Endless Forms Most Beautiful and Most Wonderful

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/2025/08/endless-forms-most-beautiful-and-most.html

Cymothoa exigua, or tongue-eating louse, inside the mouth of its fish host. (Image credit: copyright Matt Gilligan)

Opponents of evolutionary science will sometimes claim that "this [their evolutionary] view of life" devalues human life and other forms of life.

Here, I take issue with this claim, but to begin with, I must point out that whether or not you like an idea has no bearing on its veracity.
See "Darwin's Sacred Cause"[1] and "Evolution Scientifically Proven Beyond Any Reasonable Doubt"[2] 

Here are Charles Darwin's closing remarks from "On The Origin of Species".

“There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.”

This view recognizes the precious and awe-inspiring nature of life by acknowledging the unimaginably vast amount of time that it has taken to develop to its current state, running the gauntlet of natural selection over countless generations.

It recognizes how rare and fragile and precious life is, with the very special conditions that prevail locally, on this planet, and also takes into account the numerous times current life's ancestors have had "lucky escapes" from extinction-level events. [3]

It recognizes that all life, including us, forms an interdependent system - an  ecology. Man is not separate or isolated from the rest of the living world. We do not have any magical "dominion", although we do recognize that, as an intelligent and powerful species, we have a responsibility towards the well-being of life on the planet. Astonishingly, many creationists are sceptical of the indications of environmental dangers and reject the precautionary principle, saying that God would not cause such disasters as are envisioned, or if he did, we've got it coming. Here's Darwin again, in "Origin",

"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us."

It recognizes that life is not worthless and is not to be trivialized. It is to be admired and valued, as well as, in some cases, repulsed by. It is all comprehensible in the evolutionary view, where the sole criterion is, is it conducive to successful reproduction? As Darwin wrote in a letter to  J.D. Hooker.

"What a book a devil's chaplain might write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of nature!"

"A Devil's Advocate" [4] became the title of an excellent collection of essays by Richard Dawkins.  I reproduce a favourite essay from it, "What is True", here. [5]

Creationists struggle with the idea that a good God would have created both perfection and the horrors in creation [6]. Either "Stan" is responsible for all that is bad in this world, or it's the fault of a particular couple, who were not made aware of the difference between good and evil, but were nevertheless, somehow held responsible for everything bad - for being disobedient. No mechanism for this polluting influence is ever proposed. It's magic. But hey, the priority of creationist leaders is not to make any sense, but to make their flocks feel blameworthy enough to be obedient.

Incidentally, atheists do not hate God for the existence of bad stuff. To think that anyone could hate something they don't believe in is as incoherent as the notion of "original sin".

1. https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/darwins-sacred-cause.html

2. https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/endogenous-retroviruses-frequently.htm

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events

4. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Devils-Chaplain-Selected-Writings/dp/0753817500/

5. https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/2025/01/what-is-true.html

6. https://www.livescience.com/13040-10-disgusting-parasites-zombie-ants-toxoplasma.html

"How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!"

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/2025/08/how-extremely-stupid-not-to-have.html

Thomas Henry Huxley

Creationists often mischaracterize evolution as being "purely random", "pure chance" or "accident", neglecting the effect of the natural selection of heritable variations.

This is a straw-man argument, and if knowingly made, an intellectually dishonest one. It is criticizing not a real position, but a distorted caricature of it for rhetorical, if ineffectual and unearned, brownie points.

At the time of writing, the idea of the natural selection of heritable variations has only been around for some 166 years, published in Darwin's "Origin" in 1859, so creationists may not have had enough time to catch up yet.

Huxley, Darwin's friend, put it thus: "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!"

These creationist arguments get made in two contexts, to wit, 1) the origin of life and 2) its evolution. They often get muddled together, but I will deal with them separately. However, the thing they do have in common is that they are both examples of the well-recognized fallacy of the "argument from personal incredulity", or, less charitably, the argument from ignorance. It takes the form of, "I can't understand how this could have happened, or how this could be, therefore it cannot be right." See https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/personal-incredulity.

I'll deal with 2) first: Evolution.

Yes, mutations (changes to the genome) do happen largely randomly. We say that they are undirected towards any end result or purpose. Experiments and observations prove this and reveal that the majority of mutations are neutral concerning reproductive fitness (the likelihood of them being replicated in subsequent generations).

Neutral mutations

As neutral mutations build up in a population, it becomes more diverse and able to respond to environmental changes, becoming either deleterious (disadvantageous) or advantageous, Remember the fitness of any feature is always fitness with respect to the given environment. 

Disadvantageous or deleterious mutations

These are the next most frequently occurring mutations. As the words indicate, they impose a disadvantage in the reproduction stakes, and if they are not immediately fatal or incapacitating, will still tend to be - um - deleted from the gene pool eventually.

Finally, come the comparatively rare advantageous mutations.

"Advantageous" means giving an advantage in the reproduction states, so advantageous mutations are more likely, if they are heritable, to become more and more frequently represented in passing generations. Creationists like to talk about "information" in the genome, without defining it or saying how it can be quantified, but reproductive fitness can easily be defined and quantified, and has the added advantage of being relevant to evolutionary theory.

We see many creationist 'memes' bleating that sandcastles or robots or clock components or whatever do not evolve, as if this calls into question the possibility of evolution doing anything interesting, but what all these examples omit is the fact that these things do not change by the selection of undirected heritable variations. Sorry to belabour the point, but it is absolutely vital.

1), The origin of life, or abiogenesis. See https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/magic.html

   





 

Answers to "16 Bad Atheist Arguments and How to Respond to Them"

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/2025/07/answers-to-16-bad-atheist-arguments-and.html

Someone on Facebook posted a link to an article entitled "16 Bad Atheist Arguments and How to Respond to Them" @ https://crossexamined.org/16-bad-atheist-arguments-and-how-to-respond-to-them In typically infuriating Facebook fashion, when I switched to another tab and then returned, the post had disappeared. But I kept the article, which poses a series of questions to atheists, and I thought it would be fun to provide my own answers. I'm posting this to all groups that may be interested because I've forgotten where the original post was - er - originally posted. 

If you are reading this on Facebook, Facebook's features are so primitive that it makes it difficult to post in an easily readable layout. All 16 arguments, questions and my answers to them are available at the link, https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/2025/07/answers-to-16-bad-atheist-arguments-and.html 

"Below we list 16 of these bad arguments and list at least one problem with the argument for each. Much more could be said for each of these arguments, so we present this post with the risk of coming across shallow.  The point of the post, however, is not to give you a thorough response to each argument – It’s to give you ideas for an initial response to them."

"For each of the arguments, we give an example question you can ask to better understand where the person who gave the argument is coming from. The goal is to listen and understand, rather than to dominate and tear down.

"Now that we have those precursors set, here are the 16 bad Atheist arguments and how to respond to them."

By the way, the word "atheist" is not a proper noun. It is only correctly capitalized at the beginning of a sentence, and as here, in a title that capitalizes all significant words.  

Argument #1: Who created God?

"This question is asked under the assumption that God needs a creator. This assumption misrepresents the Christian understanding of God, where God is the necessary cause of all creation."

Question: Why do you think a Christian would say that no one created God?

My answer: Christians need to avoid the reductio ad absurdum of an infinite regress where a god is created by a god-god, and it is created by a god-god-god and so on ad infinitum (or ad nauseam). They try to avoid this by defining God as something that does not need a creator, not realizing that you cannot just conjure something into existence by coining a definition to suit yourself, out of thin air, as it were. I go into this whole sorry business here, @ https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/gods-all-way-up_5.html

Argument #2: Jesus never existed

"This objection flies against the conclusions of almost all scholars invested into Biblical and Roman history, along with evidence from both the New Testament books and extrabiblical sources."

Question: How did you come to the conclusion that Jesus never existed?

Answer: I didn't. I have very little interest in whether he did or not. 

Argument #3: Atheists believe in just one less god than Christians

"Some Atheists try to use this argument to show that there is not much of a difference between them and Christians. After all, Christians are “Atheists” for thousands of gods from other religions since they lack belief in those gods!"

