On the forbidden question.

“Why Life?”: A Question Atheist Scientists Never Ask 

Stephen Jacobini 

One cannot understand organisms — that is, life itself — without incorporating the concept of purpose within biology, the science of organisms. Such purpose is observable and measurable, and therefore well within the bounds of scientific inquiry.

The facts are clear. All life is purpose-driven, from the biomolecule up to the ecosystem itself, and everything in between. Angiosperms cannot reproduce without insects, and pollinating insects cannot live without nectar. Chipmunks cannot live without acorns, and oak trees cannot propagate without chipmunks. Even something as catastrophic as the eruption of Mount St. Helens was, in the end, a life-giving event. In the subsystem of biology known as succession, fire and even lava are sometimes necessary to bring forth new life. 

A Struggle for Existence 

More strikingly, the purpose-driven nature of life precedes Darwinian natural selection as the fundamental agency of evolution. Simply put, the well described Darwinian struggle for existence can occur if and only if living creatures “make the effort.” The word “struggle” is apropos. Surviving in the wild is not easy. It requires constant vigilance, exertion, and determination. That’s true even for the king of beasts. There was never a lioness who took down a wildebeest or water buffalo without risking a fatal blow from hooves or horns. The great white shark must roll its eyes back behind its jaws to survive its own attack upon its prey. 

No Mystery Here? 

To an atheist scientist, none of this seems mysterious. 

The shark, the lion, and every other predator is simply driven to the hunt by hunger. And that is just a chemical reaction, when the gut sends a message to the brain that there is a need for nutrition. It is the same with reproduction, they would say. The urge to mate is purely physiological. Despite the great risk, bulls and boars and bucks will fight it out for the right to breed.

As for those creatures that are preyed upon, they watch out carefully for danger, and flee from the hunter. Understanding the biochemistry of not wanting to have your flesh torn open is not hard to understand.

Of course, that is all true. The issue is not whether we can understand the behavior of animals surviving in the wild. Or surviving indoors, where conditions are safer. I recall vividly as a child in school watching the clock tick up to noon, anxious to be able to open my lunch pail and satisfy my hunger. There was nothing profound about that.

But in order to understand life, it is not sufficient to simply observe what is happening. The real question is why things are the way they are. 

But in order to understand life, it is not sufficient to simply observe what is happening. The real question is why things are the way they are.

However, did we not just decide that animals eat because they are hungry and avoid danger to eschew harm? Yes, these are clearly purpose-driven activities, and they all have a biochemical or physiologic basis.

True enough. But the deeper question is, why are these physiologic stimuli there in the first place? Answer: to allow for life. But then… why life?

“Why life?” is the ultimate question. 

If, as the atheist scientists endlessly insist, we exist merely as an accidental collocation of molecules strewn together on some small planet in the backwater of an insignificant galaxy, then again, “Why life?”

Time, Energy, and Matter 

The answer, finally, comes all the way back to where we started: purpose. Time, energy, and inanimate matter carry on ceaselessly with no apparent purpose. But arising out of the inorganic are living creatures, utterly purpose-driven. There is absolutely no reason for purpose-driven life to exist within this milieu, unless purpose itself exists at the fundamental core of reality itself.

Every religion has taught this, always. It is not a new revelation, however forgotten in modern times. 

Let us return to the wisdom of our elders. 

Hope has fallen?

Bioethicist: Having Children Is Bad 

Wesley J. Smith 

This is the world of bioethics, the “experts” whom we are supposed to trust to guide public policy on a range of issues, from medical policy to environmental law.

We should not listen to a word the mainstreamers have to say — as this article telling us not to have children makes clear. From “Science Proves Kids are Bad for the Earth,” by Travis Reider, published at NBC Think: 

A startling and honestly distressing view is beginning to receive serious consideration in both academic and popular discussions of climate change ethics. According to this view, having a child is a major contributor to climate change. The logical takeaway here is that everyone on Earth ought to consider having fewer children. 

The Chinese Model 

Talk about shades of China family-planning theory. We must destroy much of what makes life worth living in order save the planet! 

The argument that having a child adds to one’s carbon footprint depends on the view that each of us has a personal carbon ledger for which we are responsible. Furthermore, some amount of an offspring’s emissions count towards the parents’ ledger. 

Whatcrap. We do not have to feel guilty for being alive. Moreover, children bring great joy into the world. They are the posterity to whom the future will belong and depend. They are the hope of the world, not environmental disasters. 

