Essays
Free Will Is A Myth
By John A. Davison
I open this essay with an assertion: Free Will is a myth. I am deliberately being provocative because I am convinced that my assertion has merit. The notion that the human animal is capable of an objective analysis of his world is, in my studied opinion, without foundation. I recognize that my thesis must be supported with ascertainable facts and I am prepared to present those facts in due order. In all fairness I have a responsibility to make clear that there is little that is original in my position, so I will begin by giving credit to others who have reached the same conclusion.
One of my most treasured sources is Albert Einstein. I regard his understanding of the human condition as every bit as significant as his physics and perhaps even more so. Relativity was incipient at the dawn of the 20th century and I believe it would have emerged even if Einstein had never lived. Others may disagree but that is of no consequence as it is Einstein’s lifelong belief in a determined universe that is of importance here. He made his convictions indelible as the following excerpts illustrate. My source unless otherwise noted is Alice Calaprice, The New Quotable Einstein, The italics are mine.
“Everything is determined…by forces over which we have no control.” page 196.
“Our actions should be based on the ever-present awareness that human beings in their thinking, feeling, and acting are not free but are just as causally bound as the stars in their motion.” page 200.
“Then there are the fanatical atheists whose intolerance is the same as that of the religious fanatics, and it springs from the same source…They are creatures who can’t hear the music of the spheres.” page 204.
This last quip is the most important because Einstein offers an explanation for the intolerance of the fanatics – they “can’t hear the music of the spheres.” Without identifying its cause he has identified fanaticism as a deficiency, a fundamental defect in ones ability to interpret his world.
With his characteristic candor Einstein adds -
“I am a determinist. As such I do not believe in Free Will. The Jews believe in Free Will. They believe that man shapes his own life. I reject that doctrine philosophically. In that respect I am not a Jew.” page 130.
Since Christians also believe in Free Will, I will have to join with Einstein by declaring – In that respect I am not a Christian. Since I became a Roman Catholic late in life at the age of 72, I hope I will be forgiven for this relatively minor heresy. Besides, I do not insist, as some do, on personal infallibility. Richard Dawkins, and Paul Zachary Myers, his New World ally, come to mind!
Einstein’s lifelong determinism was anticipated in 1882 (when Einstein was three) with the staging of Gilbert and Sullivan‘s Iolanthe and the sentry’s soliloquy -
Every boy and every girl
That’s born into the world alive
Is either a little liberal
Or else a a little conservative.
William Wright, Born That Way, page 262.
It is in William Wright’s book, “Born That Way,” that we find scientific support for Einstein’s assertion that fanatics are “deaf to the music of the spheres.” It is there that we find the explanation for religious fanaticism as well. As his book title suggests, the controversy between Nature versus Nurture in influencing ones outlook has been won hands down by Nature. What makes that conclusion so very meaningful is that it was not expected by the researchers who studied the question. The research, led by Thomas Bouchard, a psychology professor at the University of Minnesota, took advantage of a natural experiment, the reuniting and interviewing of monozygotic (identical) twins that had been separated and put up for adoption as infants to be reared often in quite different cultural environments.
“Bouchard would later insist that while he and his colleagues had fully expected to find traits with a high degree of heritability, they also expected to find traits that had no genetic component. He was certain, he says, that they would find some traits that proved to be purely environmental. They were astonished when they did not. While the degree of heritability varied widely – from the low thirties to the high seventies – every trait they measured showed at least some degree of genetic influence. Many showed a lot.”
William Wright, Born That Way, page 40, the author’s italics.
Of course it came as no surprise that physical characteristics such as hair and eye color, and I.Q. were shared, but what was surprising were such correlations as style of dress, preference for toothpaste and beer brands, jewelry styles, pets, wives, and many other features previously and naturally assumed to be acquired.
Among predispositions, shared by identical twins, pro or con, are the following: Belief in a creator, atheism, the death penalty, political leanings, abortion. Based on my half century in academe I believe that political liberalism and atheist Darwinism are closely linked and may even be expressions of the same congenital predisposition.
The findings as summarized in “Born That Way” plead that a general question be asked. Is there any feature of the human condition that does not have some degree of congenital predisposition? If there is I do not believe it has yet been identified.
I am hesitant to assume that congenital is synonymous with genetic as the history of many families does not support that conclusion. Very often genius has popped up unexpectedly only to dwindle and disappear in subsequent generations. Friedrich Gauss and Johann Sebastian Bach come to mind. Since so little is known concerning the genetics of genius, it is safer to use the term congenital rather than genetic in describing predispositions. The important point is that monozygotic twins share the same prenatal environment, even the same placenta. It is conceivable that environmental factors affecting the mother could influence critical developmental steps in the development of her identical twins.
I realize the resistance with which my position will be met and I am at a loss as to how to deal with it any further than with what I have presented here. It is a bitter pill that each of us must swallow as I discovered about myself. Nevertheless, it can be a liberating influence as it offers an intellectual escape from the congenital bigotry with which we all must be afflicted to some degree or other. Some of us seem to have that ability, some others apparently not. Again, Paul Zachary Myers and Richard Dawkins come to mind. They seem incompetent to shake off the atheism with which they are each afflicted.
Most important, accepting that Free Will is a myth remains in accord with my proposal that all of organic evolution was also predetermined just as are our personal prejudices. There would be no role for chance in such a world, a conclusion reached long ago by Leo Berg, the greatest Russian biologist of his day and, in my opinion, the most significant evolutionist of all time. Commenting on the twin mysteries of ontogeny and phylogeny -
“Neither in the one, nor in the other is there room for chance.”
Leo Berg, Nomogenesis, page 134.
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution undemonstrable.”
THE AGE of DENIAL
By John A. Davison
In order to understand my perspective it is essential to realize that, with Einstein, I am a confirmed determinist.
“Everything is determined… by forces over which we have no control.”