"The problem is, there is a huge difference between a Theist (such as a Christian) and an Atheist. Theists believe in a supreme, personal creator of the Universe. Atheists don’t. This difference has huge implications for how each carries out their lives."

Question: Do you think there are any major differences between Christians and Atheists?

Answer: Atheists don't believe in any gods. Your "argument #3" misses the point that atheists make when they point out that they merely believe in one less god than Christians. The point is that not believing in gods is not that extraordinary. Everyone disbelieves in gods.

Argument #4: Believing in God is like believing in Santa or leprechauns.

"This statement calls God “made up,” equal on the level of something like Santa Claus. But the Christian claims to have evidence for God, and hardly anyone claims to have evidence for a real Santa. The alleged evidence for God cannot be simply dismissed with this silly statement."

Question: Do you think there is any evidence for the existence of God?

Answer: Many Christians (I suspect Christians whose faith is rather weak) claim to have evidence for the existence of God, but I find their claims unconvincing, which is why I am an atheist.

Argument #5: The gospels are full of myths

"This objection completely ignores the definition of a myth in ancient literature. A myth looks back at the past to understand how something in the present came to be. The gospels were written as a historical narrative, discussing things that were happening at the time."

Question: What do you mean when you use the word “myth”?

Answer: Oxford Languages has, "a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining a natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events."

Argument #6: Faith is belief without evidence 

"This definition of faith is a clear strawman of the Christian position. Most Christians view faith as involving some sort of personal trust. The trust aspect of faith is simply ignored by the “no evidence” definition."

Question: How do you think Christians would typically define “faith”?

Answer: You just stated it. "Most Christians view faith as involving some sort of personal trust." This is belief regardless of evidence.

Argument #7: There’s no evidence for God

"Christians claim to have philosophical arguments for God’s existence. It seems like those arguments could provide at least a tiny bit of evidence for God, even if an Atheist doesn’t consider the evidence close to satisfactory. Atheists who use this phrase are overstating their case."

Question: What type of evidence would you need to see in order to be convinced that there is at least some evidence for God?

Answer: God knows. Try asking him. But seriously, atheism is more common when there is social, psychological and material security. "Evidence" will do little. People may turn to God when their security is severely threatened.

Argument #8: God is a maniac slavedriver

"The idea here is that God is some sort of dictator who tells us what to do and believe and threatens to send us to hell if we don’t listen. But this characterization of God contrasts from the understanding that God offers a choice for us to escape the “slavery” of sin and to experience life as it was meant to be lived."

Question: Do you think God gives us a choice in how to live our lives?

Answer: I don't think you understand what being an atheist means. It simply means not being a theist - not believing in any gods. So from the point of view of atheism, having an opinion on what God does and doesn't do does not make any sense. But I would point out that a fictional character offering a choice between salvation and damnation is not really much of a choice - more an bully's offer you can't refuse. A "choice" forced under duress is not a real choice. See https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/a-prefix.html

Argument #9: Science disproves God

"This is one of the most broad arguments in the list. There are many fields in science, and some concepts about God are completely unrelated to those fields. What exactly is being said here? There needs to be more detail given before any substantial discussion can take place."

Question: What is one way in which science disproves God?

Answer: It depends on what you mean by "God". If you mean the god of the creationists, that is disproved by a vast body of scientific knowledge. Otherwise, the idea of "God" is unfalsifiable, and of little concern or interest to science. For an example of disproof of the creationist god, see this piece on endoenous retroviruses, https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/endogenous-retroviruses-frequently.html

Argument #10: Stories of Jesus changed like the game of telephone

"The story goes… You know the game of telephone? You start with a sentence and then it gets changed after being passed down from person to person? Well, that’s what happened when stories of Jesus were passed from person to person."

"This objection does not take into account the communal aspect of oral tradition – people could check their stories against one another. The objection also causes the reliability of all ancient history to be called into question."

Question: How might the way stories were spread in ancient history be different than the game of telephone?

Answer: The stories get passed down in parallel. Oral history is always questionable. It doesn't matter what the subject is.

