Why evolutionary materialism leads to the unreality of your existence

American Christian author Dr. Frank Turek notes that Cambridge-trained Ph.D. Stephen Meyer's New York Times best-seller, "Darwin's Doubt," is creating a major scientific controversy. Because Darwinists absolutely hate it, Meyer's well-reasoned argument that an intelligent designer is the best explanation for the evidence at hand elicits irrational accusations that Meyers is anti-scientific and guilty of endangering sexual freedom everywhere. (Darwin's Doubt, Turek, Townhall.com, July 09, 2013)

"Neo-Darwinism and the theory of intelligent design are not two different kinds of inquiry, as some critics have asserted. They are two different answers – formulated using a similar logic and method of reasoning – to the same question: 'What caused biological forms and the appearance of design in the history of life?'" (ibid.)

The real issue here is not "anti-scientific" intelligent design or for that matter, the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo ("special creation" as evolutionary materialists call it) versus "scientifically enlightened reason and science," but about creation account vs. anti-creation account (Darwinian materialism).

The reason Darwinists on one hand, and intelligent design and Genesis account proponents on the other, arrive at radically different answers is because Darwinists are neo-pagan materialists and the other two are not.

While intelligent design proponents are open to intelligent causes (just like crime scene investigators are), Genesis account creationists hold that our Creator, the living, personal Triune God, the Divine Source of life who exists outside of the space/time dimension is Jesus Christ, the angel who spoke with Moses at Sinai.

Foremost of His miracles is creation out of nothing – six days of creation rather than the billions of years of evolutionary process out of already existing or spontaneously generated matter:

"The first moment of time is the moment of God's creative act and of creation's simultaneous coming to be." (Philosopher and New Testament scholar William Lane Craig, quoted in "If God created the universe, then who created God?' by Jonathan Sarfati, Creation Ministries International)

"So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them." (Genesis 1:27)

As all men are the spiritual image-bearers of the Triune God, it logically follows that each male and female is a trinity of being – of soul, spirit, and body:

"The essence of the human is not the body, but the soul. It is the soul alone that God made in his own image and the soul that he loves....For the sake of the soul...the Son of God came into the world...." (Incomplete Work on Matthew, Homily 25, Ancient Christian Devotional, Oden and Crosby, p. 153)

For fifteen hundred years, Christendom and then later Protestant America had followed St. Augustine (AD 354-430) in affirming that all men are three part spiritual image-bearers of the transcendent Triune God (Gen. 1:27). This unique view of man was affirmed by the brilliant French economist, statesman, and author Frederic Bastiat. Man as God's spiritual image-bearer is the precious gift from God, which includes the physical, intellectual, and moral life:

"He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. Life, faculties, production – in other words, individuality, liberty, property – this is man (and) these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it. Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place." (Bastiat, "How Evil Works," David Kupelian, p. 8)

Vishal Mangalwadi, India's foremost Christian scholar, writes that this unique concept of man as God's spiritual image-bearer gave birth to the "belief in the unique dignity of human beings," and this is

"...the force that created Western civilization, where citizens do not exist for the state but the state exists for the individuals. Even kings, presidents, prime ministers, and army generals cannot be allowed to trample upon an individual and his or her rights." (Truth and Transformation: A Manifesto for Ailing Nations, pp. 12-13)

"The irony is devastating. The main purpose of Darwinism was to drive every last trace of an incredible God from biology. But the theory replaces God with an even more incredible deity – omnipotent chance...." (T. Rosazak, Unfinished Animal, pp. 101-102, 1975)

They hate the very thought of Him as their Father and seek escape to a nowhere land, an impersonal, collective communal unconscious where man as God's spiritual image-bearer, immutable truth, order, moral law, sexual ethics, authority, hell, heaven, angels, demons, meaning, and purpose do not exist. For these reasons and others, such as Original Sin and the two created sexes, they fiercely reject intelligent design but viciously hate creation ex nihilo, and choose rather to embrace evolutionary and materialist conceptions. The truth of this can be seen in the following quotes:

