Is Evolution a form of religion

I don’t wear the former, but my feet are so flat that my wet footprint on a pool deck resembles a duck’s or a trapezoid, with no concave curve from the arch whatsoever. :slightly_smiling_face: (No shadow or curve → :foot: ; - ) Huh, the foot sole emoji appears in the preview but not the post.

[Thanks for the edit, Liam @LM77, but that’s the whole foot, in my browser anyway. :slightly_smiling_face:]

Unfortunately I think the reverse is true. You clearly do not understand (the ramifications of) what you argue.

You read it back knowing that you beleive in God’s providence. And not only that, but a very specific understanding of God’s providence. But
Even with your tag of “evolutionary providentialist” readers do not see it as you do. If you try and look up evolutionary providentialist it does not come up. Only providentialism in a christian understanding.
Readers do not see what you think they do.

I know exactly what you think. And I completely disagree with you. You are only kidding yourself thinking otherwise.

However I am equally certain that most readers reading your extoling of evolution do not see God’s providence in it.

All they see is science, without God.

Richard

Of course you do.

Some confirmation biases are correct (that likewise applies to a worldview and doctrine).

Backatcha in several orders of magnitude.

You are elevating yourself beyond merit.

Of course you do, redundantly.

I don’t kid myself that you disagree with me. :grin:

Hey, I agree! I might say many, but most is okay. Yours or their opinions don’t change reality (like your opinion of evolution).

You seem to be including many or most Christians in that, equating them with atheists, which is completely unwarranted and more evidence of mistaken thinking.

Well, I guess that is progress,

But clearly it doesn’t bother you.

No but it might affect their beliefs.
If they think that evolution can do all things without God, why should they believe in Him?
And you, ostensibly are encouraging this by the way you are arguing.

Perhaps you aught to make seeing God’s Providence clearer?

Richard

Because they can see that there are still quite a few other questions that are much more at the heart of who God is than whether God lets His creation run based on the laws He created, without intervening in an obvious, observable manner.

Richard, when you carry the discussion on in these terms, it starts showing that you are really making a major mistake in logic. Just because many atheists (perhaps even most, or all) believe that all living things on earth descended from the same original life form doesn’t mean that everyone who believes that all living things on earth descended from the same life form is an atheist, or is promoting atheistic ideas. Did you read what @St.Roymond wrote about atheists who studied evolution, and based on their evaluation of the wonder of how exquisitely living things are formed, decided that God exists?

It seems to me that you are reacting defensively to the suggestion that something you believe might be true, but there are other possibilities as well. I have seen the same style of defensive reaction to my requests to my YEC relatives that they acknowledge that a different way of interpreting the bible than what they believe might possibly be valid. The underlying point is that God created a world where we do not have absolute truth, but must make decisions about what to do based on our best understanding of the situation, and based on our best understanding of what Jesus meant when He required us to love God and love our neighbors.

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It’s a wonderful mystery (and maybe it should be terrifying to some) how it works and how he does it, in his omnitemporality and omnipotence, but we do have evidence that he does by his M.O.: Factual evidence for Christians to rejoice in, remember and recount, and for true seekers to ponder.

Do you believe this?:


Daily Promise - 365 PROMISES

If you don’t, you should, and if he does and they do, how does he do it but by providence?

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You have missed (or ignored) the point. And I think I have laboured it more than enough now.

That has nothing to do with evolution or whether it works or not.

I do wish you lot would stop trying to argue YEC with me. I am not YEC!

Not every argument against evolution is YEC!

Evolution is not showing God creating anything. It is Nature building itself.

So stop linking this to any Christian theology. Evolution is not about Christ.

You are claiming that Evolution is programmed by God. There is no evidence, scientific or otherwise that is so. In fact evolutionary theory denies it.

Richard

I don’t think so and yes, you have.

How does it not? (…what he was addressing, which was not providence.)

He wasn’t saying you were, but you are using YEC-like denialism the same way they do about the antiquity of the earth.

Evolution is about God creating such incredibly wonderful diversity using evolution that as @St.Roymond has told us, some nonbelievers have even become Christians because of what you are denying.

Well yeah, it is. It’s how he created.

For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him.
Colossians 1:16

(Interestingly, that ties in nicely with this, about providence:

I rule the earth and all kings belong to me.

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Richard, this, finally, is a clear statement of your critical error!!

Evolutionary theory says nothing about whether God exists, or not. If you are really trying to argue that God exists, then we don’t have any need to discuss, we agree!

Many people have been trying to tell you that evolution is not about God at all; it is trying to show what Nature can do. No, evolution is not about Christ, one way or the other. Stop trying to say evolution says something it doesn’t say! Evolutionary theory, done correctly by good scientists, explicitly states that it says nothing about whether God exists, or does not exist.

I believe that correct Christian theology and good scientific observations in any field of study are compatible. If God created this world, as I believe, then how it works is God’s choice, and working to understand how God put together His world is a good thing.

I am not arguing YEC with you, Richard. I am just saying that your arguments sound like the same philosophical style that I have heard from YEC practitioners. And I find it interesting that you are willing to state that not every argument against evolution is YEC, but do not seem to be able to see that not every argument for evolution is against God! In fact, no argument for evolution is in any way a direct argument against God! It is a very bad scientific stretch to use evolutionary theory to conclude that God does not exist.

If you have a particular “scientific” writing that claims this, and claims to be science, then point to it, and you will get some exceedingly strong support in helping to discredit it from a lot of the people with whom you have been arguing.

