Where is the proof? He is using hearsay evidence. I would not consider this good evidence. He even admits there are no documents in support of this claims.

In another part of the book Marshall quotes a few scientists saying that it would be practically impossible for DNA to just begin to assemble itself (if memory serves I think this is what was being discussed). Considering there are just as many scientists who would disagree and state some hypothetical scenarios [at the website Science Daily they sometimes have articles detailing recent findings about this subject] in which this could take place, it’s clear that this issue is not as open and shut as Marshall makes it appear.

Kenneth Foshee

Yes, I found the Aikman volume to be a good book. There are others as well that could be recommended.

As to your concern about “actual evidence,” well we have to be careful here. There are in fact different kinds of evidence, as there are varieties of proof. One type of evidence which may be appropriate in one area may not at all be appropriate in another.

For example, the sort of evidence needed in a court of law may not at all be the sort of evidence needed in another situation. The same with the notion of “proof”. Again, a court of law cannot demand absolute proof (very few things in life can be proven absolutely), but will ask for “the preponderance of the evidence,” or will seek to make “a reasonable case”, etc.

And different fields will require different sorts of investigations. Historical proofs will differ from scientific proofs, and so on. Indeed, different types of reasoning will lead to different degrees of certainty. While deductive reasoning offers absolute proof (as in mathematical or geometrical proofs), inductive reasoning offers only a high degree of certainty (as in scientific proofs).

So it partly depends on what is being discussed and investigated, and what sort of evidence will qualify as being supportive or otherwise.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

I did not find one argument that Marshall made to be persuasive and I found that two of the worst chapters were the two in which he attempted [but failed miserably] to show that Richard Dawkins does not want parents to teach their kids religion and that atheism was responsible for communism, and evolution responsible for Nazism.

There are many facts which handily refute his book.

Personally, I liked David Aikman’s, The Delusion of Disbelief, better. While his arguments were bad (though not as bad as Marshall’s) Aikman’s book was much better written and Aikman utilized various “facts” (though I would use this term very loosely) to prove his points, while Marshall insisted on using “arguments from authority” continuously, but rarely gave any actual evidence for his claims.

Kenneth Foshee, USA

Organisations

Breakpoint
www.pfm.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=BreakPoint1
Christian Worldview Network
www.christianworldviewnetwork.com/
Leadership U
www.leaderu.com/index.html
Probe Ministries
www.probe.org/
Stand to Reason
www.str.org/index.htm
Summit Ministries
www.summit.org/
Ravi Zacharias International Ministries
www.rzim.org/

Individuals

John Ankerberg
www.johnankerberg.com/
Francis Beckwith
homepage.mac.com/francis.beckwith/Menu3.html
J. Budziszewski
www.origins.org/pjohnson/pjohnson.html
William Lane Craig
www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/index.html
Doug Groothuis
www.gospelcom.net/ivpress/groothuis/doug/
Philip Johnson
www.origins.org/pjohnson/pjohnson.html
J.P. Moreland
www.afterall.net/citizens/moreland/

Regards
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

This website with all its contents is great. Thanks to all for contributing. Here is a contribution I would like to make.

I think back to my school days and the science class being taught ‘evolution’ and how it important it was because of the answers it provided for the origins of life. You don’t need a PhD to understand the effect it had on my ‘worldview’.

Jump forward many years to about 2006. I unknowingly started a journey that to this day I am still somewhat shocked and amazed to have begun. It all started with me finding myself reading an article about the issue of Macro Evolution and the problems with the Darwinian model.

It was a most interesting read in itself but it caused me to seek from others what their understanding of evolution was, whether their worldview could be labelled loosely as atheistic, theistic or some variant of and to what extent did they think evolution was a factor in that worldview.

I started to read more widely than ever before and found myself exploring all manner of literature in the areas of – origins of life theory, evolution (in all its forms) cosmology, astrophysics and then naturally to the issue of science, religion and philosophy.

In short, my own investigation has caused me to defect from naturalism. I no longer maintain my ‘Darwinian worldview’. Somewhat ironic in the face of much of the claims made in discussions on religion and science. But to do so I concede would take a lot of ‘blind faith’ on my part. I’ve read about the ‘God of the Gaps’ theory, but the term ‘Evolution of the Gaps’ seems quite sensible.

When I looked at the body of evidence/data that I had collected on the origins of life, nature of man, logic, aesthetics, mind, laws of physic and mathematics (to name a few) and compared contrasting worldviews, I couldn’t get away from the Judaeo-Christian worldview being the most cogent of arguments. It took some getting used to.

