Recently I listened to a program on the net, for the first time, at URC Learning. This program has two pastors arguing against Richard Dawkins' Ultimate Boeing 747 Gambit which was recently published in The God Delusion.

This program seemed like it would be rather interesting and it was for the first short while, but it turned into a real mess. I had actually started commenting on it the first time I heard it, and then they revised it. After they revised it, they asked me to comment again, so I did that. The program can be found here, however I'm not recommending that you actually listen to it. My rebuttal to their rebuttal is here:

Hi,

I listened to this program (Ultimate Boeing 747 Gambit Rebuttal) before you changed it, and I made a large number of comments about it. You have since changed it, and invited me to re-comment on it. I have adjusted my comments to fit the new format and to make things clearer.

I would like to say, however, that my previous comments were written during the first hearing of your broadcast and thus, they had a much different tone. I was really quite interested to hear the broadcast as I absolutely love to hear theological debate from both sides. I complimented your program and thought that it was starting out quite well. By the end of my comments, my opinion had changed quite heavily, and it made me quite upset as I was truly hoping to get a great discussion out of this. Unfortunately, I believe that you are lacking a large foundation that you require in order to discuss this subject with any authority. My comments now, have this tone throughout.

I've numbered my points so that I can refer to them later.

1. The UB747G refutes the UB747 argument directly. That argument is about "life originating on earth" and talks of the "probability" of that. That's all.

2. You state that Dawkins believes he has a "...better, what he thinks, even a more simple explanation for reality...". Immediately into the meat of your discussion, you've moved the argument from "life originating on earth" to "reality". The english language is a very powerful thing, and this simple difference makes a major change. You repeatedly do this throughout the talk. Dawkins is not trying to discuss "reality" or the answer to "life, the universe, and everything", nor what happened before the earth came into existence. No. He is refuting the UB747 argument which discusses "life" (i.e. living organisms -- not where space dust came from).

3. You have two arguments to refute UB747G.

   1. "Darwinian evolution by Natural Selection violates obvious logical principles and directly contradicts evidence."
   2. "The conclusions that the UB747G draws betray its own philosophical inconsistency."

4. You claim that one of the reasons that Dawkins has to "take on" the Creationists (ID advocates) is because of the "overwhelmingly clear evidence of design in the world around us".

5. Rather than ID vs. Chance, you state that Dawkins is trying to "force" the discussion to ID vs. Natural Selection. You also state that Natural Selection "... requires a logical contradiction. It's based upon a violation of the laws of logic".

6. You talk about Dawkins' comments about the eye and state that the evolutionist must explain how the eye could have been created from "random" biological forces. "Random" is entirely misleading -- you're bringing the argument back to "chance" vs ID. Randomness is random within a structure, and much of the "random" behaviour is quite useful. It's not like a gene suddenly sprouts a silicon device; all that can be done is to make small mutations in the biological structure.

   You go on to say that you "build up" the eye from various stages (i.e. the ramp up the mountain as opposed to the sheer cliff, to put it in Dawkins-speak) and then "jettison" the intermediate steps so you're left with "the eye". This is not coming from Dawkins and it does not come from Darwin. While there are some aspects of the eye's evolution that may no longer be there, and might be considered scaffolding, I belive that you misunderstand Natural Selection (as does every other ID proponent in the world, for if they did understand it, they wouldn't be ID proponents). First, "the eye" is such an arbitrary description -- what is "the eye"? There are literally thousands of different types of eye and many can be considered "intermediate" stages toward the human eye, and the human eye can easily be considered an intermediate stage to some other eye (there are eyes that see "more" than we do). Clearly we didn't "jettison" these intermediates at all. They are quite useful.

7. You say "we don't have any examples of the intermediaries", which as I said earlier is absolutely and completely false. And it's this statement which is the first one that truly hurts your argument. Gentlemen, look around you. How many different types of eye can you find? It's thousands. There are creatures that live underground and have eyes that really can only sense light/dark and basic movement. This eye is almost entirely useless when compared with our eye, but it is still useful and can quite easily be seen as an intermediate representation. The eye in these creatures simply did not need to progress beyond where it did.

   Are you going to suggest that these different thousands of eyes were all designed individually? Perhaps, instead, they came from a common ancestor and evolved independantly after that. If it is the case that they were all designed and indeed all creatures throughout history were designed, then the fact that 99.9% of all species on earth are extinct shows that the intelligent designer did an extremely poor job. From Natural Selection's point of view, the 99.9% is glorious, not a mistake. The 99.9% fits perfectly with items that were not "selected". Indeed, Natural Selection shows that a huge piece of the possiblities are not selected at all and are thrown away. A designer of these creatures just, apparently, sucks at designing them.

