CMI: Dangers Of Theistic Evolution (Or "Evolutionary Creationism")

I wonder if those three words should be a motto for evolutionary creationists. Logical analysis has so often been shown to give wrong answers in biology and physics as well as in theology, Not that logic is useless in any intellectual endeavor, on the contrary. But I often think (especially when reading statements from both YECs and atheists), that over-zealous application of logical arguments in the pursuit of truth often ignores the Baconian foundations of modern science and epistemology.

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@Sy_Garte, you are right.

That is why the basis for Christian science is the Logos Who is embedded in the structure of Creation, and not imposed upon Creation.

Ah… case in point … Is logic over-rated?

I came into the room because I was passing, I distinctly heard someone say Bacon !

Now I’m a little disappointed.

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I think @Christy nailed it with the posts above.

It appears to me that this, and the many arguments I am now seeing that seem to ‘refute EC’, kind of forget what they are intending to do.

They provide much Biblical evidence against evolutionism, and then towards then end remember they weren’t attempting to argue evolutionism, rather evolution, and Evolutionary Creationism. So they change their title, though the content doesn’t reflect.

Example in Danger #5 he quotes and Evolutionismist, clearly EC can and does reconcile this quote even from and evolutionismist to the truth of the scriptures.

“The idea of evolution undermines the foundation of our salvation. Evolutionist Hoimar von Ditfurth discusses the incompatibility of Jesus’ incarnation with evolutionary thought: “Consideration of evolution inevitably forces us to a critical review … of Christian formulations. This clearly holds for the central Christian concept of the ‘incarnation’ of God … The absoluteness with which the event in Bethlehem has up to now been regarded in Christian philosophy, is contrary to the identification of this man who personifies this event (= Jesus), with man having the nature of homo sapiens.”3”

Hoimar is not understanding that Jesus was 100% God, and 100% man. Yet I will assert (so does the Bible), that Jesus, was a homo sapien, and had the nature of one.

EC are under attackon both sides (Christians and atheist) by YEC, and evolutionism. So sometimes in defending against evolutionism, they attack evolution, and therefore EC. EC never says that evolution undermines Jesus. So this guy isn’t even arguing EC.

I came for the bacon too!

@gbrooks9 @Christy @jpm @jammycakes @still_learning @etc

One that I don’t believe any of you have addressed yet is danger #2: “God becomes a God of the gaps.”

This is probably the one I find most compelling…

What are your thoughts on it?

I recommend watching these Origins - Faith Alive Christian Resources

It is funny, they speak of god of the gaps and the dangers of it, to which I agree completely (with the DVD from the link).

We need to be careful in making a god of the gaps, because when science does (and it probably will) it then nullifies ‘our god of the gaps’ we created. Thankfully our God is not a God of the gaps, like holes in a boat we feel we need to patch or our boat will sink. God IS the boat. The gaps we fill is using his Word, and his scientific world to fine tune our logic.

If you create a god that says fruit falls because of god. Then science says fruit falls because of gravity, you god was just defeated. My God is the creator of everything. Sometimes we can mistake how something is interpreted. But when science shows gravity, then we know (since God was the Creator of everything) God made gravity. This is why now when we see science show proof of 13.7 billion year old universe, then God used the big bang.

Now science no longer proves God wrong, it allows us to understand Him further increase in our understandings of His glory and power and majesty!

“However, in theistic evolution the only workspace allotted to God is that part of nature which evolution cannot ‘explain’ with the means presently at its disposal. In this way He is reduced to being a ‘god of the gaps’ for those phenomena about which there are doubts. This leads to the view that ‘God is therefore not absolute, but He Himself has evolved—He is evolution’.2”

This is not at all what I, nor I think many EC’s believe. We are not pinning god to evolution, we are using the brains and technologies God gave us to see the world as it is. Using that knowledge, we then gain understanding of who God is.

Again, I greatly recommend those 6 short (5m or so) videos, and recommend for the writer of that article to watch. Great fundamental EC videos!

It’s actually extremely iron they used that. As that is the very thing they are doing. God must ave created the earth in 6 days, and if you prove that the earth is older than 6 days, this would invalidate my God, so I refute all of your evidence, and come up with my own.

It’s flat-out untrue and the exact opposite of what evolutionary creationism teaches.

Evolutionary creation acknowledges God at work in natural processes as well as supernatural ones. Just because we can explain how something happened doesn’t mean to say that God wasn’t involved.

On the contrary, a “God of the gaps” mentality takes offence whenever science explains something that you think should only be explained by God. This gives rise to the question of what exactly should science attempt to explain? If you follow their argument through to its logical conclusion, you shouldn’t attempt to do any kind of science at all.

For what it’s worth, I once had someone objecting to the fact that science can explain where the colours in a sunset come from. Is there any reason why we can’t view Rayleigh scattering as just another one of the paints in God’s paintbox?

