Wanted; a simple universe

In the philosophy (or worldview) of Materialism we see a desire for simplicity. The Humanist wants a building block universe, that he can play with as a child plays with lettered blocks or Leggos.

Quotes and comments;
1.  'An ancient and persistent danger is the demand for simplicity. There  is a pronounced resentment on the part of very many men against knowledge that is beyond their capacity.  [1.]
- Materialism is the demand for simplicity. The whole point of reductionism is that it 'simplifies' things; but at what point, and where, does this process become oversimplification? or simplification into falsehood? The materialist claims that the idea of design is unnecessary; but I think we can read this to mean that it's too complicated, too complex. The materialist wants (and even insists) that everything be simple; and thus he contends that the wonders of creation are but the 'productions' of mindless, physical forces. This is the demand for simplicity with a vengeance.

The modern cosmologist doesn't imagine that anything is beyond his capacity, but yet I see his rejection of Christianity as an example of resentment. He both resents and is frustrated by the doctrine of creation by God. Since it eludes his analysis or ability to analyze, he rejects it. The univere must be simple he inists. Why? I want it to be, that's why. (It's not a good answer, but it's the only one he has.)

Why this demand for 'cosmological simplicity'? I think it stems from a desire not to have God in one's experience; a way to get Him out of the universe.

What if life isn't simple? We know that many want it to be simple, but what if it's not. The picture of the universe given to us in the bible isn't simple, it's highly complex. People are prone to object to this or that event or doctrine by saying, ''but I can't understand such a thing'' or "I don't understand how that can be right'' and other objections. They want to turn God into somebody's grand daddy and the universe into a child's toybox. They want all motion to obey simple equations and all objects to be as simple as rocks. Their rejection of anything they can't understand is a disguised version of the demand for simplicity, and thus requires the rejection of God' predestinating governance of the universe.

Let's do a small word study;
Simple;
Having or composed of only one thing, element, or part.
- you can see how simple fits with a monist/ic view of the universe.
adj. Not involved or complicated; easy: a simple task.
- i.e. so simple that purely physical forces could somehow fabricate the wonders of living organisms.
Having or manifesting little sense or intelligence.
- the desire for simplicity is a rejection of intelligence and a preference for the non-intelligent; a preference for the impersonal over the personal. Why? This makes things easier to understand and explain. (We've all heard evolutionists complain that if creation were true it would be impossible for them (i.e. autonomously) to explain a lot of things.)
Single; not complex; not infolded or entangled; uncombined; not compounded; not blended with something else; not complicated.
- the materialist denies that the world could be a 'blend' of creation and evolution. This wouldn't be simple enough for him. (One wonders at times if anything could be simple enough for him.)
Not given to artifice, stratagem, or duplicity; undesigning; sincere; true. - for the materialist design simply isn't (not remotely) simple enough. It is art and what he wants is chance. i.e. you can't 'scientifically' explain a great painting. Why? It's art; not the product of necessity. The desire for simplicity is the desire for human autonomy; the idea man doesn't need God or revelation.
- Behind every method (i.e. scientific methodology) is an idea of what the universe is like; and since materialism posits a very simple universe it employs a simple method. i.e. all things must be the result of matter in motion, of observable actions (and reactions) in the physical realm. In other words; since m. posits an impersonal universe persons must be left out of all causation. (Such a method can't give you truth, but only a conclusion made in conformity with the model.)

One can only laugh at people who criticize Christianity without ever having read a serious (orthodox) book on systematic theology, and who can't even be bothered to look up the Westminster Confession. They proudly parade their ignorance and expect to be taken seriously. They want to see it as a simple superstition and thus one not even worthy of study; but they confuse their desire for reality. If I believe one thing it's that the universe is not simple, that it is instead, highly complex, far too complex for human beings to fully comprehend. (Surely the mass confusion in most of the sciences is a good indication the reality of the universe, and of our experience within it, is not simple!)

I don't know why  anyone but a textbook writer would want the universe to be simple. (This is akin to wanting your spouse or your child to be simple.... but far worse.) To go further, and to insist the universe (etc.) is simple is sheer madness. Why should it be? to satisfy the simple minded? to satisfy the materialist? to satisfy the atheist? Scripture gives us a very different picture of things, and I have far more confidence its declaration of a highly complex, personal and transcendent universe.

