Evolution is secularism, not science

Faith & Science Conversation
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I see that Alvin Plantinga won the Templetom Prize 2017:

“American scholar Alvin Plantinga, a pioneering advocate for theism, or belief in God, as a serious philosophical position within academic circles, was named the winner of the 2017 Templeton Prize.
Plantinga, 84, a retired professor at the University of Notre Dame, won the award for revolutionizing “the way we think,” said Heather Templeton Dill, president of the John Templeton Foundation, which awards the annual prize.”

After reading and watching videos from Plantinga over the years, his response to the idea that “The mainstream practice of science is still our best shot at understanding God’s Creation” may be for him to suggest that if man is a product of natural processes which are based on the survival of the fittest and mutation which this statement inevitably has to support, then man is an incapable agent of truly demonstrating that we arrived on this planet via these natural processes because we are just a byproduct of nature who is declaring such things for the purposes of survival. I believe that he would therefore reject this truth claim on a philosophical level about the belief that science is our best shot! And this idea is demonstratively unchristian as it goes directly against the grain of many Biblical principles not to mention that it is unreasonable.

So, on the other hand, if we were created in God’s image in an instant which the Bible plainly states and is very much within reason and actually takes less faith to believe compared to the idea that amoral nature created us, then we can conclude that we humans have been given the tools as God’s creation to not only declare how we arrived via God speaking us into existence, but also are given the gift of science for how it was intended to be used: It is not the best vehicle for determining what occurred at the beginning of human existence where it is a gift from God for determining solutions for problems humans face as God’s creations who are placed upon a planet that became stained with sin by us!

I just read this sobering article on Fox that suggest, based on research that science has become very poor and the scientific method unused to a significant extent:

Could it be that the bad fruit of such pseudo science supposedly in practice in many circles today be attributed and seeded by the practice of secularism pushing God so way back to the back burner that they force themselves into an evolutionary naturalistic thinking which then bases the foolishness of belief that science is really capable of determining our beginnings? It believes that evolutionary science being capable of vast determinations first then places the pieces of discovery to fit the belief second. Bad science right? I believe that God has a way to illuminate us with such obvious embarrassing practice as declared in this article for the sake of awakening us towards Him and His truth!

In closing, I am reading a book called Union with Christ. In this book there is a chapter called “whatever happened to Union with Christ,” it suggests that the tendency for humans towards enchanted movies and obsessions with vampires and zombies be possibly a “reaction to the modern notion that only what is empirical or observable can be real and true.” I personally believe that people since original sin towards God by Adam have a void in our hearts for God who is a God of mystery, sovereignty, power, love and eternality. If this it is true that we are made for such a God and He does not get proclaimed as He is, zombies and Disney World become our go to, right? So the very statement, “The mainstream practice of science is still our best shot at understanding God’s Creation” is the very insinuation that steals these attributes of God and thus redefines Him all together thus thrusting the human soul away from Him and away from His blessings of joy and peace.

I don’t want to be responsible for my children to drift toward fanciful dread put out in the movies produced by the likes Hollywood that judging by Hollywood itself many times result in catastrophic bizarre behavior, depression and even suicide. For this, my wife and I lead them to the One and Only God who created mankind in an instant and who stands as One who is holy, transcendent, and all together impossible to understand fully…and whose creative abilities will not necessarily be detectable by human observations today we call science!

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@Grog, my dear fellow, how is it that you are so loath to remember the nature of BioLogos…

BioLogos does not maintain that “amoral nature created” mankind.

Read the Mission Statements … Again.

God created mankind… amoral nature did not create mankind. If God guides Evolution in order to create us in his image, why would you say the process is amoral?

How many times have you been corrected on this simple matter? Spread the word - - BioLogos says God created humanity! But he used a method so miraculously complex and divine you can never remember the description for how he did it.

Sometimes you just have to take things on faith.

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Hi Mr. Brooks! How are ya? So yeah! So is Bilogos now a creationist organization that agrees with the ideals of all of those other creationist organizations and movements that say that God created kinds with the ability to adapt (evolve) to its environment? Or are you something different? If you are different than this, then please share with me how the proposed evolutionary methodology is different than the evolutionary methodology taught in secular science classrooms all over the globe. Is the evolutionary methodology similar to those taught in the secular world and just labeling God as being sovereign over the process?

I am really eager to learn this new direction!

Blessings Mr. Brooks

Greg

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@grog

How agreeable you are!

First of all, I must remind you that I am just one supporter of BioLogos. There are others here with different opinions. My goal in this discussion with you is to urge you to take the Mission Statements of BioLogos seriously!

Perhaps statements [6] and [9] are the most important for you to consider:

[6] "We believe that God typically sustains the world using faithful, consistent processes that humans describe as “natural laws.” Yet we also affirm that God works outside of natural law in supernatural events, including the miracles described in Scripture. In both natural and supernatural ways, God continues to be directly involved in creation and in human history. "

[9] “We believe that the diversity and interrelation of all life on earth are best explained by the God-ordained process of evolution with common descent. Thus, evolution is not in opposition to God, but a means by which God providentially achieves his purposes. Therefore, we reject ideologies that claim that evolution is a purposeless process or that evolution replaces God.”

Here BioLogos gets crystal clear: God performs miracles as well as orchestrating natural law. And that “evolution with common descent” is part of his workings… not opposed to God’s miraculous nature but as part of it - - with an explicit rejection of any claim that God’s evolution “is a purposeless process”.

How about that, @Grog? We have a mission statement that explicitly rejects what you keep saying over and over … that BioLogos promotes “purposeless evolution”!

Shall we name it the “Greg-Rogers-Rectification Statement” ?

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@grog

Greg,

I agree that main stream science, that is Darwinism, is not the best shot at understanding God and God’s Creation.

We, that is science and theology, need a new approach to this issue, which is found in ecology. Are you interested?

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Isn’t is sort of ironic that the main YEC proponents strive to support their claims by -guess what- methodological naturalistic explanations?

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No that isn’t true. It’s precisely because the scientific method is being used, that other people are testing the claims made in articles and then discovering that those claims are unsupported. That’s exactly what peer review is all about. That shows science is alive and well.

The real issue here is that people who are anti-science, typically do not understand how science works, or how the scientific method works, or how peer review works.

_peer review.png960×720 57.2 KB

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I think what you’re describing here is the non-scientific population in general, not just special creationists. There’s also the problem of what one reads in the newspapers. Most non-scientists believe that science journalism is science when it is nothing of the sort.

phd051809s.gif600×667 103 KB

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@grog May I be bold enough to suggest that “Union with Christ” would also consist of seeking union with Christ’s followers, rather than intentionally starting arguments with them?

If you read the statement you quoted, you will see that it says that “science is still our best shot at understanding God’s Creation”, not “science is still our best shot at understanding God.” Science is a human endeavor, so of course it is flawed. However, it is difficult to reasonably contend that science is not the best way to study His creation – how cells, organs, organisms, populations, communities, and ecosystems work.

Of course there are many other aspects of God and our relationship with Him that require study of His Word, rather than seeking measurable answers from science. Unfortunately, there are far too many people that rely too heavily on materialism and deny the existence of the divine. In my opinion, we do ourselves a disservice by ignoring God’s revelation of Himself through either His Word or His Works.

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That’s not how science works, Greg. Before I talk about how scientists form theories–a subject that you entirely miscomprehend–let’s first talk about how it relates to faith.

Some scientists are atheists, and some of those scientists think that science proves there is no God.

Other scientists are atheists, but do not think that science disproves God in any way; they settle the issue on other grounds.

Some scientists believe in God, but do not think that science proves there is a God.

Some scientists believe in God, and think that science hints at God’s existence (without really proving it).

Some scientists believe in God, and think that it proves God’s existence.

