of yore could have seen the flaw. It points to Fasoli being right. Humans are becoming dumber. Apehood lies ahead in a perverse rewriting of Darwinian biology. Except for you and me and our descendants of course.
For many on the progressive left, politics is just barracking. My analogy is the rushed behind in Aussie rules: they do it, booooo; we do it, donuts.
“Emotion sans nous is another way to sum it up.”
Peter, you are not becoming dumber but maybe I am. Is the expression “sans nous” French for “without us” or a French/Greek combo, i.e. “sans” – without, and
Nous (UK: /naʊs/,[1] US: /nuːs/), from Greek: νοῦς, is a concept from classical philosophy, sometimes equated to intellect or intelligence, for the faculty of the human mind necessary for understanding what is true or real.[2]
Quote: Art modern-day playwrights better or inferior to Shakespeare?
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Are modern-day commenters and moderators better or inferior than those of yore at not letting through “typos”? The Australian commenters just keep getting slacker on average (or less competent?).
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Interestingly, to me, the standard of English in unmoderated comments in Richardson Post far exceeds that of News Corp Australia’s websites – the days of Tony Blair strictly monitoring comments on his columns are long gone.
To Tony Thomas and lbloveday
Sans nous should be read in English, not in French and not in Greek. Concise OED: sans = (literary or humurous) without; nous = practical intelligence.
“Art” was not fixed by the editor because it needs no fixing. It is there as a salute to Shakespeare. Art thou etc.
Now can we get on with substance.
I don’t see how It can be said with certainty that I claimed it was an error. It was a comparison between writers of different eras and I used it as a lead-in to the change in English standards in The Australian and other publications over the past 6 decades.
“the days of Tony Blair”
Do you mean Tim Blair, of News Corp, or a British ex-PM?
Tim Blair, of News Corp. Can’t claim that as a typo – I forgot his name, like so many these days, thought I’d remembered it, but obviously only half remembered.
A Harris Biden photo with the caption Dumb and Dumber comes to mind. But in Australia, you need no further proof to support your essay, when the latest Kings Honour awards are dished to Dan Andrews and Mark McGowan….how dumb are we?
An article in today’ Herald Sun re Andrews challenging a Supreme Court order to hand over his mobile phone records from the day of a near-fatal 2013 car crash with a teenage cyclist is headed: “What has he got to hide”?
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I liked the comment from the young victim’s father:
“He just received an Order of Australia – he’s meant to be exemplary – and yet he’s doing this,”
But please don’t blame the King
We are, on average, becoming dumber because of our education system. As more of those properly educated pass on, the proportion of Gramski students increases. If useful idiots are the aim, one must first produce idiots. Many other education systems worldwide are producing less idiots, just not ours. Evolution generally works on a longer timeframe than the duration of mass education, and can be discounted as a causal factor here.
It is true that the Second Law of Thermodynamics would be a major obstacle to evolution if the earth were a closed system, but of course it is not. Most of the energy powering life, and therefore evolution, comes from the sun. Entropy is happening on the sun, and shortly before the sun runs out of hydrogen, life will become impossible here on earth. However in the meantime sunlight powers life and evolution here while the sun-earth system as a whole slowly degrades due to entropy. This is entirely consistent with the Second Law.
As for the other arguments against evolution, these again are due to a lack of education. There are plenty of intermediate forms in the fossil record, but of course as soon as one is discovered, it becomes a “form” and further intermediates either side are demanded by those with a blunt axe to grind.
Part of the problem perhaps is that much of the popular interest in evolution is focused around human evolution where fossils are rare, populations are small and the time frame is short (in a geological sense). Fossil rarity is mostly because humans live on land where most fossils are swept away by erosion or dissolved by acid soils. Evolution in the fossil record is best seen where there are many small fossils present in an environment of consistent sedimentation. A classic example is provided by the shells of small diatoms and similar creatures in marine sediments. Consistent progressive changes in form over short depth intervals can be seen in ocean sediments worldwide, and these have been used successfully for nearly a century in picking apart sedimentary sequences to understand local geology and in oil and gas exploration.
Prediction of course is difficult, and it is certainly possible that someone will come up with a better paradigm than Darwin, but that hasn’t happened yet, and in the meantime his work has contributed immeasurably to our civilization and society.
Ian, I am fairly sure that Fasoli knows that entropy only ineluctably has its way with closed systems; at least I hope he does. I mean you can boil a kettle. I think he was being a bit more sophisticated. We humans are open systems. Presumably our individual human growth and development is an example of negative entropy going hand in hand with a modicum more of increased disorder elsewhere. However, I can personally attest to the fact that entropy has it way with us eventually – even though the sun keeps on shining, we exercise, take in the finest of foods and various youth elixirs.
Entropy is generated everywhere, even in open systems. At question is whether the dissipation of heat from the sun to the earth at a constant rate would be sufficient over a period of time to underpin sufficient negative entropy on earthly life to support an acceleration of more advanced life forms via evolution. I suppose he thinks not. Me, it is beyond my ken. That’s why I said “according to him.” I just tried to have fun with it.
As to your separate point that there are “plenty of intermediate forms in the fossil record,” I wonder why they are not trotted out more often and why some biologists resort to saying that fossils are hard to find. I suppose there’s the celebrated Archaeopteryx which is supposed, I understand, to have evolved from a dinosaur. A big maybe. If it’s real. In any event, it’s all speculation not science.
Peter, there is really no doubt that Archaeopteryx is a transitional form between dinosaurs and modern birds. The original fossil showed very clear skeletal features specific to therapod dinosaurs, but with feathers, the distinctive feature of birds. Since the original discovery in the early 1860s fossils of more than thirty species of therapod dinosaur have been found with feathers which probably evolved initially as insulation. Many more fossils of early birds have also been found, notably in China, which show the gradual changes in feather and bone structure to make flying more efficient from the inefficient long hops of Archaeopteryx to the albatross of today. It is often said that the dinosaurs died out 66 million years ago, but from the transitional forms now discovered, it is clear that they live on as birds.
I here proffer some of Darwin’s statements:.
.I proffer some of Darwin’s writings:
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As a married man he would be a “poor slave, . . . worse than a Negro,”
“males are more evolutionarily advanced than females”
“the child, the female, and the senile white” all had the intellect and nature of the “grown up Negro”
Some of the traits of women “are characteristic of the lower races, and therefore of a past and lower state of civilization”
“Thus man has ultimately become superior to woman”
“The chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than woman can attain”
“..the average standard of mental power in man must be above that of woman”.
Omit one of the first 2 sentences.
lbloveday, I’m struggling to see the relevance of these quotes, beyond the mundane observation that Darwin shared many of the opinions of his contemporaries. This would appear to be an attempt to play the man rather than the metaphorical ball and is irrelevant in respect of his scientific work. That rests on the pertinence of his observations, the logic of his conclusions and the further evidence uncovered by his successors which has tended to support and expand his original thesis.
“How else to account for Adam Bandt …?”
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Well almost every time I hear his name I am reminded that he first came to be in Parliament thanks to Liberal Party preferences.
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That wasn’t just stupid by the Libs, it was a prime example of them putting petty biased idiocy before the national interest. It might also go towards the point you were making Peter. Although at this stage of my knowledge, I am still with Darwin.
Many years ago I went to a Flemington community market with my dog and recognised Adam Bandt there with his family. We had a pleasant chat and I mentioned my dog (Cavalier King Charles Spaniel) voted for him. We all laughed at my little joke. I added,
“She has an IQ of 10.”
As it was a friendly social meeting, he took that as a harmless witticism.
Perhaps Mr Bandt was merely pondering the coincidence that your dog’s IQ was exactly the same as his.
A comparison to Curtin highlights one thing Albanese has in common with him-pusillanamity ,particularly when it comes to dealing with unions.
*QUOTE: …aside, that is, from Chris Bowen’s unanchored delusional fantasies about Australia ditching fossil fuels and becoming “a renewable energy superpower”. UNQUOTE.
Bishop Ussher (a cleric and a professor at Trinity College in Dublin) used the genealogies, history snippets and other clues from the Bible to calculate that the Earth was created on October 12th, 4004 BC, making it 6,028 years old today.
The fossil carbon that burns to produce CO2 (THAT IS A PLANT FOOD!) notionally cannot possibly have any adverse effects on the Earth’s climate. And that fossil carbon, the virtues of which power station fuel Peter Smith extols, and with a curse thrown in on renewables (caarrgh! hawk! spit!, retch! chunder!) is on the face of it, our once-in-a-planetary-lifetime supply.
