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Some guy named Todd Lewis strongly disliked my recent Counter-Currents article, Weird Science: Liberal Creationism vs. Christian Creationism. His response, hosted at the otherwise praiseworthy Attack the System anarchist website, Contra Parrott: The Emptiness of Third-Way Anthropology, was absolutely riddled with scathing insults. While I often find it necessary to look up obscure references when I’m engaged by an anti-White blogger, Mr. Lewis has the distinction of being the first critic who required me to look up an insult.
I haven’t actually taken the time to read Harold Covington’s critically-acclaimed series of White Nationalist action/adventure novels, so I had no idea what a “DM” was. According to Mr. Lewis, I’m a “drooling moron”. I’m also an adherent of Madame Blavatsky, a neo-nazi kook, a fascist, a neo-nazi-fascist, anti-Jewish, what I claim to hate, stupid, a liar, deaf, anti-social, stupid, a hypocrite, and most damning…formulaic. With so much buckshot fired in my general direction, I’m sure I’m guilty to varying degrees of some of these charges, but I object to being formulaic.
After leaving nothing but a charred spot on the ground where I had stood, he turned the label gun on himself for his closing remarks,
In conclusion I could be accused of irreverence, bellicosity, meanness, and misconstruing Matt Parrott, CC and Race-Realism. This might all be true, but this is nothing less than Matt Parrott’s SOP (Standard Operating Procedure). He takes all the leftwing crap and regurgitates it like a good Marxist drone when he is criticizing Christians, but whines when the left returns the favor on race.
My critique of Young Earth Creationism is indeed partially commensurate with the Leftists’ critiques of it. Sometimes Commies are correct. I have no compunction against plucking rhetorical appetizers from the left wing of the ideological cafeteria when it suits me. Chomsky’s critique of cannibal capitalism is great, and I quote him when appropriate. Even Marx had his share of accurate statements and conclusions, and many of his prophecies relating to capitalism becoming more destructive and alienating have come to fruition.
There are no such things as “their facts” and “our facts”, a truism which is commonly lost on rigid ideologues whose eagerness and loyalty to their factions surpass their critical thinking skills. I am not leaning on popular opinion or institutional legitimacy in my arguments against Ken Ham. My arguments do happen to have those in this case, but I believe the weight of my writing over the past decade confirms that I do not have a Standard Operating Procedure of leaning on popular fads when it suits me. Besides, I published my essay at Counter-Currents, a venue where neither the editors, the contributors, nor the readers put any weight in this regime or its pronouncements.
Creationism
Mr. Lewis accused me of “criticizing Christians” when I’ve done nothing of the sort. I criticized a particular line of thinking and arguing which some Christians have been engaging in, “Young Earth Creationism”. I’m a Christian, and my work is for Christ. If a group of Christians are doing something which is misguided and self-destructive, then it’s necessary and appropriate to correct them. They’re doing Christianity a disservice when they insist that the Christian faith is incompatible with established science. Having been a teenage atheist who rejected Christianity for nearly a decade precisely because I presumed that Christianity required choosing between it and my passion for anthropological research, I’m not budging.
True to form, he perceives my disagreement with his exegesis and concomitant sham science as an objection to Christianity itself. He insists, incorrectly, that scientific research relating to the Big Bang demonstrates that science has indeed crossed the metaphysical chasm, attempting to explain the ultimate origins. Science categorically cannot do that. Contrary to popular belief, “The Big Bang Theory” doesn’t even ask or answer the ultimate question of how existence either emerged from a true philosophical vacuum or is perhaps infinite.
“What existed before the Big Bang?”
“Where did the laws of physics which led to the Big Bang come from?”
“Why?”
Crickets.
Ultimately, Mr. Lewis is a philosopher by trade whose interest in science is evidently limited to cramming his philosophical and religious conclusions into it. Science doesn’t presume that God doesn’t exist, science is indifferent to His existence. It’s a process, a method, a tool. It can’t ask or answer whether God exists any more than a hammer can turn a screw. Hypothetically, God could prove himself by the scientific method’s rules, perhaps by placing some golden tablets confirming his existence in Bill Nye’s hat. Given that His sacred texts repeatedly emphasize the importance of cultivating faith in Him, and how predictable and amenable to scientific investigation His creation has proven to be, that seems an unlikely prospect.
