Good and bad conclusions from theory of evolution

Faith & Science Conversation
98

“Not interested in passing your test or providing you with amusement. I’m only interested in conversation with peers while you seem to prefer talking down to people. With luck you’ll get some insight into what motivates this behavior. I’m out.”

Well, to me it looks like you’re “out” because you can’t stand the heat from a new POV, which is what you’re getting from me, who is unique in this conversation, and asking difficult questions of you that you seem to wish to avoid.

“Many a good argument is ruined by some fool who knows what he is talking about.” – Marshall McLuhan

Thank God for such fools towards saving time! Then let me be at BioLogos a pro-evolution, anti-evolutionistic “fool”! :hugs:

Using the analogy of theology as a mountain, it seems fit to speak of (at least) “two types of people” as mountain-climbers or non-mountain-climbers. One type of person has begun climbing the mountain. They have laced up their boots, their have the right equipment and supplies. They prepared themselves accordingly according to the teachings of experienced climbers. [They are not “evolving” onto the mountain randomly or blindly.] They are ready to intentionally (try to) ascend the mountain, with whatever ability and gifts they were given in life, step-by-step, following their “spiritual calling” or “vocation”. They keep going and don’t turn back their entire lives!

There is a second category of people who, usually self-admittedly, have not begun climbing the mountain yet, and often reject or simply refuse to accept that they personally have a “spiritual calling” or “vocation” in their life to climb the mountain. Or, they may be planning to climb the mountain one day and now actually be planning for that. They may have started preparing to climb the mountain, and just not have yet begun. They could have prepared and even gone directly to the mountain, in readying to climb the mountain some day eventually. None of this means they’re yet “on” the mountain, though, or actually doing any mountain climbing. Here is where they may talk of others climbing or who climbed the mountain, but they simply won’t tell you what it’s like to climb the mountain personally, because they haven’t tried, or tried a few hundred meters, and came back down to “think” it over again. It is they themselves who will tell you this if they are openly engaging.

“I doubt if I’m the only one here who thinks ‘mind’, ‘self’ and morality fits within an entirely natural world.”

This is something you shouldn’t so easily doubt. I’d say there are no Abrahamic monotheists here who believe that, since your implication appears to be that “natural world” = “non-theistic world”, and none of us believe that. Did you read the Scripture passages cited above? If so, what did you find there?

I asked: “Do you believe “belief in God evolved naturally without Divine Creation” , or that “without Divine Revelation, people wouldn’t believe in God, regardless of the process of ‘change-over-time’ in human history since Creation”?”

This is one of the questions you have refused to answer to me. Yet, you would answer others in a way that already answers my question, so I believe this does suffice to show which of the two “positions” you hold, even if you wouldn’t directly answer here in this thread.

Your answer in Antoine’s thread indicates that you believe “belief in God evolved naturally without Divine Creation”. This is indeed the default ideologically naturalistic position of the field of “evolutionary religious studies”, which posits that “religion arose naturally”, including belief in God, without God actually existing. According to them, people just made God up, rather than being made (for relationship) by God! In short, it fundamentally embraces the “delusion” accusation against religion and God by people like Richard Dawkins, which admittedly isn’t something I’m good at humouring and cuddling up to.

It’s not like you haven’t done this before when you come up against views that don’t match with yours here, Mark.

“FWIW, I have no intention to engage you @Dale on any of your posts in this thread. It isn’t anything you have written many times before.” – Mark (recent days at BioLogos)

FWIW, that’s certainly NOT the case with me. There are vast realms to explore than haven’t been explored at BioLogos yet, and topics that I haven’t written about here before. I keep introducing new things here for people to try on a regular basis, and they rarely follow the trails, so I drop off posting again (or get put on pause for saying in genuine astonishment, “how haven’t you seen that trail yet?!”).

Boring to me, is when someone keeps doing the same things and expects a different result. Boring is confident individualistic agnosticism that thinks others care ever so hyper-deeply about their OWN “creative personal worldview”, which meanwhile steadfastly refuses to explore the “Someone”, not just the “something” out there. Of course there’s “something” out there, Mark! The key question is and always has been: is there Someone who loves you also?

With “agnostics” who show only “token” interest in any personal action or striving to learn and grow “spiritually”, my patience soon runs out. So, it seems wanting to say “I’m out” is nearly mutual with you, Mark. Yet meanwhile I would never give up hope in you. :pray: Please don’t forget that.

99

Yeah, the fallacy of an Appeal to Consequences. The consequences of a theory,happy or otherwise, have no bearing on its truthfulness.