Argument #11: If you grew up somewhere else you would believe something else

"This is one of the most common objections to Christianity – if you grew up in a middle eastern country, you would be a Muslim, not a Christian! While this concept does have some truth in it, it packs a load of unsupported assumptions. It also has little effect on the question of if God actually exists or not."

Question: How do you know I believe what I do because where I grew up?

Answer: Its highly likely because statistics.

Argument #12: Atheists can be good without believing in God

"This statement is true in the sense that people who do not believe in God can make choices that are moral choices. But the statement ignores the grounding of the good – the question of what caused the existence of objective moral duties."

Question: I agree that Atheists can do good things without believing in God. But what caused “good” and “bad” to exist in the first place?

Answer: They are caused by the nonexistence of a good, all-powerful God. BTW, the claim that an "objective" morality exists is a transparent attempt at asserting authority. All proponents of "objective" morality claim this, even when they differ among themselves as to what it is.

Argument #13: Religion is toxic

"The idea here is that religious thought always motivates actions that are bad. One problem with this idea is that “religion” is a broad term. It puts people who follow all kinds of religions under one umbrella, even if the differences between those religions are stark. It also downplays any potentially “good” actions taken under religious motivations."

Question: Are you referring to one specific religion, or are you saying all religions are toxic?

Answer: They are toxic when they are used to justify inhumane acts. This can happen when people are convinced that they are in possession of absolute truth with no test in reality. The ends, for them, justify the means. This applies equally to ideologies such as Nazism and the anti-theistic Marxism.

Argument #14: Jesus is just a copy of pagan gods

"This argument seems powerful on the surface as Atheists stack up to similar traits between Jesus and pagan gods – “born of a virgin,” “resurrected,” “born on December 25”, etc. But when you dig deeper into the primary sources for the pagan gods, you will find that the traits don’t align with the actual stories of those gods."

Question: Which god is Jesus a copy of, and how do you know that?

Answer: No idea. Not interested.

Argument #15: The Flying Spaghetti Monster

"New Atheists intended to make a point by bringing up this fictional creature – that you could assign the attributes of God to any random thing. But many Atheists who mention the creature now seem to do so in order to mock religious ideas rather than make a substantial point about them. Overall an Atheist who brings the creature up today ends up looking more ridiculous than thoughtful."

Question: What relevance does the Flying Spaghetti Monster have to what you are saying about God?

Answer: That satire and parody hit home is all to the good. The idea is to make theists think. It works in some cases.

Argument #16: Christians never agree

"The argument goes like this: Since Christians always seem to disagree about everything, it’s clear that God isn’t involved in the whole process. This argument is incredibly broad and immeasurable – it is uncertain how much agreement there would need to be before the objector no longer sees a problem. It also ignores that “mere Christianity” – the divinity, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ – is almost entirely agreed on amongst Christians."

Question: How much agreement would you need to see between Christians in order to no longer consider this objection a problem?

Answer: You might expect agreement on what is claimed to be "objective morality", for example. But no. Take the "Thou shalt not kill" commandment. Many say that it really means, "Thou shalt do no murder", but when it comes down to what is justifiable and what is not justifiable killing, there is a whole spectrum of opinions.

Human: A BBC series presented by Ella Al-Shamahi

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/2025/07/human-bbc-series-presented-by-ella-al.html

Have started watching "Human", the BBC series on the history of the human species (plural).

Guardian article here, @ https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/jul/14/human-review-bbc-two-iplayer-history-at-its-most-irresistibly-infectious

Although I am already a keen student of human evolutionary history, I am learning a lot that is new to me from this series. It is beautifully presented, both in terms of the filming, and also by the arresting personality of Ella Al-Shamahi.

From Wikipedia,

As a child, Al-Shamahi was a devout Muslim who wore the hijab from the age of seven and began missionary work throughout Britain at the age of 13. Her biology studies at Imperial College London were undertaken with the eventual aim of disproving evolutionary theory, but she soon came to believe that the theory was correct and her later studies would further distance her from her faith. As of 2025, she described herself as a "non-practicing Muslim." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ella_Al-Shamahi

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2025/jul/14/human-review-bbc-two-iplayer-history-at-its-most-irresistibly-infectious#img-1

H-R

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/2025/06/h-r.html

Posted to https://www.facebook.com/hansrichard.grumm/posts/29061833980074340

So sorry for your loss, Susanne. I feel a sense of sadness and loss, too, for a friend whom I had never met in the flesh.