Mr. Lewis is correct in noting that belief in God would lead to that being possible. My mistake. Unlikely, in my estimation. But certainly possible.
Science is about measuring and observing, then crafting hypotheses from these measurements and observations which can be tested with further measurement and observation. Mr. Lewis and the rest of the Answers in Genesis crowd would like to make a distinction between contemporary and “historical” science which can’t actually be observed. This relies on an intuitive but false reliance on our primary senses. After all, we can’t actually ride a dinosaur, sliding our hands through their feathers (or across their scales) as we gallop along the Jurassic landscape, “seeing it for ourselves”.
Contemporary science doesn’t work that way, either. Few of us (eight, to be precise) have actually pranced along the surface of the moon. Nuclear physics are pretty much entirely divorced from firsthand observation right up until the light switch works…or the blast wave jerks. An instrument which measures something to a certain degree of precision measures something to a certain degree of precision whether it’s measuring the oxygen level in the room you’re standing in or the oxygen level in the Carboniferous Period. Distant time limits accuracy, of course, but it’s a clinal rather than cladistic concern. Calling it a different kind of science altogether is a Creationist trope.
Race Realism
Speaking of different kinds of science, there is an important distinction between actual science and popular science. In actual science, medications, treatments, and prognoses are commonly tailored to a person’s biological race. In popular science, race is a vaporous social construct. The parallax is striking, and mainstream psychometricians are very careful to speak very guardedly and in obfuscated lexicon when confirming that different human population groups consistently exhibit different average brain sizes and intelligence quotients. While science is necessarily (and appropriately) silent on the policy conclusions to draw from its data, Todd Lewis betrays his ignorance of scientific research by presuming that stark racial differences are only supported by a handful of Esoteric Hitlerist “kooks”.
In a baffling bit of pseudo-intellectual effrontery, he declares that our Race Realism originated with Madame Blavatsky’s esoteric cult. How do I respond to this silly proposition, befitting an unexceptional teenager who’s sat through one too many History Channel specials? Until we produce a sensationalist History Channel documentary or populist Racialism Museum with an attractive gift shop and food court, Mr. Lewis will likely remain “skeptical”. For the curious reader, Libertarian Realist has a nice collection of sources on the topic here: Race Realism: A Primer.
Well over a century before Madame Blavatsky’s silly sideshow shtick, President Thomas Jefferson gathered a great deal of elementary research and observations on racial differences in his Notes on Virginia, research and observations which have largely been confirmed and corroborated by methodologically superior and more precise examinations since then. The Nobel laureate who discovered DNA directly declared, regarding Blacks, that ”all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.” The inventor of the transistor, the very founder of Silicon Valley himself, dedicated his years after winning the Nobel Prize to challenging the taboo against race realism.
If “race realism” is a pseudo-science, then ours is unique among pseudo-sciences in having accumulated more Nobel Laureates, esteemed researchers, and quality peer-reviewed original research than all of the other pseudo-sciences combined. Not a single standardized test has been composed which shows racial parity in intelligence. Todd Lewis is welcome to sketch a test up in Adobe Acrobat and collaborate with a local college to administer it. If I’m really as kooky as Lewis insists, producing one single peer-reviewed and replicable would be super easy. Finding an example of somebody else on God’s green earth having done so would be even easier.
Finally, he insists that he’s on an Internet where race realist ideas are given a fair hearing and then crushed by the weight of quality egalitarian research disproving racial differences. On the Internet my computer’s connected to, comment sections of mainstream media outlets are jealously guarded by moderators who steadily work to filter out our increasingly popular position. Our blogs and outlets are growing larger year over year, with active and growing Internet communities as more and more people explore the facts and join us in our conclusions. Meanwhile, the “anti-racist” (read: anti-White) outlets necessarily have their comments on moderation, not that there’s much of a community to moderate.
It’s not just me. Mainstream voices in media and academia are claiming that the Internet is a “hotbed of hate” where “hate groups are on the march” and so forth. Even farther out on the limb, in the application of identitarian ideas to public policy, Mr. Lewis’s position is on the defensive. The Swiss just passed a major border control law. John Boehner solidified the GOP’s retreat from amnesty last week. Europe’s nationalist parties are rapidly gaining strength and the gatekeepers of acceptable opinion are panicking.
