Is it dangerous to teach evolutionary theory to children?

I have been on an arduous road these last years of recognizing that people cannot be tricked into the gospel by seeker and the health wealth churches as a subset of these across the globe. The reason for my journey is because about 5 years ago these types caused for direct significant negative against my very own family…long story.

Anyway for example, telling a group of people that if you have faith enough to get that great job and be enriched and then give lots of your money, you will thrive…then they say, by the way the gospel of Jesus saves you from your sins. The thunderous applause coming from engaging the sinful flesh for material success will drown out the noise from any gospel message to do with God and eternity and this may very well cause the gospel seed to never grow. the leader will get a lot more seat warmers and givers to the ministry but not fruit.

And I believe that theistic evolution is no different. I have read a lot of your articles. You literally suggest that studying the presence of such and such on the cellular level combined with the fact that there has been lot so time suggest a reasonableness for this time, chance, mutation and energy to form complex life of the likes of sexuality, the brain, eyes, flying birds etc. Then to proceed with telling the gospel of Jesus. What may be going on in the heart of hearts in the hearers of this message is that this model so similar to that of those within the godless naturalistic zone (albeit incredulously statically unreasonable) would be that the gospel gets drown out from the noise of hope in naturalism and since God gets pushed so far down the road in peoples thinking anyway about how creation came to be, the gospel prayer may be nothing more than an acted recital and a pathway to meet new friends who will provide a meal when I get sick instead of receiving the very best gift of God Himself as my Creator, sustainer, provider and Lord. To your point about being thankful. I can tell you that for myself who is brutally honest with myself, thanking God for a process of Him evolving me to what I am by the powers of energy that all of the naturalists believe would be me acting. I would be blushing to thank God my creator when I was not really truly believing Him. Acting was deposited as the most serious of all offenses in Jesus ministry in the gospels and needs to be serious contended against in our ministries. So if my honesty with myself is any indication about what goes on in the heart of hearts in the masses in hearing a message, then the church needs to steer this ship a different direction.

I am telling you, this does not work. And I don’t see enough science back your claims that all of life came from a single source. I have not read one article that proves this…not even close. I see a lot of guessing but not a lot of evidence. A bacteria adapting is still always a bacteria and time does not prove that it will become anything but bacteria. Any form of young or old earth creationism has not only more reason for how we got here but it is also better founded upon faith in God as Creator as found throughout the Bible and not on a substitutionary faith in amounts of time and energy making complex life possible. And it better conforms for tilling the soil of one’s heart for the gospel seed to actually grow. Look at Jesus parable of the sower in Mt 13 and in Lk. The statistical unreasonableness of evolution and closeness of conformity of naturalisms evolutionary worldviews that theistic evolutionists claim to be well meaning pathways for reaching the lost to me are nothing more than any one of the soils in these parables where the gospel does not truly sprout effectively unto salvation.

Hey, just as long as you have the integrity to admit that you place hearsay above evidence, Greg.[quote=“grog, post:220, topic:35076”]
You think that theistic evolution is just combining a little bit of science with a little bit of God, but instead are not coming to grips with how scientific claims about the past much engage faith and engage worldviews that are statistically unreasonable.
[/quote]Don’t tell me what I think. You clearly don’t know any statistics. If you do, show your math.[quote=“grog, post:220, topic:35076”]
Read your articles. [/quote]
Look at the evidence.

[quote] Things like bacteria adapting although not changing into non-bacteria combined with time proves evolution of bacteria to non bacteria must be true.
[/quote]
Adaptation is evolution. In spades.

[quote=“grog, post:220, topic:35076”]
That is the kind of stuff you literally write.
[/quote]Apparently you don’t know what “literally” means. It’s telling that you never respond to what anyone literally writes.

Since you didn’t answer this, I suspect that you are lacking in the Christian virtue of empathy. Let’s try again:

What if I was one of your customers and refused to pay you based entirely on hearsay, while you show me the blueprints and photographs demonstrating your work was done correctly, and I just ignored them?

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Evolutionary creationism is my preferred term for what Biologos advocates, and is a form of old earth creationism. It is just about method.

Sometimes these discussions get frustrating as I do see things from a different perspective than you, yet feel we are really not so far apart on ultimate truths. Such is life. By the way, hope things are going better with your injury. Those can take a while and may not completely resolve, but hopefully will regain your function.

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I am reading the articles.

Dr. Venema says this: “As an aside, as a Christian biologist I would be perfectly fine with the answer being either “natural” or “supernatural”. Both natural and supernatural means are part of the providence of God, and the distinction is not a biblical one in any case. Perhaps God set up the cosmos in a way to allow for abiogenesis to take place. Perhaps he created the first life directly—though, as we will see, there are lines of evidence that I think are suggestive of the former rather than the latter.”

