Are Humans Just Biologically Advanced Animals?

Back on the twenty-second of this month, when I wrote "Is Religion a Curse? My Personal Thoughts on the Moral Implications of Jesus-God and No-God," I suggested that I would title what is now this blog post "David Barash Makes Me Mad: Here Me Roar." My plan was for it to be satirical, because I don't believe people really do make others mad, they just do things which people choose to get mad at. But as you will know if you have been following my blog, I argue that evolution takes away free will, so technically, David Barash would have been made by his physical composition to do something which apparently causes my physical composition to make me feel angry, if his worldview is true. Or however determinism is supposed to work.

I changed my mind because I think pointing out someone in a way which seems to belittle and condescend, even though you have to read that into the title (as reasonable as it is) and this is the intellectual business where if you attempt to refute someone's specific article of course they will get pointed out. But that should only be secondary and happen if you can't bypass it. Showing contempt for a person will not prove your side. Instead, it is best to just focus on their ideas.

So here is my source which has arguments and claims I attempt to refute: God, Darwin, and My College Biology Class by evolutionary biologist and psychology professor David P. Barash.

Science Vs. Religion; or, Science in Contradistinction to Religion
The whole reason Barash gives "The Talk" is because, supposedly, biology has intellectually overpowered religion, what with how it explains everything from our creation to the existence of pain and suffering in the world.

But science answers how, and religion answers why. So why scientists can tell us all they want about how we got here, it is still possible that there is a God (as he does sort of concede in his final paragraph with, "God hasn't necessarily struck out.") But he did say that evolution has "demolished" rational belief in an Omnipotent, Omni-benevolent God. But if God did indeed use evolution, how does he know that God doesn't have a plan for what he has allowed to happen?

(Note: I do not hold at all the view that God is not detectable in science)

Are all Biologists Evolutionists?

Barash seemed to purport a proud, authoritarian approach in his article. "[N]o biologist... can help being 'evolutionary' ... It's irresponsible to teach biology without evolution ... Living things are indeed wonderfully complex, but altogether within the range of a statistically powerful, entirely mechanical phenomenon."

One can find an argument I have written on my old website I made for school. The first two parts have almost all the evidence. But biology is not my strong suit, so fortunately for me, right now I can just fight fire with fire.

It's interesting when someone attempts to ignore people who argue for an intelligent creator (Intelligent Design doesn't assume the identity of the Designer) as biased. But the only sure thing when that happens is that they are being biased. All the scientists who believe in God that I have read have their names followed by either M.D. or Ph. D. And both atheists and theists are humans. Both can be biased. So one must read and consider the side of Intelligent Design. 

World's leading Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias said: "A lie that many have bought into is the Darwinian evolution theory. It has recently been articulated by a professor of biochemistry from Lehigh University. Michael Behe has powerfully demonstrated that meeting Darwin's own challenge of what it would take to falsify his theory comes from biochemistry. Behe's book, Darwin's Black Box, is a masterpiece. Richard Dawkins, the arch-Darwinist from Oxford, has angrily denounced Behe as 'intellectually lazy' and adjured him to 'go find an answer' to support the theory of evolution from within Behe's own discipline. One has to wonder where the lines of reason and unreason become blurred when intellectuals such as Dawkins defy the logic of scientific findings." (1)

Darwin's way to falsify macro-evolution is straight-forward:

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." (2)

Behe's argument is from irreducible complexity. Irreducible complex structures are organic machines which need all of their parts to work. He has several examples, for example the intracellular transport system (basically the cell), the cilium, and the immune system.

He would then talk about what scientific literature had been published to explain these systems. Usually, they are completely lacking, so sometimes he comes up with his own scenario. But one time, Russell Doolittle, a professor of biochemistry at the Center for Molecular Genetics, University of California, Sandiego, is the leading person regarding the evolution of the blood clotting cascade. He did hypothesize a scenario. But basically, he said a bunch of things just happened that way by chance without any reasonable cause, requiring "enormous amounts of luck needed to get the right gene pieces in the right place." (3) On pages 255-272, Behe gave responses to arguments made in the past ten years of his first publication, and shows how evolutionary biologists are "still speculating after all these years." 

