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A miracle is an event that should appear impossible to a Darwinian in view of its ultra-cosmological improbability within the framework of his own theory. Now, speaking of macromutations, let me observe that to generate a proper elephant, it will not suffice suddenly to endow it with a full-grown trunk. As the trunk is being organized, a different but complementary system—the cerebellum—must be modified in order to establish a place for the ensemble of wiring that the elephant will require in order to use the trunk. These macromutations must be coordinated by a system of genes in embryogenesis. If one considers the history of evolution, we must postulate thousands of miracles; miracles, in fact, without end. No more than the gradualists, the saltationists are unable to provide an account of those miracles. The second category of miracles are directional, offering instruction to the great evolutionary progressions and trends—the elaboration of the nervous system, of course, but the internalization of the reproductive process as well, and the appearance of bone, the emergence of ears, the enrichment of various functional relationships, and so on. Each is a series of miracles, whose accumulation has the effect of increasing the complexity and efficiency of various organisms.

(Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals
Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing
The Miracles of Darwinism, Le Recherche :49)
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(More archiving from comments here)

It’s rather ironic for those who rely on citing their own imaginations about the past as the equivalent of empirical evidence (”facts”) verifying patterns to also set themselves up as iconoclasts who condemn all the false pattern/image recognition that is typical to mankind. After all, they are the charlatans trying to make use of that very fact!

It’s also ironic that virtually every judgment that New Atheists make is reliant on Judeo-Christian history, including much of their skepticism. It’s as if Protestantism evolved to protest itself into nothingness, yet it seems that some protest too much. For what God was it that condemned all graven images/patterns and declared that they were just wood and stone and so on?

Christian theism undermined false pattern recognition historically, yet New Atheists try to pretend that skepticism of this type is reliant on atheism. Or they pretend that iconoclastic truths which do away with false gods and ghosts can somehow be perverted to do away with belief in the God that forbid graven images:

At this point we could easily make the mistake of jumping to the conclusion that getting rid of gods either necessitates or is the same as getting rid of God. Far from it. For Moses and the Prophets it was absurd to bow down to various bits of the universe such as the sun, moon and stars as gods. But they regarded it as equally absurd not to believe in and bow down to the Creator God who made both the universe and them. And here, it is to be noted, they were not introducing a radically novel idea. They did not have to have their universe de-deified as did the Greeks, for the simple reason that they had never believed in the gods in the first place. What had saved them from that superstition was their belief in One True God, Creator of heaven and earth. That is, the idolatrous and polytheistic universe described by Homer and Hesiod was not the original world- picture of humankind — an impression that is often gained from the fact that most books on science and philosophy start with the ancient Greeks and emphasize the importance of the de-deification of the universe, singularly failing to point out that the Hebrews had protested against idolatrous interpretations of the universe long before the time of the Greeks. This serves to obscure the fact that polytheism arguably constitutes a perversion of an original belief in One Creator God.6 It was this perversion that needed to be corrected, by recovering, not by jettisoning, belief in the Creator.

(God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God?
by John Lennox :49)

Philosophy can lead to similar conclusions, as the rather theistic Xenophanes said of the superstitions of his day: “The Ethiops say that their gods are flat-nosed and black, while the Thracians say that theirs have blue eyes and red hair. Yet if cattle or horses or lions had hands and could draw,
And could sculpture like men, then the horses would draw their gods
Like horses, and cattle like cattle; and each they would shape
Bodies of gods in the likeness, each kind, of their own.” Yet he also concluded that there is “One God, greatest among gods and men…” because that is the conclusion that philosophy logically leads to if one seeks the truth.

As Chesterton noted, when people stop believing in God they generally do not start believing in “nothing”/oblivion like good atheists, instead they’ll believe anything. I.e. polytheism which in modern times it can take many forms, even reptilian alien “gods” capable of transfiguration that came down from their UFOs to help build the pyramids and other wonders, etc.etc. As history shows only a small minority of atheists insist that they ultimately believe in nothing/oblivion, the general population begins to believe anything as Chesterton said. For example, leading Nazis said things like:

The Christian churches build on the ignorance of people and are anxious so far as possible to preserve this ignorance in as large a part of the populance as possible; only in this way can the Christian churches retain their power. In contrast, national socialism rests on scientific foundations.

(The German Churches Under Hitler: Backround, Struggle, and Epilogue
by Ernst Helmreich
(Detriot: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1979) :303)

Yet generally they would fall into paganism and their association with the occult is fairly well known. For them science was the equivalent of naturalism, which turned out to be a form of Nature based paganism which led them to try to kill the “biological substance” of the Jews through which a message that condemned Nature based idolatry, superstition and false images had come.
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The New Atheism

The "New Atheism" typical to Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and so on is based on a myopic form of scientism that tends to justify their philosophical, historical and theological ignorance. They tend to make clever arguments given a low level of knowledge which often assumes some progressive Enlightenment myth, so only those who already make the same assumptions will feel validated.