Albert Einstein
I further believe that which IS determined WAS determined, probably millions of years ago. I have rejected the notion of an intervening God but cannot deny that one or more such entities must have existed in the distant past. I believe that recognition of a past supernatural intervention cannot be denied by any rational observer of the natural world. I am equally convinced that is all that MUST be acknowledged in order to understand both ontogeny, the development of the individual and phylogeny, the evolution of all organisms, both those of the present and those of the past.. Ontogeny and phylogeny are closely related aspects of the same organic continuum and should be considered simultaneously. I do not believe that non-material forces are any longer at work and reject any scheme that postulates such forces. Everything is material or it wouldn’t be here. I am also convinced with others that organic evolution is finished (Davison, 2004)
As further background for the material I will present here, I recommend my published “A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis” (Davison, 2005). I believe that everything was preprogrammed, planned in advance and that we are now in the terminal century for civilization as we have known it and possibly the last century for our survival as a species. I fully realize the reaction these heresies will probably produce but I am also aware of my responsibilities as a scientist and citizen to offer my views on what I regard as the greatest crisis ever faced by the human animal.
In a mere two centuries man has increased his numbers 50 fold, vastly exceeded the carrying capacity of the earth, thoroughly polluted his environment, permanently exterminated countless fellow organisms and started in motion forces which I am convinced cannot now be reversed. All this has been accomplished through the price that the Age of Technology has exacted to achieve the present state of our civilization. The culprits are two simple gases, carbon dioxide and water vapor, the major products of the oxidation of fossil fuel. They are also the major products of the metabolism of nearly seven billion large mammals, approximately the same number of chickens and a few billions more of various domesticated animals.
Prior to the Age of Technology the production of these two gases was largely balanced by their utilization by green plants. There is now no conceivable means by which the earth could support the necessary plant life to neutralize such an insult to the balance of nature. To give one some idea of what this means in terms we can easily understand, a typical human being at rest is metabolizing at a rate of about 80 watts or a tenth of a horsepower (One horsepower is 746 watts). When such a person is driving an automobile conservatively rated at 200 horsepower while in motion, he is producing CO2 and H20 vapor at a rate 2000 times greater than he was before he decided to go somewhere, a rate that continues until he gets to wherever he was going and turns off the ignition. These same two gases are the principle “greenhouse” gases which retard heat loss from the earth’s surface and produce global warming.
The earth has always undergone great changes in average temperature and atmospheric composition which has led some to regard these recent changes as of little significance. I concur with a fellow alarmist, Tim Flannery
“We have known for some decades that the climate change we are creating for the twenty-first century was of a similar magnitude to that seen at the end of the last ice age, but that it was occurring thirty times faster. We have known that the Gulf Stream shut down on at least three occasions at the end of the last ice age, that sea levels rose by at least 300 feet, that the earth’s biosphere was profoundly reorganized, and we have known that agriculture was impossible before the Long Summer of 10,000 years ago. And so there has been little reason for our blindness, except perhaps an unwillingness to look such horror in the face and say ‘You are my creation’.”
Tim Flannery, The Weather Makers, page 210.
It is the “rate of change” that distinguishes the present from the past, a rate unprecedented in the history of the earth.
The Long Summer of 10,000 years coincides with the period during which civilizations arose independently at several sites, civilizations that until a mere two centuries ago were in reasonable balance with their environment but no longer are. I will not dwell here in length on the matter of global warming, except to say that “global warming” is one example of what I have called The Age of Denial. It is very real, it is entirely man made, and those that continue to deny it are fools.
I will next turn to the evidence that explains why such denials are so characteristic of the human condition.
Until a few decades ago a favorite topic for polite discussion was -”Which is more important, Nature or Nurture?” Recent studies leave little question as to which is the most important. There is a natural experiment which provides incisive answers to this question. Occasionally monozygotic (identical) twins are put up for adoption and are reared in quite different environments. Thomas Bouchard and his colleagues at the University of Minnesota found and examined such reunited twins to study to what extent their physical and psychological features would cast light on the question of Nature versus Nurture. The findings of that group and others have been summarized in William Wright’s book “Born That Way.” As his title indicates, Nature seems to have carried the day to a degree which astounded the investigators themselves.
“Bouchard would later insist that while he and his colleagues had fully expected to find traits with a high degree of heritability, they also expected to find traits that had no genetic component. He was certain, he says, that they would find traits that proved to be purely environmental. They were astonished when they did not. While the degree of heritability varied widely – from the low thirties to the high seventies – EVERY TRAIT THEY MEASURED showed at least some degree of genetic influence. Many showed a lot.”
Born That Way, page 40, the author’s emphasis, original in italics.
Two of the traits that showed genetic predisposition are of special significance to the present essay. They are political preferences, whether liberal or conservative, and whether or not one believed in a Creator, a measure of ones devoutness. One of the fascinating features of the latter measure is that if one twin was a devout Muslim for example, the other twin, who might be a Christian, was devout as well. If one twin was an atheist, so was the other twin likely to be an atheist. As I hope to demonstrate, these findings can go a long way to explain the polarization that continues to plague rational discussion of certain aspects of the way we view the world around us. Differences in world view have special significance to the way in which the origin of life and its subsequent evolution have been interpreted by various investigators and the sects with which they are identified. It is my opinion, based on my 50 years in academe, that political liberalism and atheism tend to link together, suggesting that they may be pleiotropic expressions of the same genetic predisposition. Both of these further correlate with the Darwinian atheist paradigm.
It goes without saying that these results remain in accord with Einstein’s determinism. It is equally obvious that they create problems for those who believe in a Free Will, something which I have seriously come to question, especially in view of the behavior I observe on internet weblogs and forums.
The notion of Einstein’s lifelong determinism was anticipated by Gilbert and Sullivan as William Wright noted in Born That Way, page 262. From the operetta Iolanthe (1873) -
Every boy and every girl
That’s born into the world alive
Is either a little liberal
Or else a little conservative.