It was not laid down in one helluva geological rush starting a few thousand Ussherian years, or about 90 human lifetimes ago. Most of that laying-down went on in the Carboniferous and Permian periods, 359-252 million years ago. That is, over the course of about 110 million years. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither were the coal measures.
As well, God, that omniscient knower of all, past, present and future, got it all wrong big time when He made that forbidden fruit and that damned talking snake; which persuasive reptile finished up conning Eve to take a chomp out of the said forbidden fruit; and she in turn induced Adam to do likewise. God’s whole project went downhill from there, necessitating that around 4,000 years ago he had himself born as Yeshua bar Joseph (aka Jesus Christ) and then sacrificed to himself (as Yahweh, or God the Father) in order to pay off the Original Sin that took him by surprise, and made Him damned angry because He had not seen it coming and therefore a patch-up job on His omniscience was called for.
Well, Peter, if you buy that, I have a lovely bridge over Sydney Harbour that I’ll sell you. Going cheap too, and a real bewdy-bottler of a bonzer money-spinner. Ring now!
What’s going on Ian? This comment is below par. Did Peter touch a nerve?
Anyway, perhaps you’ll be gracious enough to forgive those who take James Ussher’s profoundly informed research and life’s work as a higher authority than your opinion.
Christians must be really stupid to believe all that stuff. I wonder how Frances Collins, leader of the human genome project, adviser on science to the US President since 2009, atheist until 25, could be that dumb. Or Ian Hutchinson, Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT. There must be a lot of really dumb smart people out there.
pgang and kh: Ah yes. But Christianity promises the believer eternal life in Heaven.
An ex-Jesuit priest turned atheist and libertine I once knew used to tell all and sundry, “I’m going to live as I please until just before I finally kick the bucket. Then, just before I go, I’m going to repent; repent the whole lot of it.” Then he would throw in the clincher: “Why not place a bet if there’s only one horse in the race.?”
If Christians have got it right, they will face an eternity of singing God’s praises (which has to qualify God as the Infinite Egotist.) And if they are just wishful thinkers who’ve got it wrong, they face an eternity of nothingness, each of their souls (consciousness) obliterated. They return to the state they were in before they were even conceived.
But for me, it is still one helluva stretch to accept that the designer and creator of the entire Universe, from the billions of galaxies down to the infinite gazillions of atoms and the mysteries of quantum physics, is also and if only as a sideline, into blood sacrifice. Moreover sacrifice of one part of his perfect trinitarian self to the other two parts.
I approach it a bit differently. The gospels give the narrative of a sage and healer whose teaching of grace and forgiveness has made a tectonic change to human society. Luke’s gospel is followed by a detailed history of how the Christian church came into being after Jesus and because of him. On the face of it, Luke writes as an historian and begins his gospel by saying that he wants to provide a solid foundation for faith and he has relied on eye-witnesses. (Presumably, he was commissioned to write it by Paul as the eye-witnesses were dying off and a reliable record was seen to be needed. Theophilus, a senior government officer and a Christian probably funded the project and so is mentioned at the start of both books.) If what Luke records is shown to reliable then we have a proper intellectual foundation for faith and the difficult philosophical issues you raise need to be wrestled with but, like all speculative theories, must give way to facts. In the late 19th Century German theologians worked tirelessly to distill the historical Jesus from the miracle-worker of the gospels in order to explain the origin of the church in naturalistic terms. They couldn’t do it. Luke’s account remains the most plausible and the many contemporary details he provides have been unexpectedly confirmed by archeology. If someone had written a plausible alternative history, it would be on the shelves of every public library. To the people of the First Century, the miracles confirmed the divinity of Jesus. To the modern mind they are a stumbling block because we regard it as axiomatic that they could not have occurred. But the way I see it is that if science is to disprove the New Testament miracles it must do so forensically and not rely on a simple dogma that miracles don’t happen. We should ask science to explain the supposed miracles in naturalistic terms. Interestingly, it cannot for any of them. A 21st Century physicist knows as well as a First Century fisherman that you can’t walk on water, and so on. Therefore, if science cannot rely on dogma and cannot explain the miracle accounts then the surprising but necessary conclusion is that science tends to corroborate (I did not say prove) the miracle accounts. Ian Hutchinson, Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT, has no problem with this and wrote a book on why he believes miracles can happen. I have tried since I was 10 to live a good and godly life and am acutely conscious of just how badly I have failed. I don’t find it hard to recognise that I need a saviour. The first book of the Bible calls out repeatedly, “and God saw that it was good.” A good God would want the best for the people he created and loved just as we want the best for our own children. Many earthly fathers have willingly died to benefit their children. Is it so difficult to believe that a loving heavenly Father would not die for His? I don’t find it so. Knowing that God himself died to pay the price for my moral failings, I am confident that they are paid for indeed and I don’t need to carry them. It is a gift that I can accept with thanks – expressed in trying to offer the same generosity of heart to others. Is any of this really so intellectually repugnant? I can’t see that it is.
