Note to meteorologists: You're next http://www.pandasthumb.org/pt-archives/001046.html#more Posted by Nick Matzke on May 16, 2005 05:36 PM In a recent post, I noted in passing that modern evolutionary theory is no more atheistic than other sciences that seek natural explanations for the natural world. Yet for some reason, Phillip Johnson and the rest of the ID camp think that it is evolution in particular that is inconsistent with Christianity. As Johnson stated in yesterday�s Washington Post article, �I realized�that if the pure Darwinist account was accurate and life is all about an undirected material process, then Christian metaphysics and religious belief are fantasy. Here was a chance to make a great contribution.� Now, imagine how silly it would seem if Phillip Johnson had said this: �I realized�that if the pure scientific meteorologist account was accurate and weather is all about an undirected material process, then Christian metaphysics and religious belief are fantasy. Here was a chance to make a great contribution.� According to a literal reading of the Bible, the evidence that God controls the weather is, if anything, much stronger than the Biblical evidence that God specially created organisms. PT poster Wesley Elsberry ran a search on an online Bible and found a slurry of quotes explicitly describing God�s influence on the weather. The Bible is shot through with such statements, from Old Testament to New. They are re-posted below for posterity. A couple of minutes with BibleGateway shows that there are several references in the bible to God being a maker and controller of weather. Looking for �storm� and �wind�, I found the following references: Exodus 10:13 So Moses stretched out his staff over Egypt, and the LORD made an east wind blow across the land all that day and all that night. By morning the wind had brought the locusts; Numbers 11:31 Now a wind went out from the LORD and drove quail in from the sea. It brought them [ Or They flew ] down all around the camp to about three feet [ Hebrew two cubits (about 1 meter) ] above the ground, as far as a day�s walk in any direction. Isaiah 11:15 The LORD will dry up the gulf of the Egyptian sea; with a scorching wind he will sweep his hand over the Euphrates River. [ Hebrew the River ] He will break it up into seven streams so that men can cross over in sandals. Jeremiah 4:12 a wind too strong for that comes from me. [ Or comes at my command ] Now I pronounce my judgments against them.� Jeremiah 10:13 When he thunders, the waters in the heavens roar; he makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth. He sends lightning with the rain and brings out the wind from his storehouses. Ezekiel 13:13 Therefore this is what the Sovereign LORD says: In my wrath I will unleash a violent wind, and in my anger hailstones and torrents of rain will fall with destructive fury. Hosea 13:15 even though he thrives among his brothers. An east wind from the LORD will come, blowing in from the desert; his spring will fail and his well dry up. His storehouse will be plundered of all its treasures. Amos 4:13 He who forms the mountains, creates the wind, and reveals his thoughts to man, he who turns dawn to darkness, and treads the high places of the earth� the LORD God Almighty is his name. Jonah 1:4 Then the LORD sent a great wind on the sea, and such a violent storm arose that the ship threatened to break up. Jonah 4:8 When the sun rose, God provided a scorching east wind, and the sun blazed on Jonah�s head so that he grew faint. He wanted to die, and said, �It would be better for me to die than to live.� Zechariah 10:1 [ The LORD Will Care for Judah ] Ask the LORD for rain in the springtime; it is the LORD who makes the storm clouds. He gives showers of rain to men, and plants of the field to everyone. Mark 4:39 He got up, rebuked the wind and said to the waves, �Quiet! Be still!� Then the wind died down and it was completely calm. Luke 8:25 He got up and rebuked the wind and the raging waters; the storm subsided, and all was calm. �Where is your faith?� he asked his disciples. In fear and amazement they asked one another, �Who is this? He commands even the winds and the water, and they obey him.� (Wes Elsberry) Now, of course, I don�t actually think for a second that naturalistic meteorology actually undermines Christianity. People still pray about the weather, even though they know that weather is caused by natural processes. Belief in natural processes, and belief in God�s action in the world, are simply not in conflict for these people. If God can act through natural processes, then a natural explanation of something is not a threat to the belief system. I suspect that this belief � about meteorology � is almost universal among Christians, evangelical or otherwise. I also suspect that it is almost universal held among Christians of all stripes that theological beliefs about the weather belong in the church and home, and not the public schools. People still pray for rain, but there is no big movement to teach bogus �criticisms of naturalistic meteorology�, attempting to insert divine intervention into the fact that tornadoes are still fairly mysterious, or the fact that scientists are not omniscient predictors of the weather. There is no attempt to divide �micro-operational science�, which can be done in a lab, from �macro-operational science�, which cannot be done in a lab. There is no attempt to rule the latter hopelessly untestable, and therefore to consider macro-meteorology and miracles as equally scientifically valid. What ID advocates have to explain is why evolution is different from meteorology with respect to theology. The fun thing about the Meteorology Argument is how rapidly ID advocates contort and twist themselves into knots as soon as they attempt to address the argument. David Heddle gave us an example: I have no idea what Johnson believes, but it obvious that one could believe that evolution, via its implications regarding the (lack of a) need for a creator, promotes atheism, while at the same time viewing meteorology as agnostic. So someone could, self-consistently, believe that evolution promotes atheism and meteorology does not. What Heddle doesn�t provide, and couldn�t provide under questioning, was any reason why evolution and meteorology are logically any different with respect to the theism/atheism question. The best he did was bluster �it�s obvious.