Evolutionists...they're evidentialists...aren't they?

This was written to the Administrator (note I use biblical role descriptions, not worldly job titles) of a Christian mission organisation:

Dear sir,

I was surprised by a number of statements in the most recent Prayer News in relation to faith and belief. The juxtapositions that you created were in many ways remarkable.

Take your use of the word ‘faith’. You seem to use it in two completely different senses without really distinguishing them.

You write “...this newfound (sic) knowledge is actually a great boost to their faith”. And rightly so. Biblical faith is our response to knowledge of who God is and what he has done in history. Then you go on to say that “...evolutionists, by faith, have to believe...”. But this is not biblical faith, but some other type of faith: a completely different species of faith; one that is not rooted in fact, but that finds its only ground in the vague postulations of a particular ‘research hypothesis’.

The conversation about ‘fact’ in evolutionary speculation is a very short one. So this faith is nothing like biblical faith. It is more like the ‘faith’ that a person might have in a shaman or an 'Applied Kinesiologist' [the fake 'science' of 'muscle testing'], to put it in modern western terms. It is misplaced trust in something that has no basis in this world.

But, you undo this when you write that “Evolution is a propositional belief system couched in  rationalism and evidentialism.” I detect the arid apologetic strategy of Van Til here, a strategy which is famous in Christian circles, but which has any effect only in those circles! Evolution is indeed a propositional belief system, but it is grounded in fiction. There is nothing truly rational or evidential about it at all. Indeed, there is NO evidence for it. If there were, then this would suggest that evolution is a true explanation of the world: not only in relation to biogenesis, but that extends to every corner of our being and understanding, our relationships and behaviour. However, it offers nothing in these areas either.

Oddly, the whole mission of your organisation is about evidence and its rational use, and this is right in terms of the doctrine of creation. God has given us the ability to undertake stewardship of his creation, and this requires knowledge, wisdom and understanding. We are called to examine, think and test, applying what we thus discover. That’s being good stewards. God also points to his credentials in history as the basis for belief. The Holy Spirit clearly is not a follower of Van Til.

Fangs

From Natural God by Beth Houston:

[in] Darwin's world of fangs and ovipositors, good equals harm successfully inflicted on another. In other words, benefit exists only through harm...Darwin know that his theory was dependent up on the inherent ruthlessness of Nature, not upon something reminiscent of the benevolent God of his abandoned religion (p. 167)

This type of observation, unsurprising for one familiar with Darwin's work, and the Victorian atmosphere that hosted it, one finds theistic evolutionary positions held, particularly by evangelicals (or their 'neo' cousins) completely untenable, and requiring a god most unlike the God of the Bible.

Young ages

On a website on Australian Aboriginal culture, it has this to say about creation stories:

This shortened concept of time may be universal within the origin of religions. For example, in the religions of Judaism and Christianity, the Bible’s Old Testament tells how God created the entire universe, including the four major rivers local to Babylon (now Iraq and Iran), in 6 days. It then goes to great lengths to describe many of the people who lived following Adam and Eve, the first people.

 It then goes on to explain:

The earliest bible stories may have only been in oral form, later becoming written in Aramaic and Hebrew possibly around 1700 B.C.. and read as though the time of creation was about 4,000 B.C.

But, we get the party line at the end:

However, since modern dating techniques have placed the earth’s age at about 3,600 million years, many people embracing those religions today still believe that God created mankind and the universe, but imagine this happening over a different time scale to that described in the bible. For all of us, the concept of a million years of humanity and thousands of millions of years of existence for our planet is beyond our comprehension.

A few observations: the first look at the Bible is taken, not to be a metaphor...but the metaphor has to be introduced to align belief with materialism; and that makes our attachment to our origins "beyond our comprehension". Good for materialism, not good for fellowship with our Creator.

Myth

I've rarely come across good definitions of myth. Here's one I read today:

"Myth" has many connotations, but for our purposes "myth" is defined as a  "thing existing only in imagination of whose actuality is not verifiable; a belief given uncritical acceptance by members of a group in support of existing...practices and institutions. [Myth] is...used to designate a story, belief, or notion commonly held to be true but utterly without a factual basis. In this context myth is opposed to history since it is "usually fabulous in content even when loosely based on historical events".

