Astronomy—Theology—Evolution

Posted on April 25, 2016 Leave a Comment

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.” - Mark Twain

This is a wonderfully interconnected triad that gifted naturalist Annie Dillard would regard as a “bright snarl.” Without a Creator there would be no “astronomy” or evolution. Without evolution the universe would be oxymoronically stuck in the first nanosecond, before time began, with no cosmos. And with no cosmos, humans would not have evolved with the ability to contemplate the works of the Creator.

Two gifted writers have properly suggested that “Mystery” reigns supreme and only egoism and arrogance motivate scientists and theologians to assume that they have all relevant answers. Robert Jastro, former director of the National Aeronautics And Space Administration (“Until The Sun Dies,” and “God and the Astronomers”) acknowledged the limitations of “The Big Bang Theory:”

“At this moment it seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”

Jastro was a self-described agnostic, yet he used candor and levity to describe the inadequacy of his own thought process.

In an equally terse self-analysis, Fr. Robert Capon, “Hunting The Divine Fox stated:”

“Theology therefore is fun. The inveterate temptation to make something earnest out of it must be steadfastly resisted. We were told quite plainly that unless we became as little children, we could not enter the kingdom of heaven, and nowhere more than in theology do we need to take this message to heart.”

The “Big Bang,” the origin of life and the eventual evolution of human beings remain three of the great, unsolved mysteries of planet Earth. Anthropologist Loren Eiseley concluded his work, The Immense Journey with:

“Rather, I would say that if “dead” matter has reared up this curious landscape of fiddling crickets, song sparrows and wondering men, it must be plain even to the most devoted materialist that the matter of which he speaks contains amazing, if not dreadful powers, and may not impossibly be, as Hardy has suggested, ‘but one mask of many worn by the Great Face behind.’”

Lowell H. Young
Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

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Darwin Had Absolutely No Doubt About Theism And The Evolution Of Humans

Posted on April 18, 2016 5 Comments

In his own words, “The Autobiography of Charles Darwin:”

“When thus reflecting [‘on the universe, including man’] I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man’ and I deserve to be called a Theist.”

Shame on Richard Dawkins, and other science atheists who deny, obfuscate, pervert or “cherry pick” Darwin’s words. They have sabotaged Darwin’s message to make it conform their soulless world, and what a cold, heartless world it must be. If one of Dawkins’ minions decides to initiate a nuclear war, he could shrug it of as a “random” result of Darwinian “survival of the fittest.” It is staggering to know that an overwhelming number of high school, college/university biology teachers agree with Dawkins.

Secular scientists are quick to point out that human beings and chimpanzees share 97% of the same DNA. While the fossil evidence suggests that humans and chimps evolved from a common ancestor over 5 million years ago, the obvious fact remains that chimps are chimps and humans evolved into the most extraordinary animals on the planet. Evidently that 3% increase led to the world’s greatest artists, poets, sages, musicians and, ironically, even scientists like Dawkins.

Much of Darwin’s theory can be proven in the laboratory and in the field. For 1000s of years, people have used “selective breeding” and “mass selection” as a means to develop more productive and useful plants and animals. However, this does not mean that his theory is complete and flawless. After a discussion with Alfred Wallace, he acknowledged that he failed to explain human “gifts” such as mathematical, musical and artistic genius. These qualities are almost totally absent in chimpanzees.

All of the genetic changes Darwin observed were minor and only rendered the offspring a small advantage of survival. Loren Eiseley quipped; the human brain grew “like a mushroom in the night.” This has equipped man with an indeterminate period of time of mental growth. There is no known biological cause for the rapid expansion of the two human cerebral hemispheres.

Lamarck’s theory of use and disuse is of no value.

The Leakey family, Louis, Mary and Richard verified the increased cranial capacity of modern man, but they did not demonstrate the compelling factor.

Stephen Jay Gould was a big fan of “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,” however he failed to show why or how the human embryo (in evolutionary time) suddenly gained the ability to generate a triple-sized brain.

Gould was also a fan of “punctuated equilibrium” which may explain the “fits and spurts of evolution,” but he could not explain the evolution of the human brain.

Pathetically, human geneticist, Richard Dawkins, recently inferred that the human brain evolved out of “nothing.”

