Whence the Laws of Nature

Go here to read an article in the science section of the New York Times titled "Laws of Nature, Source Unknown." It's about the reaction--among scientists and others--to a recent claim by cosmologist Paul Davies to the effect that science relies on faith in an orderly universe. Davies' point was that scientists depend upon the existence of order and of laws in the universe but have no explanation for where that order and those laws came from, or why they exist.

Many angry respondents insisted upon the veracity of those laws, declaring that their existence enjoys overwhelming empirical support. In so doing, they missed Davies' point. He hadn't meant to deny those laws, but to comment on the current lack of grounding for them:

Dr. Davies complains that the traditional view of transcendent laws is just 17th-century monotheism without God. "Then God got killed off and the laws just free-floated in a conceptual vacuum but retained their theological properties," he said in [an] e-mail message.

I've posted about this before, of course, but this article begs response. It goes on to mention a number of rather absurd speculations being made from every corner of the materialist world in efforts to provide the grounding of those laws (to address the problem that Davies accurately exposes).

For me, the most interesting quote came late in the article:

"Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds," goes the saying attributed to Richard Feynman, the late Caltech Nobelist, and repeated by Dr. Weinberg.

The reporter (who, incidentally, seems unduly impressed by the title "Dr." and uses it throughout the article) shares this quote to suggest that all of these speculations are just that, and so don't qualify as science. But this idea--that philosophy of science is useless to scientists--betrays the silliness not only of the various speculators quoted but also of the journalist's own understanding.

To be sure, if all Feynman meant was that 'the average white-coated lab tech with a very specific task can accomplish that assigment without reference to the presuppositions of science,' well that's hard to argue with. Indeed, that's exactly what we see today--anybody can "do science" without having any reasonable justification for it. But once we start seeking answers to big questions--like "What's the origin of the order in the universe?'--then an understanding of both the philosophy and the history of science would serve to cut through all the nonsense like that in the NY Times article.

More about this tomorrow, as this provides such an easy target for more reasonable thinking.

Illegitimate Use of Terms

I finished the last post with this thought:

If, in attempting to support a particular position, you frequently find yourself using terms that logically belong only to the opposite position, it's time to rethink your paradigm.

I meant it particularly with regard to scientific materialists (evolutionists) who have to remind themselves daily that the design that confronts them everywhere they turn is only apparent--and who (as demonstrated by the journalist of the human backbone article) have to watch their words lest they betray the poverty of their view.

Another class of folks who run into the same problem, though, are the moral relativists. For those who believe that there is no absolute morality--no standard of good or bad--it is illegitimate to use terms like "should" or "ought." And yet nobody can have any meaningful interactions with other people for very long without using these and other terms that express moral values or judgments.

Design in Human Backbones

Kudos to my friend Pete Chadwell for bringing to my attention this article from the Fox News web site. (I've inluded some of the comments Pete interjected)...

WASHINGTON — With all that growing weight up front, how is it that pregnant women don't lose their balance and topple over?

Scientists think they've found the answer: There are slight differences between women and men in one lower-back vertebra and a joint in the hip, which allow women to adjust their center of gravity.

This elegant evolutionary engineering is seen only in female humans and our immediate ancestors who walked on two feet, but not in chimps and apes, according to a study published in Thursday's journal Nature.

(Pete: Evolutionary "engineering"? ENGINEERING?)

"That's a big load that's pulling you forward," said Liza Shapiro, an anthropology professor at the University of Texas and the only one of the study's three authors who has actually been pregnant. "You experience discomfort. Maybe it would be a lot worse if the design changes were not there."

(Pete: Design changes? What does that mean? Since when can Darwinists help themselves to the word "design"? I thought that "design" was "unscientific!")

Harvard anthropology researcher Katherine Whitcomb found two physical differences in male and female backs that until now had gone unnoticed: One lower lumbar vertebra is wedged-shaped in women and more square in men, and a key hip joint is 14 percent larger in women than men when body size is taken into account.

The researchers did engineering tests that show how those slight changes allow women to carry the additional and growing load without toppling over — and typically without disabling back pain.

(Pete: Sounds like "reverse engineering" to me. And guess what… you can only "reverse engineer" something that was engineered in the first place.)