 I hope we can be forgiven for feeling sadness at the fact men can never agree on ultimate issues, but to deny antithesis is to desire simplicity over truth. This is not a simple universe, and the antithesis Scripture speaks of (and which will continue to the end of history) is a part of this 'complexity' I spoke of earlier. The Humanist doesn't like the idea of the saved and unsaved, the regenerate and the unregenerate, the righteous and the unrighteous (etc.) and so rejects and denies them; this however doesn't change the reality of our situation. He too desires simplicity over truth and reality.

The desire for a simple universe involves a denial and rejection of Mystery. Humanism insists that all knowledge is theoretically available to man. (i.e. he may not know x at the present time, but in time he will, or it is possible that he may). Humanism declares that nothing is beyond man's abilities and capacities. (In its extreme forms it declares that even if God existed, man has the capacity to do all this 'God' could do, and to know all this God could know. In other words it denies any creator/creature distinction.) None of these claims can be proven, and so this remains but apostate man's great boast.
Humanism wants a simple universe where man can be a god, and where indeed he can become the God; i.e. controlling all things by the word of his power. i.e. controlling all things in terms of his will and by his power. Alas; this side of the multiverse, no such universe exists.

- Mike Johnson

Notes; 11/11/2012
1. Foundations of Social Order - R.J. Rushdoony p.78
- available for reading online at Chalcedon.edu
3. A great irony has recently developed in that this desire for a simple (materialist) universe has run in to problems with fine tuning (arguments) and as a result cosmologists have had to imagine a multiverse as an escape route (i.e. from creation and theism). It appears the 'simple universe' may not be so simple after all. When man rejects God he subjects himself to continual frustration.
4. We all know the simple idea of evolution given to us by Charles Darwin is false (don't we?) and it's now only a matter of time before its given up. (Atheists needn't worry though, as new simple stories will take its place... they always do.) As the cosmologists have sought to save their simple model of the cosmos by postulating the unobservable, so the Darwinists have sought to save the simple idea of E. by postulating unobservable events (and even ones that violate known discoveries). They postulate mythical creatures and mythical events and processes. In the process their simple theory becomes far from the simple thing it once was... as scientific (i.e. imaginary) 'gargoyles' now hang from Darwin's tree.
Materialist theories of Origins become more and more ungainly, as did Ptolemy's astronomy in its day. (How the multiverse advocates can laugh at Ptolemy's epicycles is beyond me; they were child's play compared with an infinite number of universes.
6. Humanism denies that God (if he exists) and man are really any different. It claims God and man exist on the same level, and are basically the same kind of entity. It denies the creator/creature distinction that is vital to biblical Christianity. It's only because he's a Humanist that Richard Dawkins feels free to criticize God. If one accepts Scripture and what it says about God then his criticisms are utterly absurd and meaningless. (e.g. apart from God there is no absolute standard for right and wrong as He himself is that standard.) His criticisms show us that he desires to live in a simple universe; but this u. he wants is an impossibility and a delusion. (The building blocks of his universe don't add up and are nothing but an incoherent confusion.)
7. The Humanist wants a simple God that doesn't speak and that doesn't interfere in man's affairs.
8. In its incessant desire to simplify the universe, Humanism reduces Jesus Christ to a man, one teacher among many. (We can see Humanism as itself being a reductionism; as being inherently reductionistic.)
9. In his desire for simplicity the materialist speaks (every other minute it would seem) of evolution; but we know that no such thing as generic E. exists. When asked to point to this E. he perhaps points to a change within a bacterial population. ''there'' he says, ''there is evolution.'' What he has pointed to isn't e. but some usually small change. So we ask; what is this e.? is it minute changes? is it life from non-life? is it m2m evolution? is it cosmic (stellar) evolution? what is it? All he has is a word; not an understandable or testable theory.
11. The simplest idea of all is materialism. Richard Dawkins underwrote an advertising campaign in Britain, where buses bore a banner saying ''God probably doesn't exist, so go on and enjoy your life.'' (Why the banner added the probable I don't know.) That about sums about materialism; it's really that simple.

