Christopher Hitchens said in one of his inebriated moments “I think you need to focus on the Fine Tuning Argument, it’s hard to dismantle”! Hitchens had a good evangelical friend that drove him to his debates all over the US. According to him “Behind the scenes, Hitchens was liked by many evangelicals and debaters because he was fun, “Kind unlike others who treat debaters disrespectful with contempt”. I think they all avoid “Universe from Nothing” Krause because he can be very rude. That’s all hearsay from the debaters, Hitchens is on video making his “Fine Tune” comments.
Fine Tuning "This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for." Perhaps in a few thousand years, if the human species manages to exist after messing up the atmosphere; from scraps of ancient texts found in a cave by the sea, that passage may well be part of a new bible where god is the whole creator and Douglas Adams becomes hailed as a Prophet, by the more religiously inclined.
[/QUOTE] Today, I watched the first of Professor Dave's videos critiquing Dr. Tour. There were a lot of things I disagreed with, of course, and I'm sure Dr. Tour will cover most, or all of them in his video series. One thing I don't want to keep silent about is Professor Dave's portrayal of Professor Kurt Wise. Although I'm sure he is quoting him accurately, he selectively quoted him and this resulted in me wanting to shout, "No, Dr. Kurt Wise believes that there is a lot of scientific evidence that supports a creationist view!" However, I refrained from shouting. Instead, I will post the following (boldness, large lettering and underlining added by me for emphasis): “Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a young earth, I am a young-age creationist because that is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turned against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate.” https://answersingenesis.org/answers/books/in-six-days/kurt-p-wise-geology/ Also, I thought it would be interesting to show some of the scientific evidence for creation that Dr. Wise believes. He doesn't have a lot of free, written articles. Most of what I've heard from him I have only found in you tube videos. I am not posting all those videos because there are a lot of them, but they are good if anyone wants to look them up and watch them. He discusses a couple methods for dating the earth at the bottom of the second excerpt. https://sbts-wordpress-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/equip/uploads/2010/02/sbjt_111_wise.pdf What Science Tells Us about the Age of the Creation Kurt P. Wise pg 6 The Catastrophic Failure of Modern Science Modern science cannot infer how the creation occurred because God utilized processes in creation that we do not observe in the present. Since God claims to have ended all the works of the Creation on the seventh day,9 science would fail to deduce the mode, the tempo, and the order of creation. In general, modern science will fail to infer the correct process when that process is unobserved by humans in the present. Because of this, modern science will certainly err in its study of such things as the conception and resurrection of Christ—because we do not observe fatherless human conception or humans rising from the dead. In fact, since miracles and wonders are, by definition, outside normal human experience, at least the vast majority of the miracles and wonders—and possibly all of them—cannot be understood by modern science. Science is not the right method to study miracles. But we have already seen that science’s failure is even more substantial than that. Science not only fails properly to understand the process of creation, it is also blind to the fact or event of creation itself. The scientist infers an unbroken history through the creation event, as if it had never occurred. This is not only because the process of creation is outside the experience of a scientist, it is also because God wove into the creation various processes that were intended to maintain the creation indefi nitely into the future. These cyclical processes effectively make the creation event invisible to the eyes of science. In general, if provisional cycles were either instituted (such as in the creation) or reinstituted after a cycle-breaking event, many aspects of the event itself would be invisible to scientists using assumptions of uniformitarianism and actualism. The more localized the event, the more invisible the event will be. The more the history of the universe was designed to continue seamlessly through a given event, the less one would expect science to notice the event at all. Thus, not only would modern science fail to understand the nature of the conception or resurrection of Christ, it would—like most of the world at the time—not even infer that either event had ever happened at all. The same can be said for a vast percentage of the miracles and wonders recorded in Scripture. In fact, even though many of them were global, most of the events of Genesis 1-11 are invisible to science. For example, consider fi rst the world before the Fall of man. Certain elements of the Genesis account such as the tree of life and a talking serpent are clearly outside of modern experience and would never be deduced from modern science. Neither the identity of the tempter, nor the cause of man’s Fall nor the nature of the curse could be inferred from science. But that is only the beginning. Before the Enlightenment,10 the church believed the pre-Fall world was not only without carnivory11 but, in fact, lacked animal death altogether.12 It was a world that not only could have persisted forever, but it was without thorns and thistles13 and a world without suffering.14 Such a world is so unfamiliar (and unthinkable) to us today, that modern science cannot (and would not) infer anything like this as part of earth history. And, since God intended the cursed creation to persist through time—at least until the final judgment—after the curse he established (and/or re-established) cyclical processes for the preservation of the creation in this fallen state. The scientist projects modern cycles of provision through the curse in the same way he projects those same cycles through the creation. In both cases he presumes the existence of the present world and its processes when they did not exist—in one case (pre-Creation) when there was no world at all, and in the other case (pre-Fall, post-Creation) when the world existed, but in an uncursed state with processes of preservation designed to preserve that world forever. If the cursed world did change as radically as the Scripture suggests, the modern scientist not only fails to understand what happened in the Fall, but