, and immediately got interested. I've heard this Wise touted as one of the most intelligent YEC to be out there, and so I immediately tuned in and started taking notes. Man, was I disappointed. The program would've been better with a jail call-in from
.
Now don't get me wrong, I'm sure that Kurt is a smart guy. His answers, however, were piss-poor, and you can verify that for yourself:
First, Wise starts out by arguing that eyewitnesses always have a better account than "scientists, thousands of years later". He remarks, "Who is better to describe what happened than God?"
Hilarious. This is classic Ken-Ham-style reasoning. He starts out all of his indoctrination sessions with the children with this line of reasoning, and he tells them to ask their teacher, "Were you there?" I mean, hey, if the teacher didn't see it happen, if scientists didn't see it happen, then how come they can, like, say what happened? *eye roll* I guess if I'm ever on trial for murder I'll make a point to ask the jury if the forensic team was there and saw it happen, and if they weren't, then the forensic specialists' knowledge and information should be disregarded. Heck, why try to reconstruct a crime scene if no one was there!!!
Second, this is classic petitio principii -- assuming what you have to prove: Wise assumes that Genesis = God's description. End of story. If Wise is right, then Genesis can't be wrong, no matter the mountains of evidence he has to ignore and twist to fit his preconceptions. He goes on:
"A modern scientist is restricted in what he or she can conclude about the world by their experience...they've never seen a creation out of nothing before..."
Wow. I've never seen an atom before, either, and neither had scientists years and years ago, when they proposed them. We'd never seen electromagnetism, only its effects, when Maxwell derived his equations. I've never seen a dinosaur, and neither has Wise, only their imprints on rocks. So I guess if we're all limited by our experiences in what we can conclude, then none of us can conclude much of anything. Wise is on a roll here.
"...With those kind of limitations they couldn't possibly deduce the right things...if it does not appeal to God's Word it will arrive at incorrect understanding..."
Very revealing petitio principii here, because he admits that the evidence will not bring you to the right "understanding" -- you have to believe Genesis is true in order to find that it is true by investigation. Revealing. It reminds me of the classic "creation scientist" model:
You assume what you cannot prove otherwise, ignore what contradicts it, and twist the facts to maintain fidelity to your commitment. Intellectual bankruptcy at its finest.
The interviewer (Mohler) refers to NOMA, and Wise responds, "Well people may accept it, but they can't operate in it...none of us in Xianity can operate in Xianity without a basis in historical facts...we can't study the physical world without making certain assumptions...science drips with theology...you cannot do science without theological assumptions..."
I think this is important, and deserves some consideration: what philosophical issues are at stake in the Creation vs. Evolution "debate" (sneer quotes)?
What Wise ignores here is the need to believe in Genesis' historicity versus the historical timeline accepted by everyone except Biblical literalists: why is it necessary to assume the former over the latter in order to be a Christian? Answer: it isn't. The Roman Catholic Church doesn't, a huge swath of educated Protestants don't...etc. "None of us in Christianity" indeed.
Wise has been called to the carpet for remarking that,
As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. Here I must stand.
This excerpt is from Wise's autobiography, and the article reprinting it is from Richard Dawkins, "Sadly, An Honest Creationist." I've pasted a nice swath here:
All the more interesting, then, to read his personal testimony in In Six Days. It is actually quite moving, in a pathetic kind of way. He begins with his childhood ambition. Where other boys wanted to be astronauts or firemen, the young Kurt touchingly dreamed of getting a Ph.D. from Harvard and teaching science at a major university. He achieved the first part of his goal, but became increasingly uneasy as his scientific learning conflicted with his religious faith. When he could bear the strain no longer, he clinched the matter with a Bible and a pair of scissors. He went right through from Genesis 1 to Revelations 22, literally cutting out every verse that would have to go if the scientific worldview were true. At the end of this exercise, there was so little left of his Bible that . . . try as I might, and even with the benefit of intact margins throughout the pages of Scripture, I found it impossible to pick up the Bible without it being rent in two. I had to make a decision between evolution and Scripture. Either the Scripture was true and evolution was wrong or evolution was true and I must toss out the Bible. . . . It was there that night that I accepted the Word of God and rejected all that would ever counter it, including evolution. With that, in great sorrow, I tossed into the fire all my dreams and hopes in science.
See what I mean about pathetic? Most revealing of all is Wise’s concluding paragraph:
Although there are scientific reasons for accepting a young earth, I am a young-age creationist because that is my understanding of the Scripture. As I shared with my professors years ago when I was in college, if all the evidence in the universe turns against creationism, I would be the first to admit it, but I would still be a creationist because that is what the Word of God seems to indicate. Here I must stand.
