From Dinosaurs to Birds

What do you mean when you say genetic mutations drive evolution? I don’t think that is correct, and that wasn’t what I said.

Adaptation is tied to survival and natural selection, it’s not an either or. There is no “drive to adapt.” There is only drive to survive and reproduce. It seems like you think individual organisms evolve and adapt, but when scientists talk about adaptations and change over time, they are never talking about an organism, they are talking about populations of organisms and changes in the genetic makeup of those populations over time that result in speciation. As environmental changes put pressure on the population, certain traits become more beneficial than others and are more likely to endure in the population as a whole whereas others are lost because the carriers of less helpful genes die out. If a population is isolated in some way from others like it through geography or through preference of one ecological niche over another, over time the population can become significantly different enough to lose the ability to interbreed with the other descendants of its ancestor population.

(Edited because I was confused for a minute about who I was responding to.)

I don’t see what you mean by this. I’m also not an expert on how terms are used and I couldn’t really tell you the difference between Darwinian evolution and Neo-Darwinian evolution. Most of what I know about evolutionary theory I have read in children’s science books, here on this website or the ASA website, or I got it from watching BBC Nature documentaries with my son. And nothing in the description you provided to start this thread seems inconsistent with how I understand “Darwinian evolution,” but like I said, I’m not a scientist.

Is it just the fact that species adapt in response to their environment and available ecological niches? I thought that was part of a standard evolutionary explanation. Have you ever read that Pulitzer book The Beak of the Finch? It was helpful for me in understanding the whole concept of adaptations and niches and how drastically certain events can affect an isolated population in one generation.

Christy,

Thank you for your response and honesty.

I have indeed read The Beak of the Finch and agree that it takes an ecological view of natural selection and evolution. Sadly most people are not convinced. Sometimes it is good to know too much about bad science, so one does not mistake it for good science. (Richard Dawkins is known to despise BBC nature documentaries.)

The problem with standard Darwinian evolution is that it takes place in a vacuum so to speak. @dcscccc is certainly wrong in his approach to evolution, but she or he is right to say that evolution cannot be caused by a self replicating organism in a closed environment.

As we have both said God can and does guide evolution by creating an environment that is constantly changing. Organisms including humans are constantly adapting in one way or another to these changes. Right now we seem to be using our God-given minds to make the right adaptions to human created climate change and pollution. As long as Christians are ignorant of the real nature of evolution, this is unlikely to change.

Could you give a couple sentence summary of what you think the “bad science” view of evolution is? I’m still unclear on what your disagreement with some people is. Is it a disagreement with a scientific consensus, or with the way the science gets represented popularly, or with implications people see in the science that aren’t really warranted? For the record, I have never read anything Dawkins has written because he strikes me a blowhard who likes to hear himself talk, regardless of whether he knows what he is talking about or not.

@Christy

Okay, Bad science of evolution.

The biggest issue is that evolution is gene centered so it exists in a vacuum.

Evolution begins with random genetic change or mutation. That change either survives or it does not because of natural selection or survival of the fittest. Genetic change over time can result in a new species. (Please note that natural selection in this view is not purposeful or directed, which is why Dawkins can base his atheistic philosophy on it. For Darwin natural selection perfected the species.)

One issue is that evolution is seen as a biological issue. Ecology involves much more than biology. Evolution has been under fire for as long time, while ecology in its modern form is about 50 years old. The influence of the environment is associated by the rejected Lamarkian view in the mind of many Darwinians. Also it smacks of teleology which it is in our Christian understanding of nature.

I will send you my book if you want my full take on this key issue.

Even when allowing for a lot ambiguity in that sentence, I can’t help but compare “so it exists in a vacuum” with a statement like “Pi is nothing but a number and it exists in a vacuum.”

Of course, your *Bad science of evolution" similarly sounds as strange as “Bad mathematics of Pi.”

The genetic change is random. But whether it is advantageous or not is not random, it’s dependent on the environment. Inherent in the idea of survival of the fittest is the idea of “fittest for a given environment” There is really no such thing as objective “fitness” or a “perfected species” with no respect to the ecosystem in which the organism lives. There are only organisms that are more or less ideally suited to survive and reproduce in their environment.

Lamark was rejected because he thought an organism could adapt to it’s environment during its lifetime and pass those adaptations on to it’s offspring. That doesn’t make sense genetically. Evolutionary theory says that traits that are beneficial are acquired randomly over multiple generations not because an an individual short necked proto-giraffe wants higher leaves and spends lots of time stretching.

If you look at, for example, at the College Board’s AP Biology course description,https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/ap/ap-biology-course-and-exam-description-effective-fall-2015.pdf the idea that traits that are passed on are tied to fitness in a particular to the environment is very clear. So I’m wondering who all these Darwinists are that disagree with you.