In his book What Darwin Didn't Know: A Doctor Dissects the Theory of Evolution, M.D. Geoffrey Simmons asks the question, "Had Darwin written his theory today, would it have been published?" The reasonable answer is no. Simmons was taught in high school that evolution was a fact, and he did believe it. He was impressed with the completely scientific -- not religious -- appeal of Francis Hitching's The Neck of the Giraffe, William Dembski's No Free Lunch and Intelligent Design: The Bridge Between Science & Technology, and yes, also Darwin's Black Box. That, combined with his knowledge as a medical doctor of whole package phenomena (WPP), which is basically irreducible complexity for large systems, Simmons finally abandoned macro-evolutionary theory in place of Intelligent Design.

Douglas Axe, Ph. D., received his undergraduate at U.C. Berkely and doctoral work at Caltech, where he held postdoctoral and research scientist positions at the University of Cambridge, the Cambridge Medical Research Council Centre, and the Babraham Institute in Cambridge. His book Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life is Designed explains why and how he came to abandon macro-evolutionary thinking and in place became the director of Biologic Institute, a non-profit research organization created by the Discovery Institute.

None of these men are misinformed. None of them are "irresponsible" or "intellectually lazy" or "idiots." While they might be very wrong in their conclusions, they carry the power of authority with them like Darwinian biologists.

The Ethical Problem of Evil

David Barash bothered to point out two answers to the "problem of pain:" true free will must allow the possibility to suffer, and Job says we are so insignificant we shouldn't ask.

To brush over the theist's response to why God would allow evil to happen is to underestimate their answers. I have given a more detailed and cumulative argument in "The Matter of an All-Loving God... and EVIL."

The first question to be asked is, "Where does someone get the justification to talk about ethics?" Barash clearly considers us as just animals, and since when was it unethical for cheetahs to chase down their prey and viciously eat them? Science tells us how the world is, not how it ought to be. Without God (a knowledgeable Mind), there can be no underlying plan and guide for right or wrong, so the non-theist must recognize that under their worldview they cannot call anything evil.

Both Randy Alcorn and Ravi Zacharias, two intellectual giants on reconciling belief in God with evil, cite how it is okay to question why God would allow evil, such as how the Prophets do in God's book, for example Habakkuk 1:3 "Why do you make me look at injustice? Why do you tolerate wrongdoing? Destruction and violence are before me; there is strife, and conflict abounds."

Ravi Zacharias explains that the story of Job gives not one, but three answers to pain(5). First, God never said He is so much greater than humans are that we can't ask. That may seem to be a reasonable interpretation, but obviously giving other reasons would immediately refute it. Instead, He just wanted to point out how He is God and we are not, and so even if we don't understand why something is happening, we should still trust Him. Then, after Job had been humbled, he said, "My ears have heard of you but now my eyes have seen you. Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes" (Job 42:5-6). When Job finally surrendered to God, the Almighty became his Comforter. Finally, Job earlier asked, "If a man dies, will he live again?" Yet later, his answer was clear:

"I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see Him with my own eyes -- I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!" (Job 19:25-27)

God is clear: we only see this life. He sees both the temporary and the eternal. God can resurrect life destroyed where we see the end of hope.

Ravi Zacharias tells the story of the professor of philosophy at the University of St. Louis Eleonore Stump telling the story (I know, I know, that sounds funny) of Philip Hallie telling his story as described in his book Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed(6). Philip Hallie intensely studied the horrors of the Third Reich, which led to the hardening of his heart to evil. Yet, he one day found himself crying, because of the work of the civilians of a small french village, Le Chambon. "Undaunted by the cruelty around them, the Chambonnais repeatedly risked their own lives to rescue those most directly under the Nazi scourge and to alleviate their suffering."

Hallie described his thoughts and discoveries this way:

"We are living in a time, perhaps like every other time, when there are many who, in the words of the prophet Amos, 'turn judgement to wormwood.' Many are not content to live with the simplicities of the prophet of the ethical plumb line, Amos, when he says in the fifth chapter of his Book, 'Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the Lord, the God of Hosts, shall be with you.' ... We are afraid to be 'taken in,' afraid to be credulous, and we are not afraid of the darkness of unbelief about important matters. ...
"But perplexity is a luxury in which I cannot indulge ... For me, as for my family, there is the same kind of urgency as far as making ethical judgements is concerned as there were for the Chambonnais when they were making their ethical judgements upon the laws of the Vichy and the Nazis. ... For me the awareness of the standard of goodness is my awareness of God. I live with the same sentence in my mind that many of the victims of the concentration camps uttered as they walked to their deaths: 'Shema Israel, Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echod.' 'Hear O Isreal, the Lord your God[, the Lord] is one."

