Questions for unbelievers

If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a thousand times: people who don’t believe evolution don’t understand evolution.  Have you heard it too? At its root, this is nothing more than a No True Scotsman's argument (that is, everyone who understands evolution believes it), but the reason it continues to be used is because it seems to shift the burden of proof away from the critic.  In other words, it’s not that atheists can’t explain their theories - it’s that creationists can’t understand them.  Um, no.  I think it’s 100% that atheists can’t explain their theories.  

Atheists often claim they simply lack a belief in God.  They should call themselves agnostic but they don’t.  Instead, they pretend they’re merely withholding judgment about the existence of God until they see evidence for Him.  I recently discussed the problem with this position and pointed out that their lack of belief in God necessarily requires a belief in something. If you press them with reasonable questions - like where did everything come from? - they often respond with an uncommitted, “I don’t know.”  Other times, they throw out terms like evolution, the Big Bang, or science.  

It’s my belief that not only do unbelievers have no good answers to questions about origins, the vast majority of them don’t even understand the answers they give.  Further, I think creationists reject the arguments of skeptics because the creationists understand the issues better than they do!  I don’t reject evolution, for example, because I don’t understand it; I reject it because I do understand it and I can see that it’s absurd!

To that end, I thought it would be fun to compile a list of questions I’d like unbelievers to answer.  Skeptics often publish lists of questions under headlines like, “Questions no Christian can answer” but ignore the hundreds of answers that they’ve already heard.  So even though I’m tempted to call this, “Questions no atheist can answer,” I won’t.  I’ll just ask the questions, and let the sheer weight of their rhetoric weigh on skeptics’ minds.  This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list of questions - it’s only meant to provoke thought.

Let’s get started:

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

Do you believe God doesn’t exist?  

If you believe there is no god anywhere, isn’t that a knowledge claim?  

If you only claim there is no evidence for God, do you allow for the possibility there could be a god?  

Do you believe the scientific methods that we use to study the natural universe are adequate tools to examine the evidence for a supernatural god?  

Are miracles evidence for God?  If “no,” why not?   

THE ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE

Do you believe it’s more reasonable to believe the universe poofed into existence out of nothing than to believe in an eternal Creator?  

If everything poofed into existence at the Big Bang, what prevents new matter/energy from forming out of nothing now?  If the universe poofed into existence from nothing, why doesn’t that violate the 1st Law of Thermodynamics (the conservation of matter/energy)?

If you believe energy is eternal, how is that any more scientific than saying God is eternal?  If you believe energy is eternal yet hasn’t been completely exhausted (entropy), how is that not like believing in perpetual energy?  

ABIOGENESIS

We’ve never observed life being formed from non-living chemicals.  If a scientific theory is tested and observed, can there really be a “theory” of abiogenesis?

How is abiogenesis substantially different from spontaneous generation?  

If we somehow created metabolic life in a lab, how could we be sure that’s how it supposedly happened in the past?  

If we don’t know how life formed in the first place, how could we confidently say God didn’t create it?  

THE SCIENTIFIC METHOD

Can something be true if it can’t be demonstrated scientifically?  

Is science the only way to determine what is true?  

Can a miracle be studied via the scientific method?   Is the scientific method an adequate tool to study the supernatural?   

How much of science is philosophical rather than testable?  

Can the scientific method be used to study historical events or persons?   

Is there any scientific evidence that supports the premise that every phenomenon has a natural explanation?   

CONCLUSION

These are just a handful of questions I could ask. Do I really need to explain the points behind any of these questions?  Where did everything come from?  Why are we here?  Is there a god?  Is there anything beyond the mundane?  What is the truth?  These are questions that people have asked for all of history.  Yet the committed skeptic can only answer any of them with a shrug and dogmatic faith that there is an answer and it’s not God!!  They are materialists of the worst sort.  They reject the idea of anything beyond the natural, but they cannot offer any compelling reason for why they do so.  They claim to believe in “science” but struggle to answer even simple questions about our world.  Theirs is a paradigm that claims to seek out “truth” and understand “reality” but fails to do either.

Convergent evolution - Lightning striking again and again and again!

There’s a common saying that lightning never strikes twice in the same place.  That’s not literally true.  When people say it, they mean if something improbable happens, it likely won’t happen again.  The odds of anyone winning the lottery, for example, are very small.  The same person winning the lottery two times in a row is virtually impossible.  Such a thing might happen in the realm of theoretical statistics, however most people understand that it wouldn’t happen in the real world.  But then again, since when does evolution operate in the real world?!