If you have specific claims about details of evolutionary theory that you believe are based on inaccurate observations or invalid analysis, just saying that the results don’t agree with your understanding of theistic evolution, and therefor the evolutionary theory must be wrong, makes you look foolish.

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I appear to have contradicted you (or you me ; - ) but I think we both know we are in agreement, knowing that evolution of itself (the methodological science, @RichardG) says nothing about God, nor can it, since we do not have a divine-o-meter (but @St.Roymond is working on it ; - ) .

He still hasn’t revealed his divine-o-meter so people can start finding God’s interventions when doing science.

“Science without God” is what God has given us since He has not provided us the means to identify His handiwork out from the rest of the data. So while Richard insults many or most Christians by seemingly “equating them with atheists”, Christians who do science without including God are just operating with what God has given. That he cannot tell the difference between operating using what God has given and excluding God is sad.

It strikes me that there isn’t a way to argue science that would encourage people to believe in God – but then there isn’t a way to discuss the engineering of the SpaceX Starship that would encourage people to believe in God – or for that matter to ‘believe’ in Elon Musk! – because if their existence has no impact in how things are examined then the only thing that can be done is what my first college biology professor did: he included a line from a Psalm at the top of each week’s handout.
So Dale is actually doing the only thing that a Christian can do when he indicates that God’s providence is at work in evolution: he is ascribing the foundation to God, then proceeding the same as any other scientist – and that is regardless of field; archaeologists may come closer to “including” God because religion tends to be a force in ancient societies that influenced most of society, yet even the archaeologist doesn’t aim at including God, it just pops up in the evidence sometimes . . .
which is a commentary on biology, geology, oceanography, meteorology, and more since God just doesn’t pop up in the evidence in any of those fields – and trying to include Him when the evidence leaves no pointers would be bad science.

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We appear to have overlapped. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Blech, and you can quote me. :grin:

You would do well to read the whole post:

Especially since you believe in the antiquity of the earth.

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Sorry, Jerry, but you don’t have that quite clear and so Richard missed the point. So please go back and read the opening post in my thread – it was evolution itself that brought them to conclude there must be a Designer.

He’s of course talking about presenting science – and he apparently doesn’t grasp that until he provides us with a divine-o-meter then no one can “make seeing God’s Providence clearer” because while in some specific stretch of DNA God may have introduced one of a dozen mutations, so far we have no way to identify which one is His handiwork by . . . .
Oh, wait: under divine providence, it’s all His handiwork – but Richard denies that God is in actual control.

Astronomy is not showing God creating anything. It is Nature building itself.
Chemistry is not showing God creating anything. It is Nature building itself.
Cosmology is not showing God creating anything. It is Nature building itself.
Geology is not showing God creating anything. It is Nature building itself.

Science is not showing God creating anything, and that is what we should expect – He is, after all, a God Who hides Himself.

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I know how you feel, Richard … I cop that too.

None of the doubters at evolutionnews.org are YEC either.

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We do have factual evidence of his M.O., though, in his providential interventions into the lives of his children (depending on your level of gullibility ; - ), frequently cited by me and yet again: Factual evidence for Christians to rejoice in, remember and recount, and for true seekers to ponder

(Does anyone think Maggie or Rich Stearns were gullible?)

Yeah, but they believe ID is scientific, and that is mistaken! I used to be one of them too (an advocate of ID anyway), mostly, pretty much entirely, out of incredulity, not knowing about neutral drift and the neutral theory of evolution, the seminal paper on the same not dropping until after I had had 7th grade biology (in fact, not until after I had graduated from high school).

I don’t get how Michael Behe can teach evolution and still be an ID-er. Like I said, I was too, but while I still believe in intelligent design, it’s providential and not provable, so it’s lower case ‘id’ until @St.Roymond patents his divine-o-meter.

It has to be about Christ, since as John says–

All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that has been made.

… which is something that Paul agrees with in several places.

“Any thing that has been made” includes mutations and all the things that trigger them. So when one human about twelve thousand years ago was suddenly able to digest cow’s milk, Jesus did that, and when northern Europeans suddenly started having blue eyes, Jesus did that. Indeed when some humans are born with an extra finger, or with fingers fused together by the skin, Jesus did that.
And when that ranger in the American west started with a batch of bacteria that barely survived moderate arsenic levels in a stream and ended up with bacteria that metabolize arsenic, Jesus did that, too.

And by declaring that there is no room for Jesus in evolution, a person declares that Jesus is not Lord of all – and it’s when that declaration comes from a Christian that people’s faith gets destroyed.

It never mattered whether a professor was a Christian or something else, no handout or course material in a university biology course describing evolutionary theory said, “God didn’t do any of it”; and it never mattered if the professor was an atheist or something else, if asked if evolution excluded God, all the ones I knew answered essentially what I’ve been saying: we can’t measure for God, so we can’t include God.

Yep – if that had happened to be on a test . . . No, scratch that; none of the professors where I attended would have wasted exam space on such an obvious question because everyone understood that no one had yet invented a divine-o-meter.

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Shall we talk about kidney cancer and sovereignly orchestrated storms.

It would have been fine with me if I had died. For my wife? Not so much.1 :confused: Metastasis and associated symptoms and therapies would have been distinctly uncomfortable though, so I’m not complaining! :slightly_smiling_face:
 


1 She has said that she would say “Good for him!”