Thanks! That is what I was thinking–@aarceng, Chris, I think it was @Joel_Duff’s writing that made me think of that. I’d be interested in what you think of his posts.
All of our understandings are “evolving,” so to speak; mine is still doing so. I’m learning a lot. I welcome this broadening on the part of AIG, though it may be a mistake to incorporate more assumptions to make that fit with a young earth (they can join my erroneous club).
This is like saying their is no majesty or greatness in farmers, shepherds, teachers, and parents, but only in artists and engineers – no greatness in servants but only in commanders and rulers. But this is directly contradicted by scripture showing that God’s view of the matter is the complete opposite. *Matthew 23:11 He who is greatest among you shall be your servant;
The truth is that YEC caters to the swaggering self-important Pharisees who like lording it over other people – like those of Victorian England for whom nobility and being a gentleman had nothing to do with character and behavior but with power and dominance. But the view of Jesus is just the opposite, where the true nobility, gentility, and greatness is measured by service. Thus in the evolutionary view where God’s role is more like the shepherd and teacher to help and serve rather than to design or control is more in line with Jesus view of greatness than that of the Pharisees.
Let us consider the so called cat kind for example. I think you would be hard pressed to reference any mainstream biologist who would allow that all the cat species could have arisen in the course of four or five thousand years. However, there is nowhere even near this much time available. Egyptian art [which actually dates date to before the YEC flood date] depicts lions, house cats, cheetahs, and leopards. Add to that all the extent cats around the world which also show up in ancient art. Add to that all the cat species, which supposedly hyper evolved only to go promptly extinct, which constitute the majority of known species including the very distinctive saber toothed tiger. All this, from one breeding pair, in the span of a hundred years or so? Is there any point at which this is just too much of a stretch?
As well, how can this proposal really meet any plain language interpretation of the Bible. If anyone from the ancient near east saw a lion, would he say, “oh, there is a lion”, or “hey, there is a cat kind”? Higher orders of classification such as genus are more modern, biological groupings. YEC may be playing lexical games here. Ask a child, ancient or modern, to list what kinds of animals there are and there is your answer.
The whole YEC hyper evolution stance is not driven by any biological evidence, but by the need to find a way the reduce the wildlife shipping manifest for Noah’s cargo.
Wow, love this sentence. Putting it in my favorite quotes file for future use.
Yours to use! Just fix the typo “the” to “to”
@aarceng, I appreciate your concern. I have extensive experience with Richard Dawkins and his work, and you can rest assured I only “cautiously” agree with only some of his assertions. In my opinion, Dawkins seems to go out of his way to denigrate our concept of a creator God, a partiality particularly evident in his book “The Blind Watchmaker.” That being said, I simply can’t disregard the science and evidence of the evolution he describes, or perhaps more appropriately, the methods God chose to use in His creation of our universe. The evidence for an old earth and for evolution is simply overwhelming. As @Christy so elegantly and accurately stated in another thread,
I couldn’t possibly agree more with that. God bless you @Christy for that understanding! I can no longer prescribe to the theory of young earth creationism. There is simply too much logical, scientifically-based evidence to the contrary. While I may be struggling with the transition and searching for an understanding of this foreign theory I once demonized, I have never second-guessed my decision to reevaluate my beliefs. Adopting a rigid view of any specific concept and disregarding any and all evidence to the contrary is the hallmark of ignorance. I really like how @Michael_Callen put it,
I’m afraid there’s no going back to YEC now, there’s only forward!
Or perhaps to put it another way … “there is only truth.”
Apparently it is a process that is governed by a law, thus it obeys a supernatural guidance - unless you believe a law to be a physical entity. to understand what survival fitness means you also need to overcome the materialistic thinking, as it is not physical fitness as in being strong enough to kill your neighbour but being smart enough to love thy neighbour like thyselves
Mark 2:22 (NIV2011)
22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”
In ancient times for both the Jews and the pagans believed that change or innovation was not good. The problem with this is that Jesus and His followers wanted people to accept Jesus as the Messiah, as the Savior, as God, which meant a definite revolutionary change in their belief systems, both Jewish and pagan/philosophy.
Jesus used the parable of the wineskins to let people know that change can be necessary and good. What He is saying is, if you want to make new wine, you need to use new wineskins. The point is that when you are saved by accepting Jesus Christ as the Savior, you must also change your whole world view.
You cannot just add faith in Jesus as Savior to an Old Testament legalistic world view as too many people try to do even today. You cannot just add the fact that you believe in God to a philosophical world view as again too many people do today. Theism is not the issue. Jesus the Savior is.