8. Now you "poke a hole" in Natural Selection. You assume that Natural Selection is correct and then you say that if you take that theory and apply it to the "origins", which you state must always be done when speaking of evolution, "how still do you get from nothing to something?". This is point number two that immediately undermines your entire program. As I stated early on, you've now moved the discussion outside of the realm of its original focus. You're no longer debating UB747 vs UB747G, which both dealt with "life". You've moved to a point before life existed, and indeed before earth existed, or the universe existed. Literally, you have moved Trillions and Trillions of years before the foundation for this entire discussion can take place. That is a true shame, because you have destroyed your position. You have confused "Natural Selection" -- a biological process, and thus a process which requires the existence of biology in order to mean anything -- with something entirely different. You either A) do not understand what Natural Selection is about, even in its extreme basic components, or B) are purposely trying to move the argument into something which Dawkins is not talking about and thus find nothing in his statements to refute this new position and therefore "Win". I believe it is A).

   "This is the 500 pound gorilla knocking at the door of evolutionary theory", is the last statement I'll comment on in this thread. No it's not. It really, really is not. What you have done is blindly confuse the issue. You can use this gorilla for, literally anything, if we let this argumnent stand. (How can you possibly say that planes fly because of a differential air pressure on either side of the wing when you haven't even been able to explain where air molecules come from with this "theory of flight" of yours? How do you get air molecules and air pressure differential from nothing?). Natural Selection describes the biological process of evolution but it, of course, assumes that a biology exists, just as Bernoulli requires the existence of air and the existence of air pressure to describe his famous principle. So, stop doing that. You've made your program into a complete waste of time to listen to and I feel like an idiot for listening to it.

9. You then go on to your second argument. "Where are the transitional forms of evolution?" You want people to show them to you. This is point number three that kills your program. Go to a museum of natural history and look at them yourself, or ask someone there to do it. They are there. I know I said to "look around you" and I highly encourage you to do that because it makes perfect sense, but if you want items in the fossil record, GO LOOK. They are there -- I've seen them, as have thousands and thousands of others. You're admitting ridiculous ignorance here. Ignorance is not a foundation for an argument and nobody is going to listen to it. You say, "It surely doesn't turn from birds to cows". You say, "It doesn't vary that much". My goodness... You clearly have no understanding of evolution or Natural Selection in particular -- that's the entire point. You don't have birds one day and then cows the next. You don't have wild swings in changes on biological structures... it's gradual... i.e. small changes.

   You say that if you go back to the pre-cambrian period that you see a lot of complex creatures living together and that it completely violates evolution. Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. A) we know it's ridiculous, and B) you say that all of these "complex" creatures should have come "much later". That's garbage. Absolute and complete garbage. You have no idea "when" a particular type of creature should have shown up and there's no document out there by a biologist that says, "In the pre-cambrian period we should have nothing but single-celled organisms". You're just making stuff up now.

10. If you want to see an example of evolution in practice, you've got one alive today, and I just love this example. Ever heard of Lance Armstrong? You know, the guy who just couldn't stop winning the Tour de France? He is a bonafide mutant. It has been clinically proven that his heart can handle up to twice the rate of a normal person and his body can assimilate twice as much oxygen. Why? Drugs? Exercise? Cosmic moon-beams? No. He has a mutated body type. He is pre-disposed to do well in the Tour de France (or, any other type of endurance activity). His genes hold this mutation and he will pass it on to his children (assuming the testicular cancer hasn't ruled that out... I think he's got kids but I'm not sure).

    His opponents could train twice as hard as he did (if that is, indeed possible), get top of the line equipment, drink the best stuff, eat the best foods... it doesn't matter. They will still lose. That is Natural Selection. He passes that on to his offspring. His offspring might live longer than the average, be healther, sire more offspring, they may make more money and live better lives, etc... That's a great example of the "chance" you're so concerned with. It's real, and it happens all the bloody time. Millions of years will pass and you won't recognize the human race (or indeed, many species) and it's due to Evolution through Natural Selection.

11. You say that if you look at the (fossil) evidence that there are all kinds of "holes in it". Well, of course there are holes. Fossils aren't created of every creature when it dies. Picking at lack of consistent (however, not incorrect) evidence in the record is irresponsible.

13. Now, you sum up:

    • "We've shown that it's based on a logical contradiction" -- this is point 8 and I've shown that it's not based on that at all, at least based on it any more than your breathing is based on it.