I’m talking about the idea of convergent evolution.  According to Grokipedia - by the way, I’ve started moving away from the left-leaning Wikipedia - anyway, according to Grokipedia, “Convergent evolution is the process whereby distantly related species independently develop similar traits or characteristics, typically in response to comparable environmental pressures or selective forces.”  In a recent post (here), I discussed how koala fingerprints are indistinguishable from human fingerprints.  Koalas are marsupials, and according to the theory of evolution, marsupial mammals supposedly diverged from placental mammals more than 150 million years ago.  In other words, koalas cannot be “closely related” to humans.  So why do both species share this very unusual characteristic?  Evolutionists claim it’s an example of convergent evolution.  You know, because koalas and humans live in nearly identical environments with all the same selective pressures.  Excuse me while I roll my eyes!

The idea of convergent evolution is little more than a rescue device for evolutionists.  They love, love, love to point out similarities between, say, chimps and humans, and say their similarities are evidence they share a recent common ancestor.  But any similarity between humans and koalas is merely a coincidence - a case of convergent evolution.  Evolutionists can’t see the special pleading in their argument.  In fact, they’ve become so comfortable with the idea of convergent evolution, they wave it around like an end-of-discussion solution anytime traits don’t follow any predictable pattern on the so-called, “tree of life.”  

I’ve discussed the appendix before so let’s start with that.  According to evolution, the appendix evolved in some ancestor of humans and once served an important function (or at least it evolved to serve some function). Since we are descended from this supposed ancestor, we have inherited that structure but, over the many generations of mutation and selection leading from the non-human ancestor to us, the appendix has lost its original function. For this reason, it's sometimes called an “evolutionary leftover.”

Humans are not the only creatures with an appendix. Dozens of mammals have appendixes – but not every mammal.  According to the theory of common descent, we should be able to trace the appendix along the so-called “nested-hierarchy” where all the animals which have an appendix also share a common ancestor. The problem is, there is no predictable pattern among the mammals with appendixes. The appendix appears in some species of primates, rodents, and even marsupials but is absent from the intermediate groups linking these species. It's not at all what we would expect if evolution were true.

Failed predictions are usually considered evidence against a scientific theory. However, the fact that the presence of the appendix follows no predictable pattern hardly raises an eyebrow among evolutionists. As is often the case, they invent ad hoc theories to explain the failed prediction. Here is a quote from Sciencemag.org:

In a new study, published online... in Comptes Rendus Palevol, the researchers compiled information on the diets of 361 living mammals, including 50 species now considered to have an appendix, and plotted the data on a mammalian evolutionary tree. They found that the 50 species are scattered so widely across the tree that the structure must have evolved independently at least 32 times, and perhaps as many as 38 times. [Bold added]

So let me get this straight: The appendix appears in no discernible pattern on the so-called “tree of life” which calls into question the entire concept of common descent. They try to say it evolved independently in all these different species but why would the selective pressures that drive convergent evolution create a similar organ over and over, when most creatures that have one don't need it?!  

Next, let’s talk about the eye.  In his infamous book, Darwin said this about the eye (source):

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. 

Of course, Darwin still believed the eye was evolved and went on to describe how evolution, by gradual steps, could produce such a remarkably complex organ.  However, Richard Dawkins, in his book, River out of Eden, had this to say about the eye:

[T]he time needed for the evolution of the eye... turned out to be too short for geologists to measure! It's a geological blink." And, "it is no wonder the eye has evolved at least forty times independently around the animal kingdom 

There are many, many creatures in the animal kingdom that have eyes.  I’ve written before (here) about the similarity between human eyes and those of an octopus.  Both creatures exist in radically different environments and are not supposed to be closely related according to evolution.  They are examples of what Dawkins was talking about, one of dozens of examples where the eye has evolved independently in different creatures.   But do you see the shift in tone from Darwin to Dawkins?  Darwin claims the eye is so complex it seems a wonder how it could have evolved, to Dawkins saying it’s so easy it happens all the time!

Finally, there is the topic of abiogenesis.  The odds of random chemicals coming together to create life are astonishingly small.  We’ve never observed it happen.  We’ve never been able to create life artificially in a lab, despite decades of trying.  However, evolutionists argue that in such a large universe even something very improbable will eventually happen.  Carl Sagan once said this: 

“... [T]he time available for the origin of life seems to have been short, a few hundred million years at the most. Since life originated on the earth, we have additional evidence that the origin of life has a high probability.” 

