First Things
“. . . the most important vehicle for exploring the tangled web of religion and society in the English-speaking world.”
—Newsweek
AMERICA’S MOST
INFLUENTIAL
JOURNAL OF
RELIGION AND
PUBLIC LIFE

First Things
“. . . the most important vehicle for exploring the tangled web of religion and society in the English-speaking world.”
—Newsweek
AMERICA’S MOST
INFLUENTIAL
JOURNAL OF
RELIGION AND
PUBLIC LIFE
Lista feita por um anônimo:
The process of evolution by natural selection is estimated to have an IQ of about 1. It works by trial and error, mostly error. It takes hundreds of thousands of years because it is so stupid. In contrast, Yahweh is alleged to have an IQ of ∞. For some reason, he is allegedly extremely partial to humans over all other species. Evolution works by spawning variants almost identical to the parents and natural selection wipes out all but the best of them. It takes about 200 million years to notice any appreciable cumulative difference in the current generation. This means that the humans who were living at the dawn of agriculture 10,000 ago were for all practical purposes identical to us. Many creationists erroneously imagine evolution is the morphing of a single individual into a new species that takes place over a few seconds. The animal kingdom exhibits so much bungling in their design, it can’t be the work of a competent designer, much less a divine one. Which designer more likely joined the windpipe of a human to his esophagus so that if he is inattentive for even a second he can choke to death? Which designer more likely gave much better eyes and lungs to birds than to humans? Humans have the optic nerve attached to the wrong side of the retina causing a blind spot. Which designer more likely gave man a spine more suited for a quadruped, meaning he would be vulnerable to back pain? Which designer more likely gave women birth canals far too small for extruding babies (or babies with heads too big). Other animals don’t have that problem. Which designer more likely gave humans teeth that are prone to cavities and that wear out part way through life? Which designer more likely made the laryngeal nerve in a giraffe do a 4.57 metres (15 ft) needless detour? Which designer more likely added useless organs like vestigial legs on snakes, appendixes in humans, vestigial pelvises in whales, dew claws on dogs, chestnuts on horses (vestigial toes)? Which designer more likely gave the crocodile belly armour, but not the human? Which designer more likely gave humans bodies that craved foods, chemicals and drugs that were harmful to them? Which designer more likely gave humans bodies that craved a sedentary existence when they needed exercise to survive? Which designer more likely gave koalas backward-facing pouches tending to dump the young out on the ground? Which designer would pack the genome with vestigial genes from ancestor species? Creationists insist there is no such thing as ancestor species. They claim Yahweh created each species from scratch. Any similarity between species (e.g. the various types of rat) is as illusion. Which designer more likely put an additional chameleon-style visual system in a human which does not provide conscious vision, along with the usual conscious one? Evolution can explain why it is there. Intelligent Design cannot. Creationists have a problem. If they ascribe all this incompetence to Yahweh, he will be seriously insulted.
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“You sound as if you would resolve scientific issues in the court of public opinion, but that isn’t the way science works.”
Ah, but the illustrious William Dembski would disagree with you. Here he is babbling in a ludicrous essay entitled “Skepticism’s Prospects for Unseating Intelligent Design” which is chapter 10 in the book of essays “Science and Religion: Are They Compatible?” edited by Paul Kurtz:
“A few years ago skeptic Michael Shermer wrote a book titled Why People Believe Weird Things. Most of the weird things Shermer discusses in that book are definitely on the fringes, like Holocaust denial, alien encounters, and witch crazes–hardly the sort of stuff that’s going to make it into the public school science curriculum. Intelligent design by contrast is becoming thoroughly mainstream and threatening to do just that.
Gallup poll after Gallup poll confirms that about 90 percent of the U.S. population believes that some sort of design is behind the world. Ohio is currently the epicenter of the evolution-intelligent design controversy. Recent polls conducted by the Cleveland Plain Dealer found that 59 percent of Ohioans want both evolution and intelligent design taught in their public schools. Another 8 percent want only intelligent design taught. And another 15 percent do not want the teaching of intelligent design mandated, but do want to allow evidence against evolution to be presented in public schools. You do the arithmetic.”
