Behe right, Miller wrong?

Posted on June 14, 2007 by me

Today at Uncommon Descent: “Junk” DNA may not be junk at all. From a June 13 article posted on Science Daily, the the ENCyclopedia Of DNA Elements (ENCODE) consortium (which, by the way, appear to be real scientists, not those ID people) has just published a group paper and 14 companion papers indicating a need to rethink what we presume about DNA. The Science Daily article states, “The new data indicate the genome contains very little unused sequences and, in fact, is a complex, interwoven network. In this network, genes are just one of many types of DNA sequences that have a functional impact.”

As the Uncommon Descent post points out, in 1994 Ken Miller wrote, “the designer made serious errors, wasting millions of bases of DNA on a blueprint full of junk and scribbles. Evolution, in contrast, can easily explain them as nothing more than failed experiments in a random process…” I’ve seen this “junk DNA” argument tossed around again and again by those wanting to simply dismiss people like Michael Behe.

Behe, on the other hand, proposed in Darwin’s Black Box that what was called “junk” DNA might not be junk after all, once we know more. Apparently Behe was correct.

Posted in Faith, Science & Doubt | 4 Comments

Review: Letter to a Christian Nation

Posted on June 11, 2007 by me

I just read Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation. I thought I should, as it was more or less addressed to me. Not that this in itself means anything, as I either shred or ignore much mail sent my way. However, the idea that anyone would spend $16.95 to read a letter addressed to them made me quite curious, to see if it was worth it. So, rather than buying a copy of my own, I snagged it from our local library.

First of all, I want to say that I do have a certain amount of compassion for Mr. Harris; after he wrote his book, The End of Faith (which is still on my reading list), he apparently got deluged in hate mail from people calling themselves Christians. I say “calling themselves Christians,” based on 1 John 4:8: “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.” If I were Sam Harris in this situation, I would tend to think that these hate letters confirmed my conclusions, and this would justify my charging $16.95 for this very short, little book which could be read in 30 minutes. And, whether he makes any sense or not, I’m guessing he made a fair amount of cash for what appears to be a weekend’s work, which should help him to feel better. (I’m a bit jealous, actually; perhaps I should write a similar “letter to a Christian nation” from a Christian’s point of view… hmm… I started out joking, but I’m starting to think it’s a great idea….).

So, Harris’ first point is made, and it’s valid. Many Christians are jerks who don’t act like they’ve ever read – or at least believed – the Bible. The New Testament is clear what a Christian should look like, or at least try to look like. It’s a shame, but it’s true: some of the worst advertisements for Christianity are people who say they’re Christians but don’t have a clue what that actually means.

However, the rest of Harris’ book is, for the most part, pure nonsense. As it’s a letter, he’s under no obligation to be accurate, logical or coherent. (Again, this would be the perfect book for me to copy…) He uses as many logical fallacies as I’ve ever seen in 90-some tiny pages, and it would be a great exercise to go through the book and analyze it from this perspective. Perhaps the most glaring example of faulty logic is to use various specific groups to make general attacks (which he does admit to, to some extent). He shotguns Christians, sometimes referring to fundamentalists, sometimes to Catholics, and so on. This lets him bounce around, blasting away, without ever actually making an accurate shot. For fellow atheists and other non-believers, its all good fun, as they say. However, it means Christians will be generally dismissive of what he has to say.

There are a number of things he alleges, such as conservatives wanting to “preserve cervical cancer as an incentive toward abstinence” that is simply ludicrous; someone might have made such a stupid statement, but this is not typical Christianity. He really should have taken the time to mention names, if he’s going to toss out bizarre examples like this.

A few other statements I noted:

  • “Atheism is not a philosophy; it is not even a view of the world.” Now I don’t know what he means to prove here, but atheism certainly is a worldview, and it definitely has an influence on how you’d live your life.
  • He alleges that “we know on the basis of textual evidence” that the New Testament writers wrote in such a way to fulfill prophecies of the Old Testament. He can believe this fairy tale if he wants, but it’s simply not the case.
  • He states that if the Bible actually had prophecy, it would predict something like the internet. This shows how clueless he is about the Bible; even clear-thinking atheists could see past this.
  • He also makes the case that science “represents our best efforts to know what is true about the world.” and says “The core of science … is intellectual honesty.” From what I’ve seen of the more vocal anti-God scientists, I would have to conclude that I haven’t seen much in the way of real science from them…

His letter is full of ranting and hand-waving with very little in the way of logic or reason. He also manages to really offend Muslims, which probably got his name added to a list that also includes George Bush and Salman Rushdie. Of course, I have to say that I would agree with some of his statements there.

He does start his conclusion rather well: “One of the greatest challenges facing civilization … is for human beings to learn to speak about their deepest personal concerns – about ethics, spiritual experience, and the inevitability of human suffering – in ways that are not flagrantly irrational.” However, he then proceeds to talk about his desire to see religion eradicated from the world. It would seem that Sam Harris has a lot to learn about how to actually communicating with people he disagrees with.