Convinced that there is a high probability of the origin of life, then it's no great leap to imagine that other life began in space as well. His faith in extra-terrestrial life inspired groups like SETI to search for signs of life beyond our planet. Today, with NASA’s interest in exploring Mars, people speculate that life could have evolved on Mars as well.  So even though we’ve NEVER observed abiogenesis, evolutionists suffer under the delusion it happens everywhere. 

Evolutionists are somewhat cavalier about what is credible. They waive the term “convergent evolution” around and suddenly the impossible becomes commonplace. A fully functioning eye evolving from a light sensitive spot on the skin?  No problem!  Life springing from non-living matter? Happens all the time!  

As was said at the start of this post, people in the real world know the odds of any improbable event happening twice is highly unlikely.  Evolutionists, on the other hand, would have us believe that lightning strikes in the area of the improbable like a timpani! 

It’s proof, except when it isn’t!

An evolutionist posted this picture on FaceBook with the question, “Why do you think they are so similar?”  His point was obvious: chimp fingerprints resemble human fingerprints because chimps and humans are related.  At least that’s the point he seemed to be making - and every evolutionist who replied on the thread pretty much echoed the same thing.  Somehow, this similar trait is proof, or at least it’s evidence, that chimps have an evolutionary relationship with humans.  They share a recent, common ancestor.

I guess the similarity could be explained by being related but is it necessarily the result of being closely related?  That’s where the evolutionary explanation becomes a little fuzzy.  Creationists sometimes explain the similarity could just as easily be the product of design.  A tricycle, for example, has similarities to a bicycle but the similarity can’t be the result of evolution.  

When I bring up the “evidence for a common Designer” rebuttal, evolutionists usually cry foul.  They say created things aren’t analogous because they can’t reproduce.  Um, that’s sort of the whole point, isn’t it? I mean, because they’re created, then the similarity between 2 things cannot be the product of evolution but was intentionally made by the design.  It’s because they’re created that makes it a good analogy!  

Even when I explain the point of the analogy, evolutionists refuse to concede it.  They merely repeat the “created things don’t reproduce” argument like it’s some sort of mic drop moment.  OK then, if you don’t like my analogy of created things, how about this: why are koala fingerprints so similar to human fingerprints?  

/// Mic drop ///

You see, evolutionists claim chimp and human fingerprints are somehow evidence for a close, evolutionary relationship.  But koalas are marsupials.  Marsupials supposedly diverged from placental mammals between 157-170 million years ago.  Koalas cannot be closely related to humans in the evolutionary sense.  They certainly are not as closely related as humans and chimps are alleged to be.  Yet koala fingerprints are virtually identical to human fingerprints.  According to one PBS article: 

As a biological anthropologist and forensic scientist, Henneberg knew this made koalas unique, the only non-primates with fingerprints. "It appears that no one has bothered to study them in detail," he told The Independent in 1996, shortly before publishing a journal article announcing the find. Henneberg’s research indicated that not even careful analysis under a microscope could help distinguish the loopy, whirling ridges on koalas' fingers from our own. The fingerprints were so similar to humans’ that he worried they could easily be mixed up by detectives. 

As is always the case, when similar features appear in different species that aren’t supposed to be closely related, evolutionists attribute the similarity to “convergent evolution.”  In the same PBS article we read:

[O]ur last common ancestor with koalas was, by some calculations, more than 100 million years ago, when marsupials split off from the rest of mammals. So how did we come to share this particular trait? The answer is what’s called “convergent evolution,” when unrelated organisms evolve identical characteristics in response to similar evolutionary pressures.  

So let me get this straight: our fingerprints are similar to chimps’  because we share a recent common ancestor but our fingerprints are similar to koalas’ by sheer coincidence.  Do I have that right?  Scientific theories are supposed to be useful in explaining things.  When observing similar structures in different animals, they could be explained by those animals having a recent, common ancestor… or not. 

A theory that could explain anything really explains nothing.  If similar features aren’t necessarily the result of having a recent common ancestor then they cannot be evidence of having a common ancestor.  Never!  Evolutionists have to resort to different explanations of how similar features evolved in different species, yet they still claim both observations support their theory.  It’s laughable.  No, seriously, it’s a total joke.

Design by “poofery”

Did the creation create itself?

I usually avoid commenting on social media but I still belong to several Fake Book groups where Christians/creationists debate atheists/evolutionists.  I do this primarily to hear what unbelievers are saying and to get inspiration for my blog. 

Recently, one unbeliever made this comment:

EVERYBODY Believes that Intelligent Order, Design and Fine Tuning Can Exist WITHOUT the Need of a Creator.

