Monday 5 February 2024
Darwinism is devolving?
Darwinists Devolve
One sign of a robust scientific theory is the quality of its most prominent proponents.
During its long history, Darwinian theory has had no shortage of gifted champions, starting with Charles Darwin himself.
Whatever else he was, Darwin was a masterful scientific communicator who collected and interpreted a vast array of observations from the natural world. One can’t read his writings without being duly impressed. Darwin’s civil and measured tone was calculated to persuade. Darwin was especially impressive in taking objections to his theory seriously and seeking to answer them.
Throughout the decades, Darwinism has had many other able scientific advocates. In our own lifetimes, there were Harvard biologists such as Ernst Mayr and Stephen Jay Gould.
And, of course, Oxford University boasted evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. A convincing popularizer and polemicist, Dawkins at least started out as a serious scientist who raised some of the right questions.
The Rise of Intelligent Design
But as the intelligent design movement gathered momentum in the 1990s, something interesting started to happen.
On the one hand, intelligent design scientists and philosophers started publishing a stream of increasingly sophisticated books and research critiquing modern Darwinism or arguing more generally for the detectability of purpose in nature. Think about books such as Darwin’s Black Box, The Design Inference, No Free Lunch, Icons of Evolution, What Darwin Didn’t Know, Nature’s Destiny, The Privileged Planet, Debating Design, The Edge of Evolution, Signature in the Cell, and Darwin’s Doubt. Or think about the research by Douglas Axe and Ann Gauger challenging the evolvability of new functions in proteins through Darwinian means.
On the other hand, as the case against Darwin was growing, the proponents of Darwinism seemed to be shrinking in stature.
Consider Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller, author of the anti-ID polemic Finding Darwin’s God in 1999. Miller was a gifted debater, but his arguments all too often relied on citation bluffing and critiquing straw-man versions of the ideas of Michael Behe and others.
Francis Collins, in his book The Language of God, was even shallower in his critique. Indeed, if you read Collins’s book today, you’ll find that many of his arguments, including junk DNA, have been increasingly thrown overboard by mainstream science.
So who was left to champion the old time religion of Darwinism?
Passing the Baton — Down
Well, you had evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne at the University of Chicago, a loudmouth atheist. At least he was at a prestigious academic institution, and he could muster an argument if he had to.
You also had biologist P. Z. Myers at the University of Minnesota Morris. He too could debate, although the quality of what you got was decidedly second rate. His preferred mode of discourse was invective. As he once instructed his fellow evolutionists, they should “screw the polite words and careful rhetoric. It’s time for scientists to break out the steel-toed boots and brass knuckles, and get out there and hammer on the lunatics and idiots” — by which he meant, of course, anyone who dared to criticize Darwin’s theory.
In short, serious defenders of Darwinism were getting scarcer.
The trend continued as more and more thoughtful intellectuals gave up their Darwinian faith. For example, in 2005 Nobel laureate physicist Robert Laughlin at Stanford University observed: “Evolution by natural selection… has lately come to function more as an anti-theory, called upon to cover up embarrassing experimental shortcomings and legitimize findings that are at best questionable and at worst not even wrong” (Laughlin, A Different Universe, 168).
In 2012, atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel wrote a book with Oxford University Press, the subtitle of which declared: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. Yale computer scientist David Gelernter wrote a piece in 2019 titled “Giving Up Darwin.”
In Search of a Theory
Meanwhile, on the Darwinian side, one of the world’s most prestigious scientific organizations, the Royal Society in England, convened an international conference of scientists in 2016 in search of some new theory of evolution, because of the growing understanding that traditional Darwinism didn’t adequately explain the most important advances in the history of life.
The remaining public champions of old-line Darwinism kept dwindling and devolving. Post-COVID, they seem to have become a truly endangered species.
So who is the most prominent public advocate of Darwin in America today?
Probably Dave Farina, aka “Professor Dave.”
Except Professor Dave isn’t actually a professor, and he doesn’t even have a PhD in a science or any other discipline. He makes his money off of YouTube videos. And many of his arguments consist of copious four-letter words, and I’m not speaking of the words “atom,” “gene,” or “cell.” Farina’s method is to attack anyone who disagrees with him as evil or an idiot — or both. More recently, Professor Dave has revealed himself to be a vile anti-Semite to boot.