“Does Evolution Diminish the Majesty of God?” Your question reveals that when you alter one aspect of your world view it impacts on other aspects. The YEC is a static worldview. God created the world in 6 days and then rested. If that is the way you perceive the majesty of God, then a dynamic understanding of the world seems to diminish God.
On the other hand if the world is dynamic, then may be God is too, and maybe the dynamic God is not only a truer view of world, but a stronger more magnificent understanding of God. In this respect the idea of a “slippery slope” that the opponents of evolution has some validity. Change does beget change. The question is whether it is good change or bad change. BioLogos backed by Jesus the Logos says that change to evolution is good change and I believe that a dynamic view of the world and life is Christian.
But there is another problem that evolution creates and has not been solved by science. The standard western world view is dualism of body and mind. Science deals with the body and philosophy with the mind. Theology deals with the spirit which seems to be folded into the mind, but really does not fit. Science has determined that determined that life forms do evolve, but has not determined a verifiable process by which this takes place, so evolution has failed this test of being a true dynamic scientific theory. Just saying or even proving that the life forms have evolved, does not make a theory.
To be a truly dynamic process evolution must bring together the physical, the rational, and the spiritual. Darwinism has been wedded to the view that evolution is non-rational conflict based process, which is the reason why it has failed in this area. Also of course science is wedded to the idea that evolution is without meaning or purpose. Evolutionary Creationism takes the other view which means that it has the best chance of coming up with a real true scientific understanding of evolution.
If I may, are you suggesting that evolution (Not EC) is subject to divine guidance and as such is not random - not survival of the fittest?
Umm, I not sure they would agree with you on
does not compute. why would survival of the fittest be random?
Random means not predictable. Non-random means that it can be predicted.
Can evolution be predicted? If so on what basis?
Dawkins says no.
@Paul_Allen1, I expect they would not agree with me, but until science has established a predictable process for evolution, it cannot be verified. Without a predictable process they have no true theory.
Hm good question. Doesn’t convergence indicate that environment causes similar pressures?
Also, we know how (and are learning how) genes and epigenetics react to the environment. Our bodies are wonderful machines that behave in somewhat predictable ways; even our minds are frequently predictable, to a certain extent.
Thanks.
As Randy said, good question. Convergence seems to indicate the evolution will reach a similar solution in reaction to the environment, though it may take a different path. Other seemingly random processes are also predictable. You can’t predict the stock market tomorrow, but it is a pretty good bet it will rise given time. The best team may not win this Saturday, but chances are in a series of seven games, the best team will prevail. Usually. Unless it gets down to the seventh game, then it is pretty much luck and the Astros blew it. But I digress.
So, random processes are not truly random most of the time. As Proverbs says, we throw the dice, but God controls the outcome.
So this conversation on how evolution may diminish the majesty of God seems to have settled on randomness as the offending factor. I can understand why some would be offended to think their creator brought them into being by way of shooting craps. Perhaps the solution would to imagine creation as having involved masterful statistical analysis?
But the other possibility is that divine creation needn’t have been so centered on specific ends. A true artist finds the figure already in the stone. Perhaps the creator is creative that way?
First and primary, throwing dice is a random process, but it is not a natural process. Neither are the stock market and sports contests natural scientific processes. The stock market and sports contests involve so many variables that they are not possible to predict accurately, but most people with a good knowledge of the situation can predict them reasonably well. They are not truly random.
Second, I would say that based on history it is crystal clear that evolution is fu3eled by changing ecological variables. Yes, it may be impossible to predict in advance what will happen because there are so many variables, but see time after time how this happens, so I support the convergence theory and make the wider claim that ecology is the ruling factor in evolution.
The problem seems to be that Darwinians do not want to give up their motto Survival of the Fittest and the accompanying claim of an unguided and meaningless creation. I do not say that Evolution itself is a meaningless process and thus supports atheism, but I see that atheists have worked to make Darwinian theory atheistic, that is unguided, and meaningless, and as a result unscientific.
It is time to make the Theory of Evolution scientific, which means not random. That is what ecology does.
A good question deserves a good answer. Isn’t about time that Darwin’s Theory became really a science that can answer real questions?
The only part of your answer that is good deals with ecology, but you continue to make excuses for “randomness” , which indicates that you do not take the good question seriously enough to seek a good answer.
I am thrilled to find another person who has left YEC and still sees God as the creator.
I see creation as a wonderful example of God’s power.
I have wondered how those who take the early chapters of Genesis as literal history think the dodo got to an island in the Pacific and nowhere else after the two waddled out of the ark.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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