Please excuse the arbitrary capitalization and the lack of the serial comma, I posted exactly what was said so that I can’t be accused of misrepresenting the point.  This person is saying that order and design can exist without a creator.  

Since I seldom hear any original thoughts from atheists/evolutionists, I knew I’d already heard this before.  I made a brief comment and linked to a post I’d made some time ago, namely that Design is Obvious and how design typically suggests there is a designer.   Richard Dawkins, wrote about this very thing in his book, The Blind Watchmaker, where he said, “The complexity of living organisms is matched by the elegant efficiency of their apparent design. If anyone doesn’t agree that this amount of complex design cries out for an explanation, I give up.”

I used the old joke about the chicken crossing the road to make a point.  It's been my experience that the most obvious answer to nearly any question is usually the correct one.  The first time people hear the chicken riddle, they usually search for some deep meaning or clever answer yet completely overlook the obvious answer – to get to the other side.  So why does everything look designed?  Maybe it’s because it is designed!!  

Evolutionists go to great lengths to explain away design but the more they explain, the more they prove my point. They would not put in such effort if they didn't grasp the clear implication of design is that there is a Designer. It's almost funny to see how they reject the most reasonable answer for such an unlikely one. It's like they're saying, “No! The chicken did not want to get to the other side!'

Anyway, the Fake Book poster replied to my comments with the following argument:

If everything that looks designed is designed, that tells us that God is designed and created OR if God is not designed and created then no, not everything that looks designed is designed.

You may see right away that his argument suffered from a first cause dilemma.  If God were created, then who created God?  Then who created that creator?  And then who created that creator?  You can see where this is going. This is what is known as an infinite regress; it's a logical fallacy where a speaker projects a causal chain of events backward without any definite point that starts the chain.  

Aristotle said there must be a “first cause” or what he described as “The unmoved mover.”  In our case, we may call Him the Ultimate Designer.  Pretend, for a moment, that you're walking through a forest and you happen upon a log cabin. It's crude and has only a dirt floor. It has no electricity, plumbing, or glass windows. It's just basically logs, notched and stacked, with openings cut out for the door and windows. There's not a stick of furniture inside nor any other sign of anyone having lived in it recently. What questions might you ask yourself? I would think your first thoughts would be, I wonder who built this? Does someone live here? Where is he now?

I'm fairly certain no one would ask, “That's incredible! I wonder how these logs fell into the shape of a cabin?”

You see, logs organized into the shape of a cabin show design. Sections having been cut out to allow light and access show purpose. Design and purpose are the characteristics of created things and created things are the proof of a creator. The cabin obviously had a creator. Withholding judgment about the existence of a builder of the cabin is not the sign of a rational, thinking person. It's the stubborn refusal of a fool to acknowledge the obvious!

Dawkins said above that complexity and design “cries out for an explanation.”  But what is there to explain?  Even a crude cabin is proof of a creator.  What needs explaining is how complexity and design could come about without a creator!

After having said all this, I thought the case was closed.  A supernatural, first cause is the only thing that makes any sense when considering the origin of everything.  Like the foolish man in Matthew 7:24-27, any worldview that is not founded upon Christ, is built upon sand.  It cannot stand up to scrutiny.  But rather than try to rebut anything I’d said, this Fakebook poster decided to declare victory and make the following, outrageous claim:

The uncreated first cause proves that a creator is unneeded.  Once we have established that existence without creation, an intelligent mind without an intelligent creator and a consciousness without a creator can all exist, what reason is there to conclude that there is only one example of such things?

Unbelievers are in denial about the religious nature of their beliefs about origins. They are trying to posit a creator with similar attributes that we normally associate with God. In other words, they want us to believe there is a supernatural, eternal, uncaused cause for the universe – but it's still not God! It's just something like God. The skeptics are invoking a god-like non-god to explain the same things Christians credit to God.

I've said before that unbelievers in God are believers in poofism. There was nothing then, POOF, there was everything. Time, space, matter, and design just poofed into existence. They're essentially saying the creation created itself. They don't know what caused it to happen but they're sure it wasn't God. //RKBentley scratches his head//

I don't believe in God because it sort of makes sense. I believe in God because that's the only thing that makes sense. Everything we know about the universe confirms over and over there is a supernatural cause behind it. Deep down, skeptics tacitly admit this too. They just stubbornly deny Elohim is the Creator.  The god of atheism is a capricious, clumsy, invisible god that is indistinguishable from dumb luck. They seek to rob God of His glory by worshipping the undivine god of evolution. How sad.