There are people who claim, "I just can't understand how anyone can believe in God when they look at all the pain and suffering in the world." And that is a reasonable thing to say. As a matter of fact, I am kind of in the same boat. I can't imagine being in anything like the horrors of the Holocaust. But since I do know that those closest to the worst kinds of evil can believe in Him, I can too.

Humans were Supernaturally Created with Their Consciousness and Reasoning 

I have explained this argument with more detail in this other blog post, although my reasoning by analogy here is completely new.

Barash said of the human race: "... we are perfectly good animals, natural as can be and indistinguishable from the rest of the world..." Richard Dawkins also made this claim about evolution: "The universe is nothing but a collection of atoms in motion, human beings are simply machines for propagating DNA, and the propagation of DNA is a self-sustaining process. It is every living object's sole reason for living." (7)

What Dawkins explained was called reductionism -- the belief that the mind can be reduced to the physical brain.

Analytical philosopher and great Christian apologist Paul Copan explains evolution's failure to cause our mind:

"Here's the problem, though: When we consult physics textbooks to understand what matter is, there's nothing psychological, subjective, or mental about matter. Matter might be described as having the properties of spatial location, spatial extension, weight, texture, color, shape, size, density, mass, or atomic or chemical composition. But what will always be missing in these textbooks describing matter is consciousness as a characteristic or property of matter. The assumption is that matter is different than [sic] mind. We're left wondering: how could matter produce mind? How could nonconscious material produce consciousness?

"The fact that we can't locate, weigh, or dye thoughts -- as we can physical objects -- reveals the inadequacy of a view identifying the physical with the mental/soulish -- or reducing the mind/soul to the physical. Brains just don't have the same properties that minds (or souls) have, and minds don't have the same properties brains do. Therefore, the mental can't be identical with the brain -- or even produced by the physical brain." (8)

The mind doesn't physically exist -- it is no thing, so technically speaking, naturally, when it comes to consciousness, atoms in motion have nothing to effect. Since our brain does affect our mind, and this can't be natural, it must be supernatural.

But there is another problem for reductionists. 

Douglas Axe cited: "Berkely psychology professor Alison Gopnik described the challenge this causes for teachers of evolution in a recent Wall Street Journal column. 'By elementary-school age,' she wrote, 'children start to invoke an ultimate God-like designer to explain the complexity of the world around them -- even children brought up as atheists.' In fact, Deborah Kelemen, a psychology professor at Boston University, found that even highly trained scientists are unable to fully rid themselves of the innate impression that there is purpose underlying the living world. According to her, 'Even though advanced scientific training can reduce acceptance of scientifically inaccurate teleological explanations, it cannot erase a tenacious early-emerging human tendency to find purpose in nature.'" (9)

Justin Barrett is a well-respected cognitive science of religion scholar, and editor of the Journal of Cognition and Culture. His book Why Would Anyone Believe in God? explains how through biological and environmental influences, we are made to believe in God/the supernatural, and atheism is actually not normal(10). Indeed, his research supports his conclusion that children are "intuitive theists" -- that very early on they have an inclination to believe in a "nonhuman superbeing" -- even before being taught such by religious people.

Barrett is also a Christian. But his religious affiliation does not negate his distinguished standing as a scientist, nor does atheism being not wired into the human brain prove anything. Actually, to make such an argument is called the genetic fallacy. My readings lead me to conclude that it is commonly known among experts that people do have a tendency toward believing in God. As a matter of fact, I learned about the genetic fallacy with the examples of saying "we obviously are driven by our hard-drive to believe in Him because He exists" or "since we are just wired to believe in God, that gets rid of reason to believe in Him (a potential argument for atheism)."

But anyway, my point.

"If there is no God, we are just molecules in motion, and we have no sense and no mind; we are just random firing of chemicals in our brain. If our minds are composed only of physical matter, then our thoughts are, as Doug Wilson wittily quipped in his debate with atheist Dan Barker, just 'brain gas.' ... If our minds are just the result of chemical reactions, then in the debate over pop cans, God's existence can rightly be settled by shaking the two soda pop cans simultaneously. Labeling one can 'atheism' and the other 'theism'; after shaking the cans, the one that fizzes the most wins the debate. If our minds are simply the fluctuations of proteins, neurotransmitters, and the other brain biochemicals, then an intellectual debate is equivalent to the chemical reactions that occur when one shakes up a couple of cans of soda." (11)

(I pointed out in my main blog post about this that, as Richard Dawkins said, brains and soda are made up of the same basic stuff: protons, electrons, and neutrons. My thinking doesn't equal a fizzing-over soda can, therefore, ladies and gentlemen, the absurdity of reductionism. But this is only further explaining the first problem. Below is the second.)

