The Fabulist, Gad Saad, Complains About Being Called a Fabulist

Gad Saad @6:35 mark of the video linked below ("What Science Tells Us About ..."): "... and so, evolu.. You see what I mean? And so it's [evolutionism] just incredible. And this is what frustrates me so much, by the way, about the people who hate evolutionary theory. Because the amount of exquisite scientific explanations and predictions that evolution offers is so bafflingly great; and yet people accuse us of just engaging in 'Just-So' story-telling.  It's really galling."

People accuse evolutionists of "just engaging in 'Just-So' story-telling" because that is exactly what they do. Evolutionists, especially of the Darwinist stripe, observe some fact in the world ... and then "explain" it with what literally *is* a 'Just-So' story.  It doesn't matter to the evolutionist that his "explanation" doesn't make sense in light of general human knowledge/belief; it doesn't matter to the evolutionist that his "explanation" implicitly reifies and deifies evolution, attributing foresight and planning to 'Evolution!'. Hell! It doesn't even matter to the evolutionist that his "explanation" contradicts basic premises of "evolutionary theory".

To the best of my knowledge, it was the late Australian philosopher, David Stove (died by suicide in 1994) -- and who, by the way, was at least as much an atheist as Gad Saad is -- who popularized mockery of Darwinian "explanations" as "Just-So Stories". As I recall (in the book, 'Darwinian Fairytales' ), he was especially scathing of what is now called "evolutionary psychology", that is, Gad Saad's specialty.

To paraphrase David Stove (to the best of my memory): "To the extent that Darwinian explanations are true, they are trivial; to the extent that Darwinian explanations are non-trivial, they are non-true."

I'm not convinced that psychology simpliciter even counts as 'science', given that the "results" of "psychological studies" are notoriously difficult to replicate, but at least it has an observable subject matter; to wit: living human beings. But, turn mere psychology into evolutionary psychology, and there is no subject matter at all to study: and thus, the *only* thing that evolutionary psychology can offer is 'Just-So' stories, frequently couched in terms of "cave-man days".

Rather than repeat what I said then, I direct Gentle Reader's attention to my post: "How Evolution Explains Sex Differences ... Or Not"

I link to the Alexander Grace video to give Gentle Reader a premium example the sort of 'Just-So' story-telling and ad hoc reasoning/explanation in which evolutionism, and especially evolutionary psychology, specializes. I don't recall (nor care) what Mr Grace's degree was in, nor its level (that is, whether he had enough sense to not waste further time chasing after a PhD); the point is that he always attempts to justify his observations and claims in terms of evolutionary psychology (and, he frequently makes literal reference to "cave-man days" as "explaining" today's observable reality).

Alexander Grace @3:25-4:25 "... but you can't overcome the biology of gender [sic]. Evolution has shaped male and female instincts in a very specific way. Over countless generations, it [evolution] has incentivized a talent and an aptitude in certain tasks.  Men who are good at building things, at finding and manipulating objects and using them as tools for survival were more likely to survive and therefore were more desirable as mating partners; and so women would 'shack-up' with those kind of men, who had those talents. And then, of course, over time, 'Evolution!'  reinforces this through gene-selection.  Women who have personality traits of kindness and, you know, nurturing, they're going to be good mothers, and good mothers are more likely to ensure their children survive, and pass on those genes to the next generation. And, of course, men are specifically attracted to women who are kind and nurturing, the ones that are gonna make good mothers.  And so, again, 'Evolution!' through sexual selection reinforces this.  And so you can see, over countless generations, how 'Evolution!' has incentivized men to be one particular way, and women to be another way. ... [and so on]"

As I have pointed out more than once: IF there are evolutionary "explanations" for the generally-observed differences between the psychology and behavior of men compared to women, THEN, even to BE 'evolutionary', those differences MUST be encoded in the DNA of the respective persons. BUT, the genetic difference between men and women is limited to the small number of Y-Chromosome genes which do not engage in cross-over with corresponding X-Chromosome genes.

Jordan Peterson and Gad Saad:  "What Science Tells Us About Firstborns, Middle Children, and Lastborns"

Alexander Grace (engaging in evolutionary psychology 'Just-So' story-telling):: BEWARE! There's 3 Sides To Every Woman

How Evolution Explains Sex Differences ... Or Not

Linked  Video Title: "How Evolution Explains Sex Differences"

I'm not going to waste a minute of my time watching this video -- the title alone, plus the fact that Gad Saad is an "evolutionary psychologist" (*), is all I need to know to know that the video is a waste of time and intellect.

But, in case you, Gentle Reader, are still intimidated by the asserted authority of the religionists of evolutionism, consider this:
1) definitionally, "evolution" operates only on genes, or more precisely, on gene expression;
2) thus, if "evolution" is to explain sex differences amongst human beings, there must be some important and enduring genetic difference between the sexes upon which "evolution" has acted over the eons, and the expression of which genes greatly influences the generally observable differing behavior and preferences of men and women;
3) but, in point of fact, due to the very mechanisms of sexual reproduction, the genetic differences between men and women are limited to a paucity of genes on the Y-Chromosome;
4) THUS, "evolution" cannot explain sex differences in humans.

(*) Straight psychology is lame and sketchy enough all on its own, but turn it into "evolutionary psychology" and you have a "science" without a subject of study.