The OP doesn’t actually go there but it’s an appropriate remark, IMO.

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100

Overall, the thread has focused on the misapplication of evolution to social, philosophical, and theological issues. Such misapplication is quite common and popular, but basically boils down to “evolution supports my personal agenda”.

Agreed.

One of the agendas that such misapplication of evolution includes, I believe is called “theistic evolutionism” or “evolutionary creationism”. Without acknowledging that theology can also embrace ideology, too much one-sidedness occurs in this “conversation”.

Ideas about what is more primitive (in the sense of matching ancestral forms) versus advanced can be incorrect.

Yes, agreed. They’re making up a “big Gods” narrative to suit their anthropological retelling of theology, not altogether different from August Comte’s “religion of humanity”.

Ideas that evolution is some sort of “progress” in the sense of getting better in a value sense (as opposed to merely better at achieving a particular biological goal) is a major part of most non-biological misuse of evolution, but it does show up in some biological errors.

Yes, this non-biological misuse of evolution draws on biology with faulty metaphors and a narrative that is so outlandish it surprises that some actually believe it. It astonishes me that as an over-reaction to rejecting YECism, the opposite extreme is too often embraced by “liberal evangelicals”, who load up their “theology” with “evolutionary thinking”, leading them into ideological evolutionism, which I take to be a “bad conclusion to [the] theory of evolution” being misused outside of natural-physical sciences.

It just doesn’t make any sense … to join the ranks of Michael Dowd & Connie Barlow remaking (Thank) God (for evolution!) to fit their own private image of ideological evolutionism! Why have evangelicals (sociological category) seemingly lost almost all sense of proportion about this and not done more to warn against it, David? On this topic, I much appreciate your words.

101

Yes, it’s a good comment, Adam.

At the same time, I wonder if you also accept that there are multiple “theories of evolution”, not just a single monolithic “THE” theory of evolution. Would you agree?

In that case, one can properly and faithfully challenge and critique the faultiness of, e.g., “evolutionary psychology”, i.e. cultural &/or personal history, while at the same time accepting the “evolution happens” of biology, i.e. natural history. Does that seem appropriate to note also?

Iow, one doesn’t have to be anti-evolution in natural sciences to be ideologically anti-evolutionistic in line with good theological teachings.

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102

“Those who are for or against the theory accepted by most biologists are to me at least, making irrelevant arguments.”

Couldn’t agree more. Wish this “reverse perspective” were better and more widely known and practised. Thankful you can “see” (experience) it too. :pray:

103

That second definition has some potential.

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104

So psyches didn’t evolve? But evolution is a fact?

105

Reverse of what perspective?

The only bad conclusions from evolution are non-scientific, irrational ones starting from either accepting it or denying it. The far right were early adopters, typical of those perverting science through their distorted vision.

106

Are you suggesting that the theory(s) of biological evolution provides a meaning essential to our understanding of the Trinity?

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108

Guys, you will be here a long, long time. Make sure you turn your car engine over occasionally so the battery doesn’t die.

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109

What theories? Phyletic gradualism without punctuated equilibria or group selection is the theory. Theory as in gravitation, germ, electromagnetic. And yes, of course, the essential, ontological, immanent Trinity uses human socio-biological terms which cannot be universal, unless every intentional life form of the infinite from eternity has fathers and sons which are physically dominant.

110

As a non believer, I do find this difficult. Scientific theories about the natural world are indeed just human constructs. Nature knows nothing about our theories nor does she ever show the answer book. We are guessing, as best we can, about what’s going on.

But it seems to me that Divine Revelation also fails to rise above this. I would argue that God is a human construct, along with the idea that he reveals himself in certain ways. If I accept the existence of God, I have no more than a human understanding of what that means. And doesn’t the interpretation of these revelations involve further human constructs? It is up to mankind to figure out what they mean and there is considerable disagreement. In fact most believers do not read their texts in the original language, rather they follow someone’s interpretation as a translation. And finally, isn’t the natural world itself a revelation of its creator? I don’t see how it’s possible to really escape the fallible limits of human knowledge

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111

Taking these from the end first…

It isn’t.

Amen to that!

Why or how should any human be expected to have anything more than a “human understanding” of anything? Isn’t that, by definition, impossible - divine revelation or not? It seems a bit of a canard against believers to think that, given a divine revelation, they will suddenly have comprehensions that their brains aren’t even designed to hold.

