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Reason Vs. Faith *

A Response by Steven Macks

(With further interaction with Tom Lawson attached.)

The ring is clean, the confetti ready to fly. The masses have arrived to cheer for their favorite. There will be no other match to warm things up; the headlining fight will be all. The bill has Reason stacked in the champion corner, and Faith as the humble challenger. With all of the beer and nachos sold and non-refundable, the packed crowd should be awfully disappointed. The match has been called. Reason has no beef with Faith, as it would have it, and Faith is not in conflict with Reason. As the crowd slowly makes its way down the aisles and out the door, the two contenders shake each other’s hand.

The rationalist (or materialist, or naturalist, or even atheist) would like you to believe that faith is superstition. They want to tell you that they have no faith. Unfortunately for them, they have no idea what the word means. They treat it as a pastor’s word. Any word out of the mouth of a theologian is hardly believable in the rationalist’s mind, scarcely anything to give serious thought to. Even the simple utterance of the word leaves them envisioning the miraculous resurrection of Lazarus, or maybe something even less imaginable to them.

The rationalist has gotten the wrong idea. Believing that Jesus raised Lazarus from death does require faith, but not all faith is this extreme. This is faith in the Bible, not faith in general. Faith is believing in something, having confidence, even in the times when you cannot prove the thought right. If I tell my nephew to stay out of the candy I left on the kitchen table, I have faith that he will do so. In the immediacy of that moment, however, I cannot prove it. I’d like to think that the power of my authority would be good enough to warrant proof, but anyone who’s been around kids for some amount of time will know that just isn’t true!

The naturalist says he has no faith. What he means is that he doesn’t have the Christian faith. There are two mistakes with his statement: (1) faith has another meaning and (2) he has an equivalent faith in materialism.

One of the illusions of … materialism is that materialists don’t have faith commitments. Faith is not something that some people have and others do not. … For example, scientific materialists have faith that they will eventually find a materialistic theory to explain the origin of life, even though the experimental evidence may be pretty discouraging for now. (Johnson, 1997, p. 66)

Faith isn’t something to be afraid of. We all need it to get started in something. I have strong reason to believe that this computer will save the information I put onto this page, but I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t had the faith to give it a try the first few times I wanted to write something.

The materialist is trying to blind us to what faith in anything might imply. They have a knee-jerk reaction to faith because if they have faith in any concept, they might as well just have faith in an Almighty God. This, however, is unacceptable to them. So they gloss over the issue and set up a mock boxing match between faith and reason. However, Phillip Johnson was right in that "Faith … isn’t something opposed to reason."

But enough of my ramblings. Time to get to the meat of the issue:

Intelligent Design

Intelligent design, in my estimation, traces its roots in the philosophical and logical realm to William Paley, who formulated the now famous (and abused) watchmaker analogy. Although Socrates and Diogenes also offered similar theorems, they were incomplete and had error in their reasoning. Although it is dismissed as old-fashioned and unscientific, Paley provided the framework for Intelligent Design theorists such as Behe and Dempski to get started.

Since this essay is an initiation to debate, I’ll spell out my specific disagreements and go from there. Tom Lawson’s words will be italicized and in quotations, and my comments will follow.

"Young-earth creationists, as well as some old-earth creationists, believe in a Supernatural Intelligent Designer…"

The materialist doesn’t like this idea, and he typically starts out by classifying those who believe in Intelligent Design theory. The first thought that naturally came to mind after reading this was "Actually, all old-earth creationists believe in an intelligent designer. That’s what makes them creationists, after all." There’s not much to be gained with this classification, so I’ll leave it be.

"Our only experience with things that have been designed is with those things that have been designed by humans."

This is where the materialist and the creationist disagree. To the creationist, everything has been designed, so the whole thesis is fundamentally flawed. Not so to the materialist. This is a crucial point: misunderstandings can stem from the most basic of ‘biased’ sentences. I’ll do my part to avoid such generalizations from my own biased perspective, to save energy and problems.

"…the theist sees evidence of God's existence in both the normal operation of natural law and in the violation of natural law (e.g. a miracle)."

Likewise, the naturalist sees evidence of neo-Darwinian evolution in the normal operation of natural law and would have a minute-made explanation for a violation of natural law. This demonstrates the congruity in structure that religious beliefs and naturalism actually have.

