Evolutionist on Evolution: Pt. 2

If evolution's "tree of life" is true, then one of the most absurd paths that have ever gone down the theoretical chain is the claim that birds such as chickens evolved from dinosaurs such as the T. Rex. The astounding claim that dinosaurs live on today in the form of birds is without supportive, physical evidence. One question in sincerity might be asked here: when comparing a Tyrannosaurus Rex, weighing several tons, to a chicken, weighing three or four pounds, in what way do they resemble each other?. It is nothing about their relative size, weight, internal structures, or general appearance that indicates any relation whatsoever.

New Scientist [25 February 2009] featured the work of Jack Horner, a man on a mission to prove this theory. Horner seeks to build a chickenosaurus by altering the embryo of a chicken to develop a long tail. This hybrid, he believes, will prove that reptiles such as dinosaurs evolved into birds. wants to raise the dead by growing a dinosaur from a chicken embryo. While the publisher calls his idea "astonishing new science that trumps science fiction". Is it possible? In short, no.

Science holds out some hope for cloning ancient DNA and resurrecting the victims of recent extinctions, from dodos and moas to mammoths and woolly rhinos, but as for dinosaurs, it looks impossible. DNA is far less stable than protein, so if the protein was scarce, Horner sees no chance that enough DNA survives to clone the extinct giants. The results were the only thing that laid an egg.

Whether Aristotle might have believed in evolution, he was chiefly concerned with the beginning. He cogently argued that there must be a reality that causes, but is itself uncaused (or, a being that moves but is itself unmoved). Why? Because if there is an infinite regression of causes, then by definition the whole process could never begin. He seemed to know that matter, or at least life, was not eternal.

Richard Dawkins is not the only one that fails in his task to explain the origins, because he seems unable to prevent himself from argumentative overreach. For instance, he tells the young people that evolution "is the explanation for our existence ... everything we know about life is explained by it." Really!? Music, art, literature, love, beauty and ethics are all explained by evolution? Good luck explaining to a 16-year old girl that the reason her boyfriend cheated on her was due to "evolution's survival of the fittest". I don't believe this would make the heartbroken girl feel better or understand that it's just "human evolution at work".

Richard Dawkins makes extravagant claims and sweeping statements. Even though he states that evolutionary mechanisms explain the origin of the universe, not many cosmologists currently agree with him. And since the origin of life itself remains, to date, a mystery, so much so that Professor Robert Shapiro has called Dawkins' account "fundamentally flawed", then how much more difficult to determine the origin of the universe (& matter)? Now, I'm not going to try to fill these gaps with God. Maybe, in due course, we'll find out what scientific explanation does lie behind them, but what Dawkins hurts the case for evolution with his claims that it alone provides the explanation even though there is no evidence for such claims.

Evolutionists ought to be constrained to their hemisphere of the origin of life, since the origin of matter precedes that of life. Evolution only tries to theorize the origin of life, given the fact that spontaneous generation (life from non-living matter) has fallen out of the scientific communities favor as a theory. And when Dawkins does stick to that which is the proper domain of evolutionary biology - the diversity of life - he somehow misses his target. He would have evolution extending outside of it's proper domain to explain the origins of matter. This question seems equally weighty compared to the origin of life. But evolution has to depend upon theories to address the origins of life. It has no theory for the origin of matter. Dawkins would be better suited to highlight the similarities between the mouse and rat genomes, since believing that two rodents are related isn't difficult. The real problem is believing that humans and mice are and so we are theoretically setting death traps of our near relatives. Good luck trying to persuading a High School Science class of this as fact.

The origins of matter and the beginning are not beyond physics, says Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in Physics, who has said that at the moment of this explosion, "the universe was about a hundred thousands million degrees Centigrade...and the universe was filled with light." The universe has not always existed. It had a start...what caused that? Scientists have no explanation for the sudden explosion of light and matter, but a beginning is inferred.

Mr. Weinberg continued saying, "The greatest scientists have been struck by how strange this is. There is no logical necessity for a universe that obeys rules, let alone one that abides by the rules of mathematics. This astonishment springs from the recognition that the universe doesn't have to behave this way. It is easy to imagine a universe in which conditions change unpredictably from instant to instant, or even a universe in which things pop in and out of existence."

Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize winner for quantum electrodynamics, said, "Why nature is mathematical is a mystery...The fact that there are rules at all is a kind of miracle." What explanation do these scientists give for the start to our entire universe, energy, time, and space? Dawkins attempts to simply negate the foundational premise that science rests on: that everything that begins to exist must have a cause.

It is ironic that Physicist Victor Stenger says the universe may be "uncaused" and may have "emerged from nothing" even though this is a logical absurdity, as Philosopher Bertrand Russell says. He adopted this position in a debate on the existence of God. He said, "The universe is just here, and that's all." It is one thing to state that something is eternal, and therefore no "cause" is necessary. But it is entirely different to scientifically observe the start of something, the instantaneous beginning of something, and then try to say that it had no cause.

Even David Hume, one of the most skeptical of all philosophers, regarded this position as ridiculous. For all his skepticism, even Hume never denied causation. In 1754, Hume wrote, "I have never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without cause." Cumulative scientific findings continue to point toward only one general conclusions: the universe had a singular start or beginning, an explosion of matter and intense light, where everything we know; the universe, time, space, scientific laws we observe, all had a beginning. A special creation event is not in contradiction with known scientific facts and we are not done examining the evidence of such. The universe has left us an echo (ie, red shifts,) as well as many other evidences. This much we know...and yet there is more to come.

Excerpt from: Blind Chance or Intelligent Design?, Empirical Methodologies and the Bible from:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/blind-chance-or-intelligent-design-empirical-methodologies-the-bible/7798472