How Evolution Explains Sex Differences - Gad Saad | Maiden Mother Matriarch 43

EDIT (2025/03/24):

Concerning "evolutionary truths between men and women" @7:00 mark --

If there are "evolutionary truths between men and women" (that is, if evolutionary psychology is anything other than Just-So bullshittery), then those "truths" -- to *be* evolutionary -- must be encoded in the DNA. YET, the genetic difference between men and women is limit to a handful of genes on the Y-chromosome; and the Y-chromosome does in fact, engage in "cross-over" (or "recombination") with a corresponding region on the X-chromosome (*).

The genetic difference between a man and a women is very a slender reed, indeed, upon which to build a metaphysic.

(*) That is, strictly speaking, it is not true that a man receives his Y-chromosome unchanged (absent mutation) from his father.

The Rise, Peak (& Fall?) of Petersonism

Re: "Distant Starlight Proves the Universe is Billions Upon Billions of Years Old"

 from the 52:58 mark --

=====

But what about light? What did this [Special Relativity] mean for light's experience of space and time? Travelling at the fastest speed possible in the universe, the effects of relativity become extreme.  Very Extreme.  All distances shrink to zero.  As does the time taken to cover these zero distances.  And so, for photons, no matter how far they travel across the universe, not a single instant of time will tick by.  Even though this light may have existed in time and space for many years [i.e. in time] or light years [i.e. in space], even though it would have been clearly formed by one electron in one location and vanished when absorbed by another electron in another location, the space-time distance between these two events would be exactly zero.  To the photon, it is born and dies at precisely the same moment. To the photon, it is as it it had never existed at all. [I'm not convinced that this last statement stands up.]

=====

Another way to say the above is that from a photon's "point of view" or "frame of reference" it exists *simultaneously* at all times and at all points in space on the particular path which it takes from its creation to its destruction.

I had grasped this point about light with respect to Special Relativity, all on my own, years ago.  This is why I have never been impressed with, nor intimidated by, the "Distant Starlight Proves the Universe is Billions Upon Billions of Years Old" assertion.

EDIT: What I mean is that it seems to me that the "Distant Starlight Proves the Universe is Billions Upon Billions of Years Old" assertion is based upon disregarding physics following Einstein and instead treating the now-considered-erroneous Newtonian physics as the measure by which to understand the universe.

https://youtu.be/bAedYtUredI?t=3179

On "a perfect self-aware digital copy of you"

An exchange on Facebook:

Person A: "Black Mirror is a cool series, but at this point I think I can safely say that it is over-reliant on the "What if they could make a perfect self-aware digital copy of you?" plot device."

Person B: "I agree but history will probably see it as a cautionary tale."

Person Me: "How can the impossible be a cautionary tale?"

Person B: "1984 was also thought to be impossible."

And my further response --

There is nothing logically impossible about '1984' -- and, in fact, it was happening under leftist regimes even as the story was being composed. So, if it was "thought impossible", it was thought so only by those who declined to think logically and reasonably about human beings.

On the other hand, it is logically impossible for a computer program to be self-aware, to be a *self* in the first place (*). Further, even if that weren't logically impossible, it would be a further impossibility for such a program to be a self-aware digital copy of a person/self (**). So, if a computer-program-as-a-self is thought to be possible, it is thought so only by those who decline to think logically and reasonably about persons and about computers.

(*) A computer, I mean the physical machine distinct from its programming, is no more capable of "hosting" a self than an abacus is; for, a computer *is* an abacus, very complex to be sure, but an abacus nonetheless, and nothing more. Meanwhile, a computer program is just a physical *representation* of *one* possible set of deterministic cause-and-effect transformations upon some possible data set or sets. If no data input is given to a program, no data output can be generated by the program.

(**) The so-called "perfect self-aware digital copy of you" would merely be *data* for such a program to read and perform operations/transformations upon; that is, it would be mere *representations* of certain facts about your and your history (and not any actual facts at all), used as input to such a program. That program, executing on that computer, reading *your* data, would no more be you (nor a copy of you) than a minute later that some program, executing on that same computer, reading *my* data, would be me (or a copy of me). Put another way, printing that data into a book does not cause the book to be a person (much less to be you). no matter how quickly someone flips the pages.

Eyelessness in Blind Cave Fish is Due to Epigenetics

Cornelius Hunter at Darwin's God: Blindness in Cave Fish is Due to Epigenetics

I have long wondered whether this were the case. Specifically, I phrased the wonderment as: "If Mexican Blind Cave Fish were to be bred for some generations in a lighted environment, would they "spontaneously" "evolve" functional eyes?" So far as I know, no one is even attempting such an experiment. But, if the eyelessness of Mexican Blind Cave Fish is indeed controlled by epigenetic factors, as the recent paper purports to show, then the answer to my question is "Yes".

Post-Modern Science: The Illusion of Consciousness Sees Through Itself

Denyse O'Leary: Post-Modern Science: The Illusion of Consciousness Sees Through Itself

...
Naturalist philosopher Patricia Churchland puts the proposition most starkly: Evolution selects for survival and “Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.”

“Truth, whatever that is”? One sees into the soul of post-modern science here.
...
Gobry [previously quoted concerning the self-evident absurdity of the Naturalists' "consciousness is an illusion" assertion] seems not to grasp that absurdity is no longer an issue. We are animals and animals are never absurd; they live and then they die.

Similarly, literary critic Leon Wieseltier [echoing Darwin (*), whether or not he realizes it] writes, “If reason is a product of natural selection, then how much confidence can we have in a rational argument for natural selection? … Evolutionary biology cannot invoke the power of reason even as it destroys it.” Yes, it can. The power invoked is not reason but the rhetoric of reason, a weapon for those who do not believe in the concept against those who do.