"Researchers Adrian Thompson and Phil Husbands at the Center for Computational Neuroscience and Robotics at the University of Sussex have used the principles of evolution -- genetic variation and survival of the fittest -- to design electronic circuits. These circuits are remarkably fit to perform certain useful functions…"

I love it when materialists use designed experiments, with intelligently thought through components to try to ‘prove’ neo-Darwinism. They don’t see the difference between an unguided, natural process, and intelligently thought through experiments with intended results.

When referring to a designed computer experiment in Darwin’s Black Box, Michael Behe says "The analogy is offered in lieu of actual evidence." (220). The question here that needs to be asked is "Does this represent actual evolution?" I think that it does not. First of all, we are dealing with computers as opposed to organisms, two non-parallel worlds (If we were to allow a similar conclusion drawn on the development of computers, the word design would be ringing in everyone’s ears).

To see the more subtle reason that computer ‘evolution’ does not really show actual evolution, we have to understand how this program is said to work. Random strings of binary code were introduced to ‘test tones’. The strings of code that responded with a steady output regardless of the tone it heard were said to be most fit. The strings that didn’t do this were deleted, and the ‘survivors’ were then copied (metaphorical reproduction.) Some of the copies were allowed to ‘mutate’ – they were given random changes to their binary structure. It took approximately 4100 ‘generations’ for the program to be able to distinguish between two tones (or the modulations between the words ‘stop’ and ‘go’).

Essentially, this is a rehash of Dawkin’s "ME THINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL" program, cleverly disguised. The binary sequence goal was not specified at the beginning, but a computer programmer, given some time, could tell you what binary program would best be able to distinguish between the two tones. So, although not fully specified, the binary string could have been known (and used for comparison) before the experiment was started.

Let’s not forget that this experiment had a goal: to see if random changes and selection could produce a program that could distinguish between two tones. Evolution is said to be ‘mindless and goal less’ by the NAS, yet another reason that this experiment fails to represent actual evolution.

But, wait a second, someone might cry, the "ME THINKS IT IS LIKE A WEASEL" program and this one have a slight difference. Where the Weasel program would hold the letters that stopped in the correct place, this would only select the one that best distinguished audio tones. That’s a reasonable complaint, but it doesn’t get it off the hook. The experiment is designed to select the binary string that has the most code correct at any given time. Also, you don’t lose the parent string when ‘reproduction’ occurs, it is merely set aside until it is obsolete.

If we take an honest look at this experiment, it does not represent an unguided, natural process with no goal. It has a specific goal, it is guided in the laboratory, and is conducted using designed components. This could scarcely be further from ‘real evolution’ and still pass for it.

"Young-earth creationists insist that "survival of the fittest" is a tautology."

Young-earth creationists aren’t the only ones who think so. Many trustworthy naturalistic sources agree! Of the more famous naturalists who have voiced this criticism is the frequently quoted Stephen Jay Gould. "The crucial phrase of natural selection means no more than "the survival of those who survive." – a vacuous tautology." (Gould, 1979, p. 40). This is how natural selection is often formulated. When it is formulated another way, the definition is soon switched back to the tautological definition.

"Moreover, they fail to provide a good reason why microevolution (as in the variation of breeds of dogs), acting over thousands or millions of years, cannot become macroevolution (as in the variation between cats and dogs)."

And we finally come to the major shift of the creation/evolution debate. Read this last sentence carefully. Since we cannot provide good reason why macroevolution isn’t just microevolution acted out over a long period of time, it must be true. I’m sorry, Mr. Lawson, but the burden of proof lies on you. Your only evidences are examples of microevolution, yet you conclude macroevolution, and demand that we disprove the notion. That’s not science, but instead it’s a logical trick and word games.

Besides, I cannot give a good reason why Lee Harvey Oswald isn’t the gunman in JFK assassination, but that doesn’t prove that he did it! (That’s just an example, by the way… it says nothing about my views on who killed JFK.) Think about it. It’s not up to creationists to disprove a statement of authority, but to the materialist to support that statement.

