Darwinian evolution - still a theory in crisis.

[NxNW]

So here’s my own 'salient question' back to you: If a scientific conclusion pointed clearly toward intelligent design, not in the absence of data, but because of its explanatory power, would you even be allowed to consider it within your naturalistic framework?

How can you reach a conclusion without evidence?

And if you don't have evidence, why are you proposing such a thing?

 

[NxNW]

As for your 'salient question': Yes, I would consider evidence. That’s why I’m here. To hear it, weigh it, and compare it. The real question is: would you ever consider evidence for design; not in the gaps, but in the information-rich, functional complexity of life, or does your philosophy make that impossible from the start?

It's not about philosophy. Does Intelligent Design make any testable predictions such that, if they fail, it's falsified?

 

[public hermit]

Observations of the total mass and energy in the universe are consistent with zero. The universe is a re-expression of nothingness.

To be fair, that nothingness could be God. After Dionysius' Mystical Theology, it's the most exact expression we have for God (Meister Eckhart makes that explicit claim, although for different reasons, but it's commensurate with the long line of contemplative/mystical Christian writings). Dionysius aside, the Cappadocians all insisted on the inscrutability of the divine nature. That's one small epistemic step to metaphysical nothingness. For me, it's analogous to our minds. Sans thoughts, there's nothing there, and yet that nothing is fecundity since it produces thought.

 

[BCP1928]

So here’s my own 'salient question' back to you: If a scientific conclusion pointed clearly toward intelligent design, not in the absence of data, but because of its explanatory power, would you even be allowed to consider it within your naturalistic framework?

That's a tough question, because ID has no explanatory power. Don't forget, you are talking here with professionals and serious amateurs in fields like math, phisics and biology. We have collectively spent many hours investigating ID, reading papers and books pro and con on the subject. Of course we have considered it honestly. Our "framework" is methodological naturalism, not metaphysical naturalism, as the presence of so many theists on board should show.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

I only get three. Penal Substitution is a Calvinist notion.

Who is Calvin?

 

[Hans Blaster]

For some reason, that classic Meatloaf song "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad" comes to mind; it's just that in the case of the Fundamentals as originally articulated, it's 4 out of 5 in my case.

If I recall correctly his most famous album is named after biblical birds...

 

[2PhiloVoid]

If I recall correctly his most famous album is named after biblical birds...

Sometimes your humor is truly astounding, Hans.

 

[public hermit]

Who is Calvin?

You know, John Calvin? He was a very anxious man, almost neurotically anxious. It's anyone's guess as to why.

"Here we are forcibly reminded of the inestimable felicity of a pious mind. Innumerable are the ills which beset human life, and present death in as many different forms. Not to go beyond ourselves, since the body is a receptacle, nay the nurse, of a thousand diseases, a man cannot move without carrying along with him many forms of destruction. His life is in a manner interwoven with death. For what else can be said where heat and cold bring equal danger? Then, in what direction soever you turn, all surrounding objects not only may do harm, but almost openly threaten and seem to present immediate death. Go on board a ship, you are but a plank’s breadth from death. Mount a horse, the stumbling of a foot endangers your life. Walk along the streets, every tile upon the roofs is a source of danger. If a sharp instrument is in your own hand, or that of a friend, the possible harm is manifest. All the savage beasts you see are so many beings armed for your destruction. Even within a high walled garden, where everything ministers to delight, a serpent will sometimes lurk. Your house, constantly exposed to fire, threatens you with poverty by day, with destruction by night. Your fields, subject to hail, mildew, drought, and other injuries, denounce barrenness, and thereby famine. I say nothing of poison, treachery, robbery, some of which beset us at home, others follow us abroad. Amid these perils, must not man be very miserable, as one who, more dead than alive, with difficulty draws an anxious and feeble breath, just as if a drawn sword were constantly suspended over his neck? It may be said that these things happen seldom, at least not always, or to all, certainly never all at once. I admit it; but since we are reminded by the example of others, that they may also happen to us, and that our life is not an exception any more than theirs, it is impossible not to fear and dread as if they were to befall us." Institutes I.17.10

John Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion - Christian Classics Ethereal Library

ccel.org

 

[BCP1928]

Who is Calvin?

A good buddy of Hobbes.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

You know, John Calvin? He was a very anxious man, almost neurotically anxious. It's anyone's guess as to why.

