The “secondary meaning” you refer to is actually the primary meaning – Psalm 14:1 is obviously referring to atheism – the claim that it is referring to “religious hypocrites” is as absurd as it is unique.
If you can find any professional (or even amateur) Bible commentary that agrees with the “religious hypocrites” interpretation, I would love to see it. The only interpretation of Psalm 14:1 out there in the real world is the one that refers to atheism.
Not in creationist and ID circles, it isn’t: A “Darwinist” is someone who believes the history of life on earth is attributed to a natural process of biological evolution. So most (if not all) atheists are Darwinists.
I understand. I only use the term “Darwinism” to refer to the evolutionist version of the history of life on earth.
Please consider this scenario: You come across someone’s name, address and phone number spelt out on a beach with sea-shells. If you claimed that it could not possibly be the result of nature, but could only be the result of intelligent design, on what basis would you make that claim? How did you measure that basis?
You’re getting off-track. The point is, the very first computer was irreducibly complex and could not possibly have arisen by chance; it could only have been produced by intelligent design. Ditto for the first ever viable organism: It would have been irreducibly complex and could not possibly have arisen naturally.
Anyone who could believe abiogenesis is the result of a natural process could believe in anything.
Miracles do happen, but like any good atheist, Richard Lewontin is determined to deny that aspect of reality. Anyone who comes face-to-face with a miracle (eg, abiogenesis) realizes that methodological naturalism is a just a teeny-weeny little room with just one teeny-weeny little window.
Consensus is not necessarily a good guide to truth … neither is naively following the herd.
Fair points … although I was by no means familiar with the “space oddesy obselisk” and I immediately recognized it was man-made.
Do you agree or disagree with the principle Patterson referred to, that theories that can’t be tested are just stories and therefore have no place in science?
I not talking about evolution, but abiogenesis.
Similarly, we would conclude that the first viable organism that ever existed could not possibly have arisen naturally, and must therefore have been brought into existence by an intelligent being.
… and we would wonder why God created bacteria on Mars, only to became extinct.
That sounds fair and reasonable … except my claim is not “that they are impossible to test”. My claim is that it is impossible to test if those mechanisms are responsible for the novel body plans and novel organs that appear in the fossil record.
Why is it a faulty analogy?
The changes in the fossil record could be reasonably and loosely described as “evolution” - albeit, the fossil record is often out-of-sorts with a biological evolution model.
Natural selection can only select what morphological features are already present – it doesn’t produce novel body plans or novel organs.
Until science can produce an viable organism from inanimate matter and can prove that God doesn’t exist, I will continue to believe that abiogenesis is a miracle performed by a supernatural being, aka God.
If I made the claim that the first television could not have the result of natural forces, but was man-made, would you dismiss this claim on the basis that it is based on “assumptions”, that I have failed “to provide evidence or explanation” and that my claim “isn’t based on science or reason, but on emotion and lack of critical thinking”?
Here is how it works: If you want to believe in God, you will find a way. If you don’t want to believe in God, you will find a way. Evidently, your found a way to not believe in God.
When the Catholic Church investigates any claim of a miraculous healing, for example, their first position is extreme skepticism – which makes perfect sense, considering that the Church’s credibility is on the line. Such a miracle is not accepted as authentic until every possible scientific explanation has been eliminated – a process that can sometimes take years. So such a miracle in Catholicism is hardly based on “unverifiable personal testimonies”.
Someone has a vision of the future, which within a few seconds comes to pass, and all this – including the vision itself - can be explained away as an “accident” and “chance”? Or someone hears a loud, authoritative voice in their head, telling them to take an immediate, urgent action that saves their life a few seconds later, and all this – including the voice itself - can be explained away as an “accident” and “chance”? I don’t think so.
Hilarious. You have no idea what you’re talking about or what you’re dealing with.
God gives us the freedom to act according to our free will, with which we choose to do good or to do evil. Such is God’s respect for our free will, that he doesn’t (usually) prevent anyone from using their free will, even when it results in unspeakable evil. For example, God gave Pol Pot the freedom to exercise his free will and murder millions of his countrymen.
My understanding is that “neo-Darwinism” and “the Modern Synthesis” are the same thing … but I’m not expert.
No. We have lots of experience with and examples of designed laptop computers. We have zero experience with and zero examples of designed from scratch viable living organisms.
When you redefine words in common use, you run the risk of creating confusion. When you refuse to recognize that other people mean something different, you magnify the confusion.
Please consider that I’ve had my fill on this forum of implausible creationist hypotheticals. This is particularly true as they generally aren’t even remotely original, and have a strong tendency to be plagarism of Paley’s Watchmaker analogy (often with the scene changed from a heath to a beach).
I really cannot be bothered to point out the many ways your absurd hypothetical is dis-analogous to your claim.
I will however point out that any argument based on an analogy (even a good one, which this was not) is a comparatively weak argument. Even a strong argument would still not be a definition. And lacking this definition there is still nothing for science to discuss.
