An analogy for evolution

[Vinnie]

And I am done with you. Good day.

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

(post deleted by author)

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

I would have joined in sooner but i have had a forced silence.

@St.Roymond

And lest someone object that a sandcastle is all the same material

it is not the organs that matter but the cells themselves
composition of sand
And the specialisation of cells
And there are about 200 different cell tpyes in a human
How many cell types in a human

So the analogy fails.

RIchard

PS Is that enough references?

[EDC1]

ah, but what do you mean by ‘believing the text is true’? Literally true in all parts, or a mixture of literal truth, historical truth, metaphorical truth, poetic truth etc etc?

Thankfully many Christians consider it the latter.

[St.Roymond]

@Vinnie

That Adam and Eve are real and a global life ending flood occurred are very viable Biblical interpretations. They are the default and historical interpretations

For a long period in the third through fourth century they were taken allegorically more than not. It’s hard to discern without really digging because allegory can be treated literally in order to start mining the meaning. A shift came in the fifth century – and interestingly it correlates with the church becoming accustomed to political power and parallels a loss of the attempt to “make the Old Testament Christian” which I think was due to suddenly starting to use the OT to justify the wielding of political power.

@Roy

And I pointed out that everyone thinks the Bible is data, but believers who reject evolution think the Bible is more than just data.

I think it would be more clear to say “a different kind of data”.

[EDC1]

As someone who accepts evolution but who has little grasp on how it actually works (essentially no background in biology - physics and maths were my forte), could you recommend an introductory book that spells out the basics?

‘one of the reason the characterization of evolution as random is wrong is because many of the ways in which variation is introduced in to genome are a product of evolution themselves. They are selected because they enhance the survival adaptability of the species.’

Perhaps random is the wrong descriptor, but I dont really have a problem with the idea of randomness. In the end nothing is random to God, even if it is to humans. But if you take the case of Darwin’s moths. One type became dominant simply because of local environmental conditions caused by humans. But that human causation was not intentional to making one type of moth more common than hitherto, It was just the consequence of making one type of moth more obvious to its predators, and thus that population dramatically reduced. If a erupting volcano had had a similar effect on a particular population of a species, would that not be essentially a random effect of nature?

I just dont see God involved directly in evolution or indeed in nature in general. I suspect He does not micro-manage his creation. Just in the same way if an asteroid is moving through space-time, He is not directing its path, but rather it will move as described by the ‘laws’ of physics. I tend to view evolution similarly.

[RichardG (Richard Gillett)]

@St.Roymond

@Roy

And I pointed out that everyone thinks the Bible is data, but believers who reject evolution think the Bible is more than just data.

I think it would be more clear to say “a different kind of data”.

We seem to be playing around with definitions and linguistics.

To call Scrippture data is probaby as good a definition as any. it is material to be processed and understood. however, many treat it as facts, which is further on from data, it is accepting Scriptural self interpretation or comentary. Furthermore, Scripture is not one type of writing so to accept it all on a singular basis would seem to be falacious. The hiccup being the accusation of “picking and choosing” that rears its ugly head every time someone disagrees or has a different viewpoint.
All or nothing is never a good principle, especially when dealing with a complex writing such as Scripture.

Just saying… I am not dictating

Richard

[Vinnie]

@St.Roymond

For a long period in the third through fourth century they were taken allegorically more than not. It’s hard to discern without really digging because allegory can be treated literally in order to start mining the meaning. A shift came in the fifth century – and interestingly it correlates with the church becoming accustomed to political power and parallels a loss of the attempt to “make the Old Testament Christian” which I think was due to suddenly starting to use the OT to justify the wielding of political power.

I think it’s interesting because I don’t think anyone really comments on the question directly in that time period do they? We are just going based off of references teaching other things or them using allegorical interpretations. My understanding is that literal and allegorical interpretations are not mutually exclusive to most of the church during that time period either. One could go beyond the literal but that does not mean one necessarily disagree with it.

Irenaeus in late second century seems to view A&E as historical but even this might not be certain since he also thinks they represent humanity. We probably have a tendency to overgeneralize certain time periods and it s difficult not to project our beliefs back onto them.

I do think that Jews at the time of Jesus did consider most of these figures in the OT real. I mean Josephus traces their history to Adam and literature in 2nd temple Judaism seems to treats them that way. Whether specific gentiles in the 2nd-4th century did is difficult to determine.

Vinnie