"The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. The voluntary...reasons for holding doctrines of materialism...may be predominantly erotic, as they were in the case of Lamettrie...or predominantly political as they were in the case of Karl Marx." (Aldous Huxley, "Ends and Means," p. 315, from Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation and Political Control, E. Michael Jones, p. 27)

"...one belief that all true original Darwinians held in common, and that was their rejection of creationism, their rejection of special creation. This was the flag around which they assembled and under which they marched.... The conviction that the diversity of the natural world was the result of natural processes and not the work of God was the idea that brought all the so-called Darwinians together in spite of their disagreements on other of Darwin's theories." (One Long Argument, 1991, p. 99, Ernst Mayr (d. 2005), Professor of Zoology at Harvard University)

"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door." ("Billions and Billions of Demons," Richard Lewontin, PhD Zoology, Alexander Agassiz Research Professor at Harvard University)

Metaphysical nihilism (all that exists is matter and energy) is the metaphysics of both physical materialism and nonphysical materialist conceptions.

What chiefly separates these two is whether matter is physical or nonphysical. If physical, then the Triune God, heaven, hell, soul/spirit, angels, and demons do not exist. But if nonphysical, then for example, spirits, ghosts, divine sparks, Transcended Masters, intra-cosmic deities, Orobouros, astral planes, divine impersonal mind, and Christ consciousness exist but the material world is an illusion.

Brooks Alexander, the founder of The Spiritual Counterfeits Project (SCP), an evangelical ministry and think-tank in Berkeley, California, identifies both physical and nonphysical materialist conceptions as the two sides of pagan monism. Because they are from the same root, they tend to cross-pollinate and mingle,

"...producing a brood of offspring that exhibits the genetic heritage of its parents in a confused and confusing array. Soon it becomes impossible to say whether a given movement, trend or school of thought is a secular impulse that has absorbed Eastern/occult values, or an Eastern/occult teaching that has dressed itself in secular language." (The Rise of Cosmic Humanism: What is Religion?" Brooks Alexander, SCP Journal, 1981-82, p. 2)

In other words, for many years secular-human physicalists have been quietly crossing over into spiritual or cosmic conceptions of matter and embracing for example, Zen Buddhism and Teilhards idea, which leapfrogs off of Darwin's theory.

The apostate French Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) taught that an impersonal god-force emerges from spontaneously generated matter. According to Teilhard, this evolution of a god-force results in evolution becoming "conscious of itself" and ultimately, in the transformation of all physical matter into nonphysical divine matter defined by Teilhard as "Christ consciousness" or "pure spirit." Teilhard called this final stage of evolution the "Omega Point" and "the cosmic Christ."

The perennially persuasive Big Lie underlies both physical and nonphysical conceptions. This thought is expressed openly in the teachings of Swami Vivekananda and Dr. Beverly Galyean, leading exponent of occult Luciferian New Age confluent education:

"The Buddhists and the Jains do not depend on God; but the whole force of their religion is directed to the great central truth in every religion: to evolve a God out of man." (Inspired Talks, Ramakrishna Vivekananda Center, 1958, p. 218)

"Once we begin to see that we are all God, that we have the attributes of God, then, I think the whole purpose of human life is to reown the Godlikeness within us...So my whole view is very much based on that idea." (Galyean quoted by Francis Adeney, Educators Look East, Radix 12, No. 3, Nov-Dec. 1980, p. 21)

This same idea expressed in secular terms such as self-realization and self-actualization (a term coined by Abraham Maslow) underlies many contemporary psychotherapies.

"Behold, you are of nothing, and your work of that which hath no being: he that hath chosen you is an abomination." Isaiah 41:24

Though evolutionary materialists congratulate themselves for being scientifically enlightened, cutting edge 'elite' free thinkers, the truth is otherwise, meaning that materialists, whether of the secular physical or occult spiritual school are miserable self-deceived nihilists for whom there is neither source for "self" (conscious life, psyche, individual mind) nor for meaning and purpose in life. They are "of nothing" and the unreality of their own existence is the devastating price they have paid the devil, the father of death and nihilism, for "saving" them from the living God.

The misery inducing "salvation" of "nonself" is not something new but something ancient. It began with Buddha who craved God-like power to deconstruct and reinterpret the soul. Taking power not only requires the murder of God but the teaching of lies.