Dr. Venema here seems to give God a little nod of approval for His capability to do the miraculous but believes that the lines of evidence point toward naturalism and away from miracles in our existence. How does He conclude this we ask? I read another article where he talks about bacteria adapting and literally suggests that when we have millions of years to work with, this insinuates that bacteria do indeed evolve to non bacteria.

Dr. Venema says,"Put another way, if only one in 10 to the 77th proteins are functional, there should be no way that this sort of thing could happen in billions and billions of years, let alone 40. Either this was a stupendous fluke (and stupendous isn’t nearly strong enough of a word), or evolution is in fact capable of generating the information required to form new protein folds. And if this can happen in 40 years, what might millions of years of evolution produce?

So Dr. Venema finds real evidence that bacteria adapts by the power of “evolution” but there has never been evidence that bacteria becomes a non bacteria…but he goes on to suggest in the form of this question that due to vast amounts of time where this evolution we see on a cellular level when bacteria adapts to fit its environment suggest that it does indeed adapt to become a non bacteria.

First of all, this is faulty logic. Evolution on a cellular level for adaptation is true. Evolution of all of complex life from a bacteria like creature circumvents human logic to the nth degree. Tell me if I am wrong- In a nutshell if we see the changes occurring within the cellular structure of a bacteria that adapt to survive in their environment, we do not ever see the bacteria becoming something different than a bacteria. Just because we see micro evolution and recognize that there are large amounts of time is faulty logic towards the idea that a bacteria, time, energy, chance, mutation, natural selection can develop into sex organs and eyeballs and brains. It is so incredibly counterintuitive and beyond reason. Even if we saw in nature a bacteria change into a quasi-bacteria in real time does not diminish the argument that the probability of bacteria becoming sexual creatures with sex organs for reproduction by the powers of energy, chance, time, selection are more miniscule than probability of assigning a probability to never selecting one of two playing cards in a billion tries. And when you get to this many tries of selecting one of two cards, we call this so nearly impossible that we no longer attempt to assign probability to it. That’s what we are dealing with here.

And this type of statistical analysis literally does come into play when Paul argues the tenants of the gospel in Romans 1:18-20 where he appeals to the conscience of the hearer for recognizing that since intelligent complex life exists, so must the necessity of an intelligent complex life giver. Naturalistic evolutionary terms even with a little theology lipstick push against this. To me, this is suppressing the truth and I just cannot get myself to see it in any other way.

Judging by the incredible desire to live modestly and to give more than generously in the staff members we know about at AIG, I would be profoundly confused and twisted if I found Ken Hamm living large on the back of his ministry. The attitude of the staff like this are usually an indicator of their leader. I knew of a pastor in AL who gave about 70% of his salary as tithe! And he was not pulling a $500k salary either. Drove old cars and the house was unpainted but God sent revival in his church.

If I am a pastor and I see that my salary is rewarded by the size of my church, temptations for generically increasing flock size will always be there.

That is why I listen most closely to those leaders in Christian circles who are taking a servant leadership approach and taking salaries from all sources to be comparable to the average in their church members.

I want to pull my hair out when I hear that admission that the speaker has no idea what evolution is! Consider, grog:

(1) “Bacteria” is a huge taxonomic category. It is akin to saying “we have never seen an animal change to something other than an animal.” Think about it! That would be an inane argument. It doesn’t improve when you substitute “bacteria” for “animal.”

(2) No scientist has ever claimed that evolution means that “a plant changes to something other than a plant” or “a bacteria changes to some something other than a bacteria.”

(3) If ever an organism changed to something entirely different, that wouldn’t be evolution. That would be magic!

(4) An organism doesn’t change into something else. Populations of organisms change their allele frequencies over time. That is evolution!

Most importantly, if ever a bacteria were to produce an “offspring” that wasn’t a bacteria, it would be powerful evidence against the Theory of Evolution.

Why?

Moreover, you are NOT God, so why does a human’s opinion of what God should or shouldn’t be insulted by matter?

Frankly, what you do and don’t believe doesn’t change the fact that God is sovereign over energy, time, and mutations and accomplishes his will by them. We observe that that is exactly what is going on so why attribute it to anybody but God?

Are you unaware that the Bible says that God is sovereign over “random chance”? Do you doubt that God can create a world where mutations and natural selection and genetic draft and genetic drift can carry out God’s will for the biosphere? It sounds like you are the one lacking in faith in God’s power and wisdom.

Your argument basically comes down to this: (1) You have no idea what evolution is. (2) Yet, you are afraid of it and feel it just has to be evil. (3) Then, you impose your emotions on God and insist that he must share your opinions. Newsflash: He doesn’t.

Illogical. Energy, time, and mutation are all within God’s sovereign will and we already observe that they produce changes in living things.

In other words, because you don’t like it, you are insisting that God doesn’t like it. If God made everything, how could those processes be “confusing” and “godless” and “amoral”. You are simply letting your emotions take over. You fear what you don’t understand.