Anarchism and the New Right
The site, Attack the System, is an anarchist collective, under the aegis of Editor-in-Chief Keith Preston. While Preston’s neither a Christian nor a White Nationalist, his particular flavor of anarchism and open-minded disposition leaves him tolerant of Christian and race realist positions which the self-styled paragons of “Tolerance” would never tolerate. His “anarchism” deserves a separate term to distinguish itself from the Marxist farce which has effectively usurped the label.
According to Preston’s conception of anarchy, a global patchwork of relatively small organic collectives would emerge, typically around ethnic identity, religious affiliation, and culture. You know, …the kind of stuff people actually gravitate toward when a powerful state doesn’t preclude their doing so with its network of incentives and disincentives. I’ve joked about it, but there’s some truth to my claim that his “anarchist” label and my “fascist” label largely boil down to semantic quibbles over defining the “state”. I also joke, and there’s also some truth to my claim that I’m a “Situational Anarchist”. I’m as opposed to this state as he is, and much more so (in both theory and practice) than most self-styled “anarchists”.
I appreciate Todd Lewis taking the time to kick off the debate between divergent factions of the New Right (or Dark Enlightenment or Dissident Right or whatever). If I do happen to be drooling, it’s because I’m salivating at the prospect of a constructive dialogue with a fellow Christian political dissident. I’m not, as he imagines, an evil racial supremacist hellbent on whipping up a totalitarian regime of some sort. I’ll happily debate him to the hilt on any relevant political topic he prefers. If I’m wrong, I’ll gladly concede. If he catches an error of mine, I’ll gladly correct myself (as I did once above).
Mr. Parrott,
You complete missed the point of my article. You need to look up a what a reductio ad absurdum is. I was utilizing your own style and tone against you.
“I’m also an adherent of Madame Blavatsky, a neo-nazi kook, a fascist, a neo-nazi-fascist, anti-Jewish, what I claim to hate, stupid, a liar, deaf, anti-social, stupid, a hypocrite, and most damning…formulaic.”
And you don’t think this is offensive: “Ham lost the debate before he started because he agreed that a book written, edited, and translated by bronze-age Bedouins can be directly pitted against state-of-the-art scientific knowledge.” What I said was in substance no different than what you said. Its just putting the shoe on the other foot. You think Blavatsky is offensive, but bronze-age Bedouins is not? Bronze-age Bedouins is a trope/meme from the New Atheists.
For the record I have read enough of CC to know it is not stormfront or some other extreme movement like that. The point of my article was to place the same disrespect and contempt on Mr. Parrott’s views and the institution he collaborated with. A
You say:
“Sometimes Commies are correct. I have no compunction against plucking rhetorical appetizers from the left wing of the ideological cafeteria when it suits me.”
You completely confirmed my underlying assumptions: that of hypocrisy. Two months ago on AimlessGromar you stated in the comment section of the article The New Right versus Neoreaction: no, Evola quotes aren’t good enough this(http://www.aimlessgromar.com/2013/12/11/the-new-right-versus-neoreaction-no-evola-quotes-arent-good-enough/):
“Declaring that “No, Evola quotes aren’t good enough” implies either an ignorance of the depth and scope of the Counter-Currents and TradYouth projects and its contributors, or an active attempt to smear those who dare to transgress those taboos as crazies who are obsessed about those specific taboo topics. The thesis of the article is that DE is good stuff that we can complement, hardly the conclusion a monomanic would draw.
So you complain when Gromar treats your view with contempt, but feel free to treat others with contempt?
I accused you of doing the very self-same thing you criticized Mr. Gromar of doing. Not reading your opposition and then making unsubstantiated claims about them. I was treating race-realism with the contempt you treated creationism. In order to show you how it felt and the hypocrisy of it all. If you wanted me to treat RR with respect why did you not treat Creationism with respect? Compared to the status quo we are both kooks.
“I am not leaning on popular opinion or institutional legitimacy in my arguments against Ken Ham.”
Your arguments against Ham were a straw-man. You did not accurately recapitulate his argument.