The evolutionary shoe doesn’t fit

The old saying goes, “If the shoe fits, wear it!”  In some cases, though, people are determined to squeeze their feet into shoes that just don’t fit.  In the original story by Brothers Grimm, one of Cinderella’s step sisters cut off her toes to try to fit her foot into the glass slipper.  The other sister cut off her heel.  Yikes!!  Yet as extreme as that sounds, evolutionary scientists seem to go to similar lengths to force human footprints into evolutionary shoes.

Some years back, The Guardian reported, “Earliest human footprints found in Kenya.”  I’ve included a photo of the subject print below.  The prints are surprisingly like modern humans’ with a large toe parallel to the other toes and an upright stride matching someone who would have been about 5’ 9”.  An archeologist on site describes them this way:

It was kind of creepy excavating these things to see all of a sudden [a footprint] that looks so dramatically like something that you yourself could have made 20 minutes earlier in some kind of wet sediment just next to the site…. These could quite easily have been made on the beach today.

A Reuters story covering the same find said this about the footprints:

The size, spacing and depth of the footprint impressions allowed the scientists to estimate weight, stride and gait, which all were found to be within the range of modern humans. [bold added]

However, in spite of their very human-like characteristics, the prints are in sediment believed by evolutionists to be ~1.5 million years old.  Uh oh!  Modern humans are only supposed to have evolved only about 200,000 years ago, but here are human footprints in rocks that are supposed to be 1.5 million years old. Do you see the problem?

Richard Dawkins once spoke a great lie saying, “Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours.”  Well, Mr. Dawkins, here you go.  Here are footprints of a species supposedly 200,000 years old found in rocks supposedly 1,500,000 years old.  Consider your theory disproved!  Alas, no.  It doesn’t work like that.  They’re going to force these feet into evolutionary shoes!

The Reuters’ story reports that the footprints were assigned to Homo erectus (subspecies, Home ergaster) which they believed could be in that area about that time.  It’s kind of weird, though, that they would have evidence of a creature with the height, weight, stride, and footprint within the range of modern humans but refuse to consider if it’s a modern human.

This phenomenon of assigning human footprints to non-human (at least non-Homo sapien) species isn’t unique to the Kenya find.  An even more famous example would be the Laetoli Footprints. In Tanzania, a trail of human-like footprints were found in volcanic ash they claim was 3.7 million years old.  Like the Kenya footprints, the prints in Laetoli match human patterns very closely.  Here’s a description from the Wiki article:

Analysis of the Laetoli footprints indicated the characteristics of obligate bipedalism: pronounced heel strike from deep impressions, lateral transmission of force from the heel to the base of the lateral metatarsal, a well-developed medial longitudinal arch, adducted big toe, and a deep impression for the big toe commensurate with toe-off….  The feet do not have the mobile big toe of apes; instead, they have an arch typical of modern humans. The hominins seem to have moved in a leisurely stroll.

In other words, these are prints very similar to a person walking heel-to-toe, where his heel strikes first, he transfers his weight forward, then pushes off on his big toe.  That’s how I walk.  That’s how everyone walks.  The only thing that makes these prints interesting is they’re found in rocks that are supposed to be millions of years older than modern humans.

Since there aren’t supposed to be modern humans walking around 4 million years ago, the Laetoli prints have been tentatively assigned to Australopithecus afarensis - as in the famous “Lucy” skeleton on display in nearly every museum around the world.  

This brings me to another point.  The Wiki article discussing Laetoli mentions that other prints found in the area show the presence of other animals like hyenas, baboons, boars, giraffes, and rhinos.  I’m not a hunter, but in Kentucky, I see footprints from a lot of different critters: racoons, deer, rabbits, etc.  It’s very easy to identify an animal from its tracks.  Are you ready for this - how do they know these other prints belonged to giraffes or rhinos?  Think about it:

They find giraffe tracks and assign them to giraffes.

They find boar tracks and assign them to boars.

They find hyena prints and assign them to hyenas.

They find human prints and assign them to Australopithicenes?

So again, as the old saying goes, “If the shoe fits, wear it!”  When I see a human footprint, I know it was made by a human.  Just like I know deer tracks were made by a deer.  Duh!  That doesn’t work for evolution, though.  A 4 million year old human footprint can’t be a modern human.  A 1.5 million year old human footprint can’t be a modern human.  Just like Cinderella’s wicked step-sisters, they’ll do anything to fit human footprints into the shoes of our supposed non-human ancestors.  It’s too bad for them that the shoe doesn’t fit!