(*) This is referred to as "Darwin's Doubt"

“But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind? [To William Graham 3 July 1881]”

“But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions?”

And -- just as his disciples today -- he didn't let the knowledge that his programme logically entails the denial that we even can reason truly/soundly and acquire real/true knowledge get in his way.

Amusing Contrast

Scott Adams (2017/04/20): Big Red Flag for Cognitive Dissonance

Scott Adams (2017/04/19): You Don’t Have Free Will – but You Might Get It Someday

There *is* no such thing as 'cognitive dissonance' were it really true that "You Don’t Have [as people say (*)] Free Will". Moreover, if "You Don’t Have Free Will" now, then you never will "get" it in the future.


(*) To say that we "have" free will is to use sloppy language, however common it is. The truth is that we *are* free wills; our "free will" is not something we can gain or lose, as though it were a cold or a foot.

The Illusion Delusion

I'd like to share with Gentle Reader a comment/explanation from Kristor at The Orthosphere --

winstonscrooge - "Perhaps consciousness is the universal and the you of waking is an egoic illusion."

Kristor - "It’s an interesting notion. But all the phenomenal evidence we have – that, by definition, we can possibly have – contradicts it, so …"

winstonscrooge - "What specifically?"

Kristor - "All the evidence we have, without exception, is evidence we are aware of. By definition, we can’t have awareness of evidence that we are not aware of. So we can’t have evidence that the only sort of evidence we can have – the sort we are aware of – is illusory. All the evidence we can possibly have points to the suggestion that our conscious awareness is not illusory."

The "interesting notion" (as Kristor put it), popular amongst God-deniers, in particular, and those who wish to do what they know to be immoral, in general, that our consciousness of ourselves is an illusion is an incoherent notion; it is self-refuting.

IF it were true -- if it even could be true -- that our consciousness of ourselves is an illusion, THEN we could never know it to be true; and we could never truly know it to be even a logical possibility.

Genetic 'explanations' for human behavior

As I've mentioned in passing, I'm 59 years old. As with most older people, I can no longer focus properly on close work, such as when reading a book; no doubt most of this is due to age, but I expect that part of it is because I have spent most of my life staring at computer screens. Also, I understand that for most people, this inability to focus properly generally becomes a problem at about age 40. In my case, I began noticing it at around age 52 or 53 ... and, to this day, cheap (i.e. $1.50) reading glasses, at the lowest level (1.25) take care of the problem for me.

On the other hand, my mother needed glasses before age 30 and my father not long after. My twin sisters needed glasses from childhood. Our brother is somewhere in between (but closer to my condition that to the girls').

So, two human beings, both of whom had faulty vision from a relatively young age, produced four children (with three genetic profiles), two of whom (having a single genetic profile) had worse vision that either of the parents (*), and two of whom had better vision that either of them, and at least one of those has vision that is at least one or two standard deviations better than average.

So, given how useless looking at peoples' genes would be in telling one physical facts about their children, such as what the children's vision would be like, how does it even begin to make sense to "explain" human behavior in terms of genes, especially when one ignores culture to do so?



(*) My sisters had three children each, and only one of the six needed glasses as a child.

Implications!

In a recent post on Victor Reppert's blog, Bob Prokop explodes the common atheistic talking point that critical thinking leads one to embrace atheism --

"I'm curious what you think would be an acceptable demonstration of the claim that critical thinking leads to atheism. (I do think this is true, but I am wondering what you think would demonstrate it to you, and others.)"

It's not gonna happen, because there is simply no conceivable way that honest, critical thinking will ever lead to atheism.

Atheism demands that one close one's mind to the illogic of something coming from nothing (or else one has to redefine "nothing" to the point where it is actually "something").

Atheism demands that one overlook the fact that atheism necessarily means there is no objective morality, that good and evil are nothing more than subjective judgements of a mind that one can't actually trust to make such judgements.

Atheism demands that one ignore the fact that 99.9 percent of humanity since the Dawn of Time have believed in, worshiped, and prayed to God (or to gods). Atheists are required to think their tiny minority are "right" and the overwhelming majority of people are "wrong" about the most important of all imaginable questions.

Atheists must insist that all questions can be reduced to matters of empirical evidence and "science" - that art, literature, history, music, architecture, personal experience, all are somehow defective or fundamentally lacking, not quite worthy of trust, ultimately to be (negatively) evaluated against the one-and-only objective standard given the atheist seal of approval.

Atheists must never, ever allow themselves to realize that atheism means that everything is meaningless, that in the end of ends it does not matter what kind of life one leads, or even whether one is or is not an atheist - because a single microsecond after one's death, it is all as though it never happened, so who cares?

Atheists must never face up to the inevitable implication of materialism that individual identity does not really exist - that we are simply complex bundles of matter and energy, which, if its configuration is somehow altered or destroyed, becomes something else.

Atheists must believe that our noblest traits, our highest aspirations, our sublimest thoughts, are nothing more than electrical impulses and chemical reactions in a soulless meat machine, of no greater significance than combustion or sublimation. The love I feel for my family is simply a Darwinian survival mechanism.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Atheism is the very negtion of critical thinking. To the contrary, a case can be made for its being perilously close to insanity

Exactly!

Both the affirmation of the reality of God and the denial of the reality of God are statements about the very nature of reality, of truth, of reason, of morality, of meaning, of love, of beauty, of personhood, of agency, and of our individual selves (and of much else, besides; that list is not exhaustive). The question of the reality of God is the First Question, because everything else follows from the answer to that question.