"....you took God away from them (and) your espousal of an absence of self is the most unique and fearsome claim you made...You turned from Hinduism because it said there was an essential self, which they called the atman." (The Lotus and the Cross: Jesus Talks with Buddha, Ravi Zacharias, pp.59, 67)

Six centuries before Jesus Christ, the Buddha already knew that if all that exists is matter then the human self cannot exist either:

"Therefore, he deconstructed the Hindu idea of the soul. When one starts peeling the onion skin of one's psyche, he discovers that there is no solid core at the center of one's being. Your sense of self is an illusion. Reality is nonself (anatman). You don't exist. Liberation, the Buddha taught, is realizing the unreality of your existence." (The Book That Made Your World: How the Bible Created the Soul of Western Civilization, Vishal Mangalwadi, p. 6)

If all that exists is matter and energies working on and through matter, then it logically follows that there is no source for life, conscious life (soul, spirit and will), the two sexes, human dignity and worth, or for unalienable constitutional rights beginning with the right to life, liberty, and property. Without the Triune God, meaning drains into meaninglessness and man is reduced to less than nothing, a conclusion Buddha reached long before Marxist Communists attempted to scientifically re-engineer human beings after the fashion of metaphysical nihilism.

"Thought crime was not a thing that could be concealed forever. You might dodge successfully for awhile....but sooner or later they were bound to get you." George Orwell, 1984

After seizing control of Russia, Marxist materialists utilized propaganda of the lie, re-education with major emphasis on Darwinism, revision of history, and other confusion-inducing, mind-and-thought-control techniques in connection with brain-altering drugs, electro-shock therapy, terror, and other brutal measures to

"...liquidate all expressions of individual identity in favor of an impersonal collective, communal consciousness." (The Book that Made Your World, Vishal Mangalwadi, p. 74)

Following in Buddha's footsteps, Western and American evolutionary materialists took our Creator away and replaced Him with nihilist Darwinian materialism. Then they conceptually reduced His spiritual image-bearers to less than nothing, taught monstrous lies as scientific fact, morally corrupted Westerners and Americans, and brutally ridiculed and demonized anyone who dared speak truth to their lies. By these means they set Western and American civilization adrift in infinite nothingness.

Nihilism is spiritual, moral, intellectual, and cultural suicide. It is the devil's inferno here on earth, the void of everything and nothing in which death is life, evil is good, lie is truth, up is down, male is female, female is male, rolling in filth is good clean fun, bad is good but evil better, and the father of nihilism is god.

The unreality of "self" is a waking nightmare fueled by horrors of conscience, obsession with death, and hellish terrors of mind that make suicide, murder, abortion, euthanasia, and genocide into virtues.

"...I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing, therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the Lord your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life...." Deuteronomy 30:19-20

"Thou hast brought forth, O Lord, my soul from hell: thou hast saved me from them that go down into the pit." Psalm 30:3

The Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Living Word become Flesh, Jesus Christ the Physician, came to heal the spiritually sick and dying, to save their immortal souls. Just as we are on the verge of going down into the pit, ready to depart to the unseen world, if we will repent and turn back to Him, then by His providence and grace our Lord will revive our souls and deliver us from those accursed horrors of conscience and ghastly terrors of mind which by reason of our sin are as hell searing itself into and possessing our very minds. (Psalm 116:3)

But whoever rejects the Physician, the Divine Source of life and soul, rejects His prescription, thereby destroys him or herself. So we ought to turn back to Him right now, before it is too late.

Perhaps the analogy of fire will help -- when humans are in charge of it, fire (or science) is highly useful for heating and cooking, etc.

When fire takes charge, it can instantly kill us. That's the difference between methodological and philosophical naturalism.

That's a fascinating metaphor, dear BroJoeK, thank you for sharing it!

Problems arise when people "do" theology or philosophy under the color of science, e.g. Dawkins, Lewontin. And, no doubt, some would also say that intelligent design supporters - e.g. Meyers - are doing the same thing from the polar opposite position, i.e. pro-God v. anti-God.