You work with wood. Does every cabinet-maker believe that God exists? Are there not cabinet-makers who think that the fact that they can make cabinets without praying, and do so without any obvious divine intervention, prove that there is no God? In fact, I knew a cabinet maker in Columbia, SC – his name was Scott – who said exactly that.

In the opinion of some cabinet-makers, their profession proves there is no God.

In the opinion of some scientists, their profession proves there is no God.

I’m sure you don’t agree with Scott. I’m sure you don’t think that you should be criticized just because some cabinet makers opine that their work proves that God doesn’t exist. So why is it so hard for you to understand that your brothers and sisters at BioLogos don’t agree with atheist scientists about its implications for faith?

And why do you not extend the same grace to us that we extend to you? I’m not going on rants about pseudo cabinetry, and how is it that cabinet making is so destructive to faith, why look at that cabinet maker I knew in Columbia!

I have other things to say about science and faith, Greg, but let’s just start with this point: cabinet making and science are fundamentally no different in what they have to say about faith. Do you agree?

Blessings,

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[quote=“grog, post:1, topic:35680”]
I don’t want to be responsible for my children to drift toward fanciful dread put out in the movies produced by the likes Hollywood that judging by Hollywood itself many times result in catastrophic bizarre behavior, depression and even suicide. [/quote]

How very coincidental, I also don’t want my children or grandchildren to “drift toward fanciful dread put out in the movies produced by the likes Hollywood that judging by Hollywood itself many times result in catastrophic bizarre behavior, depression and even suicide.” At the same time I don’t want any of them to drift away from Jesus and his church. For those reasons I shared Dr. Enns’ recent podcast with the mom’s on my FB page.

Larry Schmidt

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Well yes, but the context of the discussion here is special creationists, and I was replying specifically to a special creationist.

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Hi Mr. Burke: Thank you for your comment. Are you saying that this article I found on Fox News is fake? This article suggests that in many instances, after a firm scientific conclusion is made, when these scientists are then challenged to duplicate the experiment, in many cases they are unable to come to the same conclusions.

I would not be surprised one single bit if this were the case for many in mainstream science fields tend towards pushing for results to suite an agenda instead of a legitimate pursuit of truth. It all comes down to the money trail and it also comes down to putting forth what tends to appeal towards sin nature in general. This kind of thing occurs in Christian church circles where the challenge is for utmost honestly and uprightness so it would be no surprise if dishonesty occurs in mainstream science. God help us! Thank our Lord for many upright honest churches who are more interested to encourage worship of our King instead of entertainment and soliciting for a buck! My family and I are blessed to be part of one such church.

Anyway, similar dna patterns in chimps and humans does not conclude that we are from the same family unless we are looking for and expecting this. The appearance of an old earth and universe does not conclude that we evolved from common decent unless we are looking for and expecting this. The idea that natural processes have the ability (even as defined as under God’s sovereign guidance) have the ability to develop a irreducibly complex organism which has never been duplicated in the labs nor seen in the fossil record, nor even considered in the least bit logical is not based in science but it is based on blind faith. Biblical faith is trusting in what God has said in His Word. This faith is trusting in what a whole host of non-believing naturalists have declared as a set of their beliefs.

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No. Please read what I wrote. Then read the article again.

Yes. This is not surprising. This is how peer review works. This is part of the scientific method. What you are seeing here is scientists refusing to accept results until they have been validated by repeated testing, have persistently resisted falsification, and have an established record of repeatability.

That’s just your personal ideological preference getting in the way of reality.

This shows how little you know about the modern discipline of science. There is incredibly little money to be had in most scientific experiments. You can get a whole lot more money by being paid by oil companies to write anti-science articles. Remember, when scientists receive funding for experiments, they don’t get to spend the money on themselves.

None of this makes any sense.

This is wildly separated from reality.

This is a false representation of the facts, and fails to acknowledge the Christian origin of evolution before Darwin.

