You are confusing evolution and abiogenesis. Evolution “starts” with life evolving from life.
And I’m pretty sure even theories of abiogenesis start with water, not dirt. 
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Dirty water, maybe?
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My thought is: Why did God use dirt in the first place? If you are
a scientific literalist and say God physically used soil and clay to for Adam’s body, you then have to say God miraculously changed the elemental composition to make flesh and blood out of silica and maybe a little organic material, bacteria, fungi and maybe a few grub worms.
If he changed the elemental composition, he could have started with any collection of electrons and protons, or with nothing at all.
Therefore, there is something more profound about being made from dust, and feel it does have meaning both in our humble beginnings, and in our beings being molded in God’s hands from the clay, as is imaged elsewhere in scripture.
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I expect it goes back to the phenomenalogical stuff. Plants grow out of dirt and animals eat plants (or other animals). Humans eat the same plants and animals or we don’t grow, either. Yes, now we know that plant ‘material’ is partly made of water and air and sunlight, but considering the latter two as ‘matter’ is relatively recent. Bringing it back down to earth, the soil is fundamentally necessary to building life structures. (Ha! See what I did there? 
)
Fussing about the relative ratios of silica in dirt vs. humans seems a little too fine-grained!
Good Morning to you both, @Casper_Hesp & @Dredge,
Rogue blood cell? I suppose I have had much worse things said about me. Let’s see if I can find a Desk Name plate that suitably dignifies that assessment.
B.L. mission statement 1 reads:
[1] We believe the Bible is the inspired and authoritative word of God. By the Holy Spirit it is the “living and active” means through which God speaks to the church today, bearing witness to God’s Son, Jesus, as the divine Logos, or Word of God.
Yes, I believe this is where I tend to diverge from most of the good and faithful BioLogos supporters. Since @Christy has already installed a “ban” on discussing slavery, I won’t delve into the weeds about it. But topics like Slavery, and like some of Job’s discussions of natural phenomena provide me the evidence I would use to say that God’s inspiration can get a little fuzzy in the biologically “streaming” brain we call the mind. Frankly, I think this is the general position of those American Christians who don’t invest as much time in religious discussion as we all do. So I like to think I represent the “every-man voice”. And most of the time, I just relate to the idea that authors do know much of what they are writing, and that instead of just being “erroneous” … they should be seen as speaking figuratively.
Mission Statement [4] reads: “We believe in the historical incarnation of Jesus Christ as fully God and fully man. We believe in the historical death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, by which we are saved and reconciled to God.”
Right, Casper… that one would get me excommunicated from the Unitarians for sure! However, I am quite enthusiastic about my position that Jesus did exist, and will enter the fray frequently when some nay-sayer says he never lived. I do believe he thought his self-less actions would ultimately benefit his people and ultimately the world.
@Jpm,
I’m fairly convinced that the Genesis writer was part of the tradition that loved the word play of “clay”, particularly “red” clay, to represent the working material used to make the “red” blood of humans.
When I stumbled on a text that mentioned the Persian creation myth that humans were made from Rhubarb, I remember thinking “What the !!!” But once I remembered that rhubarb is a brilliant red, with lots of red “veins” in the leaves … it all became pretty reasonable.
The Greeks would relay other Persian creation myths too… like that originally humans were dual-gendered! … not in the usual hermaphroditic conception, but as a kind of “roundish” being with 2 heads … (I can’t remember whether the heads faced away or towards each other!).
But because of some cataclysm (natural vs. divine, I also don’t remember that detail!), humans were rent in two … and for eons since, males and females have had a subconscious motivation to rejoin their other half! < It is easy to see the etymological aspect of this creation myth, to explain the almost irrational “coupling” drive of humans.
And this etymological angle even gets repeated in the Genesis story when it throws in the off-hand comment about a man and woman joining - - but emphasizing the spiritual sense over the physical.
I find it ironic that Kabbalah-inspired discussions of God’s creation “male and female” typically allude to the idea that Adam, before his surgery, was two people (male and female) and that the plural term “Elohim” is also a reference to a dual-gendered deity.
These themes similar to Persian ones are not surprising to me, since I see the Kosher rule set as coming principally out of the Jewish contact with the Zoroastrians. And I see the Essene fixation with toilet taboos (especially with their scrupulous concerns about the Sun being “offended” by an exposed sanitation hole) as being classic Persian concerns.
Ooops… sorry, JPM, I have digressed … and all I wanted to do was point out that Hebrew texts on “red” clay and “Adam” make for great poetry !!!
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Well, of course, probably the safest way to read “clay” is figurative or poetic.
However, if life came about via abiogenesis, then the “clay” may have formed a catalyst. Clay minerals have very complex structures, so it seems remotely possible that some scribble in the clay was the right scribble and that catalyzed the origins of an RNA world, or an RNA/protein world or whatever.
