Henke 2022ck

More Failed Proclamations in Lundahl (2022m) on Materialism, Biological Evolution and the Origin of Language

Kevin R. Henke

September 15, 2022

In Henke (2022b), I wrote the following about verifying history and the supernatural:

“According to his second essay, Lundahl (2022b), there are two ways to verify the existence of the supernatural; namely, metaphysics and history. He is definitely wrong to claim that history is capable of verifying the supernatural. C.S. Lewis (1960, p. 2), a source used by Lundahl (2022a), even agrees with me that “history can never convince us that a miracle occurred.” We can never rule out the strong possibility that “witnesses” to a past “supernatural event” outright lied and made-up a story, or misinterpreted what they saw. These are the bases of Hypotheses #3 and #4 for the Talking Snake, which Lundahl (2022c) utterly fails to adequately address as discussed in Section 5.0 of this essay.

Lewis (1960, p. 87) is also correct when he states that the “progress of science” has not eliminated the possibility of miracles and that science has not demonstrated that miracles are impossible. However, again, Lewis (1960, pp. 17-85) fails to demonstrate that human reasoning or another other process involves the supernatural. He also failed to realize that the burden of evidence for miracles are on those that argue for miracles. Despite his often vague rambling, Lewis (1960) presents no evidence of miracles.

The only way to demonstrate the existence of the supernatural is to have it demonstrated under strictly controlled conditions with multiple investigators from diverse backgrounds. These investigations would certainly involve logic and mathematics, but not any unnecessary pedantic and flawed metaphysical arguments.

As an example, someone might claim that he witnessed a “prophet” raising a cat from the dead. Obviously, this claim could be a lie or a misinterpretation. So, how could anyone confirm that this prophet has the ability to raise animals from the dead? The only reliable way is to test the prophet under strictly controlled conditions. First, you collect a DNA sample from a cat that has just died. Get three veterinarians to independently confirm that the cat is indeed dead. Next, place the cat in a well-secured storage area where it can rot for a week. Then under strictly controlled conditions involving videos, get the prophet to raise the cat from the dead. If the cat comes back to life, immediately collect another DNA sample to confirm that it’s the same cat.

Let’s say that someone was actually able on their own without technological assistance to resurrect a cat from the dead. Perhaps, he lays his hands on dead animals, prays, and in all cases the animals come back to life. Now, some superskeptics might simply argue that the individual has discovered a new, but totally natural, way of resurrecting the dead and that the supernatural remains undemonstrated. For example, someone might argue that aliens from space could have hidden advanced technologies or natural powers that would allow them to resurrect dead animals even after a week. The process would look supernatural to our primitive minds even though natural law was not violated. It is said that advanced technologies appear as “magic” to less technical societies. If this is a genuine concern, have the “prophet” do a bigger task, such as producing a complete solar system from nothing within a light year of Earth. The prophet could be given six days to do it. Now, someone might groundlessly speculate that in a million years people might develop the technology to raise the dead or create solar systems from nothing – ex nihilo creation. Maybe, but if humans every gain the ability through either technology, now unknown natural powers or magic to raise the dead or create entire solar systems from nothing; that is, utterly control space and time, then they might meet the definitions of a god and they might deserve the right to be called gods. However, that doesn’t mean that they deserve worship as gods. Their moral character still may be quite human and flawed. Nevertheless, I’m skeptical that humans will ever be able to do ex nihilo creation and resurrect the decayed dead.

Now, I fully understand that a god, prophet, psychic, ghost, demon, or angel probably would never agree to submit to testing, but this is the only way to verify the supernatural. So, believers in the supernatural are in the unfortunate position of not being able to demonstrate that their claims are real. Too bad for them. Nevertheless, skeptics have no rational reason to lower their standards so that believers’ likely nonsense could be labeled as reality. Advocates of the supernatural have to find some way to meet strict scientific standards and demonstrate their claims.” [my emphasis]

In response to the single bolded sentence from Henke (2022b), Lundahl (2022m) incoherently tries to summarize the views of his materialistic opponents:

“If I were to give the opposition a good articulation of what Henke only sketches out, it would go like this:

· matter and energy are ultimately determining all of reality, by chain reactions going back to past eternal or to the Big Bang and CSL is right that this level of determination, described by the laws of physics, would never by itself lead to reason or morality;

· however, against Taine, meaning CSL is strawmanning us by reducing us to Taine, their determinations extend only to certain directions, leaving a certain amount of indetermination, like the sudoku solutions that have 3 or 5 alternatives, given the start and the rules, and this leaves room for complexity to create its own chains of determination, and mind, language, reason, morality all belong to this sphere, via evolution after abiogenesis;