The question I have to ask is why it is that Francis Collins has no problem accepting Christianity and the Bible, and about a billion other Christians, while Wise erects this huge mutual exclusion: we might say a false dilemma, a fallacious either/or issue.
Wise has also said in an interview that,
"To accept the entire evolutionary model would mean one would have to reject Scripture. And because I came to know Christ through Scripture I couldn't reject it."
Furthermore, Wise admits here, as elsewhere, that, "The evidence from Scripture is by far the best evidence for creation. No better evidence can be imagined than that provided from Him who is not only the only eyewitness observer, but who also is the embodiment of all truth. All Christians should be content in His claims for creation. There are those, however, who reject the authority of the Scriptures." (AiG)
He is admitting, as with his first exposition above re "eyewitness" accounts, that the "evidence of Creation" is largely argumentum ad ignorantium -- in the AiG article he cites the design of a trilobite's eye as some of "the best extra-biblical evidence". But how is it evidence? Well...because it is a marvelous eye!
As far as "theological assumptions" go, he is equivocating. One need not think of anything besides a degree of uniformity in order to do science. Methodological naturalism needs only a high degree of uniformity (not necessarily absolute uniformity as is often assumed), it needs to neither deny nor assert God's existence or nonexistence to operate. As Laplace is famously reported to have said, "Sir, I have no need of that hypothesis." Either way, true or false, it doesn't impinge on scientific pursuits as to whether or not God exists. What would impinge is revelation, of course, and that's the crux.
The question Wise dodges here is why one should assume the Christian Bible is God's Word, and why one should assume that it should be taken literally, if common experience and basic scientific evidence point in the other direction on one or either of those counts. Which is more of an epistemological burden, divine revelation via the Bible, or assuming uniformity? One need not assume either that revelation exists, or that the Bible is that revelation, and Ockham's Razor slices their superfluous questions away when considering how to do science.
Interviewer refers to Dawkins about the "selfish gene" for his quasi-philosophical science [i understand this complaint], but then, Sagan as if "billions and billions of stars" is a philosophical comment on our meaning, rather than a statement of fact. I wish I had been listening live, and had known the phone number [877-893-8255 (877-893-TALK)], because at this point I would've made Mohler look like an imbecile. Mohler goes on:
"...what really gets under the skin of these evolutionary scientists is that you can 'play their game' and yet believe in God..."
Yes, Al, it's just a game. And we scientists all hate God. *eye roll*
I also love how Al refers to Dr. Marcus R. Ross at U. Rhode Island as having attended an "illustrious" department to get his Ph.D. He blathers on about how aggravated we heathen scientists are:
"...that seems to the scientists to mean that you believe in the impossible and refuse to play by their rules..."
Well, it seems to anyone with common sense that you believe in the implausible and do "play by rules" which would lead you to conclude exactly how implausible your beliefs are!
Wise responds:
"I went into the doctorate...to get trained with the tools of the discipline...in particular I choose a thesis that could be interpreted either way..."
Wise's thesis was titled, "The estimation of true taxonomic durations from fossil occurrence data"*, and thus I really don't see how this is even remotely possible. Either the durations between taxa are on the order of decades or on the order of millenia/eons. How in the hell is he going to do a coherent investigation that leaves the answer to the question open for either? He can't. You can't get a Ph.D. when the question you're trying to answer is left open-ended with such a ridiculous flexibility. (*Do a HOLLIS search for HOLLIS #001708247.)
Wise goes on:
"...and those tools work whether you're a creationist or an evolutionist..."
Really? Boy, that's a new one on me. I don't see how radiometric dating works at all if you're a YEC. Please, someone, explain to me how that tool "works" if everything started 6,000 years ago, considering that the half-life of almost all of our isochron-tool isotopes are longer than that. I'd love to hear your explanation.
"...if it's true that there was a Creation, then that means that there was someone in control; and if it's true that there was a Flood, then it means that we're all in big trouble..."
A big IF. And, once again, assuming something which is not logically necessary. If there is a God, it doesn't mean: 1) that it cares if we know it or not; 2) that it still interferes in the universe; 3) it's the Christian God; 4) that even if there was a global flood*, that this indicates it was God's judgment, rather than a geological event... etc., etc., ad nauseum. [*Not that I'm saying this is intellectually likely]
Probably the kicker of the whole interview occurred when a caller, obviously ignorant, mentions how the Second Law of Thermodynamics (2LoT) "disproves" evolution. I was waiting for Wise, who I still thought to be half-intelligent, to respond at this point appropriately. But my oh my, how he revealed his ignorance about physics:
"...on a cosmic scale, the idea that the universe started out chaotic and increased in order up to the present seems to be inherently contradictory to the 2nd LoT...so it has always been a bit of a challenge to evolution...there are a couple of ways that they actually counter it: one is to say, 'well that is the tendency of things, but an accident could occur,' and so they basically say that the universe is an extraordinarily improbable accident,"
I shit you not, my mouth opened. Two expansive excellent responses to this ridiculous fallacy and misuse of thermodynamics: Mark Perhakh, (Ph.D. Physics) and Jason Rosenhouse. A concise response is provided by TO, as usual. If you are a creationist and you actually want to understand entropy, and why this is a thickheaded argument, see here.