But Hans-Richard was responsible. Responsible for my addiction to the Facebook groups that I frequent, discussing science and theology. He put me on them when we were already friends, going back to the days before the CARM (https://carm.org/) bulletin board imploded. I had just resolved to leave the creation/evolution "debate" when he introduced me to Facebook. Damn you! 😉

He always lent an air of authority and gravitas to the proceedings, and a 'like' from him was worth the likes from ten others. He introduced me to 'Last Thursdayism', a send-up of believers in a young Earth whose god, they believe, created all the false evidence for deep time and for evolution some 6,000 years ago. If he faked it then, why could he not have faked it all last Thursday, with all the supposedly fake evidence that there was a time before, including all our fake records and memories of it?

Goodbye, Hans-Richard. You will be greatly missed by very many of us.

Dust to Dust

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/2025/05/dust-to-dust.html

I was recently reminded of this article from a creationist blog published in 1993. To me, the title is most telling. A giveaway.

What does it give away?

It gives away the fact that to creationists, truth does not matter.

"No longer useful"

No longer useful for what? For determining the truth?

Or no longer useful as propaganda for creationism?

The fact that the headline has not been changed since 1993 speaks volumes.

So does the fact that it still links to the original article, the first part of which still gives the impression that the depth of dust on the moon presents a problem for normal people. Written by that notoriously two-faced doctor, Andrew Snelling and 'creation research graduate student' (*snorkle*), Dave Rush. 

The article makes pathetic attempts to shift the blame for their blunder to "uniformitarians".

In case the image is not readable for you, I have copied the text of the article below the line.
________________________________________________________

This article is from Creation 15(4):22, September 1993 

Moon-dust argument no longer useful

For years, a common and apparently valid argument for a recent creation was to use uniformitarian assumptions to argue that the amount of dust on the moon was less than 10,000 years’ worth.

In an important paper, geologist Dr Andrew Snelling from Australia’s Creation Science Foundation [now Creation Ministries International], and former Institute for Creation Research graduate student Dave Rush, have examined in minute detail all the evidence relating to this argument.1 They have shown that:

1) The amount of dust coming annually on to the earth/moon is much smaller than the amount estimated by (noncreationists) Pettersson, on which the argument is usually based.

2) Uniformitarian assumptions cannot therefore justifiably be turned against evolutionists to argue for a young age.

3) Most NASA scientists, in fact, were convinced before the Apollo landings that there was not much dust likely to be found there.

See also https://creationwiki.org/Arguments_creationists_should_not_use

Governance

https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/2025/03/governance.html

 
A FaceBooker set up a poll asking which is preferred. I replied.

Christian countries

100%

Communist countries

0%

2 votes

1 comment

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Barry Desborough

Secular democratic countries. Theocracies are $hit. Always have been., and Marxism is mistaken about human nature, which is why it doesn't work.

...

Someone expressed displeasure at my comment. I think they got secularism and atheism muddled up. A secular state merely does not favour any particular stance on any particular religion, or on religion in general. That issue is left to its individual citizens. The reason why the American constitution is secular is that when European immigrants were pouring into what they call North America, (without any legal right - "manifest Destiny" is not a legal instrument), many of them were escaping sectarian strife and oppression in Europe. They were determined to avoid such evils in their "New World". Religious fanatics have fought this aspect of the constitution ever since, but have never succeeded in establishing their preferred flavour of theocracy. Ironically, it seems that Europe is a much more liberal place than America now. 

Re. democracy, Churchill once wrote, "Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"

Marx got human nature tragically wrong, which is why communism has proved to be just as disastrous as theocracy. 

The problems with both sorts of countries in the poll is why I am such a staunch advocate and defender of evolutionary science. An understanding of human nature is a requirement for getting our problems sorted out.

Alas, now both liberal secular democracy and communism seem to be giving way to a form of fascistic gangsterism...