“He insists, incorrectly, that scientific research relating to the Big Bang demonstrates that science has indeed crossed the metaphysical chasm, attempting to explain the ultimate origins. Science categorically cannot do that.”
I made no such claim and neither did Ham. The claim is that atheism is hijacking science a fear that even Max Planck had.
“Ultimately, Mr. Lewis is a philosopher by trade whose interest in science is evidently limited to cramming his philosophical and religious conclusions into it. Science doesn’t presume that God doesn’t exist, science is indifferent to His existence. It’s a process, a method, a tool. It can’t ask or answer whether God exists any more than a hammer can turn a screw. Hypothetically, God could prove himself by the scientific method’s rules, perhaps by placing some golden tablets confirming his existence in Bill Nye’s hat. Given that His sacred texts repeatedly emphasize the importance of cultivating faith in Him, and how predictable and amenable to scientific investigation His creation has proven to be, that seems an unlikely prospect.”
This comment totally misses the point.
1) Historical-Science is (1) a valid distinction (Nagel) and (2) a self-refuting absurdity.
2) Atheism has hijacked science and its interpretation (Planck)
3) Science itself does not preclude God, but the way it is done know it does
4) Mr. Parrott is guilty of dishing out the same treatment he has received, that being the case he has no place to plead in his defence.
5) Mr. Parrott poisoned the well and ignored the credentials of Damadian.
Those were the charges and none of them have been grappled with.
“Mr. Lewis and the rest of the Answers in Genesis crowd would like to make a distinction between contemporary and “historical” science which can’t actually be observed.”
This kind of disingenuous dialogue is exactly what I was trying to criticize. You forgot Thomas Nagel, who btw is an atheist. Historical-Science is perfectly reasonable classification of thought, it is only contentious to non-philosophers, or in the case of Nye people afraid of its implications.
“Contemporary science doesn’t work that way, either. Few of us (eight, to be precise) have actually pranced along the surface of the moon.”
This is confusing too many things at once. It is possible, though very very unlikely, for your or I to land on the moon and gather moon rocks, it is impossible for you or I to got to the Late Jurassic and observe the Allosaurus in its natural habitat. I cannot reach the former because I don’t have the money or training to do so; I cannot reach the latter because it is impossible. If any one could visit the late Jurassic he would be the greatest scientist of all time, but since no one has a time machine that is impossible nor is it likely ever to be possible.
In conclusion, I understand that the vitriol of my reductio probably got most of your attention, to the exclusion of all else. But nothing you said really grappled with my two main contentions atheists have hijacked science and historical science is (1) a distinct concept from empirical science and (2) it is incoherent. CC and RR were just window dressing.
I should say that since Mr. Parrott had to react to my act in imitation I must thank him for the flattery. Since imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
Reductio ad Absurdum = Teach the Controversy: http://controversy.wearscience.com/
PS I like the Mad Scientist motiff.
“He insists, incorrectly, that scientific research relating to the Big Bang demonstrates that science has indeed crossed the metaphysical chasm, attempting to explain the ultimate origins. Science categorically cannot do that.”
Missunderstood original claim. Yes I do claim the big bang is non-empirical. And hence non-scientific. Your right in that science cannot explain ultimate origins, but that has not stopped the atheists from trying.
1) Historical-Science is (1) a valid distinction (Nagel) and (2) a self-refuting absurdity.
Measuring and observation is measuring and observation. You can’t go back in time and “ride the raptors”, but real actual-factual science can go back as far as the instruments allow. Even if we leap down Nagel’s “historical science” rabbit hole, that rabbit hole doesn’t legitimize counter-factual creation myths. It merely places a different label over the collection of data confirming that dinosaurs were skittering about a hundred million years ago.
2) Atheism has hijacked science and its interpretation (Planck)
Indeed. My answer is that science must necessarily remain in the material realm, guarded from both atheists and creationists alike who are eager to apply it outside of its appropriate metaphysical context.
3) Science itself does not preclude God, but the way it is done know it does
Nope. If “science” does so, then it’s not science. Maybe “scientists” or “scientific institutions”. But a scientific study relating to the existence of God is ipso facto unscientific.
4) Mr. Parrott is guilty of dishing out the same treatment he has received, that being the case he has no place to plead in his defence.