I have to say that Wise is both wrong and stupid for the following reasons:
1) If it is a law, there is no exception or "accident". I know of not one person who would say such a stupid thing as Wise alleges here. If they did, they'd know nothing of that which they spoke.
2) The Standard Model of Cosmology, aka the "Big Bang", depicts the origins of our universe as extremely small, dense, and hot. The current universe has its contents flung across a basically infinite expanse of space, "ordered" only by gravity. How is it that a tiny point containing all the known matter in the universe is "chaotic" and the current universe is "ordered", exactly?
3) We see increases in complexity before our very eyes all the time, one simple example is in the development of an entire organism from two gametes (or asexually). Does this mean we witness violations of the 2LoT all the time?? If not, why not? Answer: No, it is a law, and laws aren't broken. The 2LoT does not deny the possibility of increases in complexity, as simple-minded creationists have alleged for years. It denies that these increases must not be accompanied by overall increases in the entropy of the universe (heat release being the most common). It denies that these increases can occur in closed systems!!!
4) Our earth is not a closed system, a billions of Joules of energy pour onto it every second from the sun's rays -- this energy is converted into chemical energy, which is used to do work, which is what we observe as an "increase in complexity" -- driving "thermodynamically-uphill" reactions spontaneously:
In both reaction coordinate diagrams, your "starting material" (SM) goes to a product (P1 or P2) via a "transition state" -- this is standard freshman chemistry. The first particular reaction is thermodynamically downhill -- which implies that the ΔG (Gibbs Free Energy) of the reaction is negative. This means it is an energetically spontaneous reaction. This does not imply that the reaction will just happen, over and over and over...until all SM --> P. Why? Because it requires an activation energy (Ea) to get to TM. That means that even in "spontaneous" reactions, we need energy in order to activate the reaction (kinetic control). The second reaction, below, is thermodynamically uphill, and thus would be called "non-spontaneous": not only does it also require Ea, but it also requires an input for overall enthalpy change ΔH and free energy change ΔG.
What the 2LoT tells us is that in closed systems such as case 1, where ΔG < style="">enthalpically stable products
(stronger bonds) with
higher entropy (ΔS
gas > ΔS
liq) are formed. What this means in real-world terms is that exothermic processes give off heat (ΔH
surroundings > 0) , and
always increase the entropy of their products. ΔS = -ΔH
surroundings / T when ΔG = 0. In the latter system, we may decrease the entropy of the products at the expense of a large input of energy, in order to form
less enthalpically-stable products.All this shows, in basic terms, what Wise and all other non-physical science creationists screw up -- even though the universe's entropy increases for processes, the local entropy does not have to increase! This only applies for spontaneous, closed systems! Wise stumbles on:
"they basically say that the universe is 'an extraordinarily improbable accident,' or you might say a miracle. Another way is to say that you can overcome the 2LoT if you have information coming in from the outside, so if you have a Creator...the 2nd Law is not a problem...it's [the 2LoT] is much easier to explain if you're a creationist..."
Who, exactly, "basically say[s]" this? I want a name. Second, the 2LoT has nothing to do with information,
per se. It is about energy dispersal and statistical mechanics (regarding degrees of freedom in chemical entropy). Is heat energy informative? How many bits does it have? How about an electron? *eye roll*
So you don't need "information", but instead,
energy coming from the "outside". Here Wise shows some rudimentary grasp of the idea of closed/open systems -- energy intrinsic to, or outside of the system. And again, the earth, and its organisms, are not "closed systems" -- they exchange energy freely with each other and their environment in the form of thermal (heat) and chemical energy (food).
Wise doesn't know his hand from his ass here, and he is pretending he does. It doesn't fool me. And it makes him look bad. Very bad. Even other creationists, like
physicist and YEC Dr. Russell Humphreys, don't pull this anymore. You won't find him claiming that the 2LoT = "evolution can't happen". If it were this simple, don't you think all knowledgeable physicists would be anti-evolution? All physical chemists? I'm saddened to see Sarfati
obfuscating energy with information here:
The open systems argument does not help evolution. Raw energy cannot generate the specified complex information in living things. Undirected energy just speeds up destruction. Just standing out in the sun won’t make you more complex—the human body lacks the mechanisms to harness raw solar energy. If you stood in the sun too long, you would get skin cancer, because the sun’s undirected energy will cause mutations. (Mutations are copying errors in the genes that nearly always lose information). Similarly, undirected energy flow through an alleged primordial soup will break down the complex molecules of life faster than they are formed.