At the very least, every one of the demands and entailments of God-denial that Mr Prokop lists ought to give one pause regarding one's God-denial if one really is engaging in critical thinking; and some of them are sufficient to demonstrate the falsity of God-denial. Thus, if one really is engaging in critical thinking, then one simply will not continue to deny the reality of God. So, far from critical thinkng leading a person to atheism, in truth it leads one away.

Consider just a few of the above entailments of atheism --

Atheists must never, ever allow themselves to realize that atheism means that everything is meaningless, that in the end of ends it does not matter what kind of life one leads, or even whether one is or is not an atheist - because a single microsecond after one's death, it is all as though it never happened, so who cares?

This is one of the logical entailments of God-denial that ought to cause one to seriously doubt that God-denial is the truth about the nature of reality. That is, this entailment itself doesn't show that God-denial is false (though other entailments do), but it does show that very few human beings -- including one's own atheistic-professing self -- are actually capable of *really* believing that atheism is the truth about the nature of reality.

No one -- including every self-professed atheist -- really believes that *everything* -- including atheism itself -- is meaningless. No one -- including every self-professed atheist -- really believes that it doesn't matter in the least what a person believes about the nature of reality. No one -- including every self-professed atheist -- really believes that it doesn't matter in the least how a person conducts his life.

Now, of course, the fact that no one -- including every self-professed atheist -- really believes this particular logically inescapable entailment of God-denial does not in itself prove that God-denial is the false view of reality. But it does expose a very serious cognitive dissonance involved in attempting to assert that atheism is the truth about the nature of reality -- if one doesn't believe the logically inescapable entailments of a proposition which one asserts, then one either doesn't really understand the proposition or one doesn't really believe the proposition in the first place. If one asserts that 1+1=2 and yet denies that 2+1=3, then one either does not understand what one is talking about, or one doesn't really believe what one has asserted.

It's a curiosity: atheism is odd, and possibly unique, in this regard -- atheism is a world-view the truth of which matters not in the least were it actually the truth about the nature of reality; the question of the truth of atheism matters only if atheism is not true.

Atheism demands that one overlook the fact that atheism necessarily means there is no objective morality, that good and evil are nothing more than subjective judgements of a mind that one can't actually trust to make such judgements.

This is another of the logical entailments of God-denial that ought to cause one to seriously doubt that God-denial is the truth about the nature of reality -- even the people who explicitly and publically assert that there is no such thing as objective-and-transcendent morality continuously demonstrate by their own behavior that they don't really believe what they have asserted!

Consider just one common example of their behavior belying their assertions --

Richard Dawkins (along with many other famous 'atheists') is on very public record of affirming the logical entailment of atheism that there are no such things as 'right' and 'wrong', that is, that there is no such thing as transcendent morality, and of affirming this as a logical entailment of atheism. Richard Dawkins (along with many other famous 'atheists') is *also* on very public record of asserting that this or that (e.g. rearing one's child as a Christian; being a "creationist"; punishing criminals because they have chosen to be criminals; being sexually jealous of one's spouse; and on and on) is 'wrong'. Richard Dawkins (along with many other famous 'atheists') constantly asserts that there is no "way things ought to be" ... and also constanly asserts that this or that "ought not be" -- this is a blatant self-contradiction: either he (and they) does not really believe the former assertion, or does not really believe the latter assertion(s).


Now, consider this immediate topic in light of the prior one.

Suppose it really is the case that there are no such things as 'right' and 'wrong', that is, that there is no such thing as transcendent morality. And after all, this really is a logically inescapable entailment of atheism.

And, suppose it really is the case that that *everything* really is ultimately and utterly meaningless, and thus it doesn't matter in the least how one conducts one's life. And after all, this really is a logically inescapable entailment of atheism.

Now, suppose those two propositions simultaneously -- for, after all, if atheism really is the truth about the nature of reality, then both propositions are true.

Does one now see how it is that so many 'atheists' constantly seek to shape public opinion by means of asserting self-contradictions?

Atheism demands that one overlook the fact that atheism necessarily means [that all our thoughts/judgements/conclusions are nothing more than the output] of a mind that one can't actually trust to make such judgements.

Atheists must believe that our noblest traits, our highest aspirations, our sublimest thoughts, are nothing more than electrical impulses and chemical reactions in a soulless meat machine, of no greater significance than combustion or sublimation. The love I feel for my family is simply a Darwinian survival mechanism.

If atheism is the truth about the nature of reality, then you cannot reason -- you cannot *know* anything ... including that you cannot know anything ... and including knowing that atheism is the truth about the nature of reality.

Everything that is coheres, and it cohers in God, and God alone: to deny the reality of God is to deny the coherence of reality. This doubtless explains why 'atheists' so readily retreat into irrationality as a means to protect their God-denial from rational critical evaluation -- contrary to their constant self-promotion, they are not committed to reason/rationality, but merely to refusing to acknowledge God.

Atheists must never face up to the inevitable implication of materialism that individual identity does not really exist - that we are simply complex bundles of matter and energy, which, if its configuration is somehow altered or destroyed, becomes something else.

This is one of the logically inescapable entailments of God-denial which shows it to be absurd, and thus shows it to be false, and thus shows its denial to be true.

