Tag Archives: evidence

Steven Ball – Chapter 2

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Dr. Steven Ball is a physics professor at LeTourneau University, a Christian university in Texas. He has written a few papers advocating for old earthism, that could use some cross-examination. His first paper is titled “A Christian Physicist Examines the Age of the Earth”. I will note his comments in red with my comments directly underneath in the default black. Any bold or underline in Ball’s quotes are my own and not in the original. Each of his chapters will be divided into a distinct blog post to keep the posts from being too long. You can read my review of chapter 1 here.

You don’t have to have an eyewitness account from someone to determine when something in the past occurred. You simply need sufficiently trustworthy evidence left behind in order to make an intelligent determination. For example, a coroner can determine when a person may have died based on the body condition and its temperature compared to both the surrounding environment and the original living body temperature. Although there may be complications, which increase the uncertainties in the actual time of death such as a changing temperature of the environment, it is still possible to make reliable estimates. In fact, the evidence left behind can be a more reliable source than a living eyewitness with a watch, as the next example will show.

I have 3 key issues with Dr. Ball’s assertion about evidence.

  1. The myth of neutrality. Dr. Ball tacitly asserts that evidence just speaks for itself and any observer can come to evidence and just make an unbiased conclusion to determine truth. This is not true, because there are no unbiased observers. EVERYONE has a worldview through which they view evidence. Christians should view evidence through the lens that God is the Creator, Sustainer, and Author of the historical account of his revelation in the Bible. Christ is LORD over everything, and even those, who claim to be neutral or unbiased have a bias denying Christ’s definitive claim as Lord. Dr. Bahnsen has a tremendous lecture series on this which I recommend for all Christians to inject.
  2. “sufficiently trustworthy evidence” – By what standard does a person determine what is sufficiently trustworthy? While it sounds reasonable on the surface, when pressed even a little, the claim devolves rather quickly into item 1 addressed just above. A person can easily say that such-and-such evidence (or source) isn’t sufficiently trustworthy due to an arbitrary or biased standard. That’s not to say that all evidence has equal weight or that every eye-witness is equally trustworthy, but the claim itself (if it were to have universal applicability) must have a transcendent standard by which to compare which Dr. Ball leaves unanswered.
  3. This is verifiably untrue as was pointed out in the Chapter 1 review regarding Mt. St. Helens. In 1992 the rocks from Mt St Helens were radiometrically dated anywhere from 350,000 years old to 2,800,000 years old depending on the method. But the ACTUAL date of the rocks was 12 years. The eye-witness account is dozens of orders of magnitude more accurate than the radiometric dating extrapolations from the forensics practitioners. Just considering Ball’s assertion about the ability of a coroner to determine the when a body died would only be possible within the first few hours after death when the temperature would equalize with the surrounding environment

In experimental high energy physics research, it would be rather absurd to stick a person inside of our detector region, near where high energy particles are collided and numerous new particles are generated from this energy. Beyond the problem of intense radiation exposure, this person would be a completely worthless witness.

He makes an analogy to a worthless human eye-witness, but Ball is unfortunately trying to compare this worthless human eyewitness to the Almighty. God is the One, who revealed his creative acts to Moses. Why would Ball work so hard to demean the original Eyewitness to the creation? Strange indeed for a self-professing Christian.

One can calculate the rate of fuel being burned inside the core of a star and estimate its lifetime, approximately 10,000,000,000 (10 billion) years for our Sun, of which present indicators reveal that nearly half of its lifetime supply of fuel is exhausted

Speaking of extrapolation, how does Ball solve the Faint Young Sun Paradox? Essentially, in the old earther’s view, as Solar has aged, it radiates more light and heat. In their view 3.8 billion years ago when they presume that life emerged and began to evolve, there was not enough light or heat on earth to preserve light. Extrapolation eviscerates old earther’s expectations. The point is that extrapolating deep into the past requires many assumptions and the further back in time, one hopes to predict, the more assumptions need to be made and the greater the error is probable.

The reliability of the evidence can be determined in a number of ways. First of all, since our universe obeys certain laws and principles, the evidence should be examined in light of these well-established laws and principles.

When one presumes to reject what God said in the Bible (“For in 6 days the LORD made the heavens the earth, the sea, and all that is in them”) in favor of the modern academic paradigm (MAP), to be consistent that person must reject other parts of the Bible. For instance, it would be consistent for someone to say:

  • “The science says the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, so we have to reinterpret what the Bible says”
  • “The science says that virgins cannot birth children, so we have to reinterpret what the Bible says”
  • “The science says that dead people do not come back to life, so we have to reinterpret what the Bible says”
  • “The science says that water does not turn into wine, so we have to reinterpret what the Bible says”
  • “The science says that axe heads do not float, so we have to reinterpret what the Bible says”

But I’m sure Dr. Ball accepts at least a few of those. It’s inconsistent to deny the historical passages in the Bible because of some outside authority . As Christians, we mustn’t let MAP be an authority at the expense of the Bible. His next quote is ironic as he desires consistency in scientific work (something everyone should want).

Secondly, when several independent sources are all giving very similar answers, it increases the measure of confidence we have in the results. Good science requires both the measures of self-consistency and consistency with other independent, yet equally valid methods

So let’s look at the specific “independent sources” from different fields of science to see how they measure up to scripture itself, and offer a little scrutiny to his conclusions

Geology of the Earth

Just one glimpse of the multitude of layers of rock exposed in the Grand Canyon…The shades of color from one layer to the next going down over one mile deep from the canyon rim down to the Colorado River tells us that there is an incredibly vast and changing history associated with how these layers were deposited…We find fossils in many of these layers, showing the history of life forms going backward in time as you go down through the successive layers to earlier time periods…It is not easy to estimate the rate of rock layering, since this fluctuates greatly in time…However, it is clear that vast intervals of time are necessary to produce the layers of rock we do observe

There are indeed a multitude of layers exposed in the grand canyon. Water-sorted layers. Dr. Ball makes no mention of the effects of the global flood that is recorded in Genesis 6-9. Fossil-bearing water-sorted layers is EXACTLY what biblical creationist would expect to find in the Grand Canyon. Dr. Ball (not a geologist) is completely unfamiliar with the evidence against his view, which is that erosion/bioturbation in and between the water-sorted layers is so rare as to declare them virtually absent from the entire Canyon. Follow the link below listen to Dr. Ron Neller, who is a fluvial geomorphologist, explain why the geologic column is disconfirming evidence for an old earth…and instead affirms the biblical account of a global flood

Bioturbation refutes the idea of a slowly accumulating geologic column

Notice from Ball’s comments that he assumes that the accumulation of the layers takes “incredibly vast” amounts of time and the “vast intervals of time are necessary”. He completely ignores the Biblical account of the global flood in his question-begging claims of extended time. Never does he consider that the layers formed rapidly during and shortly after the year-long flood. Were Dr. Ball’s view true, then there would be no distinct layers. If the layers were indeed exposed to the elements for millions of years of wind/water erosion and the affiliated periods of bioturbation, the layers would be indistinct as in figure 4 below. Be instead we find that each layer is perfectly distinct as if it were never exposed to erosion or bioturbation as in figure 1 (like we would expect from the global flood)

