My Conversation with an Orthodox Lutheran: Part 2

The facebook conversation with my friend has continued, but at an increasingly slow pace.  I have removed the time stamps on the posts in what follows, but my friend is taking longer and longer to respond.  At the moment it has been more than 2 weeks since his last comment.  This seems odd, since his original objective, as stated in his email to me, was to defend the Bible.  Evidently he doesn’t feel that defense warrants much effort.  Anyway, this has all been on the same comment in facebook and I’m sure that no one except he and I are paying attention anymore.  He wanted a very public discussion and I am glad to oblige, so here it is.

TSL’s Friend: WOW! That is an impressive list! I congratulate you and thank you for all the work you put in on it. But before I comment on it, let me take on the topics you raise in their order.
First, “evolution.” I did not invent the term. It is no…t my idea or theory. I take no responsibility for it. What I have read about it is enough for me to know I disagree with it and think it leads people away from the truth. I do not care to waste any of my valuable time on it. It would be, in your words, “pointless.” But, for the record, what is your definition of it (“evolution” that is)? I will stick my neck out and state before I even hear it that ANY definition of the theory of evolution, including yours, contradicts the Bible. I find it interesting that your list of words explaining the present state of the universe did not include “evolution.”
Now, as to your list of theories. You use the term “theory” several times. How do you define “theory”? Is it something you believe is true and real? Or could it be a “myth”? Could all or some of these things you list just be “myths”?
I have found one thing we DO agree on in your remarks. Yes, I DO also think the universe and how it came to be what it is today is very complicated. I never stated it was simple, I simply asked you the question, “Is this so complicated?” I wanted you to admit it is very complicated. Thus you are wrong in your statement, “as simple as you seem to think.” I think this universe, this existence, and how it got to be what it is is very, very complex and complicated–far beyond any human being to fully understand and know. In fact, as you describe, it has so far been beyond the collective ability of all mankind combined to fully understand, or make. How could anyone rationally claim to understand it? Who could have such arrogance and pride? You have only listed, as you say, an incomplete list of theories attempting to explain and understand the universe. It is so complex. That is why most scientists down through the ages have believed in an infinitely wise and powerful Creator. How else could such a vastly complex thing come about?
Now, let us introduce the fascinating element of TIME. Let us take your list one term, or “theory”, at a time. First, “gravity.” How long has “gravity” been doing it’s thing? Or, to put it another way, how long has there been “gravity”?

TSL: I’m glad you appreciate the work I put into my last response. I wish you had read it more carefully. If you had you would have realized that I did include evolution in my list. (It was number 8.) Evolution is tersely defined as a change… in allele frequencies in a population over time.

A theory is a an explanation of reality that has been demonstrated by repeated observation. A myth is a traditional narrative that is handed down through the generations. It often involves supernatural events, the proof of which relies on witnesses and authorities that are no longer living. Obviously a theory is not a myth.

That the functioning of the universe is complicated does not mean it is completely incomprehensible. That you and I are able to communicate in this way is possible only because Maxwell’s equations were arrived at by repeated experimentation. Clearly it was not far beyond the capacity of any human being to understand the electromagnetic force. I concede that many early scientists were creationists, but it matters not. In the 16th century scientific consensus was that the earth was surrounded by a glass dome on which the stars were inscribed. In the late nineteenth century scientific consensus was that all of space is occupied by an ether that eluded detection. Now we know otherwise, and it doesn’t matter what those early scientists believed for they did not have access to the data we have. It is true that we may be wrong about some things, but we are less wrong than we used to be. Isaac Asimov illustrated this well in his essay “The Relativity of Wrong”. I refer you to it here:

http://chem.tufts.edu/answersinscience/relativityofwrong.htm

Gravity is a property of space and matter and has “been doing it’s [sic] thing” for as long as there has been space and matter. According to our best estimates and to three significant figures this has been 13.7 billion years.

TSL’s Friend: Sorrry about that. You DID include evolution in your list of how the universe came to be what it is currently. Let’s go to the second in the list: quantum mechanics. How long has quantum mechanics been doing its thing? How long has there been quantum mechanics?

TSL: QM describes how matter and energy operate at the subatomic level. Matter and energy have been around for at least 13.7 billion years.

TSL’s Friend: You state that many “early scientists” were creationists because they did not have access to the data available today. I disagree. If “data” was the scientific proving point of atheism, how do you explain Darwin (19th Cent.) denying the B…ible and Einstein (20th Cent.) believing in the existence of God? Of course, I could go on to list many present-day scientists who believe in both God and the Bible. It seems the amount of “data” has nothing to do with whether or not a scientist is an atheist. Let us go on to “thermodynamics” on your list of what is responsible for our current existence. How long has “thermodynamics” been around?

TSL: I said the data invalidated creationism. Your conflating creationism and atheism. Einstein was not a creationist. Hardly any credible scientist today is a young-earth creationist.

As I said on Jan. 8, thermodynamics can be derived from qu…antum mechanics by an exercise in statistical mechanics. I’ve told you how long quantum mechanics has been valid. The answer to your question should have been obvious.

TSL: I should have said that you are conflating creationism and theism (not atheism).

TSL: For the record, a survey of the National Academy of Science revealed that 93% of scientists lack belief in a personal god: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html

You may think that you can list many present day scientists that… are creationists, but I could list even more present days scientists that are not, even if I restrict myself only to scientists named Steve. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Steve

I stand by my original claim regarding the availability of data and the viability of creationism within the scientific community.