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Leio um debate entre um evolucionista materialista e um criacionista cristão, entao não resisto e mando um post – que não foi publicado aguardando moderador. O link fe:
Louis Morelli commented – 9/12/19
Amigos Rossetti e Abrão… não briguem. Quando alguem diz “os criacionistas nunca vao acreditar nisso” e outro diz que “nos estamos vendo que mutacoes selecionadas aconteceram por acaso e não por um prévio design”, o debate sera sem solução. Uma vez na selva amazônica de repente uma onça apareceu na minha frente. Eu vi o terror, mas fiquei com tanto odio dela que ia me jantar, que fiz uma careta dos diabos e dei um berro maior que ela podia urrar, mostrando as duas maos como garras. Nao me pergunte porque, mas a onça parou, me olhou aterrorizada, deu meia volta e saiu correndo. Sai contando essa historia mas os primeiros ja diziam que ” eu nunca vou acreditar nisso”, entao parei de contar. Hoje me pego em duvidas se aquilo realmente aconteceu ou se sonhei, mas não sei porque, logo me reafirmo que acredito que aconteceu. O fundador-autor da Biblia tambem comecou a se perguntar se o que escreveu aconteceu ou foi imaginação, mas os ouvintes acreditaram e ele acreditou no que foi sua imaginação jurando que de fato aconteceu. Porque acreditam no deus dele e não na minha onça? A resposta sera a mesma para porque acreditam no deus magico e não na evolucao… ninguem sabe, nada a fazer.
Mas não terminava minha historia quando me interrompiam dizendo que não acreditavam, agora vou contar tudo: Quando dei meia-volta para retornar no caminho vi que um dinossauro estava ali… parado. Ahhh… foi por isso que a onça correu! E porque o dinossauro não me comia?! Notei que estava com os olhos furados, cego…
Os materialistas nunca viram um agente chamado acaso e nunca viram esse agente que nunca viram provocando uma mutacao. Mas a ideia lhes foi tão simpática que acreditam nela piamente. Nunca vao acreditar que a grande maioria das mutacoes selecionadas foram produzidas por prévio design de um agente natural real, sem magicas, que tambem não podem ver. O Agente Acaso tem em suas maos a clava do tempo e isso explica tudo!
O Agente Acaso Magico e sua evolucao cega é o dinossauro cego dos materialistas. Hoje sei que não sei se caso da onça foi real mesmo, mas tenho certeza que o dinossauro foi sonho de tanto pensar nesse caso, e sei que foi sonho porque dinossauros não existem. Mas os materialistas ainda acreditam que seu dinossauro existe. Nada adianta contrariar…fazer o que?
Mas com que autoridade venho dizer que existe prévio design natural, real, que tambem não estou sonhando de novo? Bem, essa é outra longa historia acontecida na selva que descrevo no meu website…
That’s fantastical! About a hundred years, people has watching an incredible working motor inside the living cell, and we had no idea how, or from where, Nature got it. It will be very good if you watch the motor working, in the movie/animation at
http://vcell.ndsu.nodak.edu/animations/atpgradient/index.htm
Look to the complex called “ATP Synthase”. Isn’t stupendous, whimsical?! From where came this object, this phenomenon? How did it to being?! Do you believe – as many believers – that, the stupid matter of this lost planet did it, alone? Or do you believe that the matter of other planet or constellation did it? If so, is it a magic planet? Or do you believe that God – or other non-natural being – came here to Earth and did it by magic?
We found a theoretical solution, well developed and logical, rational. The matter of Earth did it (but, not alone), the matter of others constellations also collaborated for doing it. Everything should be possible, but, we now know how was the natural process that made it, and from where it came from: it came from the body of LUCA, the Last Universal Common Ancestral!
Ok, let’s see the ” body of LUCA”: ( these drawinings were made in the jungle with pencils and papers, so, sorry by the bad quality. It means that an unique matricial systemic circuit rules the formation of astronomical systems, cells systems, and we had mimicked it when making the basic electric circuit of ours homes because it was encrypted into our DNA-memories):
And now, let’s see this extraordinary engineering natural job, the motor called ATP Synthase:
Ok. Seeing the two pictures, side by side, and understanding how each works, is almost automatically: we see at the astronomical ancestral proto-system a kind of proto-motor, doing the same job that the cellular machinery is doing. The picture of LUCA has a nuclei, inside the nuclei has a quasar composed by dusty and debris from stellar decomposition, and below the quasar there is the black hole. 4 billions years of Evolution, changing from celestial space and matter composed only by solid and gaseous state of matter, to Earth surface, with matter earning a new state of matter,the liquid state, and then, the chemical reactions… and finally we see the whole process of transformation at the picture below ( click on it for seeing better):
To those does not know what this website is about:
I am suggesting a theoretical model of LUCA – The Last Universal Common Ancestral.