    • "We've shown that there are a bunch of evidentiary problems with evolution and he just suppresses those" -- Actually, you haven't shown that at all. You've inferred it, and discussed it, but you haven't shown it whatsoever. Which transitions are you having a problem with? Where is the transition that biologists say, "This fossil and that fossil are clearly related, and are separated by 1 million years as we find from carbon dating" that you say is complete nonesense? (And, by the way, these fossils do exist, even though you are unwilling to go see them).

    • "How does Natural Selection provide the intellectual conditions necessary for philosophical or scientific inquiry?" -- Well, this is new in the discussion and is clearly not answered by Natural Selection. Once again (for the third or fourth time, I believe) you have attributed something to Natural Selection that it is not designed handle. You have, once again, shown that you do not understand Natural Selection's place in the scientific community. This is an egregious failing of your program and it shows that you have no understanding of the topic that you're debating. The problem of "the mind" is scientific and philosophical but it is not connected to this topic. Further, it is only philosophical because we don't have a full scientific explanation yet. However, we're getting closer (i.e. the "God gaps" are getting smaller). But you slide this "argument" right into the heart of the discussion. You basically say that because Natural Selection doesn't answer the question as to "how and why do we think?" then it is completely contradictory because Darwin had to think to come up with the theory.

      That is complete nonesense as well. This is akin to saying that because the theory of gravity does not explain how the strong force in a molecule works that it is completely contradictory because gravity requires molecules in order to exist. That statement is nonesense, and so is yours.

    • You bring up the Uniformity of Nature, and that in order to explain the UB747G you must have it. Well, guys, you need the UoN to explain anything. The UoN states that things behave themselves in nature. If they didn't, we couldn't fly planes, we couldn't walk, we couldn't breathe, we couldn't do anything. So, yes, this argument depends on the UoN, but no more than you do to survive or to create this program.

      This is also ridiculous.

      The other stuff you say you need, laws of logic, etc... are all in the same category as UoN and are irrelevent to the discussion anyways. You state again that you need the law of non-contradiction and this is garbage. You do not need this at all, as I've explained already.

Ok, so now let me sum up:

• You've completely blown the discussion into something that no longer resembles number 1). I don't know what you're arguing, but it's not against the UB747G.
• You do not provide any evidence, as you eluded to when you state what's in point 3a). I heard no evidence whatsoever. I assume, therefore, that you have none.
• In 3b) you're trying to claim that Natural Selection must answer questions of consciousness and thought in order to answer where logic has come from. It does not do that, never claimed to do that, and never will do that.
• In point 4) you state that there is overwhelming evidence of ID but you give none. If there is evidence (and nobody has ever given irrefutable evidence of ID - Behe couldn't even do it in a court of law) and it is so overwhelmingly clear, then it should be easy to present. The fact that you haven't done this easy thing tells me that you have no evidence to present, again.
• In point 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 you've shown that you still don't understand Natural Selection. It does nothing like you say it does and, as a result, you're not arguing against it. You're arguing against "something" but I don't know what it is.
• I also must state that in the previous recording you had, you said that Physics and Natural Selection fight each other because Natural Selection talks about "Evolution" and Physics talks about "Devolution". One can immediately see that you're speaking about entropy which is the fact that disorder increases with time in the universe. The fact that you believe this to be "Devolution" shows you have no understanding of physics either.
• So, you don't understand Physics, you don't understand Biology (Natural Selection in particular), you don't seek out evidence in the fossil record, you don't understand the argument process as you can't stay on the argument to begin with (in fact, you leave it almost immediately), and you bring in concepts such as the "law of non-contradiction" when they are completely and totally irrelevant.
• The only reason I re-wrote this to fit the new format is because I put time into the original one. I would like to re-state that I went into the original run through of the program with high hopes (very high, in fact) but by the end of it, realized that I wasted my time. You two gentlemen lack the basis you need to speak on these topics. You seem to think that the decades of schooling that Dawkins has had, and the constant immersion he has in the field is somehow irrelevant and that you don't need the same level of understanding. I hope that it is clear to you now (although I won't hold my breath on it) that you understand this much better. You require about 4-6 years of strong study in the areas of Biology and Physics, and even Computer Science would help with the "logical" problems, before claiming competance in the field you are currently attempting to take part in. I still think that I've wasted my time, but I already wasted it the first time, so I figured I would complete the cycle, at least, and say that "I'm done".

Gentlemen, I wish you the best of luck in the future, but you have lost me as a listener, to be sure. One program was much more than enough.