For example, New Atheists seem to assume that the egalitarian values which the West tends to adhere to now developed from and are rooted in the philosophical naturalism that they preach. Yet it only takes a small amount of knowledge of the history of scientific racism and the myopic form of scientism that it was based on to see that they will tend to go back to some form of biologism because that's a type of blindness their philosophy leads to. Western values have to do with the very Judeo-Christian notions of transcendence that New Atheists want to do away with as the equivalent of Dark Age superstitions. Ironically, when it comes to equality they are judging "progress" by doing away with seeing things in a Darwinian way through ideas about natural selection and instead looking down on natural processes from a vantage point that can only be afforded given the Creator based worldview that they hate.

Ultimately they come to the ridiculous position of trying to argue that egalitarianism is somehow naturally rooted in Darwinian thinking while neglecting its "unnatural" historical and textual roots in Christianity and Scripture:

Dawkins even claims that the humanity of women and of other races is “deeply unbiblical,” an error we are only beginning to rise above. Quoting Hartung, “The Bible is a blueprint of in-group morality, complete with instructions of genocide, enslavement of out-groups, and world domination.” Even Jesus, Dawkins argues, “limited his in-group of the saved strictly to Jews.”
[...]
Neither man can have read either the Old or New Testaments carefully. [...]
The concept of salvation for all peoples runs through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation. The history of Israel is bloody at times, like most histories. And it’s true that God is shown commanding violent acts, which may be why the Jews survived. But the overall plan was always for the good of the nations. This comes to the fore in the New Testament, which is explicitly and dramatically a set of blueprints for blessing all humanity. Anyone who cannot see this may have moved his eyes across but has not really ever read the Bible.
True, the Old Testament does emphasize the Jewish responsibility to look out for other Jews. But there are also many references to caring for, loving, being kind to, or reaching out somehow to non-Jews. “Let the nations be glad and sing for joy” (Psalm 67:4). “Are not you Israelites the same to me as the Cushites? declares the LORD. Did I not bring Israel up from Egypt, the Philistines from Caphtor and the Arameans from Kir?” (Amos 9:7 NIV). “They will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation, and never again will they learn war” (Isaiah 2:4). Keeping Jews from getting killed has always been a tough job. But God’s plan to bless all peoples is a strong balancing counternarrative, which began with the very first Jew, Abraham, and his son, Isaac.
When it comes to the New Testament, the error committed by Hartung and Dawkins is stark indeed. “Jesus limited his in-group of the saved strictly to Jews,” says Dawkins. Hartung credited, or blamed, the apostle
Paul for the universalism of Christianity: “Jesus would have turned over in his grave if he had known that Paul would be taking his plan to the pigs.”
As we will see, Sam Harris says the New Testament was written by people who hated Jews. Hartung and Dawkins say Jesus hated Gentiles. That covers everyone!
[...]
Ironically, Dawkins hones in on the phrase “love thy neighbor” to illustrate his belief that Jesus only cared about the “in-group.” But there was a particular moment in history when “neighbor” emphatically stopped meaning “another Jew” and came forever to mean “anyone you meet.” Dawkins should recognize that moment, for he twice uses the term Good Samaritan.
A young Jewish man asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29). Jesus responded by telling the story of the Good Samaritan, perhaps the most famous story ever.
A Samaritan was not a Jew. He was a despised half-breed. He was an improbable hero for a rabbi in an era when the always nationalistic Jews were chafing under foreign occupation. That is precisely, Funk points out, what made the Good Samaritan so typical a hero in a story by Jesus.2° The sheer absurdity of accusing Jesus, of all people, of “exclusiveness” seems almost inspired (by whom, I leave the reader to consider).
How did we really discover our common humanity?
Aristotle held that “from the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.” He even claimed it was better for the “lower sort” to be ruled by masters, since they were “by nature slaves.” Gnostics said some were naturally incapable of being saved from this “lowest region of all matter.” According to the Rig Veda, the four great castes proceeded from the mouth, arms, thighs, and feet of Brahma.
With a few kindly allies such as Confucius, the Bible taught us racial unity. It has always been a theistic dogma that humans are alike in nature and dignity as the image of God. In one of the earliest Old Testament documents, Job said, “If I have denied justice to my menservants and maidservants...what will I do when God confronts me?... Did not he who made me in the womb make them?” (Job 3 1:13-15 NIV). Paul wrote, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). Augustine thus rebutted Aristotle: Whatever society may do to us, no one is a slave by nature. There was a great future in that insight. But there was also a great future in the response by Social Darwinist Hermann Klaatch: “The humanitarian nonsense which grants equal rights to all on the premise of the unity of humanity, is to be condemned from the scientific standpoint.”