I guess I still don’t see how a focus on entire ecosystems leads to teleology though. You could still view everything in the environment as the product of random chance along with the genetic changes in populations that allow a group to adapt to the environment.

You don’t have to convince me that there is purpose in the universe. I am skeptical that you can point to anything in evolutionary biology that proves (or disproves) there is purpose in the universe. Teleology is not something scientific naturalism can speak to.

I’m sure your book is interesting, but I’ll spare you the postage it would take to get it to me. I’m not in the U.S. and don’t have reliable mail service. But thanks for the kind offer.

@Christy

Your short summary regarding evolution and the environment is a fairly accurate portrayal of how it is taught to the public, but it needs to be said that the adaptation, survival, within an ecological view, possess considerable problems when considered as a verifiable science. This has been considered by people from almost every ideological, religious, atheistic and anti-religious persuasion. There are two very big obstacles to neo-Darwinian outlook. The first deals with the huge possibilities that are derived from random mutations, which when considered as stochastic, make it impossible to consider natural selection within a random paradigm (the statistical approach simply does not make sense, whatever population hypothesis is added to this). The second obstacle stems from the fact that ecology cannot be considered as an isolated geographical area. The very notion of ecology is that of a linked and interdependent system that encompasses the entire planet. Indeed the dependence of the bioworld to the non-bioworld is understood to be part of that ecology; this is both intricate and extremely complicated and the sciences have not advanced sufficiently to enable us to have an understanding that is adequate to address some of the neo-Darwinian claims regarding the origins of life, and especially the hypothesis of common descent (as a general scientifically verified theory).

My remarks are brief, but it is worth remembering these difficulties when we wish to discuss Darwinian evolution within the context of Christian theology.

That’s me, the public. :smile:

As I understand it, abiogenesis is separate from the evolutionary theory. Or is that just something they say here on the BioLogos website? I think of it has separate.

I also understand there are gaps and unanswered questions and that some scientists believe there must be some yet to be discovered mechanism besides natural selection at work in order to account for things. It doesn’t really bother me that not everything is figured out, because evolution is not something I “believe in.” It’s a scientific model. I would not live my life any differently if it were disproved tomorrow.

@Christy

That’s me the scientist. :wink:

I am not a biologist so my take in this forum is on what is often termed “the grand theory of evolution (GTE)”. I have noticed posts on this site that I can only comprehend as GTE - consequently I make my comments within this context, and that of theology.

@Relates, I just had a thought which you may find helpful in considering another way to view God “guiding” evolution. It is a view which has greatly helped me in dealing with the conflict between Divine Sovereignty and man’s free will to where everything made sense (and scriptures which seemed to be in a frustrating tension began to harmonize for me)–and I think it can help one consider how the Lord God outside of time can “guide” evolution even while “random processes” do what they do: Molinism. I’ve found that a lot of my evangelical brethren haven’t heard of it. The Wikipedia entry provides a nice overview and William Lane Craig provides lots of help with it on Youtube (and his ReasonsToBelieve website.) Rather than try to explain it all I think those resources do a better job than I could and once you understand it, the applications to evolutionary processes will be readily apparent.

Indeed, I would have to say that the two major “concepts” which most revolutionized my appreciation for God’s wisdom and power (as well as my desire to praise and worship Him as my Creator) have been Molinism and The Theory of Evolution. My past as a Young Earth Creationist become more and more frustrating as I examined the scriptures and improved my Hebrew fluency and did my grad work in linguistics–and I realized I couldn’t lecture and participate as an advocate for YECism in university debates. Yet, it also propelled a process which led to my realization that evolution was not something to be feared and I began to grasp the hand of God in evolutionary processes and billions of years. (Of course, as I learned more about the scientific evidence, it was a slam dunk.)

Molinism may seem a strange theology at first but as you compare it to the totality of scripture, more and more falls into place.

@Christy
@GJDS

Thank you for your responses.

I want to keep out thinking related to the question of dinosaurs to birds.

The study which is the basis of this blog does not address the ecological basis for this transformation. It just indicates how this happened, from the original bipedal nature of the dinosaurs to feathers to shrinkage and finally to flight and the beak.

Now a description is not an explanation. Part of science is a description of what nature does, but science is more than this, because without understanding there is no real knowledge.

It takes the ecological view to understand why these changes took place. It takes the ecological view to understand how and why human beings came into being. This is what Darwinians for the most part have rejected.

Darwin himself said that human beings are the result of the “war of nature,” not the result of billions of years of ecological change and adaptation. Dawkins does not use the word symbiosis which is the basis of ecology. His selfish gene is the antithesis of ecology and he is the public face of modern evolutionary thought. In the text books genetics and genetic models are the sources of change.

Even in a new discipline developed to bring new awareness of the role of ecology into evolution, Environmental Epigenetics, sees Variation as the place where the environment has input, not in Natural Selection.