"When you think about it, women make it look so very damn easy," Whitcomb said. "They are experiencing a pretty impressive challenge. Evolution has tinkered ... to the point where they can deal with the challenge."

(Pete: So then there WAS a point in time where pregnant females did NOT 'deal with the challenge'? Does that mean that at one time they DID 'topple over'? How did Natural Selection preserve those generations whose pregnant females would topple over? Didn't that cause injury? Wouldn't they be more vulnerable to predators in that state? Wasn't it more difficult to survive without that ability?)

"It's absolutely beautiful," she said. "A little bit of tinkering can have a profound effect."

(Pete: Of course it's beautiful. But can a blind, purposeless process like evolution actually "tinker"? Doesn't "tinkering" imply intelligence?)

Walking on two feet separates humans from most other mammals. And while anthropologists still debate the evolutionary benefit of walking on two feet, there are notable costs, such as pain for pregnant females. Animals on all fours can better handle the extra belly weight.

The back changes appear to have evolved to overcome the cost of walking on two feet, said Harvard anthropology professor Daniel Lieberman.

(Pete: Either that or the human frame was designed that way from the get-go, with males and females having slight variations in structure to accommodate the different roles. Which do you think is more reasonable?)

I'm with Pete. And I suppose the even broader lesson here is this... If, in attempting to support a particular position, you frequently find yourself using terms that logically belong only to the opposite position, it's time to rethink your paradigm.

Intellectual Feasts

I'm looking forward to a couple of local events this week...

Tomorrow, I'll be joining about 60 others at a luncheon for the Bend (OR) Apologetics Guild meeting, where we'll hear Brandon Groza lecture on "The Bible and Ancient Mythology."

Then Thursday night, I'll be at the Eastside Starbucks with an intrepid group of history buffs discussing Thomas Cahill's Mysteries of the Middle Ages. I look forward to a rousing session, as there is much to like and yet much to argue with about Cahill's take on this interesting period.

The Fall of Mankind

I'm doing a research paper on the biblical doctrine of the fall of mankind (of Adam). In the process, I've been reminded that this understanding of humanity--that we are fallen--is unique to Judeo-Christianity (or very nearly so). And yet, it seems that it should be obvious that any worldview that doesn't acknowledge moral evil and provide a reasonable account for it is inadequate. As philosopher William Hasker comments,

Surely one of the acid tests for a world view is whether it is able to provide a consistent, coherent, and acceptable account of the nature of humanity.

And if the past century has taught us anything--with its world wars and its repeated genocides--it is that there is something of depravity in human nature. (Or, if you don't want to consider the past century, simply read a newspaper or watch the evening news.) The biblical worldview does address this aspect of human nature, and the understanding that man is fallen is a central teaching of Christianity. As C.S. Lewis has it,

Christianity simply does not make sense until you have faced the [sin issue]. Christianity tells people to repent and promises them forgiveness. It therefore has nothing (as far as I know) to say to people who do not know they have done anything to repent of and who do not feel that they need any forgiveness. It is after you have realised that there is a real Moral Law, and a Power behind the law… and not a moment sooner, that Christianity begins to talk.

So, much of the Christian worldview's explanatory power resides in its accurate description of man's fundamental problem. The great news, of course, is that Christianity doesn't leave us there, but also describes the miraculous redemption of mankind planned by God and fulfilled in His eternal Son!

Pearl Harbor Day

On this day, the 66th anniversary of the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, I can do no better than to link my readers to a transcript of Chuck Colson's daily radio broadcast, Breakpoint. This broadcast, titled "Forgiving our Enemies," deals with the wonderful testimony of Jacob DeShazer, a POW in Japan. What you won't learn by reading the transcript is that DeShazer was a Central Oregonian, having grown up in and around Madras.

More Evo-Devo

In the last post, I explained that the evidence suggests that genetic programs do not control embryological development. That is, the relatively new field of evo-devo, whose raison d'etre was to salvage neo-Darwinism by identifying a genetic basis for major changes occurring early in development, has instead uncovered a good deal of evidence leading to an opposite conclusion.

Of course, neo-Darwinists are plenty adept at ignoring contrary evidence, and the idea that genetic programs control development--since it is a necessary corollary of neo-Darwinism--will not die easily. Nonetheless, here are the sorts of evidences that argue against genetic control of development (this list courtesy of Dembski and Wells from their latest book, The Design of Life)...