Theistic believers must part ways on that of course, if you insist that God is or can be nothing more than a human construct. But there is considerably more truth in your assertion than most believers are comfortably letting on … that indeed our images of God - even those images mediated by the Bible - will remain human constructs for us as much as they were for them - for better or worse. We can’t seem to get on much without something like a mental image to work with. The trick for us is to somehow avoid letting our mental images pass over into idolatry.

[think of our “God constructs” as being like what models are for scientists. It’s been said that all models are wrong, but some are useful. Just because I have an undoubtedly mostly false image in my head of what an atom is like; it doesn’t therefore follow that atoms are merely my own mental creations and nothing more. Or even that my wrong model was necessarily a bad one as regards helping me toward more accurate understandings.]

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112

To insist such would be to make a case for atheism which I am not attempting here.

What a thing actually is and what we can know about it are different things. The physical world is not a human construct but the Law of Gravity is. Like any and all human understanding we might have that wrong, at least in part. We can continue to refine and correct our understanding but we never escape the limitations of human knowledge and Nature does not publish the answer key.

Suppose I accept the existence of God, can I hope to do any better epistemologically? I am limited to a fallible human understanding of the matter and you don’t have have to look far to find profound disagreements among believers. An answer key would have helped here too :).

The TOE arose from a careful, intelligent examination of the natural world, which to a believer is an assessment of the handiwork of a creator. Although Darwin had serious doubts on the existence of God, such a theory could just as well have been formed in the mind of a believer.

I ask then, how does this differ from the understanding that a believer attains after thoughtful examination of scriptures and other matters. Even if I conceded that there are real revelations from a real God, your understanding of them is limited in the same way.

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113

Well yes in that there is disagreement about TOE and to some extent it has itself evolved. But this is about the details such as whether it operates by steady transformation or by “punctuated equilibrium”. The core of the theory, that the diversity of life is explained by random mutation and natural selection is not seriously contended.

But TOE is a biological theory. [Edit: To clarify, it is a theory about biology -about the real of living things. The theory itself is not, of course, biological rather a mental abstraction] It makes claims only about the diversity of life. It does not even attempt to explain how it came about in the first place. Any extension to culture or psychology while an interesting speculation, must be carefully justified and tested in the way TOE has been. That work hasn’t been done. IMO this is a worthwhile inquiry, ideas from TOE might be useful but for now it’s just a hunch.

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114

Amen to that. It would probably help to acknowledge that one’s mileage may vary for any given model. So we shouldn’t so much be arguing over which is the one true model but rather simply speaking up for what has made a difference for us.

It isn’t that there is no fact of the matter as that there is no simple way to describe it which can ever be entirely free of metaphor, myth or narrative. In any case every description is like a finger pointing to something else. That’s all we can do because whatever it is which gives rise to God belief is not a fact or an object and resists being pinned down.

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115

The ultimate understatement when it comes to God.

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116

A semantic question appears needed first, since otherwise it’s not clear to me what you’re asking.

If “TOE is a biological theory”, as you wrote it is (still in the singular “The TOE”), i.e. a theory specifically about biology, then why (on what basis) do you say TOE “to some extent [it] has itself evolved”, since a theory (in biology or any other field) is not itself a “biological” phenomenon? This seems to need unravelling if you wish to seek constructive proportion between science, philosophy, theology (or worldview).

Thus, are you currently either, 1) contending a “theory” is actually a biological phenomenon, or 2) in direct contradiction with yourself about what does and doesn’t “evolve”, since “theories” aren’t “biological phenomenon”, but you said “evolution” is a “biological theory”, or 3) changing your position to one that holds biology is (and other natural sciences are) not the exclusive field of “evolutionary theory”, and that “cultural evolution” is kosher too?

Forgive me, please, for not being able to see what you currently think “evolves” and in contrast, what I believe is vastly more important to know, what you currently think “doesn’t evolve”. It would be welcome if you could share your thoughts on this, which I believe over-laps directly with the questions in the OP.

117

“Evolve” means merely change (in anything ) with respect to time. (Or we could also talk about the other definition above. :grin:)

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118

Bloat. This is a typical example of ideological evolutionism, which places NO LIMITS on “evolution”. It reflects weak and indefensible philosophistry that doesn’t actually “respect time”, only pretends to.

““Evolve” means merely change (in anything)”

Hmm, what then is “revolution”? “That’s just ‘evolution’ too, of course!”

Where does the fanatical “everything evolves” ideology end? Ideological exaggeration is no different for theistic evolutionism than it is for atheistic evolutionism; neither are helpful or sustainable. And both are easily visible when the proponent reveals they have a highly myopic vocabulary that they are stuck on.