Darwin



Parallels between the God Particle and the Hard Problem of Consciousness

The cover of the new issue of New Scientist highlights the improvements made to the Large Hadron Collider in Europe, not only the world’s most advanced atom-smasher, but the most sophisticated piece of technology ever built by humankind.  The cover says, “Forget the Higgs, Now we’re searching for the root of reality.”  Meanwhile, at the other  end of the scientific spectrum, neuroscientists remain lost in the quagmire of solving the so-called hard problem of consciousness, which, according to David Chalmers is “the question of how physical processes in the brain give rise to subjective experiences.” So with the Large Hadron Collider, the question is whether physicists will find the answer to the mystery of the universe in computer-generated images of colliding subatomic particles.  With the hard problem of consciousness, the question is whether neuroscientists will find the secret to the vivid, three-dimensional awareness we call consciousness in the firing interactions between brain...

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Is Intelligent Design Science?

On my upcoming radio show, Conversations Beyond Science and Religion, webtalkradio.net, scheduled for posting on July 29, 2013, I interview Professor Michael Behe of Lehigh University and author of the controversial book, Darwin’s Black Box.  This book, which the back cover says helped launch the intelligent design movement, contains a devastating attack on Darwin’s theory of natural selection.  We are conditioned to reject the intelligent design movement as unscientific (if not unAmerican) and to believe that the Darwinian camp, led by Richard Dawkins (of Blind Watchmaker fame), must be right.  While taking this stance, I would guess many people have not really  examined for themselves natural selection or Behe’s version of intelligent design.  And this may be the biggest problem facing opponents of Darwin: it doesn’t matter what the facts show, to be a true scientist one must be a materialist (matter, not mind, is fundamental) and reject any role...

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A Mind is Always Present: Another Fatal Flaw of Materialism

 Materialism, the doctrine that the entire cosmos and all living things can ultimately be reduced to mindless stuff, has many fundamental flaws.  Here is one of them:              Even in the mindless, God-less, designer-less worldview of materialism, a mind is still present.  Where is this mind?  In the head of a scientific theorist who imagines that the intelligence and organizational ability of matter is much more creative than it could ever be on its own.                Let me provide a bit more detail.               At bottom, material scientists believe they can explain the entire universe using only matter and the laws of nature.  The laws of nature are necessary to give order and regularity to the dust that would otherwise scatter in the wind.   For example, the laws of gravity, chemistry, quantum theory, and nuclear fission are considered among those responsible for sculpting the large-scale structure of the cosmos, such...

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Five Good Reasons to Question Darwinism

The aids to inference that lead scientists to the fact of evolution are far more numerous, more convincing, more incontrovertible, than any eye-witness reports that have ever been used, in any court of law, in any century to establish guilt in any crime.  Proof beyond reasonable doubt? Reasonable doubt? That is the understatement of all time.                                                             Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth             Understatement — or overstatement —of all time?  That is the question this blog will  explore.             According to modern evolutionists, Darwin’s theory of natural selection is as “incontrovertible as any fact in science,” supported by evidence at least  as strong as that proving the truth of the Holocaust.  (R. Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth, Preface).   If you don’t believe in evolution, according to these modern thinkers, you are “inexcusably ignorant” (D. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, 46),  insane (R. Dawkins, Ancestor’s Tale, 13), or perhaps some...

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