· and while he is correct that natural selection does not actively select for reason and morality, only for survival fitness, it happens in other instances too that their mechanisms of culling happen to select for something more than qualified for survival fitness, since that, rather than the bare survival fitness is what is available, meaning that language, reason and morality can give us these advantages along with survival fitness, because the thing enhancing survival fitness that was selected for also involved these;

· and as mechanisms can reflect universally valid truth, like a computer reflects mathematics, so these conscious mechanisms (consciousness being also a plus above survival fitness) can reflect universally valid truths of reason, and reflection give us reason to believe we have discovered so, while morality need not be universal, just human-universal, given our evolutionary disposition (crocodiles, piranhas, sharks and spiders having no taboo against cannibalism, we seem to have developed ours after the palaeolithic).”

Lundahl (2022m) then comments on his inadequate summaries:

“Two big problems with this solution involve simple creationist criticism of evolution, no need to go to CSL Miracles - 1) known evolutionary mechanisms explain selection of new traits once they exist, but cannot explain a new function, since each function normally involves several genes, and since one mutation can certainly render a gene wholly or partially dysfunctional, but is definitely not enough to constitute it from scratch or from a gene for another function 2) human language cannot credibly be derived from ape vocal or gestual communications, since these do not involve notionality and are not doubly articulated.”

The ambiguous rambling about “Taine” in the above paragraphs from Lundahl (2022m) may refer to Hippolyte Taine, a 19^th century French thinker (see my comments on this in Henke 2022cj). Because Mr. Lundahl refuses to provide descent references for his sources and even brags about not doing so (see Henke 2022q), we don’t know for sure who Taine is, if his views are really up-to-date and relevant here or if Lundahl (2022m) is even citing them properly.

From what we know, our Universe came from the Big Bang, whose model was confirmed in 1965 with the discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (Bennett et al. 2014, p. 654). This was after the death of C.S. Lewis.

As I explained in Henke (2022ay), the commands in the Bible are often barbaric and nonsensical, and the arguments about reason and morality in Lewis (1960) and Lundahl (2022j) are totally without merit. Instead of coming from gods or angels, the evidence indicates that reason and morality come from human thought and intelligence in our brains, which result from a long line of natural processes involving biological evolution (Dennett 2006). Ultimately, biological evolution is controlled by the laws of chemistry and physics. I further discussed the possible sources of human reason and morality in Henke (2022ay). I’ll leave it to the biologists and evolutionary psychologists to explain how evolution works and how human intelligence is a product of it (e.g., Heyes 2012 and her references). I’m not interested in going into that level of detail unless perhaps if Mr. Lundahl actually learns some 21^st century biology rather than just relying on the outdated, uninformed and irrelevant opinions of creationists and 19^th century and earlier theologians.

Now, certainly human language, reason and morality are examples of mechanisms for survival fitness. If our evolutionary ancestors could call out specific linguistic warnings to others about a lion, bear, snake or another threat, would not language give them a survival advantage over animals that could only give nonspecific grunts or howls? If our ancestors could reason and identify threats early, such as an approaching forest fire, how would that not be a survival mechanism influencing natural selection and evolution? If our ancestors helped each other and cooperated with each other in gathering food, how is that not a survival mechanism?

Again, Mr. Lundahl in Lundahl (2022m) was not considerate enough to cite his creationist sources on the origin of human speech. However, his statements on the evolution of human speech are simply incorrect. Readers should check the biology literature for accurate information on the evolution of human speech rather than just taking Mr. Lundahl’s uninformed and unreferenced statements at face value. As just a few examples, Pagel (2017), Bowling et al. (2020) and their references provide useful information on this topic.

References:

Bennett, J., M. Donahue, N. Schneider, and M. Voit. 2014. The Cosmic Perspective: Stars, Galaxies, & Cosmology: Pearson: Boston, MA, USA.

Bowling, D.L., J.C. Dunn, J.B. Smaers, M. Garcia, A. Sato, G. Hantke, S. Handschuh, S. Dengg, M. Kerney, A.C. Kitchener, M. Gumpenberger, and W.T. Fitch. 2020. “Rapid Evolution of the Primate Larynx?”, PLOS Biology, v. 18, n. 8, e3000764.

Dennett, D.C. 2006. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon: Viking Penguin: London, UK, 448pp.

Heyes, C. 2012. “New Thinking: The Evolution of Human Cognition” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society: B: v. 367, pp. 2091-2096.

Lewis, C.S. 1960. Miracles, 2^nd ed., printed 1974: Harper One: HarperCollinsPublishers, 294pp.

Pagel, M. 2017. “Q&A: What is Human Language, When Did It Evolve and Why Should We Care?” BMC Biology, 15:64, 6pp, doi: 10.1186/s12915-017-0405-3.