He did however notice that the layers were sedimentary (laid down by water) and bearing marine fossils…just as Bible-believing Christians would expect since they were deposited by the waters of the global flood

steady marine sedimentation during below sea-level periods…sedimentation rates

Fossils? Let’s discuss fossils

Only the painstakingly slow process of replacement of bone tissue with minerals from the surrounding soil can produce a true fossil…fossils can very rarely form. And since there appears to be an abundance of fossils in the Earth, it is clear that there has been an incredibly long history of life preceding us

He did say 1 correct sentence from above: “fossils can very rarely form”. Why is that? Because fossils only form in very specific conditions: flood conditions. Biological material must be buried rapidly do avoid the scavengers and corruption processes, so that fossilization (mineral replacement of biological material) can occur. He incorrectly concludes that because there are billions of dead things buried in rock layers, laid down by water, all over the Earth – that it took an incredibly long time. The opposite is true. Because we have a correct historical account given to us in Genesis 6-9, we know that all of the air-breathing creatures not on the ark were buried by catastrophic deluge in judgment for the sin of mankind. Contrary to what Dr. Ball has claimed, ALL of the evidence is in strong support of the Biblical account of a global flood. I cover this evidence in a blog post, here. Those, who deny this catastrophic worldwide flood, are described as “scoffers” by Peter

Other geological studies have examined processes believed to be rather constant in time such as rates of coral reef build-up, tectonic plate motion, mountain building, certain weathering and erosion rates, and even the rate of continental mass build-up

Unfortunately, Dr. Ball is wrong about ALL of these items. They not only disconfirm the old earth paradigm, in which he believes, they are STRONG confirmation of the biblical timescale held by young earth creationists

  • Coral Reef Buildup – “Pandora Reef is approximately 10 metres in thickness; 1.8 metres of this coral has grown in the last 118 years. On this basis the whole 10 metre thickness of coral that makes up this reef would have taken only about 660 years to grow!”
  • Tectonic Plate Motion – Both Catastrophic plate tectonics and Hydroplate theory account for the evidence seen much better than the standard model of plate tectonics
  • Mountain Building – All mountain ranges in the world are evidently young. Were they millions of years old, they would be smoothly rounded by the erosion forces of wind/water/ice
  • Erosion Rates – The continents are definitevely NOT billions of years old as has been claimed. “At the present rate of erosion, all of the continents would be reduced to sea level in 10 Ma (10 millions years)”. 10 million years is the UPPER limit. If you take into account the monumental erosion rates after the global flood, the continents look exactly as we would expect if the global flood took place about 4500 years ago.

Exactly opposite of what Dr. Ball claimed, the evidence is strongly in favor of biblical creation and disconfirms the assertions of old earthers. It’s doubtful that Dr. Ball has researched the overwhelming scientific evidences of a young Earth/universe that corresponds with the biblical account, but if you’re interested, so can see 101 of them here.

Radiometric Dating

Radiometric dating is the method of using nature’s natural clocks to date events such as when rocks were first formed

Radiometric dating has many problems of which advocates are completely unaware. I covered many of the problems with radiometric dating in this article, so there’s no need to duplicate the effort here. But in short, since radiometric dating shows itself to be completely wrong on the samples that we have seen formed, why should we trust the dates that this extrapolation gives for unknown/unseen samples?

Lunar Geology

Precise dating of the birth of our Earth is difficult based only on knowledge of the Earth’s geology and radiometric dating of its rocks, primarily since primordial rocks may not have formed until long after the Earth’s initial formation

True. Based on his presuppositions (extrapolations), dating Earth is difficult. Based on my presuppositions (The Truth of the Bible), dating the Earth is much easier.

So while no rocks can be found older than about 3.8 billion years old on Earth, the Earth itself is older than this. We must go outside the Earth to get a more accurate measurement, namely the Moon

This line of reasoning is related to his assumptions about radiometric dating, but notice how even before he applies a “scientific test”, he assumes (in bold above) “the Earth itself is older than this.” Not for scientific reasons, but ideological ones

Rocks brought back from these missions (Apollo) have been dated up to 4.3 billion years old, confirmed through measurements using several different isotopes

Again, you see how even though he categorized this Lunar argument as separate from the others, it is a regurgitation of the radiometric dating argument with its unwarranted assumptions.

On the contrary, the moon is actually strong evidence that the Earth/moon system is NOT billions of years old. Because the moon recesses (moves away) from the Earth at a measurable rate in accordance with Kepler’s third law of planetary motion (conservation of angular momentum), we know that the moon could only be as old as 1.5 billion years since at that time, the moon and Earth would be touching. Again 1.5 billion years is the UPPER limit of time. Life on Earth would be impossible for much less time than that if the the distance to the moon were 1/4, 1/2, or even 2/3 of its current distance, the tides gravitational effects on the Earth would be too destructive to sustain life. So, instead of proving a billions of years old creation, the moon specifically refutes that belief and is affirmation of a young Earth.

Meteorites

While iron meteorites have been found not to have the long-lived radioactive isotopes needed for dating, they are invaluable for dating the Earth, since they provide us with pristine samples of primordial lead, whose isotopic ratios yield the original lead isotopic ratios on Earth, which have since then been modified by the daughter products from Uranium and Thorium decays. By this method we find the Earth to be 4.6 billion years old

Dr. Ball again relies on radiometric dating for this line of evidence. So there’s nothing new here. But if we’d like to talk about the philosophical implications of objects orbiting the sun, how do they scientifically account for short-term comets? Many comets disintegrate completely in only a few trips around the sun, yet these short term comets persist. If the solar system were truly billions of years old, there would be no more short term comets. Their rescue device for their old universe view is that some unseen source provides new comets every now and then. It’s unscientific, but they try to protect their worldview from falsification.

Stellar Astronomy

Are there non-radiometric methods, which can be used to determine such vast ages? Yes, and the natural clocks they depend upon are very reliable…Nuclear fusion is a powerful source of energy we can understand…This energy conversion has been occurring steadily in the core of our Sun, where temperatures are sufficiently high enough, for as long as Earth has been around, thus bathing the Earth with heat. From the rate of energy produced and the supply of fuel initially inside the reaction core of the Sun, we can determine its lifetime. As mentioned previously, this is approximately 10 billion years

What were the initial conditions? What was the Hydrogen:Helium ratio when the sun was created by God on Day 4? How do you know that the rate of fuel consumption has always been the same for nearly 5 billion years? How do you overcome the Faint Young-Sun Paradox?

