MUST-LISTEN: Audio of debate between Stephen Meyer and Peter Atkins

Why Peter Atkins lost this debate and what he should’ve known before the debate.

Peter Atkins called ID “Intellectual laziness”. I would argue that he is intellectually lazy for dismissing an idea before investigating its merits.

Like all Darwinists, Peter equates ID with creationism. I would’ve called it dishonnest, if it was not for one fact: He actually believes it. This little bit of propaganda is doing the Darwinists a great disservice when enterring a debate, as this debate clearly showed. Dr Peter was completely ill prepared, and hugely underestimated his oponent. A cardinal rule in war is to “know thy enemy”. From this debate, it was clear that Peter did not know his oponent, and suffered the inevitable result.

Therefore, I’d like to make the following comments on what he said. This critisism of dr Peter’s arguments are in the order as he makes them.

1) His most fundimental mistake: Equating ID with Creationism.
Unlike most creationists, the ID proponents are actual scientists. Unlike most Creationists, the ID proponents used to believe in Darwinian theory themselves. Unlike Creationism, ID propnents makes no references to scripture. The ID argument is based purely on empirical evidence, and goes no further than the empirical evidence can support. Unlike Creationism, ID is not linked to any particular faith. ID proponents and Darwin critics come from all kinds of different religious backgrounds. One, Anthony Flew, even used to be a Atheist.

2) Bringing up the Second Law of Thermodynamics. I doubt that it is a coincidence that dr Atkins raised this law in the discussion. Everybody knows that this is a favourite law amongst Creationists, and he probably thought that by refering to it first, calling it wonderful and all that, he will completely deflate dr Meyer’s argument. I might be mistaken, but dr Meyers did not refer to this law anywhere in the 500 pages of Signature of the Cell. In fact, I can’t remember ever hearing any ID proponent using this law to build their case for ID. So effectively, dr Atkins is busy knocking down a straw man that has no relevance in this debate. This is a wonderful example of what happens when you call ID creationism. Had dr Atkins accepted that ID is not creationism, he might have used his time to construct a stronger argument.

3) Refering to information as “structures” and “order”. This, once again, proves that dr. Atkins did not inform himself of what ID states. I believe that Stephan C Meyer makes the strongest case for ID, and he does so by building an argument around information. Had dr Atkins informed himself of dr Stephen’s position, he would not have made such an uninformed remark as to say “structures include information”.

Seen from a purely physical perspective, “information” can not be regarded as “structural” and “ordered” at all. It is completely chaotic and eratic with no physical law underling its sequence. Structures in the natural world, such as crystals, emerge due to the underlying laws of physics that causes molecules to behave in a particular way. In Crystals, for example, the laws of chemical attraction will ensure that A will link to B, and B will link to A. This will cause the following stucture: ABABABABA… etc. However, precisely because of these underlying chemical attractions, crystals are incapable of conveying any information. For information, specifically coded information, you need a system in which any character can follow the previous one. The sequence of the molecules are not determined by some underlying chemical necesity, but rather by completely abstract and arbitrary rules of syntax, as well as the sequence of amino acids which it specifies. There exist no direct physical or chemical connection between the protein produced and the DNA that would explain the sequence of base pairs. In fact, we recognise information as completely independant spesification, with absolutely no physical connection with the object being specified. Therefore, the significance of information does not lay in its physical properties, but rather in the abstract message which it conveys. Information is essesially an abstract concept. Physically, there is no difference between an empty disk, and one containing data. It is for this reason that ID is not based on an absence of knowledge, but rather a knowledge of absence: Natural processes do not produce abstract information. While it is completely possible for natural processes to form RNA strings, natural processes do not produce meaningful sequences of RNA. And you need a meaningful sequence to get a self replicating cycle going.

4) “Local abaitements of chaos constitutes information”: Yes, you could say that the order specifies the physical laws that created it. However, only a materialist would refer to such things as information. I don’t know of anyone who would refer to crystals, or the vortex in the bath tub as “information”. Nor is this the kind of “information” found in the DNA. dr Atkins might well be a briliant chemist, but here he is showing off his complete and utter ignorance of the properties of information.