"Here we are forcibly reminded of the inestimable felicity of a pious mind. Innumerable are the ills which beset human life, and present death in as many different forms. Not to go beyond ourselves, since the body is a receptacle, nay the nurse, of a thousand diseases, a man cannot move without carrying along with him many forms of destruction. His life is in a manner interwoven with death. For what else can be said where heat and cold bring equal danger? Then, in what direction soever you turn, all surrounding objects not only may do harm, but almost openly threaten and seem to present immediate death. Go on board a ship, you are but a plank’s breadth from death. Mount a horse, the stumbling of a foot endangers your life. Walk along the streets, every tile upon the roofs is a source of danger. If a sharp instrument is in your own hand, or that of a friend, the possible harm is manifest. All the savage beasts you see are so many beings armed for your destruction. Even within a high walled garden, where everything ministers to delight, a serpent will sometimes lurk. Your house, constantly exposed to fire, threatens you with poverty by day, with destruction by night. Your fields, subject to hail, mildew, drought, and other injuries, denounce barrenness, and thereby famine. I say nothing of poison, treachery, robbery, some of which beset us at home, others follow us abroad. Amid these perils, must not man be very miserable, as one who, more dead than alive, with difficulty draws an anxious and feeble breath, just as if a drawn sword were constantly suspended over his neck? It may be said that these things happen seldom, at least not always, or to all, certainly never all at once. I admit it; but since we are reminded by the example of others, that they may also happen to us, and that our life is not an exception any more than theirs, it is impossible not to fear and dread as if they were to befall us." Institutes I.17.10

John Calvin: Institutes of the Christian Religion - Christian Classics Ethereal Library

ccel.org

Oh goodness! Is that the one and the same Calvin who didn't quite take to Copernicus' theory of heliocentrism?

John Calvin on Nicolaus Copernicus and Heliocentrism - Article - BioLogos

It would be a great error to use John Calvin’s 16th century mind to oppose the accepted scientific consensus of today.

biologos.org

I guess it's a good thing he didn't live in the time of Charles Darwin or we may have had another Captain Fitzroy on our hands.

 

[AV1611VET]

A good buddy of Hobbes.

Hobbs wasn't an Anabaptist then, or he wouldn't have lived long.

John Calvin was one of the four worst in history.

 

[2PhiloVoid]

Hobbs wasn't an Anabaptist then, or he wouldn't have lived long.

John Calvin was one of the four worst in history.

View attachment 366892

Dare I ask who you think the other "three worst in history" were?

 

[AV1611VET]

Dare I ask who you think the other "three worst in history" were?

Huldrych Zwingli, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and King Henry VIII

 

[public hermit]

Huldrych Zwingli, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and King Henry VIII

Interesting. How do you feel about Jan Matthys and the Munster rebellion?

 

[1Tonne]

You did right putting it into one post. One of the problems we are having here is with your long posts containing a heterogehous mix of creationist talking points. It's hard to respond to them.

Regarding my posts. There are many people to whom I am responding to and some of those people are posing many questions within their one post (Look at how long post number 260 is). Hence, I am not going to make a totally separate post for each response. Though, as you would have noticed, for each question or topic, I do include the original post that they have made. So, the posts I make may be long, but they should be easy to follow.
So to respond to me, just quote the part you are talking about and then type what you are thinking. I should be able to follow.
But please do not be like post number 260, as those posts get a little silly.

 

[AV1611VET]

Interesting. How do you feel about Jan Matthys and the Munster rebellion?

Just learned about it.

Interesting indeed.

Reminds me of this passage:

Acts 5:36 For before these days rose up Theudas, boasting himself to be somebody; to whom a number of men, about four hundred, joined themselves: who was slain; and all, as many as obeyed him, were scattered, and brought to nought.
37 After this man rose up Judas of Galilee in the days of the taxing, and drew away much people after him: he also perished; and all, even as many as obeyed him, were dispersed.

 

[BCP1928]

Regarding my posts. There are many people to whom I am responding to and some of those people are posing many questions within their one post (Look at how long post number 260 is). Hence, I am not going to make a totally separate post for each response. Though, as you would have noticed, for each question or topic, I do include the original post that they have made. So, the posts I make may be long, but they should be easy to follow.
So to respond to me, just quote the part you are talking about and then type what you are thinking. I should be able to follow.
But please do not be like post number 260, as those posts get a little silly.

Actually, that zero net energy finding is good news for Christians who believe in creation ex nihilo.

 

[public hermit]

Just learned about it.

Interesting indeed.

Reminds me of this passage:

Acts 5:36 For before these days rose up Theudas, boasting himself to be somebody; to whom a number of men, about four hundred, joined themselves: who was slain; and all, as many as obeyed him, were scattered, and brought to nought.
37 After this man rose up Judas of Galilee in the days of the taxing, and drew away much people after him: he also perished; and all, even as many as obeyed him, were dispersed.