Other stars have been dated to be much older than ours, up to 14 billion years old. In fact, innumerable stars have already exhausted their supply of fuel and met their deaths. A star dies by running out of the very fuel that sustains an outward pressure to prevent its own self-gravity from collapsing it. The larger stars die rather violently, in a process called a supernova

The remnants of supernova are supposedly visible for many millions of years after their demise. Over time astronomers have measured the rate at which supernova occur, and can make predictions on how long a galaxy has existed based on that rate. If the Milky Way is billions of years old as Dr. Ball and the atheists think, there should be about 7500 super nova remnants in various stages of decay. If the Milky Way galaxy is only as old as the Bible says (about 7000 years old) then there should be only about 125. How many do we actually observe? About 200. By this “clock” the biblical predictions are much closer, while Dr. Ball’s predictions are off by a factor of about 40

The Universal Expansion

How do we extract an age for the universe? Astronomer Edwin Hubble demonstrated in the 1920’s that the universe is expanding; by showing that the further away a galaxy is from us the faster it appears to be moving away from us. This expansion rate tells us how long the universe has taken to expand to the immense size it is today. But it has been very difficult to determine this expansion rate accurately until recently…Combining measurements of several different distance indicators such as variable stars and distant supernovae, we have narrowed down the age of the universe to approximately 14 billion years old, uncertain to 0.5 billion years

I’m not quite old enough to remember when the scientific consensus agreed with the Bible that the universe was about 6000 years old, but the scientific community believes that the universe is aging faster than anything else in existence. I asked Grok to collect data from around the planet across time on how quickly the universe has been (supposedly) aging, and this is what is has come up with:

  • 1800AD – the universe was 6000 years old
  • 1840AD – the universe was ~100,000 years old
  • 1850AD – the universe was ~1,000,000 years old
  • 1860AD – the universe was ~10,000,000 years old
  • 1870AD – the universe was ~20,000,000-100,000,000 years old (±10-50 million)
  • 1880AD – the universe was ~20,000,000-100,000,000 years old (±10-50 million)
  • 1890AD – the universe was ~20,000,000-100,000,000 years old (±10-50 million)
  • 1900AD – the universe was ~100,000,000-1,000,000,000 years old
  • 1910AD – the universe was ~1,000,000,000-2,000,000,000 years old (±.5-1 billion)
  • 1920AD – the universe was ~1,000,000,000-10,000,000,000 years old (±1-5 billion)
  • 1930AD – the universe was ~2,000,000,000-10,000,000,000 years old (±1-5 billion)
  • 1940AD – the universe was ~2,000,000,000-5,000,000,000 years old (±1-2 billion)
  • 1950AD – the universe was ~3,000,000,000-6,000,000,000 years old (±1-2 billion)
  • 1960AD – the universe was ~10,000,000,000-20,000,000,000 years old (±5-10 billion)
  • 1970AD – the universe was ~10,000,000,000-20,000,000,000 years old (±5 billion)
  • 1980AD – the universe was ~10,000,000,000-20,000,000,000 years old (±3-5 billion)
  • 1990AD – the universe was ~10,000,000,000-15,000,000,000 years old (±2-3 billion)
  • 2000AD – the universe was ~13,000,000,000-14,000,000,000 years old (±1-2 billion)
  • 2020AD – the universe was ~13,800,000,000 years old (±.02 billion)
  • 2025AD – the universe is 13,800,000,000 years old (±.02 billion)

The parentheses in the above notes are the error bars. Error bars are the estimated error possibilities on either side of the possible date range. I do think it’s extremely humorous how the error bars in 1960 included the original Biblical timeframe of about 6000 years and how each new “age”, was outside the previous “age” error bars. It confirms that as biological evolution began to have a greater effect on the modern academic paradigm, the universe/Earth had to age at an appropriate rate to accommodate its assumptions. In 2019 a scientific paper claimed that the universe was only 11.4 billion years old. The error bars at this time was only 20 million years, but suddenly over 2 billion years went missing?!?!?? How could billions of years suddenly go missing? They must have found those years, because the it’s back to 13.8 billion. In 2024, there was a peer-reviewed paper saying that the latest findings showed that the universe is a whopping 26.7 billion years old…almost 14,000,000,000 years OUTSIDE the error bars. What’s a few billion years between scientific allies? To be fair, this paper has not been widely accepted, but it goes to show that atheists, naturalists, and sadly some Christians are always looking for more time in the universe to accommodate their evolutionary (whether galactic, chemical, stellar, planetary or biological) beliefs.

The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation

Additional evidence of a beginning 14 billion years ago is the leftover remnant of the initial explosion nicknamed the “Big Bang”, which was discovered first in 1965, nearly 20 years after it was predicted. This is the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR), which pervades all of space. It is the radiation released near the beginning of the universal expansion, and has been cooling off gradually ever since, until today it is now a chilly 2.73 degrees above absolute zero temperature.

Chilly indeed, but not nearly enough. There are MANY problems with the Big Bang Theory, but #3 in the linked list shows the CMBR to be evidence NOT of an ancient universe but of a light time travel problem for naturalists. Based on their assumptions, the universe should not be so thermodynamically balanced.

So, what we have found as we’ve critically analyzed the claims of Dr. Ball is that instead of supporting an ancient universe like the atheists believe, we find that the observations are correctly seen to affirm the biblical timeline of only about 6,000 years. There’s no reason for Christians to capitulate to the modern academic paradigm. God’s Word is absolutely trustworthy as written and needs no injection of worldliness in order to accommodate their beliefs about origins. The Bible is NOT a science textbook, and that’s a good thing so that it doesn’t need to be completely rewritten every few years as new discoveries change the theories. God’s revelation cannot be refuted. I’m sure Dr. Ball is a friendly Christian professor, but his writings about Christianity trying to accommodate worldliness are unnecessary at best and deceptive at worst.

Can Evolution Explain the Origin of Multicellularity?

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One of the giant problems for those who believe in evolution is the missing evidence for the transition of single-celled organisms into multicellularity. According to the story of evolution there was a single-celled Last Universal Common Ancestor LUCA from whom all biological life descended. No evidence for this supposed LUCA exists, but it is a philosophical place-holder for the theory of evolution to persist. If the theory of evolution is true, at the VERY LEAST, the evolutionists must have some kind of explanation for transition from single-celled creatures into the multi-cellular creatures that we see today

In an online interaction, an evolutionist made the claim that the problem was solved in 2019. Some researchers had their paper pass peer-review, and in they claim that multicellularity evolved in response to predation. At the time of this writing, their paper has been cited 181 times. Commonly, a case gets accepted simply by passing peer review. I’ve not found evidence that the experiments described in their paper have been duplicated anywhere, but it’s reasonable to cross-examine their claims to see how they stack up. This is a very biblical response to their claim:

So, let’s cross-examine, to see if there are any weaknesses in their claims and if their claims hold up to even the mildest of scrutiny:

  1. According to the story of evolution, the algae in question has persisted unchanged for ~310 million years. That’s some pretty amazing longevity (if true). But the researchers from this paper claimed to have observed the evolution of this novel trait in the comparably instantaneous time of 50 weeks…less than 1 year. Despite it being one of the biggest problems for evolutionists, the emergence of multicellularity from single-celled organism, these scientists claim to have taken one of the most stable genotypes (having existed fixed for over 300 million years) and watched it evolve new traits in less time than it takes to complete a cricket tournament (I think…as I’ve never really understood those rules). It’s mind-numbingly absurd to believe that evolution can happen that fast considering the claims of evolutionists themselves and the well-known waiting-time problem. The biggest single leap in evolution from single to multiple cells happened right before the eyes of these researchers in under a year. I’m unpersuaded
  2. They didn’t show that natural selection acting on random mutations (evolution) was able to produce this change, yet they use some form of “evolve” NINETY-SEVEN times in their article. I’ve been told that science is supposed to try to disprove a theory, but it’s clear that these biased researchers were good company-men…sticking with the party-line: evolution only all the time!
    • This is they key: The evolutionists said that predation was the selection pressure that forced single-cell algae populations into multicellularity, but they did not show that the algae developed new biological code via random mutation that produced this ‘novel’ ability. New code is needed, but evolution does not have that power
    • The experiments show instead that the ability to aggregate into multi-cellular clumps is a pre-existing trait. The algae were designed to cluster, and the expression of genes for multicellularity is turned off most of the time when not exposed to predation
  3. There is no fossil evidence of unicellular-to-multicellular transition. It is an imagined transition, which evolutionists need for their theory. But it is not supported by any existing evidence.