I’ve become very interested in the swathe of books published by such atheistic authors as Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris etc and theistic authors such as Mcgrath, D’souza, Craig etc. I’m sure most would be aware that there is a very healthy debating scene that occurs mainly in university campuses across North America between many of these authors. They are very entertaining but unfortunately due to time constraints there tends to be the lack emphasis that gets placed on properly defining buzz words like – ‘faith’, ‘logic’, ‘reason’ and ‘religion’.

A great resource I stumbled upon is the work of www.apologetics.com, whose stated mission to challenge ‘believers to think, and thinkers to believe’. Check out the podcasts of their radio show that are available from the website and from itunes.

A new topic is discussed each week and people call in and provide their views which are also discussed. These guys are astute, well educated apologists who are able to articulate their views on a broad range of issues relevant to the society in which we live.

Lee Strobel’s books – The Case for a Creator, The Case for Chris and The Case for Faith provided a great source of information and the references included provided for some great reading worth of any thorough investigation.

I also recommend reasons.org (all about science) and tothesource.org/ for some interesting reading.

As a famous man once said “The truth is much more interesting”, how right he was.

Regards

Tim Jones

But with all due respect, each new post from you shows how far out of your depth you are, or how far you are willing to distort the truth to push your agenda. Darwin in fact said quite a lot about people in his various writings, which need to be taken as a whole. For example, in The Descent of Man he made it clear how his theory directly applied to humans. He said, “the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man”. He also clearly believed in the racial superiority of the white Europeans over other races, something Hitler found to be quite helpful. Darwin said that sometime soon, “the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world”. This is eugenics and racism pure and simple, very handily put to use by the Nazis.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

Since the debate has now turned to your appeal to “reason” (you said: “And anyone capable of the most basic level of reasoning should be able to tell him what’s wrong with killing people”), I now ask you to be consistent with yourself and tell me how the stories about how language evolved satisfy any standard “reasoning” test (they certainly don’t pass my standard). I guess they can’t because there is no such thing as standardised reasoning. One person’s “reasoning” could be another’s foolishness. And yet you seem to put your faith in human reason to solve moral problems (eg why serial murder is wrong, or why Hitler and Stalin’s actions were unreasonable).

I have to ask you (to paraphrase C.S. Lewis) – if the thoughts that occur in your mind (or should I say brain, because what is a “mind” in the evolutionary framework, really?) are just the result of a long series of evolutionary accidents (and the same applies for me), why should we even try to reason with each other? On what basis can you justify the use of reasoning to solve moral problems or conduct debates when there is no basis (in the evolutionary framework) to even trust in such reason, let alone understand how it is possible that it exists?

I am not trying to throw reasoning out the window here – of course I believe that the human ability to reason with the mind is amazing. But I also know that human reasoning is fallible. My understanding of this is consistent with my belief that we were created by God. He created humans with the ability to reason, and also the freedom to choose their own actions. It is this freedom which opened the door for the first humans to sin – the consequences of which was a fallen creation (if things were left perfect, then it would not be possible for us to be punished with death). And that is where the fallibility comes in.

But where is the consistency in your position here? Somehow you have to justify that human reasoning just happened by evolutionary accident while at the same time using such accidental “reasoning” in your justification. It doesn’t sound reasonable to me. Please correct me if I’m wrong about what you think here, I certainly don’t mean to put up a straw man to knock down – but if I am wrong, I would be very interested to know what the consistent and reasoned response would be.

Regards,
Mathew Markey

Do not forget that “race” as used by Darwin, and naturalists of his time, meant distinct populations within species. In fact, The Origin of Species hardly mentions humans at all.

Sammy Jankis, London UK

But all the tyrants thought they were being perfectly reasonable in their mass slaughters. Indeed, Hitler’s Final Solution was perfectly logical and reasonable given his worldview. The ideological road to the Holocaust came fairly directly from Darwin via Nietzsche. Do not forget the subtitle of Darwin’s classic: “The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”. The Nazi experiment was fully reasonable in view of such thinking. It made perfect sense and most educated Germans at the time agreed with the logic of it all.

Sorry, but reason alone will not cut it. Who decides who is reasonable and who isn’t? You? 51 per cent of the population? Scientists? Lenin and Stalin thought they were being perfectly reasonable as well. Your secularism simply leaves your feet firmly planted in mid-air when it comes to morality. Without an absolute, universal and unchanging basis for ethics, there is no way to argue that Hitler’s ethics were inferior to Mother Teresa’s.

No one is arguing that we should be un-reasonable when it comes to ethical reflection. But reason alone is clearly not enough. Unless there is an objective standard of morality, we are simply left with moral subjectivism and relativism.

And let me call you bluff on “ancient religious texts”. Are you now arguing that simply because something has been around for a long time that it is no longer of any value? And why are you assuming that something new is somehow superior to something that is older? That is simply chronological snobbery, and has nothing to do with rational debate.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch