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"A scientist may not believe in ... an eternally existing Creator, Who has
no creator. Yet, he will easily believe that dull matter is eternal and that
all things, including consciousness were created from it though it has no
creator and he can never prove it. The fact that he cannot prove it and in
fact knows that it is un-provable does not deter him in the least from his
conclusion. Rather he is unshakable in his belief and finds so many reasons
to support this belief. He becomes more and more convinced of his opinion as
he compiles fact upon fact to reassure himself all the while neglecting the
scientific method which he proclaims as superior to all others."
Creation of Nature
11/18/2018
Just so you know, the author of this site:
Is a creationist, but not a Biblical
creationist. He maintains a belief in an original creator with purpose,
plan, values and intelligent design and production capability.
Accepts that will, spirit and intelligence
preceded the creation of the material realm.
Is not a "young earther" but accepts that
the surface of the earth has been terra-formed by the deliberate
introduction of a progression of plant kingdom life forms.
Accepts that even more recently almost all
of the surface of the earth has been subject to material sluffings from
other planets in
the sky, and has been "Electric Discharge Machined" from interaction
with other planets. This has resulted in a recently sculpted surface of
geological features ranging from craters and rilles to mountains and ocean
basins.
Accepts that Mankind is as old as the
physical universe itself.
Accepts that humans on earth are the end
product of a family of humans that set themselves on a course that forced
them to devolve
from the level of the Originator.
Accepts that we as homo sapiens did not
totally evolve or develop
on the earth but transferred here at some relatively recent point in
time, probably within the last ten millennia.
Accepts that our perverse but then still empowered
human forefathers were the agency for the design and development of the
animal kingdom and its predatory competition system.
As for the argument of design, one of the issues is simplicity or
economy of credibility. The following is taken from:
Human Devolution
Joan d'Arc Interviews Michael Cremo
Another common reaction from a "skeptic," in Forbidden
Archeology's Impact, was that you have "abandoned the testing of
simpler hypotheses before more complex and sensationalistic ones."
It seems to me that what makes something "simple" is the prior
belief in it. Yet, this "economy" argument is used quite frequently
by "skeptics" who feel that Darwinian evolution is so obvious as to
be unquestionable. How do you address this argument?
When the simplicity argument comes up, as in the case you mentioned, the
skeptic assumes that the Darwinian explanation is the simplest one,
whereas an explanation involving creation or intelligent design is
the more complicated one. First of all, I cannot think of a single
instance in which I have not given consideration to the Darwinist
interpretation of the evidence. Second, the Darwinian explanation is
not so simple. If we look at the neo-Darwinian synthesis, we see
that it involves quite a complex interaction of genetics,
developmental biology, population dynamics, and fitness in specified
environments. Actually, it's so complex that Darwinists are unable
to actually explain the origin of the anatomically modern human
species in the terms their own theory requires.
For
example, if they want to explain the human eye, they would have to
specify the genome of some ancestral animal that did not have an
eye. Then they would have to specify a change in the genome of that
animal that would result in the first step in the formation of the
modern human eye. Let's keep in mind that a gene just tells a cell
how to make a specific protein from amino acid subparts. So they
should be able to tell us what protein the mutated gene would
produce. We also have to keep in mind that this protein would have
to have an effect in the course of the development of the organism,
starting from the egg.
So
they should be able to specify how the biochemical pathway by which
this protein would have some effect, way downstream in the cell
division process, perhaps after tens of thousands of cell divisions,
so that the first part of the eye is produced in the organism. Then
they would have to explain how this change in the gene, etc., would
become spread throughout and fixed in a breeding population. They
would have to explain how this change would contribute to the
fitness of the individuals in that population in a specific
environment. Then they would have to iterate this process, to
explain the next step in the production of the eye.
Keep
in mind, we are not just talking about the structure of the eye.
There would have to be an optic nerve that could carry signals to
the brain. The eye would also have to have sets of muscles to
control it, and these would require nerves going to the brain, and
the brain itself would have to have a neuronal structure capable of
processing the signals from the eye. The development of each of
these subsystems would have to be specified in exactly the same way
as described above. You will find no such explanation in any biology
text or scientific journal. So it might be debatable as to what the
"simpler" hypothesis really is. Ultimately, there is no guarantee
that the simplest hypothesis is the true one.
