Bill Dembski: Evolution “played no role whatever” in his conversion to Christianity #4
| January 17, 2012 | Posted by News under Culture, Darwinism, Science |
(Dembski discovers Darwin’s awesome cultural noise machine.)
Comment on Dembski interview here.
We’ve been pointing out highlights from James Barham’s The Best Schools interview with design theorist Bill Dembski – who founded this blog – about why he decided to take aim at the Darwin frauds and their Christian enablers. How did they in particular end up on his windscreen?
TBS: When did you first come to doubt that the theory of natural selection adequately explains the fact that living things appear to be designed—an appearance that even Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett freely admit?
WD: The funny thing—especially in light of my work on intelligent design—is that evolution played no role whatsoever in my conversion to Christianity. My dad was an evolutionist. He even taught evolution at the college level. He would often joke that a few million years ago, we were swinging from trees. I accepted evolution on becoming a Christian, and I didn’t see any fundamental conflict between the two.
After becoming a Christian, I started reading the creationist literature (there was no ID literature to speak of, then) and seeing the tension between Darwinism and the more conservative reading of Scripture that was customary in the evangelical circles in which I moved. But what decided me against Darwinism wasn’t its unacceptability to any preferred construal of Christianity. It was this.
We all have intuitions about what’s within the reach of chance and what isn’t. If I get out a fair coin and flip it three times, I might witness three heads in a row, no problem. I might even flip 10 heads in a row if given an hour or two to toss the coin. But getting 100, to say nothing of 1,000, heads in a row by chance seems completely absurd.
Well, when I was reading about the origin of life (this was in 1980), it seemed to me utterly ridiculous that chemistry left to its own devices could pull off this feat of forming first life. Once naturalism lost its hold on me with regard to the origin of life, skepticism of Darwinism vis-à-vis the subsequent history of life followed. Indeed, without naturalism to prop up Darwinism, the evidence for this unguided form of evolution is underwhelming, to say the least. Phillip Johnson showed this quite effectively in Darwin on Trial. Others have as well. I came to the same conclusion within a year after my conversion to Christianity.
See also: Why Bill Dembski took aim against the Darwin frauds and their enablers #1
Why Bill Dembski took aim against the Darwin frauds and their enablers Part 2
Bill Dembski: The big religious conspiracy revealed #3
Comment on Dembski interview here.
18 Responses to Bill Dembski: Evolution “played no role whatever” in his conversion to Christianity #4
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And yet getting two of every animal into a big boat while there is a global flood (for which no physical evidence exists) that wipes out every living thing is not absurd?
It’s almost as if Dr Dembski is saying that Darwinism can do everything that’s claimed for it as long as there is a little guidance.
And therefore undercuts every “bodyplan not possible”, “islands of functionality”, “no evidence the transformations are even possible” argument ever made at Uncommon Descent, ever!
OT; New video with Dr. Behe
Peter Griffin, how be this: You manufacture the animals from scratch – must be viable originals, not copies – and we’ll do the boat. Seems like a fair division of labour to us. Stay in touch.
Peter even though the inference to design is purely scientific. In fact it the very same type of scientific inference that Charles Darwin himself used to try to make his case for evolution,,,
,,, you made a theological argument to undercut the purely scientific case for design we see in life. i.e. Instead of honestly addressing the fact that Darwinism is repeatedly shown to be impossible, many times over, from strict probabilities of math and physics, even granted the most generous assumptions for probabilistic resources of the entire universe, you completely ignored that ‘elephant in the living room’ scientific problem (Denialism) to focus on what you think to be a solid argument that goes against design. And I ask you so what??? All you have done is attack the Bible!!! but Intelligent Design does not seek to defend the Bible in the first place!!! If you got a problem with the Bible I suggest you go to one of the thousands of sites dedicated to the study of the Bible and present your evidence to them!,, Myself, speaking theologically, I find your claim,,,
,,to be not nearly as solid as you think it to be:
This following article points to a global anomaly in sediment layers. A anomaly that would be expected from a global flood perspective:
Worldwide ‘planation’ also points to a global disaster from water:
This ‘global anomaly’ of planation, is exactly what we would expect to see from a global flood perspective, yet the dating of the global catastrophe(s) from water, as far as I know, is not yet known to accurate detail. Indeed I know of no secular reference of any known ‘mass extinction’ that mentions any ancient global disaster for water covering the face earth, to form this worldwide ‘unconformity’ and planation. And yet, there the worldwide anomaly sits. An anomaly that certainly requires a global deluge to explain!:
The following videos outline some surprisingly strong geological evidence for a global flood that will make any honest person scratch their head in wonder:
Here is a article that gives evidence of ‘submerged’ landscapes, just as the preceding video postulated:
The following video is very interesting for it shows a geological formation that is now known to have been formed by a catastrophic flood, yet Charles Darwin himself had ‘predicted’ the geological formation was formed ‘gradually’:
This following secular article ‘honestly’ admits that ‘some big canyons’ were formed by catastrophic floods:
The following article investigates eight anomalies of the Grand Canyon that strongly suggest rapid formation by a catastrophic flood of global proportions:
Here is another anomaly of the Grand Canyon:
Here is a site that, though written from a Young Earth perspective, gives a fairly good overview of the many strange anomalies in the fossil record that point to an ancient global flood:
Of related interest; Rainbows are formed by what are called ‘Quantum Catastrophes’. Thus, since I find Quantum Mechanical phenomena to be thoroughly Theistic, as to the necessity of providing a coherent ‘non-local’ (beyond space and time) causation, that does not dissolve into absurdity as postulated ‘non-reductive’ materialistic causes do for non local events, then yes I actually do think God does form rainbows;
As well, there is actually very strong archaeological evidence tracing all human races to the three sons of Noah:
This following video, and article, are very interesting for they talk about the scientific evidence for a ‘genetic Adam’ and a ‘genetic Eve’, and how the evidence relates to Noah’s flood:
CMI has a excellent video of the preceding paper by Dr. Carter, that makes the technical aspects of the paper much easier to understand;
It’s ID that claims animals were created from scratch, nobody else.