I didn’t cry foul over your nastiness. I attempted to dig through the barrage of insults to find your actual point, then attempted to answer it. This ultimately boils down to a big misunderstanding, as I never intended to insult the “Bronze Age Bedouins”. This is certainly what they were when they transcribed Genesis, a point which is necessary to make when both atheists and creationists alike attempt to turn to them for astronomical, geological, archaeological, and genetic advice.
Even if God had patiently sat an entire crowd of people of that time down and carefully walked them through the consensus narrative, what they managed to write down and pass along would have probably looked a lot like Genesis.
No disrespect intended to them. They wrote my favorite book. They weren’t rocket scientists or geneticists, in the literal sense, and I don’t pretend they were. I’m sorry if that hurt your feelings.
5) Mr. Parrott poisoned the well and ignored the credentials of Damadian.
Damadian was a gifted research scientist who made significant contributions. Happy?
“If I do happen to be drooling, it’s because I’m salivating at the prospect of a constructive dialogue with a fellow Christian political dissident. I’m not, as he imagines, an evil racial supremacist hellbent on whipping up a totalitarian regime of some sort. I’ll happily debate him to the hilt on any relevant political topic he prefers. If I’m wrong, I’ll gladly concede. If he catches an error of mine, I’ll gladly correct myself (as I did once above).”
It completely agree, and eagerly await future dialogue.
Mr. Parrott,
“This ultimately boils down to a big misunderstanding, as I never intended to insult the “Bronze Age Bedouins”.”
This might and probably is true.
“Damadian was a gifted research scientist who made significant contributions. Happy?”
But I doubt Bill Nye would be.
“Even if we leap down Nagel’s “historical science” rabbit hole, that rabbit hole doesn’t legitimize counter-factual creation myths.”
I’m not saying it proves creationism, but I am saying is that evolution is just an atheist creation myth. Both the materialist and the Christian have try to give an account of the origins of the universe, but any such question and answer is by definition not scientific (which I think we agree on), it historical and philosophical.
“Indeed. My answer is that science must necessarily remain in the material realm, guarded from both atheists and creationists alike who are eager to apply it outside of its appropriate metaphysical context.”
“Nope. If “science” does so, then it’s not science. Maybe “scientists” or “scientific institutions”. But a scientific study relating to the existence of God is ipso facto unscientific.”
I think were are talking past each other. Lets begin with, what I see we agree on, (1) Science cannot prove or disprove God, (2) science cannot prove ‘origins’, (3) science must limit itself to the material world. We are disagreeing one whether evolution is an atheist creation myth or not.
I am not saying that because of historical science creationism is true. I am saying that given that evolution and creationism seek to answer the same question ‘origins’ and ‘historical-science’ it is not science vs. faith. It is two faiths atheism(more precisely philosophical naturalism) vs. Christianity. It is faith vs. faith, not science vs. faith. The evolutionary cosmologist, as you called them scientists and the scientific establishment, is trying to prove origins, I realize we both agree that is impossible, but tell that to Dawkins or Hawking. They believe they are solving the essential history of the universe.
Secondly this naturalist faith, makes three unscientific and miraculous claims. (1) Life originated from inorganic material, (2) sentient life originated form non-sentient life (plants to animals) and (3) from sentient life to rational life (apes to men). None of these three steps have ever been observed in scientific research.
Lets define terms:
Abiogenesis: “the supposed spontaneous origination of living organisms directly from lifeless matter.”
Spontaneous Generation: abiogenesis
Both definitions are taken from the Merriam-Webster dictionary
The Oxford Dictionary definition for Abiogensis:
1 the original evolution of life or living organisms from inorganic or inanimate substances:
1.1 historical another term for spontaneous generation.
Using a hypothetical syllogism we see that:
(A) If Pasture disproved spontaneous generation, (B) then non-organic life cannot generate life.
(B) If non-organic life cannot generate life, (C) then abiogenesis cannot happen.
(A) Pasture disproved spontaneous generation; (C) therefore abiogenesis cannot happen.
