I’m not a YEC, btw - far from it - I accept the fossil and geological records that reveal an overall evolution of life that took billions of years. I believe in a progressive creation model, in which God took genetic material from an existing creature to create the “next” creature (this comes from the description of how God created organisms from existing matter (Genesis 2:19).
This being so, all life would be genetically linked (in a true, physical sense)
Glipsnort replied:
Edgar:
But my model is not based on Darwin’s tree, which is based on a contiguous process of biological evolution.
Yes, sorry; the OP is a work-in-progress and will hopefully be upgraded soon.
In the meantime, here is some information from the donar thread (“Darwin’s tree of common descent is useless to applied biology”) which should help:
"I’m not a YEC, btw - far from it - I accept the fossil and geological records that reveal an overall evolution of life that took billions of years. I believe in a progressive creation model, in which God took genetic material from an existing creature to create the “next” creature (this comes from the description of how God created organisms from existing matter (Genesis 2:19). This being so, all life would be genetically linked (in a true, physical sense), so there may well be a practical scientific use for such links - only I’m not (yet) convinced there are any. It’s possible your research has indeed found a practical use for these genetic links.
But my model is not based on Darwin’s tree, which is based on a contiguous process of biological evolution. My model is based on separate, but genetically-linked creations.
I read your article, Testing Common Ancestry: It’s All about the Mutations, which I found very interesting (although I’d be lying if I said I fully understood it!). I was wondering if the observations described in this article would be consistent with my progressive creation model."
Does Genetic science support progressive creation?
Only if the creator in question is sloppy, careless and generally inept. However, all the same evidence perfectly fits a model of living things learning things for themselves.
Perhaps the better question is what role of God does fit the objective evidence?
Well… even though life is all about growth and learning, it doesn’t mean that this happens in a vacuum. The whole process very much requires an environment and that environment can include such things as farmers, shepherds, and teachers. Thus we have the same role for God in evolution that we have for God in everyday Christian life as one who has a subtle influence on events in order to promote our learning and/or edification, not to mention the occasional miraculous recovery or escape from disaster.
Why assume a God’s involvement in any of it then? Why hold on to the Bible? Why not discard it as you have all other creation accounts? Save one more step and remove Him from the equation? Biologos can’t do that for some reason however, though it has utterly destroyed any requirement of God’s involvement…
So what changes does God make to the genomes in the process of creating the next species? What DNA differences would we expect to see between the species God took DNA from and the species God creates?
Also, would God take DNA from several species groups and combine sections of DNA from those genomes to produce a new species?
Let’s use one specific example. When we look at naturally occurring processes that cause substitution mutations we find that the mutations that occur at the highest rate are CpG mutations. A CpG is a two letter DNA sequence CG. For example:
5’—AAATACCACGTTGCGTTAA----3’
The short sequence above has two CpG’s. The two numbers at the start and end give the direction of the DNA strand based on the sugar backbone (replication and transcription happen in the 5’ to 3’ direction).
As it turns out, CpG’s are prone to having a methyl group added to the C by methyltransferases. A cytosine with a methyl group can be further modified so that it becomes a thymine. This natural process increases the rate of mutations at CpG’s.
So the question is, would God also increase the number of differences at CpG’s to mimic natural processes? Is there any functional reason why God would change the C at CpG’s at a higher rate?
Nobody here is a Christian because they God is required to uphold their conclusions about creation. They are Christians because they believe Jesus died for their sins to reconcile them to God.
I don’t assume anything. Nor do I hold onto the Bible as if this was something I started with. Frankly, YOU are the one holding onto something which makes no sense to you and refusing to let go. I wasn’t raised Christian, but rather in the most liberal family imaginable. Both of my parents were non-theist psychology majors – so psychology is the closest thing to a religion in which I was raised.
Thus my starting point for truth is science, so much so, it is part of the way I see the world and anything contrary to its findings is not worth consideration for rational belief. I am a scientist (masters of physics from the university), and remain so before I am a Christian. And where you may have been raised in an anti-rational sector of Christianity to think that science and Christianity are mutually exclusive, this has never been the case in the rest of Christianity.
So my “creation account” is that of the Big bang and I have no reason whatsoever to discard this. As for your question about why believe in God, I do not see a sincere inquiry there, but only incredulity that anyone could possibly come to a different rational conclusion than you do. But while you revel in a worldview (much like your old one) where you are privileged to know the truth unlike all those poor deluded suckers our there, I have a worldview which does not look at other people that way… frankly rather consistent with the way I was raised, to view with contempt the ugly arrogant westerner looking down their noses at all the primitives of the world.
Biologos is a gathering of Christians (even evangelicals) who see value in both Christianity and evolution. So I came here rather tired of pointless talks with creationists. But despite evolution providing you with the excuses you need to discard a rather noxious form of Christianity there is no fundamental conflict within the full spectrum of Christians belief and that is why the majority of Christians accept evolution.
I certainly hope that the requirements of those who have turned a belief in God into a tool for power and manipulation is eventually removed from all of Christianity.
Mmhmm… But what makes Christianity true? Why not deism? So you have rationalized that evolution and God are not mutually exclusive… How did you do that? How did you learn anything about this God? Did it talk to you? What source of information did you use? Certainly not the Bible… That teaches claymation…
@T_aquaticus cites the core question that has the power to prove your thesis correct… or confirm it’s error quite efficiently:
God had a choice of designing mammals as a mega-aggregation of all the best solutions of all the preceding animal forms. And if he had created mammals in this way, it would have succinctly proved to Evolutionists that God was not using “Common Descent” and other Evolutionary principles as his master tool for creating Earth’s living creatures.
But what we see is that the tool kit used to build all the mammals is the tool kit made available through Common Descent … and only through Common Descent.
Now, mind you, there is convergent Evolutionary patterns to be sure… they the convergent forms are produced using the genetic tool kit available to Mammals… not the entire tool kit as manifested in Fish, Amphibians, Reptiles, and the invertebrates that blanket the Earth.
So… why does God work so hard to prove Evolution and Common Descent? He seems intent on disappointing you.
What makes anything true? It agrees with the totality of your experiences.
You mean the belief in a deity who simply creates then observes like it was some sort of science experiment? Well in that case I would agree with my father that such a belief is indistinguishable from no belief in any god at all because such a god would be irrelevant to the living of our lives. This is why he was a nonbeliever, because this is the only sort of god he even considered the existence of.
Easy. I already took evolution for granted when I read the Bible, so it never occurred to me to employ the kind of childish literalism which would take the Bible to mean something contrary.
Eyes. Ears. Heart. Mind. All the books I read. All the movies I saw. All the classes I took. All the people I talked to. All of them.
Not with an audible voice, no. But do people talk to you? How do you know they even exist? Perception is something which psychologists have proven to be founded on belief. You believe they exist and the sounds and sights associated are thus categorized into the communications coming from these entities you believe to exist. Are all of these communications in the form of an audible voice? No they are not. Well… some people believe that the totality of their experiences also has a person behind them through which there comes communication in a form other than an audible voice. Naturally those who do not believe in such a person will not perceive any such communication.
Certainly the Bible. But I did not read the book looking for excuses to look down my nose at Christians. I read the Bible, admittedly with the scientific worldview as my filter, to see if I saw anything of value there. What I found was a considerable amount of criticism of religion which made a great deal of sense, and which frankly agreed with the same criticisms of religion which I grew up with. Quite an ironic experience, frankly.
GARBAGE! What rot. Either someone spoke to you or no one spoke to you! Your denial of objective reality is… Concerning. Such people are usually a threat to themselves and others.
It is my experience that it is the people who force their beliefs on others, imagining these things to represent some sort of objective reality, who are the most dangerous to other people.
Despite your roughshod effort to force me into one of your simplistic categories to serve your own rhetoric, I have specifically explained that there is excellent evidence for the existence of an objective aspect to reality. But any insistence that reality is purely objective is mere presumption of a subjective nature. And your shouts that this is one of the requirements for your own sanity proves nothing but your own limitations. My hold on reality is not so weak. My dreams and imagination have nowhere near the clarity of my sensory experiences so while I can understand that others might have a difficulty distinguishing the two and thus require proofs to make sure that what they are experiencing is real, I have never had that problem and never will.