The Most Important Endeavor 

If I release a murderer from prison, knowing full well that he intends to kill innocent people, then I bear some responsibility for those deaths — even though the killer is also fully responsible. My having released him doesn’t make him less responsible (he did it!). But his doing it doesn’t eliminate my responsibility either.

Something similar is true, I think, when it comes to having children: Once my daughter is an autonomous agent, she will be responsible for her emissions. But that doesn’t negate my responsibility. Moral responsibility simply isn’t mathematical. . . .

Having a child imposes high emissions on the world, while the parents get the benefit. So like with any high-cost luxury, we should limit our indulgence.

No. Choosing to bring new life is not an environmental wrong. It is the best that life has to offer.

This is why I call it global-warming hysteria. And it’s an example of why I think most bioethics discourse pushes us away from policies and actions that make for a healthy and vibrant society.

Ps. Luke23:29NIV"For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!’" 

For the record I believe that both the author and the mainstream bioethicists he vehemently opposes mean well but they both attacking the symptoms and not the disease.

 

Between the magic kingdom and JEHOVAH's Kingdom.

On this classic ID the future, John West, author of Walt Disney and Live Action: The Disney Studio’s Live-Action Features of the 1950s and 60s, talks about Walt Disney’s life-long fascination with evolution. By exploring various messages embedded in Disney’s theme parks and animated features, from the Magic Skyway created for the 1964 World’s Fair to the 1948 animated film Fantasia, we see Disney’s recurring contemplation of evolution. Fantasia, in particular, provides an extended depiction of evolutionary history along with imaginatively rendered reflections on rationalism, materialism, and animism. At first blush Fantasia’s “Rite of Spring” seems to promote Darwinian materialism, but as West explains, a closer look reveals considerable nuance and ambiguity. On the Magic Skyway, animatronics were used to tell stories of ages past, from the age of the dinosaurs to the arrival of man. Disney’s presentation there skirted the origins of humans but, as West argues, the narration suggests that humanity is something qualitatively different, a message at odds with Darwinian materialism.

While we have you here, please consider an end-of-year gift to Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (CSC) to support this podcast and the culture-impacting work of intelligent design. The research and writing of CSC fellows such as Stephen Meyer, Michael Behe, Jonathan Wells, Casey Luskin, and Ann Gauger are pushing back the darkness that is Darwinian materialism. The CSC’s work is also shining a light on the truth that nature is a work of genius and that we are, indeed, fearfully and wonderfully made. Click here to give 

The ministry of truth is real?

 How Media and the Medical Establishment Suppressed COVID Heterodoxy

Peter Biles 

Last month, the peer-reviewed journal Minerva: A Review of Science, Learning, and Policy published an important article on COVID-related censorship. I’ve written about it already here. The researchers introduced their article by defining some terms, recalling certain COVID controversies, and noting how multiple respected medical professionals were hurt in the fallout of the pandemic controversy. 

They went on to describe the specific experiences of their study participants, including 13 established doctors, scientists, and medical professionals who were censored, suppressed, or otherwise punished for expressing dissent with regard to the prevailing COVID-19 orthodoxy. All those who participated have either an MD or PhD in their respective fields, and four have both. These are not, then, conspiracy types or Internet trolls. They are reputable minds who simply transgressed against the “consensus” view, which, as I said in my earlier article, has changed drastically since March 2020. 

Standing and Credibility 

The researchers kept these participants anonymous to protect them, but emphasized their standing and credibility. In interviews, they gathered firsthand quotes to show just how harsh and brazen the censorship was in some cases, listing the tactics the medical establishment and media used against them. They reported: 

Tactics of censorship and suppression described by our respondents include exclusion, derogatory labelling, hostile comments and threatening statements by the media, both mainstream and social; dismissal by the respondents’ employers; official inquiries; revocation of medical licenses; lawsuits; and retraction of scientific papers after publication. 

The study respondents noted that publications that formerly endorsed and published them began excluding their work and refusing to publish or interview them. One participant said,  

Neither X nor Y [two major newspapers in the respondent’s country] wanted to publish my articles. Without a proper explanation. …It was quite blatant, that they stopped accepting articles expressing a different opinion from that of the Ministry of Health (MOH). The number of journalists who can really be talked to, who are willing to listen to another opinion, to publish, has been greatly reduced, and most health reporters today are very biased towards the MOH. 

Beyond mere exclusion from publication privileges, respondents also experienced outright denigration. News headlines called them out for their criticisms, defaming them, harming their reputations, and distorting their views. One participant said, “I have been vilified…I’ve been called a quack…, an anti-vaxxer and a COVID denier, a conspiracy theorist.” Facing ridicule of that sort, other likeminded medical professionals understandably kept silent. So, the silencing tactic may have suppressed many more medical professionals, as the researchers note in their introduction.  

Not the Only Casualties 

The study also showed how reputations weren’t the only casualties. Whole careers were destroyed. Another respondent reported: 

I lost my job…, I was working for the last 20 years in X [the institution’s name]… And so, the media started coming to X… there was a concerted effort to… ruin my reputation, even though, this is unbelievable, they had the lowest death rate basically in the world, and the doctor who brought it to them, gets vilified and slandered. So, I left on my own…  

Other respondents described being censored by social media. Sites such as Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and LinkedIn, removed heterodox posts, and in some cases, suspended the respondent’s account. That Twitter blacklisted and “shadow-banned” prominent medical experts like Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya has since been confirmed. One study participant said: 

I’ve always had videos, just my teaching material I’ve been putting up on YouTube…, but I also started to put up materials around this, just sort of talking through some of the research… looking at the vaccine efficacy data… YouTube started taking it down. And so now…, I cannot post, I can’t even mention vaccines, because within seconds, as soon as I’m actually trying to upload the video, YouTube will say this video goes against our guidelines… 

No Explanation or Due Process 

Beyond media censorship, the medical establishment suppressed research and viewpoint diversity. Academic institutions, peer-reviewed journals, and scientific committees played a hand in excluding certain respondents and refusing to give their voices a fair hearing. One respondent said he was “stripped” from a committee and editorial position with no explanation or due process. The respondent had been on this particular committee for decades, but still was cut off without a word. In addition, the researchers noted that some respondents “recounted how their research had been retracted by the journal after publication.” During the pandemic, it became increasingly difficult for some of the respondents to publish in journals where their work had been formerly welcomed. 

The study went on to document how the participants initially responded to these tactics of suppression, and the tactics they used to fight back. I’ll cover that in my next and final post in this series.

Chickens coming home to roost?

 Ukraine considers ban on Russian affiliated churches

Milton Quintanilla 

Ukrainian authorities recently called for a ban on churches within its borders that are affiliated with Russia.

As reported by Reuters, Ukraine's National Security and Defence Council asked the government to make a law banning churches that are possibly taking orders from Russia.

In an address last Thursday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy argued that pro-Russian influences are trying to "weaken Ukraine from within" as war rages on between Ukraine and Russia.

"We have to create conditions where no actors dependent on the aggressor state [Russia] will have an opportunity to manipulate Ukrainians and weaken Ukraine from within," Zelenskyy said. "We will never allow anyone to build an empire inside the Ukrainian soul."

The security council also called for an investigation into alleged "subversive activities of Russian special services in the religious environment of Ukraine" and a call for sanctions against unspecified individuals.

Meanwhile, last Friday, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) raided at least five parishes belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church that had previously been linked to the Russian Orthodox Church.

A former diocese head was also served a notice of suspicion by authorities. The former leader is suspected of organizing a Pro-Moscow campaign with the leader of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Metropolitan Kliment, a spokesperson for the church, says his organization "has always acted within the framework of Ukrainian law."

"Therefore, the state of Ukraine does not have any legal grounds to put pressure on or repress our believers," he added.

According to The Christian Post, last month, authorities conducted searches at the Ivano-Frankivsk Eparchy of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Moscow Patriarchate and the Pochaiv Theological Seminary in Ternopil Oblast. The SBU claimed that pro-Russian materials were found in both locations.

In a message via Telegram, Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called authorities in Kyiv "Satanists" and "enemies of Christ and the Orthodox faith."

"This is how the whole Christian world should treat them," he continued.

Photo courtesy: Andriyko Podilnyk/Unsplash

Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer. He is also the co-hosts of the For Your Soul podcast, which seeks to equip the church with biblical truth and sound doctrine. Visit his blog Blessed Are The Forgiven.

Revelation17:16KJV"And the ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire."

Death and taxes indeed.

Bioethics: In Canada, Medically Assisted Death Is a Solution for Poverty

Wesley J. Smith 

Death is increasingly seen as the answer to a variety of woes in Canada, with its euthanasia libertinism running truly amuck. This includes veterans being offered euthanasia for PTSD and a nursing home patient lethally injected because she did not want to be isolated during a COVID lockdown. There are also cases in which people ask to die because they can’t access prompt medical care from Canada’s socialized healthcare system, and one in which death was offered to a disabled woman rather than a stairs chair lift. 