Beyond the painfully tedious and complex development
sequences described above, Cremo gives us an off the cuff synopsis
of the vision system and three of its sub-systems that contribute to
the overall functioning, but even this description of his borders on
being simplistic because there are other subsystems and some of the
subsystems have their own subsystems. Just looking at the sets of
muscles, these have to be proportioned and situated, anchored and
attached in an exquisite way. And so on, ad nauseam.
"The faith that the godless evolutionist exercises in the development of life,
sentience, consciousness, awareness and intelligence is substantially more
naïve and trusting than that of the rabid, right wing fundamentalist, in my
opinion. And it has a lot more to do with a determination to AVOID issues
surrounding an original creator and "God" than
any commitment to "truth."
Looking at the violence and predation
Without stretching our human reason to the breaking
point and whitewashing the salient information we have from the natural
world of fauna on earth, how can we reconcile the raw violence and
savage predation of nature with a creator of peace and harmony, a
caring, loving, merciful systems designer that eschews the suffering and
destruction of life forms?
The disconnect and contrast between a God of
love and this feral animal kingdom is so great!
What man of nobility and good will would even
consider embarking on a creation of such an extensive and multifarious
system of predatory competition? Even with all of our problems, all of
our corruption, in the face and context of the natural world of the
animal kingdom, when we do our competitive business and when we design
our competitive sports and games, in our "civilized", humanized,
non-barbaric societies we draw the line before it gets to the point of
serious physical and mental damage and death.
So, IS civilized man more humane than the vaunted
creator-god of Judeo-Christianity? Setting aside the barbaric
punishment, the mythology and violations of scientific fact, and just
looking at the animal kingdom, is it any wonder that cultured
scientific gentlemen seek to understand the origin and development of
the universe and its life forms in ways that are alternative to those
described in sacred writings? The disconnect and contrast between the
God of love and this feral animal kingdom is so great that the idea that
a "God" worthy of the term having created this system should not pass
the laugh-out-loud test! And it doesn't for a growing number of
humanists!
Consider one of the many examples of parasitical
activity found in nature:
"...the contemporary American science writer, paleontologist and
biologist Stephen Jay Gould, an eloquent defender of the hard truth of hard
science, discusses the strange case of the ichneumon wasp. During its
larval stage this creature lives as a parasite, feeding on the bodies
of, usually, caterpillars. The female adult injects her eggs into the host
and victim via a long thin tube known as an ovipositor. Some varieties
of ichneumon lay the eggs on the surface, so, as a precaution
against them being dislodged, they simultaneously inject a paralyzing
toxin to prevent the host from moving during the process of incubating
and then feeding their offspring. To keep the food fresh, this toxin
paralyzes but does not kill. For the same reason larvae deposited
inside the caterpillar follow a particular eating pattern designed
to consume inner organs and tissue in such a way that the host
will continue to live for as long as the larvae require.
"Gould points out how the life of the ichneumons captured the
moral crisis of the nineteenth century. The very exploitative viciousness,
the cruel calculation of the wasps' behavior seemed to
deny the possibility of a benevolent universe. It was one thing to eat
your prey, quite another to contrive to keep it alive while you did so.
The Victorians attempted to be objective about this terrible spectacle. They made serious
attempts not to see nature in terms of human morality. They wished to distance
the horror by scientific objectivity. But, as Gould points out, they
found themselves obliged to employ the language of human drama
simply to tell the story." Appleyard, Bryan, Understanding the
Present, p. 76
"Nature is red in tooth and tong!"
Concerning the violence-to-living-entities that is the
foundation for survival of many species, it has been said that nature is
red in tooth and tong. In the face of the above information and many
other examples of vicious activity and macabre aspects, how can we say
that a benevolent "god" is the author of nature as we know it?
Despite creationists pointing to the astounding variations and complex
design of the various system of life forms, their organs, and their
relationships, the simple answer is that we CANNOT! And so we posit that
something went wrong in a creation originally without pain, violence, suffering and
death.