The latest wrinkle in the evolution battle is the emerging consideration of “Intelligent Design.” Although the theory suggests that evolution is not a random, chance-born process, it does not describe a “designated designer.” Therefore, “Intelligent Design” does not explain the emergence of the human brain.

The fact of the matter is, by virtue of the laws of chance and probability, the human brain should never have evolved and so it is not surprising that its origin remains a mystery. Considering the universe, with its boggling time/space dimensions, life on Earth is supremely enigmatic. The Earth has been evolving for 4.5 billion years and yielded millions of plant and animal species before man arrived. Darwinian evolution does not need or explain “man.” If all these living forms survived by “instinct,” what need is there for consciousness, values, or free will? If “modern man” evolved 5 million years ago, we have lived on Earth 0.01% of its history and yet arrogant practitioners of Scientism claim that Mystery is irrelevant and that they have all the necessary answers.

Meanwhile, there is a moral and ethical disease that is pandemic in our society and had afflicted scientists as well. It is called “situational ethics” and scientists use it frequently. Lacking any evidence for the origin of the universe, the origin of life, the origin of the first cell or the tripling of the human brain, secular scientists either ignore or obfuscate the issues or make up their own ethics and pander them as truth.

Photo credit: Toscano: Darwin’s Ape. Available Amazon.com

Lowell H. Young
Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

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Intelligent Design or Nothingness?

Posted on April 6, 2016 Leave a Comment

“Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.” - Albert Einstein

There are a growing number of practitioners of “scientism” who become exercised when their critics suggest that science may have some wrong conclusions. Paraphrasing Einstein’s logic, all scientists have been wrong on some issues or else they would have become a god.

Ptolemy, the Greek mathematician/astronomer, proposed a geocentric model for our solar system that lasted for 1400 years. Imagine that! For 1400 years, scientists and scholars walked around thinking that they knew the “truth” about the solar system. Ironically, history has repeated itself, as many scientists think that their thoughts are the center of the universe.

Lamarck was wrong about his theory of “use and disuse” and that acquired traits were passed on to offspring. Scientists of that time believed that mice mysteriously emerged from piles of rags and worms spontaneously grew in mud puddles.

Einstein was wrong about the “Steady State” theory and admitted that he falsified some data to favor his conclusions. Later, he sorrowfully acknowledged that it was the greatest mistake in his career.

In his autobiography, Charles Darwin admitted that his theory of evolution could not explain the origin of life or the evolution of humans. This confession is conveniently ignored by an overwhelming majority of high school and university biology teachers.

Carl Sagan’s description of how the first cells were formed (“COSMOS”) is pure fantasy, but is still being taught to millions of US students.

Nobel prize winner, Dr. Roger Sperry stated:

“One of the great unresolved paradoxes of science involves consciousness, free will and values, three long-standing thorns in the hide of science. Materialist science couldn’t cope with any of them, even in principle. It’s not just that they’re difficult. They’re in direct conflict with basic models. Science has had to renounce them—to deny their existence or to say that they are beyond the domain of science.”

In a recent debate on evolution, Richard Dawkins became one of Einstein’s fools as he tried to describe how evolution came from “NOTHING.” When the audience laughed, he looked puzzled and asked, “What’s so funny about that?” What he failed to grasp was that the people, who he regarded as intellectually inferior, used his own words to deduce that he was inferring that his brain must have evolved out of nothing. Little wonder they could not contain their laughter.

In his book, “The Great Design,” Stephen Hawking claims that the universe is so complex that it made itself out of “nothing,” which has rendered God obsolete. Either Hawking is wrong or the fundamental laws of physics (matter/energy can neither be created nor destroyed) are wrong.

There is nothing wrong with making errors during scientific research. In fact, the entire process of the scientific method depends on testing hypotheses to see if they are flawed. However, science becomes dangerously flawed when a “scientist undertakes to set himself up as a judge of Truth and Knowledge [and] is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.”

There are many who think that Einstein’s contribution to society, as a humanitarian was more valuable than his work as a scientist. If this is so, then it is not surprising that his legendary last words were, “I still wonder how something could come from nothing?”.

Assuming that we don’t destroy ourselves first, what current scientific knowledge that we believe is factual, will people in 100 years laugh about?