Most interesting, kh. But IMHO it does not answer the question I raised above: “But for me, it is still one helluva stretch to accept that the designer and creator of the entire Universe, from the billions of galaxies down to the infinite gazillions of atoms and the mysteries of quantum physics, is also and if only as a sideline, into blood sacrifice. Moreover’ sacrifice of one part of his perfect trinitarian self to the other two parts.”
You say: “Ian Hutchinson, Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering at MIT, has no problem with this and wrote a book on why he believes miracles can happen. I have tried since I was 10 to live a good and godly life and am acutely conscious of just how badly I have failed. I don’t find it hard to recognise that I need a saviour….”
Whatever floats your boat. If God created the laws of Nature, and is all powerful, he/she can also set them aside for his/her own purposes any time he/she chooses. But it still comes back to God’s omniscience vs his/her omnipotence. If all the strife in the world comes back to God’s own decision to create that damned talking snake which led Eve astray, then Adam, and there followed by all their descendants (ie all of humanity) God who answers to nobody has none the less erred badly, has one helluva lot to answer for.
But we believe what we want to believe. And in any religious ceremony, the group worships itself; (h/t Emile Durkheim) giving a new dimension to that Christian saying “the family that prays together, stays together.” Modern Christianity does not endorse the idea that everyone should become holy hermits dwelling in caves or whatever, even though the latter played a most important part in the history of Christianity. It remains a highly communal religion: hence Holy Communion.
Ian you demonstrate a wilful ignorance of Christianity that is the hallmark of the fall of our civilisation. It parallels CK’s ignorance of the evolutionary theory in which he/she faithfully believes. The confusion of adaptation with evolution is the trick that maintains the fairy tale. Adaptation is a (poorly understood) genetic mechanism for diversity to maintain life. Evolution is a myth that leverages adaptation and carries it into a fantasy scenario far beyond its capacity. Behind the debate, people understand that it’s either Darwin or God. For Modern man, it must never be God. Our civilisation is responding accordingly.
Ian’s therapy is not working.
We need a LOT more CO2.
Hypothesis building Academy’s of science
Fasoli is correct, the genes of all living things are degrading with time due to the accumulation of errors. Unfortunately for us this does not result in novel information systems, just rubbish like cancer and decreasing fertility. It’s really as simple as that. Geneticist John Sanford has written extensively about it, for anyone who can get their head out of the evolutionary sand (as he did). It is quite possible that we are not as clever as we once were.
There are almost innumerable problems with the theory. Haldane’s Dilemma is one other example, which has never been resolved in spite of lies to the contrary (because it simply can’t be). All species (or ‘kinds’, to use the correct term) exist in finite numbers. To breed a genetic change into a kind comes with a cost, which is the destruction of all members of the kind that don’t possess the change (otherwise evolution simply wouldn’t occur). This requires generations of breeding for which, even allowing for the nonsense of ‘deep time’, there is simply nowhere-near enough time available for the panoply of life to have ‘evolved’.
Written by someone who clearly has never read ‘On the Origin of Species’ and the role that geographic separation and differing environmental and climactic influences play in natural evolution.
‘To breed a genetic change into a kind comes with a cost, which is the destruction of all members of the kind that don’t possess the change (otherwise evolution simply wouldn’t occur). This requires generations of breeding for which, even allowing for the nonsense of ‘deep time’, there is simply nowhere-near enough time available for the panoply of life to have ‘evolved’.’ – if this pathetic piece of logic and child -like intellect were even remotely true, how then would one explain Wolves and other dog breeds? Red and Grey Kangaroos? Spotted and Red Handfish? The eight hundred odd species of Eucalypt that can range from Eucalyptus regnans at 100m tall to Eucalyptus pauciflora at 5m tall – all doing very nicely in their niche environments thankyou very much – to choose just a handfull of examples off the top of my head. What an ignoramus you really are! Thats why your church pews are so empty.