In my view, it would be better for a scientist faced with an unanswerable question (e.g. origin of inertia, information [Shannon, successful communication], space/time) simply to say "it is unknowable by the scientific method" rather than to default to his theological/philosophical presupposition - whether "God did it" or "Nature did it." Both are statements of faith. And offering a statement of faith is fine, but it should not be called "science" because it was not derived by the scientific method and cannot be falsified (Popper et al.)

Science is not the enemy of Christianity, though some atheists claim that it is.

O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane [and] vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. Grace [be] with thee. Amen. - I Tim 6:20-21

I would also put "randomness did it" in the same faith statement bucket since we cannot say something is random in the system when we don't know what the system "is." The total number and types of dimensions are both unknown and unknowable - so just like a string of numbers extracted from the extension of pi, something may have the appearance of randomness and yet truly be highly determined.

Let’s be very clear: this Stephen Meyer is *NOT* a biologist. His PhD is in physics.

In my view, things will never be the same in Biology since the Physicists and Mathematicians were invited to the table. And that's a good thing because they approach the same issues from different aspects.

Many biologists consider physical laws, artificial life, robotics, and even theoretical biology as largely irrelevant for their research. In the 1970s, a prominent molecular geneticist asked me, "Why do we need theory when we have all the facts?" At the time I dismissed the question as silly, as most physicists would. However, it is not as silly as the converse question, Why do we need facts when we have all the theories? These are actually interesting philosophical questions that show why trying to relate biology to physics is seldom of interest to biologists, even though it is of great interest to physicists. Questioning the importance of theory sounds eccentric to physicists for whom general theories is what physics is all about. Consequently, physicists, like the skeptics I mentioned above, are concerned when they learn facts of life that their theories do not appear capable of addressing. On the other hand, biologists, when they have the facts, need not worry about physical theories that neither address nor alter their facts. Ernst Mayr (1997) believes this difference is severe enough to separate physical and biological models: "Yes, biology is, like physics and chemistry, a science. But biology is not a science like physics and chemistry; it is rather an autonomous science on a par with the equally autonomous physical sciences."

There are fundamental reasons why physics and biology require different levels of models, the most obvious one is that physical theory is described by rate-dependent dynamical laws that have no memory, while evolution depends, at least to some degree, on control of dynamics by rate-independent memory structures. A less obvious reason is that Pearson's "corpuscles" are now described by quantum theory while biological subjects require classical description in so far as they function as observers. This fact remains a fundamental problem for interpreting quantum measurement, and as I mention below, this may still turn out to be essential in distinguishing real life from macroscopic classical simulacra. I agree with Mayr that physics and biology require different models, but I do not agree that they are autonomous models. Physical systems require many levels of models, some formally irreducible to one another, but we must still understand how the levels are related. Evolution also produces hierarchies of organization from cells to societies, each level requiring different models, but the higher levels of the hierarchy must have emerged from lower levels. Life must have emerged from the physical world. This emergence must be understood if our knowledge is not to degenerate (more than it has already) into a collection of disjoint specialized disciplines.

The Physics of Symbols: Bridging the Epistemic Cut

Truly, there is a big difference between historical sciences (evolution theory, archeology, anthropology, Egyptology) and other disciplines of science (physics, chemistry, etc.)

To the observer, it is as if the historical sciences construct a blueprint based on quantized historical data (fossils, artifacts, etc.) and thereafter associate new findings into that blueprint. If the finding cannot be fit, then the blueprint must change.

The historical record is not continuous, e.g. not every living thing left a fossil in the geologic record. The bottom line is that historical sciences deal with quantizations of a presumed continuum (the theory.) Other disciplines of science, deal with the theory itself - which mostly can be recreated under laboratory conditions, i.e. put to an empirical test. Or in the alternative, continuing observations can accrue to the merit of the theory, e.g. quantum field theory.

Or more simply put, to the historical sciences the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence whereas to the "hard" sciences the reverse is true, the absence of evidence is evidence of absence.

