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Ian Macrae 12/16/2009 12:16:00 PM
This is a thorough review. Good work.
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Josh 10/27/2009 9:49:00 PM
I don't think that anyone thought the flight of bees was via magic. What I find compelling about their flight is that a low intelligence/no intelligence organism, supposedly conceived, planned and executed it all on their own and did so quickly enough so as not to become extinct while the system was in development. To me, that idea is preposterous on its face, the time it would take to develop a system via natural selection would send it to the scrap heap before it got off the starting line. Oh yes and such a complex system that engineers with 150 point IQ's couldn't design a similar system without copying the one found in nature. Everything man has to boast about is something that was found in nature before we even came along. We've mastered physics...which was already written, there for us to observe. Man is so proud, and for what? Copying off of the test of the student next to them? "The heavens declare the glory of God..." As a believer in God, there are certainly things that give me headaches to think about and challenge my faith, but ultimately I am reassured by the immense complexity and creativity in creation.
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Nanahuatzin 11/10/2008 6:32:00 PM
About 40 years ago, scientist were puzzled about why bees fly.
Acord the law of aerodinamics, their wings should not be able to lift them.
About about 30 years ago, bees were put in a wind tunnel, and photographed at high speed.
Because of their size, bees does not operate using laminar flow, but turbulent flow. And problem resolved.
But since a lot of people does not know the diference between laminar and turbulent flow, they still claim that bees does not obey laws of physics. Ask any chemical engineer to explain it or google it.
Look for the original article in Scientific American.
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James Redford 01/16/2008 11:36:00 PM
The known laws of physics (i.e., general relativity, quantum mechanics, and the Extended Standard Model of particle physics) force us to the conclusion that computational resources in the universe must diverge to infinity (i.e., in order for the known laws of physics to be mutually consistent at all times). The final state of infinite informational capacity (which is never reached in experiential time) is identified as being God.
For much more on the technical details of the above, see the below resources:
F. J. Tipler, "The structure of the world from pure numbers," Reports on Progress in Physics, Vol. 68, No. 4 (April 2005), pp. 897-964. http://math.tulane.edu/~tipler/theoryofeverything.pdf Also released as "Feynman-Weinberg Quantum Gravity and the Extended Standard Model as a Theory of Everything," arXiv:0704.3276, April 24, 2007. http://arxiv.org/abs/0704.3276
"Omega Point (Tipler)," Wikipedia, January 6, 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Omega_Point_%28Tipler%29&oldid=182549075
"Frank J. Tipler," Wikipedia, January 5, 2008 http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Frank_J._Tipler&oldid=182407923
Theophysics http://geocities.com/theophysics/
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Mark Piske 07/05/2007 6:13:00 AM
C. Mathias, you misunderstand me. When I say "God did it" is a science stopper, I most certainly do not mean one cannot be a good scientist and believe in gods. I am a great fan of Ken Miller, Catholic, and author of "Finding Darwin's God". What Miller will tell you is that "god did it" doesn't move our knowledge forward. There is no reason, no rhyme, nothing more to study or test. So science cannot posit God as an explanation, whether the scientist believes or not, because it literally stops the science.
As to not dismissing Varghese' arguments without even attempting to understand his work, that would be wiser advice were his ideas new, instead of the rehashes of long-refuted arguments that they are. They are not challenging questions when measured against the science.
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C. Mathias 06/07/2007 6:00:00 AM
Mark Piske writes: "God did it is a science stopper and always will be."
As a scientist myself I have no problem believing in the existence of God and practising science simultaneously. In fact, belief in a Creator makes it even easier for me to admire the wonders of science as Varghese so eloquently portrays. I know the same is true for several colleagues of mine, who like me, study Biology at various levels. However I might as well cite some famous scientists as well. What about, Francis S. Collins, who oversaw the Human Genome Project and discovered the genes for cystic fibrosis and Huntington's disease among others. He also invented a molecular approach to cloning called 'positional cloning'. In his recent book, "The Language of God", he eloquently presents evidence for his faith, and conversion from an atheist to a theist. Or Sir Isaac Newton, who along with being perhaps the greatest scientist known to us today, was also an avid student and expositor of the Bible? I would suggest that atheists show a little more humility before they contend that no scientists or 'true ones' do not believe in a Creator. The problem is too many seem to see no reason to defend both their faith and profession. And we would not even have got here (in terms of scientific advances) if dedicated theists and Christians of the 18th and 19th centuries had not rigorously pursued science as a result of their various faiths. After all, was not even Darwin himself confused about this?
