RE: Big crunch idea on universe exploded

Stephen Jones (sejones@ibm.net)
Thu, 29 Jan 98 05:48:57 +0800

Scott

On Fri, 23 Jan 1998 23:42:08 -0500, Scott Rauch wrote:

>SR>On Wednesday, January 21, 1998 9:16 AM, Stephen Jones
>[SMTP:sejones@ibm.net] wrote a very good reply to my question regarding a
>multiple bang universe.

Thanks Scott.

>SR>... I keep reading names like Dicke
>R.H, and Ross H. I've heard of Guth and other's through Fred Heeren's book,
>_Show Me God_, but who are Dicke and Ross? Are they reliable? Are they from
>the "upper tier?" I suppose I am still pretty gun-shy about trusting an
>"authority." Here is an instance where I must be carefully skeptical, yet
>not reject all theistic authorities just because of my being misled in the
>past. I would appreciate your judgment (and that of anyone else who reads
>this) regarding their agenda and therefore their bias.

I don't know about the others, but Hugh Ross is definitely in the
"upper-tier". He is an evangelical Christian astronomer, who takes
and Old-Earth Progressive Creation stance. He is reliable on
astronomical matters, but may be less so on his desire to make the
Bible out to be a sort of scientific textbook. He has a web page at
http://www.reasons.org. I found his books "Creator and The Cosmos"
and "Creation and Time" useful. He also has a chapter in J.P.
Moreland's "The Creation Hypothesis". The latter is well worth
getting as a compendium of Ratzsch's "upper tier" creationist
material.

>SR>...We quote authoritative scientists and come to cosmological
>conclusions based on the evidence they supply. Yet I wonder what
>keeps them from changing their minds and admitting what appears
>obvious to most here - God created the universe, and created it
>once.

Many factors. Peer pressure? Unwillingness to admit one has been
wrong all these years? But above all, a desperate need to avoid
coming to grips with the reality of the Creator. That's why the
resisted the Big Bang so long:

"The desire to keep God out of the picture was no hidden agenda but a
clearly expressed one. British cosmologist Sir Arthur Eddington
(1882-1944) expressed his feelings clearly: "Philosophically, the
notion of a beginning of the present order of Nature is repugnant....
I should like to find a genuine loophole." " (Ross H., "The Creator
and the Cosmos", 1993, p51)

>SR>...it would seem a paradigm shift is on the way for them, too!
>Wouldn't that be neat!!!! It would be quite a coup for the Church,
>evangelically and apologetically speaking, if all these Nobel prize winners
>became Christians because the scientific evidence favored a willful God who
>*wanted* creation to exist. Of course, a God who wanted creation to exist,
>may want other things, too, and may have given us a way to find out what
>these things are that He wants. Ya think?

It would be nice, but even if they became abandoned atheism/
agnosticism, and became philosophical theists, that would not
necessarily make them Christians. That is the limitation of natural
theology-it is useful in apologetics and evangelism for defending the
faith and preparing the way for the gospel, and strengthening the
faith of Christians, but it rarely (if ever) converts unbelievers to
Christ.

>SR>Personal note: I can't thank enough everyone who responded to my
>posts. At the risk (or certainty) of sounding corny, if things
>continue, you will be directly responsible for my "returning to the
>fold." You will have given me "an answer for the hope that is in
>[me]." Thank you!

Thanks for your thanks. But which "fold" are you referring to?
Sounds to me you are still in the one fold that counts (Jn 10:16).

[...]

>SJ>...Even if the version of creation taught by the ICR is false,
>>that does not mean that the other extreme of fully naturalistic
>>"evolution" is true.

>SR>Yes, yes, yes!!! I must constantly be on guard. C. S. Lewis said Martin
>Luther likened Christianity to a drunk on a horse. First he falls off one
>side, then he gets on and falls off the other. Lately, I have been falling
>off the angry anti-creation side of the horse. I honestly appreciate being
>told when I am coming across mean-spirited or unfairly biased. Thanks for
>helping me out.

No problems. I was worried you might take it the wrong way. I prayed that
you wouldn't. Thanks be to God!

>SJ>>...The Christian church has been struggling with this for over a
>>century, and is only now coming to grips with it...."But there is
>>barely beginning to emerge a new generation of creationists...has
>>begun to produce a separation in the creationist movement-an
>>upper and lower tier...what ultimately separates the two tiers is
>>different levels of respect for accuracy and completeness of detail,
>>and different levels of awareness that a theory's looking good in
>>vague and general form is an enormously unreliable predictor of
>>whether in the long run the theory will be disemboweled by
>>recalcitrant technical details." (Ratzsch D.L., "The Battle of
>>Beginnings, 1996, p82)

>SR>It's funny you should mention this book. This is the book that caused me to
>rage. The book is great. I became enraged when I found out what the
>conservative creationists were teaching. My guess is that we laity do not
>hear what the conservative creationists teach because it is embarrassing.
>The truth devastated me.

Funny, I thought Ratzsch's book was intended to be fair to the YECs and
help others see their point of view, even if one didn't agree with
them.