� Another example from a few years back is Casey Luskin of the IDEA center: Stormy weather [Matzke] suggests that if the weather is undirected, then meteorologists should rightly employ the same materialist philosophy Wells criticizes. [Ignore this ad hom in the first sentence for the moment � N.M.] However, the difference between the weather and evolution is that the processes controlling weather are be observed in the present to be based upon chance and law. The origin of biological organisms took place in the past, where the processes involved cannot be accessed. By assuming that only naturalistic processes were at work in the past, evolutionists make stronger philosophical statements than meteorologists, who can directly observe that naturalistic processes are at work in the present. Given that many unknowns about causes of weather will always exist, for we cannot know what is always happening in the sky, it is possible that God �makes clouds rise from the ends of the earth; [and] sends lightning with the rain�58 after all! However, given that we observe weather in the present obeying natural laws, scientists are not unjustified in relegating explanations of present weather to the natural realm. To summarize, Luskin says: (1) Meteorologists observe natural processes operating today (2) Evolutionists, although they can observe natural processes operating now, can�t observe natural processes operating in the past (3) Meteorologists actually can�t directly observe all the natural processes operating today in controlling the weather (weather is a chaotic system, highly sensitive to initial micro-conditions that cannot be observed � this is the butterfly effect) (4) So maybe God is miraculously intervening in the weather after all, like the literal reading of the Bible says (5) But meteorologists are justified in using exclusively natural processes in their work, while evolutionary biologists are being dogmatic philosophical materialists for doing so. It makes perfect sense! The only way the IDists can escape the Meteorology Argument is (1) give up on their core claim, or (2) be self-consistent, and state that meteorologists are also nasty, society-undermining secular dogmatists promoting atheism, philosophical materialism, and moral decay under the guise of science. Option #1 doesn�t seem very likely, so I bet we�ll be seeing meteorology warning labels in public schools and on the public airwaves (your local news weatherman is actually promoting atheism over the air!) sooner or later.
Wow, a website response to talkorigins.org . Who would have thunk to question their integrity? They have a lot of big scientific terms and references on their site, so it must be true... trueorigin.org
I appeciate D&D and the good treatment I receive here as a pastor. I appreciate the honest discussion from you and others who discuss and debate. I could in no way debate this issue as a scientist. I only read alot. And I am sure I am misguided by my own bias. I know I am. I do appreciate those who share their opinions here, the internet is marvelous.
BTW- I obvious mispell alot, thanks for understanding, How do you do that 'originally posted by' in the quote, I am so computer dense.
I do too. I did not mean to be too harsh in that reply and I hope I did not come across as an a**hole. I look forward to our next conversation rhester.
No I never think someone is coming across that way, like I said I respect this D&D, and I certainly understand that passion and opinions bring both intellectual and emotional response.
Let my try changing the wording I’ve used. Instead of testing non-randomness let’s say you test for patterns, for order, and the time it would take to creatat that order, and you try to falsify that by showing that the diversity of life could be merely random. If, based on what we know about how vertical evolution works, it is shown by probability analysis that what exists is likely influenced by design, then would that satisfy you? This is semantics at this point but maybe that’s your problem. Please answer the question and then we can more forward from this point. The naysayer here keep repeating the claim that ID is merely a philosophy but they never respond to the proof provided that it isn’t. Explain to me how we are going to train critical thinking scientists by indoctrinating them into a theory that is taught to them as truth and by shouting down any competing theories? How is this science? This is 1984. More accurately, this is the world of science Kuhn has described and the dangers of denying critical thought and teaching one nearly shakey theory as “truth” to a generation of young scientists is laid out quite well by him. Have you read the summary of Kuhn’s book I linked to? His findings are key to understanding what is happening in the scientific community around this issue. Regarding the article you posted, can we break it down to a few key points? It says that because someone created a computer program that evolves therefore life on earth evolved? While it is useful to develop these programs this is a very complex and error prone process. We haven’t developed programs that can accurately predict things like long term weather forecasting and many turbulent flow problems so the confidence we should have in a program that models actual evolution is minimal. It’s a useful exercise but at this point such a program is probably very far off from being an accurate representation of real world variables. I’d also like to add that I personally don’t believe that the earth is only 6,000 years old. From a Christian standpoint I don’t think the Bible says that it’s only that old either. I think this is an example of a “literal interpretation” that can’t really be justified from the Bible. It may be one interpretation, but not one most readers would come to I think.