5) “…but it has grown through evolution.” Materialists use terms such as “Evolution” and “Natural selection” so loosely to explain away everything, that they seem to have forgotten what they actually mean. Evolution, as used here, refer to random mutation and natural selection. Natural selection is the hero of the plot – it is the mechanism materialists were looking for to make evolution scientific. But natural selection only selects that which works, it does not actually produce new information. That is left to RANDOM mutation. Mutation ALWAYS destroys information, because no random process can produce any meaningful text of significant length. And even so, you need information to get a self replicating system going in the first place. Without a self replicating system, there can be no evolution, and therefore, you can not invoke evolution as the origin of information.

6) Mr Atkins need to practice what he preach. He keeps chipping in as dr Meyers respond. To his credit, he does not continue doing this.

7) “What do you mean by specified complexity?” Specified complexity is essetually information, and information forms the basis of the ID argument. If dr Atkins does not know this, he has no business making judgements about ID.

“Evolution determines the sequence”. Once again, there is no known MECHANISM for evolution to sequence the amino acids in a prebiotic world. Therefore, dr Meyers is quite right to way that “that is just an assertion”. To invoke some vague and magical concept of evolution is to avoid the problem. Dr. Atkins need to provide the MECHANISM by which chemical evolution could occur without information.

9) “I think you won’t accept that evolution has occured. Yes or No!”
Once again, dr Atkins shows that he did not even bother to google dr. Stephen’s background. He probably assumed that dr Stephen’s degree came from the same place as dr. Kent Hovand’s. Due to his ignorance of his oponent’s background and position, dr Atkins is waisting valuble time which he could’ve used to try and actually refute dr Meyer. In fact, dr Atkins is completely ill prepared to answer dr. Meyers arguments.

10) Dr Atkins claim that it is acceptable to discuss and question whether evolution is a sufficient explanation for the origin of live, but at the same time, he rejects out of hand that ID is science even before investigating the argument. There’s a clear inconsistancy in dr Atkins’s position. And this is exactly the point of the movie expelled. No one is saying that everyone should accept ID is true: As dr. Meyers correctly states: science progess through DISAGREEMENT. The problem is not that some scientists don’t want to accept ID, the problem is that they refuse to even listen to the argument, or even to allow their fellow scientists to develop the idea. This attitude is clearly not healthy for science. If ID is unscientific, it should be falsified based apon the claims that it makes, and apon the empirical evidence. But in order to do that, Darwinists must first actually LISTEN to the argument, something they refuse to do. Instead, Darwinists grabs to all kinds of strawman arguments to avoid the actual issues that ID is raising. The strength of an argument is measured by the counter arguments of its critics. Currently, the counter arguments against ID from Darwinists is like a fart against a huricane.

11) Based on dr Peter’s previous comments, his consession at this late stage is a sign of him retreating. Clearly, he did not expect that dr Meyers will make such strong arguments for ID, he expected him to be a push over. However, by now, dr Atkins realise that dr Meyer is not just a creationists who’s read one or two science papers, that he is infact a formidible oponent who is quite comfortable in his subject matter, and who operates within the standard, mainstream methodology of science.

12) “We materialists”. This is a remarkable breakthrough for dr Meyers. Atheists refer to themselves as atheists, because they like to emphisise what they do NOT believe in. By doing this, they want to create the illusion that they’re more rational than religious people: that they will only believe in what science can prove. This is ofcause, not true. “Materialists” is a much more accurate description for atheists, as it places the focus on what they DO believe in, rather than on what they DON’T believe. They DO believe that everything we know, from the big bang, to the origin of information, to the cause for consciousness, can be reduced to and explained by material processes. This goes far beyond what science can prove, and I would argue, it even goes against some of the empirical evidence. For dr Atkins to admit that he is a “Materialist” is for him to admit that he is NOT unbiased in his scientific research, that, like the creationist, he has a particular PARADIGM which influences his interpretation of the data, and also what kinds of conclusions he is willing to accept. Just like Creationism, Materialism, or Scientism, distorts science to fit a preconcieved idea of ultimate reality. Therefore, the idea that science can not concider the posibility that live was designed, is not scientific, but materialistic. In fact, one would find it is usually atheists who use this argument, which makes their own position a tautology: God does not exist, because science has shown that he is not necesary, but science is not allowed to concider design – never mind God – even when the evidence is staring you in the face.