A Culture of Abandonment

Now, a disabled man wants to die because he is afraid of falling into poverty. And at least one doctor has said yes. From the Daily Mail story: 

A Canadian pensioner seeking euthanasia because he fears homelessness has received approval from a doctor despite admitting poverty is a major factor in the decision to end his own life.

Les Landry, 65, told assessors for the procedure he ‘doesn’t want to die’ but has applied for medical assistance in dying (MAID) because he can’t afford to live comfortably.

Astonishingly, a doctor has given one of the two signatures required for Landry to end his own life, despite knowing that financial hardship — not illness — is a leading reason for the profound decision. 

Landry plans to go doctor-shopping to obtain the second MD approval:

 Landry is awaiting the decision of a second doctor who has assessed his eligibility. If that doctor rejects the application, Landry says he will simply ‘shop’ around for another who’s prepared to sign off on his death — something that’s allowed under Canada‘s assisted dying laws. 

Suicide by Zoom Call 

Note that this is allowed in U.S. assisted-suicide laws too. In fact, many assisted suicides are facilitated by doctors who have not treated the patient and only met them briefly for the purpose of obtaining the lethal prescription. These days, assisted suicide can even be obtained in a Zoom call.

The problem for Landry is that Canada won’t assist him to live with dignity. 

Landry uses a wheelchair and has several other disabilities that mean he is eligible for MAID, including epilepsy and diabetes. But until recently, he was able to live comfortably, sharing his modest home in Medicine Hat, Alberta, with his service dog.

Changes to his state benefits when he turned 65 in May meant his income was cut and he’s now left with around $120 per month after paying for medical bills and essentials.

Landry is also braced for a rent hike in January that could mean his benefits no longer cover the cost of essentials, placing him on the brink of homelessness.

In a series of interviews with DailyMail.com, he detailed his spiral into hardship and decision to pursue the ‘bizarre’ MAID application process that’s made ‘state-sanctioned suicide’ a viable solution to his struggles. 

I’m glad the media and many commentators are finally paying attention to the crass culture of abandonment to which assisted suicide and its advocacy logically leads. I just don’t know whether that increasingly clear consequence of “death with dignity” laws matters much anymore. 

Friendly advice to wannabe chatbot poet: don't quit your day job.

Move Over, Keats? Here Is AI-Generated Poetry 

William A. Dembski 

I’ve had my latest exchange with GPT-3, this time here. (Also see my earlier post, “Dialogue with ChatGPT on Intelligent Design.”) I asked: 

Would you please write me song lyrics in four stanzas about two lovers who get lost on the way up climbing Mount Everest and then get miraculously reunited? Thanks. 

I received this in reply: 

Verse 1

Two lovers, on a journey up the mountain side

Heading towards the summit, side by side

Each step a challenge, each breath a prayer

A love so strong, that nothing can compare

Chorus

Climbing up the mountain, hand in hand

The journey long and hard, but the love so grand

The summit the goal, but fate had other plans

Two lovers lost on their way up Mount Everest

Verse 2

Winds howling, the blizzard so strong

The path ahead obscured, the way so long

The snow so deep, and the air so cold

Direction lost, the two slowly unfold

Chorus

Climbing up the mountain, hand in hand

The journey long and hard, but the love so grand

The summit the goal, but fate had other plans

Two lovers lost on their way up Mount Everest

Verse 3

Two hearts beating, hope starts to fade

The darkness closing in, the two afraid

A glimmer of light, a miracle appears

Uplifting spirits, the two wiped away their tears

Chorus

Climbing up the mountain, hand in hand The journey long and hard, but 

It broke off there, before the 250-word limit. There are settings for word counts.

This poetry is bad to the point of hilarity, much as some movies are so bad that they’re “good.” I know it’s possible to make fun of these AI content-generating systems. But they’re in the early stages, so it will be interesting to see where they break down consistently and where they show continued improvement. My suspicion is that they will never write good original poetry.

 

On acknowledging the thumb print of JEHOVAH.

God Hypothesis: In Defense of Stephen Meyer’s Book Title 

Michael Egnor 

A friend and interlocutor, the philosopher Edward Feser, takes exception to the title of Stephen Meyer’s recent book, Return of the God Hypothesis.

Responding to a tweet from David Klingoffer, Dr. Feser writes: 

With all due respect, the phrase “the God hypothesis” gets my hackles up. If X is something on which the world might merely “hypothetically” depend then X isn’t God. An argument gets to God only if it establishes the reality of an X on which the world couldn’t fail to depend.

Hence arguments that present theism as a “hypothesis” are — qua arguments for theism — time-wasters at best and indeed cause positive harm insofar as they yield a distorted conception of God and his relation to the world.