Placing foreign DNA into an egg does not change the species of the egg or embryo.

DNA mutations can interfere with development, but they never alter its endpoint.

Different cell types arise in the same animal even though all of them contain the same DNA.

Similar developmental genes are found in animals as different as worms, flies, and mammals.

Eggs contain several structures (such as microtubule arrays and membrane patterns) that are known to influence development independently of the DNA.

Good stuff! Unless, of course, you're more interested in defending neo-Darwinism than in discovering the truth about biological origins.

Problems for Evo-Devo

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned the new book by William Dembski and Jonathan Wells, The Design of Life. Its subtitle is Discovering Signs of Intelligence in Biological Systems, and it is the clearest, most comprehensive book to date dealing with the evidences that make neo-Darwinian theory inadequate for explaining what we now know about living things.

What I want to share today comes from chapter 2, "Genetics and Macroevolution," and has to do with the relatively new field (in biology) known as "evo-devo."

For a long time now, neo-Darwinism has postulated that microevolutionary changes (small changes that occur within a species, like bacterial resistance to antibiotics and variation in the beak size of finches) somehow help to explain macroevolution (the origin of entirely new body plans, of new families and orders). In other words, macroevolution is (for them) a logical extrapolation of microevolution, and both must rely on the same mechanisms--natural selection acting on random gene mutations. The problem is that no evidence exists to suggest that macroevolution really can be accounted for by the steady accumulation of microevolutionary changes, and there is a great deal of evidence contrary to this traditional view.

Enter evolutionary developmental biology, evo-devo. Evo-devo merges the disciplines of evolutionary biology and developmental biology, the latter being the study of the development of an organism from embryo to adult. The idea is that perhaps it's not just any genes that account for changes among species but those particular genes that control development. If one of these genes is changed (early in the embryo), perhaps the change in the adult would be significant. According to Dembski and Wells,

The promise of evo-devo is that genetically-induced changes early in development, though small and easily attainable in themselves, might nonetheless lead to macroevolutionary changes. In this way evo-devo seeks to do an end-run around the more traditional neo-Darwinian approach... Evo-devo, by contrast, promises rapid evolutionary change at a small cost, namely, the cost of mutating a few key genes that control early development.

Thus, the existence of evo-devo as a field of research represents a tacit admission on the part of biologists that the traditional evolutionary explanation is inadequate. Unfortunately (for the materialist), so is evo-devo:

Yet, despite this initial promise, evo-devo is now in a state of crisis.... William Jeffrey, an evolutionary developmental biologist at the University of Maryland, concedes that evo-devo's attempt to understand how developmental genes induce macroevolutionary change is "at a dead end."

This section is well worth your read if you're at all interested, but here's the skinny... the mounting evidence from this field indicates that genetic programs do not control development (though they do play a role in development). And this presents a big problem for neo-Darwinism.

...if development is controlled by something other than genes, then evolution must be due to something other than genetic mutations and changes in gene frequencies. Consequently, if the notion that genetic programs control development is false, then so is neo-Darwinism. Neo-Darwinism logically entails the control of development by genetic programs.

Wind on the High Desert

At Antioch, we're in a sermon series called Elements. Pastor Ken opened the series last week with "Earth." Today, Brandon Groza challenged us with "Wind." He shared that throughout the Old Testament, the Hebrew word ruach is translated both "wind" and "spirit," and that this "movement of God" (wind/Spirit) has been at work in the world since the beginning. In OT human history, this movement rested on particular people for particular seasons. This Spirit was at work in and through Jesus during His ministry, death and resurrection, and then (in the events at Pentecost recorded in Acts 2) was given permanently to all those who became followers of Christ.

Of course, the Spirit of God is still active 2000 years after the events recorded in the New Testament, and Brandon's challenge was to ask whether we are putting up our sails and allowing God's ruach to move us according to His will, or whether we are piling up barriers to shield ourselves from Him.

To ensure that we keep this challenge fresh in our minds, God has provided our area with a continuous strong barrage of gale-force winds that began last evening and shows no signs of abating. Let's hope He doesn't give us a literal illustration to enforce next week's element, "Fire."

