More on Paul Baird's atheist "reasoning"

Here is another of my answers to Paul Baird here
Paul G.'s answers are here

I've restated it in the 3rd person and added some extras.

Baird stated :

To state, without qualification, that evolution has many 'holes', is to make an emotive statement, or at least an unsubstantiated assertion. To then cite anthropological grounds is quite unfounded.

I've been staying out of this discussion lately precisely because Mr. Baird is quite bent on defending his empty world view by the standard atheist "avoid and accuse" tactic in which he himself is offering nothing more than emotive responses instead of facts. Worse, the main substance of

Baird's arguments are irrelevant to the real issue - are there moral and logical absolutes or not? If not how can you prove it?
Without assuming logical absolutes one can prove nothing at all.

C.S Lewis noted:

"The very idea of freedom presupposes some objective moral law which overarches rulers and ruled alike...Unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish."
"If naturalism were true then all thoughts whatever would be wholly the result of irrational causes...it cuts its own throat."
"Unless thought is valid we have no reason to believe in the real universe."
"A universe whose only claim to be believed in rests on the validity of inference must not start telling us the inference is invalid..."

One cannot reason with one who denies the very validity of reason. Nor is it useful to attempt to convince one who will, at all costs, not be convinced no matter what.

Mr. Gosselin has a Masters in Anthropolgy and his thesis was on this very subject so that when he states "anthropological grounds" as putting holes in Darwinism, it is indeed well founded.

Merely saying it isn't founded is ignorance and presumption.

Pogo has also written a rather large book, fully referenced, called "Fuite de l'Absolu" (in French obviously). In that book he literally demolishes most everything you and the atheists claim.

The funniest thing again though is that you're still trying to prove that logical absolutes don't exist all while denying the existence of such. This is tantamount to a mild form of insanity. Of atheism itself being denial of reality is a mild form of insanity.

Sadly, like Mr. Baird, most atheists cannot, and more importantly, will not see the inherent contradiction involved in their relativist view.

ex. Baird stated, "because relativism, by it's nature, is dynamic."
Dynamic?! This is like calling a wild party at the local whore house dynamic.
Dynamic?! Sure if you define dynamic as that which is utterly unstable, unreliable and chaotic!!

I find it unbelievable that atheists such as Baird, go about making their "bread and butter" by preaching an empty, self-confessed "meaningless" world view with a passion worthy of the most ardent TV evangelist.
And they do this all while sporting the most arrogant self-assured snotty demeanor as Mr. Baird has demonstrated throughout this discussion!

And this "bread and butter" is a clue to the real underlying reason why.

Accepting the truth about his vain world view would undo everything he's made himself!

Indeed, Mr. Baird's reputation among fellow atheists is at stake. Heaven (or hell) forbid he'd accept such humiliation!
They would all "turn and rend" him if ever they found he'd done the unthinkable thing and conceded, as did Flew, that atheism doesn't work in the real world.

So he's merely hiding behind a rather transparent mask of self deceit.

Again:
You cannot refute the law of non-contradiction without assuming its truth.

i.e. to refute the absoluteness of any law of logic you must assume, throughout your refutation, the absolute truth of that same law.
Otherwise, nothing can proved or disproved.

Yet, instead of accepting the salient fact of this, Mr. Baird merely denies that he merely denies!!

Yet no proof whatsoever has been offered by any atheist to demonstrate that logical absolutes do not exist.

It cannot be done. For in the very attempt one proves the truth of what he attempts to refute!

This would be laughable in any other domain.
Either Mr. Baird just doesn't get it or he's very dishonest with others and himself for selfish reasons.

The sum of Mr. Baird's arguments against pogo and I thus far is this: "I deny whatever you say, and you're just emotive, ignorant and dumb, so there!"

Again, this is no surprise coming from a typical atheist defender of the inane "nothing created everything" religion.

Atheism and morality

This is an answer to an ongoing debate between theists and atheists on moral law, absolutes and such.

The original post is here: and this response is in answer to statements here: Patient and Persistant: Response to Pogo #4

Participant “pogo” wrote:

Logically if “ethics and morals can change”, then tomorrow you may also agree with Pol-Pot, Osama ben Laden or Stalin or the neighborhood rapist… Here again, in logical terms there are no real barriers (beyond peer pressure) to such a switch within your moral system. Just to be clear. Though your world-view would not exclude the morality of Mother Theresa, of Albert Schweitzer or of Martin Luther King, neither would it exclude the views of Hitler, de Sade or of Pol-Pot. It doesn’t exclude anything. If you know of an escape hatch from this equation (within your world-view), please enlighten us.

Paul Baird answered : “Sorry, Pogo, but this is emotive nonsense.”

Here is my response to Paul B.

How so? It has nothing to do with emotion.
Pogo’s statement is simply factual and logical.
You claim there is no Moral Law. Thus values are determined on whatever one pleases and ultimately anything goes.
So you can do as you want based on any criterion you happen to like at the moment.

The apostle said: “For the Law inflicts punishment; but where no Law exists, there can be no violation of Law.”
And, “…but sin [transgression of the Law] is not imputed when there is no law.”
i.e. There can be no right or wrong where there is no law.

And this is the whole point -atheism, having no independent Moral Law -because there is allegedly no source for such- it cannot logically have moral values either.
The one is dependent upon the other.

Like I’ve said several times thus far: no law = no morals for there is no rule of measurement
The only reason atheists DO have morals is because they have no choice. The moral sense is innate, “written in the heart”.
The whole idea of morals as an evolutionary adaptation for survival is ludicrous for then all morals would be based purely on non rational genetic accidents!

Paul then said:

“Would you like to explain the moral rationale of water-boarding or extraordinary rendition ? …”

Again, any specific case is simply irrelevant to the real issue.
You could bring up any number of moral debates, issues etc. they will all merely underline the fact that humans cannot get away from their moral sense and automatically measure all actions according to some assumed rule they believe “ought” to be obeyed.

The fact that there are varying opinions implies 2 things:
1. everyone is consciously or unconsciously assuming some primary Law by which they attempt to measure actions. We try to measure how “close to” or “far from” the overarching Moral Rule, any moral state or action is.
2. we do not know this Law perfectly and some are closer to it, in their moral values, than others -whatever the reason

How so? As soon as we make any moral judgment we’re insinuating that actions, in any social arena, are wrong or right according to some independent Rule used to measure them.
We’re not just saying, “Well I don’t personally like that action so I deem it wrong.”; or “You’re action bothers me emotionally and to the degree I feel bothered you ought not do that.” The other party -if atheist- could easily respond, “well why should I care what you feel and to hell with your values, mine are different!”.
No, rather we appeal to an independent Rule that we automatically assume the other party knows and ought to obey.

There can be no debate on anything either unless we have parties each attempting to convince the other that their view is the right one, i.e. closer to a Real Right -independent of mere opinion.

The whole crux of the matter is this: what is the rule you use to judge actions? If not independent of human opinion it is not binding upon any and none ought be punished for any action at all. This is what Provine clearly stated in our quotes of him.
If there is no ultimate rule then no moral judgment is even possible and no evil or good either. See previous Dawkins’ quotes.

If there is no ultimate authority there can be no binding moral Law at all.
Hence no God = no right to make law, thus all human imposed law would be mere tyranny. Worse, that tyranny itself could not be ‘wrong’.
And again, this is standard atheist dogma (not a strawman) i.e. no God = no Rule = no good or evil; simply because there is nothing but subjective personal thought to measure by. Why should subjective opinion be binding on anyone? No God = no reason at all.

Is the bible true?

Sunday, May 16, 2010

The Bible proven false?

A Hyde Park orator was denouncing the feeble efforts of the Jews to resist the Roman oppression in the first century of the Christian era, and suggested that if they had appealed more to the sword and less to the sacred writings, they might have fared much better.

One in the crowd asked, "But where are the Romans today?"
"Nowhere," was the quick answer.
"And where are the Jews today?"
"Everywhere," was the sarcastic but true reply-to the evident appreciation of the hearers.

One book is hated and feared by Communists, humanists and other atheistic groups. They claim that it is only a book of myths and legends, but they cannot tolerate it.

Here are some quick, short and of course non exhaustive statements and evidences for the bible's ongoing demand for credibility and respect. Much of this is stuff I've gathered up over the years from various sources.

# Nelson Glueck - "It may be stated categorically that no archaeological discovery has ever controverted a biblical reference."

# William F. Albright - "There can be no doubt that archaeology has confirmed the substantial historicity of Old Testament traditions."

# F.F. Bruce - "Where Luke has been suspected of inaccuracy, and accuracy has been vindicated by some inscriptional evidence, it may be legitimate to say archaeology has confirmed the New Testament record."

# Merrill Unger - "Old Testament archaeology has rediscovered whole nations, resurrected important peoples, and in a most astonishing manner filled in historical gaps, adding immeasurably to the knowledge of biblical backgrounds."

# Miller Burrows - "Archaeology has in many cases refuted the views of modern critics. It has shown in a number of instances that these views rest on false assumptions and unreal, artificial schemes of historical development ... The excessive skepticism of many liberal theologians stems not from a careful evaluation of the available data, but from an enormous predisposition against the supernatural."

1. For many critics the account of the birth of Jesus was held as ridiculous. They argued that there was no census, that Quirinius was not Governor of Syria at that time and that everyone did not have to return to his ancestral home for a census. Archaeology has proven the critics wrong (again) ---

* The Romans had a regular enrollment of taxpayers and held censuses every 14 years. The procedure was begun under Augustus.

* Quirinius was Governor of Syria about 7 B.C.

* A papyrus found in Egypt gives directions for the conduct of a census. Families were to return to their own governments to complete family registration of the enrollment and that the tilled lands might retain those belonging to them.

2. Critics said Acts was unreliable because Luke wrote that Lystra and Derbe were in Lycaonia and Iconium was not (Acts 14:6). However, in 1910, Sir William Ramsay found a monument that showed Iconium was a Phrygran city. Later discoveries confirmed that.

3. In his letter to the Romans, Paul mentions the city treasurer, Erastus (Romans 16:23). The letter was written in Corinth. Excavations of Corinth in 1929 found this inscripion on a pavement: "Erastus, curator of public buildings, laid this pavement at his own expense." The pavement dates from the 1st century A.D.

4. Many critics have blasted the usage of certain words by Luke.

• Luke called rulers in Philippi "praetors." Scholars argued that two "duumuirs" would have ruled the town. However, archaeology shows that the title of "praetor" was employed by the magistrates of a Roman colony. Luke was right.
• Luke called civil authorities in Thessalonica "politarchs." Critics said there was no such person. However, 19 inscriptions have been unearthed which use the title. Luke was right.
• Luke called Gallio "proconsul." The Delphi inscription was unearthed which reads: "As Lucius Junius Gallio, my friend and the proconsul of Achaia."

Sir William Ramsay wrote of Luke: "Luke is a historian of the first rank ... this author should be placed along with the very greatest of historians."

Concerning translations:

No single translation constitutes the only version one may consider to be inspired.
JB Phillips would tell you that it is not the word by exact word that is inspired but the meaning. The only perfect version is the originals themselves.

And they are not here and for good reason - given man's propensity to idolatry and the worship of 'things' it goes without saying that institutions like the RC church would venerate the originals and make gods out of them. So it's no wonder many sacred items of the past have been "lost". However we have every reason to accept what we do have as legitimate as I will show briefly.

With the great abundance of MSS (historic manuscripts) available for both Old Testament and New Testament texts, and the minimal problems involved with inconsistencies between them, there really is no problem at all.

We can safely say with Sir F. Kenyon (former Director of the British Museum),

"The number of manuscripts of the New Testament, or early translations from it in the oldest writers of the Church, is so large that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one or other of these ancient authorities. This can be said of no other ancient book in the world."

and,
"The interval between the dates of the original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established."

And F. J. A. Hort of Cambridge University, one of the greatest textual critics of the New Testament, in his book Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek said that, leaving aside the comparatively trivial variations between the manuscripts:
the amount of what can in any sense be called substantial variation is but a small fraction of the whole...and can hardly form more than a thousandth part of the entire text.

And if you really want to be honest and impartial you must also take into account the following facts:

Numbers of surviving manuscripts of ancient writers

The plays of Aeschylus are preserved in perhaps 50 manuscripts, of which none is complete.
Sophocles is represented by about 100 manuscripts, of which only 7 have any appreciable independent value.
The Greek Anthology has survived in one solitary copy.
The same is the case with a considerable part of Tacitus' Annals.
Of the poems of Catullus there are only 3 independent manuscripts.
Some of the classical authors, such as Euripides, Cicero, Ovid, and especially Virgil, are better served with the numbers rising into the hundreds.

The numbers of manuscripts of other writers are: for Caesar's Gallic War 10, Aristotle 49, Plato 7, Herodotus 8, Aristophanes 10.

Apart from a few papyrus scraps only 8 manuscripts of Thucydides, considered by many to be one of the most accurate of ancient historians, have survived.
Of the 142 books of the Roman History of Livy only 35 survive, represented in about 20 manuscripts.
Homer's Iliad is the best represented of all ancient writings, apart from the New Testament, with something like 700 manuscripts. However, there are many more significant variations in the Iliad manuscripts than there are in those of the New Testament.

Does one feel that the above named MSS must be totally refuted or considered unreliable? Of course not. So why is it always the bible that gets the most flack?

The answers to that question are pretty obvious - on the purely human side - it's claims and demands are much more significant than any other book.

On the psychological and spiritual side we can cite hatred or at least dislike of the idea of the Judeo/Xian God being the one true God. Indeed, the consequences are devastating for the atheist and for all other "gods" such as Zeus, Shiva etc..

No other book in all of history has received so much vehement persecution, hatred, multiplied 1000's of attempts to destroy it both physically and evidentially. No other MSS is history is so well supported by so many experts in the fields of archaeology and history.

No other book in history is so loved and so hated. Why? The answers are both obvious and subtle. Anyone not wishing to have moral claims laid upon their lives will not like the books of scripture. That much is obvious. Those who wish to worship other gods or define God as they please will not like it either. That is a bit more subtle.

In addition to Greek, we have something like 8,000 manuscripts in Latin, and an additional 8,000 or so manuscripts in other languages such as Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopic, Coptic, Gothic, Slavic, Sahidic and Georgian. As these translations began to be made before the close of the second century, they provide an excellent source for assessing the text of the New Testament writings from a very early date.

On this latter point Charles H. Welsh, in his book True from the Beginning, quotes from the third edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica:
This argument is so strong, that, if we deny the authenticity of the New Testament we may with a thousand times greater propriety reject all the other writings in the world.

Time gap from date of author to date of earliest surviving manuscript

• Tacitus - 700 years
• Livy - 400 years
• Caesar - 900 years
• Catullus - 1600 years
• Aristotle - 1400 years
• Plato - 1200 years
• Aristophanes - 1200 years
• Thucydides* - 1200 years
• Euripides - 1500 years
• Sophocles - 1400 years
• Herodotus - 1300 years

*For several papyri of Thucydides, the gap is 500-600 years.

The first complete copy of the Odyssey we have is from 2,200 years after it was written! Yet no classical scholar would listen to an argument that the authenticity of Herodotus or Thucydides is in doubt because the earliest manuscript of their works, which are of any use to us, are so much later than the originals.

The differences between MSS are almost all so minor as to change nothing of the supposed original meaning. Some add a verse here and remove one there. So what!

So what does this indicate? All persistent whining and hammering against the bible is not founded on factual evidence, reason, logic or anything of the kind! It is founded upon hatred or at least strong prejudice as is easily evidenced in this forum every single hour!

Here are some interesting quotes from a few famous people on the bible:

"It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible."
George Washington (1732-1799)

"That Book accounts for the supremacy of England."
Queen Victoria (1819-1901)

"I believe the Bible is the best gift God has ever given to man. All the good from The Savior of the world is communicated to us through this Book."
Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)

"I have known ninety-five of the world's great men in my time, and of these, eighty-seven were followers of the Bible. The Bible is stamped with a Specialty of Origin, and an immeasurable distance separates it from all competitors."
William Gladstone (1809-1898)

"The Bible is the sheet-anchor of our liberties."
Ulysses S. Grant (1822-1885)

"The Bible is no mere book, but a Living Creature, with a power that conquers all that oppose it."
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)

"It is impossible to enslave mentally or socially a Bible-reading people. The principles of the Bible are the groundwork of human freedom."
Horace Greeley (1811-1872)

"There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history."
Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727)

"All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more and more the Truths contained in the Sacred Scriptures."
Sir William Herschel (1738-1822)

Quotes prove nothing of course and one could list many 1000's of them both for and against the bible but I found the above interesting and pertinent.

Those who continue to hammer away at the bible will only break themselves on the anvil. The bible has survived 2000 years of incessant hammering, denial, attack, murderous persecutions and multiplied attempts to prove it wrong or false - and it will continue to do so ...ad infinitum.

"For most assuredly, I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not even one smallest letter{literally, iota} or one tiny pen stroke{or, serif} shall in any way pass away from the law, until all things are accomplished."

"Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away." Whether we like it or not and whether we believe it or not.

Is Atheism Mere Lack of Belief?

I receive a common claim from atheists on debate forums.

When they are told that they are as religious as theists or when they are told that atheism is itself a king of religion, they inevitably respond with the canned answer, "No atheism is not a religion or philosophy. It is simply lack of belief. You obviously don't understand atheism!"

This is of course a learned and automatic response as opposed to a critically thought out one. Atheists have learned this answer from other atheists who of course learned it from some others on and so on, off of web forums, youtube, younameit, etc.

The most astounding thing about this canned answer is that it isn't even logically viable.
Babies have no logically definable belief in God, yet they are by no means atheists.
On the contrary, Dr Justin Barrett of the University of Oxford’s Centre for Anthropology and Mind says that children have "a predisposition to see the natural world as designed and purposeful and that some kind of intelligent being is behind that purpose."
See here

Of course atheists now seek to discredit him - what else can they do? Nothing as usual.

Worse still is when the blind non-thinking atheist throws up this "You don't understand atheism" folderol.
I mean please, seriously, what's not to understand? It isn't hard, it isn't anywhere near scientific or complicated. So that part of the answer is purely rhetorical codswallop.

Is atheism mere lack of belief? Of course not. It is "lack of belief in god or gods" but it is more than that and the additional pieces are crucial.

Young children, for example, are not atheists.  My cat is not an atheist yet lacks belief. Rocks lack belief but are not atheists.
Of course then we're talking about a personal mind and free will here - free will is something which the smarter atheists do not even believe in of course but I'll pass on that for now.  So sure we can barely use cats or rocks to refute the argument by themselves.

Here is the problem with the lack of belief response:
It is not a mere lack of belief.  It is a positive choice not to believe.

The difference is enormous and fundamental.

A positive choice not to believe in a God is NOT a mere - as though passive - lack or absence of belief. It is indeed a choice to refuse to accept whatever evidence for the existence of a supreme being is presented and in most cases - at least 99% of the ones I encounter - to accept that there even is any such evidence! Pretty amazing when you then hear these same people claiming they are "open minded", "logical", "reasonable" etc.!

Atheism is indeed a metaphysical, philosophical vacuum.  It is a pretense to knowing there is no God. Merely saying, "I don't know if there is a god or not but I don't believe in any" is not really atheism.  Not knowing is agnosticism's territory - smarter than atheism but little better.

Nevertheless, when an atheist claims he is being rational in claiming there is no God, or doesn't believe in any god, he is following a self-imposed willful blindness to rationality itself, rather than the openness he claims.
There is nothing rational in atheism for rationality itself cannot be a logical conclusion of atheism.
As CS Lewis pointed out,

"If naturalism were true then all thoughts whatever would be wholly the result of irrational causes...it cuts its own throat."
and "Unless thought is valid we have no reason to believe in the real universe."

Under atheism, all life is a mere accident of a mindless, non rational, purposeless universe. How does any non rational process create mind and rationality?  To pre-empt the typical responses to this problem - such as that we have observations that confirm the reliability of our minds - I add, no you cannot test the reliability of the human mind by using the human mind. A fatal and salient contradiction occurs in the attempt!

Atheism's pretended "lack of belief" is a mis-definition of itself. And why should that surprise anyone that see through such blatant nonsense? The atheist cannot see any evidence for a supreme being in the universe because no matter what evidence is produced it is a priori denied.

One must choose to be an atheist in spite of all evidence for the existence of God and not at all because of the imagined absence of any evidence. And of course, anyone who pretends to know there is no God is either a certifiable fool or incredibly doltish for if we hear anything from atheists it is that we asked for the evidence or foundations of atheism they themselves tell us there is no possibility of proving the non existence of God! So here they admit to believing there is no God by faith!! Amazing.

Atheism is far more than mere lack of belief.  Indeed, it is a chosen adherence to a specific metaphysical position, a conscious decision, in favor of a refusal to accept any and all evidence whatsoever that there indeed could be a supreme mind underlying all creation.
That is simply logically unsupportable - even by the atheist's own pretended criterion of reason.

They themselves know that they cannot know there is no God and can never bring anything even close to proof, but are still so sure of it that they call themselves atheists! Then they go all around the web and the world screaming out insults, complaints, obscenities and boorish but gratuitous affirmations that there is no God and no evidence exists!

Like putting on an opaque blindfold and and saying, "I see no evidence for any God".
If they would only remove their own fabricated-for-the purpose blindfolds they would at last how ridiculous they look to everyone else that is looking in wonder at the obvious design in all creation. Design that must,a priori, be denied and explained away through volumes of scientific sounding sophism.

Worse still is the fact that refuting certain evidence for God's existence doesn't bring any evidence that there really is no God!
The atheist's position is thus illogical and vain and requires far more blind faith than any deist or theist position ever has, does or ever will require!

Atheism is inviable and is clearly more than a mere absence of belief. It must be chosen in spite of all evidence for God and thus for teleology.

It is a humongous web of interwoven self-deceptions based in denial of realities and positions that are testable under logic and/or observation. One such observation is the origin of the prescribed, specified, programmed for a purpose, information dwelling in every living cell - DNA/RNA.

Atheism: Nothing producing everything, for no reason with no purpose is a nonsensical piece of fairy-tale-like tripe.
No wonder atheists have always been the minority in the world and thankfully still are.

*Note: I just now (14-08-2010) found an article on this same subject by noted Christian philosopher and apologist Dr. William Lane Craig here which I encourage you read.  In this response Dr. Craig states,

For the assertion that “There is no God” is just as much a claim to knowledge as is the assertion that “There is a God.”  Therefore, the former assertion requires justification just as the latter does.

This is precisely what I am saying here.

Darwinism vs Facts

I was once challenged by a self-confessed atheist Darwinist in this way:

Are you holding back then?  Do you have some ground breaking evidence that shows that evolution is false?   I'm sure the the scientific community would love to hear about it.

Here is my initial response:

Definitions:
Information: For this entry we're talking about biologically meaningful information, or semantic information or more specifically still biosemiotics. Shannon information is useful in biology as well but not at the level required for ID. That is, both descriptive info and prescriptive info.

Complexity: Here ID refers to specified complexity - and this is not an IDist invention - it was first used by Leslie Orgel. Complexity alone is insufficient. A long string of random letters for example is complex but not specified. A string of letters from a Shakespearean sonnet is both complex and specified.

Here I quote Dr David L. Abel; The Origin of Life Science Foundation:

Semantic (meaningful) information has two subsets: Descriptive and Prescriptive. Prescriptive Information (PI) instructs or directly produces nontrivial formal function (Abel, 2009a). Merely describing a computer chip does not prescribe or produce that chip. Thus mere description needs to be dichotomized from prescription. Computationally halting cybernetic programs and linguistic instructions are examples of Prescriptive Information. “Prescriptive Information (PI) either tells us what choices to make, or it is a recordation of wise choices already made.” (Abel, 2009a)

    Not even Descriptive semantic information is achievable by inanimate physicodynamics (Pattee, 1972, 1995, 2001). Measuring initial conditions in any experiment and plugging those measurements appropriately into equations (e.g., physical “laws”) is formal, not physical. Cybernetic programming choices and mathematical manipulations are also formal.
    ...
    DNA strings are formed through the selection of one of four nucleotides at each locus in a string. These programming choices at quaternary decision nodes in DNA sequences must be made prior to the existence of any selectable phenotypic fitness (The GS Principle, (Abel, 2009b). Natural selection cannot explain the programming of genetic PI that precedes and prescribes organismic existence.

    No one has ever observed PI flow in reverse direction from inanimate physicodynamics to the formal side of the ravine—the land of bona fide formal pragmatic “control.” The GS Principle states that selection for potential function must occur at the molecular-genetic level of nucleotide selection and sequencing, prior to organismic existence (Abel, 2009b, d). Differential survival/reproduction of already-programmed living organisms (natural selection) is not sufficient to explain molecular evolution or life-origin (Abel, 2009b). Life must be organized into existence and managed by prescriptive information found in both genetic and epigenetic regulatory mechanisms. The environment possesses no ability to program linear digital folding instructions into the primary structure of biosequences and biomessages. The environment also provides no ability to generate Hamming block codes (e.g. triplet codons that preclude noise pollution through a 3-to-1 symbol representation of each amino acid) (Abel and Trevors, 2006a, 2007). The environment cannot decode or translate from one arbitrary language into another. The codon table is arbitrary and physicodynamically indeterminate. No physicochemical connection exists between resortable nucleotides, groups of nucleotides, and the amino acid that each triplet codon represents. Although instantiated into a material symbol system, the prescriptive information of genetic and epigenetic control is fundamentally formal, not physical.

If you understood that then you'll realize that the above facts already by themselves refute Darwinism at the most fundamental level - encoded meaningful information.

Douglas Axe, for example, comments on the recent and controversial experiments by Durrett and Schmidt that supposedly contradict Behe's Edge of Evolution:

By way of analogy, you might easily cause your favorite software to crash by changing a bit or two in the compiled executable file, but you can’t possibly convert it into something altogether different (and equally useful) by such a simple change, or even by a series of such changes with each version improving on the prior one. To get a substantially new piece of software, you would need to substantially re-engineer the original code knowing that your work wouldn’t pay off until it’s finished. Darwinism just doesn’t have the patience for this.

Furthermore, returning to the first question, it seems that even humble binding-site conversions are typically beyond the reach of Darwinian evolution. Durrett and Schmidt conclude that “this type of change would take >100 million years” in a human line [1], which is problematic in view of the fact that the entire history of primates is thought to be shorter than that [3].

Might the prospects be less bleak for more prolific species with shorter generation times? As it turns out, even there Darwinism appears to be teetering on the brink of collapse. Choosing fruit flies as a favorable organism, Durrett and Schmidt calculate that what is impossible in humans would take only “a few million years” in these insects. To get that figure, however, they had to assume that the damage caused buy the first mutation has a negligible effect on fitness. In other words, they had to leap from “the mutation need not be lethal” to (in effect) ‘the mutation causes no significant harm’. That’s a big leap.

What happens if we instead assume a small but significant cost—say, a 5% reduction in fitness? By their math it would then take around 400 million years for the binding-site switch to prove its benefit (if it had one) by becoming fully established in the fruit fly population. [4] By way of comparison, the whole insect class—the most diverse animal group on the planet—is thought to have come into existence well within that time frame. [5]

Do you see the problem? On the one hand we’re supposed to believe that the Darwinian mechanism converted a proto-insect into a stunning array of radically different life forms (termites, beetles, ants, wasps, bees, dragonflies, stick insects, aphids, fleas, flies, mantises, cockroaches, moths, butterflies, etc., each group with its own diversity) well within the space of 400 million years. But on the other hand, when we actually do the math we find that a single insignificant conversion of binding sites would reasonably be expected to consume all of that time.

The contrast could hardly be more stark: The Darwinian story hopes to explain all the remarkable transformations within 400 million years, but the math shows that it actually explains no remarkable transformation in that time.

If that doesn’t call for a serious rethink, it’s hard to imagine what would.

But it gets a lot worse.

Axe also, experimentally not theoretically (with site directed mutagenesis experiments on a 150-residue protein-folding domain within a B-lactamase enzyme) estimated that the probability of finding a functional protein among the possible amino acid sequences corresponding to a 150-residue protein is similarly 1 in 10^77!

If the universe is indeed some 13.7 billion years and since using the Plank length (smallest possible distance) which is 10^-33 centimeters, and the Plank time (number of possible events per sec.) which is 10^43 and then the number of elementary particles in the universe which is estimated to be 10^80 - calculating the number of possible events in the universe since the Big Bang gives ~10^139. That's using Dembski's very conservative calculation.

Other scientists have given much smaller results like University of Pittsburgh physicist Bret van der Sande's estimate of the probabilistic resources available in the universe at 10^92 - a much less favorable number for the supposed evolutionary time frame than Dembski's. Worse of course is that this is the number that applies since the beginning of the universe - not the beginning of Earth!

MIT computer scientist Seth Lloyd has calculated that the most bit operations the universe could have performed in its history (assuming the entire universe were given over to this single-minded task) is 10^120, meaning that a specific bit operation with an improbability significantly greater than 1 chance in 10^120 will likely never occur by chance. None of these probabilistic resources is sufficient to render the chance hypothesis plausible. Dembski’s calculation is the most conservative and gives chance its "best chance" to succeed. But even his calculation confirms the implausibility of the chance hypothesis, whether chance is invoked to explain the information necessary to build a single protein or the information necessary to build the suite of proteins needed to service a minimally complex cell.

The probability of producing a single 150-amino-acid functional protein by chance stands at about 1 in about 10^164 (when including P for the requirements for having only peptide bonds and only L-amino acids) - "L-amino acids" dominate on earth, etc. "If you mix up chirality, a protein's properties change enormously. Life couldn't operate with just random mixtures of stuff," - Ronald Breslow, Ph.D., University Professor, Columbia University).
Chirality: The term chiral is used to describe an object that is non-superposable on its mirror image. The concept of handedness - right, left
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chirality_%28chemistry%29 - section on biology

Thus, for each functional sequence of 150 amino acids, there are at least 10^164 other possible nonfunctional sequences of the same length. Therefore, to have a good (i.e., better than 50-50) chance of producing a single functional protein of this length by chance, a random process would have to generate (or sample) more than half of the 10^164 nonfunctional sequences corresponding to each functional sequence of that length. Unfortunately, that number vastly exceeds the most optimistic estimate of the probabilistic resources of the entire universe - that is the number of events that could have occurred since the beginning of its existence.

To see this, notice again that to have a better than 50-50 chance of generating a functional protein by chance, more than half of the 10^164 sequences would have to be produced. Now compare that number (0.5 x l0^164) to the maximum number of opportunities – 10^139 – for that event to occur in the history of the universe. Notice that the first number (.5 x 10^164) exceeds the second (10^139).

There is a better chance of pinpointing a single specific atom within the entire universe, entirely by luck, than the single functional 150 amino acid protein arriving by the same! And that's a small protein.
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The above is partly from Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell
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Remember that the above numbers are estimates since no one knows the exact age age of the universe, the earth and probabilities are often subject to other unknown variables. But the above calculations only apply to getting a single functional protein! Not a fully functional cell! Not even DNA.

Even if the odds are much better than this, they are still so bad as to merit a verdict against Darwinism's chance and selection hypothesis! In Darwinism everything is super easy for evolution! Even if the final numbers are orders of magnitude off, their implications are still so far beyond the realm of reasonable expectations as to warrant a complete abandon of the whole chemical origin of life scheme.

Furthermore, if the origin of life is physically impossible by chance and necessity then what are the chances that the same processes could cause the evolution of some ancient 'self-replicator' into more than 10 million highly specified, well adapted life forms? The answer is that the chances for that are not much better at all!

Add genetic entropy to the problem and you'll understand why neo Darwinism is a waste of time and a real science stopper.
The facts, yes facts, about genetic entropy are devastating to NDE.  If the primary mechanism of mutations + selection is shown to be inadequate then the whole NDE is undone.  And this has already been shown to a degree requiring a negative verdict!  Mutations, the prime source of genetic variation, are largely near neutral (very slightly deleterious), many are deleterious (some fatal) and some, but very rare are beneficial. 

Atheist Sir F. Hoyle commented on this problem:

"I am convinced it is this almost trivial simplicity that explains why the Darwinian theory is so widely accepted, why it has penetrated through the educational system so completely. As one student text puts it, `The theory is a two-step process. First variation must exist in a population. Second, the fittest members of the population have a selective advantage and are more likely to transmit their genes to the next generation.' But what if individuals with a good gene A carry a bad gene B. having the larger value of |s|. Does the bad gene not carry the good one down to disaster? What of the situation that bad mutations must enormously exceed good ones in number? ... The essential problem for the Darwinian theory in its twentieth century form is how to cope with this continuing flood of adverse mutations, a far cry indeed from the trite problem of only the single mutation in (1.1). Supposing a favourable mutation to occur among the avalanche of unfavourable ones, how is the favourable mutation to advance against the downward pressure of the others?" (Hoyle, F., "Mathematics of Evolution," [1987]

and  again...

"Two points of principle are worth emphasis. The first is that the usually supposed logical inevitability of the theory of evolution by natural selection is quite incorrect. There is no inevitability, just the reverse. It is only when the present asexual model is changed to the sophisticated model of sexual reproduction accompanied by crossover that the theory can be made to work, even in the limited degree to be discussed .... This presents an insuperable problem for the notion that life arose out of an abiological organic soup through the development of a primitive replicating system. A primitive replicating system could not have copied itself with anything like the fidelity of present-day systems .... With only poor copying fidelity, a primitive system could carry little genetic information without L [the mutation rate] becoming unbearably large, and how a primitive system could then improve its fidelity and also evolve into a sexual system with crossover beggars the imagination." (Hoyle, F., "Mathematics of Evolution," [1987], Acorn Enterprises: Memphis TN, 1999

Renown geneticist Dr. John Sandford's recent work in this area is also highly revealing.  Here  is what he said on the endeavor itself (my bold):

Late in my career, I did something which for a Cornell professor would seem unthinkable. I began to question the Primary Axiom [neo Darwinism]. I did this with great fear and trepidation. By doing this, I knew I would be at odds with the most “sacred cow” of modern academia. Among other things, it might even result in my expulsion from the academic world.    Although I had achieved considerable success and notoriety within my own particular specialty (applied genetics), it would mean I would have to be stepping out of the safety of my own little niche. I would have to begin to explore some very big things, including aspects of theoretical genetics which I had always accepted by faith alone. I felt compelled to do all this, but I must confess I fully expected to simply hit a brick wall. To my own amazement, I gradually realized that the seemingly “great and unassailable fortress” which has been built up around the primary axiom is really a house of cards. The Primary Axiom is actually an extremely vulnerable theory, in fact it is essentially indefensible. Its apparent invincibility derives mostly from bluster, smoke, and mirrors. A large part of what keeps the Axiom standing is an almost mystical faith, which the true-believers have in the omnipotence of natural selection. Furthermore, I began to see that this deep-seated faith in natural selection was typically coupled with a degree of ideological commitment which can only be described as religious. I started to realize (again with trepidation) that I might be offending a lot of people’s religion!

To question the Primary Axiom required me to re-examine virtually everything I thought I knew about genetics. This was probably the most difficult intellectual endeavor of my life. Deeply entrenched thought pattern only change very slowly (and I must add — painfully). What I eventually experienced was a complete overthrow of my previous understandings. Several years of personal struggle resulted in a new understanding, and a very strong conviction that the Primary Axiom was most definitely wrong. More importantly, I became convinced that the Axiom could be shown to be wrong to any reasonable and open-minded individual. This realization was exhilarating, but again frightening. I realized that I had a moral obligation to openly challenge this most sacred of cows. In doing this, I realized I would earn for myself the most intense disdain of most of my colleagues in academia not to mention very intense opposition and anger from other high places.

In his book, which I will not attempt to quote extensively, he notes:

One of the most astounding recent findings in the world of genetics is that the human mutation rate (just within our reproductive cells) is at least 100 nucleotide substitutions (misspellings) per person per generation (Kondrashov, 2002). Other geneticists would place this number at 175 (Nachman and Crowell, 2000). These high numbers are now widely accepted within the genetics community. Furthermore, Dr. Kondrashov, the author of the most definitive publication, has indicated to me that 100 was only his lower estimate — he believes the actual rate of point mutations (misspellings) per person may be as high as 300 (personal communication). Even the lower estimate, 100, is an amazing number, with profound implications. When an earlier study revealed that the human mutation rate might be as high as 30, the highly distinguished author of that study, concluded that such a number would have profound implications for evolutionary theory (Neel et al. 1986).