Innate tendencies are indicated in some of our popular music as in “Doin’ what comes naturally” and “I cain’t say no!” from Rogers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma and the ballad made popular by Marlene Dietrich -
“Falling in love again,
Never wanted to,
What am I to do?
Can’t help it
The realization that we may not be intellectually free has been largely ignored for obvious reasons. No one, including myself, is anxious to accept the implications of such a revelation, even as it has been supported by carefully controlled observations in which a role for the environment has obviously been minimized. When I applied the “predestined criterion” to myself, I “discovered” some rather unpleasant realities, but also one which I found very encouraging. I “discovered” that my primary destiny, my Providence as it were, was to restore some of the greatest minds of the past to their rightful place as the real pioneers in understanding the nature of the great mystery of organic evolution. That is exactly what my papers have achieved with my own contributions being of relatively secondary significance.
I also seem to be blessed with the ability to identify those who fail to meet the standards established by my intellectual sources, real scientists all, not an atheist or a religious fanatic in the lot.
I am happy to be able to say that I have passed Thomas Carlyle’s acid test -
“No sadder proof can be given by a man of his own littleness than disbelief in great men.”
When an objective analysis is made of the primary spokespersons in the ongoing debate concerning the great mystery of evolution, one discovers that they often fail to satisfy that measure of objectivity that has always been the hallmark of scientific progress. I am blessed with the uncanny and apparently congenital capacity to identify such types at great distance and deeply enjoy exposing them with their own words.
It is always with their own words that people betray their innate biases and prejudices. Here are some examples.
Ernst Mayr at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology has displayed his prejudice in his opus magnus, “The Growth of Biological Thought,” with a thought of his own. Commenting on the role of DNA he says -
“This may be true, but it is not very convincing for a dyed-in-the-wool Darwinian like myself,”
page 134.
Isn’t “dyed-in-the-wool” a synonym for congenital? He might just as well have substituted “born that way.”
His colleague down the hall, Stephen Jay Gould, once compared evolution to a “drunk reeling back and forth between the gutter and the bar room door” and he described intelligence as an “evolutionary accident.”
Gould wrote the Foreword to the 1993 English version of Otto Schindewolf’s opus magnus “Basic Questions in Paleontology” originally published forty-three years earlier in 1950. In that Foreword Gould exposed his bias in no uncertain terms by describing Schindewolf’s non-Darwinian evolutionary views as -
“spectacularly flawed.”
Foreword, page xi
Another Darwinian, Theodosius Dobzhansky, wrote a Foreword, in this case to the English translation of Nomogenesis by Leo Berg, his former mentor before Dobzhansky left Russia to come to America. Forty six years after its original publication and long after Berg’s death, here is how Dobzhansky characterized his former Professor’s work.
“A majority of evolutionists at present, including the author of this Preface, consider L.S. Berg’s theory of nomogenesis to be erroneous.”
page vii
Not satisfied, the distinguished English scholar, D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson added his denunciation to that by Dobzhansky in what was called an Introduction -
“I need go no further, nor say one word more, to show that Professor Berg holds views of his own, with which many of us are little likely to agree.”
page xvi
Oh the power of majority opinion!
I have never forgiven Gould for his hideous demonstration of intellectual bigotry. It was a scandalous treatment of the greatest paleontologist since Cuvier. Comments like that probably affected sales! Nor can I forgive Thompson and Dobzhansky for their similar treatment of the greatest Russian biologist of his day and probably of all time.
Today, virulence and polarization of ideas are at an all time high. Nowhere is this more obvious than the controversy that surrounds the question of our origins. The mechanism by which organic evolution took place has become a battleground for men’s very souls. We have two armed camps, the Darwinians led by professed atheists like P.Z, Myers and Richard Dawkins and their mortal enemies, those believing in a role for a Creator in the evolutionary scenario. I will first concentrate on the Darwinians as they are by far the most vocal, organized and venomous in the pursuit of their objective, which, as far as I am able to discern, is permanently to establish their atheist agenda whatever the cost.
Two of their most influential leaders are P.Z. Myers and Richard Dawkins, both declared atheists. Myers hosts the Pharyngula weblog, the most popular biologically oriented forum on the present scene. He presents his daily thoughts in unambiguous fashion under the banner -
“Evolution, development and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal.”
Like Dawkins, Myers has completely abandoned any semblance of science to dedicate all his energies to the destruction of any person or institution that might have the temerity to include in its credo a role for any sort of higher power. His venom knows no bounds. The Holy Father, Pope Bendict XVI is now “bennie” as in “What do we care what bennie thinks?” The President of the United States is “asshole-in-chief.” On a personal note, some time ago I ventured to comment on his weblog only to be greeted with -
“Your stench has preceded you,”
followed by summary banishment. The man is a master of invective which is encouraged and praised by hundreds of his wildly cheering fans. He gleefully responds with more of the same.
His friend and fellow atheist Richard Dawkins, while much more civilized, is no less dedicated to their common goal which is to convert the entire world to Universal Atheism. He too has hundreds of dedicated followers at RichardDawkins.net with its forum. Other rabid Darwinians are concentrated at Panda’s Thumb and its “inner sanctum,” After The Bar Closes. Some of the devoted comment on all three weblogs. While Wesley Elsberry is nominally in charge of Panda’s Thumb, P.Z, Myers was instrumental in its establishment and frequently introduces topics there. These three forums are the principle surviving bastions of Darwinian mysticism. They all share the same dogged adherence to the most failed hypothesis in the history of science, godless, purposeless Darwinism.