Finally, please do not claim to refute all of Varghese' arguments as some of you have done above without even attempting to understand his work. Answering a challenging question before even understanding it (or reading it) does not show intelligence, but a certain lack of cogency or maturity, something I learnt long ago when I went to grade school.
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Wes Savon 05/19/2007 4:56:00 AM
Q: How can we test, according to scientific method, events that purportedly took place billions of years ago over periods of millions of years?
A: Evidence shows those events are happening right now all around you. Seek the evidence.
Q: All we can test is the here and now, which is not even a blink in the evolutionary timeframe. How do we know that the laws we use to describe our observations now were relevant back then?
A: The Law of Gravity works the same whether you�re an ant or an elephant. The Law of Natural Selection works whether you�re a flu virus or black squirrel. Laws are observable, measurable, and repeatable. Anybody who tells you can�t rely on the evidence is trying to trick you.
Q: If God is truly the creator of all as the Bible says he is, does he owe us anything?
A: Correct. The Bible says God is the creator. The Bible says he doesn�t owe you anything.
Q: Why should we (part of his creation, according to that account) expect to fully understand him?
A: Repeat. Anybody who tells you can�t rely on the evidence is trying to trick you, by undermining your ability to reason. You have a free will and the ability to understand the facts. Letting someone else think for you is dangerous. Evading the evidence does not change reality.
KK. I too am an awe of the natural world. Life IS Good.
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KK 05/18/2007 2:11:00 PM
Great article presenting views on both sides of a debate. I had to laugh when I read the line �Evolutionary theory has stubbornly survived 150 years of rigorous scientific testing.� How can we test, according to scientific method, events that purportedly took place billions of years ago over periods of millions of years? All we can test is the here and now, which is not even a blink in the evolutionary timeframe. Anything beyond that is educated speculation. How do we know that the laws we use to describe our observations now were relevant back then?
If God is truly the creator of all as the Bible says he is, does he owe us anything? Why should we (part of his creation, according to that account) expect to fully understand him? We barely understand a fraction of the world he made. He owes us nothing, yet he gave us everything, including the minds and intelligence to unravel some of the mysteries of this world. Are we proud that it took us 70 years to explain the flight of bees? It gives me all the more reason to be in awe of God�s creation, that something so simple took us so long to figure out.
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Wes Savon 05/15/2007 6:24:00 PM
Many good ideas here and lots of speculation�so here are a few rules of common sense I try to use:
1. Remember, speculation unconfirmed by evidence remains speculation. Speculation confirmed by evidence becomes fact.
2. Facts can be counted on. Facts are objective and discernable by all. Facts exist whether you�re a Muslim, Christian, Hindu, or a Labrador Retriever.
3. What you don�t know is not a fact.
4. When you see a contradiction, check your premise. An assumption is false.
5. Knowledge expands one block at a time. We know more today then we did yesterday, and we�ll know more tomorrow.
6. What is a fact today will not be overturned tomorrow by a yet �undiscovered� fact. Speculation on the other hand is constantly turned upside down.
7. Learning is difficult, but letting someone else think for you could cost you your life (or your property).
Life is good.
Wes
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Maria 05/10/2007 11:51:00 PM
I have recently finished Carl Sagan's "The Varieties of Scientific Experience," and these gaps and mysteries addressed by the theists in this article as proof of the existence of God are just that, according to Sagan--gaps and mysteries. That is the point of scientific experimentation, to discover the unknown. Just because, in the year 2007, we don't have a solution to the many gaps and mysteries of life--and ultimately of science--doesn't mean that the answer does not lie in scientific experience. It may take centuries to find solutions to all of the gaps in scientific theories, but those answers will eventually--through the experiments and the minds of great scientists--be found. Why are so many of us quick to fill in these gaps and mysteries with the solution that God must therefore exist? That solution lacks creativity and possibility and, ultimately, "does not follow" to reference logic.
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TGorski 05/10/2007 11:40:00 PM
Others have already pointed out the obvious: that the bee business of balderdash, there is nothing new under the Creationist, sun, etc. What I wish to point out is equally obvious: that not to believe in god(s) is not to hold that science can answer every question or is all we need. So Varghese is in one sense simply demolishing a straw man.
If a believer can find awe and wonder in theological beliefs (which come in a dizzying variety of mutually-exclsuive forms!) an unbeliever can find as much awe and wonder - having once been a believer I can say that it is MORE - in what science tells us of the universe.