Reality + reality = reality, right? Sure, non-reasoning reality + non-reasoning reality = non-reasoning reality. But atheists say, with the majority of the world being theistic and atheism being practically unheard of in the ancient world, our reasoning processes have given us false output. To further illustrate, if a computer put together by chance said, "5 = 3,290,9ss,i90h, 8JHJL,;:9, [0," we couldn't blame it.

One can argue that that was because they didn't have science back then. They weren't enabled to be as knowledgeable as we are today. But that assumes that DNA somehow became reasonable, and just places the problem one step under our minds. The point is how DNA, as Richard Dawkins famously put it, "neither knows or cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music." My point is that it's unreasonable to say that reasoning was caused by a non-reasoning process. The unreasonable input is much more likely to give a false output than a true one, and to constantly keep it true at that. Reductionism undermines the ability to reason, and therefore is reasonably false.

Conclusion
The real reason I wrote this blog post was not to refute the views of David Barash. It was actually just to refute and question atheism. I had some resources not previously shared which would fit perfectly if I attempted to critique his article, and so decided to do this. I hope you found it intriguing. 

Please keep in mind that if you in turn wish to critique my arguments about the "problem of pain" and reductionism, read my last two cited blog posts first. To avoid those is to avoid major parts of my beliefs.

Keep in mind as you exit this tab, that you have a mind. And how without God, it doesn't make any sense. And therefore, how you are a very special creation. 

Citations:

1. Ravi Zacharias, Cries of the Heart: Bringing God Near When He Feels so Far (Thomas Nelson: Nashville, Tennessee. 2002), 221.
2. Darwin, On the Origin of Species: By Means of Natural Selection, ed. Thomas Crawford (Dover Thrift: New York, 2006), 119.
3. Micheal Behe, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (Free Press: 2006), 90-97.
4. Geoffrey Simmons, What Darwin Didn't Know: A Doctor Dissects the Theory of Evolution (Harvest House: Eugune, OR. 2004), 15-23.
5. Ravi Zacharias, Cries of the Heart: Bringing God Near When He Feels so Far (Thomas Nelson: Nashville, Tennessee. 2002), 77-87.
6. Ravi Zacharias, Jesus Among Other Gods: The Absolute Claims of the Christian Message (Thomas Nelson: Nashville, TN. 2000), 132-134. He cites Philip Hallie, Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed (Philadelpia: Harper & Row, 1979), 2, cited by Eleonore Stump in her essay "The Mirror of Evil" in Thomas V. Morris, ed., God and the Philosophers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 241-42.
7. Richard Dawkins, "Growing Up in the Universe" (lecture, Royal Institution Christmas lectures, London. 1991). Cited in Ravi Zacharias,  John Lennox, et al. Beyond Opinion: Living the Faith We Defend (Thomas Nelson: Nashville, TN. 2007), 116.

8. Paul Copan, How Do You Know You're Not Wrong? (Baker: Grand Rapids, MI. 2005), 100, 101.

9. Douglas Axe, Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition that Life is Designed (HarperOne: 2016), 19. He cites a now dead link to Alison Gopnik, "See Jane Evolve: Picture Books Explain Darwin," Mind and Matter, Wall Street Journal, April 18, 2014, http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304311204579505574046805070. Also, see Kelemen's quote in Art Jahnke, "The Natural Design Default: Why Even the Best-Trained Scientists Should Think Twice," Bostonia, Winter/Spring 2013, www.bu.edu/bostonia/winter-spring13/the-natural-design-default/.

10. Justin L. Barrett, Why Would Anyone Believe in God? (AltaMira Press: Walnut Creek, CA. 2004). Cited in Paul Copan, When God Goes to Starbucks: A Guide to Everyday Apologetics (Baker Books: Grand Rapids, MI. 2008), 72.
11. Micheal Robertson, God Does Exist (AuthorHouse: Bloomington, IN. 2006), 45. Cited in Zacharias et. al, Beyond Opinion, 171