When one encounters a God-denier saying such things as "Consciousness is an illusion" or "The 'self' is an illusion" or "There is no such thing as 'free-will'", that isn't just some blow-hard blowing hard (however much that 'atheists' tend to be blow-hards). These claims and other such claims are logically inescapable entailments of atheism.

And when one encounters a God-denier saying something like, "Well, I am an 'atheist', and *I* don't believe that consciousness is an illusion", then one simply is dealing with a blow-hard -- what this or that 'atheist' is willing to affirm does not alter the set of propositions which are logical entailments of atheism.

When one denies the reality of God, then logically and inescapably one has also denied the reality of one's own self: but this is absurd. Since one *knows* that it is absurd to deny the reality of one's own self, and since this absurd denial is logically entailed by the denial of the reality of God, then one *knows* that the initial or grounding absurdity is in the denial of the reality of God.

This is why I say that every 'atheist', as an 'atheist', is intellectually dishonest. This isn't just me being "mean"; this is me "following the logic where it leads" -- atheism is absurd (and thus is false); atheism entails obvious absurdities (and thus is seen obviously to be false); not a single one of the 'atheists' one will ever encounter has any rationally exculpating excuse for continuing to ignore the absurdity of God-denial; that is, every single 'atheist' one will ever encounter asserts the absurdity of God-denial knowing it to be absurd, and thus knowing it to be false.

As the Apostle Paul wrote 2000 years ago: men are without excuse in denying (and failing to love-and-worship) God. Pace Bertrand Russell, men do not deny the reality of God because they have "insufficient evidence". Rather, they deny the reality of God because they refuse to acknowledge the truth they already know.

Refusing to see what's right in from of your face

William Vallicella: Does Evil Prove the Nonexistence of God? --

I'll grant you that it does if you grant me that truth, existence, order, conscience and twenty of so other phenomena prove the existence of God. And let's not leave out the moral heroism of Maximilian Kolbe.

You can reasonably ask how there could be a God given the fact of natural and moral evil. You can also reasonably ask how there could not be a God given the transcendent moral heroism and selflessness of Kolbe and others like him.

I'll grant you that evil argues the nonexistence of God if you grant me that evil also argues the existence of God. (Click on the first hyperlink and locate the argument from evil for the existence of God.)

My point is that there are no rationally compelling arguments for or against the existence of God.

Whatever it may be, it is not his *point* that "there are no rationally compelling arguments for or against the existence of God."

Consider -- "I'll grant you that evil argues the nonexistence of God if you grant me that evil also argues the existence of God."

What Vallicella is referring to here is that 'evil' is utterly meaningless if atheism is the truth about the nature of reality.

IF there is no Creator (*) -- if the world just randomly happened -- THEN there can be no "way things ought to be"; that is, there is no such thing as 'good'. AND, if there is no "way things ought to be", then there can be no violation of the "way things ought to be"; that is, there is no such thing as 'evil'.

Contrary to all the confused (when not merely dishonest) bleating of 'atheists', far from being evidence against the reality of God, the reality is evil is evidence *for* the reality of God.

Now, Vallicella does actually know this, but he will not see it and he will not acknowledge it, because he has a prior commitment to the falsehood that "there are no rationally compelling arguments for or against the existence of God."

In other words, the man is a fool.


(*) Not only must it be the case that there is some entity which may be called 'God', but this entity must be the cause of the world -- this 'God' cannot be an item in the world, but is rather "outside the world" -- this 'God' must be transcendent and immaterial and eternal. At the same time, it is not enough that 'God' be the cause of the world, 'God' must be the deliberate cause of the world -- this 'God' must be personal.

In other words, even before he can appeal to 'evil' as his rationale for denying the reality of God, the so-called atheist must make the logically prior appeal to a transcendent, eternal, immaterial and personal Creator-God.

It's logically impossible to reason with these people

The 'these people' with whom it is logically impossible to reason being the so-called atheists one encounters on the internet. And the 'when' of it is *whenever* the topic is clearly seen as related to God, or "religion", or the logical implications of denying the reality of the Creator-God.

Consider this exchange --

Ilíon: "While there are certainly 'atheists' who are *generally* honest, no 'atheist' is honest with respect the very question that defines them.

Even if there were no positive arguments for the reality of God, the obvious inescapable logical entailments of denying God prove that atheism is false. SInce there is no excluded middle, as "God is not" is false, then "God is" is true.

There is no way around this."

JDHuey: "Nobody on this blog has ever shown that there are any logical entailments resulting from God not existing. People here state that they have, but they are mistaken.
If God does not exist then the world is exactly like it is. We simply have no need for that hypothesis.

The AFR is flawed and certainly not obvious. Everything we know about how the mind works indicates that it is derived solely from our embodied selves - there are no ghosts in the machine."

Victor Reppert: "The entailments would have to be from the fact that mental states are not fundamental to the universe. This doesn't entail theism directly, though it does rule out the philosophies of mind that most atheists hold. Nagel would be an exception."

Victor Reppert: "In fact, one atheist on this site defended a Nagel-type atheist position, and two of his fellow atheists suspected him of being a Christian in disguise."

JDHuey: "This is the rub. I do not remember that anyone on this blog has really demonstrated that a mental process as envisioned by an atheist philosophy of mind has been ruled out. It has been asserted many times but never demostrated.

The arguments put forward by Searle are hardly convincing. In fact, when I read books that cover research in consciousnes by people like Stanislas Dehaene or Antonio Damasio, it becomes evident that a lot of the objections by Searle are based on faulty conceptions of how the brain works.

