Monday, September 21, 2009

Debating Darwinism and Science with the Secular Left

By Douglas V. Gibbs

Debate can be a healthy thing. The exchange of information is important. Psalm 36 reminds us that "In their blind conceit they cannot see how wicked they really are." This is why it is important to inform and educate, and spread the message of truth.

More often than not truth serves as a light, and it causes the cockroaches of the secular humanistic left to scatter. Occasionally, it is important to have dialogue with the opposition. Usually, it is best not to give them a pedestal to stand on, or a megaphone to spread their deceit, so normally I do not engage in such discussions.

I am always, however, when I have the time to engage, up for a spirited debate. One of the people that likes to attack me most often is Harry, but none of his comments ever make it on my site, mainly because of the profanity, and his tendency to use ALL CAPS while speaking in the third person. Besides, he is like a little kid fighting over a toy, and spends more time using baseless attacks that have no merit, than actually debating the topic at hand.

The next most obsessed liberal reader/commenter is Tom. He is a gay, secular, anti-religion follower of such crazy voices as Richard Dawkins and Bill Maher. I usually don't give his comments the opportunity to see the light of day, either, more often than not because of the ad hominem attacks included in the comment, sometimes the profanity, or the pure insanity of what was written. He also tends to write comments longer than my posts, which I normally frown upon. But, sometimes the noose he is placing around his neck based on what he wrote is comical enough to reveal to the rest of you.

Science is one of my loves, and the fact that Tom is an ardent Darwinist has made me decide to do a little sparring with Tom over the topic. These posts will not dominate this site. I don't have time to spend hours upon hours on this debate. The volley between he and I will serve as occasional bits of entertaining debate - more often than not waged in the comment section. If you, the reader, enjoys this kind of thing, feel free to follow the rollercoaster. But as I stated before, it will not dominate this site, or my time, and sometimes responses may be spread out considering my very intense non-blogging schedule.

So, the following is one of my latest responses, specifically to Tom's opinions about the credentials of the people interviewed for Lee Strobel's book, A Case For A Creator (find the original comments on Haloscan HERE).

-----------

I wrote the post about their credentials because that is what you were attacking. A response to an attack on a list of obviously deep thinkers. You act as if because of other interests, suddenly the science in them is negated. That is ludicrous. Must they have only your expectation of credentials to be reliable sources?

The error made by you was to call them a bunch of philosophers and theologians, thus ignoring their education in science, and discounting any scientific opinion they may have -- despite their heavy scientific background. Then, you even brought into the argument the faith of one, of which also was not a part of the discussion. Its like you were trying to throw as many darts as you could at the wall, hoping one might stick into a bulls eye.

It is more than just "God did it." There is a plethora of evidence supporting Intelligent Design, and even more evidence discounting Darwinism. There are overlaps, because species do make minor adjustments, but not to the point of changing species. In other words, there was not a single common ancestor. The idea of that even goes against science - after all, doesn't like beget like?

A great piece of evidence is DNA. The language is very similar to computer code. If you were to find information scrawled on a wall in a cave, would you immediately assume it appeared by random? Of course not, you would recognize it as the writings of an intelligent being. Yet, when DNA was mapped, the response is that the complex writings of genetic coding is random chance, or the result of evolution - when it is obvious that DNA is the writings of an intelligent designer. Writings would be given that consideration on a cave wall, but not on the DNA strands of our bodies.

The belief that mankind has been on the planet for about 6,000 years is also something supported by evidence. In "The Collapse of Evolution" author Scott Huse, PhD sums up proof that the Earth cannot be billions of years old because it would exhibit:

-A much higher concentration of salt in the oceans than what exists today,
-much more atmospheric helium, the product of the radioactive decay of uranium and thorium; current levels would indicate ten thousand years of decay, assuming a starting point of zero,
-no mountains, because even the Himalaya and Rocky Mountains would erode to sea level in just ten million years,
-a lot more sediment deposited in the Gulf of Mexico by the Mississippi River, since what's in the delta now has been calculated to have taken about four thousand years to deposit,
-no more petroleum or natural gas beneath the earth's cap rock because the extremely high pressures containing both would have blown through the rock in ten thousand years max.

As for mankind being on the Earth for about six thousand years, you have to do the math for that. Calculating Biblical accounts and all of the begets, the Bible comes up with about 6,000 years. Mathematicians, basing a growth of about 2.12 to 2.25 children per family, taking into consideration downturns in population growth such as famine and plague, place the beginning of growth of a population of about six and a half billion people to about 4,500 years ago. Biblically, Noah is about 5,000 years ago.

Okay, let's use some other math. Without anything interfering (plague, war, famine, etc.) calculating the number of people on Earth now by growing numbers from Noah’s family using the current growth rate in number of people (1.7% per year) stretched back to Noah’s time, we would now have over sixty thousand billion billion billion (6 with 31 zeroes after it).

If anything is rather absurd, it is that humanity has been on the planet for longer than 6,000 years, or that the Earth is billions of years old.

Granted, there are, as you continually state, thousands of credentialed biologists and scientists presenting papers and PhD essays on the science behind evolution. But did it ever cross your mind that even with that many people supporting something, they could be wrong?

As for that old text called the Holy Bible, don't discount it so quickly. It holds more credibility than the Evolution Fairy Tale. It has been proven to be a flawless historical record with accurate, centuries-spanning prophecies, confirmed by the finding of the Dead Sea Scrolls containing nearly the entire Old Testament, matching almost perfectly with the text we have today (showing the unchanged nature of biblical text). There is no credible evidence the Bible has been distorted. The evidence that it was divinely inspired is not difficult to explain when you think about how difficult it would be for a single author to avoid contradiction when dealing with such a lengthy period of detailed history involving so many individuals and nations and covering such a wide variety of subjects. But 40 different prophets writing with one voice over a period of many centuries is truly amazing. There can only be one explanation: divine inspiration.

Interestingly enough, science is also throughout the Bible. The flat-earthers, in fact, were originally the non-Christians, because the Bible numerous times recognizes the Earth as a sphere. There is also the notion that the sun has an orbit of its own, written by Kind David in Psalm 19:6 "The sun's rising is from one end of heaven, and its circuit to the other end, and there is nothing hidden from its heat." The Bible touches on the microscopic world before that tiny world was even discovered. The Bible's understanding of science, regarding parts of science that humanity hadn't even discovered yet, is incredible.

Meanwhile, modern archaeology has been confirming more and more the Bible's historical accuracy. The Bible displays an incredibly amount of accurate historical data.

Mystical? Evidence in favor of biblical accuracy in science and history provides that the Bible is more than just some big dusty book full of rules handed down by a supernatural God.

As for Richard Dawkins, I viewed a film regarding his thoughts before, and was able to discount almost all of it with common sense. But, I have not read any of his works, and am willing to do so. I am constantly reading books that both support, and are opposed to, my belief system. I have no reason to not be reading material by the opposition. Otherwise, how could I say with confidence that I know what they said?

Game on (as a friend of mine likes to say).

-- Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary

No comments: