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.
-----
The above is partly from Stephen Meyer's Signature in the Cell
-----
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.

Programmed Cell Death

Cells have built-in error correction and repair mechanisms. Such mechanisms cannot be accounted for by any Darwinian hypothesis since error detection implies knowledge. Knowledge of correct system state and planning of appropriate repair measures.

Here's one problem with the Darwinian "it just evolved" hypothesis :
Q: How can a repair mechanism arise without pre-knowledge of correct system state?
A: It cannot. Not when the damage caused interrupts and when corrective facilities are this specifically complex

The one thing I find myself repeatedly having to explain to Darwinists in topics like this is that error detection/correction absolutely, totally demands pre-knowledge of correct system state.

Darwinists never get this crucial problem with their materialist theory.
This is probably related to their other mental illnesses - specifically acute cognitive dissonance.

Implication? DNA had to be designed by an intelligent agent.

In software development, programmers build what we call "exception trapping" mechanisms.
Such mechanisms 'watch' a given function progress and trap errors (exceptional system events) when detected. The trapping code then directs program flow either to analysis functions and correctional code or if the error is minor simply continue processing after the code block that failed (caused the exception) and may possibly alert the user to a faulty input situation.

DNA has it's own special codes for detecting and 'catching' the exceptions that occur. Triggered by a diverse range of cell signals.

Neo Darwinian evolution (NDE) cannot explain the existence of such built-in functions.

Worse (for NDE) : Not only is there repair of damage available to the cell's system but there is even a last resort "correction" (but not repaired) measure called apoptosis - pre-programmed cell death! Apoptosis  is "a type of cell death in which the cell uses specialized cellular machinery to kill itself; a cell suicide mechanism that enables metazoans to control cell number and eliminate cells that threaten the animal's survival" (also plays a role in preventing cancer). Its a key process in multicellular organisms.

This too is not explicable under NDE.

So, in a more engineering like term we can look at this process as something like a control-feedback loop. Such 'loops' exist in many places in the cell; like the circadian oscillator (Paely's watch!) - "a clockwork mechanism that controls these global rhythms of transcription, chromosomal topology, and cell division."

Well then, the evolutionary ancestor to that was what?

Darwinism utterly fails to predict sophisticated repair mechanisms like these. Only pre-knowledge of correct system state can foresee and then construct code sequences that operate repairs to or destruction of faulty parts in a complex machine.
DNA is such a machine.

Here's a simple way of testing what I'm saying:
Test: write a coherent sentence in English on a piece of paper.  Make sure to include several glaring grammatical and spelling errors.
Now, find a monolingual Chinese person and ask them to find and correct the mistakes.
See?
No pre-knowledge of English grammar, symbolism, spelling etc. = no ability to either detect or correct.
Same applies to any such error trapping/correcting in any system - including biological ones.
Now try to imagine something that tries to correct your sentence without any goals, plans, brains or purpose.
It will never happen.

Design is the inevitable and scientifically correct explanation. Period

Objective moral foundations in atheism don’t exist

This is not to say that atheists have no moral values. Most do. Sometimes very good ones too. But they are borrowed values. Values usually taken from Judeo/Christian roots, or from simple conscience or some assumed value in collective cultural agreements.

The question is not, however, whether atheists have morals. The question is what is the foundation of those morals. Upon what grounds of logic or reason have these morals been founded?

In the end, they have none. At least, nothing objective. Nothing truly, solidly or binding. And of course they have, in their own heads, no one to whom they are ultimately accountable.

There are a great many atheists who attempt to find grounds for their moral values without reference to any absolute Moral Law. This is normal. They want to have moral values but, not believing in God or absolutes, they are forced to find their grounds in something else. Invariably this something ends up being untenable and sometimes very illogical.

Some invent “objective” values based on materialist evaluations of the material consequences of actions. Others become relativists who, of course, can’t really practice what they claim to believe.

Relativism is self-contradictory by nature.

In my experience in debating moral foundations with atheists I’ve found that people who persist in attempting to demonstrate that there are no objective moral values, invariably dig in further to proving there are.

Obviously these types of people believe they are objectively “right”. But then , if what they say is true, they cannot be “right” or “wrong” about anything if what they state is true!

Relativism cuts its own throat.

They will often try to debunk objective moral values by pointing, as usual, at religions and the differences between them as being being immense. They tend to completely ignore the universality of morals and the universality of belief in a higher authority throughout all ages and in all peoples tribes and nations. Instead, they will focus on generally insignificant details in differences between one religion’s set of morals and anothers. Almost always centering attention on the outward workings of the underlying principles instead of the underlying principles themselves.

They will say something like the following I heard recently, “And where it [religion based morality] differs, all claims to objective morality vanish, because the claims are dependent upon a subjective opinion as to which deity is correct.”

Bad logic of course. This assumes that every specific religions deity is fundamentally different and opposite to every other. Another falsehood. They are in fact very similar in all fundamentals.
Moral values - their very existence - can easily lead us to conclude there must of necessity be some over-governing power to moral law. Atheists, of course, must deny this or become theists.
One of them said to me, “Like it or not, consensus response to material consequences is the way societies decide right from wrong.”

Frankly this is very off the mark. The way humans judge of morality is not according to material consequence but according to reason and then every consequence, material of other. But material consequence alone can never be the rule of judgment. It also requires some objective rule of evaluation for determining what consequences or more important than others.

Now one thing that has always both bothered me and amused me is this - atheists will often invade Internet debate forums on the subject and squeal and whine like little pigs, profanities and insults included, trying to tell you that there are no objective values. And the funny thing about this is that they are all objectively sure! They claim there are no absolutes and they are at once absolutely sure!

Do they think they’re doing some objective “good” in the universe by attending forums and debates to denounce objective morals, absolute values and/or God? Of course they do otherwise why do they bother?!

But how strange is this since, according to their own dogma, they really cannot because they also claim that there is no fundamental right or wrong! No fundamental truth or moral standard external to man. Thus what possible real “good” can debating the matter accomplish? None. All views are relative and the universe has no meaning. (Of course they all believe their own life has some inherent meaning which they invent out nothingness for themselves regardless of the universe being meaningless)

So what’s the point? It’s all useless in the end, in their view, and all views will perish in short time.

So their very presence is indication enough that they do indeed perceive a real objective absolute “truth” to exist. Otherwise they would know they are wasting time trying to objectively prove there is none.

And worse is that, like I said before, they focus on external details - (usually minor; polygamy, sanctions, how women are treated amongst various religions and etc.) - in the actual out-workings of law, to find their arguments against objectivity.

But even in this they must assume an underlying rule over-riding all. Thus any persistence in focusing on outward details is clearly a wrong approach.

Why don’t they focus on child rape? Find me a religion that has approved of this besides satanism or its cousins! There is none and never has been - except of course certain atheistic or demon sex cults who believe there are no objective morals and so they need not answer to anyone - like the NAMBLA member who was so insulted in a TV interview when the host asked him about the moral legitimacy of men in “love” (ie sexual) relations with very young boys.

Atheists assume underlying values which they are use to argue against objective values! Very strange indeed.

One said to me, “It is the human response to results that is the basis of what we consider ‘right’ and ‘wrong’“.

But again, Reason is what brings the moral considerations, not human response to material consequences. And upon what basis would the mere human response be sufficient for establishing an objective rule? Is this the way they live every day? I don’t think so, nor could they - they’d end up in the cell block of the asylum.

The atheist claims that we are the results of billions of unlikely concurrent, conjunctive
accidents - random mutations + selection. (Darwinism is it’s science.) So where do they get off inventing objective morals for themselves, or any morals at all? Or, where can they find a solid rule of moral action since they themselves are nothing like “solid” or meaningful? It never adds up.

We are, in the materialist view, without soul, spirit, heart (let all the artists in the world weep). Without free will (see Dawkins or Provine). Without anything but bio-chem processes in our brains and nervous systems that dictate what we are and even what we believe (Dawkins’ memes), yet they boldly state the contrary — when it serves their own purpose of course.

Again I was told, “All such claims [to a real objective morality] are comprehensively dismantled by studying the basis for any specific set of claims, the irreconcilable contradictions between competing claims, and the fluidity of claims over time. Every religion has its own ‘objective’ morality, and they are, to significant extents, mutually exclusive. “

First, their own proofs of being objectively right, are thus dismantled by the same rule of logic!
But no, their moral values are nothing like significantly different. Rather significantly similar!!

Thankfully there are virtually no “irreconcilable contradictions” nor is there any significant “fluidity over time”. All the most basic, fundamental Moral values remain unchanged over millennia.

It’s rather surprising they can’t see how obvious this is.

CS Lewis gives a quick list of fundamental values amongst very different religions through the ages in his book, “The Abolition of Man” now on-line here :

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition1.htm#1

and the comparative list is here : http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition4.htm

a few short quotes :
“I have not slain men” - ancient Egyptian - confession of a righteous soul - book of the dead

“in Nastrond I saw murderers” - Old Norse - Volospa 38,39 (nastrond=hell)
“do no murder” - Hebrew -exodus 20

“Slander not” - ancient Babylonian - Hymn to Samas
“do not bring a false witness against your neighbour” - Hebrew exodus 20
“utter not a word by which anyone could be wounded” - Hindu
“never do to others what you would not like them to do to you” - ancient Chinese - Analects of Confucius

“speak kindness…show good will” - Hymn to Samas
“men were brought into existence for the sake of men that they might do one another good” - roman Cicero De Off.
“man is mans delight” - Old Norse Havamal 47
“what good man regards any misfortune as no concern of his?” - roman Juvenal15, 140

“love your wife studiously. gladden her heart all your life” - ancient Egyptian - ere
“has he appraoched his neighbour’s wife?” - babylonian - List of Sins
“you shall not commit adultery” - Hebrew
“In Nastrond I saw beguilers of others’ wives” - Old Norse Volospa

“take no vengeance though they do you wrong” - Old Norse Sigdrifumal, 22
“do not avenge yourselves” - christian Paul

“I have not stolen” - Egyptian - confessions… ibid.
“do not steal” - Hebrew
“to wrong, to rob, to cause to be robbed” - Babylonian List of Sins

It simply isn’t true that there are so many contradictions in the base principles of morality. There is always and universally an underlying belief in justice, goodness, mercy, truth, faithfulness, loyalty, kindness, patience, love, humility, candor, honesty, fair play, benevolence…..

No exceptions outside of satanism and it’s relatives. And even the “values” of satanism prove atheists wrong!

In summary, the atheist ought to re-think his life. Perhaps : “Oh God, if there is a God, save my soul, if I have a soul.” would be an adequate prayer for him.

You don’t have a soul, you ARE a soul, you have a body.

The Euthyphro dilemma?

This is, and has been for centuries, considered by atheists and anti-moralists as the ultimate refutation of God. Specifically of Divine Command theory.

This dilemma basically goes as follows:

In Plato’s dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro, Socrates is attempting to understand the essence of piety and holiness:

Socrates: And what do you say of piety, Euthyphro? Is not piety, according to your definition, loved by all the gods?

Euthyphro: Certainly.

Socrates: Because it is pious or holy, or for some other reason?

Euthyphro: No, that is the reason.

Socrates: It is loved because it is holy, not holy because it is loved?

The dilemma Euthyphro faced is this: Is a thing good simply because the gods say it is? Or do the gods say a thing is good because of some other quality it has? If so, what is that quality? The problem stumped Euthyphro.

Russel put it this way:

If you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, you are then in this situation: Is that difference due to God’s fiat or is it not? If it is due to God’s fiat, then for God Himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God’s fiat, because God’s fiats are good and not good independently of the mere fact that he made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God

First, I refer interested parties to the following sites: http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5236
and : http://www.charlesgfinney.com/1840skeletons/sk_lecture23.htm

These 2 sites offer or some good responses to this issue and teh Moral Law of in general. I will quote from one or the other in some small measure here.

Basically, no being can make law. But no law can exist without sanctions. And no sanctions can exist without a Ruling, conscious Magistrate to adiminster them…reason it farther - the ultimate conclusions are obvious enough - God’s existence is necessary to the existence of ultimates moral values.

However, nothing is easier than defining this *dilemma* out of existence. Why? Because there is no dilemma in the 1st place!

The pretended dilemma argues what it does not understand and founds it’s argument on a falsity, an incorrect presumption - that the moral Law and God are two separate things.

So, in one phrase it may be undone - “God is the Law and the Law is God.”

God is the inspirited, incarnate, Living Law - they are one. Not independant entities.

What is said of God is exactly what may be said of the Moral Law “the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature”. Every thing that one can discern of all true objective moral realities can also be said of God himself.

And of course, this is the view of the bible and Christianity. “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because *God is love*.”

Love is good willing. It is benevolence. It is seeking the highest good. “Love does no wrong to a neighbor; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.” “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’”

The Law is One. An indivisible unit all summed up in one word “love” - agape - disinterested, unselfish good willing. And that so describes who and what God is, that the two are inseparable, immutable, unchangeable and eternally, mutually existent - one in the other.

Thus no God = no law and no law = no God. And thus the existence of God = existence of Law vice versa. So the very existence of a real, objective Moral Law running everywhere where there are sentient, self-deteminingbeings, is evidence of the existence of God.

Just as both philosophers (check Kant on this) and theologians and simple everyday people have been saying from times immemorial.

“Do as you would be done by” is the worlds oldest, most universal command. It describes love which describes the Moral Law which describes who God is and what he is like.

As for the so-called tautologies and contradictions involved with the infamous “dilemma”, they are the very well documented territory of Darwinism and atheism as any one know if they’d really done any proper homework on the issue.

Is there purpose in Darwinian life or not?

This is partly from an article on the uncommondecent site, which I made comments on. Only my own comments are here.
The article quotes from various school biology text books.

“[E]volution works without either plan or purpose — Evolution is random and undirected.”

(Biology, by Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph S. Levine (1st ed., Prentice Hall, 1991), pg. 658; (3rd ed., Prentice Hall, 1995), pg. 658; (4th ed., Prentice Hall, 1998), pg. 658; emphasis in original.)

“Humans represent just one tiny, largely fortuitous, and late-arising twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life.”

(Stephen J Gould quoted in Biology, by Peter H Raven & George B Johnson (5th ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pg 15; (6th ed., McGraw Hill, 2000), pg. 16.)

“By coupling undirected, purposeless variation to the blind, uncaring process of natural selection, Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”

(Evolutionary Biology, by Douglas J. Futuyma (3rd ed., Sinauer Associates Inc., 1998), p. 5.)

“Darwin knew that accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that matter is the stuff of all existence and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. Darwinian evolution was not only purposeless but also heartless–a process in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit. Suddenly, humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all, there was no divine plan to guide us.”

(Biology: Discovering Life by Joseph S. Levine & Kenneth R. Miller (1st ed., D.C. Heath and Co., 1992), pg. 152; (2nd ed.. D.C. Heath and Co., 1994), p. 161; emphases in original.)

“Adopting this view of the world means accepting not only the processes of evolution, but also the view that the living world is constantly evolving, and that evolutionary change occurs without any ‘goals.’ The idea that evolution is not directed towards a final goal state has been more difficult for many people to accept than the process of evolution itself.”

(Life: The Science of Biology by William K. Purves, David Sadava, Gordon H. Orians, & H. Craig Keller, (6th ed., Sinauer; W.H. Freeman and Co., 2001), pg. 3.)

“The ‘blind’ watchmaker is natural selection. Natural selection is totally blind to the future. … Humans are fundamentally not exceptional because we came from the same evolutionary source as every other species. It is natural selection of selfish genes that has given us our bodies and brains … Natural selection is a bewilderingly simple idea. And yet what it explains is the whole of life, the diversity of life, the apparent design of life.”

(Richard Dawkins quoted in Biology by Neil A. Campbell, Jane B. Reese. & Lawrence G. Mitchell (5th ed., Addison Wesley Longman, 1999), pgs. 412-413.)

“Of course, no species has ‘chosen’ a strategy. Rather, its ancestors—little by little, generation after generation—merely wandered into a successful way of life through the action of random evolutionary forces …. Once pointed in a certain direction, a line of evolution survives only if the cosmic dice continues to roll in its favor. … [J]ust by chance, a wonderful diversity of life has developed during the billions of years in which organisms have been evolving on earth.”

(Biology by Burton S. Guttman (1st ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pgs. 36-37.)

“It is difficult to avoid the speculation that Darwin, as has been the case with others, found the implications of his theory difficult to confront. … The real difficulty in accepting Darwin’s theory has always been that it seems to diminish our significance. Earlier, astronomy had made it clear that the earth is not the center of the solar universe, or even of our own solar system. Now the new biology asked us to accept the proposition that, like all other organisms, we too are the products of a random process that, as far as science can show, we are not created for any special purpose or as part of any universal design.”

(Invitation to Biology, by Helena Curtis & N. Sue Barnes(3rd ed., Worth, 1981), pgs. 474-475.)

“The advent of Darwinism posted even greater threats to religion by suggesting that biological relationship, including the origin of humans and of all species, could be explained by natural selection without the intervention of a god. Many felt that evolutionary randomness and uncertainty had replaced a deity having conscious, purposeful, human characteristics. The Darwinian view that evolution is a historical process and present-type organisms were not created spontaneously but formed in a succession of selective events that occurred in the past, contradicted the common religious view that there could be no design, biological or otherwise, without an intelligent designer. … The variability by which selection depends may be random, but adaptions are not; they arise because selection chooses and perfects only what is adaptive. In this scheme a god of design and purpose is not necessary. Neither religion nor science has irrevocably conquered. Religion has been bolstered by paternalistic social systems in which individuals depend on the beneficiences of those more powerful than they are, as well as the comforting idea that humanity was created in the image of a god to rule over the world and its creatures. Religion provided emotional solace … Nevertheless, faith in religious dogma has been eroded by natural explanations of its mysteries, by a deep understanding of the sources of human emotional needs, and by the recognition that ethics and morality can change among different societies and that acceptance of such values need not depend on religion.”

(Evolution by Monroe, W. Strickberger (3rd ed., Jones & Bartlett, 2000), pg. 70-71)

“Nothing consciously chooses what is selected. Nature is not a conscious agent who chooses what will be selected. … There is no long term goal, for nothing is involved that could conceive of a goal.”

(Evolution: An Introduction by Stephen C. Stearns & Rolf F. Hoeckstra, pg. 30 (2nd ed., Oxford University Press, 2005).)

“[A]s E.O. Wilson puts it, a chicken is really the chicken genes’ way of making more copies of themselves. … [A]s an evolutionary biologist I believe that in some sense we exist solely to propagate the genes within us.”
(Animal Behavior: An Evolutionary Approach, by John Alcock, pgs 16, 609 (Sinauer Associates, Inc, 1998).)
--------------------

“I believe that in some sense we exist solely to propagate the genes within us.”

This, of course, brings back to the table the underlying implications of such nonsense - rape, for example, is a biological adaptation to this end - so is every thing else including murder.

Darwinists may try, as some still erringly and vainly do, to get out of it but there is no way out. Not using reason. Of course the atheistDarwinist may attempt to "invent" purpose for himself, but that purpose is vain, unilateral and ultimately no pourpose at all since, by necessity, it exists within the overall meaninglessness of the universe.

Now if this “gene propagation as sole purpose” is true then a pertinent question forces it’s way to the front - WHY?

Why should we exist in the 1st place? Why should we “propagate the genes”? To what end? Why should humans, or anything else for that matter, *survive* at all?