Black-and-White Owls

During my peregrinations in Tikal National Park (Guatemala), I was fortunate enough to spend a good deal of time studying a beautiful and little-known species, the Black-and-White Owl (Strix nigrolineata). In fact, my colleagues (Craig Flatten and Normandy Bonilla) and I were the first to document a nest of this species. Each nest (we eventually found four) was an epiphyte (that is, either a bromeliad or orchid) high in a tree, and all nest trees were in or near bajas (the seasonally flooded lowland forests). On those epiphytes, only a single egg was laid, and to my knowledge this remains the only owl species documented to have such a low reproductive effort.

A number of other interesting natural history facts came out of that study. These owls eat lots of insects, especially the large scarab beetles abundant in those forests. But the mammalian component of their diet is almost exclusively bats, and we believe that their large home range size (relative to other owls of their size, and as we determined through radio-telemetry) was required in order to encompass a sufficient number of the fruit trees most attractive to a variety of bats. Another anecdotal observation was that the one pair we observed in three consecutive seasons exhibited astonishing regularity in their nesting--they laid their single egg on the same date (or within a day either way) each of those years.

In the photo above, you can observe the size difference between the male and female. As in most owls, it's the female that is larger. Since in most other families of birds it is the male that is larger (if any size difference exists), the situation in owls (and other birds of prey) is termed "reversed sexual size dimorphism." In this tropical species--and the other one that we studied (and which I'll post about some other time)--this size difference is greater than almost any species from temperate or boreal zones to the north. This finding, in turn, is contrary to the predictions of many of the theories attempting to explain the adaptive advantage of reversed sexual size dimorphism in owls.

Skin Cell News

Much in the news this past week is the research breakthrough--by teams in both Japan and America--in which human skin cells have been reprogrammed to behave as embryonic stem cells. (Embryonic stem cells are thought to hold great medical promise for curing and preventing diseases and birth defects.) The news was welcomed by most, because using embryonic stem cells is ethically controversial (and thus has faced political barriers).

This breakthrough is good news, and there's reason to be glad of it. But perhaps I should add a bit of perspective to what the popular media has offered on this subject.

First, as far as the actual technology and day-to-day research is concerned, last week's announcement doesn't change much. The privately-funded labs conducting research in this area have all along been much less excited about embryonic stem cells than have the media and politicians. Embryonic stem cells have not--for some time now--been as promising a choice as the public has been led to believe. (And, incidentally, the broader technology still remains long on promise and hype and relatively short on success. I believe that progress will eventually lead to some successes, but a great deal of work remains before that is realized, and--although only time will tell--the number and type of conditions that will be treatable by the resulting "therapies" is likely to be far less than what hype suggests.)

Second, the push to use embryonic stem cells will not go away. And that is because this has never been a primarily scientific issue (see the preceding paragraph). Rather, all along this has been an attempt (on the part of abortion advocates and their allies) to further marginalize the Christian view of the unborn baby (and, by extension, the view that there is a moral standard of any kind). That is, pitting the rights of "a mere lump of fetal tissue" (which, on the theistic view, is a complete human person created by God) against those of a disabled adult (who, unlike the baby in the womb, could make a persuasive argument on his own behalf) was a great ploy for further weaning the general public from its traditional belief in objective morality. Such activists are keeping quiet about this recent research announcement, but you can bet they won't let it squelch this ploy that they've long found so useful.

By the way, there have always been a few scientists who joined those activists in pushing for unlimited use of embryonic stem cells. Their motivation was slightly different. Though some may have shared a disgust for biblical morality, the campaign had a secondary goal of promoting scientism--the view that science is the only arbiter of truth and that philosophy, theology, and even ethics no longer have a place in our modern, scientific world. According to scientism, we would all be better off if we allowed science to make all the calls.

Lastly, I want to point out that the recent announcement provides another case of validation and vindication for a theistic approach to science (over against the materialist approach that still dominates). That is, scientists who are theists (like my friends at Reasons To Believe) have predicted for years that if such technology really held any promise then it would be through a methodology that was not at odds with the moral law revealed by the Creator. Breakthroughs like last week's are a continuing fulfillment of that prediction, and a further reason to go back to the theistic approach to science that gave science its birth in the first place.