That's a pretty good summary in my view. So if you insist that the Genesis account of origins is not factual, then it is myth: either imaginary, non-verifiable, or without factual basis. If it has a factual basis, then it is confabulated. Not a good look for theistic evolutionists, because they are left with the theological basis for Christian belief being content free.

On the other hand it describes evolution very well: fabulous in content and loosely based on historical events. Very loose...so loose as to obscure the particular facts on which it is based.

And the source of the quote? "The Myth of Maneuver Warfare" a critique of the U.S. Marines' warfare doctrine manual FMFM-1. Just thought you'd like to know.

Self-organization

There was a phase of evolutionist fantasy that looked with forlorn hope to 'self-organising' systems being a model for the outfolding of creation: all these complex creatures, why, they 'self-organised'.

An engineering blog had this to say about self-organising systems (edited by me to clean up the English and particularise it for here):

Self Organization requires several conditions for it to occur and be observed:
    •    A high degree of structure
    •    The capacity for coordinated action
    •    A mechanism for system-wide feedback and amplification
    •    Some means to transform a small event into a larger driving force for the system to organize itself into a coherent system
Primary is coordination across boundaries and the capacity for action. This implies - quite explicitly - a deterministic response to external stimulus. The self-organization properties require structured communication channels for the systems to posses this property.
So next time you hear self organizing as the way evolution works, best ask to see what structures are identified to provide the channels for coordinated actions. What mechanisms are being used for system-wide feedback within that highly structured process framework, and what are the means of transforms small - potentially very small stimuli - into the collective actions of the whole?
In the broader sense, these concepts all live in a world governed in a deterministic manner through...
    •    Feedback - the return of a portion the output of a process or system to the input. These means modeling the transform function - usually G(S), where S is the system dynamic model, and G is the transform function. Both can be represented by non-linear differential equations
    •    System Dynamics is the next level of modeling for the structured, coordinated, system-wide feedback and amplification (both positive and negative).
    ◦    This involves state-space modeling or phase space) where an abstract space - a mathematical model in which all possible states of a system - are represented, with each possible state of the system corresponding to one unique point in the state space. Dimensions of state space represent all relevant parameters of the system. For example state space of mechanical systems has six dimensions and consists of all possible values of position and momentum variables.
    ◦    The Trajectory of the system describing the sequence of system states as they evolve.
    ◦    A fixed point in the state space where the system is in equilibrium and does not change. In complex projects and systems they represent, this is the steering signal needed to compare the feedback to so corrective actions can be taken by the system to maintain equilibrium and run off the cliff.
    ◦    The Attractor is a part of the state space where some trajectories end.
    •    The actual dynamics of the system - where the set of functions that encode the movement of the system from one point in the state space to another. This is the foundation of the mechanism for feedback and structuring of the disconnected components of the system. These dynamics are many times modeled with sets of differential equations containing the rules for the interactions.

Above all this, it must be remembered that the control system has to be at least as complex as the system it is controlling: accommodating entropic loss; somewhat along the lines of an Ashby-Conant regulator.

Of course, evolutionary speculation contains none of this detail, or even a sketch of it...

Carl Sagan

In a recent post on Lifehacker, as part of their series on people's productivity tips, was a set of 'tips' from Carl Sagan; notwithstanding that he is long dead. So I guess there's a bit of a paean to the famous scientism-ist in that.

But two of his tips collided with each other:

"Scrutinise your own beliefs" and "Remember your place in the Universe"

The latter is a belief and Sagan's notion of placeness is a direct outgrowth of his materialism. His dictum amounts to saying that we are just dust so nothing is of true value...indeed that statement itself has no value in Sagan's world as he dumbly excludes himself from his own epistemology. But it also means that the notions of 'belief' and 'scrutinise' collapse into the same self-important dust.

Another self-refuting puff from a materialist! Must we give these people air time when by their own world-view nothing is important, only momentarily diverting.

Man and Wife

Quote from The Year 1000 by Lacey and Danziger (1999):

...it does seem that the Anglo-Saxons separated and divorced when they had to, without any particular ethical complications. The only concern of the community was practical -- the proper partitioning of property and the care of the children. One Anglo-Saxon law code makes clear that a woman could walk out of her marriage on her own initiative if she cared to, and that if she took the children and cared for them, then she was also entitled to half the property.
The Old English law codes were concerned to shield women against the hazards of life in a rough, male-dominated society...

