Bad Science, Materialism, and Emergence

Although many materialists treat science as a religion, it is actually a philosophy — a way of conducting searches to find certain truths about the world. Materialists assume that physical things such as molecules and atoms are all that exist, but there is no God.

Materialists use their presuppositions to advance their secular worldview. When they cannot back up their claims, they fudge it and employ escape hatches (rescuing devices). Notice how Darwinists say that something emerged but let the statement itself serve as evidence.

Aircraft escape hatch at Kasuga Air Base, Wikimedia Commons / Hunini (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Something supposedly emerged according to evolution. How did it emerge? What caused it? People who want their biases confirmed are willing to settle for stories and bland assertions, but they are unwilling to consider that evidence can be better interpreted to show that something "emerged" because it was created.

Faced with conundrums posed by the origin of the universe, life, and consciousness, many thinkers have proposed a concept known as emergence. The idea is that some properties of systems emerge only after a certain level of complexity is reached. Emergence offers a materialist account of “something from nothing” an escape hatch.

But at IAI.TV, Washington University philosopher John Heil wants us to know that, as a concept, emergence doesn’t really work. Here’s the Introduction:

To read the rest or listen to the audio, see "Materialism’s Band-Aid, 'Emergence' Is Bad Science."