More importantly, I think that real meaning has to come from within. If cows were sentient, for example, they could not get their meaning in life from the farmer who cares for them for their milk and meat. Believer or unbeliever, it is ultimately *from within* that we find what is important and worthwhile for us. The best of us manage to do this over and over and over again, each time with rapturous results.
But none of what is truly important about religion - understood broadly as simply that which deals with the "ultimate questions" of the human condition, morality, love, purpose, and so on, all the things that science cannot and was never meant to address - depends on the Big Bang, quantum mechanics, or whatever will replace what may one day be seen as quaint notions of the 21st Century. That is why, to the degree that the Bible - and other "holy" books, as well as Shakespeare and the works of many others - speaks to us today it is because it speaks to the heart and not because it informs us about objective reality in the way that science does.
God is a figment of the imagination. But figments of the imagination can teach us about ourselves too. It is sad that Varghese cannot appreciate this.
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Pandu das 05/10/2007 6:19:00 PM
Scientists are becoming increasingly confident that everything in nature can be explained without God. They also seem to be mostly satisfied with refuting statements in the Bible. However the invocation verse to Isopanishad states that the world is made to be complete in itself. ( http://isopanisad.com/en )
The verse goes, "oḿ pūrṇam adaḥ pūrṇam idaḿ pūrṇāt pūrṇam udacyate pūrṇasya pūrṇam ādāya pūrṇam evāvaśiṣyate." Translated, "The Personality of Godhead is perfect and complete, and because He is completely perfect, all emanations from Him, such as this phenomenal world, are perfectly equipped as complete wholes. Whatever is produced of the Complete Whole is also complete in itself. Because He is the Complete Whole, even though so many complete units emanate from Him, He remains the complete balance."
Thus although modern discoveries seem to indicate that belief in God is obsolete, the same kind of results are also expected based on the Vedic scriptures that describe the relationship between the material universe and the Personality of Godhead.
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Art Davila 05/10/2007 5:50:00 PM
As a Christian whose faith has only increased with age, I disagree with those that say we brainwash our children. Unfortunately more and more of our children leave the church. Churches grow when adults accept Christ. When God created the universe he created a mature earth, and mature animals and a mature man. If you will read the book of Job it talks of an animal with legs big enough to stop the flow of the Jordan river, sounds like a dinosaur to me. Remember the word dinosaur was invented in the 1800's, so it couldn't be used to describe something written about in the Bible.
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David Unti 05/10/2007 1:08:00 AM
Mark:
Thank you for your fine, well-written article.
===============================================
As a Christian it pains me when clear scientific evidence is overlooked or simply assumed away. It is worse when denying such evidence is used as some kind of loyalty test by churches.
For example, the Earth is billions of years old by virtue of solid scientific study. Still, there are those Christians who maintain that the age of the earth is something like 6,000 years.
So they assume an Earth governed by observable physical laws and artifacts that are carbon dated well over 6,000 years. This would make God one of the biggest practical jokers around.
"Let's see", says the creator, "I'll create a universe with discoverable, logical physical laws and then create a whole bunch of stuff which doesn't obey the physical laws that I set up. That'll get 'em plenty confused and get them to love me."
As a result, many would be Christians are turned off. They just don't think that God would create millions of year old dinosaurs and stuff them under dirt less than 6,000 years old just for fun or for some judgment day pop quiz.
And as a final comment: Yes the Old and for that matter New Testament God (same God folks) can express a range of emotions including great anger, as well as being longsuffering. This is not at all inconsistent with the New Testament Revelations.
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Nigel Van Derwil 05/09/2007 11:20:00 PM
Ridiculous, preposterous nonsense that a thinking person would even affirm any strain of evolutionary thinking, an oxymoronic phrase if ever one existed. Origins, fools, it's about origins. Did you not read Varghese's comment "For anything to exist, someone had to exist before it?" Blind guides, these atheists. A rejection of Creation based on anger and blindness rather than scientific evidence. The Creation myth of our time, Evolution, and its corrupt priests. Proceed, Dr. Varghese.
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random 05/07/2007 4:31:00 PM
On the contrary, it is yours to prove the God does NOT exist. Why the Cambrian Explosion? Why the Big Bang? There is far more evidence that things don't just happen. Atheists need to show proof that the laws of physics don't apply to their theories. Science is consistently changing and reinventing itself. It's funny how much work they put into setting up tests and conducting experiments designed to show how easily things can just "happen." Their would be no tests results were it not for the intelligently design scenarios created by the scientists.