Even you seem to have a faulty concept of a 'brain state'. It seems to me that you use that term as if the brain were a static system that transitions from one state to another. But the brain is a continuously dynamic system with massively interacting networks. You can say that the brain is in a state of paying attention or is asleep or is aroused or is calm but those states are processes not configurations."

Victor Reppert: "Perhaps I can put this as follows. Suppose I say that I can build a cat out of legos. I mean a real cat, not something that looks like a cat. And, I have lots of legos, and can put those legos into many interesting configurations. Perhaps they even function dynamically, as opposed to statically. It seems to me that no matter how complex these lego-formations are, it won't produce a cat, simply because there is a fundamental difference in kind between legos and cats.

It seems to me that no matter how much detail you use to specify the state of the brain, so long as you don't fudge categories, no mental state is entailed by all the physical state-descriptions. The physical always leaves the mental underdetermined. Now we can project the mental into the physical, but then we are going to need a mind to do the projecting, and so we aren't really going from the physical to the mental in the required way."

JDHuey: "The problem is not that Legos are not like cats but that Legos are not like atoms. A cat is not the same kind of thing as an atom but it is composed of atoms.

If you have something that can serve the same function as an atom and you configure them into the same visual and functional configuration that we call a 'cat'. And the results looks like a cat and acts in all ways like a cat, then in what way is it not a cat?"

This "dialogue" could continue forever, and while JDHuey will certainly contradict himself (increasingly so as it continues), he will *never* admit to anything. He will make all manner of assertions (never backing them up) that are false, but need to be true for atheism to be the truth about the nature of reality, demanding Victor Reppert prove them false, and never admitting when Reppert has done so.

It is logically impossible to reason with people who do that sort of thing.

What took you so long?

It seems that Barry Arrington at Uncommon Descent is only just now figuring out something; but it's an important something and he expresses his 'epiphany' well, so I wish to share it with Gentle Reader: Driving a Stake Through the Heart of Rationality Itself

About 'tidy-minded engineers' and our 'backward' retina

The Pope of Atheism, Richard Dawkins, in particular, and DarwinDefenders in general, like to claim that the layout of the vertebrate retina is "backwards" ... and that this is proof of the Darwinistic UIND ('unintelligent nondesign', pronounced "wind"), which blows where it blows, with no rhyme nor reason. Dawkins argues (ha!) that as no "tidy-minded engineer" would ever design the vertebrate retina in the manner that we observe, ergo it wasn't designed, but rather, just happened.

Here, Cornelius Hunter discusses merely the most recent finding of *real* science (as distinct from the 'Science!' so beloved of DarwinDefenders) that shows Dawkins and the other DarwinDefenders to be *wrong* in claiming that our eyes are "wired backward" -- It’s Just Getting Worse: Our Retina Structure is “optimized for our vision purposes”

Here is a little something I first read about a good decade ago -- The Retinal Pigment Epithelium in Visual Function

Abstract
Located between vessels of the choriocapillaris and light-sensitive outer segments of the photoreceptors, the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) closely interacts with photoreceptors in the maintenance of visual function. Increasing knowledge of the multiple functions performed by the RPE improved the understanding of many diseases leading to blindness. This review summarizes the current knowledge of RPE functions and describes how failure of these functions causes loss of visual function. Mutations in genes that are expressed in the RPE can lead to photoreceptor degeneration. On the other hand, mutations in genes expressed in photoreceptors can lead to degenerations of the RPE. Thus both tissues can be regarded as a functional unit where both interacting partners depend on each other.

I. INTRODUCTION
The retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) is a monolayer of pigmented cells forming a part of the blood/retina barrier (72, 372, 492, 558). The apical membrane of the RPE faces the photoreceptor outer segments (Fig. 1). Long apical microvilli surround the light-sensitive outer segments establishing a complex of close structural interaction. With its basolateral membrane the RPE faces Bruch’s membrane, which separates the RPE from fenestrated endothelium of the choriocapillaris (Fig. 1).

[figure 1]

Summary of retinal pigment epithelium (RPE) functions. PEDF, pigment epithelium-derived growth factor; VEGF, vascular epithelium growth factor; Epithel, epithelium.

As a layer of pigmented cells the RPE absorbs the light energy focused by the lens on the retina (72, 86). The RPE transports ions, water, and metabolic end products from the subretinal space to the blood (144, 236, 369, 402, 558). The RPE takes up nutrients such as glucose, retinol, and fatty acids from the blood and delivers these nutrients to photoreceptors. Importantly, retinal is constantly exchanged between photoreceptors and the RPE (30, 58, 596). Photoreceptors are unable to reisomerize all-trans-retinal, formed after photon absorption, back into 11-cis-retinal. To maintain the photoreceptor excitability, retinal is transported to the RPE reisomerized to 11-cis-retinal and transported back to photoreceptors. This process is known as the visual cycle of retinal. Furthermore, the voltage-dependent ion conductance of the apical membrane enables the RPE to stabilize ion composition in the subretinal space, which is essential for the maintenance of photoreceptor excitability (144, 558, 559). Another function in the maintenance of photoreceptor excitability is the phagocytosis of shed photoreceptor outer segments (72, 170, 187, 575). The photoreceptor outer segments are digested, and essential substances such as retinal are recycled and returned to photoreceptors to rebuild light-sensitive outer segments from the base of the photoreceptors. In addition, the RPE is able to secrete a variety of growth factors helping to maintain the structural integrity of choriocapillaris endothelium and photoreceptors. Furthermore, the secretory activity of the RPE plays an important role in establishing the immune privilege of the eye by secreting immunosuppressive factors (280, 581). With these complex different functions, the RPE is essential for visual function. A failure of any one of these functions can lead to degeneration of the retina, loss of visual function, and blindness. In the following sections these functions will be described in more detail. ...