Now people as nasty as non-Professor Dave can be rather depressing to deal with. But think about what it means that the most prominent defender of Darwin left is someone as small-minded and unserious as non-Professor Dave. What does it say when the most prominent defender in American society today is someone like THAT?
And what does it say when the prominent defenders of ID include people like Stephen Meyer, William Dembski, Casey Luskin, Winston Ewert, Michael Behe, Marcos Eberlin, Guillermo Gonzalez, Ann Gauger, Emily Reeves, Brian Miller, Jonathan McLatchie, Douglas Axe, and many others?
I think it says the future does not belong to Darwinian materialism.
So take heart! As we approach another birthday of Charles Darwin on February 12, Darwinists may be devolving, but intelligent design proponents are progressing.
On the name Jesus: the Watchtower Society's commentary
Jesus,
(Jeʹsus) [Lat. form of the Gr. I·e·sousʹ, which corresponds to the Heb. Ye·shuʹaʽ or Yehoh·shuʹaʽ and means “Jehovah Is Salvation”].
Jewish historian Josephus of the first century C.E. mentions some 12 persons, other than those in the Bible record, bearing that name. It also appears in the Apocryphal writings of the last centuries of the B.C.E. period. It therefore appears that it was not an uncommon name during that period.
1. The name I·e·sousʹ appears in the Greek text of Acts 7:45 and Hebrews 4:8 and applies to Joshua, the leader of Israel following Moses’ death.—See JOSHUA No. 1.
2. An ancestor of Jesus Christ, evidently in his mother’s line. (Lu 3:29) Some ancient manuscripts here read “Jose(s).”—See GENEALOGY OF JESUS CHRIST.
3. Jesus Christ.—See JESUS CHRIST.
4. A Christian, evidently Jewish, and fellow worker of Paul. He was also called Justus.—Col 4:11.
Ps. Note please there are many Jesuses, their are many Christs, but there is but one JEHOVAH, the only name in ALL of scripture EVER Referred to as Holy.
On distinguishing between God's personal name and His official titles: the Watchtower society's commentary..
In its articles on JEHOVAH, The Imperial Bible-Dictionary nicely illustrates the difference between ʼElo·himʹ (God) and JEHOVAH. Of the name JEHOVAH, it says: “It is everywhere a proper name, denoting the personal God and him only; whereas Elohim partakes more of the character of a common noun, denoting usually, indeed, but not necessarily nor uniformly, the Supreme. . . . The Hebrew may say the Elohim, the true God, in opposition to all false gods; but he never says the JEHOVAH, for JEHOVAH is the name of the true God only. He says again and again my God . . . ; but never my JEHOVAH, for when he says my God, he means JEHOVAH. He speaks of the God of Israel, but never of the JEHOVAH of Israel, for there is no other JEHOVAH. He speaks of the living God, but never of the living JEHOVAH, for he cannot conceive of JEHOVAH as other than living.”—Edited by P. Fairbairn, London, 1874, Vol. I, p. 856.
The same is true of the Greek term for God, The·osʹ. It was applied alike to the true God and to such pagan gods as Zeus and Hermes (Roman Jupiter and Mercury). (Compare Ac 14:11-15.) Presenting the true situation are Paul’s words at 1 Corinthians 8:4-6: “For even though there are those who are called ‘gods,’ whether in heaven or on earth, just as there are many ‘gods’ and many ‘lords,’ there is actually to us one God the Father, out of whom all things are, and we for him.” The belief in numerous gods, which makes essential that the true God be distinguished from such, has continued even into this 21st century.
Paul’s reference to “God the Father” does not mean that the true God’s name is “Father,” for the designation “father” applies as well to every human male parent and describes men in other relationships. (Ro 4:11, 16; 1Co 4:15) The Messiah is given the title “Eternal Father.” (Isa 9:6) Jesus called Satan the “father” of certain murderous opposers. (Joh 8:44) The term was also applied to gods of the nations, the Greek god Zeus being represented as the great father god in Homeric poetry. That “God the Father” has a name, one that is distinct from his Son’s name, is shown in numerous texts. (Mt 28:19; Re 3:12; 14:1) Paul knew the personal name of God, JEHOVAH, as found in the creation account in Genesis, from which Paul quoted in his writings. That name, JEHOVAH, distinguishes “God the Father” (compare Isa 64:8), thereby blocking any attempt at merging or blending his identity and person with that of any other to whom the title “god” or “father” may be applied.
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