The hatred of creation

The Humanist of today sees the expungement of creation as a theological necessity. It's the one doctrine he cannot allow to flourish.

Quotes and comments;

1. 'Aristotle described, in his Politics, the great political leader as a "god among men" and stated that "for for men of preeminent virtue there is no law - they themselves are the law.''  [1.]
- the claim political leaders can do as they please is a theological claim, as it denies preeminence to God and gives it to men instead. (This claim was put into infamous form by the post ww2 British politician who claimed that the 'government' could order the death of every infant born with blue eyes if it so wanted.) [2.]
Man as god is a comical figure in that he is then 'god' over a world he didn't make! Hardly a god-like position to be in.

2. 'Because man is a religious creature, the god concept is inescapable to his thinking.  Man will either serve the true God or create a false one.  [3.]
- ie. the 'right' to absolute power and rule is always given to some person or group; eg. the right to make laws, the right to be exempt from those laws, etc. Man cannot escape his created nature.

Humanism is the project of the divinization of man. For man to be god (i.e. to play the role of god) he must get rid of the idea and concept of creation; for clearly if the world (and man himself) was created then man cannot very well be god. This being the case the humanist must wage all out warfare on the doctrine of creation; going so far as to ban it from his schools, even ban criticism of it.

If the world was created man can only play at being god, for he cannot be the true God since he isn't creator; but if some form of the E. story were true then man could indeed claim to be god since he would clearly be ultimate. (Of course if aliens came onto the scene they might displace him as god... but this appears to be a risk he's willing to take. We might well wonder if the atheist truly wants to find superior aliens or whether he's just claiming that he does. It's one thing to bow down to a spirit but clearly another to bow down to a 12 foot tall intelligent insect.)

If there was/is no Creator then man can claim, with some merit (or persuasiveness) to have created himself. i.e. he was the ape who taught himself to speak, to think, to use logic and thus transformed himself into this god called man.

3. 'The premise of the bible is God's assertion of total sovereignty over all creation and all men. [4.]
- This is perhaps the root of secular man's hatred of the very idea of creation. i.e. if the world (including man) was created then God has sovereign rights over all things, and man is but a poseur when he tries to usurp the role of God.

- Mike Johnson

Notes;
1. Politics of guilt and pity - R. J. Rushdoony  p.312
- available online at Chalcedon.edu
2. Why his name hasn't gone down in infamy is a tribute to pr efforts I suppose; as it should be as well known as Hitler's or Stalin's.
3. p. 313
4. p. 325

Thank God for Sunday

 Early creeds began by an affirmation of creation. e.g. "I believe in God the Almighty, maker of heaven and earth...'' Contrary to the claims of atheists (old and new) a concern for the crucial importance of creation is nothing new or distinctively American. The doctrine of creation is the foundation for all truly biblical theology.

 Quotes and comments;
1. 'Because God is the creator he is also the redeemer. Schaff's observations here are especially pertinent:

     ''As to creation, Irenaeus and Tertullian, most firmly rejected the hylozoic and demiurgic of paganism and gnosticism, and taught, according to the book of Genesis, that God made the world, including matter, not, of course, out of any material, but out of nothing, or, to express it positively, out of his free, almight will, by his word. This free will of God, a will of love, is the supremely unconditioned, and all conditioning cause and final reason of all existence, precluding every idea of physical force or emanation. Every creature, since it proceeds from the holy will of God, is in itself, as to its essence, is good. Evil, therefore, is not an original and substantial entity, but a corruption of nature, and hence can be destroyed by the power of  redemption. Without a correct doctrine of creation there can be no true doctrine of redemption, as all the Gnostic systems show."  [1.]

- It's because God created man (and was the only one who could have) that it's only God who can redeem man (rescue him, save him) from his fallen and sinful nature. There is no human remedy for man's condition, and thus his only hope is divine salvation.
Note;
1. Foundations of Social Order - R.J. Rushdoony p.7-8 [Phillip Schaff/Church History/2/540]
2. ''Every creature, since it proceeds from the holy will of God, is in itself, as to its essence, is good.''
- I take it Schaff is here speaking of the original creation; i.e. before the Fall.