In the "three examples of poor design," I don’t see any poor design. I certainly don’t see a problem with the testes argument. And as far as horses and dogs go, it might just be that the Intelligent Designer was providing both variety and organisms that defied naturalistic explanations(is it any wonder that we don’t hear about how the heat control in dogs and horses arose from the same evolutionary ancestor?). The absent enzyme argument is interesting, but not compelling. Besides, perfection isn’t the only thing that indicates design. For example, an 8088 computer is by no means a perfect machine, yet it is 100% designed.

Also, imperfections allow the world to work without being governed in every aspect by an Intelligent Designer. If each organism had a 100% survival rate (it could reproduce, predate, escape predators…survive in every way we can imagine) then all organisms would fail. Let me elaborate on this idea a little bit more.

Since all organisms are 100% affective in surviving, that means that a lion is 100% effective as a hunter. That also means that an antelope is 100% effective at evading capture and its certain death. So which will it be? Who will win? The lion or the antelope? Do you see the problem here? This example leads into other problems, certainly, in survival and the all around job of being a part of God’s creation.

I am admittedly reluctant to enter into the discussion of "the Fall", but it is assuredly an important thing to consider. In the original creation, a 100% perfect lion and a 100% perfect antelope would survive perfectly together. However, after the Fall, predation began and organisms became less than perfect, which allows survival as we see it today.

The idea that a Supernatural being cannot create natural law is a mistaken one. It has long been said that the effect cannot be greater than the cause. Therefore, the Designer can easily create natural law. The alleged problem here comes in the semantics. But maybe I can clear it up a little bit. I am human, but I can create something that is not human, even mechanical. I could build an engine from parts. Does this seem contradictory to you, that a human can create mechanical?

"A consistent commitment to [a supernatural agent intervening now and then] is antithetical to the practice of sound, productive science."

Last time I checked, creation scientists only used supernatural intervention for two events in their arguments (many more in their theology): The creation week and the flood. Everything else in creation science sticks to natural explanations. Does this mean that we fit within the boundaries of what the materialist considers sound, productive science?

There are many ways I could go from here, and I shall choose the easiest one: to stop right now and await a reply. Anything not covered I feel is simply unimportant or inconsequential.

Best wishes to all, and enjoy the ensuing debate.

Steven "Madd" Macks

*A website by Tom Lawson www.reasonvsfaith.org

References:
Johnson, Phillip Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds, 1997, Inter-varsity Press, Downer’s Grove, Illinois
Lawson, Tom, Intelligent Design, http://members.ll.net/tomofdarwin/
Gould, Stephen Jay, Ever Since Darwin, 1979, W.W. Norton and Co., New York, New York
Davidson, Clive, "Creatures From Primordial Silicon," New Scientist, (15 Nov 1997), p.30
    http://www.netscrap.com/netscrap_detail.cfm?scrap_id=73





From: Tom of Darwin [tomofdarwin{at}cmgate.com]
Sent: Sunday, July 08, 2001 4:41 PM
To: Steve
Cc: Ross
Subject: Reply to Macks

8 July 2001

Hi Steve,

Thanks for your response. You sound like a fun guy to talk to.

Before I get to your essay, let me address two comments and a question you
mailed separately. When I said, "...ever since Sedgwick criticized
[Haeckel's embryo drawings] in 1894 . . . ," I used the date of a article
cited recently by Michael Richardson and others:
Sedgwick, A. (1894) On the law of development commonly known as von Baer's
law, and on the significance of ancestral rudiments in embryonic
development. Q J Microsc Sci 36: 35-52
Sedgwick could have made his criticisms known before this publication.

Concerning your comment that "Behe never proposed irreducible complexity
for organs, but instead molecular machines," I will not quibble over the
definition of "organ," and I accept your correction.

You asked what type of evolutionist I am -- gradualist, punctuationist,
both, or neither. Gould's "punctuated equilibrium" appeals to me, because
a small but infrequent mutation in a gene that controls how other genes
express themselves can make a relatively sudden large change in the shape
and size of an animal.

I am a lay naturalist. If a scientific claim in a particular field of
inquiry seems plausible to me, if it is open to challenge by all other
professionals in the same field, and if they all tend to agree on the major
points, I don't try to second-guess them. If, for example, a professional
anthropologist finds that the composition of a tooth from the skeleton of a
man buried at Stonehenge shows that the man came from Southeast England, I
am in no position to argue with him. Only the "scientific creationists"
are "experts" in every field of inquiry from geology to atomic theory, even
if their qualifications are no more than a degree in engineering.

REASON VS. FAITH
================
STEVE: "Reason has no beef with Faith, as it would have it, and Faith is
not in conflict with Reason.
[snip]
"Faith is believing in something, having confidence, even in the times when
you cannot prove the thought right. If I tell my nephew to stay out of the
candy I left on the kitchen table, I have faith that he will do so. In the
immediacy of that moment, however, I cannot prove it.
[snip]
However, Phillip Johnson was right in that 'Faith ... isn't something
opposed to reason'."

Reply: I hope that Johnson, after defining what "faith" is NOT, went on to
define what it IS. If you want to define it (above) as an expectation
based on past experience, that's OK with me, but this is the "faith" of a
naturalist, not of a religious believer. Not only is the expectation of a
religious believer not based on objective evidence, but it is often held
tenaciously IN SPITE OF such evidence. The religious believer -- or any
true believer -- believes because it makes him/her feel good, not because
he/she has any facts to support the belief. It is an emotional experience,
and facts are of no consequence.

Only Phillip Johnson and other creationists think that "the experimental
evidence [for a materialistic theory to explain the origin of life] may be
pretty discouraging for now." What is his alternative? According to
creationists, the act of creation can never have a materialistic
explanation. As Timothy Wallace has stated
[http://www.trueorigin.org/creatheory.htm]:
"The very nature of the creationary paradigm precludes man, as a created
being, from any right or entitlement to exhaustive knowledge of the
Creator's ways or means. It is an act of arrogance for the creature to
claim entitlement from the Creator for more information than the Creator
has chosen to reveal (as if he had the capability to comprehend it in the
first place). The creationist thus can and will claim to "know" no more
about the act of creation than what the Creator has chosen to reveal

Johnson and Wallace have closed the door permanently to our ever
understanding either the "creative act" or a materialistic explanation of
the origin of life. We are just supposed to sit on our hands and play
humble and dumb ad infinitum.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN
==================
TOM: "Young-earth creationists, as well as some old-earth creationists,
believe in a Supernatural Intelligent Designer..."
STEVE: "The first thought that naturally came to mind after reading this
was 'Actually, all old-earth creationists believe in an intelligent
designer. That's what makes them creationists, after all.'

Reply: I agree, thank you, so I changed the sentence to read: "Creationists
believe in a Supernatural Intelligent Designer (SID), and young-earth
creationists also oppose the well-established theory of biological
evolution." OK?

TOM: "Our only experience with things that have been designed is with those
things that have been designed by humans."
STEVE: "This is where the materialist and the creationist disagree. To the
creationist, everything has been designed, so the whole thesis is
fundamentally flawed.

Reply: I think the key word here is "experience." The creationist falsely
BELIEVES that he has experience with things designed by supernatural
intelligence. He lacks experiential proof.

TOM: "...the theist sees evidence of God's existence in both the normal
operation of natural law and in the violation of natural law (e.g. a
miracle)."
STEVE: "Likewise, the naturalist sees evidence of neo-Darwinian evolution
in the normal operation of natural law and would have a minute-made
explanation for a violation of natural law. This demonstrates the congruity
in structure that religious beliefs and naturalism actually have."

Reply: "Violation of natural law (e.g. a miracle)" here means a
supernatural phenomenon. Evolutionists never assume that a supernatural
phenomenon provides evidence of evolution, so I see no congruity here.

STEVE: "I love it when materialists use designed experiments, with
intelligently thought through components to try to 'prove' neo-Darwinism.
They don't see the difference between an unguided, natural process, and
intelligently thought through experiments with intended results."

Reply: You "love it" because you are not making the necessary distinction
between, on the one hand, the intelligently designed computer program and,
on the other, the process being simulated by the computer program. If a
computer program, for example, accurately predicts changes in weather or
climate, this does not mean that the process of weather or climate has been
intelligently designed. It just means that the computer program did a good
job of simulating the natural phenomenon.

STEVE: "When referring to a designed computer experiment in Darwin's Black
Box, Michael Behe says 'The analogy is offered in lieu of actual evidence.'
(220). The question here that needs to be asked is 'Does this represent
actual evolution?' I think that it does not. First of all, we are dealing
with computers as opposed to organisms, two non-parallel worlds . . . ."