fails to deduce that it ever happened at all. He not only fails to recognize specifi c elements of the world between the Creation and the Fall, he in fact fails to recognize that that world ever existed at all. _____________ pg 10 Science to the Rescue? Following the reasoning presented above, one would expect that if it ignored the claims of Scripture, modern science would deduce deep history and deep time before the actual beginning of things. And, truly, modern science deduces ages for the universe, for the most part, millions of times older than the Bible suggests. Again, by the reasoning presented above, science would also be expected to reconstruct incorrectly the mode, tempo, and order of creation. And, again, none of the objects listed in Genesis 1 (the earth, the sun, the moon, the stars, plants, animals, humans, etc.) are suggested by modern science to have been formed instantaneously by anything approaching the word of God. Nor does modern science deduce the order of origin given in Genesis 1. Modern science reverses the earth-before-sun, plants-before-animals, and flying-before-land animals order given in Genesis 1. As we concluded above, modern science is not the place to begin to determine the age or nature of creation. Can we use science to determine anything about the age of things? Perhaps. When we turn to the biblical account we learn not only about the creation, but also the Fall and God’s response in the form of the curse. The pre-Fall world was designed to persist forever and might—because of the provisionary cycles embedded within it—appear infi nitely old. With the curse, however, we are told that the universe was made subject to corruption (Rom 8:19-21), groans and travails in pain (Rom8:22), and “waxes old like a garment” (Ps 102:25-26). Whereas it might not be possible to determine how old things really are, it might be possible to determine how long things have been decaying. An example might be the decay of DNA. Deleterious mutations accumulate in organismal DNA, increasing what is called the mutational genetic load of organisms. Although we are not quite able to measure this mutational load directly, we can measure some related phenomena. In human DNA, for example, new mutations of all types (neutral, deleterious, and presumably advantageous) accumulate at a rapid rate (on the order of one to ten mutations per generation per person). The number of mutational differences between all humans seems roughly consistent with what would be accumulated in the 6000 years since Adam’s Fall going through the population bottlenecks of the fl ood and Babel.31 Another example concerns the earth’s magnetic fi eld—an important protector of life on earth. It seems that the magnetic fi eld of the earth is decreasing in intensity, dropping half of its strength every 1400 years or so. It does not seem possible for that decay to have been occurring for as long as even 10,000 years—i.e. quite consistent with an earth-impacting Fall only about 6000 years ago.32 Similarly, the loss of material by some comets as they orbit the sun suggests they have been losing material like this for less than 10,000 years (consistent with a solar-system-impacting Fall only 6000 years ago).33 Even the absence of supernovae remnants in our vicinity of the galaxy older than several thousands of years suggests stars may have been blowing up in this region for less than 10,000 years (possibly consistent with a galaxyimpacting Fall only 6000 years ago).34 Tonight, I also watched this video of Dr. Kurt Wise which focuses on seeing relationships that abound in nature as evidence of a relational God who created such relationships. How is Mutualism Evidence for Creation?
Watched episode 2/13 today: Episode 2/13: Primordial Soup // A Course on Abiogenesis by Dr. James Tour I found Dr. Farina's comments regarding creationists' referencing young students' textbooks teachings on life beginning in primordial soup conditions to be a clear example of dishonesty within the textbooks. Dr. Farina is upset that Dr. Tour would reference these textbooks. By becoming upset With Dr. Tour for quoting from these textbooks for their errors, he is acknowledging the error, but laying the blame on creationists for referencing standard textbooks. Why isn't he upset that we are putting into textbooks false information? In clearer words: Dr. Farina acknowledged there are textbook inaccuracies but rather than blaming those textbooks for teaching misleading information, he is upset with creationists for quoting the materials. Dr. Tour also referenced Dr. Lee Cronin and provided other supporting evidence to reveal the layperson's inaccurate understanding of the primordial soup model.
This next video in the series is only 26 minutes long but I forgot to watch it today. I'm planning on watching it this week so I don't fall behind in watching one per week and can post the next one next Sunday. Episode 4/13: Homochirality // A Course on Abiogenesis by Dr. James Tour Diving into the science on homochirality, Dr. James Tour teaches the core chemistry concepts of enantiomers and chirality, exposing enormous challenges in the prebiotic synthesis and resolution of the molecules needed for life. By digging into the cited video's only provided reference, Dr. Tour puts ink on paper and shows how the devil is in the details when it comes to proper interpretation of the data. Finally, Dr. Tour touches on the stereoisomeric challenges facing synthetic chemists doing origin-of-life, prebiotic research. Video Index: 00:00 - Introduction 00:37 - Recall Dunning-Kruger 01:06 - Reasons & Intent of this Abiogenesis Series 03:01 - Enantiomers, Diastereomers, and Chirality 07:36 - Resolution of Enantiomers, Methods, and Requirements 09:26 - Quoting the Only Reference Cited 11:20 - Homochirality Explained 14:17 - Digging into the Misread of that Reference 23:26 - Summary and What's Next
The guy instantly failed the Turing test when he said, at like 2 mins in or whatever about the mirror-image effect. To paraphrase..."When I put my left hand up to a mirror, I am seeing the mirror image of my left hand, but they are not superimposable because the left hand is the right hand in the mirror." No. FAIL! The image in the mirror is the SAME DAMNED THING as the real world. It is just that the mirror world is backwards from the real. In the mirror world, your left hand IS the LEFT hand, because in the mirror world, left and right are reversed. Absolute garbage.
LOL! Well, if Dr. Tour was wrong, it went over my head! So, I did a little research to help with my mirror incompetence. I watched this educational video to better my understanding of mirror images. It even has a counting exercise (which I failed).