Richard Dawkins and the appearance of design

Quotes and commants;

1.  Richard Dawkins likes to respond to creationist claims of design by saying they are merely the appearance of design. (We'll leave aside for the moment how it is an entity can see the appearance of design if all is matter in motion.) We remind him that the appearance of design can in fact be the reality of design. e.g. For over a millenia people were sure that heiroglyphics had the appearance of code, but were unable to understand it. Then finally in the 1800s the Rosetta stone was decoded and it became a reality that this was not merely the appearance of design but in fact was truly design.

2.  Appearance
a. apparent likeness; external show; how something appears to others.
- seen from a great distance two boats may appear to be of the same type; on closer inspection one might be a fishing boat and one might be a yacht; or both may be fishing boats. ie. to say some x appears to be a y might be correct or incorrect.

- Dawkins of course claims that this appearance of design is mistaken... and I of course claim it is he who is mistaken. Our ability to detect design (ID) is still primitive; but I believe progress is being made in this area, as various tools are being developed. (e.g. W. Gitt's rules for Universal Information) [1.]

3. Why is it people see evidence for Design in living organisms (etc.) if we humans are but accidental congregates of matter in motion? e.g. a rock can't see design; chemicals can't detect design... I see no way mere matter could see beyond the material (or even mistakenly do so). Seeing design is evidence for the argument human beings transcend the merely material. If matter were all there was there would be nothing to see beyond matter. (This wouldn't even make sense would it?) Materialism gives us the odd (if not comical) picture of matter claiming to see something that transcends matter.

- Dawkins has studied rhetoric quite extensively and is a master of the logical fallacy. His book the 'God Delusion' might have (more accurately) been titled the 'Fallacy Delusion'
He shows us what can be done by deceiving people with fallacies of one sort or another.
or; A critical examination of his work might well be called 'The fallacy delusion.'

- His use of the 'appearance' claim isn't actually an example of a fallacy but an example of rhetoric. In this stratagem (used by Darwin to great effect) you appear to make a concession to your opponent (thus showing yourself to be a reasonable fellow, amenable to argument) but then you pull the rug out from under him by taking it back. e.g. "Yes, I admit that we see design in nature,  but... (wait for it) .... it's merely the appearance of design."


Notes;
1. Without Excuse - Werner Gitt

You are not your brain

The good news is that your are not your brain; even if a christian professor says you are. The Naturalism that tells us 'you are just your brain' means the death of psychology as we know it and replacing it with neuro-reductionism. A biblical conception of man is replaced with a mechanical model of matter in motion.

Quotes and comments;

1. 'But, eminent neuroscientist Professor Joseph LeDoux (1997), who adheres to this view, admitted that he and his fellow neuroscientists are unable to explain this fact: “We have no idea how our brains make us who we are.” (Horgan 1999).  [1.]

- This reductionist view is radically simplistic. e.g. it ignores the fact the human brain is largely fashioned by human behavior. If a human being led a completely inhuman life (e.g. with no contact with human beings) this person would end up a thing, a radically non-human entity, and its brain would show the effects of this.

We can agree with the statement a brain is necessary to be fully human; but this doesn't mean it is the brain that makes us human. This is akin to saying it's a piano that makes music, or it's a piano that produces the Moonlight Sonata; and this ignores the fact an intelligent agent sat down and worked on the composition for years, and that a score was written down and that a musician read the score and hit the keys. To borrow the analogy; is it the piano that makes us human? is it the composer? is it the score? or is it the musician?

2. ''But why did such a large brain evolve in a group of small, primitive, tree-dwelling mammals, more similar to rats and shrews than to mammals conventionally judged as more advanced? And with this provocative query I end, for we simply do not know the answer to one of the most important questions we can ask (Gould 1977, p. 191).  [1.]

- We should ask whether this is a scientific question or not; and how we would knows. (If we assume that biblical creation is true, is this question scientific? i.e. can it be scientific if it has nothing to do with reality?) Are why questions scientific? (I'm sure I've read people who claim that they're not.) Aren't why questions metaphysical or theological?
To know whether a question is 'scientific' or not one would have to know the nature of reality and the truth about the past. Neither or these can be known empirically or through observational science.