The thing that most unifies these “groupthinktanks,” aside from their common loathing of any departure from the “one true faith,” is that they have completely abandoned any pretense of science and rarely mention the paradigm they so violently protect. The reason for this is transparent to this investigator. It is because the Darwinian model is indefensible and they know it but are unable, probably for the congenital reasons I earlier discussed, to accept the only conceivable alternative to the Darwinian model which is a guided evolution. They have painted themselves into an ideological corner from which there is no escape except a complete recantation of their commitment to the Darwinian myth. Unable to accept the only viable alternative, they now must lash out blindly at all those who also for congenital reasons accept, even demand, a role for a Higher Power in establishing the origin of life and its subsequent evolution. They are highly organized and in my opinion constitute a serious threat to the free advancement of biological science.
Dawkins and Myers have joined forces to engage in the recruitment of atheist followers on a grand scale. In order to fully appreciate their joint efforts, I recommend going to Myers’ Pharyngula forum and clicking on the red A which adorns each days edition of “hatespeech,” with often as many as ten threads per day dedicated to the denigration and ridicule of many defenseless human beings and some of our most cherished institutions. Behind the big red A you will discover an extensive exhortation by Richard Dawkins detailing several reasons one should “come out” and “join the atheist movement.” There you will also find the opportunity to purchase Tshirts, coffee mugs and bumper stickers all emblazoned with the big red A for atheism. They have completely abandoned science for a business venture!
It is hard to believe isn’t it?
Quite independently, the atheist movement is growing in America as indicated by the fact that for the first time in our history we have a declared atheist in the House of Representatives, not surprisingly a Democrat from California. We now have an atheist inspired Political Action Committee and atheist camps for our youth reminiscent of the Hitlerjugend movement of Nazi Germany. It is both revealing and depressing if you ask me.
One of the most mystifying features of the persistence of the Darwinian myth is the fact that some of the most distinguished scientists identified with Darwinism have reached firm conclusions devastating to its basic tenets. Theodosius Dobzhansky, already mentioned, proved experimentally that artificial selection was unable to transform the fruitfly, Drosophila melanogaster, into a new species. Why didn’t he recognize the significance of this unambiguous result? My answer is that he was unable for congenital reasons to accept what that meant for the Darwinian paradigm. More precisely, he could not accept the idea that, exactly like ontogeny, phylogeny has also proved to be a self-limiting, goal directed process, a concept foreign to the atheist Darwinian mentality, a mentality which cannot recognize a goal in a process driven by random variations. Isn’t the goal, the purpose, of ontogeny to produce a final product which does not further change? It is called the adult.
When innate ideology confronts hard facts, ideology invariably carries the day but cannot alter reality. The reality is that Drosophila melanogaster can’t change and, as far as we know, hasn’t changed for millions of years.
“The fruitfly (Drosophila melanogaster), the favorite pet insect of the geneticists, whose geographical, biotypical, urban and rural genotypes are now known inside out, seems not to have changed since the remotest times.”
Pierre Grasse, Evolution of Living Organisms, page 130.
Another prominent Darwinian was Julian Huxley, grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, “Darwin’s Bulldog” who, incidentally, was never a convinced Darwinian himself. His grandson Julian, like Dobzhansky, remained a Darwinian even as he presented evidence that evolution was finished, a reality lethal to the Darwinian paradigm.
Julian Huxley published Evolution: The Modern Synthesis in 1942, a 578 page consensus as the title suggests. Huxley coined the term Modern Synthesis, a term which still dominates evolutionary thinking today. On page 571, seven pages from the end, he presents his conclusion, one that can never be reconciled with the Darwinian fairy tale in one of the most remarkable demonstrations in all of the evolutionary literature. I will not quote the entire paragraph, more than a half page in length, but I recommend every serious student of evolution read it in its entirety and ask yourself the question as I have – how could this man possibly remain a Darwinian?
“Evolution is thus seen as a series of blind alleys. Some are extremely short – those leading to new genera and species that either remain stable or become extinct. Others are longer – the lines of adaptive radiation within a group such as a class or sub-class, which run for tens of millions of years before coming up against their terminal blank wall. Others are still longer – the lines that in the past led to the development of the major phyla and their highest representatives; their course is to be reckoned not in tens but in hundreds of millions of years. But all in the long run have terminated blindly……..”
Incidentally, Huxley was dead wrong with respect to the lengths of times involved in the development of any of the taxonomic categories. The appearance of every category from species to phylum was an instantaneous event as the fossil record clearly demonstrates. His insistence on gradualism is another fatal flaw in the Darwinian model and receives no support from the testimony of the fossil record.
“We might as well stop looking for the missing links as they never existed. …The first bird hatched from a reptilian egg.”
from Otto Schindewolf as presented by Richard B. Goldschmidt, The Material Basis of Evolution, page 395.
As for Darwinism and the Modern Synthesis, let me quote Boris Ephrussi who proved that mitochondria are self-replicating, autonomous elements.
“An hypothesis does not cease being an hypothesis when a lot of people believe it.”
One of the defining features of internet blogs and forums is what is termed “moderation policy.” It is interesting to see what form “moderation policy” takes in various blogs. One device is summary banishment the moment someone dares question the judgment of the blog head or one of his faithful lieutenants. That was my fate at Pharyngula as I recounted earlier in this essay. P.Z. Myers has a very revealing way of dealing with his critics, friends or foes alike. Apparently anyone can submit a comment but Myers alone decides its fate. I have found this to be a useful means of reminding Myers what I am up to. Of course my comments neither appear nor are acknowledged.
At both ARN and at RichardDawkins.net forum I have not only been denied commentary but I can’t view either forum from this computer, a distinction I cherish and suspect is reserved for very few.
At Panda’s Thumb an imaginative “moderation policy” way has evolved to deal with dissenters. If a comment is deemed unacceptable, it is not deleted but appears on a special thread, appropriately named “The Bathroom Wall.” While that was fine with me, it was not sufficient for Wesley Elsberry, who finally opted to give me my own thread which he named “Davison’s Soap Box.” Like all threads at Panda’s Thumb, that too disappeared off the bottom of the page and with it Davison, Soap Box and all. It was fun while it lasted.