As already noted, the evolutionists NEED this to imagined transition to be true for their theory to work. So, even though there is no fossil evidence that evolution produced this change, and there is no experimental evidence that natural selection acting on random mutations can build the cohesive interrelated interdependent functional code for transitioning single-celled organisms into multicellular organisms, they will continue to believe it

If you are interested, you can see a more robust examination of the claims of Herron’s paper here.

This is not the only time that I have scrutinized the supposed airtight arguments for evolution:

Objections

After posting these “Can Evolution Explain…articles, I inevitably hear evolutionists respond with some form of: “get your paper peer-reviewed and only then can you get your Nobel Prize for disproving evolution. Until then STFU!”

To be clear, these “Can Evolution Explain…” articles are NOT intended to disprove evolution. They are simply meant to analyze the assertions of evolutionists to see whether the subject matter is actually evidence for evolution by their own standards or not. It’s an internal critique. What I find in all of these articles is that what’s been proclaimed as “mOuntAinS oF eVidenCe” for evolution is really just story-telling and assumptions. We’ve seen that this article is more of the same bluster devoid of actual evidence.

There will be no shortage of “papers” that the devout evolutionists will propose that I must analyze. I don’t have the time or the desire to expose EVERY single article, but I do analyze the top authors and the articles that evolutionists THINK are actually evidence as shown above. Hopefully, given the example of my analysis, other Christians will be motivated to expose how the “mOuntAinS oF eVidenCe” for evolution are really massive canyons. These articles are not intended to prove creationism or anything else. They are simply meant to push back against the dominant paradigm rather than just blindly accepting what is being taught. If these works of evolution can survive scrutiny, then so be it, but so far, I’m finding that their claims are impotent.

Can Evolution Explain the Origin of Lungs?

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Hold your breath! How long before are forced to breathe deeply of the amazing mixture of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, argon and a trace amounts of a few other gasses?…that is unless you live in Mexico City where the other gasses are not so trace. Taking that air and converting the oxygen into usable metabolic portions for your cells are your lungs. Lungs are incredible organs that function as part of our remarkable respiratory systems.

Now I’ve been told that natural selection acting on random mutations has enough power to produce everything in biology…including lungs. I’ve put these claims to the test several times before each time with the same result…no evidence…just assumptions:

Many God-deniers and skeptics are angry rubes, but Steve McRae is not unthinking or a rube. We disagree, but I’ve found him to be fair in my interactions with him. Recently, he posted that he believes there is evidence that evolution (natural selection acting on random mutations) can produce lungs. He linked to this article from the National Library of Medicine. Let’s see if the powers of evolution can explain the origins of lungs.

Here’s how this works: The quotes from the article in red italics and then just below the quote, I’ll post my analysis in the default black font. I have added bold and underline to key words from the authors throughout, so this is just a note to say that neither the bold nor underline appear in the original article.

Right from the start in the abstract we get the first caveat:

the origin and early evolution of vertebrate lungs remain highly controversial, particularly whether the ancestral state was paired or unpaired. Due to the rarity of fossil soft tissue preservation, lung evolution can only be traced based on the extant phylogenetic bracket

That’s quite a lot to overcome, but I’m sure they will try. Of note: Their admission that since there is no fossil evidence of lung evolution, they rely “only” on creatures that are alive today to extrapolate backwards in time with a collection of assumptions. Their words…not mine.

After giving the proper obeisance to the evolutionary story, the authors get right into it:

How this important organ (lungs) first evolved is a hotly debated topic. This is largely because lung tissue does not preserve well in fossils, making it difficult to trace how the lungs of vertebrates changed over the course of evolution

It will indeed be difficult to trace given the narrative of evolution, but because it is the dominant paradigm, it MUST try to provide an explanation – difficult or not

Lungs, the most important organ of the pulmonary complex, are rarely preserved in fossils, hindering direct evidence of how the earliest air-breathing vertebrates breathed air

I’ll take that as an admission that direct evidence is absent. We will proceed knowing that what follows from them is a collection of assumptions and story-telling

Yet, lung affinities for such structures remain elusive (Janvier et al., 2007) and could not be confirmed by anatomical, phylogenetic, or biological data (Goujet, 2011; Béchard et al., 2014). Here, we follow Janvier et al., 2007, Goujet, 2011 and Béchard et al., 2014, and consider that observable evidences are elusive and do not support the interpretation of these paired masses as a lung

Indeed, the evidence is elusive and cannot be confirmed. The available evidence consists of assumptions and unsupported interpretations. Got it

Our knowledge about the morphological and genetic development of the lung is, however, highly biased towards amniotes, and consequently the original form of this evolutionary novelty among osteichthyans remains largely elusive

Elusive = missing

One hypothesis, formed and supported by studies on tetrapods (particularly mammals and birds), assumes that the lung evolved through a modification of the pharyngeal pouch

Assumptions abound

Curiously, some living vertebrates display an unpaired organ, leaving the ancestral condition equivocal

The origin of lungs is a curiosity for evolutionists since they are forced to make up stories of their origin. And they use words like “equivocal” to hide the fact that they are left clueless as to the origin.

The so-called left lung of L. paradoxa is most likely a diverticulum or a modified lateral lobe, which might have evolved secondarily, an advantage for enlarging the surface area for oxygen-uptake, eventually enabling the obligatory air-breathing performance in the linage towards L. paradoxa

Most likely? Might have evolved? Are we talking about “the mountains of evidence for evolution” or a story? Most internet evolutionists are VERY good at searching through the headlines of articles on Google Scholar or Nature or Wikipedia for “evolution of _______” fill in the blank. But 9/10 have never read the contents of the article. If they had, they would see over and over phrases like: most likely, might have, could have, probably, perhaps, feasibly, presumably, conceivably…just like in this article

There are some very interesting charts and figures. Notice from the chart below

I modified the chart with the red/green boxes arrows and text. The upper part of the figure in green is science. The lower part in red is the part where they try to “prove” evolution, but it’s in the assumption category because there is no evidence for their claim

From this evolutionary point of view, our results lead to a new definition of the vertebrate lung: either an unpaired or paired respiratory organ developing ventrally from the foregut. Vestigial forms secondarily released from the respiratory function should be also designated as lungs (e.g. the lung of coelacanths). Some criteria previously used for discriminating lungs from gas bladders are no longer supported, including: paired/unpaired organization, position ventral to the alimentary tract (Marcus, 1937; Funk et al., 2020; Lambertz et al., 2015; Graham, 1997), as well as its function. The dorsal position of the majority of osteichthyans lungs described here may be related to its dual and secondary functionality of respiration and buoyancy control (Thomson, 1968). Actually, the only morphological characteristic that can be used to distinguish lungs and gas bladders is the ventral and dorsal origins from the foregut, respectively (Funk et al., 2020; Cass et al., 2013). This phenotypic differentiation into true paired lungs in tetrapods may be related to differential gene expressions (Funk et al., 2020; Bi et al., 2021). Nevertheless, at a level of developmental mechanism, the possibility of co-options of gene regulatory networks of the pharyngeal pouch morphogenesis cannot be excluded, as both the lung bud and pharyngeal pouch develop through the invagination of the foregut endoderm. Our results open the door for future molecular analyses to trace possible regulatory elements for the evolutionary transition from unpaired lungs to true paired lungs in tetrapods.