But if you put a photosynthetic bacterium out in the sun, is it, or is it not, breaking the 2LoT, Jon-Jon? It's a simple question. Either the 2LoT is being violated by the conversion of solar energy to chemical energy to increase complexity or it isn't. And if it isn't, then what in the hell does all your rhetoric mean? Do you contend that every time a plant is formed from other plants, the 2LoT is violated? The "increase in complexity problem" was undone at the moment of creation, and it hasn't mattered since?
Also, why is it, if the universe is as Wise paints here, that the universe isn't an "extraordinarily improbable accident"? What else do you call God circumventing natural laws (which is what he implies within this passage)? Wise wants to have his cake and eat it too: the 2LoT is a law at operation all the time around us...yet...life goes on and order increases before our eyes every day...and somehow evolution doesn't work but God's interaction in nature (preventing the 2LoT) does...?
"we experience the tendency for things to break down: the room gets disordered...this is the way the universe is, so far as we can tell..."
Yes and our experiences don't occur on the molecular level. And our experience tells us that the earth is flat and that the sky rotates around us and that a big orange light in the sky revolves rises in the east and sets in the west...pretty pitiful argument: "Well, this
seems to be true..."
"...the challenge of the origin of consciousness is a large one for evolutionists...one of the amazing things about the Creation is not just its design, but its over-design! ...the biggest challenge to evolution has been the evolution of the human brain...why is it bigger than it needs to be?...evolution cannot overcome the difficulty of the human brain.""
First, I'm not aware of how a creationist "explains" consciousness. It's easy to say, "there's this shimmery invisible spirit inside the piece of fat in my skull that thinks!" But there's a large difference between a scientific explanation and a spiritual belief. For example, if consciousness is solely the product of this shimmery spirit stuff, then why do drugs, solely physical material, knock out consciousness by knocking out the brain's operations? Why are you not still conscious under anesthesia, if your spirit is your consciousness? And if your spirit depends upon your brain for consciousness, then in what ways? How useful is it to have a spirit if you can't think without a brain? Does God's mind require a brain? Or is it made of nothing?
Second, the brain's "over-design" is rather vague and not much of an argument. Wise knows better than to claim directionality to evolution, aside from retaining characteristics favorable to survival. How has he shown that the features of the human brain are not selection-worthy features? Why is it not better for us to have abstract thinking, so that we can imagine tools and building shelter? He doesn't present anything here -- just the typical
argumentum ad ignorantium that creationists can spill all day long: "I can't imagine how this might've happened, so goddidit!" Incredulity is not an argument.
Mohler: "...evolution should just create enough brain for us to reproduce...not to do architecture..."
Why is that, Mohler? I don't see any way you can support this from scientific explanations of evolution: no one claims, "evolution 'only cares about' X" or "evolution 'stops at point Y'". How do all of the capacities of the brain not contribute to survival, dummy? And, some of the functions of the brain, eg playing music, are side-effects of having the capability to do survival-oriented tasks, eg distinguish patterned sounds from random ones to know if an animal is chasing you or if wind is blowing in the trees.
"...God isn't just an efficient God, he's an ABUNDANT God!..."
Right, that's why we have
such wonderful instruments of death and suffering in the world.
Next, Mohler explains that he is a YEC, not an OEC, because of his theology, and Wise responds:
"I hold the exact same position for more or less the same reasons: it seems to be a clear reading of Scripture that God told us that the earth is young, and I hold that position for those reasons."
As if we didn't know that already, since
all the evidence points in the other direction.
"If it is a choice between God's Word and human's reason, then I am going to take God's Word over, that is why I'm a YEC rather than an OEC."
Bwa-ha-ha-ha. Thanks for admitting you have to abandon reason to be a young-earther, buddy.
Next, a caller calls in with the classic, "
Why aren't ape-men still walking around?" [always humorous to me because directly opposite, they will argue, "
Why are some species still extant, they look unchanged?"] Wise continues in all his glory here:
"...they [evolutionists] would say in response to that question that if we had a half-man-half-ape, that you would ask, 'Why don't we have a half-half-man-half-half-ape?'..."
Since evolutionary theory confirms that the oldest life forms are bacteria and viruses, and since the tree of life exists as it does, I would have to say that we have just a couple (million) examples of extant transitional species, wouldn't you, Dr. Wise? Not to mention the fact that those "half-halfs" you refer to
are known and
well-documented.
This guy is no better than
Dr. Dino, so far as I could tell. And far less entertaining. I was quite disappointed for such a touted individual, and a Harvard alum, at that.
________________
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