A remarkably similar “solution” evolved apparently independently at EvC forum. Dissenters were sent to “Boot Camp” ostensibly to “learn how to debate properly.” Needless to say, I failed to master that presumed criterion for rational exchange and was soon banished from EvC. The very word “debate” is foreign to my sensibilities as a scientist. Scientists do not debate: they discover and then they publish their findings. We now live in an age of debate just as we live in the Age of Denial. It is denial that spawns debate.
Next I will turn my attention to those who, like myself, believe that there was a purpose, a goal in evolution. Unfortunately they too have found my position unacceptable. I will try to explain why.
Nowhere is the word “debate” more evident than in the question of our origins. A never ending debate continues between the atheist Darwinians and the Christian Fundamentalists. In a very real sense this is a debate between science and religion, especially a religion involving a role for a personal God. We should always approach this question mindful of Einstein’s warning -
“The main source of the present-day conflicts between the spheres of religion and science lies in the concept of a personal God.”
So it is not surprising to see that the most vocal opponents to the Darwinian model are associated with religious institutions. Uncommon Descent is the most prominent internet forum critical of the Darwinian paradigm. Its founder is William A. Dembski. His biographical sketch, updated 11/26/07, is as follows -
“A mathematician and philosopher, William A. Dembski is Research Professor in Philosophy at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth. He is also a senior fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture in Seattle. previously he was the Carl F. H. Henry Professor of Theology and Science at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, where he founded its Center for Theology and Science. Before that he was Associate Research Professor in the Conceptual Foundations of Science at Baylor University, where he also headed the first intelligent design think-tank at a major research university: the Michael Polanyi Center.
Dr. Dembski has taught at Northwestern University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Dallas. He has done postdoctoral work in mathematics at MIT, in physics at at the University of Chicago, and in computer science at Princeton University. A graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago where he earned a B.A. in Psychology, an M.S. in statistics, and a PH. D. in philosophy, he also received a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1988 and a master of divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1996. He has held National Science Foundation graduate and postdoctoral fellowships.”
It is often useful in evaluating a forum to examine the way it introduces itself.
UNCOMMON DESCENT
The Intelligent Design Weblog of William Dembski,
Denyse O’Leary and Friends.
“Materialist ideology has subverted the study of biological and cosmological origins so that the actual content of these sciences has become corrupted.”
I will not carry the introduction any further because I must reject what has already been presented. Incidentally, O’Leary is a Canadian journalist and a Catholic.
First, I reject the title, Uncommon Descent, because it suggests that man is not a product of organic evolution and accordingly does not share ancestry with his fellow Primates. It would have been much more effective if a question mark had been added – “Uncommon Descent?”
Secondly, and far more important, is the assertion that “the actual contents of these sciences have been corrupted by a materialist ideology.”
My position is that there is no place for ideology in science nor is there anything that is not material. Science does not deal with what is not material and accordingly science cannot be corrupted by a materialist ideology. Ideologists may fail to properly interpret reality but they can do nothing to corrupt it.
Nevertheless, I am certainly far more in sympathy with the position of the ID proponents, than I am with the Godless Darwinian zealots. Everything I have ever published in the field of evolution pleads for design and purpose in both ontogeny and phylogeny; so I was disappointed to find that I was to be excluded from their proceedings just as I had been by their adversaries.
Long before Darwin, William Paley anticipated what has recently been resurrected by Dembski and others as the “Intelligent Design Movement.”
Where there is design there is a designer.”
William Paley
My only difference with Paley is his use of the present tense. All that can be established with certainty is that there WAS a designer. Even that is in question. For all we know there may have been several designers. Like it or not, there is no tangible evidence for either non-material factors or for an intervening personal God or Gods. That does not mean that one or more such Gods do not exist. My personal preference is for at least two Gods, one benevolent, the other malevolent. It makes what we see going on around us so much more easily understood!
“Let us not invoke God in realities in which He NO LONGER HAS TO INTERVENE. The single absolute act of creation was enough for Him.”
Pierre Grasse, Evolution of Living Organisms, page 166, Grasse’s emphasis, original in italics.
Notice that Grasse has capitalized He and Him, suggesting a Christian perspective, hardly a criminal offense, except of course for atheist Darwinian mystics like Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and P.Z. Myers!
The reality is that there is no more reason to demand monotheism than there is to accept the monophyletic evolution assumed by the Darwinian model.
“Science commits suicide when she adopts a creed.”
Thomas Henry Huxley
Darwinism is the slowest yet most certain form of intellectual suicide ever conjured up by an overactive human imagination.
As I will demonstrate, my exclusion from the proceedings of Uncommon Descent has more to do with “moderation policy” than with my relatively minor differences with William Dembski and his forum.
Unfortunately, Dembski has delegated his “moderation policy” to a large extent to a single individual, David Springer, who posts under the alias DaveScot. He has become a “blogczar” who wields the power to ban users or delete their comments if he deems them unacceptable. This is often done for the slightest of reasons accompanied with arrogant farewells such as ” ______ is no longer with us” or “You’re outa here homo” or some other insulting form of termination. Springer has undoubtedly terminated more users than any other individual in the history of forum communication. He has in the past even insulted O’Leary and Dembski. Why Dembski gave him this power remains a mystery, as it serves only to provoke animus between the various factions debating the basis for evolution. Springer has a whole thread dedicated just to him at After The Bar Closes where his tactics are continually monitored, exposed and discussed. His notoriety, which he seems to enjoy, is legendary and has contributed very little of value to the current dialogue.
His arrogance knows no bounds. He recently invited me back to the fold at Uncommon Descent “provided” I would “promise” not to comment on Global Warming or say anything that might irritate the membership. Since he had already terminated me twice, I responded that I would be happy to return to Uncommon Descent if William Dembski would extend the invitation. Springer in the past has openly declared – “Dembski thinks you are nuts.” Since I have not heard from Dembksi, I guess he still thinks so. It is revealing when someone allows another to be his spokesperson, something many, including myself, wouldn’t dream of doing.