Moreover, there are strong theoretical reasons for believing there is no truly neutral nucleotide position. By its very existence, a nucleotide position takes up space, affects spacing between other sites, and affects such things as regional nucleotide composition, DNA folding and nucleosome binding. If a nucleotide carries absolutely zero information, it is then by definition slightly deleterious - as it slows cell replication and wastes energy. Just as there are really no truly beneficial neutral letters in a encyclopedia, there are probably no truly neutral nucleotide sites in the genome. Therefore there is no way to change any given site, without some biological effect - no matter how subtle. Therefore, while most sites are probably “nearly neutral”, very few, if any, should be absolutely neutral.   - Dr. John Sanford, Cornell geneticist, Genetic Entropy The most recent paper on mutation rates is this : http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090827/full/news.2009.864.html - which basically confirms the 100-200 figure.

And so much for "junk DNA":

The ENCODE consortium's major findings include the discovery that the majority of DNA in the human genome is transcribed into functional molecules, called RNA, and that these transcripts extensively overlap one another. This broad pattern of transcription challenges the long-standing view that the human genome consists of a relatively small set of discrete genes, along with a vast amount of so-called junk DNA that is not biologically active.

Also - You still must account for semantic information in biological systems. And it is that information, along with the complex algorithms that process it, that makes Darwinism unfeasible.
Materialism, by very definition, cannot account for the existence of semantic information in living things. That kind of information absolutely requires intelligence - no exceptions exist.

I have repeated this next fact over and over again and never gotten any refutation other than mere denial!  - Code, by definition, implies intelligence and the genetic code is real code, mathematically identical to that of language, computer codes etc. all of which can only arise by intelligent convention of symbologies.

The fact that the genetic code is real code and not merely analogous to code is another devastating fact against NDE.
Moreover the genome contains meta information and there is now evidence of meta-programming as well.
Meta info is information on information and we now know the genome contains such structures. But meta information cannot arise without knowledge of the original information.

Meta programming is even more solid evidence of intelligence at work.
We now know that in yeast DNA alone there are more than 300 nano machines at work performing various tasks in the cell, many of which are performed concurrently. Yet concurrency in info processing systems cannot arise without pre-knowledge of tasks requiring coordinated action!

Stuart Pullen in his book Intelligent Design or Evolution (available for reading on line, rightly calls this information "molecular knowledge".
Read his book to see why a chance and necessity OOL hypothesis is utterly impossible.
It is also viewable here
His mathematical analysis of the chance - necessity scenario is utterly devastating to any chance OOL hypothesis and thus could be equally devastating to the Darwinian evolution of life hypothesis merely by applying the sample principles to complex bio machines.

In short the nature of cellular information systems in the genome literally rules out chance and necessity for any viable origin theory.
An intelligence HAD to be intimately involved in its formation and function.

Worse still for NDE, we now know that the genome contains many poly-poly0functional and thus constrained sequences. But this poly-functionality really stretches the credibility of any chance + necessity hypothesis of ever having any chance at all of success!
In any poly-functional-constrained system, undoing - by random mutation - any one function necessarily undoes the whole.

As Sanford states,

    This “complex interwoven (poly-fuctional) network” throughout the entire DNA code makes the human genome severely poly-constrained to random mutations (Sanford; Genetic Entropy, 2005; page 141). This means the DNA code is now much more severely limited in its chance of ever having a hypothetical beneficial mutation since almost the entire DNA code is now proven to be intimately connected to many other parts of the DNA code. Thus even though a random mutation to DNA may be able to change one part of an organism for the better, it is now proven much more likely to harm many other parts of the organism that depend on that one particular part being as it originally was. Since evolution was forced, by the established proof of Mendelian genetics, to no longer view the whole organism as to what natural selection works upon, but to view the whole organism as a multiple independent collection of genes that can be selected or discarded as natural selection sees fit, this “complex interwoven network” finding is extremely bad news, if not absolutely crushing, for the “Junk DNA” population genetics scenario of evolution (modern neo-Darwinian synthesis) developed by Haldane, Fisher and Wright (page 52 and 53: Genetic Entropy: Sanford 2005

One of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th centuy was Kurt Godel.

The formation within geological time of a human body by the laws of physics (or any other laws of similar nature), starting from a random distribution of elementary particles and the field, is as unlikely as the separation by chance of the atmosphere into its components. The complexity of the living things has to be present within the material [from which they are derived] or in the laws [governing their formation] -Kurt Gödel

We could also add the implications of self correction mechanisms within the genome as further evidence of design since no correction can be made to any complex system without knowledge of its correct system state and thus no such mechanism can arise randomly.
I won't get into apoptosis and the rest here but you can read my post on Programmed Cell Death.

ID is a necessity in OOL (origin of life) and OOS (origin of species) explanations. The only thing we can reliably say of Darwinian mechanisms is that adaptation and variation occur - but only in a limited way - within the "kind".
Now, since evolutionists are always asking what taxonomic category the biblical kind is here is my own answer: The "kind" probably corresponds best with the taxonomic 'family'.
I.E. - No lizard to dog, frog to prince, bacteria to banana, banana to monkey, Darwinist to squid, etc. is even possible given the above humongous improbabilities.