And the terms for man and woman? Men were called waepnedmenn "weaponed-persons" and the women wifmenn "weaving-persons".

But, the point of the quote?

Today, there is much ado by the social engineers to have the state create male-male and female-female marriages (whether the people are actually male and actually female). It is as though the state, the community empowered, is interested in people's romances. It is not, and should not be, and the Anglo-Saxons set the precedent: the state's interest in marriage its about protecting children (and women).

I think the sub-plot to 'same sex marriage' is to legitimise an artificial union so as to enable the exploitation of children. This might not be sexual exploitation, but forcing children into an arrangement where they are inevitably (and not accidentally) deprived of one of their parents is exploitation. Children become possessions subservient to the interests of adults. If money changes hand in procuring such children we have returned to child slavery, and sanctioned by the state!

It is that that is abhorrent. The social tinkering of pagans I'm not the least interested in, otherwise.

Changing Feet

Simon Smart opens his mouth to change feet in this article on The Drum. And without a biblical doctrine of creation, that's all he can do.

Not biblical? Not as far as I know. CPX is famous for thinking that the materialists have it all sewn up when it comes to how things really are, and not the Bible; so he can't really argue a biblical position, because he doesn't really have one. He's got a quasi materialist position if he's anything like John Dickson.

So how do you argue with a  materialist like Fry? First off, his ethical epistemology is derived from a Christian one...so let's find out what his world view really has to say....[waiting]...[waiting]...why, nothing, of course!

If material, or as I like to say, 'dirt' is all there finally is, then nothing has any significance, finally. And therefore, not at all, really. So where does his notion of bad things come from?

Then to deal with the substance of Fry's complaint, its baselessness in his world aside: God created a perfect world but mankind rejected fellowship with him: turned its back on life, and so continues to do, reaping as a result death, which by the rend from God has permeated the entire creation that was given to our stewardship. It is by God's mercy that it's not worse, and we can turn to him to join his undoing of it; but none of this death and falling apart, anti-love is his doing. It is all the death mankind brought that we are reaping: from little chln with cancer and up.

God shared our plight in Christ, so we can share his life in the same person.

Churchill and Darwin

From Churchill’s History of the English Speaking Peoples, vol. 4, p. 73

Religious preoccupations were probably more widespread and deeply felt than at any time since the days of Cromwell. But thinking men were also disturbed by a new theory, long foreshadowed in the work of scientists, the theory of evolution. It was given classic expression in The Origin of Species, published by Charles Darwin in 1859. This book provoked doubt and perplexity  among those who could no longer take literally the Biblical account of creation. But the theory of evolution, and its emphasis on the survival of the fittest in the  history of life upon the globe, was a powerful adjunct to mid-Victorian optimism. It lent fresh force to the belief in the forward march of mankind.

Keroauc

A friend and I were discussing On the Road, Kerouac's famous 'beat' novel of the 1950s. Sal and his pals madly drive about the USA, adrift, no centre for their souls, no place in the world, they are just...adrift.

They are located in a world were the personal has no real connection with being, where persons are solipsistic fragments drifting like plankton in an ocean (I'm reminded of Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being) and relationships' only parameter is proximity.

Cut life away from the truly personal ground of being (apologies to Tillich), and it drifts madly like Sal: always yearns, never has satisfaction, the soul gapes at life, but can't find the connection to truly participate in it. He never finds, and never can find what he seeks: he gropes for an integrating universal that makes the sense his mad racing around after something that will bring it all together he seeks to lift his experience above the randomness of dust blowing in wind.

Any time you like

In a conversation with most Anglican theistic evolutionists, or 'long age' creationists, you'll come to some sort of argument that the days of Genesis 1 do not mean days like we experience them, but something else. The 'something else' is, of course, indeterminate periods of time, or epochs, or some long period that correlates with modern 'geological time'.

I don't think they realise that in relying on this move to save their accommodation of naturalism they have left biblical theism and adopted a pagan approach where the truth is obscure, hidden, not amenable to any but the 'adepts'. Our world in paganism is shrouded in non-causal mystery and we are not free.