This is FAR from semantics. This is the reason why ID if philosophy. It is not possible to do what you propose, and that is why, in all of your links and information that you have posted, I can find nothing of the sort. Anywhere. It hasn't happened yet, and it isn't going to happen. ID is philosophy. It is an argument based on logic, not the scientific method.
You’ll have to clarify. Why would you say that it’s not possible? It’s a simple probability analysis. You collect the data and you analyse it. It’s absolutely basic.
Did you skim through my first reply on how similar looking species from appearance might not be so similar? Biologists did classify by noticable patterns long ago. We still do to some extent and taxonomy is wildly debated to this day. You're reinventing the square wheel because the round one doesn't fit your idea of design. I have to clean up my reply a little. The thought itself isn't science. If I carried out that thought and designed an experiment that fits the Scientific Method, it would be. Scientists who believe and want to promote ID can use the Scientific Method to design an experiment and get it peer reviewed. In fact, beliefs about evolution were heavily tied with religious doctrine until they couldn't be observed or verified. If the experiment is repeatable, then it can't be shouted down. Do you mean it's buried? Possibly, but once published and peer reviewed (as in repeatable conditions and results and not through personal biases), it exists in databases and archives for any other to follow that path. Your tone suggests that different teaching in school will open a whole new frontier because there hasn't been any religiously minded scientist have walked that path before... My reason for seriously participating in this topic is that I feel ID and also Creationist lobbyists are performing addition by subtraction by forcing our schools to leave out crucial information that those students will later learn if they decide to take it up in higher studies. Are you implying that young scientists lose their faith and belief from their careers? Shouldn't this great ID controversy from lobbies awaken these poor oppressed lab technicians into rebelling against the established hierarchy? Honestly, I haven't read your link and I'll reply more when I have (the respect in my posts get better with time that isn't procrastinating...) . In fairness, I'm replying from what you've summarized like you've replied to what I bolded in that Discover article. It's not a simulation like weather forcasts or forces of nature that rely on models. "One thing the digital organisms do particularly well is evolve.“ Avida is not a simulation of evolution; it is an instance of it,” Pennock says. “All the core parts of the Darwinian process are there. These things replicate, they mutate, they are competing with one another. The very process of natural selection is happening there. If that's central to the definition of life, then these things count.” What that means is the programmers didn't tell it to evolve. He didn't tell it to do anything he listed. In modeling you define parameters that similate the your target, like temperature, humidity or the ideal gas constant. It's not the same. What his program does is do a little math and copy itself like a virus. Some Creationists, those same people with scientific background I mentioned before, haven't boldly reporter any flaws of the program. I'm not sure how that fits into the context of our debate. I also have no idea where the number 6,000 comes from. But it makes me want to ask, "What is this Theory that IDers are carrying?" Is it a line? A frame of thought? The Modern Synthesis isn't that short and sweet. Plus it's evolving and modifying itself with new information as well. I'll leave it at that until I have time to read and interpret your link.
Let me try to summarize your point to make sure I’ve got it right. You are saying evolution may be happening even if there aren’t obvious signs of it, i.e. signs that can be seen with the naked eye? Ok, how does this change my point? This may be true but I don’t understand how you think this changes what I said. I need to clarify my point too. In response to your comment about watering down science I was asking how presenting a single theory as “truth”, a theory that at the very least has big questions around it, and blocking any competing theories can be scientifically justified. What this does, pretty clearly, is to suppress critical thought on the subject. And I believe that a number of scientists have published on ID. Are you suggesting that there have not been any such publications? And I think you mean “subtraction by addition”. Surely it’s more important to tell students that is not a proven theory and that there are other legitimate avenues to explore. Again, I think what is happening here is a process that is very much like the one Kuhn describes and I think to break free from that we have to teach the next generation of scientists not that they must try to make the pieces fit the puzzle that is being given to them (to use Kuhn’s example) but that the pieces may fit better in an entirely different puzzle. We may indeed be on the verge of a paradigm shift.