Now, perhaps it’s time to start writing my own letter …

Posted in Faith, Science & Doubt, Reviews | 4 Comments

Food for thought: Evolution and the long-necked giraffe

Posted on June 10, 2007 by me

From page 48 of The Evolution of the Long-Necked Giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis L.) – What do we really know? (Part 2) by biologist and genetic mutations expert Wolf-Ekkehard Loennig of the Max Planck Institute for Breeding Research:

In the first part of the paper we have come to the conclusion that the assertions on the evolution of the long-necked giraffes by Ulrich Kutschera, Richard Dawkins and Kathleen Hunt do not have a scientific basis. This is also true for macroevolutionary propositions of Mitchell and Skinner and others, which have been discussed in the second part. Although an absolute negative proof is nearly or completely infeasible, nevertheless the scientific data that are available to date on the question of the origin of the giraffe make a gradual development by mutation and selection so extremely improbable that in any other area of life such improbability would force us to look for a feasible alternative.

Yet biologists committed to a materialistic world view will simply not consider an alternative. For them, even the most stringent objections against the synthetic evolutionary theory are nothing but open problems that will be solved entirely within the boundaries of their theory. This is still true even when the trend is clearly running against them, that is, when the problems for the theory become greater and greater with new scientific data. This essential unfalsifiablity, by the way, places today’s evolutionary theory outside of science, one of whose defining characteristics is that theories can only be considered to be scientific if they are falsifiable, and when they set forth criteria by which they can potentially be falsified.

Just food for thought.

Posted in Faith, Science & Doubt | 2 Comments

What if God was one of us?

Posted on June 9, 2007 by me

If God had a face what would it look like
And would you want to see
If seeing meant that you would have to believe
In things like Heaven and in Jesus and the saints and all the prophets

And yeah yeah God is great yeah yeah God is good
yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on the bus
Trying to make his way home

– One Of Us, Eric Bazilian

(Note on the above song credit: the song was a hit for Joan Osbourn, but written by Eric Brazilan of the Philadelphia-based band, The Hooters. A “hooter,” by the way, is another name for a melodica, an instrument that the band featured.)

So, who is this God of the Bible? Is he the scary, wrathful “dangling sinners over the pit of Hell” kind of God that Jonathan Edwards ranted about, or is he “a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness” (Jonah 4:2)?

There’s a basic rule of interpretation that will really help us here, and that is to start with what is the most clear, and interpret that which is less clear in light of what we know. Keeping in mind that both Testaments speak of the unchanging nature of God, we know that we should see the same God throughout the Bible – but where to start?

I believe that the book of Hebrews holds the key:

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. Hebrews 1:1-3a

If Jesus, then, is the highest revelation of God, this should be our starting point. And, we see that Jesus himself made a similar claim:

If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. … Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. John 14:7,9

Now, most people like Jesus. As gods go, he is hands down the best. Antony Flew, the famous ex-atheist, but who is still not a Theist, said in an interview, “Well, one thing I’ll say … is that, for goodness sake, Jesus is an enormously attractive charismatic figure.”

The people who didn’t like Jesus, of course, were the religious power-mongers of his day. He tended to snub those who we would call self-righteous, and chose to hang out with the sinners. Far from dangling people over hell, he healed people without requiring repentance (though he certainly advised in favor of repentance), forgave sins without being asked, and on the cross even asked the Father to forgive those participating in his crucifixion, “for they know not what they do.”

He also chastised the Jews for keeping the knowledge of God to themselves and for holding religion over people’s heads. He chastised the rich and the self-righteous. If you look through the Gospels at those whom Jesus criticized and those whom he accepted, I think you’d come up with a rather interesting par of lists with the headings “sheep” and “goats.”

So far, he appears to be the original Working Class Hero. But, here’s where people begin to have issues: he claimed to be “the truth” and “the only way.” He made it clear that you accepted Jesus’ Good News – or you missed the boat. At this point, you can hear a Jarjar-like exclamation, “how rude!” So, Jesus turns out to be this extremely nice guy with the only “words of life,” which at times can be rather harsh. As it turns out, Jesus offended everybody, as the Gospel tends to do. Jesus’ moral teachings are welcome on one hand and offensive on the other. Jesus, after all, claimed to be God. As CS Lewis argued, you cannot just accept Jesus as a heckuva nice guy; he either was God as he claimed, or he was a flake. You either, then, have to accept Jesus at his own word, or come up with some hair-brained theory to explain how his words were altered by wacko followers.

In spite of ridiculous arguments that Jesus never existed (as was made by one of the atheists in the recent debate against Ray Comfort), the evidence for Jesus is sufficient for any reasonable person not to doubt it. And, as far as that goes, the evidence for the physical resurrection of Jesus is also quite sound. Quoting Antony Flew again from his interview with Dr. Gary Habermas, “The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion. It’s outstandingly different in quality and quantity, I think, from the evidence offered for the occurrence of most other supposedly miraculous events.”

Considering the best scholarship on Jesus and the Bible, we have to conclude that the four accepted Gospels are authentic and aside from a few questionable passages (which by the way, are noted as such in most versions of the Bible), we can accept them as historically reliable; it really makes no sense to doubt them. So, again we are faced with dealing with the person of Jesus of Nazareth, who claimed to be God.

But what about God in the rest of the Bible? Certainly we have to address the total picture of God as revealed throughout history – for that is essentially what the Bible is about. However, until we get past Jesus, there’s no point in dealing with anything else. Again, Jesus is the highest revelation of the Biblical God that we have, and we must start here, and then interpret the rest according to what Jesus has revealed.

This is not a cop-out by any means, meant to avoid dealing with the Old Testament. It is, rather, a challenge to deal with Jesus.

Posted in Faith, Science & Doubt, Theological Musings | 4 Comments