To put this into plain English: the supposed "backwards" design of the retina is actually critical to "maintain the photoreceptor excitability" of the cone and rod cells -- that is, to allow us to see as efficiently as we.

To put it another way, if Dawkins, being a "tidy minded engineer", had designed our eyes, our vision wouldn't be nearly as good as it is, and it wouldn't be nearly as fitted to how we actually live as it is. Since the photoreceptor cells couldn't react as quickly as they do to the *next* photon to strike them, we'd need to have much bigger eyes, with far more photoreceptor cells,to send the same amount of visual information to the brain. Or, perhaps our visual experience of the world would have to be as a series of stills, instead of smoothly flowing.


So, if it really were the case that our eyes were "wired backward" ... and that this were then proof that Darwinism, and atheism, are the truth about the nature of reality ... does the *real* scientific finding that they're not "wired backward" count as proof that Darwinism, and atheism, are falsehoods about the nature of reality? Of course not! For the "our eyes are wired backward" argument (ahem!) was never offered ion good-faith in the first place.

And what would that be?

I saw a bumper-stickerish avatar over at Jordan's LJ blog. It said, "You are the end result of four billion years of evolution. Fucking act like it."

And I can't help but think that whatever behavior it is that he thinks is beneath the majesty and/or dignity of the "end result of four billion years of evolution" is *precisely* how one should expect an "end result of four billion years of evolution" to behave.

For, after all, how else *could* the "end result of four billion years of evolution" behave than however it is that it is behaving?

It just never ceases to amaze me that evolutionists *still* don't understand their own world-view.

Trees ... and Flowers ... and 'Evolution'

'News' at Uncommon Descent recently made a post drawing attention to an evolutionist's statement that "... we don’t know much about how speciation happens in trees."

This prompted me to drop a note to Denyse O'Leary (who is frequently, though not always, 'News') mentioning a Darwinist conundrum about trees and flowers -- well, it would be a conundrum to DarwinDefenders were they not so highly skilled in ignoring everything that needs to be ignored so as to protect their metaphysical speculations disguised as 'Science!' from rational critical evaluation.

The initial note I sent Mrs O'Leary was:

Except for their mode of reproduction, flowering trees and non-flowering trees are more like than flowering trees are to flowering non-trees. However, by their mode of reproduction, oak trees are more like tulips than like pine trees.


It's a great mystery ... if your religion is evolutionism.

A follow-up note to explain in more detail was:

You may recall Darwin's "abominal mystery".

So far as I know, he, nor his followers, never even thought about it in these terms, though they should be doing so: but flowering plants are "abominable" from the DarwinDefender point of view not just in their origin, but also in the fact that flowering plants are so diverse in all ways but the flowers themselves. A tulip blossom and an apple blossom (*) are both "perfect flowers" (**) (see here, as mentioned at the bottom of that page, so is an oat blossom) and also "complete flowers" -- the flowers have the same structures, which, according to evolutionists, are always descended/modified from the same parts (***). But other than the flowers, apple trees and tulip plants have few, if any, similarities in their gross characteristics.

Think about it: for Darwinistic evolutionism to be consistent, the apple and the tulip *must* be more closely related by descent than the apple is to the pine, despite that both being trees, apples and pines grow/develop and maintain their health and lives in very similar ways. The "permanent" part of an apple or pine is the layer of actively growing cells just below the bark (including the roots). But the "permanent" part of a tulip is the little disk at the bottom of the bulb, from which disk (re)grows the roots (it's a yearly affair) and leaves and flower stems. This point is even more ovbious with daffodils and onions. A pine or an apple overwinters by storing food in its roots, which persist, and continuously grow similarly to the branches, year ro year. A tulip sheds its roots as part of its overwintering strategy and instead stores food in the bulb, which has no counterpart in the apple.


(*) I changed my tree example from oak to apple. I had initially picked oak because ‘mighty oaks’ are such exemplar trees in our language; but oak flowers are not “perfect” and are so inconspicuous that most people don’t realize they have flowers.

Perhaps, for the irony of it, I should have picked tulip trees to contrast with tulips.


(**) Apparently, botanists have changed the definition of "perfect flower", for I used to see the term used for what it seems is now called a "complete flower".

Also, it *used* to be that a "perfect flower" (now a "complete flower") had FIVE parts, not four. Goodness, I wish they'd make up their minds!

(***) Flower petals, for instance, are claimed to be modified leaves.

I'm not Wolfgang Pauli

I'm not Wolfgang Pauli, yet I understood this point about Darwinism/evolutionism when I was still a teen --

'News' at Uncommon Descent From Wolfgang Pauli, on Darwinism

“In discussions with biologists I met large difficulties when they apply the concept of ‘natural selection’ in a rather wide field, without being able to estimate the probability of the occurrence in a empirically given time of just those events, which have been important for the biological evolution. Treating the empirical time scale of the evolution theoretically as infinity they have then an easy game, apparently to avoid the concept of purposesiveness. While they pretend to stay in this way completely ‘scientific’ and ‘rational,’ they become actually very irrational, particularly because they use the word ‘chance’, not any longer combined with estimations of a mathematically defined probability, in its application to very rare single events more or less synonymous with the old word ‘miracle.’” (pp. 27-28)

'News' adds, "For the Darwinist (or Christian Darwinist) natural selection is, quite simply, magic. It is not and never could be anything else."