It should surprise no one that I am somewhat disenchanted with Uncommon Descent as a venue for rational discourse. Like Pharyngula, it too is intolerant and protectionist. The basic difference is that Dembski lets another serve as the guardian of his domain, a pleasure P.Z. Myers reserves entirely for himself.
While the various forums and blogs go right on promoting the agendas of their owners and insulting or ignoring their adversaries, real scientists continue to disclose facts that can never be reconciled with either Darwinian atheism or the credos of a personal God. Neither has ever played any role in the elucidation of what is now and always has been there, patiently waiting only to be discovered. All that matter are the facts.
“Hypotheses have to be reasonable, facts don’t.”
anonymous
“Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.”
Galileo
I have asked myself the question – Why do we have all these polarized, intractable positions? I have already presented a partial answer which I am sure will not be found acceptable for some. Stated simply, we were “born that way.” Just as our eye color has a genetic basis, so it seems do our prejudices. I doubt very much if these predispositions will prove to be reduced to simple Mendelian alleles like those that determine many of our physical traits. I doubt there will ever prove to be a “God gene.” I am not even certain that our world views will ever prove to have a demonstrable, tangible genetic foundation even though there is powerful evidence favoring that conclusion. An alternative explanation may be simply that we were predestined to be what we are, just as I believe everything else was. Perhaps some were “chosen,” if I may use that word, to be the instruments of a sequence planned millions of years ago.
It should be noted that genius often just “pops up” with no apparent antecedent preparation. Karl Friedrich Gauss was the son of peasants. Mozart and Bach both came from relatively modest musical backgrounds. Great minds have often appeared for no apparent reason. Einstein often referred to the “music of the spheres,” music he claimed some could not hear. That raises a further possibility. Isn’t it possible that Mozart and Bach didn’t actually compose their great music but were simply the selected instruments of its ultimate publication?
Admittedly these seem absurdly improbable extrapolations of my deterministic foundations and I offer them only as possibilities which we shouldn’t reflexively reject, especially since we have no concrete evidence which proves they are wrong.
Consideration of a predestined evolution can offer a new insight into the polarization and vehement defense offered by so many, especially of the so-called “intellectual class” we associate with our institutions of higher learning, our political institutions and even the Supreme Court. Our innate predispositions offer an explanation for what Robert Bork has called the “adversary culture.” I agree with Bork.
“The intellectual class, then, is composed of people whose mindset is very like that of the student radicals of the Sixties: hostile to this culture and society coupled with millenarium dreams.”
Slouching Towards Gomorrah, page 84.
Note Bork’s use of the term “mindset” Isn’t “mindset” the perfect term defining the posture of congenital atheists like P.Z. Myers, Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins? And doesn’t it apply to the radical Christian Fundamentalist just as well?
I looked up the word “mindset” in the American Heritage Dictionary and was delighted to find support in the definition -
“A fixed mental attitude or disposition that PREDETERMINES a person’s responses to and interpretations of situations.” my emphasis.
Why has this swing to the liberal left become so obvious in recent decades? I don’t believe it represents a fundamental change in people’s world views. We have always had both religious fanatics and equally fanatical atheists. The difference is that in the not so distant past they did not have the leisure to express themselves a they do today. In the Great Depression in which I grew up, most citizens were so busy making ends meet that they had little time to let their innate selves be expressed. In other words I suggest that the polarizations we now see are due to affluence. The same Age of Technology that has poisoned our planet also has given us the opportunity to gravitate to others with the same congenital predispositions. Man is a social animal and these aggregations occur spontaneously as Cervantes observed -
“Birds of a feather flock together.”
To this we may add -
“Idle time is the devil’s handmaiden.”
anonymous
The capacity to loathe something or someone seems to be a common feature for large fractions of the human population. Nowhere is this more evident than on such “hatethinktanks” as Pharyngula, EvC, Panda’s Thumb and After The Bar Closes. I do not mean to suggest that all idle time is dedicated to evil purposes. Many use their leisure hours in pursuit of benign activities such as hunting, fishing and gardening. These reflect our heritage in a manner which is also beneficial to our economy. There is little that can be beneficial in a mindset that denigrates everything upon which this Republic was founded. Yet that is exactly what the Darwinian atheist mentality demands. P.Z. Myers went so far not too long ago to suggest that academics who question Darwinian evolution should be denied tenure. Of course that was long after he had tenure himself! Richard Dawkins has completely abandoned any semblance of science to write “The God Delusion.” The frightening aspect is the huge followings that these ideologues have gathered as well as the fanatical dedication to their leaders the users of these weblogs display.
I offer my explanation for this as follows. Both Dawkins and Myers are fully aware of the total failure of the Darwinian model but are unable to accept what is the only conceivable alternative, some form of guided, purposeful evolution. They have painted themselves into a corner from which there is no escape short of recantation of everything they hold dear. This, I submit, they are congenitally incapable of achieving so they must do what they were “determined” to do which is to lash out at all who recognize a guided purposeful, goal-directed phylogeny.
I now ask the question – Is there anything that can be done to reverse the downward trend we see everywhere in our society? We have lost all semblance of standards for human behavior as is so obvious in our music, our literature, our respect for our institutions. Even our most sacred institutions are now corrupted. Witness the posture of the courts as revealed by Robert Bork in his penetrating book “Slouching Toward Gomorrah,” an analysis with which I agree completely.