We know (A) is true (the law of biogenesis as proven by Louis Pasture:“Omne vivum ex vivo,” and we know (B) is true from the definition of the terms (abiogenesis is defined as the origin of organic life from inorganic material), thus having a valid argument and two true premises (A) and (B) we have a certain conclusion in (C). This is faith, not science. Again there is no observable evidence (the bread and butter of science) to show that inorganic material can become organic. Abiogenesis, the first step of evolution, violates the first law of biology. Is that scientific? If a theory cannot even get of the ground any thing afterward is moot. It is worse than faith, since in faith miracles are performed by a deity, in the atheist creation myth there is no deity to perform the miracle.
“I’m not saying it proves creationism, but I am saying is that evolution is just an atheist creation myth.”
Just because Dawkins and Nye wish and imagine it so doesn’t make it so. Neither evolution nor even the Big Bang either ask or answer that big philosophical questions.
Oh, dear. Let me get on my wading boots. Pasteur merely proved that abiogenesis isn’t involved in any phenomena he (or anybody else) observed. He didn’t prove that it can’t happen, deductively.
I don’t have any special contributions to the debate about abiogenesis. From what I’ve read, all you need to get the ball rolling is one self-replicating protein structure. It was a big ocean with eleventy billion proteins with billions of years and lightning bolts and deep sea lava vents and stuff. Or intergalactic self-replicating particles landing here. Or God’s divine intervention.
I don’t know. Abiogenesis isn’t currently answered by science, perhaps it never will be, and perhaps it categorically can’t be. I dunno. It’s a gap.
The only thing that breaks the paradigm for me is self-awareness, “cogito ergo sum“.
Mr. Parrott,
“Neither evolution nor even the Big Bang either ask or answer that big philosophical questions.”
In principle I agree with you that “Science cannot answer the big philosophical questions.” The point of contention as I see it is this.
You are claiming that evolution is science in the same way Newton’s laws of motion are. They are limited by the same considerations and implications.
I am saying that evolution is claiming to say far more than that. Evolution is not just a biological theory any more. We speak of the evolution of the universe, which implies star formation, planet formation, the formation of life and all its various stages, etc. Evolution as a theory seeks to build a holistic explanation for cosmology of the universe.
Actually let’s define evolution. It can be defined in one of three ways: (1) speciation (the development of finch beaks, but at the end of the day they are all finches; (2) the origin of all life from a common ancestor and (3) the history of the universe.
I agree that (1) is scientific in the Newtonian sense, but reject (2) and (3) as scientific. (2) and (3) are necessarily historical in nature and thus not scientific. (1) is scientific and is non-controversial even Ken Ham accepts (1).
“Pasteur merely proved that abiogenesis isn’t involved in any phenomena he (or anybody else) observed.”
I totally agree with that statement, but we posit a force or process that contradicts all the observable evidence, which is all we have in empirical-scientific research, then it, is unscientific to claim such a force/process exists.
“I don’t know. Abiogenesis isn’t currently answered by science, perhaps it never will be, and perhaps it categorically can’t be. I dunno. It’s a gap.”
You have outlined at least three possibilities (1) as we currently observe the world abiogensis does not happen, (2) abiogenesis might be observed at some later date (either naturally or in a laboratory) or (3) it will never be solved. As it stands we are living in a world were, as far as are scientific research goes, (1) is true. And it is likely that (3) is true. Since (2) has not yet happened one cannot, if one is claiming to do science, to build a whole theory based on the expectation that such a discovery will be made, with all the current evidence against it.
We see that in seeking to avoid the implications of Pastuer’s work modern evolutionary apologists end up confirming contradtions.
From TalkOrigins Spontaneous Generation and the Origin of Life:
(1)
“What Louis Pasteur and the others who denied spontaneous generation demonstrated is that life does not currently spontaneously arise in complex form from nonlife in nature; he did not demonstrate the impossibility of life arising in simple form from nonlife by way of a long and propitious series of chemical steps/selections. In particular, they did not show that life cannot arise once, and then evolve.”
(2)
“A recurring theme in antievolution literature is that if science cannot account for the origin of life, evolution is false, and that “spontaneous generation” was disproven, so therefore evolution is false. This syllogism fails, because evolution (that is, common descent and transmutation of species) occurs whether or not life arose by chance, law or design, but there is another more insidious mistake here. It is not true that “spontaneous generation” has been ruled out in all cases by science; the claims disproven were more restricted than that.”