>SJ>...it is still *our* responsibility to be part of the solution,
>>not part of the problem.

>SR>Yes! And these ICR guys are our brothers.

Indeed. And if God did in fact create the heavens and the earth, then
they are right on the main fact, even though they are wrong on some
of the details. And Johnson on this tapes gives the YECs credit for
standing up against Darwinism, when it was unfashionable to do so.
They have "borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day."
(Mt 20:12), when those who had less stomach for the struggle, were
trying to find ways to appease the Darwinists. I salute them!!

>SJ>>Darwinism is on the ropes, with many evolutionists
>>becoming skeptical about it and two its leading proponents Gould and
>>Dennett fighting openly in public....If you join it now, you may be
>>boarding a sinking ship!

>SR>I think Gould would say that Darwin was not a strict Darwinist.

In one sense Gould is right, but in another he is wrong. Darwin was
not a strict Darwinist in the sense that he did not claim that
natural selection was the only means of modification:

"I am convinced that Natural Selection has been the most important,
but not the exclusive, means of modification." (Darwin C., "The
Origin of Species", 6th Edition, [1872], Everyman's Library, J.M.
Dent & Sons: London, 1967 reprint, p20)

But Darwin was a strict Darwinist in the sense that he claimed his
theory would be annihilated if natural selection could be shown to
have had a rival:

"If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one
species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species,
it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced
through natural selection." (Darwin, 1872, p186)

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could
not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." (Darwin, 1872,
p170)

>SR>Strict Darwinism, as not taught by Darwin, i.e., natural selection
>as the only mechanism at work, may be untenable

As Johnson points out, this is a caricature. No Neo-Darwinist
believes that natural selection is the only mechanism at work:

"...the classical Darwinists consider Gouldās description of their
position to be a preposterous caricature. Gould has a well-earned
reputation for distorting the views of his rivals and adversaries, and it
is not surprising to find that the complaints are justified. To my
knowledge none of his targets disputes that neutral variations occur
in plenty, that developmental pathways are conserved, that significant
evolutionary change may occur in brief periods of time (geologically
speaking) after longer periods of stasis, or that the dinosaurs were
probably wiped out by a planetary catastrophe. Gould does deserve
credit for advocating these sub-theories before they became popular,
but nowadays everybody claims to be a plur alist. For his own part,
Gould does not deny the central tenet of the classicists that adaptive
complexity is due to the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection. In
his own words, "Yes, eyes are for seeing and feet are for moving.
And, yes again, I know of no scientific mechanism other than natural
selection with the proven power to build structures of such eminently
workable design." (Johnson P.E., "The Gorbachev of Darwinism", First
Things 79, January 1998, pp14-16.
http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9801/johnson.html)

It is Dawkins who is the consistent Neo-Darwinist and Gould who is
the inconsistent one. But because Neo-Darwinism adaptive
selectionism (ie. the blind watchmaker) is not suppported by the
evidence, Gould is winning. The problem for Gould is that he is
sitting on the branch that he is sawing off!

>SR>but evolution is not dead. I can't help but think attacking strict
>Darwinism is attacking a straw man (although I now see that there are
>some strict Darwinists out there), and not worth it.

See above. There are NO strict Darwinists out there who maintain
that natural selection is the only means of modification. And I
agree that "evolution is not dead". As "Darwin's bulldog T.H.
Huxley pointed out, it is "The oldest of all philosophies":

"The oldest of all philosophies, that of Evolution, was bound hand
and foot and cast into utter darkness during the millennium of
theological scholasticism. But Darwin poured new lifeblood into the
ancient frame; the bonds burst, and the revivified thought of ancient
Greece has proved itself to be a more adequate expression of the
universal order of things than any of the schemes which have been
accepted by the credulity and welcomed by the superstition of later
generations of men. - T. H. Huxley, 1887 (Sagan C., "Cosmos",
Macdonald: London, 1981, p24)

But Darwinism is another matter. Darwinism stands or falls on the
"blind watchmaker" (ie. natural selection):

"Natural selection is the blind watchmaker, blind because it does not see
ahead, does not plan consequences, has no purpose in view. Yet the
living results of natural selection overwhelmingly impress us with the
appearance of design as if by a master watchmaker, impress us with the
illusion of design and planning." (Dawkins R., "The Blind Watchmaker",
1986, p21)

As Dawkins has pointed out (and no evolutionist AFAIK has ever denied)
natural selection is the *only* mechanism that *even in principle*,
can explain the life's complex design:

"I want to persuade the reader, not just that the Darwinian world-
view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that
could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence. This makes it a
doubly satisfying theory. A good case can be made that Darwinism is
true, not just on this planet but all over the universe wherever life
may be found." (Dawkins, 1986, ppxiv)

"The Darwinian theory is in principle capable of explaining life. No
other theory that has ever been suggested is in principle capable of
explaining life." (Dawkins, 1986, p288)

"The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only
theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the
existence of organized complexity. Even if the evidence did not
favour it, it would still be the best theory available!" (Dawkins, 1986,
pp317-318)

