Brad - great to see that you are still checking the thread. First and foremost I’d like to thank you and Jim once again for all the great contributions you are making both online and in the real world towards promoting a better understanding of evolution in Christian realms. I share your concern that misunderstanding of science is a major reason for the secular/Christian divide we see today and I certainly appreciate your contributions.
I have two questions related to the topic of the article.
First, I wonder if your conversations also gave you some insight about whether there are online resources where non-BioLogos Christians question and discuss their own views much like we do over here. There is no substitute for in-person interactions like you and Jim promoted at this meeting but maybe there are also ways in which all of us can help clarify questions from those camps by engaging with them online?
Second, you gained very valuable insight from the interactions described in this article and I am glad that those who interacted with you were able to at least realize that it is possible to be a serious Christian and not deny evolution. My question is - how can more of us promote the same kind of understanding at our own churches? I know the BioLogos website has the Common Questions sections and some links to resources for study groups but do you also share some of your handouts and related materials that could serve as offline/in-person conversation starters?
That is very interesting. Can you please tell me where I can find more information on how much the main categories of Christian groups are losing millennials due to science? I’ve done a fair amount of looking into survey’s but I haven’t found that information. I have a strong desire to help college students see there is a way to be in a science friendly faith community (sort of small group churches) in college, and hopefully beyond college. So that kind of information would be very helpful.
Present-day cetaceans such as dolphins have four limbs, like all good mammals (which are tetrapods) should. They only have them as embryos, though - they have hindlimb buds that start at the right time for a mammal to have hindlimb buds, and then later hindlimb development stops and they regress. Why might this be the case, do you think?
It comes up a lot on homeschooling boards. There are usually some lively conversations happening at the Well Trained Mind forum. Most of the participants are women who homeschool, though sometimes fathers and teachers or curriculum developers chime in.
If you search over there for YEC or old earth or Ken Ham or evolution some such related term, you can usually find threads that got a lot of action from all points on the spectrum.
The ReligionNews.com article is quite relevant (came out just last month too!).
“The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life has noted that 39% of those currently unaffiliated who grew up as mainline Protestants now believe that “[m]odern science proves religion is superstition,” and 31% identify this belief as an “important reason” they became unaffiliated.”
Naturally, the writer glosses over a detail that would be GREAT for us to know more about … how do they define “mainline Protestants” ? I would like to think this category is most Evolution-tolerant denominations. But it probably has plenty of the large Evangelical groups that are anything but Evolution-tolerant.
Thanks and you’re welcome! It’s difficult but rewarding work.
There’s plenty of online forums out there about origins, but they are almost always segregated by position, and some can be quite raucous. To my knowledge, this is the only forum where people of all perspectives interact on origins with a high level of civility. That’s pretty cool, in my opinion.
In a word: SLOWLY. There’s so many misconceptions and ignorance out there that introducing a new paradigm into the conversation can be very traumatic for people. I suggest getting copies of two books for people: In the Beginning, We Misunderstood and Coming to Peace with Science (and, of course, The Language of God…can’t forget that one ) . Then follow up over coffee (or something) and work through the conversation slowly. Many people have such rigid categories for faith and science that it takes time to introduce new categories. And be patient and gracious.
Before you do more research, I have two questions to ask:
(1) If you don’t yet know the details about the several species of whale-like fossils that are incredibly important support for whale evolution, why are you already arguing that this type of evolution cannot be true?
(2) If you are going to look into these fossil forms, are you going to do so to find out whether the evidence does, in fact, support an evolutionary past, or will you be determined to find ways to reject it?
I’m guessing that you see where I am going with this.
I assume from what you have written so far that your aim will be to refute the natural evidences. But, if you are already firmly convinced that evolution cannot be valid, I will skip a back-and-forth, non-productive exchange about natural observations.
I believe it is far more helpful to address this core issue: What biblical, theological and/or philosophical reasons are motivating you to reject the possibility of an evolutionary creation view, while I am convinced that God’s biblical and natural revelations reveal a grand narrative of an evolutionary past? The answer to this foundational question is already determining how we view natural evidences.
hi again prof gary. im actually go by the evidences. if the evidences show us that a whale cant evolve step wise from a tetrapod- then we should accept those evidences. do you agree?
now lets check again your evidences:
if its have a function then why not? before this you said that “whales have small bones in their pelvic region that serve no apparent function”-. so in this case we may claim that its true. but we indeed found a function for this structure.
what about the possibility that this stucture is actually a part of a vestigial flipper? we have evidence for this also.
so for now- we dont have any evidence that whales had legs.
i already showed that some expert claim it isnt teeth at all but a part of the embrio development. now, even if it was a real teeth- it will be evidence for degeneration and not evolution.
why not actually? maybe its need to be this way because of the complex ambrio development process. actually you said that some mammals doesnt share this trait. so doest it mean that those mammals doesnt share a commonndescent with the mammals that do have it?
i vever seen a whale with legs. do you?
not according to this:
its simple: they share a commondesigner. why 2 different cars are similar?
Thank you for the pointers. At this stage, I was thinking about something at an even earlier stage than books, something that would stimulate people to simply begin asking the right questions instead of just falling in the default/common positions you list on your post. Once they’re already willing to read books about the subject then I’d say we’re already halfway there Nevertheless, these are good suggestions of good books to have readily available - I’ll make sure to add them the list of introductory references.
Thank you for the pointer to this board - it seems overwhelming with millions of posts in tens of thousands of topics in each section! Are there organizations providing YEC/OEC/ID curricula or home schooling materials for those views? How would you assess those materials in comparison with what’s available on the BioLogos website?
Gary, I think dcscccc has clearly shown the inadequacy of the whale vestigial bones theory. The vestigial bones is an out of date concept; it is clear they do have a function. The reasoning for common descent always seems to be common structures, or vestiges of common structures, backed up by a type of common genetics. The problems is that the assumptions are wrong, or at the very least inconclusive, unprovable, and unlikely. Much of this falls under the same type of wishful thinking imposed by Haeckel on his drawings of embryos, contrary to evidence and to reality. Only now the comparisons are made in a more sophisticated way, yet with pseudo assumptions and pseudo conclusions.
There is a mountain of facts, a mountain of theorizing and hypothesizing and a mountain of story-telling. To say that this fact or that fact “most assuredly would be interpreted by modern scientists as evidence for evolution” is a misleading statement. In reality, there is absolutely nothing that would not be interpreted by modern scientists as evidence for evolution… or to put it another way, there is absolutely nothing that would be interpreted by so-called “modern” scientists as evidence against evolution. So it is a meaningless statement you have made.
The reality is however, that the missing transitionals are still missing, and vastly underpopulated in the fossil record, compared to expectations. Convenient then that evolutionists after the fact would not conclude that they did not exist, according to the evidence, but rather, that they would be few in number and most would have never fossilized. Evidence, my foot. (Dcscccc is much more gracious on this point. Today I am simply irritated by such …)
But the same is true for evolutionists. They are wholly committed to rejecting or ignoring any evidence against evolution, no matter what is presented. They are wholly committed to ignoring their false predictions and conclusions in terms of its impact on the viability of the theory of E. They are wholly committed to revising their theory, rather than revising their faith in the theory. Dcscccc shows how all your comments about whale evolution are false statements, and why, and instead of dealing with this, you continue on about presenting the list of evidence for ungulate to whale evolution as if he had never spoken. Your list is imaginary and non-existent, when examined in detail, and so your list explains nothing, and so it is not at all compelling. It is only compelling and supportive for evolution if accepted at face value, and not examined in detail.
Oh, but, it’s not what you say, it’s what you mean that matters. Linguistics is all about the implicatures inherent in the explicatures which is how the meaning is calculated. If it’s not what you meant, you should clarify, because I have evidently incorrectly hypothesized the intended meaning your communicative cues were supposed to point to.
Of course God killed off the older species of archaeocetes and dropped later models in the water. Only instead of going back to the drawing board he made it only look like they’re related.
True. (of course, your analytical mind will quickly deduce that true means false… in this case). Half truths are the biggest bane of my experience. In other words, your statement is false because if you cannot tell what I mean by what I say, then what I have said is meaningless, and this “meaninglessness” does matter, particularly in contrast to actual words which are understandable and not “meaningless”.
In the process of all this analyzing, you have managed to divert the original topic entirely, and so have failed to actually reword what I have actually said, and then to ask for verification or affirmation of your understanding. If you used that process, you might have discovered what I actually meant, rather than to read in your own impressions. And if by some chance I was deliberately trying to be obtuse, or to interweave a number of “hidden” meanings, that would be my cue to enlighten you. As it stands, what I have said quite literally is what I meant.
Ted, thanks for your gracious reply. Yes there is hubris on all sides, but I am more irritated by the subtle (superior attitude) type which attempts to align people with human theory than by the obvious attempts to bring people back to God. That is the biggest contrast I see. Thus the link you showed which I finally looked at, indicated to me not an exaggerated pride or superior knowledge, but rather a mission to bring people back to what God clearly wrote in scripture (through human beings).
As far as evangelicals and fundamentalists are concerned, we do not need as Christians to be putting up “walls of division” or categories of dissension which are not warranted, and which miss the real issues we are discussing. All protestant churches were at one time fundamentalist in the sense of putting importance on the perspecuity of scripture, and the authority of scripture. All churches were at one time evangelical, organizing missions that not only provided food and clothing, but also scripture, salvation, and service so that the unbelievers would be saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ.
It is not what believers are “boxed” as, nor what denomination they join, but how they live, and how their faith impacts their lives and minds that is important. And this may or may not be similar to a particular church, just as a particular church may or may not be indistinguishable from its denomination or “category of denominations”,
18 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who suppress the truth [l]in unrighteousness, 19 because that which is known about God is evident [m]within them; for God made it evident to them. 20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse. 21 For even though they knew God, they did not [n]honor Him as God or give thanks, but they became futile in their speculations, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 Professing to be wise, they became fools, 23 and exchanged the glory of the incorruptible God for an image in the form of corruptible man and of birds and four-footed animals and [o]crawling creatures. (Romans 1).
) . Then follow up over coffee (or something) and work through the conversation slowly. Many people have such rigid categories for faith and science that it takes time to introduce new categories. And be patient and gracious.
Nevertheless, these are good suggestions of good books to have readily available - I’ll make sure to add them the list of introductory references.