A long quote indeed, but it was interesting to note that they did not want to restrict anything from being a lung that might look like or was assumed to previously be like or might have once acted like or could be a vestigial form of – a lung. The organs that previously weren’t lungs are now being defined as lungs…possibly

Based on the extant phylogenetic bracket, we infer that the bilaterally paired nature of the lung evolved only in the lineage towards fossil and extant tetrapods, as a synapomorphy of this clade

Inference is not a bad thing to do. Just be sure that your worldview can justify inference due to the principle of induction (uniformity in nature). But again, inference is not evidence

Paired lungs may have been present also in early tetrapods and were probably essential to raise lung surface area and volume capacity during the evolution of vertebrate respiratory system and the air-breathing intensification at the water-to-land transition

I hope by this point that you’re seeing the pattern: “may have been” followed by a “probably” and the ever present ambiguous word: evolution. Not evidence. Just caveats built on assumptions believed because of the story of evolution.

Yet another article that when you read the headline: “Lung evolution in vertebrates and the water-to-land transition”, you are lead to believe it will be packed with evidence for evolution. But when you read the contents of the article, it’s the story that some hard-working scientists conjured up through extrapolation based on their faith in common ancestry. No evidence was actually presented that evolution (natural selection acting on random mutations) could produce lungs or vestigial lungs or air bladders or ventral respiratory organs or anything else.

Objections

After posting these “Can Evolution Explain…articles, I inevitably hear evolutionists respond with some form of: “get your paper peer-reviewed and only then can you get your Nobel Prize for disproving evolution. Until then STFU!”

To be clear, these “Can Evolution Explain…” articles are NOT intended to disprove evolution. They are simply meant to analyze the assertions of evolutionists to see whether the subject matter is actually evidence for evolution by their own standards or not. It’s an internal critique. What I find in all of these articles is that what’s been proclaimed as “mOuntAinS oF eVidenCe” for evolution is really just story-telling and assumptions. We’ve seen that this article is more of the same bluster devoid of actual evidence.

There will be no shortage of “papers” that the devout evolutionists will propose that I must analyze. I don’t have the time or the desire to expose EVERY single article, but I do analyze the top authors and the articles that evolutionists THINK are actually evidence as shown above. Hopefully, given the example of my analysis, other Christians will be motivated to expose how the “mOuntAinS oF eVidenCe” for evolution are really massive canyons. These articles are not intended to prove creationism or anything else. They are meant to push back against the dominant paradigm rather than just blindly accepting what is being taught. If these works of evolution can survive scrutiny, then so be it, but so far, I’m finding that their claims are impotent.

Can Evolution Explain the Origin of Information?

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I’ve been told that natural selection acting on random mutations has enough power to produce everything in biology. I’ve put these claims to the test several times

Photo by Olena Bohovyk on Pexels.com

Well, I got a new challenge from a Christian, who has faith in both old earthism and evolutionism. Sadly, he has joined the scoffers in rejecting the Biblical account of the worldwide flood during the days of Noah. It’s doubtful that he will even read this article, since he has a personal distaste for reading anything that hasn’t gone through the Peer-Review™️ process. He holds Peer-review as his sacred text, but I will proceed in the hopes that others will be encouraged in their faith in God’s revealed word rather than the modern academic paradigm. And although the article that we will analyze is not peer-reviewed, our Christian interlocutor will rationalize his inconsistency by saying, “Well, it contains citations to peer-reviewed articles.” Alrighty-then.

After posting these “Can Evolution Explain…articles, I inevitably hear evolutionists respond with some form of: “get your paper peer-reviewed and only then can you get your Nobel Prize for disproving evolution. Until then STFU!”

To be clear, these “Can Evolution Explain…” articles are not intended to disprove evolution. They are simply meant to analyze the assertions of evolutionists to see whether the subject matter is actually evidence for evolution. What I find in all of these articles is that what’s been proclaimed as “mOuntAinS oF eVidenCe” for evolution is really just story-telling and assumptions. We’ll see if the article below is more of the same bluster or actual evidence.

So I will be analyzing this article from Biologos written by astrobiologist, Stephen Freeland. But before I do, we must make a few notes, lest the skeptics shriek in horror. For purposes of our discussion, we will grant that the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA) already has the base quantity of information necessary for life in its genetic code. This post will not address the impossibility of life emerging from non-life as this is done elsewhere. So the question at hand in THIS post is simply to address the massive amounts of information that would be necessary to have the expression of traits seen in today’s observations (eyes, wings, lungs, coherent interrelated interdependent systems…) that were not available to LUCA. We’ve been told that evolution (natural selection acting on random mutations) can explain the total amount of this information, and Dr. Freeland wrote his article to elucidate how evolution can explain its origins

Dr. Freeland’s quotes are in red italics. Any bold or underline in his quotes are not in the original but are added by me for emphasis.

Current science does not have a detailed, widely-accepted description for how a genetic information system evolved in the first place…I describe the progress that mainstream science has made towards understanding the origin of genetic information since the molecular basis of genetic information was first understood, encouraging readers to reach their own conclusions

From the opening paragraph of the article, it sounds like bad news for the prevaricators of evolution. To repeat him in my own words: There’s no demonstrable evidence that evolution can produce information, but I’m going to give you my theory of how it might have happened. In all of my previous posts in the “Can Evolution Explain…” series, it’s the same bluster: Undeniable explanation in the title of the article and caveats, assumptions, artwork and story-telling in the article below. And Freeland’s article starts out just the same

Biological evolution describes a natural process that transfers information from a local environment into the chemical known as DNA…This unusual definition of evolution seeks to clarify an ambiguity in traditional alternatives, such as “biological evolution is a natural process of change in genetic material over time.”

This is NOT the typical definition of evolution. And his definition burdens the readers with more questions than it answers. Where did the information that is stored in the local environment come from? What is the process that stores information in the local environment? Did the need or the desire or the ability or the availability to transfer information from the local environment to DNA arise first? Without the others, how could it have been preserved until the others arrived? What tools perform the transfer of information from a local environment to DNA? What is the process that transfers information from a local environment to DNA?

Regarding the last question, my profession as a database administrator will have some insight. When transferring data from one data format to another data format like from a marketing firm to a state entity for tax purposes, several parameters must be considered:

  • Format – the data must be in an arrangement that both the sender and the receiver understand. For instance, the credit amount from the sender must be in the same column that the receiver expects it to be.
  • Timing – the transfer cannot take place if the sender does not transmit at the time when the receiver is expecting it. If the receiver is not listening when the sender transmits the information, the data is lost
  • Protocol – transmission method, authentication, and data integrity confirmation must all be considered when passing data to a new source
  • Ability to send
  • Ability to recieve
  • The ability to send and receive must correspond

So while Freeland might have casually assumed that information can be transferred from a local environment to DNA, he’s left unanswered how the unguided, purposeless process of evolution can solve these monumental problems

Start by imagining a line

Imagine indeed! That’s not really the explanation I was looking for

These mutations could, in a single generation, produce large changes in an organism’s appearance

That assertion would be more compelling if it had a citation with it. As is, it looks like an extraordinary assertion without any evidence. Besides if true, the expectation would be (since the vast majority of mutations are neutral or deleterious) that the “large changes” about which Freeland alludes would be destructive and degenerative…not new information

Further evidence indicated that micro-evolution accumulates over time to account for all larger degrees of evolutionary diversification (macro-evolution)