Lowell H. Young
Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

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An Abominable Mystery

Posted on March 16, 2016 Leave a Comment

“Everything You Need To Know Is Contained In a Flower.” Buddha

Excerpt: “The Immense Journey” [How Flowers Changed The World] by Loren Eiseley.

“A little while ago—about one hundred million years, as the geologist estimates time in the history of our four-billion-year-old planet—flowers were not to be found anywhere on the five continents. Wherever one might have looked, from the poles to the equator, one would have only seen only the cold dark monotonous green of a world whose plant life possessed no other color.
Somewhere, just a short time before the close of the Age of Reptiles, there occurred a soundless, violent explosion. It lasted millions of years, but it was an explosion nevertheless. It marked the emergence of the angiosperms—the flowering plants. Even the great evolutionist, Charles Darwin, called them “an abominable mystery,” because they appeared so suddenly and spread so fast… The weight of a petal has changed the face of the world and made it ours.”

Living 600 years before Christ, Buddha lacked modern geological and botanical knowledge. However, his wisdom about flowers rings just as true today as when he proposed it.

Lowell H. Young
Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

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It’s About Time

Posted on December 7, 2014 Leave a Comment

Warning! Readers of this post are likely to experience a severe brain cramp!

Excerpt: Biodesign Out For A Walk, Chap. 10, Matthew I.

Unbeknown to me, a quiet, thoughtful Latina girl went to church the following Sunday. After the service, she approached her priest and asked, “Father, if God made the universe, what made God?” The priest’s face turned red, and he stooped down and whispered sharply in her ear, “We don’t ask questions like that!”

The pope once asked Stephen Hawking not to try to inquire about what happened before the big bang, and Hawking agreed. Not because he wanted to comply with the pope’s wishes, but because it is fundamentally impossible to find out something that happened before the literal beginning of time. As St. Augustine pointed out, “there was no ‘then’; when there was no time.”

Circa 400 AD, Augustine of Hippo formulated the first known version of the “Big Bang” theory. There may be no “scientific” proof for the existence of God, but 1600 years later, scientists have not been able to refute his theory. In fact, excepting the cause, it aligns well with the currently accepted “Big Bang” theory.

I suspect that this will be the most extraordinary blog-post I will ever write and, as usual, it involves someone else’s thinking process. I am not being self-deprecating, it’s just that many of the world’s greatest minds are far more intelligent than I.

This includes a pantheon of scholars including Bishop Augustine of Hippo. In 397 he wrote, Confessions: in thirteen books, which, according to some scholars, is the greatest collection of books other than the Holy Bible. It had a profound impact on the evolution of Christianity and Western philosophy, ergo Western Civilization. In a wonderful synchronicity, I found Eric Rosenfield’s post on-line:

http://www.ericrosenfield.com/time.html

“In 1917, Albert Einstein completed work on the General Theory of Relativity, one of the rules of which states that time is fundamentally bound to matter and gravity, and that without matter there would be no time. Oddly, this concept was presaged almost 1,300 years before that when Bishop Augustine of Hippo (later St. Augustine) put forth the idea that when God created the Heavens and the Earth, he created time itself as well. Before Augustine, no one that we know of had tried to consider “time” as being something changeable, something that could start and stop; after all, we always perceive time as moving forward, and contemplating temporality as being finite or malleable seems unnatural, and the implications headache-rousing. Plato and Aristotle both regarded time as being infinite. Yet it was Augustine’s application of the methods of the principles of Grecian philosophy and reason to the Christian concept of God that forced him to arrive at his conclusions…”

But then, what’s really strange about Augustine’s interpretation of the eternal nature of the Beginning is that, when taken entirely apart from the Bible, it resonates not only with Relativity (Augustine saying that for the World to happen in time there must have been something that experiences time being roughly analogous to Einstein saying that matter and time are linked, and without one you would not have the other) but also with modern Big Bang Theory. Briefly, according to Big Bang Theory, because matter and time are so inextricably bound, when all the matter in the universe was compressed into a single point it formed what’s called a “quantum singularity” in which, the math shows, the curvature of time and space became infinite. This means the Big Bang singularity exists at all times at once, in all places at once much like Augustine’s God - the singularity that created the universe is all around us, all the time, forever. Of course, it’s not a perfect correlation, since whether a quantum singularity wants to offer us salvation through its divine grace, like Augustine’s God, is another question entirely.

