Q & A with Brian Tweed. His first question(s) & my response.

Instead of trying to keep up with an exponentially growing thread, I asked Brian if we could restart out conversation asking one question.  He agreed and both his question(s) along with my response is below...

Hi SP
Thank you for informing me that you are now ready to resume our discussion, and I hope that it will be beneficial to us both.

As you are well aware, reading discussions between atheists and theists of any sort on the internet is not always an uplifting way to spend your day, mainly, but not only, because rarely do you find that the two parties have much courteous or respect for the oppositions point of view. Whilst it is certain that we shall disagree vehemently on the subject matters, hopefully we can approach the debate in a manner that acknowledges that our opponent has the right to disagree, and we will not need to portray them as ignorant or foolish for seeing things differently than we do ourselves.

I know that your preference is to have a discussion solely about the validity of the evolutionary biological version of the ‘creation story’ as opposed to the biblical view of the origin of life that I hold, and I am more than happy to discuss the details of that shortly. I would though like to lay out some of my objections to your viewpoint before I ask you my first question.

I am off the opinion that the universe as a whole requires an explanation, as there is an astronomical amount of matter out there, (pun intended ;-) the simple fact that the universe exists at all seems to require some sort of explanation.

In my view, before this universe began, there existed a very powerful, intelligent Being, (whom I believe is now known as the God of the bible) that chose to create the universe, and at the same time, created laws to govern the universe, so that it can be understood by you and I, creatures that this Being also created. So, my view postulates that before this universe or any of the matter that it contains ever existed, there was a Being capable of creating all of it, and endowing it with the properties that we see in the here and now. Since the appearance of the universe from nothing requires an explanation, the bible I believes gives me a plausible one, in that God, who existed before all of time, space and matter, used His power to create it all that we can see.

You would agree, I will assume, (and await any corrections to any errors I may make in presenting your view) that the origin of the universe requires an explanation, but as an atheist, you reject the view that God exists, and therefore you reject this explanation of why time, space and matter came into being. In your view, (if you agree with the majority of atheists that I have heard give there explanation of why there is a universe at all) all of the matter that we can observe in the universe appeared suddenly, for some unknown reason, out of nothing. Apparently, at this time, again for no known reason, all of the laws that govern the universe began to guide the formation of our present observable universe. Since the beginning, which you believe was about 13.7 billion years ago, the matter in the universe has simply followed ‘laws’ (for which you have no explanation of), and the combination of these ‘laws’ working on the matter, over extremely long periods of time, have ‘created’ stars, planets, and the inhabitants of the planets. In your view, you and I are simply the product of unguided processes that have worked over immense periods of time to ‘create’ the complex systems such as the ‘fine tuned’ universe and of course the human brain, by which we can learn about, and make sense of it all.

In short, you believe that order came from disorder, laws came from lawlessness, and intelligibility came from unintelligibility. I don’t know if you think that this sounds reasonable and logical to you, but to me it seems like a gigantic stretch of credibility, and I don’t have enough faith to believe it ;-). But if this is what you want to believe, I am open to hear your logic in coming to this position.

I find it far more logical and reasonable to believe that the ‘fine tuning’ that we observe in the universe indicates a ‘Fine-tuner’, the order in the universe was the product of a Planner, and the complexity of life and life processes, is the result of a Grand Designer, which is real and not just illusory.

So, with that background for why I find your position illogical and against common reason, I will focus down on the area of evolutionary biology that I would like to discuss first. I will start with a simple question, which can be answered by you by a simple yes or no. I will then hope that you will follow up this simple answer with further details of why you agree or disagree with the statement.

Here are some quotes from the book ‘Why evolution is true’ by Jerry A. Coyne.

“For the process of evolution- natural selection, the mechanism that drove the first naked, replicating molecule into the diversity of millions of fossil and living forms- is a mechanism of staggering simplicity and beauty.” (Introduction xvii)

“The truth - that we, like lions, redwoods and frogs, all resulted from the slow replacement of one gene by another, each step conferring a tiny reproductive advantage – is surely more satisfying than the myth that we were suddenly called into being from nothing.” (Introduction xxi)

“Life on Earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species - perhaps a self-replicating molecule- that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection.” (P3)

So, after reading these statements my question to you is:
Do you believe that natural selection, “the mechanism that drove the first naked, replicating molecule” through the “slow replacement of one gene by another”, is the process by which “a self-replicating molecule” has been transformed into mankind?

Brian 

 My response follows...

Brian,

I’ll leave your opinion on Cosmology and instead address the end of your post about Biology, but will say that I view your description of the scientific explanation for physical cosmology as a straw-man of the actual facts that the Big Bang theory explains. I think that before I can address this statement I will need to see you give a synopsis of what the majority of  physicists articulate as Big Band theory compared to what I perceive as your misrepresentation of that scientific theory.

As for your question about natural selection, no I do not believe that natural selection is responsible for humanity.  I know that Natural Selection is the best scientific explanation (along with Genetic Drift from Founder Effect & Bottle Necks, Gene Flow, Sexual Selection, Biased Mutations, among other mechanisms) for the fact of the diversity of life found today and in the fossil record. I do not accept upon faith (believe) what others have told me about how life on this planet has changed over time, but instead I have researched the facts and explanations of those facts and understand that Evolutionary Biology is the best account for the fact of common descent with modification. 

Yours,

SP