Again Freeland does not cite or provide any evidence for this assertion. The reader is just expected to believe what he’s asserted without evidence

Unless life began in greater quantity than it now exists, evolution requires that natural processes have, over time, increased the total quantity of genetic material (DNA) present on our planet. This is one way in which science currently believes genetic information has increased over time: a natural process has increased the number of copies of DNA molecules without any need for guidance by an intelligent agent

Does evolution have requirements? The THEORY does. Yes, the theory of evolution does require that new information must have been formed, but this is just another assertion by Freeland. Notice from the underlined section above, Freeland employs the reification fallacy as if science has its own mind and can believe something. This is common among old earthers to reify the abstract concept of science (pursuit of knowledge) as if science were a living anthropomorphic entity that has a voice and beliefs and censorship powers. We also see in Freeland’s quote the implication that duplications of information are an actual increase in information. There are at least 3 problems with this line of thinking

  • duplicate duplicate duplicate duplicate duplicate duplicate duplicate duplicate
  • Duplications provide a means for more degenerative problems to arise
  • Due to the work of geneticist Dr. John Sanford, we know that only deleterious mutations are able to be removed/preserved by natural selection. Neutral or legendary beneficial mutations are well inside the “no-selection” zone and cannot be removed/preserved by natural selection. p104 Genetic Entropy, Dr. John Sanford

Freeland’s assertions veer unexpectedly into confirming the creation model

unless life originated containing more DNA than the most genetically complex organism alive today, then some lineages must have increased the quantity of DNA they contain through evolution

This is exactly what the creation model says. God created kinds of plants and animals with the full variability they would need to survive and thrive in different conditions as they filled the earth’s disparate environments. This is exactly what we find. As the world became subject to the effects of the fall, geographic isolation, natural selection & other factors have splintered and destroyed much of the original information, but we see incredible variability being expressed in the different kinds that God created. Freeland rejects the biblical view in favor of the naturalistic one, where he assumes that all genetic information (after LUCA) had to be constructed by natural unguided forces over time. We’re just waiting for him to provide evidence for this. Maybe we’ll find it further down in his paper

DNA has the unusual property of being aperiodic. This means that the sequence of nucleotides within a DNA molecule is not constrained to any kind of repeating pattern

This is true. The individual nucleotides also have no chemical or physical force that would cause them to be arranged in a particular order (specified complexity). The nucleotides are similar to the children’s letters with a magnet on the back for refrigerators. They are attracted to the refrigerator but this does not arrange the individual letters in an order that would spell a message “Good morning mom I luv u” (misspellings intended since all the o’s got used up). But notice what Freeland does below

The idea that some sequences of DNA cannot be produced by natural processes owing to the information they contain has no empirical support from modern genetics. In fact, quite the reverse. Genetic information is stored in sequences of nucleotides that have been chemically linked together to form a molecule of DNA. Genetics, bioinformatics, biochemistry and molecular biology all agree that natural processes can cause any nucleotide to become the neighbor of any other within a DNA sequence

Rather than showing us how the letters were arranged (as in our analogy) to say “good morning mom I luv u”, he simply says (in my own words) Well, there’s nothing that would PREVENT nature from arranging these letters in this way. Freeland has not given us the secret for how nature constructed billions of lines of genetic code…he’s just informed us that there’s nothing that would keep nature from constructing billions of lines of code that’s stored in DNA. His faith in nature’s ability to write biological code stretches credulity.

Try this for yourself by listing a series of mutations that convert the word “evolution” into “creation” with the restriction that each mutation must either change a single letter, insert or delete one or more letters, or move the position of any sub-group of letters. There are many ways to reach the outcome, and this remains true for any two words that you can choose.

This sounds an awful lot like Dawkin’s “Me thinks it is like a weasel” analogy. In his book, A Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins proposes that the phrase “Me thinks it is like a weasel” can be constructed easily by randomly changing 1 letter of a gibberish collection of letters at a time and artificially preserving any letter that appears in the right spot. He asserts that success in constructing the phrase is inevitable. The problem is that the way natural selection works, unless the phrase appears all at one, it cannot be preserved as meaningful. Without functionality or meaning, natural selection would discard any partial sentence and every iteration would have to start from the beginning. Rather than inevitable, the actual chances of constructing a sentence (or changing evolution to creation with a random switching of letters) is ZERO if analogous to natural selection removing non-meaningful phrases/words.

Indeed, evolution can be described precisely in terms of thermodynamic processes by which sources of energy bring into being particular states of information within a DNA molecule

Perhaps he’ll describe this process more later in his paper, but he’s again presenting more unanswered questions. What thermodynamic processes? What source of energy? What particular state? What are the different states of information? Bring? In what way do processes bring states of information into being? What mechanism serves to convert energy into information?

Within a population of individuals that vary from one another, those that best match their environment will, on average, leave behind the most offspring. Wherever the match is genetically programmed, the version of the genetic program associated with the best match will tend to increase in frequency over time by leaving behind more copies of itself. As these advantageous versions are copied from one generation to the next, they will mix with new variations that either increase or decrease the match. All the while, the environment keeps changing and mutations keep occurring so the matching process continues. Repeating this process over and over will create a pool of genetic programs that have accumulated variations maximizing the overall match between organism and environment

A colossal oversight from Freeland is the assumption that the information that he’s supposed to be explaining already exists in his “population of individuals”. It’s like him saying: From this Microsoft Word 10.5, I will construct Microsoft Word 10.6. Now just a minute. For purposes of our discussion, I have granted him DOS 1.0 (genetic code for LUCA), but to needs to elucidate how evolution got from DOS 1.0 -> Windows 3.1 -> Windows 10 (genetic code for humans) and MS Word 1.0 running on Windows 3.1-> MS Word 10.6 running on Windows 10 without intelligent interaction. You missed some steps Dr. Freeland.

The color of leaf on which an organism feeds may become reflected in its genetic material if this type of genetic programming helps the herbivore to hide from predators; conversely, genetic material may evolve to program colorations that contrast with the background of other organisms in an environment where finding and attracting mates is the strategy that leaves behind the most copies

This is an assertion that is ripe for a citation, but Freeland leaves his readers in the dark about whether this is just his opinion or whether a peer-reviewed experiment confirmed that ONLY natural selection acting on random mutations can incorporate genetic code from plants into consumers as camouflage. Notice too how Freeland (like many other evolutionists) asserts contradictory results from the same action (evolution camouflages and evolution colorizes).

The contradictory nature of evolution

No matter how complex these rebounding, mixing reflections of the environment become, they will never create new information (any more than your image in a reflection of a reflection of a reflection contains more information than you do.) Viewed in this light, biological evolution is a natural process that distills thermodynamic information from a highly complex environment into molecules of DNA.

Somewhat correct. We would not expect nature to create new information and Freeland confirms this. But the 2nd sentence is simply a restatement of his initial assertion…NOT justification or explanation for it.

Evolution is to DNA what gravity is to a puddle of water: in both cases it is possible to isolate elements of the whole that carry impressively complex information

This is not true. Gravity is prescriptive. It’s force is physical. Evolution is descriptive. Natural selection is simply the observation that the unfit do not pass on their genetic code. Neither are random mutations prescriptive. Random mutations happen (because of the curse of sin) and have never been observed to produce NEW information.

Gravity and evolution not only permit the transfer of environmental information into a chemical medium, but inevitably and inexorably lead to this information transfer

As expected, Freeland was only able to rely on a failed analogy to make his case. No citation of the answers to any of the questions that followed from his original assertion. Since he continues only to assert rather than demonstrate, we have no choice but to dismiss his claims as simply assertions.

It is true that at present, evolutionary science does not have a clear, detailed and well-accepted explanation for how the Central Dogma of molecular biology emerged

True

The universe is replete with information capacity and syntax – from the positions of stars within our galaxy (and billions of others) to the arrangement of atoms in a single grain of sand. Within living systems, most of this information is ignored – so the question is not “where did the information come from” (unless we wish to talk cosmology – a very different subject) but rather “how does nature create systems that focus on some of this natural information?” Put another way, the challenge for understanding the origin of genetic systems is to find how natural processes can simplify a large amount of thermodynamic information into a syntax that displays only the disciplined chemical semantics of a self-replicator.

There it is: the crux of his argument: The universe has plenty of information, so he asserts that evolution just transfers this existing information into DNA. The proof is missing! We’ve yet to hear from Freeland:

  1. How evolution originated new information (the title of his article)
  2. The mechanism by which the universe can convert the “thermodynamic information” into biological information to be stored in DNA. An analogy: If we think of the energy stored in gasoline as the “thermodynamic information” stored in the universe, what’s missing is the internal combustion engine & drivetrain to get that energy transferred to the wheels (DNA) to make the car move. Even if we grant evolution to be the drivetrain (which I do not), conversion of the volatile energy from gasoline must be released, harnessed, and meticulously converted to the drivetrain to preserve the integrity of the energy (data)

Recent findings are also starting to make sense of why natural selection created this particular alphabet of building blocks

This is the fallacy of reification. Natural selection is a description of what happens in nature when it is observed that the diseased, least fit, and injured are removed from the gene pool. We can think of natural selection as ‘quality control’. The way quality control in a car factory works is that this department analyzes the cars coming off the factory line to make sure that it is “fit” for the environment to accomplish its purpose. If natural selection (quality control) determines it to be unfit, that car (organism) and it’s internal assembly instructions (DNA) are destroyed. So while I’m sure Freeland understands natural selection, he’s made a serious mistake by granting to natural selection the power to create. Freeland did have a citation (to his own article for a different publication) for this particular quote, and when we analyze this article, his problems are compounded with more fallacies

We found that evolution’s choice outperforms random alternative selections for some simple, predictable criteria. This in turn gives us deeper insight into the relative roles of chance versus predictability in the emergence and evolution of life on our planet

His reification fallacies continue as evolution has now been granted powers of choice by Freeland. From Freeland’s writings we begin to get the feeling that he believes the cosmos to be alive in order to select informational alphabets, store that information, and then transmit it to biological machines.

DNA is made by complex, genetically encoded protein enzymes without a ribozyme in sight. The individual building-blocks of DNA (deoxynucleotides) are made by taking and modifying a nucleotide of RNA. Again, all this is exactly what we would expect if DNA evolved from RNA

Freeland’s article is from 2013, so it’s likely that he’s not up-to-date with the refutation of the RNA world hypothesis. Maybe in his newer papers, he has been made aware and wouldn’t make that argument. This short video is highly informative for showing why the RNA evolution theory should be discarded and no longer used by evolutionists

A related suggestion is that current evolutionary theory cannot explain how natural processes could produce a genetic information system in the first place. I agree that we are far from a full understanding

Honesty is commendable, but your paper is not persuasive in telling us how evolution originated all of the information in biological life from LUCA to humans. Freeland actually overstates his case that there is even a limited understanding. His claims are not demonstrable lest he would have done it

I agree with Dawkins (and Darwin) that from a human standpoint, the suffering and death implicit to natural selection form questions for my faith

The Bible provides the answers that Freeland and other old earthers are unable to resolve. God created a “very good” universe (Genesis 1:31) with no death, suffering, predation or thorns. But because of the sin of mankind (Genesis 3), the curse of sin (corruption, death, suffering, predation & thorns) fell upon the whole universe (Romans 8:19-23). Our faith is strengthened not by trusting in the modern academic paradigm and tits lab-coat-wearing scientists. Our faith is strengthened by reading God’s word and trusting what He said. We can trust what God revealed about the past, so we can trust what He has revealed about the future. You want to know why evolution is not true? Because it is in conflict with what God has revealed in his word. But as you can also see through the analysis of this article and any other evolutionary article, the evidence is lacking

Calling the Bluff 2.0

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In yesterday’s post, I discussed several ways to expose the fallacies that God-deniers sometimes use to keep from being exposed when they claim:

“being an atheist simply means that there’s not sufficient evidence for your sky daddy“

It’s not uncommon for them to try to bluster their way to an online argument victory. So listen to their claims and hold them to account for their assertions. When they have to “show their cards”, it’s unsuited 3, 5, 6, 9 and an Uno card. Now sometimes, the God-denier will off an assertion something a little more outrageous like:

“There’s absolutely no evidence for your sky daddy” – AggregateOfInternetAtheists

Let’s look at the serious problems with this incomprehensively lazy assertion:

  1. God-deniers have no slot in their epistemology for absolutes. For God-deniers, in a cosmos made only of matter, there are no absolutes – there’s only particles and aggregations of particles
  2. Those who deny God cannot account for the preconditions necessary for the concept of evidence.
  3. Is this atheist aware of ALL evidence in the cosmos such that she could assert that “there’s no evidence for God”? The honest atheist would have to admit that they are not privy to all evidence in the cosmos. Conversely, God IS privy to all knowledge/evidence in the universe and He has revealed some of that evidence so that Christians can be certain of those things
  4. Now here’s the really important point: What does evidence for God look like? For someone to say “There’s no evidence for a cobra” – they would have to know what a cobra is like. How would you describe a cobra so that you could definitively say “There’s no evidence for a cobra.” In the same way, for someone to declare “There’s no evidence for God” they would have to know what evidence for God looks like. Press the atheist on this because they are bluffing. As soon as they realize that they cannot sufficiently formulate what evidence for God is like, their bluff is blown.

Don’t be afraid to call the God-denier’s bluff. They are not holding any good cards, and by God’s amazing grace Christians most definitely are. Call their bluff, but do so with gentleness and respect

Be sure to check out the links (blue text) that are saturated throughout this post as most of the “leg-work” was completed by people much smarter than me…for whose work I am very grateful!

Calling the Bluff 1.0

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“I’ll raise it $5000“

Those around the table exchange approving glances with the thought: “He must be holding the 2 diamonds needed to complete that flush.”

He sounds assured of himself to add 5 large to the pot, but I’m skeptical…first, because I’VE got two consecutive diamonds to complete the straight flush, and secondly he claims to be an atheist. I think he’s bluffing, and I’m going to call him on it

“Wait just a cotton-pickin’ minute! What does being an atheist have to do with poker?”

It’s an analogy. Bear with me.