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Dangerous #5 seems the most incoherent of all the list items:

"The idea of evolution undermines the foundation of our salvation. Evolutionist Hoimar von Ditfurth discusses the incompatibility of Jesus’ incarnation with evolutionary thought: “Consideration of evolution inevitably forces us to a critical review … of Christian formulations. This clearly holds for the central Christian concept of the ‘incarnation’ of God … The absoluteness with which the event in Bethlehem has up to now been regarded in Christian philosophy, is contrary to the identification of this man who personifies this event (= Jesus), with man having the nature of homo sapiens.”
.
In all the mumbo-jumbo, I see no conflict between the metaphysics of salvation and the physics of evolution!

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What @jammycakes said.

As others said to you, it is based on an incorrect premise. Why do you think it is compelling?

@jammycakes @Christy @RHernandez

Let’s put it this way…
Would you be open to the possibility that God does not exist, and that the universe was created without his action, and that life was able to evolve without his aid whatsoever?

The way I see it, the next step is finding out that it all could have happened without God after all…

Hope that answers your questions…

Nope. That would mean denying the most fundamental relationship of my life, my relationship with the Creator God of Christian Scripture who is my Savior.

I categorically reject the idea that scientific knowledge is the only valid category of knowledge or that reason and observation are the only faculties for accessing truth.

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Keeping in mind I am an atheist sitting on the outside looking in, I thought I might add some observations I have made.

What I find interesting is the history of Christian theology and how it has dealt with scientific findings. In the past, objections to scientific theories haven’t been limited to evolution and the various other theories modern YECs object to. For example, there were theologians who objected to Newton’s idea that gravity worked as an impersonal mechanism of nature, moving the planets around the Sun and pulling apples from trees. Theologians objected to Ben Franklin’s approach to scientifically studying lightning. In fact, they didn’t like the idea of putting lightning rods on church bell towers because they felt it was interfering with God’s will by guiding lightning to where man wanted it. Today, even YECs would probably think it quite silly to reject the scientific theories that explain how lightning forms. The acceptance of evolution, the old age of the Earth, and the Big Bang seems like a continuation of this trend, at least to me.

I will leave you with this quote (which I may have shown you before) and my best wishes:

It can hardly be supposed that a false theory would explain, in so satisfactory a manner as does the theory of natural selection, the several large classes of facts above specified. It has recently been objected that this is an unsafe method of arguing; but it is a method used in judging of the common events of life, and has often been used by the greatest natural philosophers … I see no good reason why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of any one. It is satisfactory, as showing how transient such impressions are, to remember that the greatest discovery ever made by man, namely, the law of the attraction of gravity, was also attacked by Leibnitz, “as subversive of natural, and inferentially of revealed, religion.” A celebrated author and divine has written to me that “he has gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His laws.”

— Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859)

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But there are still Christians today (some of whom have posted here), who cry “Deism!” as soon as you start talking about the natural laws discovered by people like Newton.

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[quote=“J.E.S, post:31, topic:36732”]
Let’s put it this way…
Would you be open to the possibility that God does not exist, and that the universe was created without his action, and that life was able to evolve without his aid whatsoever?[/quote]

No. This is the reason why I stated that it is based on a false premise. Why do you find it compelling?

The next step from what? The false premise?

[quote=“J.E.S, post:31, topic:36732”]Hope that answers your questions…
[/quote]It did not answer my question at all, but then I expected that you would not answer directly.

Why do you find it compelling?

No. God is too real to me for that to be a possibility. I’ve seen His hand at work in my life too much to be able to doubt His existence for very long.

To be honest, I’m not sure why you’re even asking the question. What point are you trying to make?

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Reading through all of those dangers, I would say #2 is the worst of them all, and the most self serving. It is really a case of psychological projection on the part of CMI.

If any of the “sides” in this debate are guilty of creating a God of the Gaps it is CMI and YEC/OECs in general. They are the ones who divide reality into things that nature does and things that God does. They constantly argue that nature can’t produce the biodiversity we see today, and from that claimed gap in natural explanations they try to claim that God must do it. That is the classic God of the Gaps argument. They apply the same argumentation to things like abiogenesis and the Big Bang.

Evolutionary creationists, on the other hand, do not bifurcate reality into what nature does and what God does. Finding a natural explanation which closes a gap in our knowledge does not reduce the role of God in the EC worldview, but it certainly reduces the role of God in the CMI worldview.

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J.E.S

There are millions of christians who worry about exactly the opposite of what you worry about. If given an ultimatum between how they can plainly see how the world works - - vs. the Earth being made in 6 days, and fossils being faked by God, and all the rest of what it would take to dismiss Evolutoinary processes … pro-Evolutionist Christians just might have to reject the faith of their fathers!

I do not think there is a point. Two of us point out that it is based on a false premise, what we say argumento del hombre de paja, and he just repeats the false premise and thinks that answer the question of why it is compelling.

I don’t think he is here for discussion. I think he is more what we say se dio ala fuga, what you call hit and run.

@jammycakes @RHernandez
I see your points…However, I am not so much trying to make a point as I am trying to clarify the point that CMI is trying to make…