Experimental Data Force Researchers to Admit There’s “No Such Thing As Junk RNA:”"Originally, proponents of neo-Darwinian evolution lauded 'junk' DNA as functionless genetic garbage that showed life is the result of blind and random mutational events. Then 'junk' DNA was disproved by the discovery that the vast majority of DNA is being transcribed into RNA. Did the failure of this Darwinian assumption cause evolutionists to terminate their love affair with biological 'junk?' Of course not. They just shifted their argument back, claiming that the cell is full of 'junk RNA'—DNA that is being transcribed into RNA but still does nothing in the cell. Earlier this year we reported on a Nature paper suggesting function for 'junk' RNA. Now a Science DailyNews article is confirming that finding."
A Tip of the Hat to an Honest Darwinist:“Incremental changes in an existing biological structure the alterations in beak shape of the finches that so impressed Charles Darwin during his voyage to the Galapagos Islands, for instance – can indeed be attributed to natural selection. Even most creationists do not deny this. But when it comes to the innovation of entirely new structures ('morphological novelties') such as segmentally organized bodies (seen in earthworms, insects, and vertebrates such as humans, but not jellyfish or molluscs), or the hands and feet of tetrapods (vertebrates with four limbs), Darwin’s mechanism comes up short.
New Interest in “Near-Death Experiences:” On Oct. 16, CNN.com’s lead story was about NDEs, although their headline was unfortunately titled, Doctor Says Near-Death Experiences are in the Mind. Umm, they’re not. But anyhoo, the CNN.com is article is part of a series about NDEs called Cheating Death. One excerpt – a quote from Bob Schriever, co-founder of the Sudden Cardiac Arrest Association: "Why are so many people dreaming the same thing? How can so many people, and there's hundreds of thousands of people who have experienced this, how can we all be dreaming the same thing and describe the exact same thing?"
Poll: U.S. Belief in Global Warming is Cooling: "Just 57 percent think there is solid evidence the world is getting warmer, down 20 points in just three years, a new poll says…Only about a third, or 36 percent of the respondents, feel that human activities — such as pollution from power plants, factories and automobiles — are behind a temperature increase. That's down from 47 percent from 2006."
A Novel about Aristotle? Annabelle Lyon’s new book, The Golden Mean, looks very interesting. Unfortunately, the price at Amazon.com is a steep $32.95.
When presenting evidence for a spiritual realm, I usually bring up the phenomenon of Near-Death Experiences (NDEs).
NDEs are usually very threatening to materialists - whether they're tenured scientists at a university or young horny college students in the HBD/Game movement.
When debating the HBD/Gamers online, I'm often surprised by how hostile they are to evidence that challenges their worldview. I'm sure they think their hostility will make me doubt myself and back off; rather by revealing their own insecurity, it makes me push back evenharder.
Let's take Chuck Ross, for instance. Chuck comments on my website (and vice versa) on issues pertaining to Game. Last week, when the Game topic moved to larger questions about God, life and death, tempers flared on both sides. I felt that Chuck was too quick to dismiss my evidence, while Chuck felt that I was personally attacking him. Overall, it was not one of our more productive debates.
In any case, as part of my essay, Kumbaya Alert,Chuck requested more evidence for NDEs. And I promised to give it to him.Just for the record, I am not entertaining any hope that I can convince Chuck of the merits of this issue. But a promise is a promise. And so I emailed my friend Alex Tsakiris, host of the excellent website Skeptiko, to give a brief outline of the best reasons to accept NDEs.
*NDE is usually a highly organized and lucid experience occurring while unconscious or clinically dead, which is medically inexplicable.
*1,000s of well documented cases of NDE have been recorded by researchers. Best estimates suggest millions have had NDEs.
*Reports of NDE and related survival of consciousnesses experiences are extremely common throughout time and across all known cultures.
*The best evidence (i.e. peer-reviewed published research) establish that NDE can not be explained by the prevailing mind = brain paradigm. Not a single scieitific paper published in the last 10 years contradicts this statement.
*A majority of NDErs, report being able to see and hear in the out of body state during their NDE. The accuracy of their descriptions have been confirmed by physicians who were present during these experiences. Such accounts by one's primary physician are generally accepted as strong evidence (i.e. "case studies").
*Highly visual NDEs occur among those with significantly impaired vision or even legal blindness, including several reported visual NDEs in those blind from birth.
*The consistency of the order and content of NDEs show that they are not solely due to pre-existing beliefs (i.e., religious belief in heaven, judgment, etc.).
*The evidence is favor of survival of consciousness is so strong that, were it not for the taboo against the belief, it would be considered a scientific certainty.
Remember, what Alex provided isn't the final word on NDEs; it's the first word.
Any opposition to NDEs must take these basic factors into consideration and address them head-on.
Semantic games like "the very definition of the term Near-Death precludes any observations made during death" (yes, that's an actual quote) will not be considered valid.
I wasn’t satisfied with the arguments that were being used, so I emailed Mr. Auster to voice my opinion…
I believe in the existence of God, but the arguments used in your blog post are not "logical, easy to understand, and unanswerable." Rather, they are flimsy, vague, and abstract. If you (or anyone else) wants to validate scientifically the existence of God, you have three solid arguments at your disposal: First is the Anthropic Principle (discovered by Brandon Carter in 1973) which proves (beyond any reasonable doubt) that the laws of physics were "pre-planned" to be "life-friendly" at the conception of the universe because even the slightest tinkering of those laws would make life anywhere impossible. Second is Intelligent Design in biology (best articulated by Philip Johnson, Michael Behe, Stephen Meyer, and others), in which the conception of purposeful Design is vastly superior to the blind, meaningless Darwinian paradigm of natural selection. In the past few decades, the evidence from DNA, irreducible complexity, and the fossil record plus the LACK of evidence for Darwinism has shifted the debate radically in favor of a divine solution. Finally, the vast collection of data from Near Death Experiences (NDEs) shows--again, beyond any reasonable doubt--that consciousness is independent of the brain and survives death, and thus, the materialist paradigm ("matter is all there is") is destroyed beyond any hope of repair. The philosophical implications of these breakthroughs is played out in my novel, The Mustard Seed.