As Pauli put it, "the concept of ‘natural selection’ [is] more or less synonymous with the old word ‘miracle.’ " -- Exactly: what 'Science!' fetishists hate about miracles (or alleged miracles) is not they the supposedly "violate the laws of nature" -- they're quite willing to assert that there are no "laws of nature" in the first place -- but rather that, definitionally, a real miracle is intentionally caused and for a purpose. A (real) miracle is not a random and inherently meaningless event -- that is what they hate about suspected miracles, for their whole worldview requires that *everything* be utterly meaningless.

Darwinist Just-So Stories

This is a recording from a competition to mock Darwinist Just-So Stories --

'News' at Uncommon Descent: The world is changing: Someone noticed what “evolutionary science” has become, and laughed

DarwinDefender of the day

In responding to someone on his LiveJournal blog, Jordan said, and I responded:

Jordan: I sense a huge double standard here.

Vox Day argues dubious science (creationism) on religious grounds, and he argues dubious sociology (Blacks and Hispanics less able to form and participate in civil society than Whites) based on outdated theories of eugenics. He does not, please note, argue for theocracy or for Nazi-like racial wars. ...

Ilíon: "Vox Day argues dubious science (creationism) on religious grounds, ..."

Actually, that part isn't true. The truth is this: "Vox Day argues *against* dubious science (evolutionism) on rational-and-scientific grounds, ..."


Jordan: I get that you're a crank where biology is concerned. I've made an extensive study of paleontology and am very aware of the interconnecting webwork of evidence that supports the age of the Earth and the reality of evolution. Stop trying to muddy the issue -- you're only making your own side look crazier.


Ilíon: And I get it that there are things that you just *will not* think about.

Do you really imagine that it bothers me that someone like that calls me a "crank"?

And come to think of it, the second part of Jordan's statement ("... and he argues dubious sociology (Blacks and Hispanics less able to form and participate in civil society than Whites) based on outdated theories of eugenics") isn't *quite* true, either.

What is it about DarwinDefenders that they *will not* admit that there are valid rational and scientific criticisms to be leveled against what Jordan calls "evolution"? What is it about DarwinDefenders that when they encounter a criticism of Darwinism something causes their DarLogic Module to short out such that all they can then bleat is "Religion! Danger! Religion! Danger!"

Yet another conundrum

Here is yet another conundrum for evolutionism --

Cornelius Hunter has a recent post concerning the "sixth sense" of magnetoreception that many animal possess, with a focus on how this ability relates to evolutionism Evolutionists Conclude Magnetoreception Evolved (After They Doubted its Very Existence) ... but then, they “conclude” that about everything, once they stop denying that it exists.

Hunter: -- “... It is also another example of the failure of evolutionary theory. Not only is there no scientific explanation for how such magneto reception, processing and decision-making could evolve, but the entire idea runs counter to evolution. Fifty years ago evolutionists ridiculed the idea that animals could detect such weak signals and use them in a sort of geographic information service. Now they claim it is all a result of blind evolution. As one evolutionist explained regarding the loggerhead turtles, “We think different areas along the migratory pathway are marked by unique magnetic signatures, and the turtles have evolved responses that are coupled to these signatures.” They think that not because the turtle’s magnetoreception appears to be a product of evolution, or that they have anything close to a scientific explanation for how it could have evolved. They think that because they believe evolution is true.

That is the extent of evolution’s contribution to this research.”

Here is the conundrum for evolutionism -

Supposedly - it’s (presently) Gospel in evolutionism -- the earth's magnetic field periodically collapses and reverses.

So, one must wonder, given Darwinsm/evolutionism, and give the periodic collapse and reversal of the earth’s marnet field, how do there happen to be species that rely upon magnetoreception to get to where they need to be when they need to be there (for instance, their breeding or spawning grounds)?


A collapse and reversal is supposed to happen on an average of 450,000 years. That hardly seems like time enough for magnetoreception to randomly evolve-and-fix. Or, even if it were enough time, about the time a species came to get good at it and to depend upon it, the magnetic field would collapse and reverse.

According to the Wickedpedia (no foe of evolutionism, that!) - " A geomagnetic reversal is a change in the Earth's magnetic field such that the positions of magnetic north and magnetic south are interchanged. The Earth's field has alternated between periods of normal polarity, in which the direction of the field was the same as the present direction, and reverse polarity, in which the field was the opposite. These periods are called chrons. The time spans of chrons are randomly distributed with most being between 0.1 and 1 million years with an average of 450,000 years. Most reversals are estimated to take between 1,000 and 10,000 years. The latest one, the -BrunhesMatuyama reversal, occurred 780,000 years ago. A brief complete reversal, known as the Laschamp event, occurred only 41,000 years ago during the last glacial period. That reversal lasted only about 440 years with the actual change of polarity lasting around 250 years. During this change the strength of the magnetic field dropped to 5% of its present strength."

So, according to evolutionism, a mere 41,000 years ago, there was a brief (i.e. 440 years) complete reversal of earth’s magnetic field. Now, while 440 years (or 250 years) may be “brief” on geological time-scales, in the life-span of an organism which needs to be at the right places -- feeding grounds and/or breeding grounds -- at the right times, this span of time of being unable to rely upon its magnetoreception to get there equals species extinction.