That is not to rule out a priori the possibility that considerations of the kind raised by Meyer point to real difficulties with some particular naturalistic theory, or indeed with naturalism as such as it is generally understood today. And that’s important.

But to criticize naturalism is not by itself sufficient to establish theism. The relationship between the two sets of issues is more complex than that. Moreover, the arguments that explain the rationale of theism take the form of demonstrations (not mere hypotheses), and proceed from premises that go deeper than particular facts about this or that empirical phenomenon (adaptation, fine-tuning, or whatever). For the interested uninitiated reader, these are matters I set out in Five Proofs of the Existence of God. 

I think Dr. Feser is exactly right in this sense: God’s existence is not a scientific theory on a par with Darwin’s theory of evolution or Big Bang theory or General Relativity. It is certainly possible that Darwinism or the Big Bang or Relativity could be wrong in a fundamental way — in fact, it is obvious that each of these theories is far from an exhaustive explanation of nature. 

A Necessary Predicate 

God’s existence, as Feser has brilliantly shown in several of his books (e.g., here, here and here ), is a necessary predicate for the existence of anything, including the natural world. God is the ground of existence — the Necessary Existence — on which existence itself utterly depends.

But in defense of Dr. Meyer’s book title, there is another perspective that I think is important. Natural theology is a branch of theology (and properly a branch of natural science, in my view) that demonstrates God’s existence from evidence in nature. Feser is an expert in the thought of the great Catholic philosopher Thomas Aquinas (1225– 1274). In Aquinas’ view, all demonstrations of God’s existence are natural theology, because existence is absolutely distinct from essence.

The implication of this is that any valid demonstration of God’s existence must begin with evidence and proceed to the most satisfactory explanation that accounts for that evidence. This is the basis for Aquinas’ refutation of Anselm’s Ontological Argument: the Ontological Argument is a purely formal deductive argument, and you can’t prove the existence of anything by logic alone (essence) without invoking evidence (existence) of some sort. 

Aquinas’ Metaphysics 

Thus, as I understand Aquinas’ metaphysics, God’s existence is a theory in natural science, and (aside from revelation) it is only via natural science (i.e., natural theology) that His existence can be demonstrated. Of course, when you look carefully at the natural demonstrations of God’s existence, His existence is absolutely undeniable, because to deny His existence is to deny the reality of change in nature (The First Way), causation in nature (The Second Way), the existence of anything in nature (The Third Way), degrees of perfection in nature (The Fourth Way), teleology in nature (The Fifth Way), interconnectedness of processes in nature (The Neo-Platonic Proof), the reality of universals (The Augustine Proof), the real distinction between essence and existence in nature (The Thomistic Proof), the existence of sufficient reason for nature (The Rationalist Proof), and the reality of Moral Law.

To deny God’s existence is to admit abject ignorance or, if the denier is conversant with these proofs, insanity. But nonetheless, by Aquinas’ own criterion, these proofs are hypotheses in natural science, in the sense that they are inductive arguments that begin with natural (scientific) evidence and proceed to inference to best explanation. 

Science Correctly Understood 

It is in this light that I see Dr. Meyer’s book title — the validity of the God hypothesis is demonstrated by modern science correctly understood. Of course, the arguments presented by Dr. Meyer are not Thomistic or classical philosophical proofs, but his arguments are accessible to the public and to scientists in ways that classical natural theology may not be.

I suspect that more people in our philosophically innocent modern culture will be convinced of God’s existence by the Big Bang, the genetic code, and anthropic coincidences than will be convinced by the Augustinian Proof or the Neo-Platonic Proof. Dr. Feser makes excellent points — particularly the point that it is dangerous to use atheists’ own metaphysical presumptions in this debate — but what Dr. Meyer did was enter the atheist camp, take up their flawed tools, and defeat them with their own weapons.

Dr. Meyer’s brilliant book is a 21st century Areopagus Sermon, fitted to the scientistic world in which we live and move and have our being.

 

On the crux of the design debate?

 Luskin on the Heart of Intelligent Design Theory 

Evolution News 

On a classic episode of ID the Future, intelligent design geologist Casey Luskin sits down with podcast host Dr. Jeff Myers to explain the heart of intelligent design theory and why it should matter to Christians and to anyone who prizes a culture committed to the view that life is meaningful and human beings more than matter in motion. Dr. Luskin also responds to evolutionist attempts to explain the origin of exquisite molecular machines like the bacterial flagellum motor, and he offers some advice for pro-ID college students facing professors hostile to anything that challenges mainstream evolutionary theory.  

Download the podcast or listen to it here