Moving forward in Book 11, Augustine then asks, “What exactly is time?” and says, somewhat comically, “If no one asks me, I know what it is.” We know that time, he states, has three parts – the past, the present and the future. And yet, we also know that the past and future don’t actually exist, since we can in no way interact with them except when they are the present. That is to say, if the past and the future exist in the physical way that the present does, we have no way of knowing it, because we only experience the present. And yet, if the past and future don’t exist, then what exactly are we measuring when we measure time? Obviously, time itself exists, since it can be measured, and yet if we say something is a hundred years ago, what exactly is that hundred years ago when it is past and therefore doesn’t exist at all? And since the present must become past in order to be time (otherwise, it would be eternity), then if “time present — if it be time — comes into existence only because it passes into time past, how can we say that even this is, since the cause of its being is that it will cease to be? Thus, can we not truly say that time is only as it tends toward nonbeing?” He then tries to further examine what exactly is meant by the term “present”, since the present cannot be broken down and examined – is the present a second, a nanosecond, less than a nanosecond? In truth the present has no length at all, it can only be measured as it passes from future into past – two states that do not actually exist – and therefore, can it be said that the present actually exists at all?”

In a devilishly humorous irony, in his book, The Great Design, Stephen Hawking proceeded to claim that believing in God has become obsolete because the universe is so complex that it created itself out of NOTHING! Imagine that. Hawking has egotistically assumed that he is smarter than God ergo; God must be obsolete.

So, 1600 years ago, Bishop Augustine proposed a theory that is just as plausible today as anything science has to offer. The fact that he chose to name the Great Mystery “God” and Stephen Hawking chose to name it “nothingness” suggests that Moses was correct when he wrote, 3500 years ago, that man has been endowed with the awesome privilege of “free will”.

According to the “Big Bang Theory”, the universe is 13.8 billion years old, there are 100 billion galaxies in the known universe, the earth is 4.5 billion years old and there are 7 billion people living on our planet. So, what are the odds of us being here at this precise moment?

Lowell H. Young, Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

Mandarin Dragonets—Heike Crabs—Loren Eiseley

Posted on November 29, 2014 Leave a Comment

If I were still teaching Biodesign, I would have students quietly concentrate on this image for one full minute and have them “write out of their stream of consciousness.” I can assure you, their descriptions would be astounding! Why not try it?

The “Big Bang Theory” and evolution have something in common, both are events with no known cause. According to Galileo, the story of “Adam and Eve” was written as an allegory to “accommodate the mental capacity of the unlearned.” Perhaps it is really a story about the evolution of God and, 3,500 years later, it is becoming more complex and enigmatic. In a devilishly ironic twist, evolution has embarrassingly exposed the limited mental capacity of the so-called biological intelligentsia; experts who lack a spiritual perspective of what Joseph Campbell called, “The soul’s high adventure.”

Whether people know it or not, college journalism 101 and biology 101 classes have very similar goals. Their collective objectives are to answer: Who? What? When? Where? Why? And how?

In his book, Cosmos, Carl Sagan, claimed that Heike crabs evolved when Japanese fishermen selected out crabs that resembled samurai warriors and returned them to the sea. I don’t know if this is true or not, however, many of his assumptions regarding evolution were pure “science fiction.” Crabs are crustaceans that appeared on earth about 145 million years ago. Many of the smaller species, including the Heike crabs, have little food value and are routinely returned to the sea by fishermen. The samurai warriors appeared in Japan about 800 years ago. Fossil evidence of such a recent event is not likely, however, if the Heike crabs evolved before then, Sagan’s theory would be invalid.

MORE importantly, this leads us to the obvious question: What was the controlling force that resulted in the flamboyant Mandarin Dragonets? Lacking any plausible explanation, scientists are forced to claim that the fish are the result of “random” or “chance” mutations or reshuffling of genes in the reproductive process. Most scientists would not bet a penny on the odds of this producing a Dragonet, instead they sheepishly grin and parrot, “given enough time it could happen.” Yes, and given enough time, a sow’s ear may magically morph into a silk purse.