13) Ah, Occam’s rasor. But, if used in an unbiased way, then Occams rasor actually points TOWARDS God, rather than away from Him. To explain this, one needs to reference the ultimate question which has devided mankind since the dawn of time: Is matter the product of mind, or is mind the product of matter. Now, the Cosmological argument states that the Big bang points to a cause that is immaterial, enourmously powerful, completely independant of space and time (As the cause for space and time can not itself be bound to it). And, thanks to Dawkin’s God Delusion argument, he actually goes to prove that if live was designed, it had to be done by an eternal being, as any temporal being would itself require a cause. So, thanks to ID, we can add consciousness to the list of properties of the first Cause. These properties also happen to closely coinside with a little something theists refer to as “God”. Materialists, on the other hand, invoke all kinds of untestable hypothesis, unobservable material entities with unknown properties, unobservable forces, and mathematical models designed to explain away the big bang. “Magic” is to assign creative powers to natural processes and forces which it does not possess. Design is a perfectly natural phenomenon, which is capably, no, which is UNIQUELY capably to produce information. To attribute information to anything else but consciousness, is to invoke magic. I can develop the argument much further, but suffice to say, Occams razor cuts TOWARDS Intelligent design, rather than to some unspecified, unexplainable material process, which MIGHT or MIGHT NOT be discovered in the distant future,

14) “We can not explain everything … yet”. Here, dr .Meyer’s victory is complete. dr Atkins just admitted his bias, and also admitted that he would rather search all infinity for a material explanation which does not exist, rather than to accept what the data is telling him: That live was designed. Now, he is quite free to do that. I doubt that he will succeed in finding a natural process capable of producing information from scratch, but, if he does find it, (and empirically demonstrate it, of cause, otherwise it remains a mind experiment) then ID will be falsified. Untill then, however, he must accept that ID is scientifically acceptable, and it is acceptable until it is falsified. To claim that it is not science before it is falsified, goes against the spirit of science, and that is where science ends and scientism, or materialism begins.

I think this already says enough. I would add the argument that ID is a science stopper, but dr. Meyers already refuted that argument as well. Chemical evolution might tell a more elegent story for the origin of life than ID, which simply state that consciousness was involved. However, if chemical evolution is wrong, it is a science stopper in the sence that it hinders the scientist’s ability detect the biological function of a certain feature. In fact, Darwinism is a science stopper in that our ignorance of the certain arangements and features in biology is usually dismissed as evolutionary junk. I believe it’s a more important persuit of science to discover biological function than to discover biological origin. For example, thanks to darwinian theory, doctors removed perfectly healthy appendixes of millions of people. Today, we know that the appendix is not vestigal, but is part of the immune system. The list of ill conceived ideas based on darwinism is very long, and include ideologies such as Eugenics, Nazism and Socialism. Another example of darwinian thought is that mind is a product of the brain, even though there are many NDE where the patient could give confirmed accounts of what happened around him, even though they were clinically dead. I mean, think about this for a while. Why would a bunch of equally dead atoms suddenly form a collective awareness of its own existance if you arange them in a certain way? Darwinists say consciousness is an illusion, but to have an illusion about anything, you must first be conscious: Rocks don’t have illusions, electricity don’t have illusions. Illusions is a product of consciousness, not the other way around. People compare the brain with a computer, but a computer is essentually trillions of on and off switches which stores information, and which is incapable of anything without intelligent input. Why would a large number of on and off switches magically become self aware??

With all the blunders that has been made in the name of Darwin the last 150 years, I believe it’s time to give ID scientists a fair shot at it again. Let’s have Darwinian scientists compete with ID scientists to discover previously unknown biological function. This way, we can tell which theory has the better explanatory power. Let’s give it 50 years. In the end, the evidence, the predictive power of the theory should decide which one is scientific and which one is not. Darwinists don’t have to accept ID … yet. They just need to respect their fellow scientist’s right to investigate and follow the evidence were they believe it leads. If they’re wrong, what will be the harm in letting them discover it, by shutting them up prematurely?