@Professor_Tertius

Thank you for your comment.

PI does not exist in a vacuum. Indeed as the result of the diameter divided by the radius, so it is clearly related and relational. However if we just had PI as a number without knowing what it stood for, then it would exist in a vacuum and our math would be much poorer as a result…

@Professor_Tertius

Thank you for sharing your thoughts about Molinism.

You may enjoy my take on the subject of freedom found in a paper entitled God and Freedom found on the Academia.edu website.

hi christy

you said:

" All adaptations are driven by changes in environment, not by sitting in a closed room with earth-like conditions. "-

yes. i actually talk about something else. i talk about a giant room in the size of the galaxy or even the universe. so in this condition its possible (according to the atheist view)that a bacteria that in the room can evolve into a human that will make a car, so its indeed a car that evolve in a close (giant)room .

" I don’t argue that there is no Designer. I am pretty sure that you can’t scientifically prove there is a Designer, but I don’t care, because I believe the Bible is revelation from God."-

the bible actually says: "“וידעת היום והשבות אל לבבך כי השם הוא האלוקים בשמים ממעל ועל ה ארץ מתחת” (דברים ד’, פסוק לט’

in hebrew its mean that god want us to know that he exist in the sky and in the earth. so its very important point. if it was just a belief, then we can belief in anything we want. so it actually more then just a belief.

by the way christy, there is a lot of problems with evolution from a scientific prespective. you can check it for yourself with those great articles from creation.com:

i know that some of them are very important for both christians and non christians believers

yours sincerely.

As a former “creation science” speaker/debater in my Young Earth Creationist years of long ago, I find it fascinating how so much of the same pseudo-science from 1962 (The Genesis Flood) is still being used today. (As Ripley used to say, “Believe it or not!”)

That page is a great index of failed arguments. I’m saving that URL because that particular webpage can be very useful. I might even consider placing it in my autobiography under “More Reasons Why I’m an Ex-YEC”.

My favorites are where they deplore uniformitarian science and then use illogical uniformitarian arguments to claim the earth is young!

I strongly encourage readers to check out that Creation.com treasury of “creation science”. (It is not a parody.)

hi prof tertius. what is the argument\evidence that changed your mind about evolution? do you still believe in god but also in evolution?

@dcscccc

“In the Beginning God created the heavens and earth.” In the Beginning God created Time. Time = Change. No Change, that is if every day were the same, no Time. Right.

Not only did God create Time, which is Good, God created the universe within the framework of Time, that is 6 divine days, instead of all at once. Thus God created in an evolutionary manner, step by step within time rather than in an atemporal revolutionary manner. Am I correct?

All this is revealed in Genesis 1, but we also have God’s revelation in John 1 and in other parts of the Bible which give a little different view of how God works in time. We also have the witness which God left in the rocks of geological time.

What I am trying to do and BioLogos is trying to do is put all these witnesses to the Glory of God together to come up with a more coherent understanding of the majesty of God as God rules the earth and the heavens and you and me.

There are always going to be theological and scientific questions that need to be worked out, which is why we have theology and science. That is also why we have BioLogos, so you are welcome to work with us to this end.

I’m a retired ordained minister and seminary professor. I certainly still believe in God and my study of evolution played an important role in revitalizing my faith!

I was part of the “creation science” movement in the 1960’s and 1970’s. [I tell various aspects of my story on my blog at https://bibleandscienceforum.wordpress.com/] I was excited by Morris & Whitcomb’s The Genesis Flood and basically had it memorized for use in lectures and public debates. Yet, after a while I got very concerned about “facts” that didn’t check out. For a while I accepted the excuse that “sometimes people exaggerate in the excitement of this kind of ministry” but over time I became more and more troubled. Those days were long before the Internet so it was not easy to find helpful information. However, when I accepted a lecturer appointment at a major university, the much larger library provided virtually every science journal imaginable. I started looking up the citations I had been using and I was aghast at the number of deceptive quote-mines and “creative” uses of ellipsis. (Frankly, it sent me into a depression.) I won’t take the time here to explain all that I went through–though you can find such information on my blog–but eventually I simply couldn’t continue repeating arguments, quotations, and pseudo-science that I realized were untrue. I even finally got to the point where I asked one of my famous colleagues, “If all this is true, why do we have to rely on deceptive quote-mines and misleading half-truths?” The answer basically told me everything the Holy Spirit had already convicted me about.