In the introduction to Loren Eiseley’s, “The Star Thrower,” W.H. Auden wrote: “I must now openly state my own bias and say that I do not believe in Chance; I believe in Providence and Miracles. If photosynthesis was invented by chance, I can only say it was a damned lucky chance for us. If, biologically speaking, it is a “statistical impossibility” that I should be walking the earth instead of a million other possible people, I can only think of it as a miracle which I must do my best to deserve…I can not swallow the assertion that “chance” mutations can explain the fact that whenever an ecological niche is free, some species evolves to fit it…”

Auden surely had read Eiseley’s, “The Immense Journey,” where he discussed the evolutionary importance of Periophythalmus ( mudskipper fish). Instead of fish, using super-pectoral fins, making a triumphant march up an ocean beach, Eiseley describes the mudskippers climbing up mangrove trees. In what is truly one of the most profound scientific/theological observations Eiseley wrote:

“Perhaps there also, among rotting fish heads and blue night-burning bog lights, moved the eternal mystery, the careful finger of God. The increase was not much. It was two bubbles, two thin-walled little balloons at the end of the Snout’s brain. The cerebral hemispheres had appeared.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KurTiX4FDuQ

The human cerebral hemispheres are the primary structures that separate them from other animals. They are three times larger than those of the higher apes and include the following functions: logic, reasoning, numerical, language, creative, spatial, perception, executive-motor skills, memory, visual, auditory, and sensory skills.

Nobel laureate/physiology scholar Roger Sperry, was well aware of this when he wrote: “One of the great unresolved paradoxes of science involves consciousness, free will and values, three long-standing thorns in the hide of science. Materialist science couldn’t cope with any of them, even in principle. It’s not just that they’re difficult. They’re in direct conflict with basic models. Science has had to renounce them—to deny their existence or to say that they are beyond the domain of science. For most of us, of course, they are among the most important things in life.”

Indeed: Without our cerebral hemispheres we simply would not be sharing this moment in time and space. Boggling!

Lowell H.Young, Author: Biodesign Out For A Walk

Biodesign: Yin-Yang and Evolution

Posted on July 1, 2013 Leave a Comment

It is possible that the ultimate example of the Taoist concept of yin and yang may be contemporary science and religion. Yin and yang are actually complementary, not opposing, forces, interacting to form a whole greater than either separate part; in effect, a dynamic system. Everything has both yin and yang aspects, (for instance shadow cannot exist without light). The sigmoid wall that separates science and religion is necessarily impenetrable. Science depends on facts (as we perceive them) that can be predicted and reproduced. Religion depends on faith that can not be predicted or reproduced. There are times, however, when transitory chinks appear that allow peeks through the wall. Backpackers camping on a high mountain peak on a crisp, clear, night are often treated to a cosmic display that evokes wonder, awe, and perhaps contemplation. Somehow the out-dated “steady-state” theory (“the universe was always there”) seems soul-less, empty, insipid. So, if the “red-shift theory” is correct, and there was a universal creative event, who (or what) made the trans-galactic view? Even though it is not “scientifically correct” to ascribe the creative event to a Supreme Being, can scientists not theorize that the event was caused by a being, power or process that is beyond human comprehension? The sigmoid wall, of the yin and yang of creation and evolution, is much more permeable. Assuming the mountain-top view was created, we also know that it has evolved, and will continue to do so. In fact, what we are seeing does not really exist. The light from stars long gone is still reaching us. The light from newly created stars may not reach Earth for several million years.

It is now clear that the continents on Earth are “drifting,” mountains are being formed and eroded, deserts have come and gone. The Earth was mysteriously created and now is evolving.

The evolutionary history of life, although not complete, suggests that life began at the prokaryote level and has progressed to Blue Whale, Sequoia, nuclear physicist and opera diva. However, just as new stars are being formed, new life forms (even species) are being created. Gregor Mendel and Luther Burbank formed the sciences of theoretical and applied genetics and modern scientists can now “create” modified life forms that previously did not exist.

Perhaps we are finally at the level of intellectual maturity where we can stop bickering and celebrate the synthesis of “Creavolution.” After all, creation and evolution simply can not exist without each other. Every creative event evolves and all evolution begins with a creative event.

Stalwart proponents of one discipline, at the exclusion of the other, are like school-yard children shouting, “Does so!” “Does not!” *