3. 'Despite this total lack of understanding we are told to continue to study the brain in order to learn what makes us human.

- People might be better off studying the big toe in order to learn what makes us human. At least In this case we could have the hope they'd make a lot fewer mistakes. This is akin to studying the fingers to find out what music is.

Neuroscientists should ask themselves (on a daily basis) who it is that is studying the brain... as they seem to forget or ignore this seemingly crucial factor. A strict adherence to theory would necessitate the claim that it is the brain that is studying the brain. i.e. electrical impulses are 'studying' electrical impulses. In that case why should we (whoever we is in this scenario) place any trust in the 'conclusions' made by these electrical impulses?

4. 'This is the view of Christian psychiatrist and evolutionist Dr. Curt Thompson. For him the brain and its so-called reptilian, paleomammalian and paleocortex also serve as evidence for the “similarities between humans and animals . . . that we are deeply connected to the rest of creation” (Thompson 2010, p. 41).

- The idea of a reptile part of the human brain reminds me of David Icke and his idea that our political elite are really intelligent alien reptiles that have taken on human form. I really don't know what idea is sillier.

Evolutionists look in the brain and see 'similarities' to reptiles; but are these similarities or only the appearance of similarity? Is there any necessary connection between similarity and identity? Does similarity prove an e. heritage? Does the fact the piano and the guitar both have strings mean that one evolved from the other? They sure look similar, and doesn't that prove an evolutionary ancestry?

Mankind and animals are indeed deeply connected but the reason isn't evolution but creation. i.e. the fact all of the passengers on this planet has the same creator (and have the same Lord).

- it's not the human brain that is reptilian, it's mad claims such as this. It's especially sad that such ideas have crept (and snaked) their way into the church.  (If everything can be blamed on the reptilian brain then what happens to the doctrine of sin?)

5. 'One thing seems fairly certain; the “magnifying glass” enabled evolutionists—secular and Christian—to see that the human soul does not exist.

- This assumes that the soul can be seen; but the 'soul' can't be seen any more than information can be seen. (When you talk to someone over the phone do you see the words coming down the wire or coming down from space? When you copy your novel onto a CD do you see the words when you look at the disc?)
The soul (that which the term refers to) is very real, but it's not a thing that can be seen.

6. "Bit by experimental bit, neuroscience is morphing our conception of what we are. The weight of evidence now implies that it is the brain, rather than some nonphysical stuff, that feels, thinks, and decides . . . It means there is no soul to spend its postmortem eternity blissful in Heaven or miserable in Hell (Churchland 2002, p. 1).

- I note that she writes of 'what' we are, rather than who we are. Under reductionism the personal disappears (in the model) and is replaced with the impersonal. (Seeming odd behavior for personal agents to be engaged in wouldn't you think?

Is the phrase 'the weight of evidence' scientific? are scientists now weighing evidence :=} C. here confuses evidence with data. What is commonly called 'evidence' refers not to data but to interpretations about data; in other words it refers to arguments given to persuade people that a particular 'reading' of the data is correct.

6a. "...it is the brain, rather than some nonphysical stuff, that feels, thinks, and decides . . . ''
- this is classic reductionism, and shows us the person disappearing beneath the swamp of theory. C. is required thus to say that a brain wrote the words we quoted; that it wasn't a person but a chunk of meat. (We might wonder what meat could know about world, let alone these philosophical issues.) One wonders how a chunk of meat decides things.

Without a theory or model of information what scholars give us is drivel like this. Their materialism has rendered them incapable of understanding.

7. ''[N]euroscience is now completing the Darwinian revolution, bringing the mind into the purview of biology. My claim, in short, is this: all of the human capacities once attributed to the immaterial mind or soul are now yielding to the insights of neurobiology . . . . [W]e have to accept the fact that God has to do with brains—crude though this may sound (Murphy 2006b, pp. 88, 96).