Kenotic Theology

I'm finishing up a research paper for a class I'm taking in Essential Christian Doctrine. The paper focuses on "kenotic theology," an idea that enjoyed a brief popularity in the mid- to late-1800's. It basically claims that Jesus set aside some of His deity, divine nature, or attributes when He took on human nature. The main text used in promoting this theory was Philippians 2:5-7...

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, being made in the likeness of men (Phil. 2:5-7, New American Standard Bible).

It's the "emptied Himself" that was used as a springboard for kenotic theology, along with a couple of other verses that emphasize the condescension and humiliation involved in the incarnation. To support the idea that Jesus lacked divine attributes, proponents used Mark 13:32, in which Jesus says...

But of the day and hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.

This verse seems to indicate that there is knowledge available to the all-knowing Father that is not available to the incarnate Son. Hence, the latter must not be--while on earth--omniscient.

Of course, the gospel accounts are full of counterexamples, instances in which Jesus' omniscience and sovereignty (over wind and waves, demons, diseases, and birth defects) are on full display. Kenotic theology involved a denial of the historical understanding--hammered out by the early church in its councils at Nicea and Chalcedon--of Christ's nature and personhood. But in practical terms, this short-lived attempt to elevate Jesus' humanity was rejected because it did such a poor job of accounting for the breadth of Scripture's teaching.

Apologetics Includes...

...a 4-fold defense of the Christian faith. This according to one of my mentors, Kenneth Samples. Ken was at one time the "Bible Answer Man," is now one of Reasons To Believe's scholar team, an adjunct faculty member at BIOLA (and elsewhere, for all I know), and a gifted philosopher, theologian, and teacher. This 4-fold defense of the faith includes...

1) Presenting and clarifying the truth-claims of historical Christianity

2) Presenting positive evidence for the faith

3) Answering questions and objections

4) Critiquing alternative, non-Christian belief systems

Four characteristics of good apologetics are to be

1) clear

2) concise

3) cogent

4) compelling

And finally, four areas of preparation for the would-be apologist are

1) Biblical theology

2) Worldview thinking

3) Logic and argumentation

4) Rhetorical skill

Ken's most recent book deals with worldview thinking, and is the best treatment of the subject I've come across. There are still a handful of copies of A World of Difference at the Antioch book table (for those of you in the Central Oregon area).

Tsunami Facts

My understanding of Scripture's message, then, is that God is still and always has been completely sovereign over the workings of the universe, including tsunamis. As Psalm 97:1 has it,

The LORD reigns, let the earth rejoice; let the many coastlands be glad.

Tsunamis, earthquakes, and volcanoes are essential to life on earth, and that in ways that scientists have only begun to understand. Thus, like fire and gravity, they are necessary and yet very dangerous aspects of the physics with which God endowed the creation.

Our planet experiences one million earthquakes each year. A large one occurs on average every two weeks under one of the seas. And a tsunami of the magnitude of the one in Southeast Asia in December of 2004 comes along about once a century. But we live in a very tranquil period in earth's history; the frequency and magnitude of earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes (not to mention meteorite impacts) has generally been much greater than that which humans have experienced.

Moreover, there are at least three aspects of tsunamis designed to minimize or prevent loss of life. First, about 20 minutes prior to a tsunami, the seas invariably recede in a very characteristic manner, giving people warning to get inland or to higher ground. Second, the mangrove forests native to most tropical coastlines are known to dissipate up to 90% of the force of such a wave. (This buffering effect was observed again this past fall with in connection with the hurricane that hit the coast of Nicaragua and Honduras.) We know that the coastlines affected by the 2004 tsunami have lost 30% of the mangroves that existed there only two decades ago. In that wave, villages situated right at sea level--but behind such a mangrove forest--suffered only minor damage. Third, it appears that coral reefs have a similar role in dissipating the force of tsunamis.

There is, of course, a moral component to the tragic loss of life associated with killer tsunamis like the one in Asia. Knowing as we do about the characteristic warning signs, it would be effective and feasible to post informative signs on beaches throughout danger zones, but neither governments nor anyone else has yet undertaken such a humanitarian project. And wasteful destruction of mangrove forests and of coral reefs (poor stewardship of the resources--and in this case the buffers--that God has provided) represents an immoral act with deadly consequences.