During that same period of my life I was working hard to bring my Hebrew skills up to the level of my Koine Greek background and with it a great deal more comparative and historical linguistics. My study of Hebrew lexicography and exegesis greatly changed my understanding of the early chapters of Genesis. I realized that so much of my background in terms of *origins theology" in a Young Earth Creationist church was more tradition than Biblical text. I also began to realize just how recent in the history of the church was YECism, “creation science”, and “flood geology.” (As you probably already know, the “creation science” which The Genesis Flood introduced to mainstream evangelicals was Seventh Day Adventist concepts published by George McCready Price who claimed to have based it on the prophecies of Ellen White. Of course, I didn’t know of that history at the time because the book said nothing to credit Price or Prophetess White. Dr. Whitcomb didn’t mention that background until years later. By the way, perhaps you saw Dr. Whitcomb honored at the “plank pegging ceremony” for Ken Ham’s Ark Park. Ken Ham credited him for starting the “creation science” movement. That designation is quite appropriate.)

At that point in life my greatest knowledge deficit was in evolutionary biology and biochemistry. So it was time for me to see how my new positions based on the Hebrew text aligned with the evidence from creation itself. And that’s when I was thrilled to see how everything fits together so beautifully. As a Young Earth Creationist, I was constantly dealing with the total contradiction between my view of Genesis and the evidence in creation itself. I always had to look up what my “creation science” heroes were saying was the explanation behind the contradiction. (My mind had always been bursting with contradictory evidence which I had to work hard to “force into the same box.”)

Thankfully, with my newfound knowledge of the scriptures and from creation, everything finally fit together! The conflict and the stress that had troubled me for all of those years—years spent trying to salvage cherished traditions that didn’t fit the Biblical text nor God’s creation around me—was gone!

It absolutely revolutionized my worship and my view of God. It was absolutely thrilling to leave behind me the “small deity” of my one-kind-at-a-time view of Special Creation. I got to know and worship the God of the Bible whose power and wisdom “engineered” the laws of physics in such a way that life would come from non-living ingredients (just as the first two chapters of Genesis states several times) and produce evolutionary processes which diversified life in the biosphere (just as Genesis states.)

It has been thrilling to learn God’s answers from both of his great works of authorship: God’s scriptures and God’s creation. Because both share the same author, I expect them to be in harmony. They are.

So I praise God that he reveals his truths in both the Bible and in his creation. I don’t have to be frustrated by conflict any more. All I see is harmony. It wasn’t necessarily easy to abandon tradition. I had to work through those cherished, man-made traditions one-by-one and see which ones held up against the Word of God and which ones didn’t. Yet, it was all worth it.

Now, in retirement, I try to help others get free of the conflicts and confusion which I lived under for so long. Also, I still feel very guilty and responsible for the audiences I misled so long ago. I was young and gullible and trusting. (I simply assumed that my “Christian heroes” did their homework, were careful about quotations and citations, and had carefully examined all of the evidence. I was wrong in all of those suppositions.) Yet God is merciful and all I can do now is try to help people recognize and praise God for the abundant answers he gives us in both his scriptures and his creation. We can trust them because they come from God himself.

One other comment may be helpful: A few years ago I was asked this question: “When you were deeply committed to creation science and all that went with it in terms of young earth views, did anything which other people told you help you decide to re-examine what you were doing?” I didn’t have an immediate answer and told them that I couldn’t think of anything. But I went home and found myself thinking about that question for several weeks. Eventually I realized something: The people who were very congenial in questioning me were easy to dismiss—but some of the people who hit me hard and tough with very difficult questions (about both the Bible and Science) were the ones who helped me most. They broke through my pride and confidence and they said things like “You are influencing a lot of young people. Are you certain you’ve checked out all the facts behind what you are saying?” and “Are you sure that all of the world’s scientists are wrong but you are qualified to school them in what they don’t undestand?” My first reaction was usually an anger that I concealed, yet those were the confrontations which got me really thinking. I truly believe it was the people who were very tough on me who God used to bring me out of the “walled ideology” I’d built around my mind and life. (A geologist by the name of Glenn Morton wrote his own account of what that was like for him when he was a “publishing creation scientists”. It is easy to find online under “Morton’s Demon”. He tells how his mind was trained to keep all evidence out. I highly recommend everyone reading it. My story is so similar to his. In his case, his oil exploration company job moved him to a different post where he had to work with the real field data of the geology. It forced him to see that “flood geology” made no sense and didn’t fit what he saw in the field.)

I should mention that during those times I also was troubled that I was seeing the beginnings of somewhat “cult-like” behaviors within the movement. I don’t want to dwell on that here but when I look at how the CS movement has changed since the 1970’s, it disturbs me greatly—and far more than back then. The trends I saw then are multiplied exponentially today. No, I don’t feel proud for getting out early in a “I told you so” sort of way. Instead, I feel very guilty because I played my own part in what has happened as the movement grew and became a big money origins industry. I often wish that my debate opponents years ago had been much harder on me and perhaps I would have started my introspection much earlier and with more vigor. Yet that would be passing the buck. No, the guilt is mine. I wasn’t just a follower. I bear responsibility as someone who misled others.

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Thank you, @Relates. I will save that for my reading list.