LUCA does not leave at Earth, but it is surrounding Earth and contains Earth. The picture shows the seven known kind of astronomical bodies, but LUCA is every body. The picture shows the Life’s Cycle of LUCA, at least, his seven principal shapes in any lifetime. The seven pieces are connected as each shape of a human body in its lifetime are connected together. The LUCA’s Life’s Cycle – when reproducing and fixing its several shapes – becomes a closed perpetual motor, but not a system, yet. The systemic closed circuit of mass and energy carries the flow of information (genetic information of LUCA), but it exists only in relation to time; it does not exists visible in the space (like the several shapes of a human body during its lifetime can not be visible arranged as system in the space).
LUCA – its complete Life’s Cycle – becomes the building block of astronomical architectures, like galaxies. The picture of LUCA above can be seeing as the same picture of a base-pair of nucleotides, the fundamental unit of information of RNA/DNA. Extracting the circuit of energy as flow of information, from LUCA’s picture, we got the same picture of a unit of the DNA. By the process of Macro-Evolution, which is performed by seven variables – having among them the three variables of Darwinian micro-evolution – Nature applies “nanotechnology” transforming astronomical architecture into micro architecture. After several mechanisms and processes revealed inside this theory, LUCA is transformed into biological systems, and those becomes plants and animal systems, like human beings. Over the homo-erectus’ brain, the theory sees a new jump of macro-evolution, the elaboration of “consciousness” which we have a theoretical model suggesting its anatomy as natural system. That’s it…
Well… I am afraid I will need stopping now ( it is time for beginning work with my auto-cab in New York, so, we need stopping this historical discover…) But, after the work journey, I will came back, if God wants… Ah?! God? How I said that? Which God? Where? Hummm… maybe here at our side… or not?)
Sorry. Since I am not having enough time for translating from Portuguese, for seeing the articles one need to chlick the Brazillian flag above. Also, I understand that the site is not explaining almost nothing about the theory. It is because the site is under construction, I have a lot of writed material but had no time and the special computers skills for doing that. I hope will do it soon. Thanks…
Article Published in The New York Times, Sunday, August 23, 2009, page 9, Sunday Opinion
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Of course, to say that God trusted natural selection to do the creative work assumes that natural selection, once in motion, would do it. This claim turns out to be scientifically plausible.
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William A. Dembsky mentions of Explanatory Filter: A three-part filter for understanding how to separate and identify cause from intelligent design. (…) There’s no magic, no vitalism, no appeal to occult forces here. Inferring design is widespread, rational, and objectifiable. The purpose of this paper is to formulate Intelligent Design as a scientific theory.
( The whole paper is at: http://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_explfilter.htm )
Center for the Philosophy of Religion, University of Notre Dame
What is science going to look like once Intelligent Design succeeds? To answer this question we need to be clear what we mean by Intelligent Design. Intelligent Design is not repackaged creationism, nor religion masquerading as science. Intelligent Design holds that intelligent causation is an irreducible feature of the bio-physical universe, and furthermore that intelligent causation is empirically detectable. It is unexceptionable that intelligent causes can do things which unintelligent causes cannot. Intelligent Design provides a method for distinguishing between intelligent and unintelligent causes, and then applies this method to the special sciences.
The key step in formulating Intelligent Design as a scientific theory is to delineate a method for detecting design. Such a method exists, and in fact, we use it implicitly all the time. The method takes the form of a three-stage Explanatory Filter. Given something we think might be designed, we refer it to the filter. If it successfully passes all three stages of the filter, then we are warranted asserting it is designed. Roughly speaking the filter asks three questions and in the following order:
(1) Does a law explain it?
(2) Does chance explain it?
(3) Does design explain it?
First suggestion from Matrix/DNA:
“The method of Explanatory Filter ( EF) is very useful in the Court, but Mr. Dembsky is trying to apply for the judgement of natural phenomenas and events. He wants apply it directly to abiogenesis and concludes that irreducible complexity implies Inteligent Design. I think we have problems here. First of all, the whole history of abiogeneses is a history of macro-embryogenese. Then, the genetics laws must explain it. But sometimes there is mutation by chance. And every embryo is product of a prior design. Not inteligent. Genetics is somethinbg that produces design, but there is no intelligence involved. A rat father is the designer of another rat, but it did not used intelligence for doing a rat.
By the way, the issue is open and we need to study it.”