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I love my brothers and sisters in the Lord who are scientists and I beg them to consider the fact that I believe that there is a great enemy who is trying to distort truth and distort God through this enemy’s naturalistic philosophy servants. And the feet and hands of the naturalistic philosophy are naturalistic methodologies which suggest that God created through processes of pain, death, survival of the fittest and in the end called it all “good” People are made in God’s image and they will inevitably be affected by this worldview and perspective.

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Almost every letter written by the apostles in the NT were argumentative in order for encouragement for the church to sway away from the humanistic and worldly and made up principles of the day and to find unity upon the principles based on the principles being proclaimed by God’s spokespeople which are these very apostles and OT prophets.

Person A believes that a certain color is red. Person B believes that another certain color is blue. If one wants these people to find unity for common sense solutions for determining the actual color or for the sake of peaceful unity, what is that result? They will think of the other as a nut while wearing a plastic smile maybe. Or confusion maybe too? Or a lack of vigorous exercise of combing the Bible and studying the real frailty for science’s capability for finding the truth about our beginnings.

Such is not unity and surely has nothing to do with Biblical unity. Paul said to the church in Corinth that he was glad there were divisions in the church where one party was practicing the Lord’s table with irreverence and the other with reverence to point out the fact that one party was tending towards the right and the other towards the wrong for hopeful correction and unity to occur in the reverent category.

When it comes to God as Creator I will surely side with those respecters of God’s Word before the word proclaimed by mainstream science which is mainly controlled by the naturalistic philosophy. If we want unity, then tend towards unity of the Biblical truths which bases our faith as Christians which additionally has a lot of logical sense when it comes to how we arrived on this planet. Common decent evolution is a far cry from this. This is not a minor thing…it is a major. Where we go a wrong direction at the base of the Judeo Christian worldview in Genesis so tends wrongness in the rest of the worldview. Right now I see a trend of unity upon principles in Genesis where God is Creator of kinds and not through evolution. If you want unity, then consider joining this revival!

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Wow you certainly don’t give God much credit. With God guiding a process anything is possible. Or at least it is for my God.

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@grog Epistle writers wrote to correct theological errors. I believe that Genesis speaks to the creative work and sovereignty of God. True, I believe that the evidence inherent in God’s Work is suggestive of evolution, rather than 6 24-hour periods, but I believe we have much more in common than you seem willing to admit.

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Well tell me where science has produced any type of truly legit model that describes how an irreducibly complex organism developed from a lesser organism via evolution? And we need to remember that mainstream science has pretty much declared that common decent evolution is not a guess, not an hypothesis even, and perhaps is even upping from the theory category and into pretty much proven FACT.

In almost every instance I have encountered on this websight where I have asked for folks to share the evidence, almost always the evidence tends to support devolution more than they do evolution…such as the rabbit adaptation where there is a loss of genetic information thus a greater chance of extinction and lesser chance of survival. And how in the world does mutation cause millions of genetic adaptation capabilities within the wolf dog? It does not make sense that this comes from natural selection either…And if the wolf dog has been around for 100’s of thousands of years if not millions, would we not expect less adaptation capabilities and not more. Or course genetic mutation becomes the go to for explaining this…Or perhaps God was incredibly involved in the entire process of evolution where in process of developing the human body, for a time it had a half functioning heart, no kidney, and underdeveloped esophagus muscles for swallowing food…Of course that creature was unable to live without a kidney, but let’s just say that it was able to amidst the ills of its harsh natural suroundings where death, disease and difficulty were His go to for building the creature. After all of the kinks were worked out, walla-the human organism. This so unbelievably destroys my brain cells and one is telling me that “science” has just about declared evolution as fact nonetheless??

…OR perhaps we keep it simple: God created the heavens and earth and He created fully developed kinds to dwell in it. Makes the MOST sense and causes science to lean away from having to fudge its way to explain how we got here for science to flourish where it is best as a true gift and blessing to the world we live in.

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I think I lost a few brain cells trying to follow this. If you really believe this is evolution I can see why you are so opposed to it. But thank goodness this is not the way evolution works. And why would you believe that an all knowing and all powerful God would be so incompetent that He would work in such a way?

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