A few minutes ago, Lawrence was kind enough to post my email on his website.
-Todd
**UPDATE, AUG. 14, 2009**
Since yesterday, Lawrence and I have exchanged a few emails, and someone named Sage McLaughlin has also provided some commentary (click on Lawrence’s website to read the whole exchange). In case – for some odd reason – my writings get deleted from Lawrence’s site, I’ve posted all of my comments bellow…
I read through Sage McLaughlin's post, and, I have to say, I don't think he characterized my views very well, or drew the right conclusions from them. First of all, I never said there is "scientific proof of God's existence." In fact, I agree with Sage that such a statement is impossible. Rather, I offered "three solid arguments" to "validate scientifically the existence of God." In other words, I am offering what I can consider to be the best arguments to "validate" God's existence through reason, not faith. If you have faith (as Sage apparently does), God bless him, but a lot of people don't have faith, and it's appropriate for us to persuade those people using the tools they are most familiar with--namely, science and reason. This entire discussion between us proves that when faith is absent (after all, we're not obligated to take Sage's opinion on faith), reason is the only means of communication.
I used three arguments for God's existence: The Anthropic Principle, Intelligent Design, and Near-Death Experiences. I'm not sure why Sage was so dismissive of these arguments. In the case of the first two arguments, if I understand him correctly, he's basically saying, "Yeah, they sort of imply God exists, but it doesn't clinch the argument." The only problem is I never claimed it would clinch the argument. As we all agree, the argument about God's existence cannot be clinched. However, just because we don't have certainty doesn't mean we can't go with the probabilities. In the case of the Anthropic Principle and Intelligent Design, the probability that material forces can be responsible for the creation of life and the universe are so astronomically remote, any truly objective person would affirm that there is a non-material agent at work (specifically, God). To use an example: If you won the lottery 15 times in a row, I suppose you could shrug and say, "It's all chance," but an honest person would say, "I think the game is fixed." And in a sense, the game IS fixed. And that's important.
In the case of the final argument--Near Death Experiences--Sage is just plain wrong. Why? There are two overarching facts. First, these people are dead. Let me repeat that: DEAD. Whether it's for five minutes, 20 minutes, or some cases longer, they are dead. If you are dead, you cannot hallucinate. You cannot have any sensory or mental experience. Period. Second, there are many, many cases where dead people were later able to document events outside their body--i.e, they were able to describe what was happening in our hospital rooms, what their families were doing at home miles away, etc. This is so well-documented a ten minute Google search would suffice.
In conclusion, it's clear that Sage and I are people of faith who think faith is critical to saving our civilization. I respect him for that. But ultimately, I think he is too quick to dismiss my arguments, and in doing so, he is limiting our ability to actively engage and change our culture for the better.
Later – in response to some further commentary by Lawrence - I wrote…
I think your last post was fair and reasonable. However, I would like to reply to your conclusion, "I can't get all that excited about Back to Deism."
I don't want to put words into your mouth, but I presume the source of that statement is an assumption that Deism does not feature a personal God; that God is effectively a "blind watchmaker." However, my faith (which I wouldn't describe as Deism, per se) DOES feature a personal God who loves us. Indeed, that is the evidence provided to us by Near-Dear Experiences and other major mystical events.
But there's an even larger point. For me, the "excitement" doesn't rest in faith directly. Faith itself is not the primary. What is primary is a life of rational self-empowerment. The conviction (supported by experience) that each person, through the use of his mind, is able to succeed and find happiness on this Earth. In other words, our happiness is not contingent on others. We are truly the authors of our own destiny--to the extent that we wish to pick up the pen and write our destiny. That--for me--at least, is something worth getting excited for.
Later still…
I agree that Deists usually use the Anthropic Principle to validate their philosophy. However, I would argue that people shouldn't limit their interpretation of the Anthropic Principle to Deism (the "blind watchmaker" thesis). We know the act of creation was "fine-tuned" to support life. To quote the physicist Freeman Dyson, "the universe knew we were coming." Life - and specifically, conscious human life - was planned from the start. As such, I think we can infer that God cares for his creation (human beings) and is invested in our progress. Indeed, once we recognize this powerful fact, it is
practically illogical to limit our faith to Deism.
There's a lot of talk these days about "the new atheism" - which, led by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens - advocates a louder, more aggressive stance against faith and religion. But there's NO talk about the "new theism." Of course, that's because the "new theism" hasn't been invented yet! But is such a thing as the "new theism" were to exist (and I'd like to think that The Mustard Seed may promote that occurance), here are some historical milestones in that journey. Specifically, I would consider the "new theism" to be a conjoining of science and faith (see Chapter 9 of The Mustard Seed for how that would work).
1973Brandon Carter states the “anthropic principle” at symposium honoring Copernicus's 500th birthday
I'll add to this list as things unfurl from my memory.
One observation: From 1973-96, there's a tremendous effort to build 1) the intellectual roots of the "new theism," and then 2) create institutions to advocate for it. Then, from 1997-2003, there's a large gap where nothing happens. Finally, in 2005, the Dover Trial turns I.D. into a major political ssue. Then, after another brief lull, in 2008,the release of Expelled marks I.D.'s transformation into a part of popular culture.
Where will I.D. go next? Since we already have the intellectual and organizational infrastructure, hopefully we can build on the success of Expelled and continuing reaching into the cultural mainstream.