Don’t argue with me CK, argue with Remine, Haldane and Kimura. Just paraphrasing their work, childish as it may be. As is usual, you are an ardent believer who confuses evolution with adaptation. It is the only way to cognitively accept the fairy tale, after all. Whilst I appreciate your replies in general, the insults simply mean you’ve given over discernment to hubris.
Pgang, you can’t possibly be suggesting here that adaptation is not part of the evolutionary process – surely? If so it only further cements the appraisal, that when it comes to the understanding of biological, indeed natural processes, you are really out of your depth.
Yes pgang; for instance, the book “Genetic Entropy “ by Dr Sanford is an absolute classic! Essential reading!
Peter, you speak a lot of truth, with much wisdom, but please don’t bring politics into biological evolution, which is established scientific fact (why, even the Pope accepts it). Everything we know of life, as well as its applications, such as in the geological search for minerals and fossil fuels, and in medicine, including biochemistry, physiology, anatomy, genetics, pharmacology, pathology, microbiology, virology, parasitology etc. etc. rests on a pretty-well established hypothesis that life-forms change with time. With really tiny ones, such as bacteria and viruses, we see it happening from day to day. Larger animals, with slower reproduction rates, take considerably longer, so we rarely see it in any one human lifetime, but the fossil record sure illustrates it superbly. Species (a pretty slippery term) do change over prolonged time — just look at all the geographical variants of lions, elephants, swans, pelicans, even humans (I’m sure you can think of countless others) — it’s just that, to have an inbreeding population that keeps to itself long enough to become distinct, chromosomal mutations need to come into play, which is more complex that simple genetic mutation, but we do see it happening. Otherwise, what’s the point of genetic mutations, which go on all the time? Why did your God allow this? It must have been part of His plan — otherwise, we’d all be clones of Adam and Eve. And, should someone eventually generate replicating chemical complexes in the lab, as a preliminary form of more complex life, how will you change your thinking? How about if we find life on another planet? It was quite a spanner in the works when Christians discovered what looked very much like human life on other continents of our planet . . .
As for entropy, it goes on constantly in the living world — every chemical reaction depends on energy flow and dissipation, even those driven by enzymes. It’s a fallacy to assume life “concentrates” energy “uphill”, against entropy, when it’s all obviously driven by the constant input of “free” energy from the sun — without which the entire system would almost instantly grind to a halt. There’s nothing magical, or supernatural, in this. Of course, we’ll never know when or how it all started, or where it’s all heading, so feel free to believe in your God, but please don’t gloss over scientific details, which admittedly do take considerable time and effort to digest and retain.
Pmprociv, I recall reading Francis Collins (The Language of God); he who led the human genome project, before he went downhill during the Covid fiasco. He totally accepts conventional evolutionary theory yet is a convicted Christian. I too have no religious objection to Darwinism. God could have done it that way. However, I was struck by the example Collins gave of evolution in action. Stickleback fish retaining armour in salt water where it was a net advantage and losing armour in fresh water where it was a net disadvantage. I thought, is that all you’ve got my friend then let’s keep on searching.
That’s such a disappointing example, if it’s all he could come up with. The world is replete with everyday examples, starting with the way viruses are forever changing, and bacteria develop antibiotic resistance, then working all the way up the complexity tree. A big book could be written — in fact, many already have been. Just because something might be difficult to explain with current knowledge does not immediately mean that supernatural influences must have been at play. It’s what gave rise to Richard Dawkins’ “God-of-the-gaps” notion. But, as I said, belief in the supernatural will never clash with science — only literal belief in religious texts, all written by men with agendas (and very little knowledge of the natural world).
Peter the very point of Darwinism was to provide a scientific foundation for the removal of God from philosophy and put man at the centre. Science was big back then, much bigger than now, so for Modernist philosophy to capture imaginations it had to be married to a ‘natural’ theory (as was the case with Marxism). No matter how desperately bankrupt the theory is, to this day it provides a ‘rational’ panacea for humanists, and they will never let it go.