The Bible frames our world and relationship with God differently. It is open. We know who we are and who God is. It is revelation, not occult (hidden). The creation in Genesis is part of the great arc of revelation that ends in Christ and sets us free.

It's about time

There's an old saw in the world of engineering that goes like this: anyone could build a safe, efficient bridge; but an engineer will do it first time, anyone else might take decades of trial and error: expensive, dangerous and wasteful.

The application of intelligent capability achieves the objective parsimoniously. Any other approach is profligate and depletative: it wastes resources and impedes society.

I've heard similar thinking applied to biblical creation: an intelligent agent, all other factors being equal, will do something more quickly than an unintelligent agent. This works in exams: smart students get more right answers more quickly than non-smart students.

Hilariously, some Anglicans, I've been told will attempt to rebut this, saying that a really smart person might take their time to 'get it all right'. But this is an obduracy.

God is clear about the tempo of creation: it is rapid. He uses terms that are meaningful within the creation he is speaking about (i.e. "day", "evening and morning") and are unambiguous. He even counts them to drive the point.

Evolutionists seem to acknowledge this point too, in that I've heard some say that while evolution is improbable, given enough time, almost anything can happen (this omits to consider that natural randomness can only produce results that are possible. Evolution has not been shown to even be possible). Leave intelligence out of it. Given time, a non-agent can achieve an outcome that only an agent could achieve in short time! QED.

Dr Who

The episode of Dr Who in series 8 (reduced price DVDs at the ABC shop) "Listen" is probably the best Dr Who episode that I've seen.

It doesn't have in it creepy robots, historical figures, spooky aliens or the such. It has just three characters, or four if  you count the time traveller who really is an echo of character number 3: Dan Pink.

The episode is an existential confrontation with our end-state as had by materialism: there is nothing. Ironically it starts with the Doctor musing on the evolution of hunters, and reflecting on how an organism would have evolved to be always hidden; its end objective? To listen.

Dr and his girl-pet travel to the end of time and the edge of the universe (both metaphysically interesting concepts) where there is no one. All life gone, all is but matter and about to vanish. The aching alone-ness is courted in the script, but tantalizingly avoided in the question that the one that listens may be there. This theme is played with in a run through the time travel paradox loved of science fiction writers. That the characters confront the question raises the great materialist promise: one has finally no significance and is not distinguishable from the mute matter of the universe. But no one lives this way: the characters cannot live as though this is true; they live as though there is final significance; that the personal is above matter and  history.

Modern materialism has at its heart a confusion: it relies on the Christian significance of the person and the basic underpinning of the personal, but cannot deliver this in its dogma.

No concrete?

A lot of Christians, and even some non-Christians, regard Genesis 1 as symbolic: symbolic that God is creator, but empty of content about his creating. As one minister I heard put it; he doesn’t regard it as ‘concrete’.

Where does this leave us?

Where indeed, when on this view the act that God grounds his self-identity in has no concrete meaning in the world that he created! The world by which its meaning is established.

The proponent has to explain what it means that God is creator, when the content of the only thing he could be referring to does not refer to anything that has happened in the time and space that cirscumscribes the creation.

Thus, when God tells us he is creator, we cannot really understand what this means, particularly if evolutionary dogma is taken as the real information about ‘creation’: this has no place for God at all but turns the Bible’s world upside down placing God as a social afterthought in the minds of those who are randomly assembed dust.

Or did God guide evolution? Seeing that similar ideas were available in ancient times, it is a surprise that the writer to the Hebrews resolutely opposes them, and the ‘principles’ they imagine that operate in the world when he says: what is seen is the result of God's word, not prior visible things Heb 11:3, and the works were complete from the foundation: Heb 4:3. Together these verses tell a very different story from the retrospective evacuation of meaning from Genesis 1, which only leaves us materialism with its pagan references for what ‘creation’ means and for the dimensions of God’s identity.

Anglican minister supports atheists world view

Amazing exchange on Twitter:

Dickson has confused 'evolution' which was the point here, with a mere scientific technicality; as though scientific discourse is independent of its social setting and motivations. Now, I'm not applying this broadly to science that is objectively established, although Kuhn tells us that here too that can be the case, but to the idea of evolution which is not that.