Some of this seems to be whether life is inevitable or if this is the uniquely rare exception (or even the only case in the universe). It does seem with SETI that we are pretty much alone. (Judging what goes on here on earth, I hate to think what atrocious extraterrestrial programming might arrive here, if any of that notion is true.) We should diligently keep looking because that will establish the odds. If we continue to find nothing even with the best minds searching, then it says that life on earth is nothing short of a miracle, though each an every one of our lives is in fact a miracle at least metaphorically speaking.
Anyway, beyond clay as a catalyst acting as a kind of “selection” mechanism, abiogenesis is not really evolution and this is drifting from the main thrust of this topic, and there are many possibilities but no clear or even compelling answers.
I also think it is very risky to impose much of any science or engineering onto scripture. It doesn’t seem like the point of scripture. Maybe “plants” (as @Lynn_Munter wrote) or “red” (as @gbrooks9 wrote) is a far safer angle on this.
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Is it possible to get excommunicated from the UUs? One could be on the Universalist side and hold 4.
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Good news and Bad news.
The bad news is I don’t know what the last part of your sentence means:
“…and hold 4”?
But the good news is - - nah… you really can’t get excommunicated out of the U.U.
We aren’t organized enough for that … I suppose you can get booted out of an individual congregation … but they figure anyone odd enough to want to be in the U.U. must belong there!
My labors here on this list are easy to describe:
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visitors who arrive and assert that Evolution is false for x, y and z reasons… and then, after being offered explanations for x, y and z are not true, they come back the next week and repeat exactly the same charges against Evolution. These people are exploiting the good will of BioLogos.
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visitors who arrive and say scientists are liars or motivated to lie because Evolution is where the money is … Such people are rude and exploiting the good will of BioLogos.
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visitors who arrive and ignore any input on their objections to evolution, but make half their postings sermonizing rhetoric about the Love of God and his Sovereignty … and so forth … Such people are exploiting the good will of BioLogos.
Dredge, let me know when you see a pattern in my efforts…
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[quote=“Christy, post:192, topic:35756, full:true”]
You are confusing evolution and abiogenesis. Evolution “starts” with life evolving from life. [/quote]
Thank you, but I am aware of the difference.
[quote=“jpm, post:194, topic:35756, full:true”]
My thought is: Why did God use dirt in the first place? If you are
a scientific literalist and say God physically used soil and clay to for Adam’s body, you then have to say God miraculously changed the elemental composition to make flesh and blood out of silica and maybe a little organic material, bacteria, fungi and maybe a few grub worms. [/quote] Don’t forget bananas, Phil - I heard we share 50% of our DNA with them ( I have a cousin who looks at least 35% banana).
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@gbrooks9
I agree with your general response to point (h) in the list.
Nevertheless, actually, in a somewhat counter intuitive way, entropy actually does factor into issues of neutral mutations.
Now, most structure prediction programs don’t understand entropy, because you feed it biologically known sequences and 1/3 to half of the predictions will be wrong, even if you find a setting where at least some of them come out right. So if they are any good, they mostly rely on sequence and structural homology to be successful, not physics.
Nevertheless, from a physics point of view, it turns out that the free energy in folding of polymers and their contacts are governed largely by balancing the binding energies against entropy (the increase in order, or reduction in degrees of freedom). If you understand this as binding, cross links or contacts, then (on first approximation), the entropic cost of a particular structural configuration is almost a fixed constant, and onto that, you vary the weight of the binding contacts. Hence, you have something like a maximum entropy for a particular configuration, and against that, changes in the sequence tend to adjust the weight of the binding contacts. If the changes are small, the target structure will generally form.
So there is a curious link between molecular evolution with neutral theory and the physical entropy. Counterintuitively, the entropy sets the target, and variations in the sequence (the contacts) happen around that target. So, my “counterintuitively” point is that entropy provides a physical basis on which to further demonstrate the validity of neutral mutation as a significant factor in the modification of genes.
The point of structures in biology is that they must be robust to mutation. Even when you try to cripple the system, it should have enough flexibility that many of your attempts will fail to yield any significantly observable effect. That may explain why biologist sometimes become the experiment, rather that what they are working on.
by Grace we proceed
Very interesting discussion.
But I think you will agree with me that Entropy, as it relates to micro-biology, is not a factor that a Creationist can point at and say: “and thus Evolution is impossible.”
Entropy, as a pervasive universal aspect of energy systems, is obviously going to “touch” Evolution and a great many other things. But as long as Earth continues to shower in the Sun’s net surplus energy output … Evolution will continue with nary a murmur…
I think the most interesting conundrum is how many life forms were wiped out because their system for genetic replication was too efficient … without variation, populations can quickly run out of maneuvering room in their environment … and before you can say “boo” … they are gone.