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William W. Newbill 05/06/2007 8:42:00 PM
Congratulations to Mark Stuertz for his balanced feature on Varghese and the new atheist movement. I've read all the works mentioned by Stuertz from Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Daniel Dennett. Together they comprise a masterful refutation of the frontier gibberish that comes from second-rate minds like Roy Varghese. It is their burden to prove the existence of God, not ours to disprove it. And in this task they have utterly failed.
Varghese starts with grand unsupported assumptions about intelligence being everywhere, whatever that means, and moves on to more nonsense and unsupported claims. It's laughable to call these musings "God Proofs." Belief in God is prevalent for one reason only, because it is forced upon the impressionable minds of children who are brainwashed. The day will come when this is recognized for what it actually is, a form of child abuse.
I go further than Harris, for the foreseeable future America will continue to be a dimwitted nation of uncivilized ignorant war-mongering pricks, precisely because they lack the critical thinking skills that make them vulnerable to manipulation by such stellar minds as George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.
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steve beck 05/06/2007 7:00:00 PM
I thought this article was interesting and informative. Theists such as Varghese pretend to respect science, but where there's a gap in our knowledge, they'll say that there's no scientific account for such and such mysterious thing, and therefore god did it, which certainly doesn't follow logically, and which runs the risk of being falsified when science fills in the gap, as in the example of bee flight. Varghese is making much of the "mysteries" of reproduction and consciousness, but perhaps he should read University of Califirnia evolutionary biologist Marlene Zuk's Riddled With Life, which argues that sexual reproduction evolved at least in part to shuffle genes in a never-ending war with parasites, and she also gives a plausible account of how this evolution may have taken place. As for consciousness, nearly all reputable scientists who study this subject agree that it evolved from animal minds.
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S Foote 05/06/2007 4:20:00 AM
The article begins with the myth that bees should be unable to fly; a myth that has long been refuted. (Even were it true, which would be more likely-- that our understanding of aerodynamics is flawed or that there must be a supernatural being involved?) The article goes downhill from there.
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MonkeyBoy 05/05/2007 7:05:00 PM
The profound complexity of reality demands a creator and that creator is God. Then again God is so complex that he created everything. So who created God? Is it "turtles all the way up"?
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Brad 05/04/2007 9:15:00 PM
Everyone will believe what they wish to believe. I thought this article was oustanding. Great job.
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Mark Piske 05/04/2007 9:18:00 AM
Varghese's arguments are standard creationist talking points, oft-refuted, as can easily be verified at sites like www.talkorigins.org. Typically erroneous is the claim that evolutionary algorithms are merely analogies and therefore invalid because an intelligent person wrote the programs, as if intelligence is some sort of contagion that spreads by mere contact. The point demonstrated by EA's is that simple descent with modification, Darwin's preferred term for what he was describing, can indeed create unimaginably complex structures. That a programmer created the artificial selection mechanism is completely irrelevant. This argument from personal incredulity employed by people like Varghese simply won't fly any more.
Neither will vague arguments which toss about the terms "intelligence" and "information" without a clear definition of what exactly these terms mean. The devil is in the details, and such handwaving simply will not do. Despite Varghese's claims of not promoting intelligent design, his arguments are exactly the same, and just as flawed and scientifically vacuous. Like the "scientists" at the Discovery Institute, he talks a lot about science, but doesn't seem to do any, and for good reason: God did it is a science stopper, and always will be.
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Mark Piske 05/04/2007 9:17:00 AM
Varghese's arguments are standard creationist talking points, oft-refuted, as can easily be verified at sites like www.talkorigins.org. Typically erroneous is the claim that evolutionary algorithms are merely analogies and therefore invalid because an intelligent person wrote the programs, as if intelligence is some sort of contagion that spreads by mere contact. The point demonstrated by EA's is that simple descent with modification, Darwin's preferred term for what he was describing, can indeed create unimaginably complex structures. That a programmer created the artificial selection mechanism is completely irrelevant. This argument from personal incredulity employed by people like Varghese simply won't fly any more.
Neither will vague arguments which toss about the terms "intelligence" and "information" without a clear definition of what exactly these terms mean. The devil is in the details, and such handwaving simply will not do. Despite Varghese's claims of not promoting intelligent design, his arguments are exactly the same, and just as flawed and scientifically vacuous. Like the "scientists" at the Discovery Institute, he talks a lot about science, but doesn't seem to do any, and for good reason: God did it is a science stopper, and always will be.