- This is a shocking statement.... but this is the 'revenge' materialism takes on people; it renders them devoid of understanding.
Never mind what the Bible says... right? The idea is that since the bible says nothing about science it can be ignored in dealing with 'scientific' questions. (Never mind that it protects people from faddish ideas like brainology.)

So; God desires relationships with brains? is that the idea? Why create a planetary world in that case? Brains in a vat would work just as well if brains were all God was dealing with.

It's comical to me how easily our intellectuals are willing to give up mind and soul. I guess we have a right in this case to call them mindless commentators... or mindless commentators on the mind. You'd have thought that intellectuals would be the last to surrender the mind, but apparently the desire for respectability with scientists is too much for them to resist.

What we call the mind results from the interaction of brain and information. Just as a piano without a musician produces no music, so matter without information cannot produce mind. The ability to think, feel and decide (etc.) depends upon the programming of the brain. The only source for such programming is an intelligent and personal agent. The materialist goes wrong when he or she imagines that the brain 'evolved' by some natural process, that it's the result of matter plus time plus chance. (As a crude analogy we can say that as chickens only come from chickens so mind only comes from mind.)
What we call mind can be equated with the software that programs hardware; in no way is it the same as hardware.

What we call mind is a capacity human beings have. I think it's better to think of it as a verb rather than a noun. What we call a person (or personhood) is also a capacity of human beings (that has been programmed into us). (As birds have migratory instincts, so human beings possess the ability to be a person.)

To be a person means human beings have various capacities; these include the capacity to see oneself as single unit over time; the ability hold or live out different roles (e.g. daughter, friend, wife, mother, etc.) the capacity to decide; to see oneself as responsible and having duties; to envision the future; to think in moral terms; to have a relationship to God; to have relationships with other persons; to make sacrifices; to be courageous; to be creative; to see oneself as a person living in history; the capacity to see oneself as both unique and similar; and so on.

To say a brain is capable of all this is akin to saying a piano is capable of composing a concerto. Brains don't have relationships anymore than pianos do.

8. 'Elsewhere Murphy said that a “massive amount of evidence” suggests that we no longer “need to postulate the existence of a soul or mind in order to explain life and consciousness” (Brown, Murphy, and Malony 1998, p. 17)

- This amounts to saying ''materialists claim there is no need to postulate the existence of a soul or mind...'' Well; I guess that's true isn't it?  (What's at stake here is not the felt needs of various individuals but the truth of things.)
Evidence doesn't suggest anything... what they call evidence are arguments made defending materialism.
- any data set can be 'explained' in many different ways. Explanations are cheap and philosophers should know this. To fall down in front of this explanation of the human is mere capitulation to the spirit of the age. (An explanation is basically just a story someone is telling.)