TSL’s Friend: I was simply stating that Einstein believed in a creating God.
You state that a “theory” is “an explanation of reality that has been demonstrated by repeated observation.” According to this, how has the theory of evolution been “repeatedly …observed”?
As to the age of all your explanations of how the universe came into existence, I do not presume to know what you think. I will only ask.
You state on 1/12 that gravity has been doing its part in this process for and “estimate” of 13.7 billion years (I assume you mean the time it takes earth to rotate the sun 13.7 billion times). Later, you state you believe (1/13) “at least” 13.7 billions years for QM, matter, energy and thermodynamics doing its thing. In other words, you don’t know. It could be at least 100 billions years, or an infinite amount of time; eternity. If you “know” its 13.7 billion years, you should be able my the same method of calculation, to know exactly how long it has been around.
I think we are down to “Newton’s laws of motion”. How long?

TSL: First of all, you were doing more than simply stating that Einstein believed in a creating god. You clearly stated that you could list many scientists that believe in both god and the bible and that therefore the availability of new data i…s not correlated with atheism. I have shown you evidence that scientists overwhelming reject the idea of a personal god by 93%. By comparison, only 15% of all Americans admit to atheism. Clearly there is a correlation between being educated in the sciences and believing in a god. Einstein’s beliefs, which evidence suggest were more comparable to pantheism than anything you would recognize as monotheism, is but one data point and one cannot draw conclusions about larger populations from it. Whether Einstein believed in a god means as much to me as does the fact that Christians like Ken Miller and Francis Collins accept evolution means to you.

Secondly, the scientific evidence for evolution is immense and I could not begin to cover it in a facebook comment. Besides, evolution is hardly my field of expertise. If you want to know the evidence you should go to the experts. I recommend the following sources:
Jerry A. Coyne, Why Evolution Is True (Viking Adult, 2009).
Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, 1st ed. (Free Press, 2009).
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/
I believe you will find these works accessible, even to the scientifically illiterate.

Thirdly, when I said that QM has been operating for x, where x>=13.7 billion years you suggested that the presensce of the “>=” symbol means that I can say nothing at all about x. This is a gross misrepresentation and I don’t see how it is possible to seriously level such a charge with anything more than a third grade education in mathematics. x>=13.7 does not imply that x>=100 or that x=infty, although it does admit them as both possibilities. We can, however, exclude all possible values for x that are less than 13.7. We can know, for example, that any claims that x=0.000006, which I’m guessing is also your claim, is just plain wrong. So you see, I do know something about the value of x, after all.

Finally, you said “If you ‘know’ its [sic]13.7 billion years, you should be able my [sic] the same method of calculation, to know exactly how long it has been around.” This is just plain wrong, and I wager that you burped it onto your keyboard without even knowing what the method of calculation is. If not, then you would have realized that, at present, we are unable to say much of anything at all about what happened more than 1×10^-44 seconds after the big bang, which was (wait for it) about 13.7 billion years ago. If you want to stick to this absurd claim you should explain why the method by which the date of the big bang has been estimated should allow us to make predictions about the behavior of the universe prior to one Planck time after the moment of the big bang.

Oh, I almost forgot. Newton’s laws of motion are a local approximation to the theory that explains gravity. It’s been at work for as long as gravity has.

TSL’s Friend: The theory of evolution. You seem to have accepted it as more than a theory. You believe it, you have faith in it. You point to “immense” evidence of it. I can point to many facts that prove it wrong, only a theory accepted only by fait…h by those who want to believe it, or are bullied by the “scientific/academic” establishment into thinking it is not a myth. I maintain your 93% statistic is somewhat due to this same phenomena, much as most Germans favored Hitler because Hitler saw to it that they did. I would guess you define “scientist” as one who has the stamp of approval of the “scientific/academic” establishment. If the evidence for evolution was so “immense”, why are there thousands of “scientists” who reject it even at this present day? You would think the number of “scientists” believing in such a well-proven fact as evolution would be 100%, not just 93%.
Einstein believed in a creator. But if you want to dismiss him from our discussion, let me list just a few more true “scientists” who believed in a personal creator: Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Kelvin, Boyle, Dalton, Pascal, Ramsay, Ray, Linnaeus, Mendel, Pasteur, Steno, Woodward, Brewster, Agassiz, Kepler, Galileo, Herschel, Maunder.
All I want and need to know about your definition of evolution is this: do you believe you (and by deduction, I and my parents) are descended from anything but a human being, such as a monkey, fish or amoeba?
In regard to your time table of your catalog of causes of our present existence, you state ” . . . we are unable to say much of anything at all . . . ” I find that interesting, as I feel this is crucial concerning God being a “myth.” I find it intellectually unsatisfying to only go part way in knowing how we came to exist.
Let’s go on to “Maxwell’s equations”, one of your religion’s causes of our current state. How long has it been around?

TSL: The scientists you list did not have the data that are available now. We’ve been over this before. The percentage of scientists presently practicing who accept evolution is far more than 93%. Again, you’ve conflated atheism and accepting… the theory of evolution.

Please provide evidence of bullying in the academic community.

You say you can point to many facts that prove evolution wrong. (Later you ask me to further define evolution. That has me scratching my head.) How about you give me your one best fact that proves evolution wrong?

I’ve already given you my definition of evolution. I’m not teaching a course on it. You should have found the answer to your question in the references from my last mail. Did you not even cursorily examine them?

You have taken me out of context when quoting me. Why?

It is true that we cannot piece together much of what happened prior to once plank time after the big bang. You may find that intellectually unsatisfying, and that may lead you to wish that it was brought on by fairies. That doesn’t make it right.

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