Yeah, Munster was pretty horrific by the end. But I think they were somewhat antithetical to the other Protestants you mentioned so I wondered if you had some affinity for those Anabaptists.

 

[AV1611VET]

Yeah, Munster was pretty horrific by the end. But I think they were somewhat antithetical to the other Protestants you mentioned so I wondered if you had some affinity for those Anabaptists.

Nope.

None whatsoever.

 

[1Tonne]

The example served to refute your claim that complexity does not arise without intelligent design behind it.

But I never claimed that no complexity can arise without intelligent design. - I’m specifically referring to functional and information-rich complexity, like that found in DNA, molecular machines, or organ systems. A snowflake is beautiful, yes, but it also lacks function and contains no information or purposeful arrangement of parts. It’s not comparable to the specified complexity found in even a single living cell.
The kind of complexity we observe in life goes beyond symmetry or shape. It involves coordinated systems performing tasks, guided by instructions encoded in language-like structures. That’s not the kind of thing we see arising from unguided physical laws alone.

It's not clever or sleight of hand, it's a scientific observation: the sum total of mass and energy in the universe appears to be zero. If you want to define mass and energy as positive, then gravity is negative, and the two appear to cancel out. Just as it's possible to have a net worth of zero and still have borrowed cash in your hand, it's possible for planets and stars to exist in a universe that adds up to nothing. The mass and energy are borrowed from the vacuum.

You're describing a theoretical model, not an observation of nothing. You're borrowing mathematical language (like negative energy) to make 'nothing' sound like a physical something. But a vacuum with fluctuating energy, governed by laws like gravity and quantum mechanics, is not nothing; it’s a highly structured something.
True 'nothing' has no properties, no potential, no laws, no vacuum, and no time, it can’t ‘borrow’ anything. So, when we say the universe came from ‘nothing,’ but then smuggle in gravity, quantum fields, and physical laws, we’re not explaining the origin, we’re just moving the question back a step. Where did those laws and conditions come from? That’s not a scientific sleight of hand; it’s a philosophical assumption dressed up as physics.

You're describing a pure vacuum, which is unstable. Physics predicts that it produces unstable patches which can give rise to all sorts of things, including a universe. However, it's now known that empty space has structure and weight, so what you think of as empty, really isn't.

So it's something then. Not nothing? That is funny.

You're describing a pure vacuum, which is unstable. Physics predicts that it produces unstable patches which can give rise to all sorts of things, including a universe. However, it's now known that empty space has structure and weight, so what you think of as empty, really isn't.

But that’s exactly the point. If what you're calling 'nothing' has structure, weight, instability, and can fluctuate, then it isn’t nothing. That’s something. You’re talking about quantum vacuums or fields governed by physical laws, not the absence of reality, but a specific state of physical existence.
The idea that a universe can arise from 'nothing' only works if we redefine 'nothing' to mean 'a low-energy quantum field governed by the laws of physics', which is misleading. It’s like saying a blank page wrote a novel just because the ink hadn’t dried yet.
So, let’s just be honest about what’s being claimed: not creation from nothing, but you believe from a very real, structured something, one that still demands explanation.
(To be honest, this part of the discussion feels circular and unproductive. When 'nothing' is redefined to include structure, weight, and physical laws, it’s no longer nothing; it’s something. So, unless the definition becomes consistent and coherent, I don’t see the value in continuing this particular line of argument. It contradicts itself.)

Fully-formed? As opposed to what?

'Fully formed' means it's not a partial or transitional structure. It's a complete, functional organism. The term doesn't mean 'not evolved', it means that what we find in the fossil record are fully developed creatures, not creatures with half-formed limbs or halfway gills and lungs.
With Tiktaalik, we see an animal well-adapted to its environment, but we don’t see clear, step-by-step anatomical transitions from fish fins to tetrapod limbs. So yes, it's interesting, but calling it a slam-dunk for evolution overlooks the fact that it appears suddenly, fully functional, and without the detailed series of gradual modifications Darwin himself said would be needed if his theory were true.

A transitional fossil is one example, and nobody is claiming that it's constitutes "all the steps."

Because there are massive, massive gaps. Evolutionists fill the gaps with speculation. Not science.

The processes are not blind; they are driven by natural selection. If you follow the sequence of fossils across the epochs, you can see organs developing, legs lengthening, brains growing, etc. Sorry, but you're not likely to see genetic info from a fossil unless you've got intact DNA.