If the "blind watchmaker" is shown to be unable to do do this complexity
building work, then "evolution" can continue as a philosophy, or as
an organising principle in biology, and even as a scientific theory to
explain the `horizontal' diversity of life, but not as an explanation
for the central mystery of mystery, that of life's complex design:

"The problem is that of complex design. The computer on which I am
writing these words has an information storage capacity of about 64
kilobytes lone byte is used to hold each character of text). The
computer was consciously designed and deliberately manufactured. The
brain with which you are understanding my words is an array of some
ten million kiloneurones. Many of these billions of nerve cells have
each more than a thousand 'electric wires' connecting them to other
neurones. Moreover, at the molecular genetic level, every single one
of more than a trillion cells in the body contains about a thousand
times as much precisely-coded digital information as my entire
computer. The complexity of living organisms is matched by the
elegant efficiency of their apparent design. If anyone doesn't agree
that this amount of complex design cries out for an explanation, I
give up." (Dawkins, 1986, p.xiii).

If Darwinism as an explanation for life's complex design goes, then
we are back to pre-Darwinian days, with atheists being unfulfilled
intellectually, and Paley's Divine Watchmaker back as the leading
model:

"The second possibility is curiously reminiscent of the special creation
theory advocated in the second half of the eighteenth century by
William Paley. After emphasizing that plants and animals are
remarkably well adapted to the environments in which they live, Paley
likened the precision of the living world to a beautifully made watch.
He then argued that, just as a watch owes its origin to a watchmaker,
the world of Nature must owe its origin to a Creator, God. His work
A View of the Evidence of Christianity was highly influential. Given
initially as a series of lectures in the University of Cambridge, the
book became required reading in that University. Indeed, up to the
twentieth century an examination, popularly known as 'Paley's
Evidences', had to be successfully passed by all graduates of the
University...What Darwin, and also Alfred Russel Wallace, did...was
to assert that natural selection would indeed get the adaptation there
in the first place...The assertion was without proof, although the
scientific world has been persuaded into thinking that exhaustive
proofs were given in The Origin of Species (1859). What we are
actually given in Darwin's book are very many changes of adaptation
by already adapted species, of which there had never been any real
cause for argument...The key issue, namely that origins from scratch
cannot be explained in the same way, is not dealt with at all. The
speculations of the Origin of Species turned out to be wrong...It is
ironic that the scientific facts throw Darwin out, but leave William
Paley, a figure of fun to the scientific world for more than a century,
still in the tournament with a chance of being the ultimate winner."
(Hoyle F. & Wickramasinghe C., "Evolution from Space", 1981,
pp96-97)

>SR>I guess I should ask what exactly is the "sinking ship?"

To those of us who are theistic realists, we believe that *Darwinism*
is a seemingly impregnable battleship which has sprung a metaphysical
leak:

"When I finished the Epilogue to Darwin on Trial in 1993, I
compared evolutionary naturalism to a great battleship afloat on the
Ocean of Reality. The ship's sides are heavily armored with
philosophical and legal barriers to criticism, and its decks are stacked
with 16-inch rhetorical guns to intimidate would-be attackers. In
appearance, it is as impregnable as the Soviet Union seemed a few
years ago. But the ship has sprung a metaphysical leak, and that leak
widens as more and more people understand it and draw attention to
the conflict between empirical science and materialist philosophy. The
more perceptive of the ship's officers know that the ship is doomed if
the leak cannot be plugged. The struggle to save the ship will go on
for a while, and meanwhile there will even be academic wine- and-
cheese parti es on the deck. In the end, the ship's great firepower and
ponderous armor will only help drag it to the bottom. Reality will
win." (Johnson P.E., "How to Sink a Battleship: A call to separate
materialist philosophy from empirical science"
http://www.origins.org/real/ri9602/johnson.html)

>SJ> Better to be critical of *both* sides, than uncritically accept
>>one side...."Test *everything*..." (1Th 5:21...), and this "everything"
includes evolution.

>SR>Yes. We cannot be afraid of the truth! Nothing that is true is the
>>enemy.

Agreed. And because Darwinism has been such a boon to atheism:

"...although atheism might have been logically tenable before Darwin,
Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist."
(Dawkins R., "The Blind Watchmaker", 1986, p6)

and a catastrophe of the first order for Christianity:

"As far as Christianity was concerned, the advent of the theory of
evolution and the elimination of traditional teleological thinking was
catastrophic. The suggestion that life and man are the result of chance
is incompatible with the biblical assertion of their being the direct
result of intelligent creative activity. Despite the attempt by liberal
theology to disguise the point, the fact is that no biblically derived
religion can really be compromised with the fundamental assertion of
Darwinian theory. Chance and design are antithetical concepts, and
the decline in religious belief can probably be attributed more to the
propagation and advocacy by the intellectual and scientific
community of the Darwinian version of evolution than to any other
single factor." (Denton M., "Evolution: A Theory in Crisis", 1985,
p66)

as Christians we are entitled to be suspicious of it, and demand a
high standard of evidence for its truth *in every particular*, before
we incorporate elements of it into our worldview.

God bless,

Steve

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Perth, West Australia v "Test everything." (1Thess 5:21)
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