(3)
“So we must ask – what did Pasteur prove? Did he prove that no life can ever come from non-living things? No, he didn’t, and this is because you cannot disprove something like that experimentally, only theoretically, and he had no theory of molecular biology to establish this claim. What he showed was that it was highly unlikely that modern living organisms arose from non-living organic material. This is a much more restricted claim than that primitive life once arose from non-living non-organic material.”
(4)
“Evolutionary theory was not proposed to account for the origins of living beings, only the process of change once life exists. However, many have thought that the theory of evolution logically requires a beginning of life, which is true. Of those, many have thought that a natural account of the origin of life is necessary, and some have proposed models which have borne up or not as research proceeds.”
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/spontaneous-generation.html
Three errors are committed here: (1) he calls for a miracle, (2) he denies at the end of the article what he claimed at the beginning and (3) he makes a distinction without a difference.
In the paragraph (1) and (3) where I highlighted two sentences containing the word ‘once’ in bold, the author is claiming that Pasture did not disprove that abiogenesis could have happened at least once in the past. This of course is a miracle. He is denying a universal observed law of science for a one-off. Abiogenesis is seen, by this author, as one-off non-repeatable event. Given that the charge of miracle, which is often hurled by evolutionist (not necessarily by Mr. Parrot), as a proof of unscientific thinking at Christians; we here have the embarrassing case of an evolutionist (possibly an atheist) invoking a miracle. He basically saying, well Pasture did not observe that abiogenesis could not happen once. This is a laughably weak argument and if made by a Christian would get him ran out of town. Basically Pasture did not prove evolutionary miracles. Faith anyone?
In paragraph (2), highlighted in bold the author claims that even if abiogenesis could not occur that would not disprove evolution, since evolution only deals with the diversity of life after its origin. However, in paragraph (4) he says that the theory of evolution must entail an explanation for the origin of life. Well that is a pretty pickle he is in. First evolution does not depend on a naturalist explanation of the origin of life and then it does? Which is it?
His distinction in paragraph (1) between the spontaneous origin of complex or simple life is irrelevant. Even if I granted him that, the distinction is between life and non-life originating by natural processes, not complex vs. simple life originating in such a manner. No such processes have been observed.
Notice I don’t see anywhere in the article he said “some has observed abiogenesis” which is quite telling.
In conclusions I argue that to even get evolution to “start” one must have “faith” in abiogenesis, i.e. abiogenesis and evolution are naturalist creation myths.
I did not realize bold text does not transfer. Ignore my reference to bold texts.
It is.
You can’t just redefine “evolution” to win the argument. The goal posts are remaining where they rightfully belong; “the origin of all life from a common ancestor”. That’s obviously what I mean when I say evolution.
What a slippery slope. The first step down the slope is trying to create an artificial distinction between “historical science” and “real science”. Once I’ve agreed with that poppycock, you can move on to the next step, declaring “historical science” unscientific. Finally, having sawed off pretty much most of science, the door’s open for pretty much whatever our imaginations desire.
Contradict is the wrong word. We can deduce that all life has a common origin while being agnostic about that origin. After all, self-replicating space dust is still on the table. Gaps in our knowledge don’t contradict or negate our knowledge.
You can try this at home. Swaddle yourself in a homespun quilt. It will keep you warm. The holes won’t negate the quilt.
No, you don’t. I can believe that the Earth orbits the sun without knowing or caring how it got there or even knowing or caring how it stays in orbit. You’re pretending that gaps in our knowledge contradict or negate the knowledge.
It’s pseudo-intellectual sophistry.
“Ultimately, Mr. Lewis is a philosopher by trade whose interest in science is evidently limited to cramming his philosophical and religious conclusions into it.”
I don’t normally talk about my work, but given the context of this discussion I will. I work for Canadian Auto Preservation on in the research lab in Hartville OH as a lab tech, among other things, in the cutting edge field of non-cathodic electromagnetic car protection. According to Digby MacDonald, CAP is working on the most interesting development in corrosion science, in his career. I believe he mentions that in a video I linked to below.
I, work with my father, brother and Jason Lafferty. Jason and my dad are the heavy hitters, I and my brother are lab techs and generalists who do what ever needs done around the lab. My dad has over twenty patents. Half are in corrosion science and the other half are in digit communication 802.11 wireless lan. The corrosion related are approved in five countries (US, Canada, China, Taiwan, and Australia) and all the EU member countries have approved the patent filing. He has built and run three research labs in three different fields.