Evolution is a summative and therefore boundless ideology that brings with it (and indeed relies upon) bundled concepts of life, relationships (ethics), the nature of the real and how the real 'works'. If evolutionists are honest, or thorough, it also brings a theory of knowledge. But that theory would undermine its credibility, so evolutionists usually employ a creationist theory of knowledge, unwittingly.

Evolution as a construct in these terms, with  its auxiliary postulates (such as a long age for the universe) envelopes and defines theism. Dickson gave the game away!

Theism is reduced thereby to an epiphenomenon of matter-as-basic and is dependent completely upon its ontology.

The world-view of the Bible inverts this. Matter is not basic, but is, as it were, an epiphenomenon of will. And not just a 'will' in panentheistic terms, but in the particular terms of the Bible: the will of God whose nature being love makes fellowship: within the 'god-head' and between himself and his creation an essential outworking. And the 'matter' is important; it is part of the intention of creation, unlike the idealism we read in modern theology that has more to do with neoplatonism than Christianity.

Wise Willy

"I was inspired by my grandfather and my father, who have championed international conservation for over fifty years.  They helped to bring about a revolution in attitudes towards our natural environment.

From them, I learned that our relation to nature and wildlife goes to the heart of our identity as human beings: from our sheer survival, to our appreciation of beauty and our connection to all other living things."

The Duke of Cambridge's speech on the illegal wildlife trade at the World Bank, Washington D.C., USA 

Our self-identity is not in the Creator, a person, but in 'nature': the 'heart' of our identity? I would have thought that the heart of our identity is our ability to reason, communicate, love, forgive, indeed, worship. But no, its our relation to wildlife. Remember that next time you see a lion tear an antelope to pieces or a pederast argue that his 'love' is part of nature.

What do you mean: "prove"?

I recently read a conservative Christian claim: “no human being will ever be able to prove whether or not God exists, as that would then make him/her superior to God.”


A friend offered this comment:


1.      That seems to be a non sequitur. How does that conclusion follow from the premiss? The only “reasonable” suggestion I can attribute to the syllogism is that a priori you believe that, ultimately, God is incomprehensible and we, ultimately, can’t reason to God. That makes Paul a confusing person (and confused?), given that he has said we can in Romans 1: “because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being UNDERSTOOD by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead”. Note the word “understood”, further note the Greek and further even still note what the understanding leads to i.e. the GODHEAD! Unless of course you believe atheists have the intellectual power to reason to the Godhead and then, well, just ignore the answer after REASONING correctly. But this would contradict your premise that man can’t reason to and prove God, wouldn’t it?

2.      Can’t prove whether God exists or not? What on earth does that mean? You completely limit (?misuse) the word ‘prove’. Of course you can prove God exists! What do you think apologetics are about!? If you can’t prove God exists, then why have apologetic organisations? Why waste your breath trying to appeal to atheists’ reason, unless your review of the DVD isn’t really an appeal to reason.

And then you go and contradict yourself by saying “this does not mean, however, that Christian faith is irrational or contrary to logic and reason”. If it’s not contrary to logic and reason, it must be reasonable and logical (The Law of the Excluded Middle applies), and thus provable. An analogy: If a man were to say, “All cats are mammals, and all mammals are animals, so therefore cats are animals” but then says he can’t prove cats are animals, a listener would insightfully say the chap’s lost his marbles or seems to not understand the power of logic and reason. This feline syllogism is no different to, say, the Argument for God’s Existence from Design or the Kalam Cosmological Argument for His existence.

Tevelyan 3

Tevelyan 2

1942

In volume 4 of his English Social History, published in about 1942 (pp 44-45 in the illustrated edition), Trevelyan writes of the 'serious' character of Victorian society:

...This 'seriousness' affected even the 'agnostics' who, in the last part of the period, challenged not the ethics but the dogmas of Christianity, with increasing success on account of Darwinism and the discoveries of science.

He goes on to write:

In the Twentieth Century, on the other hand, self-discipline and self-reliance are somewhat less in evidence, and a quasi-religious demand for social salvation through State action has taken the place of older and more personal creeds. Science has undermined the old forms of religious belief, but even now the strength and the weakness of England cannot be understood without some knowledge of her religious history.