Rather than being compatible with God’s creation, Darwinism is the opposite, and was intended to be so. Christian theology and philosophy falls apart without special creation. You can’t have an existential, random materialism married to Christian essentialism – just doesn’t work. This philosophical compromise is one of the core reasons for the demise of the western church. It’s my opinion that a church revival can only start with a revival of the teaching of a pure trinitarian Christian philosophy as a treatment against the infection of humanism. Sadly our ‘Christian’ schools would rather teach kids how to be nice to everyone and all things socialist.
The demise of the Western Church is because its Christian mythos is tied to a juvenile creationist fairytale that has no relevance to the modern world and its epistemological foundations built on logic and empiricism. Your church, like so many of the failed temples of worship before it (From Mesopotamia to Mexico), is destined to be little more than a footnote in history in time to come. Christian ethos on the other hand, hopefully will live on.
Yes pgang, sometimes I think I give too much credence to the theories of those who think the universe sprang spontaneously from nothing and that all the life about us had neither cause nor script. It might be apocryphal but an atheist friend of Newton’s entered his study to find an elaborate model of the solar system on his desk. Who made that, he asked? Nobody, Newton replied.
‘sometimes I think I give too much credence to the theories of those who think the universe sprang spontaneously from nothing’ – that is your creation myth in a nutshell.
I recall reading that Darwin said that when he wrote “Origin of the Species” he was “as orthodox a curate”. The scientific theory of random mutation and natural selection is a widely respected one that has much to commend it. Scientists also are right to critique it because that is an important part of the scientific process. John’s Gospel records Jesus as saying, “In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.” [John 18:37] Christians can have no objection to scientific enquiry to the extent that it is an enquiry into the truth of things. The truth quest will always throw up surprises that challenge our past assumptions. We often exaggerate the significance of these things when they first appear. If the Bible were a science textbook on the origin of species then Darwinism would be a serious threat to its authority. But New Testament is largely
four biographies of an extraordinary sage followed by the records of his early followers from which the church distills its doctrines. Scripture’s own view of scripture is that it “is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work”. [2 Tim 3:16-17] There is nothing there about it being a textbook on natural philosophy. The Old Testament takes its authority from what that sage had to say about it – repeatedly affirming its importance. What is unfortunate is that the assessment of Darwinism as a scientific theory has become so overlaid with passions connected with broad existential questions, making objective assessment of the theory now very difficult, if not impossible. Christians are not solely to blame for this. From its inception, prominent atheists have used Darwinism as a weapon to discredit theism in all its forms as being incompatible with science as truth. It is unfortunate that a new scientific theory was used in this way before its efficacy was fully assessed and we are still burdened by that overlay in the debate. Many orthodox Christians are completely comfortable with Darwinism as a sound scientific theory. Atheist philosopher, David Armstrong, in “Darwinian Fairytales” shows forensically that in practice human beings behave very differently to other animals (and quite contrary at times to survivalist paradigms) and so Darwinian evolution cannot be the whole story for humans. Once that is accepted, Darwinian evolution loses any sting for religious belief. Orthodox Christianity faith is largely based on the reliability of the New Testament as an historical account of the church’s founder and origins. Theories of evolution have nothing to contribute to that question and are, at best, tangential. If Darwinian evolution were a scientific certainty that disproved the existence of the Christian God then no reputable scientist of standing would be Christian. That is very far from being the case.
pgang, I’m not sure what “Darwinism” actually means, for it’s thrown around in so many confusing contexts. But you certainly misconstrue the man himself, Charles Darwin, who was destined to become country vicar, and remained a Christian believer throughout his entire life. He was a very astute observer and a genius in his interpretations, who agonised for years before being forced to publish his discoveries, knowing full well their implications for fundamentalist religious beliefs, and the inevitable attacks from the church. His views on evolution most definitely were not aimed to remove “God from philosophy and put man at the centre” — in fact, Darwin himself stated that they put man in his rightful biological place, as just another animal species that arose thru aeons of evolution, like all the others extant today. It is religions that claim that we are the special creation of God, in his very image even, and should dominate and exploit the planet and all its other life forms.
Unfortunately Peter on this one you appear to be exhibit A in proof of your general thesis on the demise of Human intellect.
‘Given the irreducible complexity of the simplest life form (i.e., many interdependent moving parts without one of which the organism is kaput) it seems a stretch to imagine it being spontaneously created out of primordial soup or some such. Also it is hard to accept, even over billions of years, that one species will spawn another as a result of blind mutations and natural selection.’
Arguably the simplest lifeform is a virus – a encapsulated strand on mRNA consisting of Nucleotides constituted from Nitrogen, Phosphates and sugars. Nothing irreducibly complex about that unless you are an economist who feigns scientific understanding (no wonder they call economics the ‘dismal science’). Next cab off the rank is a single cyanobacteria, again subsisting of Nucleotides, Chlorophyll, some Nitrogen based Peptides wrapped in a phospholipid membrane – again nothing irreducibly complex there unless one is scientifically illiterate. Natural selection and ‘blind’ mutations are not blind at all but a response to the interplay between environment and organism. Are you suggesting God created white and black people? As I recall it in your fairytale story, there was Adam and Eve – was one Black and one white? And how do we account for all the other hominids such as Homo florensis – did God just not like those creations? A Red Kangaroo and a Grey Kangaroo and a Wallaroo and a Wallaby are all seperate species – how hard to see a common lineage there.? There are none so blind who those who refuse to see.
This article is pure ignorance spread across 300 or so words. Of course it is far easier for the challenged intellect to simply create an all encompassing anthropocentric creator (there is a real chicken and egg question there – no people = no religion, funny that!). And while you are at it why not imbue that creator with granting those with fragile inflated egos the notion that they will be granted ego consciousness for eternity – because Peter, the universe needs you forever. What would it ever do without you? Of course that question has already been answered – exist irrespective of your man-made religion for at least 4.5 billion years- just like before you were born.
“…spread across 300 or so words”.
847 according to Word’s count. Maybe you did not read it all?
Life is a risk. The mortality rate is 100% and the natural world ruthlessly culls stupidity. However, in modern society stupidity is not only protected, it is actively rewarded in many respects while intelligence can get one diagnosed as being “on the spectrum” and drugged into retardation. So yes, we are getting dumber and doing so quite quickly on an evolutionary timescale.
As for Darwin, he had little understanding of genetics and thus was not aware that in most species, including ours, the genetic basis for intelligence and stupidity will be similarly distributed in both males and females. However, it is unclear if this balance between genders can continue in the diverse range of new, recently evolved genders. or possibly diverge distinctly in some genders from the current norm.
Entertaining, Peter, but more rhetoric than logic.
That evolution is crap is clear once you understand the force of Aristotle’s doctrine of causality. What something is, its quiddity or essence, has nothing to do with its matter but with its form, i.e., its formal cause, which is indelible, can’t be altered. It’s an effect of intellect. Have a look at his Physics Book II ch. 7. “The natural philosopher”, he says, “must recognise that nature is purposeful.”
Cheers,
Michael B
Yes and no. ‘Something’ must consist of both form and matter, otherwise there is nothing. ‘Essence’ relies on both. The problem the Greeks had, because their universe was closed, is that you can travel in the direction of either form or matter but never both, because they are in opposite epistemological directions.
This is the same problem that has killed modernism (it was in fact still-born for this reason, being Greek philosophy v1.2). Christian trinitarianism is the only philosophical system that is logically consistent with our experience.
Ancient ant specimen trapped in amber suggests the insects evolved to have complex social lives as early as 100 million years ago
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https://www.sciencenews.org/article/early-ants-complex-social-lives-fossil?utm_source=join1440&utm_medium=email&utm_placement=newsletter
Citizen Kane
“A virus is an encapsulated strand of mRNA consisting of nucleotides, constituted from nitrogen, phosphates and sugars. Nothing irreducibly complex about that.”
You really need to explain what point you are making here. Out of respect to Peter Smith and other readers please tell us what is irreducibly complex about the chemical composition of viruses?
‘Out of respect to Peter Smith and other readers please tell us what is irreducibly complex about the chemical composition of viruses?’ – Exactly
‘You really need to explain what point you are making here. ‘ – Indeed
Citizen Kane
Sorry, not irreducibly complex. How can you tell presence or absence of irreducibly complexity from chemical composition. Is there a particular component or ligand that is diagnostic?
Bron many people, quite possibly yourself included find a car ‘irreducibility complex’. However, for the rest of us we understand it’s constituents parts, the function they play and the resulting greater whole. Other than being meaninglessly contrarian you seem to be vacuous in your attempt at interrogation.