If we look at the Ages of Man we see flowerings which reached magnificent heights only then to fall to incredible depths. It is especially evident in musical culture which remained largely static until J.S. Bach invented the tempered scale which served as a gateway for the subsequent expression of Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin and the other great composers of what came to be known as the Romantic Age of Music. We have even identified these discrete ages by naming them as we have named the Stone Age, the Iron Age etc. It is interesting to trace the fates of some of these Ages. The “Golden Age of Opera” dominated the nineteenth century and extended into the first quarter of the twentieth century with Puccini after which it for all practical purposes died. There has not been a great opera since Turandot and there probably will never be one. It is interesting that as the Golden Age of Opera died, the “Golden Age of the Broadway Musical” began with Jerome Kern’s Showboat, in my opinion the greatest musical ever written. In the brief span of little more than a half century there followed the great musicals of Rogers and Hammerstein and their contemporaries following which that great era also came to an end. The Ages of “Ragtime,” “Swing,” “Jazz” and “Rock and Roll” have come and gone never to be replaced. What passes as popular music today is an offense to my sensibilities as it is to my contemporaries. The great optimism expressed in the music of my youth has been replaced with the hideous nihilism and depravity of “hard rock” and other genres dedicated to cop killing, sexual perversion and the denigration of all that is virtuous and uplifting for the human spirit.
It is my opinion that this is another feature of what I have called a “Prescribed Evolution.” As near as I can tell there is absolutely nothing that we can do to reverse these “determined” sequences just as there is nothing we can do to reverse the destruction we have wreaked on our physical environment. Both seem to me to be the result of an original plan, a plan which somehow has apparently gone terribly awry. Neither ontogeny nor phylogeny are reversible and I see no reason to assume that will not prove to be true for every other aspect of our history as the ultimate product of a planned evolution.
It is no pleasure for me to have to present such a dismal picture of our future, but I have a responsibility as a student of the natural world to be as objective as possible whatever the consequences.
“La commedia e finita.”
Pagliacci
REFERENCES
Berg, Leo S. (1969), Nomogenesis or Evolution Determined by Law. M.I.T. Press, Cambridge (Original Russian edition, 1922).
Bork, Robert H. (1996), Slouching Toward Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and American Decline. Regan Books.
Davison, J.A. (2000), Ontogeny, Phylogeny and the Origin of Biological Information. Rivista di Biologia / Biology Forum 93: 513-524.
Davison, J.A. (2005), A Prescribed Evolutionary Hypothesis. Rivista di Biologia / Biology Forum 98: 155-166.
Flannery, Tim (2005), The Weather Makers. Atlantic Monthly Press.
Goldschmidt, Richard B. (1940), The Material Basis of Evolution. Yale University Press.
Grasse, Pierre (1977), Evolution of Living Organisms. Academic Press, New York
Mayr, Ernst (1982), The Growth of Biological Thought. Harvard University Press, Cambridge.
Schindewolf, O. H. (1993), Basic Questions in Paleontology. University of Chicago Press. (Original German edition, 1950).
Wright, William (1998), Born That Way. Alfred A. Knopf, New York.
What is an atheist?
by John A. Davison
It is always a good idea to define the terms when one asks a question. In asking “What is an atheist?” I discovered an ambiguity in the dictionary definition. The American Heritage Dictionary defines an atheist as -
“One who does not believe in the existence of God.”
I will use Friedrich Nietzsche to illustrate the ambiguity to which I refer. His
“Gott ist tot” is one of the most profound summaries in all of philosophy. Hasn’t Nietzsche implied that God once existed? Can such a person properly be considered an atheist?
I think this calls for a clarification of the word atheist. The key word in the dictionary definition is “existence.” A more precise definition might be as follows -
“An atheist is one who denies that God ever existed.”
This is the brand of atheist represented by Richard Dawkins and his New World counterpart Paul Zachary Myers, or for that matter by any proponent of the Darwinian paradigm, one which includes no role for a higher power either now or in the past. I realize there are devout Darwinians who also claim to be devout Christians. The Christian ethic demands a living, personal God. What would be the role of such a God in a mechanism driven entirely by chance and natural selection?
I had an interesting experience on the Richard Dawkins weblog, richarddawkins.net. On October 12, 2006 I introduced the thread “God or Gods are now dead but must have once existed.” That title was a ruse of course because no one knows anything for certain about Gods. The important thing is that it worked! In the course of about a week it produced twelve pages of heated exchange, nearly all directed against me and around 60,000 views, probably a forum record, following which I was summarily banished and denied further viewing of the forum from my computer, a condition still in effect.
An important feature of any inquiry is never to make unnecessary assumptions (Principle of Parsimony or Occam’s Razor). Is it necessary that God or Gods still exist in order to understand the world? I answer no. Obversely, can we understand the world without postulating that a God or Gods once existed? Once again I must answer no. I find it unthinkable that matter could organize itself even once into a living, evolving organism. I regard it as mandatory that there were an unknown number of supernatural interventions (creations) in the remote past. Those who claim otherwise are, in my carefully considered opinion, living in fantasy worlds.
I have pluralized God for a sound reason. When I examine the world I find it quite impossible to accept a single Creator. The world is much easier for me to understand if I postulate at least two Gods, one benevolent, the other malevolent. Actually this dualism is present in the Judeo-Christian ethic with Lucifer as a fallen angel. I hope I can be forgiven if I have elevated him to the level of a God!
Parallel differences prevail in evolutionary science. The Darwinians assume a single origin of life with diversity emanating from a single source, a diversity resulting from random mutations and natural selection. Actually there is very little evidence for such a perspective. Both the fossil and the extant living worlds are represented by profound discontinuities most of which are unconnected and may remain so. Leo Berg, for whom I have enormous respect, maintained -
“Organisms have developed from tens of thousands of primary forms, i.e, polyphyletically.”
Nomogenesis, page 406.
There is nothing in the present state of our knowledge in conflict with Berg’s assertion and much in support of it.