Biologists have always invited chemists to the table. But the dynamics of evolution theory has changed since the discovery of DNA and subsequently, the biologists inviting physicists and mathematicians (especially information theorists) to the table. That is the underlying theme of Pattee’s point about the physics of symbols, the epistemic cut.

...many of the big thinkers of the last century would never have been published in today's world due to the enforced orthodoxy of today's peer reviewed journals:

Here's an article by Frank Tipler, Professor of Mathematical Physics, Tulane University, that explores this very question: "Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy?

IIRC, your observation that Einstein's work largely did not see the light of day in the professionial journals of his day is correct. But then, according to his great biographer, Abraham Pais, Einstein didn't bother to read them anyway.

I gather that Einstein — unlike his close friend Niels Bohr — was a bit of a "loner." He followed his own ideas, and didn't bother much about what other people were doing — with the exception of Max Planck (and Bohr, of course), whom he greatly admired, and who motivated Einstein's discovery of the photon (1905).

Planck did get published in professional journals (and Bohr, too, of course). But this was before WWII, when (according to Tipler) new ideas could find a forum in such journals. (Tipler alleges that post-WWII, this doesn't happen much.)

Anyhoot, I encourage people to read the article at the link above, and draw their own conclusions.

I have a "funny story" to tell from real life, involving "my friend the astrophysicist." He submitted a paper describing how he derived algorithmic complexity measures of biological systems to the Journal of Theoretical Biology. It was straightaway rejected. (I saw the rejection letter. I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry. Basically, it just said "we don't do that sort of thing over here." )

But that is not the end of my story. The very person who signed the rejection letter, who shall be nameless here, found out that AG was contributing that article to an anthology edited by Joseph Seckbach & Richard Gordon (mentioned above in this thread). Since the rules of this excellent book permitted people to come and "rebut" any article included there, this same person showed up to "rebut" AG's article. Sheesh! This guy was following my friend around! A 25-page "dialogue" ensued between them, right after AG's article. Obviously, the motive was to "enforce orthodoxy."

But I think my friend whupped him big time. :^) The "gun-slinger" from JourTheolBiol seemed a littled "chasened" in the end....

Ha! I thought AG mopped the floor with him. But that's just my opinion, of course.

Thank you so much for sharing your insights, dearest sister in Christ!

fish hawk: "My problem with the religion of evolution is:"

Darwin's basic evolution idea -- descent with modifications and natural selection -- is not in any sense a "religion", but a scientific theory, since it meets the first rule of science: natural explanations for natural processes.

fish hawk: "they talk like there is fossil evidence when there isn’t,"

Of course, there are literal tons of fossils, which you can see yourself in most any large museum.
So why would you even attempt to deny what everyone can clearly see?

fish hawk: "...put down creationists because they have faith ( so that is religion and not science)"

If you feel insulted by evolutionists, you may be running with the wrong crowd... time to find some new friends?
In fact, science by definition cannot deal with religious questions.
Science has nothing, nothing to say about theology, spirituality or any metaphysical understandings.
Those are all outside the realms of science.

So, if some scientist does speak of those matters, then he/she is only speaking their own personal opinions.
Of course, such opinions do carry some weight, but only as much as you grant them.

fish hawk: "evos have absolutely no proof to lay out before us fossil or otherwise but they have faith that someday they will dig it up ( religion not science)."

"Proof" is not the proper word for a scientific hypothesis.
You never "prove" a hypothesis, you only confirm it by making valid predictions and running falsifiable tests.
Since the evolution hypothesis has been confirmed many times, it is classified as a theory -- until some new data turns up to potentially falsify it. And of course there are literal tons of fossils and mountains of other supporting evidence confirming evolution theory.

fish hawk: "The[y] play like the first and second laws of thermodynamics ( and entropy) does not exist. (which of course makes evolution impossible)..."

In no possible way does entropy make evolution impossible, since the earth is not now and never has been a closed system.
From Day One of Earth's existence it has been bathed in a steady source of new energy, from the son.
This steady new energy, in the sun's "Goldilocks zone" -- not to hot, not too cold -- makes it not just possible but inevitable that life will flourish and increase once established.

fish hawk: "...Mathematics which tells ;us that if life was by selection and time and chance, it would be a one with enough zeros behind it to fill enough book pages to reach to the moon if stacked up."

Such calculations are phony-to-the-max when you consider that Earth's oceans, land & air are chock full of just that many single-celled critters, all of them reproducing every few hours for the past four billion years, and each reproduction resulting in one or more mutations.
The more likely hypothesis is that when conditions are exactly right, there's no possible way that life could not arise.
But that idea is not yet confirmed, and so remains a scientific hypothesis.

fish hawk: "So how ‘bout YOU entering here your absolute proof of evolution, NOT Micro (changes in a species like dogs and bird beaks) but Macro, dogs to cats, lizards to birds chimps to man.)

Of course, nobody except anti-evolutionists make such claims.
What scientists talk about are common ancestors of various living species.
Fossil, DNA and radio-metric evidence suggests that the last common ancestors of humans and chimps may have lived circa 4 million years ago.
The last common ancestors of dogs and cats may have lived 70 million years ago, of lizards and birds maybe 200 million years ago, etc.
So evidence shows that one didn't evolve into the other, rather both evolved from something which lived long ago.

As for the alleged problem of "micro" versus "macro" evolution -- all evolution is "micro" evolution, a few small changes in every generation, accumulated over hundreds of thousands and millions of generations to produce new breeds, species, genera and families, etc.
It only appears to be "macro-evolution" when you compare species with last common ancestors many millions of years ago.

fish hawk: "If you can show us that, you have more proof than the leading Evo scientist alive today."

Again, science doesn't "prove" a theory, but confirms it by verified predictions and falsifiable tests -- both of which evolution theory has in redundant abundance.

fish hawk: "Question: what evidence proves that life evolved from nonliving molecules?
Evos answer: Don’t reject a scientific theory just because you have a religious prejudice.
This is because they can’t answer the question."

No, not "theory" -- there are now several scientific hypotheses dealing with the origin of life on Earth, ranging from various forms of abiogenesis to panspermia.
None of these hypotheses are strongly confirmed and therefore none qualify as "theory".

At this point, one scientific guess is as good as another, and the most likely answer is: contributions from each plausible hypothesis.

fish hawk: "Try reading... Read these and point out to us all the false info in them."

It's already been done, by people far more qualified than I am.
But, if you have summarized here some of their arguments, then I have summarized the responses.
And if you wish to discuss some points further, then feel free to raise your issues here.

Alamo-Girl: "That's a fascinating metaphor, dear BroJoeK, thank you for sharing it!"

You're welcome. ;-)
Did you also like the metaphor of the tool box (post #19) -- which gains no value, and makes us idiots, if we put it up on some alter, and bow down to worship it?

Alamo-Girl: "Problems arise when people "do" theology or philosophy under the color of science..."

In posting and discussing these matters on Free Republic, it does seem to me that much, if not most, of the confusion arises from people's mis-understandings of distinctions between science on the one hand and philosophy, theology, religion and even politics on the other.
Science itself should have little or nothing to say about those subjects...

Alamo-Girl: " '...it is unknowable by the scientific method'... "

Bingo! We have a winner. :-)

Alamo-Girl: "I would also put "randomness did it" in the same faith statement bucket since we cannot say something is random in the system when we don't know what the system "is." "

Thank you. It's one of my favorite subjects, because it answers the famous question raised by Albert Einstein when he was puzzling over (iirc) issues of quantum mechanics, and remarked: "G*d does not play dice with the Universe".

No! Albert-baby, buddy, you got it all wrong!
The physical Universe is one giant casino, with "slot machines" everywhere you turn, and every single one of them is rigged, just like Vegas, to produce a profit for "the House", and who, in the Universe is "the House", if not it's Creator, G*d?

In the long run, G*d's purposes will not be denied, yes "machines" "randomly" produce winners and losers, but G*d's Will will be done.

And in the shorter runs?
Wouldn't you suppose that those who understand the "games" stand a better chance of coming out ahead?

;-)

Thank you so much for your encouragements, dear BroJoeK, and for sharing your insights! And I do like the toolbox metaphor - somehow I missed it on my first reading of the thread.

Science itself should have little or nothing to say about those subjects...