Citizen Kane
Most people who talk in terms of parts and function when discussing irreducible complexity. Going on with your car analogy, my Subaru needs a part, an electrical starter motor, to carry out its function -that of taking me to the shops. Without a starter motor it doesn’t function. By some definitions, it is irreducibly complex. But, in 1910, cars were started by a hand crank. These vehicles could also take me to the shops. Irreducible complexity no longer a viable option.
Then along comes Citizen Kane. His view on this topic is that cars are made of steel plastic and glass. That rules out irreducible complexity in his opinion. As does the fact that many cars are red? No mention of parts or functions acquired in time, the essence of evolving.
Anyway why all the abuse of Peter Smith and myself? Your mother didn’t give you birthday presents when you were a kid?
Because as the above post demonstrates you are a naïveté – the non-functioning car is still a car, the reducible part required to have it function again, the starter motor is readily identified and replaced- The cars interactions with you and your shopping is an irrelevance. A virus is still a virus even if it has lost its capacity to infect you and promote disease. You should probably simply return to the supine idol worship of Mark McGowan and mRNA vaccines at which you are most adept (a reference position Peter could have easily cited as part of his ‘dumbing down’ thesis)
Peter Smith is old enough and opiniated enough to speak for himself. He did after all post this article (cast the first stone) essentially asserting that unless one was a ‘god botherer’ one must be of a leftist persuasion. A fairly provocative starting point, from which then to claim a ‘victim’ status when serve is returned. Something I note Peter hasn’t done (and would be unlikely to do in my experience) but for which you seem to appropriate on his behalf.
I agree Peter. Over five years, I lost my vocabulary working at a laboratory heavily staffed by Burmese and Filipino migrants. They weren’t able to string one properly formed sentence together even after years and years of living in Australia. I was bitter that my English declined to their level, rather than their English improving to mine. I found myself struggling to speak descriptively, it was rather frightening how quickly this happened. I left and promptly went back to reading my dictionary and books in order to regain my grammar and vocabulary.
Humans are certainly becoming less robust and able to complete basic civil functions. How else can we account for the rise in taxi services, fast food and fresh grocery delivery, I see young folk fumbling endlessly with phones in their hand to the point of inertia. Women unable to cook, clean, drive, shop, for themselves, struggling to count, read, pay. My German grandmother is 97 and has more ability to be self-reliant than any of my city friends. Alas, I have not been endowed the the knowledge and ability to pluck and cook a chook, ferment sauerkraut, distil sloe gin, preserve goods. It seems as though one only needs to leave their brain and body to a micro-chipped piece of glass and plastic to live, That’s the most important thing about being a human being apparently!
Citizen Kane
Take a chill pill will you.
I am no fan of irreducible complexity in biological systems. In fact I think it is bullshit. However I didn’t like the arrogant way you dismissed Peter Smith. “Cyanobacterium are made up of chlorophyll, nucleotides, peptides and phospholipids- nothing to see here regarding irreducible complexity unless you are scientifically illiterate”. I asked you to explain how chemical composition enabled you to reach this conclusion. You haven’t.
What is a car without a starter motor? A repair job. What is a non-infectious virus? Not a problem. What is a castrated man? Not a big hit on dating sites. Probably little or no difference in chemical composition to a normal man. Nucleotides, peptides, phospholipids, iron, calcium, water etc. But a big difference in functionality.
Anyway give my regards to the Medical Librarian.
Hmmm, so there appears to be a suggestion that men are only useful for their penis – not getting enough Bron?
Followed by classic projection psychology whereby you accuse me of arrogance while arrogantly belittling Geoff S based on the fact that he was ‘only’’ a medical librarian. Better go check your self imposed entitlement and privilege there old girl – you are just a professional antibiotic and antidepressant script writer (in training) after all.
The rest of your attempt to rebuff the analogy of a car and the fact that a virus is a virus whether infectious or not, is utterly devoid of logic.
Citizen Kane
Enough. You win.
I am male by the way. Not that it matters.u
Paleontologists discover potential new triceratops-like dinosaur species, dubbed Lokiceratops; 78-million-year-old fossil suggests the dinosaur family saw region-specific evolution in horn and skull shape
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https://www.discoverwildlife.com/dinosaurs/lokiceratops-rangiformis-facts?utm_source=join1440&utm_medium=email&utm_placement=newsletter
‘Blackout’ Bowen’s destruction of our reliable electrical electricity generation from coal, oil & gas is NOT delusional: it is the deliberate ‘creative destruction’ plan from which shall arise the New Society …