Here are some videos put out by CAP:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzhisCWdCeA
This is my boss
1:45 in you will see an isle shot of a series of test and control experiments that I and my brother put together. We put literally thousands of man hours into those apparatuses. They have gone through numerous modification and improvements.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nX_yBYIfKw
This is an explanation of our technology
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdzxSZuL-oQ
This is an interview with, if not the leading, one of the leading corrosion researchers in the world Digby MacDonald.
Dr. MacDonald mentions me by name between 7:41-7:58 minutes in.
Digby MacDonald’s credentials can be found here:
https://www.mse.berkeley.edu/ourfaculty/macdonaldd
So once and for all lets drop this crap that YECs cannot push the limits of science. I am one and am aiding an elite team of researchers in doing just that.
So what can Mr. Parrott show for his scientific credentials or for that matter the legions of youtube pop-science hacks?
“It’s pseudo-intellectual sophistry.”
Yeah like the atheist fairy-tale of evolution. Actually all you have said is sophistry.
You don’t even have a working definition for evolution.
“Gaps in our knowledge don’t contradict or negate our knowledge.”
We are know resorting to Darwinism of the Gaps are we?
“What a slippery slope. The first step down the slope is trying to create an artificial distinction between “historical science” and “real science”. Once I’ve agreed with that poppycock, you can move on to the next step, declaring “historical science” unscientific. Finally, having sawed off pretty much most of science, the door’s open for pretty much whatever our imaginations desire.”
That is completely incoherent blob of text, with no appreciable content value.
Like what unobservable spontaneous generation or unobservable star formation or unobservable life-cycles of the Tyrannosarus Rex? Soft organs do not fossilize, but how many science texts and pop-science programs presume to discuss the intimate biology and life-cycle of extinct organisms. These quacks are taken in by any hoax or huckster, remember Piltdown Man or more recently Archeoraptor? In order to win the Scopes Trial these frauds had to use the fraudulent Piltdon man as ‘evidence’ of apes to man evolution.
Since your are obviously incapable of (1) defining your terms and (2) grappling with my arguments, what are you hopping to achieve?
“you can move on to the next step, declaring “historical science” unscientific”
Yeah, like what?
You have failed to make any remotely rational statement. I have defined terms, constructed syllogisms and
In this context, the syllogism only serves to obfuscate. Plain English will suffice, and I’ve translated your position into a concise and direct statement: “Pasteur failed to observe abiogenesis in the laboratory, and so has everybody since him. I’m skeptical of it ever having occurred without divine intervention.”
That’s a completely valid position. Atheists can’t really budge you from that position. It forces them to grudgingly concede that they haven’t demonstrated their full creation myth to their own satisfaction.
Cable specials do often go too far. Hell, Bill Nye’s episode on race painted a big elaborate story as fact that was completely shattered a few months after the episode aired. Science evolves just like critters do, it appears.
But you’re going too far the other way. We can infer that dinosaurs probably had organs pretty similar to other land vertebrates…with a certain degree of certainty. But I know where you’re going with the “hyper-skepticism” shtick and am bored with both the pseudo-intellectual games, “Behold, a syllogism!” and the AiG polemical tactics.
Consider me hyper-skeptical of your interest in life history and science in general beyond what’s necessary to make your position seem coherent among the scientifically illiterate.
It appears that your explication of all your impressive credentials in that scientific field was stuck in the spam filter. That’s all well and good, and it was obvious from the beginning that I was communicating with an intelligent and educated man.
But you’re still wrong on the Young Earth Creationism, and the impressive and rapidly growing genetic record is painting a vivid portrait which is growing more vivid by the day of our common evolutionary origin.
Granted, we don’t know how that common origin came about, or where it came from. And you could very well be right that a divine intervention was necessary to kick that off. I dunno. I’m not an atheist or a biblical literalist.
(Reductio ad Absurdum = Teach the Controversy) = flunks rational thought 101, aka Philosophy.
For the record, it seems Mr.Lewis stomped you in the dirt you came from Mr. Parrot (bugocckckkk), (a parrot noise).