As an example close to home, it is only within the level of the Mammalian Order Primates to which we belong that we now have incontrovertible evidence for evolutionary continuity, a continuity which has obviously been accompanied by, and perhaps largely caused by, reorganizations of a common ancestral chromosome structure. There is no question that Homo sapiens is an animal with animal ancestors. The origins of all the higher taxonomic categories from Order to Phylum remain shrouded in mystery. The same can be said for the plant world.
In summary, there is no more reason to insist on a monotheistic creation than there is on a monophyletic evolution, but to deny that one or more Creators, beyond our present capacity to comprehend, must have once existed is unthinkable for this investigator. By rejecting the Darwinian model, I am joined by Pierre Grasse who put his convictions in italics for emphasis.
“Any system which purports to account for evolution must invoke a mechanism not mutational and aleatory.”
Evolution of Living Organisms, page 245.
and
“Let us not invoke God in realities in which He no longer has to intervene.
page 166.
* italics do not appear in this version of the essay. Grasse’s first statement was entirely in italics. In the second so was “no longer has to intervene.”
What is a creationist?
By John A. Davison
In an earlier essay I asked the question – What is an atheist? – to discover that there is an ambiguity in the dictionary definition -
Atheist – “One who disbelieves or denies the existence of God or gods” American Heritage Dictionary, 4th Edition.
Such a definition does not preclude the past existence of God or Gods. That ambiguity allowed me to question the traditional view of atheism. While there is no need to postulate a living God, it is in my mind unthinkable that one or more such supernatural entities did not once exist.
Now I ask the question – What is a creationist? – to discover an ambiguity there as well -
Creationist – “One who believes in the literal interpretation of the account of the creation of the universe and of all living things related in the Bible.”
Since I regard myself as a creationist, the dictionary definition fails to include those like myself who reject the Genesis account as without scientific foundation. So I will redefine creationist for the purposes of this essay as follows -
“A creationist is one who believes that one or more creators must have once existed even though there may be no tangible evidence that they still do.”
This definition distinguishes the creationist from the atheist who denies even the past existence of God or Gods. That is the genre of atheist represented by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Paul Zachary Myers. There is no role for a creator in the atheist Darwinian model to which they adhere. This distinction has enormous significance with respect to the origin or origins of life and its subsequent evolution.
I will now indicate what is required by the atheist (Darwinian) model and contrast it with the creationist perspective as I have redefined it.
It seems to me that the atheist is forced to believe that it is intrinsic in the nature of non-living matter to assemble itself at least once into a living, metabolizing, reproducing and evolving entity. This view requires reproductive continuity throughout geological history as revealed by the fossil record. Does any such evidence exist?
None whatever is my answer. Quite the contrary, everything in the Linnaean taxonomic system pleads to the exact opposite. The living landscape, both fossil and recent, is characterized by profound discontinuities with little indication for continuous transformation. While this does not argue against evolution, it does present strong evidence against the gradualism intrinsic in the Darwinian model. These discontinuities are what prompted Otto Schindewolf to claim that we might as well stop looking for the missing links as they never existed. Schindewolf, a convinced evolutionist, proposed that evolution proceeded by jumps (saltations), a conclusion independently reached by Richard B. Goldschmidt both over a half century ago, and with which I am in complete agreement.
We must also consider the experimental evidence for the Darwinian mutation/selection model. Does any evidence exist for this? As far as the generation of new species is concerned I can again answer – none whatever. While it is true that artificial selection can generate considerable variation in some but certainly not all organisms, there is not a single instance, to my knowledge, of the experimental production of a new species through selection in the experimental laboratory. Quite the contrary, intensive selection invariably leads to reduced fitness and, if continued too far, to spontaneous extinction. In short, artificial selection is anti-evolutionary and natural selection prevents rather than promotes change. I am certainly not the first to recognize this role for natural selection.
“In all the research since 1869 on the transformations observed in closely successive phyletic series no evidence whatever, to my knowledge, has been brought forward by any palaeontologist, either of the vertebrated or the invertebrated animals, that the fit originates by selection from the fortuitous.
Henry Fairfield Osborn, Fifty years of Darwinism, page 223, (1909).
“The struggle for existence and natural selection are not progressive agencies, but being, on the contrary, conservative, maintain the standard.”
Leo Berg, Nomogenesis, page 406,(1922).
There is no evidence, natural or experimental, that selection has ever played a role in either speciation or the generation of any of the higher taxonomic categories. How the Darwinians have been able to ignore this vacuum for a century and a half is beyond my comprehension. They doggedly pursue a phantom rather than admit that chance and variation are impotent to produce even the simplest product capable of growth, reproduction and ascending change, all of which features characterize the one undeniable feature and ultimate arbiter of the evolutionary sequence – the fossil record.
I now turn to the question – What can be established with certainty about the great mystery of organic evolution?
Before I answer that question I feel compelled to point out that the Darwinians do not regard evolution as a mystery. They maintain that the forces we see operating today are the same as those that acted in the past, an extrapolation to the living world of Charles Lyell’s Principle of Uniformation, an extrapolation without foundation. The living world is not to be compared with the inanimate geological world. They have nothing in common.
How many times was life created? How many times, once created, were life’s evolutionary paths further directed? Where, when and above all how was life created and how many creators were involved? None of these questions have been answered and it is quite possible that they may never be.
I find it revealing that when I ask the question – what is a creationist? – I come up with the same conclusion that I reached when I asked the question – what is an atheist? There is no more reason to assume a single creator than there is to assume a monophyletic evolution. As a matter of fact, all the realities revealed by experimental and descriptive science speak for many creation events possibly involving multiple creators. In short, while there is little in the Judeo-Christian ethic which supports experimental and descriptive science, there is even less support to be found in the atheist foundation of the neo-Darwinian fairy tale. I remain convinced that the truth lies elsewhere in a planned and now terminated evolution generated by an unknown number of entities millions of years ago, entities whose existence cannot now be demonstrated but whose past existence cannot be denied. As my signature proclaims -
“A past evolution is undeniable, a present evolution indemonstrable.”