Natural selection may act as a filter, but it doesn’t create; it can only select from what already exists. That’s why I said blind processes. Because random mutations, which supposedly generate the raw material for evolution, have no foresight or direction. Selection doesn’t explain how entirely new, coordinated structures arise in the first place.
As for the fossil record, what we see are distinct, fully functional organisms, not a continuous record of step-by-step transformations. Saying 'legs lengthen' or 'brains grow' across epochs sounds neat in hindsight, but it's a massive leap from observing isolated fossils to explaining the origin of complex, integrated systems by purely natural causes.
And yes, I understand we can’t extract full genomes from fossils, that’s actually part of the problem. Without that genetic data, we’re left making interpretive guesses, not demonstrating mechanisms.

The origin of life is not part of the evolutionary narrative.

That’s a convenient line, but it’s not entirely honest. The theory of evolution may technically begin after life already exists, but the broader naturalistic framework, which evolution is built upon, absolutely depends on life arising from non-living matter. If unguided processes are claimed to account for all of life’s diversity, then how life began is relevant.
You can’t isolate evolution from abiogenesis when both are used together to explain the full naturalistic story, from chemicals to conscious beings. So yes, ‘molecules-to-man’ still applies.

You assume the components couldn't evolve separately with different functions, which then change as systems combine. As the ice fish shows, functions can change drastically.

You’re assuming that evolving parts separately with different functions can somehow, by chance, coordinate into an interdependent, life-sustaining system and that this happens repeatedly across biology. That’s not evidence; that’s storytelling.
The ice fish doesn’t solve the problem. It’s still a fully functioning organism with an integrated system. It didn’t evolve half a heart or half a blood system. Its example shows loss of function (haemoglobin), not the origin of new complex systems from scratch.
Irreducible complexity asks how multiple parts, none functional on their own in a given role, come together all at once in the right arrangement. That’s the real issue, and so far, evolutionary theory hasn’t demonstrated how that leap is made.

You're moving the goalposts again. I provided examples that refuted your claim that the heart, blood and vessels all have exist together.

You didn’t refute the claim. You gave examples of different systems, not a step-by-step pathway showing how a closed, high-pressure circulatory system evolved. That’s the point: simpler systems don’t explain how this specific complex one arose.

But it did refute your claim that they all have to exist together.

No, it didn’t. The claim is about interdependence within a specific system. Pointing to other systems with different designs doesn’t explain how this one could evolve step-by-step without all its parts in place.

No, of course not. No one expects a fossil of every creature that ever lived. But if evolution is a gradual, step-by-step process over millions of years, we should expect to find numerous clear, well-supported transitional sequences (as Darwin even claimed).

We do.

This is a big claim.
Please provide clear, detailed transitional sequences that show gradual changes, not just isolated fossils put side by side. Which ones do you consider the best examples?

Humans are apes. I think you mean the most recent common ancestor of chimps and humans? I believe the Sahelanthropus tchadensis is a good candidate. There are a lot of offshoots and "cousin" fossils being dug up, but they all seem to converge around 5 to 6 million years ago. You're not going to find that actual common ancestor, which was actually a single individual. Good luck with that! So in reality, any fossil we do find is going to be at least somewhat before or after the split.

Thanks for the example. But notice what you just admitted, that we won’t find the actual common ancestor, and that every fossil is before or after the split. That’s exactly the challenge: interpretation fills the gap where direct evidence is missing. The fossils may suggest something, but they don’t prove a direct line of descent, just shared features.
But similarity alone isn’t enough to prove ancestry. Humans share a significant percentage of DNA with bananas too — yet no one suggests we descended from bananas. It just shows that genetic overlap doesn’t always mean common descent. Interpretation matters.
If shared DNA proves ancestry, then I guess my great-great-grandfather was a banana too? At some point, we have to draw the line between common design and common descent.

First it was claimed that no precursors existed, and when they were found, suddenly they weren't good enough. Again, it seems like you're asking for a fossile of every single organism in the lineage before you accept that evolution actually occurs. But it does sound like you're admitting that with different species coming into existence throughout the epochs, that this clearly does not match with a creation that took place in 6 days.

Not at all. I’m not asking for every fossil, just enough clear, well-supported transitions to justify the sweeping claims of gradual evolution. As for creation, the appearance of distinct, fully formed organisms in the fossil record, without clear predecessors, is exactly what a creation model would predict. So no, I’m not admitting defeat; I’m pointing out that the evidence fits my view just as well, if not better.

So every data point simply creates two more gaps, is that right? It's like the set of Real Numbers! If we pick two numbers, no matter how close together, we can always find more numbers in between them!

That’s not the issue. The problem isn’t that there are always 'more gaps'. It’s that the supposed steps between major body plans remain missing or ambiguous. Finding soft-bodied organisms before the Cambrian doesn’t automatically explain how complex structures like eyes, nervous systems, or articulated limbs arose. The gap isn’t just in time; it’s in functional complexity.