(The Truth Behind the New Atheism
by David Marshall :106-108)

Despite the victory of Creator based views over naturalism those who believe in Nature based paganism in modern times still seem to tend back towards tribalism and Darwinism, for all their talk of progress. For example: Nobel scientist condemned for 'racist' claims

It's ironic that those who self-define as "enlightened" tend to focus on intelligence without real knowledge of its nature. They have to be blind to the real nature of "intelligence" and sentience given their ridiculous attempts to reduce it to things like natural "selection," yet then they also often assume it as the transcendent measure of all things.

In this case, would Africans be better off with more communities of simple minded people trying to follow the teachings of Christ or highly intelligent warlords warring with each other, struggling over resources with only the fit surviving? There are too many layers of metaphoric idiocy to go through in a mind like Watson's. I note my metaphor because it's not right to use poor "idiots" as a metaphor for the spiritual issue of sin that slithers through all things in this case. It would take too long to catch it by its symbolic tale here, questioning Watson's assumptions is at least a start.

Archive

I've been told that I don't post enough, yet I am commenting a lot. I need to archive bits of text anyway because a lot of people who comment clearly won't read what their opposition has written any other way. Time and again they seem to be commenting on things that they have little knowledge of.

This bit of text used here: Intelligent Design aka Christian Chauvinism

Thanks to its enormous population size, rate of reproduction, and our knowledge of the genetics, the single best test case of Darwin’s theory is the history of malaria. Much of this book will center on this disease. Many parasitic diseases afflict humanity, but historically the greatest bane has been malaria, and it is among the most thoroughly studied. For ten thousand years the mosquito-borne parasite has wreaked illness and death over vast expanses of the globe. Until a century ago humanity was ignorant of the cause of malarial fever, so no conscious defense was possible. The only way to lessen the intense, unyielding selective pressure from the parasite was through the power of random mutation. Hundreds of different mutations that confer a measure of resistance to malaria cropped up in the human genome and spread through our population by natural selection. These mutations have been touted by Darwinists as among the best, clearest examples of the abilities of Darwinian evolution.
And so they are, But, as we’ll see, now that the molecular changes underlying malaria resistance have been laid bare, they tell a much different tale than Darwinists expected—a tale that highlights the incoherent flailing involved in a blind search. Malaria offers some of the best examples of Darwinian evolution, but that evidence points both to what it can, and more important what it cannot, do. Similarly, changes in the human genome, in response to malaria, also point to the radical limits on the efficacy of random mutation.
Because it has been studied so extensively, and because of the astronomical number of organisms involved, the evolutionary struggle between humans and our ancient nemesis malaria is the best, most reliable basis we have for forming judgments about the power of random mutation and natural selection. Few other sources of information even come close. And as we’ll see, the few that do tell similar tales.

(The Edge of Evolution
by Michael Behe :12-13)

All that Darwinism can do?

...the E. coli work has pointed in the same general direction. The lab bacteria performed much like the wild pathogens: A host of incoherent changes have slightly altered pre-existing systems. Nothing fundamentally new has been produced. No new protein-protein interactions, no new molecular machines. As with thalassemia in humans, some large evolutionary advantages have been conferred by breaking things. Several populations of bacteria lost their ability to repair DNA. One of the most beneficial mutations, seen repeatedly in separate cultures, was the bacterium’s loss of the ability to make a sugar called ribose, which is a component of RNA. Another was a change in a regulatory gene called spoT, which affected en masse how fifty-nine other genes work, either increasing or decreasing their activity. One likely explanation for the net good effect of this very blunt mutation is that it turned off the energetically costly genes that make the bacterial flagellum, saving the cell some energy. Breaking some genes and turning others off, however, won’t make much of anything. After a while, beneficial changes from the experiment petered out. The fact that malaria, with a billion fold more chances, gave a pattern very similar to the more modest studies on E. coli strongly suggests that that’s all Darwinism can do.

(The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism
by Michael J. Behe :142)

Richard Dawkins debate....

It seems that even atheists believe that Dawkins lost this debate:

Debate between Richard Dawkins and John Lennox

They blame the format. Given their form of blindness it's surprising that they see that he lost and so think that there is a need for excuses or explanations. It seems to me that no matter how intelligent you are if you begin your thinking based on blind forces governed by irrationality then the supposed logic of your own thoughts will always ultimately unravel, Lennox makes that point at one point.

(Link from Uncommon Descent)