Here are even more extreme examples of the intricate yet
perverse design features that we find in nature on earth:
An astonishing example of
seemingly-"impossible" design, which has quite rightly been much cited
by recent "creationist" writers, is the bombardier beetle
Brachinus,
which is now known to be equipped, for its defense, with
a miniature liquid-fuel rocket engine. Stored hydroquinone fuel and
hydrogen-peroxide oxidizer are suddenly mixed in a tail-end combustion
chamber, where they react explosively to generate a jet of steam and
boiling water, ejected through a trainable nozzle at any threatening
predator. (Wesson, P. 82, quoting J. Dean, D.J. Aneshansley, Harold
Edgerton, & T. Eisner:
Science 248 (June 8, 1990) pp. 1219-1221.)
Another example of an
extraordinary "natural" weapon has (unlike the beetle's) been known so
long that it was already exhibited by Mivart in his important
contra-Darwinian book The
Genesis of Species in 1871 (it also appeared
in Goldschmidt's list): the "nematocysts" (stinging cells) of cnidarians
("coelenterates": hydroids, jellyfish, sea anemones and their
relatives.) In each of these cells lies a barbed micro-harpoon on a
coiled-up tether, which is violently ejected if a nearby "trigger" is
touched; these micro-harpoons inject a poison so potent that some
jellyfish, such as the cubomedusan Chironex,
may be fatal for a swimmer to encounter.
But far more astounding
than the design of these weapons themselves is the fact that some other
organisms command the skill to steal these deadly spring-guns from
cnidarians, in order to make use of them for their own defense! Two
quite unrelated creatures are known to perform this hardly-credible
feat. One is the flatworm
Microstoma, which gets them from the small
freshwater polyp Hydra.
Since it has no hands, it is obliged to eat the
Hydra for the purpose—though it must find its flavor repulsive,
since it would rather starve than live on an all-Hydra diet. It somehow
deactivates the triggers so as to keep the cells from firing; then, in
its stomach, somehow keeps them from being digested, and passes them
through the stomach wall to wandering cells that carry them to its outer
skin, where they are installed, and finally furnished with new triggers
grown by their new owner. (I could hardly blame you if you refused to
believe a word of this.)
The other deft thieves are
marine nudibranchs ("sea slugs"), such as
Aeolidia, which attack sea anemones and jellyfish to obtain their
nematocysts and install them on their own backs—or, alternatively, to
hoard them in special sacs, for the purpose of spewing them en masse
into the mouth of an attacker. In
Natural History Oct. '93, pp. 66f., you may
see color photographs of the fantastically beautiful "red-flame
nudibranch" in the act of devouring a sea anemone—of which, however, we
are told that it will consume only enough for this purpose, since, like
the flatworm, it does not use cnidarians as food but
only as armories.
How can anyone manage to believe that blind
chance could possibly have endowed either of these creatures, let alone
two different ones, with a mechanism capable of accomplishing such an
"impossible" purposeful feat? Or (to phrase it in the tendentious jargon
of the Darwinists) how can we imagine such a fantastic adaptation" as
having been accidentally "evolved"? –Yet Darwin, of course, has an
all-sufficient answer—a
petitio principii which has the happy faculty
of "explaining" anything whatever*:
"Would not the animals who chanced to be able
to do this have been better able to survive than those who could
not? Of course they would! So there is your answer:
natural selection! The problem is solved, there is no more to
be said."
*Except for the numerous
instances of plants and animals that survive well in spite of being
burdened with such severe built-in hindrances to their welfare or
reproduction that, if natural selection had really exercised more than a
trivial effect, they ought to have perished! In this essay, I will pass
over that genus of Darwin-disconfirmations, but a large gallery of
striking cases may be found in Wesson's scholarly and reliable book.
(This argument, of course, does not "suit the book" of the
Bible-creationists, who feel they must flatter their vainglorious deity
by praising the whole living world as "divinely perfect", denying to its
author the capability of error (or of humor.)
Mebane, Alexander, Darwin’s Creation Myth, p. 38, 39.
So, when we look at nature with our eyes open we see it as "red in
tooth and tong", we see barbaric violence, bizarre form, mind numbing
ugliness, violent predatory competition, parasitical attachment and
attack all mixed in with its beauty and
elegance. The psychological diagnosis of the creator based on this
perspective would suggest deep
trauma and schizophrenia.
The bottom line is that for nature in this world we must consider
another creative agency outside of God, one that is perverse and
capable of being extreme, one that would think up a predatory
competition system. Who might that be? |