This analogy sounds very much like dozens of conversations I’ve had with professing atheists:

  • ApoloJedi: “As an atheist, how do you know that there’s no God?”
  • God-Denier: “That’s NOT what atheist means!!!”
  • ApoloJedi: “What do you think atheist means?”
  • God-Denier: (smuggly) “It simply means that there’s not sufficient evidence for your sky daddy” (I raise $5000)
  • ApoloJedi: (Hints at calling bluff) “What kind of evidence would you consider sufficient evidence?”
  • God-Denier: (Less certain) “Well…if your sky daddy were real, she would know what evidence would be enough to convince me“

Before we work on calling the bluff of this generic and common God-denier, let’s discuss a couple of things:

  1. He makes a definitive knowledge claim for which he is responsible: “there’s not sufficient evidence”. This can also take the form “I don’t believe in your God because there is a lack of evidence”, but it is still a definitive knowledge claim for which he must provide justification. It’s likely that God-denier is only minimally familiar with the overwhelming case for God’s existence. And it is assured that the God-denier is completely unfamiliar with the Transcendental necessity of God’s existence for knowledge, morality, and induction. In our analogy, Christians hold the unbeatable royal flush
  2. When the apologist pushes back a little and asks the very reasonable question “What is sufficient evidence?” the god-denying interlocutor will almost ALWAYS deflect the question fallaciously by moving the goal-post: “God knows what would convince me, and since I’m not convinced there’s a God, then He must not have shown me enough evidence.” The form of the question that the apologist asks can also be “By what standard do you determine something to be sufficient?”

Unfortunately, the God-denier has derailed the conversation with his fallacious answer, and the intrepid apologist can “call the God-denier’s bluff” by holding the interlocutor to their claims: “What is sufficient evidence?” AND “How do you know the evidence is insufficient? Do you have access to ALL evidence? How do you account for evidence at all in your worldview?“

Their bluff is multi-layered and we can call their bluff by pointing out the following (what follows is both the calling of the bluff and the answer to the question above about what does this have to do with the bluffer being an atheist):

  1. The atheist has a worldview that cannot account for knowledge. They are epistemically unconscious. The God-denier has no path to knowledge
  2. They have not analyzed ALL evidence, nor do they plan to, nor can they view evidence as anything more than provisional/contingent (because of their worldview as shown in item 1 above)
  3. Even if they could possibly have access to all evidence (which would make them the omniscience God), they have arbitrarily declared that the provisional evidence to which they do have access is “insufficient”. When the apologist presses them for the standard by which they determine sufficiency, the God-denier is exposed and must argue fallaciously since they cannot account for transcendent standards.
  4. It is irrational to demand laboratory evidence of the transcendent Creator.
  5. Lastly, God HAS provided sufficient evidence for the judgment of all humans. Romans 1:18-20 tells us “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” ALL evidence (because it is upheld and sustained by God’s mighty power (see Col 1:16)) is evidence for God’s existence

Don’t be afraid to call the God-denier’s bluff. They are not holding any good cards, and by God’s amazing grace Christians most definitely are. Call their bluff, but do so with gentleness and respect

Be sure to check out the links (blue text) that are saturated throughout this post as most of the “leg-work” was completed by people much smarter than me…for whose work I am very grateful!

It is Irrational to Demand Evidence For God

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Have you ever heard someone say:

  • “There is absolutely no evidence for God.”
  • “If there were evidence for God, I would believe.”
  • “If God were real, he would show me evidence of his existence”

I disagree with all of these statements for multiple reasons that I will point out below, but as often as they come up, I think it’s worth a little push-back to see if the claims can withstand a little scrutiny. Let’s address the claims to see why it is a category error to demand evidence for God.

  1. To evaluate evidence one must be able to account for the preconditions necessary for evaluation. Only the Christian worldview provides these necessary preconditions. Without being able to justify the following 4 absolutes within your worldview, it is a category error to make one of the above claims.
    1. Absolute Truth – If one hopes to evaluate evidence, they must be able to compare it to what is actually true. If there is not a truth anchor, one’s arbitrary truth claims will ultimately lead to an infinite regress or be internally inconsistent (Self-defeating).
    2. Laws of Logic – Evaluating evidence requires the existence of invariant, universal, abstract absolutes. Since God is unchanging, rational, and transcendent, He provides the necessary foundation for laws of logic.
    3. Morality – To honestly transmit observed results, one has to assume invariable honest transmission. At the very least you have to have faith in those transmitting conclusions that the empiricist is unbiased.
    4. Uniformity of nature – To expect nature to be consistent requires assumptions that are inconsistent with a universe that is in a constant state of flux. Justification for unchanging natural laws that bind nature to uniformity requires abstract assumptions that can only be justified by the Absolute Source of uniformity upholding his creation.
  2. Everyone interprets evidence according to their worldview or epistemology. So, it logically follows that evidence cannot sway someone from changing worldviews from say naturalism to Christianity. Imagine an enlightened character in a video game saying, “There’s no game designer or there would be evidence. Game designer theory is a crutch for simple-minded bots who can’t grasp the reality that we are alone on this server. Their pre-Y2K thinking might be good for classic games like Galaga, but today’s games are driven by real scientific thinking not mysterious game-designers in some paradise-like Silicon Valley.” Any effort (short of actually entering the game Himself) by an external game designer to input new elements into the game, the ‘enlightened’ character could say that is part of the game and no game designer is needed to explain it.
  3. Asking for natural evidence of the supernatural is irrational. This is related to item 2 above, because no matter what supernatural evidence is presented, someone who maintains a naturalistic worldview will always exclude supernatural causes. The excuse could be as simple as hallucination from bad mushroom pizza or as complicated as master-level illusion (David Blaine, David Copperfield…) In a recent debate, I asked my opponent what evidence could convince them of the supernatural, and he said, “Well, if someone were dead for a few days and then came back to life, I’d have to believe.” To which I responded, you mean like what Jesus did? My opponent remains unconvinced by the evidence.
  4. Most of the time, a person who claims that there is no evidence for God is a naturalist. The high priests of the naturalists claim “We are literally star dust on a speck of a speck of a speck in a blind, pitiless, indifferent universe.” What does a speck of stardust care about evidence/truth/ANYTHING?
  5. This point refers specifically to the 3rd claim from above “If God were real, he would show me evidence of his existence”. It is deplorable hubris of infinite proportion for any created being to expect the Almighty Creator to be subject to their petty whims. For a person to cry out, “I don’t like the revelations and confirmations that God has given. I want Him to do what I want…right now!” is dangerous audacity. It would be similar to a drug dealer in Sri Lanka shrieking “If The Pope doesn’t come sing at my birthday party, he’s not really the Bishop of Rome.” The Pope’s authority and office are not in question because of the insignificant droning of a foreign criminal.

For all of those reasons and probably many more, the person who claims that there is no evidence for God is making a category error.

So, what is the evidence for God? Everything! I covered the evidence for God in a previous post.

God revealed Himself in his creation, in his Word, and by becoming a man: Jesus!

Jesus claimed that extraordinary evidence (even someone rising from the dead) is insufficient to convince someone of God’s existence (See Luke 16 below). If you do not start with the Creator (because of his revelation through creation/Bible/Jesus) you will not be convinced by evidence.

[Luk 16:19-31 ESV] 19 “There was a rich man who was clothed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. 20 And at his gate was laid a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, 21 who desired to be fed with what fell from the rich man’s table. Moreover, even the dogs came and licked his sores. 22 The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, 23 and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. 24 And he called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.’ 25 But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish. 26 And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.’ 27 And he said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house– 28 for I have five brothers–so that he may warn them, lest they also come into this place of torment.’ 29 But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them.’ 30 And he said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ 31 He said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.’“

Praise God that by His Amazing Grace, we can know forgiveness for our rebellion!!!