You have not in fact established that “the very first computer was irreducibly complex”
I have already answered this point:
So I would ask that you spare me further bad analogies (computers, cars, writings in the sand, etc, etc, ad nauseam).
Evidence of this? (And no, arguments, analogies, intuitions and quote-mines are not evidence.) None? Then your claim can be dismissed out of hand.
I don’t “believe” anything, other than that at one stage there wasn’t life on the Earth, that a later stage there was, so that something must have happened. There are a number of potential explanations, some of them more plausible than others. Given the track history of success of natural explanations over supernatural explanations in explaining natural phenomena, I think that a natural explanation is more likely to prove true.
It can conversely be stated that:
Anyone who could deny that it is possible that abiogenesis is the result of a natural process, based on no evidence at all, could deny anything.
And again, I ask:
Evidence please.
I would point out that this is neither some statement of the scientific consensus, nor even the result of a peer-reviewed ‘review article’ on state of paleontological research. It is an off-the-cuff comment in a private letter written forty two years ago (almost to the day) by an individual scientist. That creationists continue to make such an enormous fuss about it even to this day is evidence of how utterly vacuous creationism is.
No, I don’t agree with it. I suspect it was an overstatement, even when written, and the advances in imaging technology and statistical analysis (driven by cheap computer power), and who knows what else, since that day has almost certainly made it far less true now.
I already asked you this question, but I don’t believe I received a reply. Your question is based on a false assumption and misunderstanding of the argument against design.
Suppose we routinely directly observed unguided waves spelling out people’s addresses in seashells? Would we still be able to determine that any particular instance of this was due to design? No, we couldn’t.
Living things come into existence by unguided natural processes. That is what we observe. So the conclusion that they were “designed” is not warranted by the logic underlying your question.
Your argument is based on your belief that this “first viable organism” was “irreducibly complex” in a way that could not have arisen thru natural processes. But unless you actually know the detailed structure of this putative “first viable organism” you’re just blowing hot air. You have no idea what this was and how it could or could not have arisen.
Sure, right. I bet anything that, if and when that day comes, you creationists will fall back on your dishonest rhetoric and say “See? It needed intelligent designers!”
But, for my part, until you can show evidence of some god doing anything at all, even merely existing, rational people will consider life to have arisen thru the physical and chemical processes that underlie everything else in the physical world. (And, to be clear, I include scientifically informed theists who may still believe in a creator god among those rational people.)
There are many such commentaries. Your refusal to accept this amazes me—or perhaps not.
I first learned this very common understanding of Psalm 14:1 from the late Gleason Archer (a friend and colleague I greatly miss.) I’ve heard the same interpretation from many other evangelical OT scholars as well as the rabbi and Journal of Biblical Literature editor who taught me Hebrew grammar so long ago that it is scary (because I was quite young at the time.) [My point in mentioning that professor from my youth is that this interpretation is not something novel but one that has been around for a very long time—even long before I was born.]
@Edgar, you might start your education with the commentary/study notes which Dallas Theological Seminary faculty—is that mainstream enough for you?—produced for the NET Bible.
“There is no God.” The statement is probably not a philosophical assertion that God does not exist, but rather a confident affirmation that God is unconcerned about how men live morally and ethically (see [Ps 10:4]).
---- Psalms 14 | NET Bible
Here’s another:
14:1 “fool” This psalm is almost exactly like Psalm 53. This word (BDB 614 I) refers to people who should know YHWH but choose to live as if He does not affect their lives. There were no atheists in the philosophical sense in the ANE, but many of the covenant people were practical atheists (cf. Deut. 32:6,21; 2 Sam. 13:13; Ps. 10:4,11,13; 53:1; 74:22; Ezek. 13:3). The proverb of Luke 12:48 surely applies to these people.
It means someone who is contemptible, someone who is empty. It does not mean “an atheist” or one who has no contact with God. It does not even mean that such a person does not see God in His creation. The fool that David describes here may readily admit that God is Creator and claim that this belief plays a major role in his life.
So, let’s return to your words, @Edgar, so that we can put your integrity to the test:
Are you now willing to admit that your claim is false? Is your interpretation of Psalms 14:1 truly the only one in the “real world”?
Meanwhile, are you familiar with the Dunning-Kruger Effect? It sounds like you are just as unaware of peer-reviewed Biblical scholarship as you are of peer-reviewed science scholarship.
POSTSCRIPT: Edgar, I do appreciate that you give me fun opportunities to return to the batting cage to practice my basic skills.
So what about you give a rigorous definition for a “specific complex pattern”? With “rigorous” specifically excluding phrasing like “seems like”, and encompassing a definition sufficiently objective that what is, and is not, a “specific complex pattern”, is inherent in the definition, rather than being a matter of subjective opinion and/or lengthy argument (and endless endlessendless bad analogies to cars, motors, computers, Mt Rushmore, unlikely things found on a beach, et cetera, et cetera ad nauseam).
If you live at sea level, a trip to 8000 feet can leave anyone short of breath. It takes at least a few days for your body to produce more red blood cells to compensate.