Now, I know that I haven't satisfactorily and fully explained the reasons that so many people lost their lives in December of 2004 on the coastlines of Asia. My goal has been a more modest one. That is to assert that tsunamis--like other things we refer to as "natural evils"--play a necessary role in making earth a habitable place and that the Bible declares that God is still sovereign over all such things. My claim is that the erroneous idea that "natural evils" themselves can be attributed to the Fall of Adam has no place in a rational Christian defense of the problem of evil and suffering.

God's Sovereignty

I suggested yesterday that the view (among Christians) that God is no longer in control of the forces of nature (since the Fall of Adam) flies in the face of the scriptural evidence. A corollary of this view is the idea that the world itself--and the forces of nature--changed at the Fall. This is implied by the article I quoted when it said,

our world isn't the perfect one God created

and

The paradise the Creator originally intended became a world where the forces of nature kill and injure innocent people.

This, too, is unbiblical. The Bible presents a unified history of God's creation of this universe and its inhabitants and His subsequent activity in human history. Central to that entire story is the remarkable incarnation of the second Person of the Godhead and His sacrificial death and resurrection that redeemed fallen mankind. Nowhere does Scripture indicate or imply that God was taken offguard when the free moral agents He had created fell into sin and rebellion. The world today is not part of a cosmic "plan B." Instead, the Fall and the redemptive central act of history were both part of God's purposes in creation.

The view I'm espousing here, which I take to do much better justice to the whole of Scripture, has been called by NASA scientist Mark Whorton the "perfect purpose paradigm." In his excellent and readable book Peril in Paradise, Whorton contrasts this with the "perfect paradise paradigm," which I take to be that of the author of this magazine article.

There are, as I have said, a wealth of exegetical (interpretive) problems with the perfect paradise view. But what really bothers me is its theological problems--including its undermining of the Scriptures' continuous declaration of God's sovereignty over all things.

God Controls the Weather

In the last post, I quoted a Christian magazine article about the deadly tsunami in Southeast Asia of December 26, 2004...

Sadly, natural disasters are a part of our world. The reason is our world isn't the perfect one God created. Once Adam and Eve sinned, our planet became subject to disease, death, and disaster. The paradise the Creator originally intended became a world where the forces of nature kill and injure innocent people.

I then claimed that there are a number of things wrong with this view.

One problem is the implication that God does not control the weather, that killer earthquakes, tsunamis, and such are somehow outside of those aspects of the universe over which God is sovereign. I would submit that this is an untenable position for anyone who takes seriously the idea that Scripture is God's inspired word.

On page after page of the Old Testament, we find the declaration that it is Yahweh alone who created and sustains the world. It is He who brings rain and drought, storms, earthquakes, lightnings, and fire. What sets Yahweh apart from all other beings--throughout the Old Testament period generally, and during the second temple period (the time during which Jesus lived)--was His identification as the One who created all things and sustains all things.

Moreover, the message shared by the apostles writing the New Testament was that this Jesus of Nazareth was to be identified as God as well because He, too, demonstrated control over such things (a representative sample of "all things" that included storms, diseases, birth defects, demons, and death). Besides demonstrating control over such things, Jesus Himself claimed (and was proclaimed, as by Paul and the author of Hebrews) to be the Creator of all things. It was this identification of Jesus as Creator and Sustainer of all things that caused the Jews of the 1st century to expand their sharp monotheism to accomodate the tri-personal understanding of the Godhead that we discern in the New Testament gospels and epistles.

So to hold a view in which God is no longer in complete control of the weather is not merely to misinterpret Scripture. Such a view undermines the very heart of the Bible's thesis regarding the unique identity of God. In attempting to understand the existence of killer tsunamis and such, therefore, we Christians must do better than to float the unscriptural idea that these things are outside of God's control.

Whence the Tsunami?

Okay, I've been meaning to get back to the problem of evil. Let me jump right in to what I find one of the most interesting aspects--"natural evil." Natural evil is generally distinguished from moral evil, the suffering that results from the actions of free-will beings. Moral evil is easily explained within the biblical worldview, which says that mankind is fallen and reprobate. Other worldviews (like secular humanism and evolution) do not provide satisfactory explanations for the atrocities commited by Stalin, Mao, Hitler, and Pol Pot.

But what about the suffering and loss of life associated with earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, and tsunamis?