And how do you feel working for somebody who believes that the Ark story is literally true? Does that not give you pause when you are writing your “Darwinists are so dumb” posts?
BA,
TLDR;
That’s OK Peter, I really didn’t expect you to read it and listed it for the primarily for the benefit of others,,, especially since the vast majority of neo-Darwinists I’ve met are note interested in any fair and rational weighing of the evidence but are delusionally bent on protecting their ideology at all cost rather than admit to the overwhelming evidence of design in nature and biology. By the way, thanks for such transparency of atheistic motives. It makes defending ID a lot easier with people like you defending Darwinism!
Correction: That’s OK Peter, I really didn’t expect you to read it and listed the evidence, primarily for the benefit of others,,, especially since the vast majority of neo-Darwinists I’ve met on the internet are not interested, at all, in any fair, and/or rational, weighing of the evidence, but are delusionally committed to protecting their atheistic ideology at all cost rather than ever admitting, even to the most trivial level, the possibility of design in nature and biology.,,, By the way, thanks for such transparency of atheistic motives. It certainly makes defending ID a lot easier with people like you defending neo-Darwinism!
BA77,
You say “vast majority”. So therefore there are some who rational weigh the evidence.
And yet those few remain neo-Darwinists.
So, rationally examine the evidence: neo-Darwinist.
Refuse to examine the evidence: neo-Darwinist.
So BA, if people who examine the evidence with an open mind remain neo-Darwinist then what’s your point?
It can’t be that the evidence does not support neo-Darwinism, as those who examine it openly remain darwinists.
So what is your point?
Except I’m not particularly defending Darwinism am I? I’m asking questions about ID, this is an ID blog.
BA,
I admit that there is “design” in nature and biology.
But while it appears to be design there is no consciousness behind it.
So, if all biology is designed why does the designer only act in ways that evolution is also constrained by?
I.E. why do innovations in a single species not get re-used in all species, why are those innovations constrained to only descendants exactly as would be expected from evolution.
If you post anything other then a response in your own words I won’t read it.
Peter though most of what you wrote is just tripe, and I will not bother to read it nor respond to it (just as you have treated me), this comment of yours caught my eye;
Really??? And you are certain of this proclamation of yours exactly how??? Is it from the scientific evidence we now have in hand??? Certainly Not!!! Contrary to what you so dogmatically stated, without even a footnote or reference,, the ‘scientific’ argument for God from consciousness can be framed, and supported empirically, like this;
references for you to not read:
Here is the key experiment that led Wigner to his Nobel Prize winning work on quantum symmetries:
i.e. In the experiment the ‘world’ (i.e. the universe) does not have a ‘privileged center’. Yet strangely, the conscious observer does exhibit a ‘privileged center’. This is since the ‘matrix’, which determines which vector will be used to describe the particle in the experiment, is ‘observer-centric’ in its origination! Thus explaining Wigner’s dramatic statement, “It was not possible to formulate the laws (of quantum theory) in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.”
more detailed notes in the first part of the paper here:
BA,
I’m certain because if humans were designed then the designer is a cretin.
Food and air down the same pipe? What a joke.
So you think you could design things better??? Allrighty then, look forward to your work ‘transcendently’ creating a universe and life within it from scratch. Please do keep us up to date on your progress!
Peter:
Except ID does not make such a claim. And it is obvious that you do not know anything about the “Ark story”- did you realize taht teh same evidence for a snowball earth is also evidence for a global flood?
The truth is that no one even knows the half of what is going on within the genome of any living thing. The evidence suggests not only design, but design thinking 1,000 steps ahead, far above the level of any human intellect.
It’s easy to stop there and zero in on my comparison to human intellect. If that’s all we know, then to what intellect am I comparing it? I’ve heard that point and I acknowledge it. It’s reasonable and valid. But it is what it is. It all points to forethought and design. The absence of a known designer simply isn’t a valid reason to retreat to a far worse explanation.
Allow me to speculate wildly. No need to point it out, that’s what I’m doing. But when we consider how many steps of forethought are already apparent, it’s reasonable to conclude that not only was someone thinking outside the box, but that we don’t even have a clue where the edges of the box are.
Again, I’m speaking purely from imagination. It’s already been observed in some studies that living things can gain genetic material from the food chain. What if the genetic material that distinguishes one species from another is partially in the ancestor and partially spread about in plant life or elsewhere? What if front-loading wasn’t even “loaded” in the genome of the organisms themselves?
Yes, that’s just crazy talk. But we know enough about biology to know that we’ve only scratched the surface of how it works. I’m not saying that we shouldn’t form hypotheses based on what we know. But we should remain humble in the face of all we don’t, and not try to place everything in a very tiny box outlined by our presently limited knowledge.
I know how foolish this sounds, but I gain perspective from looking at the stars. There are countless trillions of them burning unimaginable energy, and all we see are a sprinkle of lights that waited thousands of years for us to build telescopes and realize what they really were. The technology to build simple microscopes and then more powerful ones only opens our eyes to a depth of design no one could have imagined. The more we learn, the more we are humbled and the more we discover to learn about. It’s like having a child and enjoying each day as his mind develops and you’re able to share more and more with him.
That’s not much of an appeal to science, I know. But it’s the perspective we can miss if we judge all that exists by the tiny part we observe and minimize all that we haven’t seen yet.
I said “a sprinkle of lights that waited thousands of years” – I’m not a YEC. I was thinking in years of technological development.