There are plenty of extinct species… but surely some of them would have been wiped out even with a fairly unreliable replication system… Obviously, if it gets too unreliable… the population implodes anyway.
by Grace we Proceed,
George
Agreed. I definitely second the motion. … the earth is not at all a closed system.
I don’t know what you are referring to specifically. A change in environmental conditions should not be too sudden and drastic or there is little chance for anything to survive. If the temperature suddenly changed over a few days from 35 C to 5 C, in a tropical environment, most of the species would probably perish. However, if it is a gradual downward trend over 100 years, maybe some fraction might survive. But you probably have already considered that.
One would think that human intelligence would be the ultimate selective advantage, as we can even change our environment, but maybe that notion too is an idol of the flesh. On my more pessimistic days, it seems like even the roaches have more sense than humans do.
We are here by God’s grace, that’s for sure. Let’s hope at least the point about his Grace is abundant and sufficient holds true.
I don’t consider my intuition to be an authority on anything, although there is a mystical dimension to faith that defies explanation.
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I think what @Socratic.Fanatic was pointing out is that you use your intuition over science to reject common descent.
Certainly you agree that the phrase “too quickly” is a relative matter. After the the Dinosaur-Killing asteroid hit, and all terrestrial animals larger than 50 kilos disappeared, that is evidence of a “quick” change.
But I didn’t want to rely on that particular event. I intended my meaning to refer to extinctions that occurred all over the planet for all sorts of reasons and circumstances with which the now extinct populations had insufficient allele diversity to cope.
Naturally, we have to be careful with the broad brush about “extinctions”. It would be completely normal and expected that as a “continuous population” rides the crest of change
- - using the allegory of a surging tidal wave, carrying the most adaptive populations into new times, conditions and regions - -
it is definitional that even the successful populations leave fossils of “the older models” … that may have looked and behaved differently from the more recent genetic snapshot of a surviving population.
Alligators and crocodiles appear to fit that class easily. And for a long time, mammoths held out … evolving into much smaller models when they were confined to small northern islands as the world continued to change around them.
Ultimately, mammoths became one of the clear cases of a population that just ended - - they were terminal. We can tell by their pattern of fossils and the fact they no longer compete with the Eskimo, that they were not carried on to the next era by the allegorical crests of change the world brought them. The Terror Birds that eventually became confined to South America rose up well after the disappearance of the dinosaurs … but their population too became terminal.
Terror Birds did not become parrots, nor falcons. The population came to an end without any survivors for the next wave of environmental change that would sweep into South America -
- the tidal crest represented by humankind!
W.K., I suppose it would be too much to think that you could take spiritual solace from one such as me - - a Unitarian Universalist - - but I’m convinced that God has it in his plan to save all humanity one way or another, just as a World-Ranked Chess Master, playing a 100 hopefuls (sequentially, each at a different board), has no trouble serially engaging these many dozens without constraining their Free Will. But all of these eager players have no way to resist the inexorable mastery of the top Chess expert in their region.
God has an additional advantage over the Chess Master. Not only does God know every move and counter-move necessary to make a struggling soul find a peaceful end to his vain resistance - - but unlike the Chess Master, God invented the whole system. His Mastery is beyond question, and thus his effect will be complete and uncontested!
OK, I see what you are saying; that they had been successful of a long time, yet suddenly, they disappeared, basically completely.
The mammoth extinctions were probably to doings of man. Just as we are well into over fishing now (e.g., the latest economist issue), we are the biggest doers of extinction. I recall that most of the large birds in Australia disappeared shortly after man showed up.
The Terror Birds, they look not so unlike dinosaurs, though their disappearance is far more recent only 1.6 Myr or even possibly more recently still… Wikipedia claims that the closest living relative is Seriema ( Phorusrhacidae - Wikipedia ). At least man cannot be blamed for their disappearance.
More of a puzzle to me is trilobites. They started in the Ordovician and disappeared in the Permian. They were very diverse, but an asteroid collision (it seems) wiped them out. Yet sharks, horseshoe crabs, squids among others survived. Horseshoe crabs shared a not so drastically different environment with trilobites, and they seem far less adaptable – indeed, they have hardly changed (visibly) for 500 Myrs; sharks similarly.
I guess you always have to get lucky.
I am some sort of reformed something or other, even though I cannot completely shake off all the Arminian notions. I know what the scriptures say, but I have come to like Jimmy Carter’s response: “I do not feel qualified to make a judgment.”
I am glad i don’t have to take responsibility for those decisions. But God is all knowing, merciful and just, so at least it is the one occasion where the decision is finally fair and nothing is hidden.
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I also heard that Mikey from the Life cereal commercials died after drinking Pepsi and eating Pop Rocks.
I have yet to find a single person who can cite a single peer reviewed paper that supports the “humans and bananas share 50% of their DNA” canard. At best, we might share 50% of a certain gene family with bananas, but since genes only make up about 5% of our genome that is a rather underwhelming comparison.
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