Locarb (The Zen of Ken)

I hate propaganda. I hate it when it come from the political right and I hate it when it comes from the political left. I hate propaganda. I hate it when it comes from high schools and I hate it when it comes from universities. I hate propaganda. I hate it when it comes from works of history and I hate it when it comes from science.

Whether we like it or not, however, we are all being propagandized on a regular basis and the facts we are fed to support a given point of propaganda are not always true nor do they always even exist. For instance, does ontogeny recapitulate phylogeny? We know now that it absolutely does not but you will see this still being taught in every high school level biology text in North America. It isn't true. Not only is it known that it isn't true it is known that the creator of this evolutionist theory fudged his data. But it is still taught. It makes very good propaganda and the chart looks good.

If the obscure works of Gregor Mendel on genetics had been known to Charles Darwin it is unlikely Origin of the Species with all its implications would ever have been written. Mendel's theories have been confirmed as fact and are much more elegant than Darwin's. Mendel's works on the lowly pea were not recognized until the 20th century by which time Darwin's theory had momentum behind it and with momentum careers were built and money was made. People had a vested interest in Darwin.

We do not like to think that is how science works but it is exactly how it works. Theories are taught long after they have outlived their usefulness because money and prestige is at stake. Someone whose entire career and reputation has been based on teaching and writing about the migration of Native Americans is going to resist new evidence and new theories with all the power at his disposal. It is sad and it is frightening but this is how science works. It is commonly taught that it was religion and religion alone that led to the persecution of Nicolaus Copernicus and his heliocentric cosmology. Nothing could be further from the truth. It was the power of the entrenched theory of the day that led to his persecution.

Since Darwin issued his treatise on evolution the theory was that time times chance equalled life. That is, given enough time life would self-arise by chance alone. This was the cornerstone of biology right up until modern times and you will still hear it promoted by the masses and even by some biologists themselves. It has been abandoned by most of science, however, because it just doesn't work. When science believed in an infinite universe then time x chance = life was a valid model but when the Big Bang cosmology was shown to be indisputable there was simply not enough time for life to have arisen in the universe by chance alone. Science began looking elsewhere for an explanation for bio genesis, the theory of how life first arose.

The newer leading candidates have been self-replication and RNA World as they are termed. As science turned their lenses on these theories they began to discover major problems with these as well. While many scientists are still working on these two areas of study most have begun to realize that they are flawed and cannot have been the originators of life.

Scientists are now turning to bubble or multi-verse theory in order to rehabilitate the time x chance theory.

As cosmologists began to look at the universe around us they began to discover that the universe is very, very, very, very finely tuned towards life. I do not want to bore people reading this review with a lesson in science but essentially what cosmologists have discovered is that the odds of our universe beings as finely tuned towards life is less than the odds of life having originated by chance. In other words, neither could have originated by chance alone.

This discovery of the finely tuned universe has led to a discordance within science with more and more cosmologists arguing for a design principal lying behind or outside our universe while evolutionary biologists continue to insist that life and the universe arose and organize in a completely undesigned basis that just has the appearance of design.

In an attempt to rule out a designer, evolutionists and cosmologists now propose the 'multi-verse' The propose that there are not just one universe but an infinite number of them and in an infinite number of universes one of them would be so finely tuned that life could arise in it not only could but would be likely to happen by chance alone.

In promoting the multi-verse theory science creates two major problems for itself. Firstly, there is no such thing as an infinite number set. The 'infinite' is simply a concept we use but is not something that could actually exist. Everything is finite. Secondly, in proposing the multi-verse science has proposed something that can never be proved and is therefore unfalsifiable. In other words, their muli-verse model is by definition as unscientific as the concept of God or Intelligent Design. Science has begun to commit the same 'sins' as the theologians they condemn.

We turn now to Information Theory, a new branch of science used in codes and computers. Information Theory is proving to be increasingly exact and one of its inviolable is that information cannot self organize. In other words, information must come from information. It cannot and will not self arise. In other words, the pebbles on a beach are not suddenly going to form themselves into a sentence that begins "Four score and seven years ago ..." If one were to see that on a beach one is correct in assuming an outside intelligence formed that sentence.

Until a very few short years ago the cell was not understood. Most scientists saw the cell as a mere lump of lifeless protoplasm. Now we know the cell to be an immensely complicated factory with hundreds of protein machines that build, repair, and sustain that cell. The 'lump of protoplasm' has turned out to be one of the most complicated things in the entire universe and the 'factory' within each and every cell is driven by the information coded into DNA which is probably the most complicated thing in the universe. Information theory alone proves that this code would not self-arise.

I hate propaganda. I hate it when people twist in my head to make me believe what theywant me to believe and frankly, people, all too often science does this.

Stephen Meyer's book on the cell and intelligent design is a tour de force, a romp through science, a tour through what we know and what we merely guess at or accept by faith and it turns out that evolution requires as much faith, perhaps more, than an intelligent designer.

True ignorance is rejection before investigation.

One year ago I was an ardent supporter of the standard evolutionary model. I set out on a course of study to gain as much information about evolution as I possibly could so I could defend it against any naysayer. who I considered to be daft.

A funny thing happened along the way. After literally hundreds and hundreds of ours of study I discovered that much of evolutionary theory is bogus, without merit, is sheer propaganda and must be accepted on faith.

Has Stephen Meyer proven the case for Intelligent Design? I don't know. I am not 100% convinced. I am leaning towards it but I need more information.

What I do know with absolute certainty, however, is this. Evolution is in disarray and it most certainly has not proven its case for anything more than micro-evolution as discovered before Darwin by Mendel. As an origin of life theory evolution has most certainly not met its obligation and is currently not anything more than a faith based model. Richard Dawkins is no more than a shrill.

Meyer's book is 612 dense pages. It is not an easy read. No skimming can be done here and a certain level of science is needed to get through this book but it is worth all the sweat and hard work.