- Michael Johnson

Notes;
1. What Makes Us Human, and Why It Is Not the Brain: A Creationist Defense of the Soul - by Callie Joubert
2. 'According to the official primer of the Society for Neuroscience (Carey 2006), the “world’s largest organization of scientists and physicians dedicated to understanding the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral nervous system,” entitled Brain Facts. A primer on the brain and nervous system, “the brain is what makes us human” (Carey 2006, p. 4).
- since most creatures have brains this statement cannot be strictly true. It can only be true if we say ''it's the human brain that makes us human.'' (The trouble with this definition is that doesn't tell us what 'human' is.)
3. 'According to this “triune” theory, the reptilian brain is not only the most innermost portion of the brain, but also the oldest and most primitive portion of the brain, and the so-called rational section (the paleocortex or neocortex) is what makes people human. To debate the theory would take us beyond the scope of this paper. What is significant is that evolutionist and professor of physics, James Trefil at George Mason University described the theory as “simple, elegant, clear, and completely wrong” (Trefil 1997, p. 75).
- so why doesn't Thompson take Trefil's word for it? i.e. he's a fellow evolutionist and has great credentials.
4. 'Thompson, however, compares neuroscience with a magnifying glass because it helps us to see things about ourselves we are not otherwise able to see.
- His idea seems to be that the more you reduce something the more understandable it becomes. I wonder if this would work on a painting or on a poem :=} To look at a painting on a sub-atomic scale would make it impossible to comprehend... and the more one increased magnification the more incomprehensible it would become. People like Thompson doesn't understand the relevance of information theory, and they don't understand that you can't study information the way you study the physical. They don't understand that a radically new method is required.
- if we look at human beings through a microscope the person disappears and is replaced by meat which is replaced by electrical impulses. Reductionism is the death of the person. (Did Jesus come to earth to save electrical impulses or brain cells?) Materialism means replacing the church with the laboratory.
5. '[T]his perspective is monistic to the core; it conceives of human behavior as resulting from the nervous system—including the brain—which was, according to this perspective (and to most modern scientists who studied psychological phenomena), shaped by evolutionary processes such as natural selection.(Geher 2006, p. 185)
- G. doesn't seem to recognize the difference between 'resulting from the nervous system' and 'mediated through' the nervous system.
- this reductionist approach is grossly inadequate as it ignores a person's interaction with the world. ie. I could easily claim that human behavior results from a person interacting with their environment. To limit consciousness to the brain is to reduce it to electricity.
- I deny that there is a process (i.e. mechanism) called natural selection. i.e. I deny natural selection is a process or mechanism. Darwinists have reified this abstract concept and turned it into a real entity.
- In the physicalist model human beings are purely accidental products; brain bound entities within the 'prison' of their skull. I see no way any god or God should have a right to judge such a being.
- The physicalist can give us no reason to believe an impersonal universe can produce a personal being. (He apparently prefers to accept this impossibility rather than the 'impossibility' of believing in a creator God.)
6. '...a physicalist account of human nature does not conflict with the biblical view on bodies and souls, because “the Bible has no clear teachings here” (Murphy 2006a, pp. ix, 4).
- This isn't all that surprising a claim (though it should be) as liberals don't think the bible has any clear teachings on anything. (Or so they claim.) Percival Lowell used to claim Mars was replete with a global canal system. I leave it to you to decide which of these two claims is more accurate.
- Liberals use the bible as a kind of peep stone... with which to pull theological rabbits out of a hat. e.g. ''Oh look, there is no soul after all. Guess the bible is wrong again!"
7. ''The present epidemic of such neuroprefixed pseudo-disciplines as neuroaesthetics, neuroeconomics, neuro-sociology, neuropolitics, neurotheology, neurophilosophy, and so on” is built on the idea not that a “human life requires having a brain in some kind of working order,” but “that to live a human life is to be a brain in some kind of working order (Tallis 2010, p. 3).
- and these are but a few of the new neuro sciences.
- The theistic evolutionist tells the christian he must accept the edicts of science; but he doesn't tell him which one. All of them perhaps? Can 'science' tell us which of the above are true sciences and which are not? (Maybe I should ask my brain.
- Confusing the brain and the person is akin to confusing a book and its author. This is like inviting a book out for lunch, and ignoring the author.

The patterns of creation; or, the Pattern maker

The god of theistic evolution is very much a return to Deism, with its empty speculation about the cosmos.

Quotes and comments;
1. "See that you make them after the pattern for them, which was shown to you on the mountain. - Ex. 25:40

- God gave precise instructions on how the tabernacle was to be built, and how things like the ephod and the breastplate were to be constructed; but yet the theistic evolutionist tells us that God took no part in designing this planet or the life forms that inhabit it. Do they have an explanation for this contradictory behavior? I see in these activities confirmation of special creation and the particular care with which God created all things.

We see that God takes an interest in details, that He himself is possessed of a creative imagination. (I think we see that God has pleasure not only in creation but in the particulars of creation.) Why would a God who cares about the design of clothes for the high priest not care about the design of the eagle or the bear? The theistic evolutionist gives us a God who has no interest in anything... and I find this very strange indeed. Surely the more intelligent a person is the more interested they are in being creative and the more they enjoy the details of things.

The god of theistic evolution is not the God of the Bible, as he's merely a passive spectator and not an active creator. Instead of a God whose works man finds awesome and wondrous theistic e. gives us a god who is amazed by what has happened during evolution. ("How is all this possible?" he must ask himself. "I wish I had someone to tell me.")

To replace creation with e. requires a person to adopt a new god as well.