Reply: Some computer programs do demonstrate that the principles of
mutation, natural selection, and preservation of changes fit well what we
observe in nature. It may not be the final word about what actually is
occurring in nature, but it is a good approximation. In the example of the
computer simulation of weather/climate changes, the more the simulation
matches the real world changes, the more the program IS parallel to the
real world.

You complain that goals are used in some computer simulations of the
supposedly goal-less process of biological evolution. Biological evolution
is a process that results in heritable changes in a population spread over
many generations, and one can demonstrate this on a computer without
setting any goal other than to simulate the process.

TOM: "Moreover, they fail to provide a good reason why microevolution (as
in the variation of breeds of dogs), acting over thousands or millions of
years, cannot become macroevolution (as in the variation between cats and
dogs)."
STEVE: "Since [creationists] cannot provide good reason why macroevolution
isn't just microevolution acted out over a long period of time, it must be
true. I'm sorry, Mr. Lawson, but the burden of proof lies on you. Your
only evidences are examples of microevolution, yet you conclude
macroevolution, and demand that we disprove the notion."

Reply: The burden of proof lies on both sides. I haven't seen any evidence
of limitations on microevolution, but I have seen compelling evidence in
the fossil record for macroevolution. If you disagree, we'll have to call
on the experts.

STEVE: "In the 'three examples of poor design,' I don't see any poor
design. I certainly don't see a problem with the testes argument.

Reply: Apparently you have never had your testicles kicked, or hit by a
ball. Also, note that the testes in fetal development have to move over an
error-prone path to the outside -- 2% of full-term babies have undescended
testicles. Assuming these organs were designed by God, then his solutions
protected testes internally in some species while exposing them to harm in
others. Are you telling me that God did this just for variety? Surely you
jest.

STEVE: "Besides, perfection isn't the only thing that indicates design. For
example, an 8088 computer is by no means a perfect machine, yet it is 100%
designed."

Reply: The assumption that God either could not or would not create perfect
designs seems inconsistent with the theological claims that God is perfect,
all-knowing, and all-powerful.

STEVE: "Since all organisms are 100% affective in surviving, that means
that a lion is 100% effective as a hunter. That also means that an antelope
is 100% effective at evading capture and its certain death. So which will
it be? Who will win? The lion or the antelope? Do you see the problem
here?"

Reply: The problem is your assumption that all organisms are 100% effective
in surviving any conditions. Suppose that a population is decimated by a
disease or that the environment to which a species is well adapted changes
drastically. As a result of NOT being "100% effective in surviving," more
species, by far, have gone extinct than exist in the world today.

STEVE: " The idea that a Supernatural being cannot create natural law is a
mistaken one. It has long been said that the effect cannot be greater than
the cause. Therefore, the Designer can easily create natural law. The
alleged problem here comes in the semantics. But maybe I can clear it up a
little bit. I am human, but I can create something that is not human, even
mechanical. I could build an engine from parts. Does this seem
contradictory to you, that a human can create mechanical?

Reply: No, it is not contradictory, because both the human and the
mechanical device, which he has made, are in and of the natural world. That
is not the case with a Supernatural Creator, which exists in some kind of
obscure supernatural dimension. The interface between the supernatural and
the natural is not at all clear to me.

STEVE: "Last time I checked, creation scientists only used supernatural
intervention for two events in their arguments (many more in their
theology): The creation week and the flood. Everything else in creation
science sticks to natural explanations. Does this mean that we fit within
the boundaries of what the materialist considers sound, productive
science?"

Reply: Pseudoscientific explanations of everything from the reign of the
dinosaurs to the descent of man are no better than supernatural
explanations.

STEVE: "Anything not covered I feel is simply unimportant or
inconsequential."

Reply: I emphatically disagree. Your comments have been mainly about
supernatural intelligent design (SID), yet you are, I assume, a Christian.
Therefore, it seems to me pointless for you argue in favor of a SID, when
the supposed son of a SID, Jesus, as I pointed out in my "Divine Jesus" web
page, failed the test of supernatural powers by not returning as he
predicted during his generation and during the lives of some of his
listeners.

You seem very lucid to me, Steve, so how did you get the moniker, "Madd"?
Maybe it came from your delightfully playful sense of humor.

Regards,

Tom Lawson


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