Alas, some scientists cannot resist stepping into areas requiring a different discipline and making observations without delineating the difference. Since science derived from philosophy in the first place, some of that is understandable.

Beginning of Modern Science and Modern Philosophy

The word "science" itself is simply the Latin word for knowledge: scientia. Until the 1840's what we now call science was "natural philosophy," so that even Isaac Newton's great book on motion and gravity, published in 1687, was The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis). Newton was, to himself and his contemporaries, a "philosopher." In a letter to the English chemist Joseph Priestley written in 1800, Thomas Jefferson lists the "sciences" that interest him as, "botany, chemistry, zoology, anatomy, surgery, medicine, natural philosophy [this probably means physics], agriculture, mathematics, astronomy, geography, politics, commerce, history, ethics, law, arts, fine arts." The list begins on familiar enough terms, but we hardly think of history, ethics, or the fine arts as "sciences" any more. Jefferson simply uses to the term to mean "disciplines of knowledge."

That, btw, is my peeve about the abuse of the word "random." Randomness originates as a Mathematics term. It has a specific meaning, to wit one cannot say something is random in the system when he doesn't know what the system "is."

Quantum mechanics relies on statistics and it works, but that does not mean ipso facto that the physical universe is random at the root since we do not know, indeed cannot know, the full number and types of dimensions.

Jeepers, we cannot deny the existence of particles or fields which do not have a direct or indirect measurable effect.

"Information" is yet another term misappropriated by the Sciences from the discipline of Mathematics. Information Theory is a branch of Mathematics originating from Claude Shannon's Mathematical Theory of Communications.

In Shannon's theory information is the reduction of uncertainty in the receiver (or molecular machine as applied to biology) in moving from a before state to an after state. The math is so much like thermodynamics, it is called "Shannon entropy."

In common parlance, the term which refers to the action is falsely used to describe the content of the message being sent or received. For instance, the letter in your mailbox is not information, information happens when the letter is read.

Worse, in science the term has been misappropriated to mean determinism, i.e. physical cause/effect.

In my view, mathematics is a more elegant and certain discipline for knowing than any of the science disciplines. And misappropriating its terms results in a false sense of elegance and certainty in the sciences.

Indeed, I very strongly agree with Wigner (the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences) and go further to observe theologically that mathematics is God's copyright notice on the cosmos.

"Alas, some scientists cannot resist stepping into areas requiring a different discipline and making observations without delineating the difference."

Not scientists we know, I hope... '-)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That, btw, is my peeve about the abuse of the word "random." Randomness originates as a Mathematics term. It has a specific meaning, to wit one cannot say something is random in the system when he doesn't know what the system "is."

So -- we're back to "randomness" again. (Hope I don't get "shouted down" again...)

I agree the term has mathematical rigor -- but what term would you use to determine and describe the directions and energies of gas molecules in an "ideal gas" closed system?

How about an arbitrary, "open" system such as the room (part of a set of interconnected rooms) in which you find yourself? Describe the air molecule motion there...

Example: if the molecules in your room moved "non-'random'ly", (PChem term) and headed in a single direction , one wall (or more) would disappear explosively. (And, if we could create and direct that "non-'random'ness", we could make some extremely efficient internal combustion engines...)

Why can we expect a tire to remain uniformly inflated, if not due to "random" molecular motion? Chaos?

"PV=NkT" has mathematical (and physical meaning. Upon what assumption of molecular motion (other than elasticity and non-reactivity) does it depend?

IOW, what form of molecular motion makes the Ideal Gas 'Law' work -- every time it's tested? What about real-world gases & mixtures thereof in non-closed systems?

Or, to move closer to the "creation" aspects of this conversation, it would appear to me that, unlike the gases in which we are now immersed, the motion of "stuff" at (or shortly after) the instant of "creation" had something definitely "non-random" imposed upon it:

Please, Dear Sister, share your preferred term, so that we "mere" scientists don't profane your love of "random" mathematical perfection -- even within our own minds... AND, so that we can discuss the above (the closest we've yet come to examining the conditions at "time=zero" so far) without offending your "peeve"... '-)

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