I am a theistic evolutionist, and part of the BioLogos Voices program. So I am going to do something surprising here. I am going to explain why the referent article by Dr. Carter (http://creation.com/historical-adam-biologos) is actually correct on several important points. This does not mean he is right on everything, but he is right on quite a bit.
- He is right to protest that science cannot rule out an idea it has not tested. This is completely correct. Scientists never considered the model he proposed, and so it cannot rightly claim to rule it out. This is the same argument I make when I say the science cannot rightly claim to rule God out, because it never actually considers the possibility. He is right, and I agree with everything but the italics portion…
Needless to say, I take great exception to the dogmatism of the BioLogos spokespeople. I do not believe the data support their conclusions and I believe it is entirely unfair to exclude the creation model without ever considering what the implications of the model would be (in scientific terms, they failed to propose a null hypothesis that could be ruled out by the evidence).
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I think he is right to complain about Collin’s and @DennisVenema’s statements about variation and Adam and Eve. As well intentioned as they are, I do not think science can claim to rule out something it never considered. That being said, I do not think it correct to claim that this is the official BioLogos position. BioLogos itself does not stake out a position on Adam and Eve (@jpm and @BradKramer please comment here).
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I entirely support his effort to build a testable model that determine if his theory matches the data. I will more creationists and ID people would do just this. Even if he is wrong, I enthusiastically welcome work like this. We can all learn from it, whether it ultimately does or does not pan out. People who do this should not be demeaned for their efforts. I really appreciate he is doing more trying to “poke holes” in evolution, but is building a quantitative model of his own. That doesn’t necessarily make him right, but this is certainly respectable. In fact, I would even argue that careful studies like this should be published in the mainstream scientific literature.
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I think @glipsnort’s analysis is interesting and it does explain the problem that Carter points to with the HapMap data being too flat (Figure 2). In defense of Carter, that is a very subtle error that takes very special knowledge to detect (and I’m not even sure if 1000 Genome data was out). Even if Carter is wrong here (which it looks like he is) I think this looks like an honest error, and not anything like the distortions (rightly or wrongly) some of us have come to expect. If Carter can revise his assessment of the data, I would be doubly impressed.
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I am also appreciate that he honestly explain that there is no reason that the creation model would prefer a specific distribution of nucleotide specific variation. I totally respect that more than silly confabulations that might have tempted others. I think he also makes a fair counter point to @glipsnort in saying that the data shows a bottleneck, even though evolution does not require this, but their creation model (because of Adam/Even and Noah) requires it. So there is some symmetry on this point. The key way to resolve this is to exhaustively list all patterns we see in the data, and catagorize them along several dimensions (a) consistency with evolution or YEC, (b) predicted by evolution or YEC, (c) unknown how to make consistent with evolution or YEC. Of course, there are several patterns I thinking of here, and I believe that in the genetic data evolution would win in spades, but I do not think that has been done yet.
So what do I disagree with?
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He seems to think that @DennisVenema and Collins’ speaks for all of BioLogos on these points. They don’t. I, for one, am a theistic evolutionist (evolutionary creationist) that beleives in a historical adam and eve. So does John Walton too.
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He thinks he has shown clear evidence against evolution. This is not the case. The more interesting thing he is doing is actually building a compelling quantitative creation model.
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He faults us all for not considering his model, but has it ever been published before? I think the real problem is that this type of work is not being done enough. I would welcome more of it, and even wish him success in his efforts. Don’t fault us, however, for not evaluating a model we have not been presented with.
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Even if his model is correct, because it directly invokes God I do not think it is part of mainstream science. This doesn’t make it false though. It could be true, and science could be wrong.
So there you have. I just defended a YEC. =)