We might add that the same people who find passages like the above embarassing also find special creation embarassing. For one reason or another they don't want a 'hands on' God, they don't want a God who is interested in particulars and in small things. They want a god content to stand far off and to beam at them like a parent watching his child perform on stage. (The theistic evolutionist wants more credit for 'discovering' some thing than he wants to give God for creating it; and since God didn't actually create anything all the credit goes to man for having understood the uncreated world. An uncreated world makes man the wisest being in the universe.) Charles Darwin called evolution a grand view of life, and it certainly is if your objective is to glorify man.

The theistic evolutionist believes in a schema that has no empirical warrant; no one has ever seen such a thing as life emerge spontaneously from non-life and no one has the slightest idea of how such a thing could even be possible. (One wonders where all his critical powers have disappeared to.) The study of the world has devolved into an attempt to save naturalism from its critics.

2. "Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. - Luke 12:7

- Jesus told people that their hairs were all numbered. Since the t.e. doesn't believe god was involved in creation they give us the odd picture of a God who didn't create the human hair but merely numbers
them.

We also read in the bible that God wrote the  ten commandments with his own hand on stone tablets. How does the T.E. understand this in terms of his distant god who had no part in creation? We might wonder what right God has to give laws to creatures he never created. (Special creation speaks of a God who both created man and gave him the law; and both man and the law are the 'image' of the same God.)

Summary; 
The idea of a purely naturalistic evolution being responsible for all life on earth (and not all OECs go this far) involves a radical 'rewriting' of the entire bible.
- Michael Johnson
Notes;
1. How do we explain the hands off approach of 'naturalistic' evolution with the very hands on example of writing the Law? Again there's a contradiction here. Genesis tells us of a God who created man out of the dust (or the ground) and Exodus tells us of a God who wrote His law on the 'dust' (i.e. stone) of the ground. We see real participation in the physical world. (We might think of Jesus writing in the dust of the ground as well... perhaps some verse from the Law? e.g. perhaps ''both the adulterer and the adulteress must be put to death.'' Perhaps just the word both?)

Living on a star; or, a world of miracles

Quotes and comments;

1. 'If we once realize all this earth as it is, we should find ourselves in a land of miracles: we shall discover a new planet at the moment that we discover our own. Among all the strange things that men have forgotten, the most universal and catastrophic lapse of memory is that by which they have forgotten that they are living on a star.  [1.]

- Most people have a false idea of a miracle; they seem to think that it's an impossible event made possible only by the direct violation of natural law by God... whereas the biblical meaning is a sign; ie. a sign or indicator of God's presence. I think we see miracles more clearly if we see them as expressions of God's wisdom rather than (merely) God's power. e.g. they don't violate 'natural law' so much as they utilize it in ways unknown (at least as yet) to mankind.

As an example; vision isn't a violation of 'natural law' but a brilliantly designed utilization of it. e.g. a cell phone would seem miraculous to primitive men and a violation of all they know about the world, but it of course isn't a violation of natural law but a utlilization of it.

We do indeed live in a land of miracles (as Chesterton refers to it) and the main reason we don't think so is because we've been told so by our teachers. e.g. the only reason we don't see the flight of a bird as a miracle is because we've been told that it's not. We've been told that it's the product of blind chance when in fact it's a sign of an omniscient mind.

 Let's step into the shoes of our forefathers for a moment and assume that a person invented and created the eagle or the sparrow. What kind of person would that have to be? What kind of mind would be sufficient for such a wonder? We know that it would require an intelligence so far beyond our own that we can't even imagine it.

- Michael Johnson

Notes;
1. The Defendant - G. K. Chesterton p. 100  [A defense of planets]
- by star he means a planetary body in motion.
1a. I'm reminded of another passage from GKC;
''Thou hast hanged the world upon nothing,' said the author of the Book of Job, and in that sentence wrote the whole appalling poetry of modern astronomy. -  Chesterton - The Defendant p.98
- this is what I think he is referring to when he says men have forgotten that they live upon a star.
2. Materialism has blinded men to the miracles all around them. It's akin to wearing sunglasses in church.
3. Reductionism is akin to standing on your head in an effort to get closer to reality.