According to all the above quotes, to no end whatsoever. Survival for survival’s sake! What a bore!

Again, as CS Lewis so aptly said, “Atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning…”
and :
“If naturalism were true then all thoughts whatever would be wholly the result of irrational causes…it cuts its own throat.”

This is self-evident.

Unfortunately, the atheistic Darwinist camp is incapable of seeing this. They have been brainwashed by years of Darwinist propaganda - everywhere - and thus are in serious need of de-programming!

Ex: I once asked a Darwinist/atheist that if there were no absolutes, no ultimate truths, no real purpose then “2+2 does not always necessarily = 4?”. He replied, “exactly”.

And he was “absolutely” sure!

A strange form of intellectualized insanity follows.

This man is an IT pro who necessarily relies on math to accomplish his day to day job! But in his mind 2+2 may equal something other than 4 somehow, somewhere over the rainbow.

Thankfully he lives in a happy contradiction between reality and his own ideas - applying math *as though it were true* inspite of himself!

This is the postmodern dilema/contradiction and it leads the society that adheres to this sophism, to intellectualized, virtual insanity. “If it’s true, then it can’t be true”.

In this sorry view, there is no answer and we should not be seeking one.

Reason itself slowly dies and is replaced by any idiocy you please - such as the above inane citations from the bio-text authors (based on this bizarre relativist metaphysic).

I’ve been noting the decline of true reason in the public for a while now.
It’s frightening to see the erroneous, faulty logic that more and more people use in public.

Like the pedophile who was interviewed on a major US TV network who was working hard to get sexual relations between men and little boys legalized. He spoke easily and without the slightest inclination to shame and when challenged on the morality of it, began whining about the purposeless universe where there are no absolutes etc… and thus there was no right or wrong involved!

“Who are you to claim this is wrong?!” From the atheistic stance there was no contradicting him! For as Provine displayed, “There are no ultimate foundations for ethics”, no free will and all is biologically pre-programmed by our genes!!

All is thus purely subjective and no objective values can exist - not under these anserine schemes wherein Darwinism plays a major role and gene propagation is the sole ulimatum!

I fear that a major “outbreak” of mental illness will ensue as a result of the flight from absolutes. A flight into chaos - moral and mental.

When you see sophists defending the bio-origins of rape - like Thornhill - it’s time to wake up and smell the poison. But Thornhill and cie, are merely taking Darwinism to it’s logical ends!

F. Shaeffer’s “death of reason” is at our doorsteps and becoming more visible each passing year.

And Darwinism is this new follys’ “science” - it doesn’t matter how ludicrous the explanations are - it must be thus because the postmodern, anti-absolute mindset requires it. To say the contrary threatens the whole relativist/darwinist edifice.

No prupose but gene propagation? What a boring, feckless mindset! No wonder the “Darwinist culture” states are all off the wall endlessly seeking sexual satisfaction!

It’s all over the TV’s, movies etc. and the racks of porn mags in every store just keep growing and getting more explicit and perverse each year!

Time for a radical change!
“Unless we return to the crude and nursery-like belief in objective values, we perish.” - CS Lewis

It also seems rather confusing that here we have this article showing what’s in the bio-books stating that there is no purpose but self propagation (i.e. selfishness) and no goals or direction in life, and at the same time we have another book just out called “Darwin Loves you” wherein the author attempts to banish all these ideas and give Darwinism some “purposeful” credibility.

See the book's description here -> Darwin loves you

And this just happens to coincide with creationist/ID camp’s having been exposing the clear metaphysics involved over the past few years! Coincidince? I don’t think so.

They’ve been exposed. So the high priests of Darwinian fundamentalism and are now rushing to save the precious theory, once again, from inevitable public disaster seeking to reconcile it again to reason and common sense.

Glaring contradictions abound in the postmodern mindset indeed. When will these people awaken from their dream?

Sometimes I fear it will take another world war before the consequences of this atheistic Darwinian intellectual suicide are realized.