Well, first of all, let me point out that it is illegitimate for the atheist to raise this issue because--on his view--good and evil are not coherent categories. That is, unless there is an ultimate, transcendent standard against which to measure things, things simply are, and adjectives like bad and evil are mere personal opinions and not substantive value assessments.

But what I'm more interested in addressing is a false explanation (for the problem of natural evil) that often arises among well-meaning Christians. And that is to blame such things (as earthquakes and volcanoes) on the Fall. Here's an example from a Christian magazine article (referring to the deadly tsunami in Southeast Asia of December 26, 2004)...

Sadly, natural disasters are a part of our world. The reason is our world isn't the perfect one God created. Once Adam and Eve sinned, our planet became subject to disease, death, and disaster. The paradise the Creator originally intended became a world where the forces of nature kill and injure innocent people.

There are a number of things wrong with this belief, and I'll identify some of them in the next post.

Tikal

The shot above comes from one of my favorite spots on Earth, Tikal National Park in northern Guatemala. My peregrinations have taken me there on four seperate occasions, three of which were for 5 or 6 months at a time. The park was established to protect and make accessible the archaeological sites associated with this center of Maya civilization. But besides these marvelous examples of Maya architecture (pictured here are Temple 2 in the foreground, Temple 3 on the right, and Temple 4 in the distance to left) the park encompasses 576 square kilometers of tropical deciduous forests, home to jaguars, tapirs, army ants, parrots, and toucans.

The park is also home to some 35 species of breeding birds of prey, which is what brought me there. I had the privilege--as part of my Masters of Science program at Boise State University--of being involved in The Peregrine Fund's "Maya Project." This was a conservation research effort focusing on raptors as key indicator species, in which we studied the nesting habits, food preferences, home range and habitat requirements--in short, all aspects of the natural history--of little-known hawks, eagles, falcons, and owls of the New World tropics.

It was an exciting time, and one that remains an important part of who I am. Introducing this topic to my blog will enable me to share some of the interesting things that were learned, as well as to insert a pretty picture now and again. So, watch for periodic posts on the raptors (and other creatures) of Tikal.

The Design of Life

I can't tell you how excited I am about the upcoming release (next Monday, the 19th) of the newest book by Bill Dembski and Jonathan Wells. It's called The Design of Life, and is the most clear, comprehensive, and persuasive book to date defining and supporting intelligent design theory. About it, Michael Behe (author of Darwin's Black Box and The Edge of Evolution) has said,

When future historians list the books that toppled Darwin's theory, The Design of Life will be at the top.

I've had the opportunity to preview it, and am thrilled with every bit of it. Watch for a larger review of it here in the near future.

Wolf-to-Whale Evolution

For scientists, finding agreement among several lines of evidence brings confidence that an explanation may have some validity. On the other hand, when different lines of evidence lead to opposite conclusions, this suggests that one’s hypothesis needs to be refined or rejected. A classic example of the latter situation comes, ironically, from what has been put forth as one of the strongest evidences for evolution--the wolf to whale hypothesis.

The evolutionary idea is that whales evolved from a terrestrial, wolf-like creature (a mesonychid). For some time, proponents of this idea advanced a series of fossil creatures that, they suggested, showed a series of steps between this mesonychid on one end and a whale on the other. Unfortunately, as scientists examine the morphology of whales, they realize that whales are morphologically more similar to pigs than to wolves. This is problematic in itself, but the situation is worse (for the evolutionist). Molecular information (DNA analysis) is also now available for assessing the wolf to whale story. It turns out that whales have a closer molecular affinity to hippos than to wolves.

Were* the wolf to whale hypothesis a valid explanation (for the origin of whales), one would expect to find agreement among the fossil evidence, the morphological evidence, and the molecular evidence. Instead, each line of evidence leads to a different conclusion, which argues against the validity of this particular story (best evidence though it may be for evolution).



* (“Were” is here used as the past subjunctive form of “to be” and should not be confused with the archaic word for “man” that, when combined with “wolf,” describes a mythological creature capable of transforming from a man to a wolf and back. This author will, however, allow the reader to draw his own conclusions about whether an inadvertent juxtaposition of these two concepts--werewolves and the wolf-to-whale hypothesis--is, after all, appropriate.)