Day: July 18, 2017

Categories
Chemistry Creation/evolution Physics Science

The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe Itself? Part 8

Part 8 of my review of the book: “The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe Itself,” by Sean M. Carroll. Part 7 is found here.

Darwinian Evolution

In his next chapter “Evolution’s Bootstraps” Carroll starts by describing Richard Lenski’s experiment, which he labels as evolutionary biology. I am thinking that Carroll must have gotten the creationist message that evolution (in the goo-to-you sense) cannot be science because there is not one experimental demonstration of any process which changes microbes into molecular biologists. I say this because he states:

“Evolution is the idea that provides the bridge from abiogenesis to the grand pageant of life on Earth today. There is no question that it’s a science: evolutionary biologists formulate hypotheses, define likelihoods of different outcomes under competing hypotheses, and collect data to update our credences in those hypotheses.” (p.273, emphasis added)

In the first sentence he uses one definition for the word ‘evolution’ (the bridge from abiogenesis to the grand pageant of life) but in the following sentence it is different (mutations and selection though not explicitly stated). After the word ‘science’ what follows implies ‘evolution’ is observable in the lab, by carrying out experimental science. This is changing of the definition is called equivocation, and demonstrates very poor logic.

Very strangely Carroll does not see the point he makes himself in terms of the weakness of equivocating on the meaning of the word evolution when he admits that chemists and physicists have an advantage over evolutionary biologists because they can perform repeated experiments in their labs. The latter defines experimental science but nowhere in his statement (above) does he indicate that the evolutionary biologist carries out an experiment that “provides the bridge from abiogenesis to the grand pageant of life”.

The data collecting and formulating of hypotheses is in relation to what they believe happened in the past. At best this is historical science, a type of forensic science that tries to unravel the sequence of unseen past events. But experimental science or operational science, which is the usual definition used for science, depends on repeatable experiments to test hypotheses. This the evolutionary biologist cannot do and he admits it.

“It would be very hard to set up a laboratory experiment to see Darwinian evolution in action, just as it would be hard to create a new universe.” (p.273) (emphasis added)

Nearly correct, but not quite! It would be not “hard” but impossible. But like all evolutionists, he then equivocates at this point saying:

“But it’s not impossible. (At least for evolution: we still don’t know how to create new universes.)” (p.273)

Continue reading “The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe Itself? Part 8”
Categories
Biblical doctrines Christianity Roman Catholic Church The Papacy

Pope warns against direct personal relationship with Jesus Christ

Watch the following embedded video of part of the pope’s speech and read the transcript on a Vatican website. The content of the pope’s speech is irrefutable. There it is written what he said to a general audience in Peter’s Square on Wednesday, 25 June 2014. Here is one excerpt:.

“There are those who believe they can maintain a personal, direct and immediate relationship with Jesus Christ outside the communion and the mediation of the Church. These are dangerous and harmful temptations.”.

Of course by ‘church’ Francis means the Roman Catholic Church, but the true church are all those who are born-again regenerate Christians.

Pope Francis told a crowd of 33,000 in Rome that ‘a personal relationship with Jesus Christ’ must be avoided at all costs.

Pope Francis on camera warning against “having a personal relationship with Jesus” as “dangerous and harmful”. .

In the transcript Francis also says that we should

“… ask the Lord, through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, Mother of the Church, for the grace never to fall into the temptation of thinking we can make it without the others, that we can get along without the Church, that we can save ourselves on our own, of being Christians from the laboratory.”

This is Catholic works doctrine and not salvation by grace through the atonement that our Lord Jesus Christ made for all those who trust in Him. There is no grace through Christ’s earthly mother. Only through the Lord Jesus Christ.

But God commends His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Romans 5:8

There is nothing you can do to save yourself. No amount of praying to Mary as Queen of Heaven will do. Only the Lord Jesus Christ can save you.

For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. Ephesians 2:8,9

And he continues with:

“On the contrary, you cannot love God without loving your brothers, you cannot love God outside of the Church; you cannot be in communion with God without being so in the Church, and we cannot be good Christians if we are not together with those who seek to follow the Lord Jesus, as one single people, one single body, and this is the Church.”

But thank God you don’t need to belong to any organisation, especially the Roman Catholic Church. Christ can and does save all those who turn to Him, those who repent of their sins and put their trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and Him alone, not the papacy, the RCC or any church for that matter.