Of course, your arguments have been used in past centuries by Christians complaining about lots of other scientific concepts that scared them, such as Copernicus model of planetary motion around the sun. They also claimed that the Bible flatly denied that model. Do you? (Many of them preferred the idea of God commanding angels to push the planets about. Anything else was “godless” and “confusing” and “amoral”.)

No. The science depends upon EVIDENCE, not faith.

You are confused. God is not. So your entire argument is illogical.You keep insisting that God must operate with the same confusion and emotions that you bring to this topic.

So you are saying that God is powerful and omniscient but only as to matters which meet your approval. When you don’t understand something in science and it scares you, you capriciously declare it invalid and outside of God’s power and wisdom. Got it.

No, you are far from right on these topics. I don’t think you have any idea what evolution is and how God uses it for his glory. Much like those who denied the Copernican Model, you deny and fear that which you don’t understand. The science confuses you so you declare it confusing and thereby unworthy of God. No, you are not the final standard for what God does and doesn’t do.

On this we agree! I certainly believe that God created all kinds of animals—and evolutionary processes is how he did it. (And if ever an animal failed to reproduce after its own kind, that would be a powerful argument against the Theory of Evolution.)

Bizarre. I have no idea how you came by these strange claims.

In other words, you are guided by your emotions. I think we already knew that.

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God is probably chuckling over this conversation, Greg. Except when He mourns over the venomous accusations of bad will that have abounded.

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You know what I think is improbable? I think expecting life to sit still, behave, and NOT change dramatically in order to fill every niche it can possibly reach is so statistically unlikely you might as well call it zero. This idea that there are these invisible, undefinable constraints beyond which life may not evolve any further is bogglingly silly to me, and I feel incredulous and baffled when people proclaim this idea in all seriousness.

However, I don’t usually make this argument in these terms, because I don’t expect it to be particularly useful or convincing to someone who is genuinely coming from a totally different set of experiences. What is helpful is to dig into the details. What details do you feel have gone unaddressed that impede your understanding of evolution so much you still find it so confusing?

Could I ask you if you believe if it is possible for a bacteria or bacteria like creature to evolve over millions of years to fashion complexity and life with sexuality and complexity and all the rest without one single interaction by God in a supernatural way in those years?

I apologize for starting with this, but it makes me crazy to see it over and over again. Decent = good or satisfactory. Descent = trajectory or ancestry. The “s” makes all the difference. It’s a little like the desert/dessert distinction.

Regardless, I assert that God is sovereign over all things, including time, energy, matter, “random” events, and everything else in all of creation. God sovereignly used time, energy, and matter like you would use a tool. He used what we call “random” events (events that we cannot assign to a particular cause) to guide and direct all of history to serve his sovereign purpose. The fact that God used these “amoral” forces to create means that they did not create or design by themselves. God is creator. He is sovereign. All things work together to fulfill his purposes.

I’m going to start from the back and work toward the top this time. As far as rescue from a bad conscience goes, I’ll let the author of Hebrews speak for me: “For if the blood of goats and bulls, and the sprinkling of defiled persons with the ashes of a heifer, sanctify for the purification of the flesh, how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God.”

As far as your claim that “the trust and faith factor this model (theistic evolution) clings to is not faith in God but faith in time, mutation, energy,” I would humbly suggest that this is a product of your imagination. Theistic evolution simply declares – by faith, not by scientific or logical proofs – that God used time, mutation, energy, etc., as tools to fulfill his purposes.

As far as this, “Theistic evolution is not only bad but it is worse than naturalistic evolution…” Honestly, I’m a little speechless. But …

What are you talking about?! Theistic evolution AFFIRMS BY FAITH that God CREATED us. No one here has faith in a time frame. This makes absolutely no sense.

Really? Is that what I have done, placed my faith in time, matter, and energy, and casually pasted God’s name on the concept? And everyone else here? No, you are not right. And I will remind you of your own words:

Sorry, Greg, but this is probably our last interaction. As the saying goes, “With friends like you …”

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I agree wholeheartedly with this, Greg.

At the same time, this principle does not apply to Christians who accept the theory of common descent by evolution–any more than it applies to Christians who believe in the germ theory of illness, or the physics theory of general relativity, or the Hueckel Molecular-Orbital (HMO) theory. Christians who ascribe to those scientific theories do so not out of a desire to please men, but to please God. He made us to explore and understand. We desire to please God by learning about the universe He created and describing it in as truthful a manner as is in our power.

Like any God-given ability, it can be turned to good or to evil. Neither I nor anyone at BioLogos subscribes to a view of science that would turn it into a reason to disbelieve God. Instead, it is a view that acknowledges our dependence on Him, and seeks to use scientific knowledge in a way that benefits our neighbor.

Greg, you seem so obsessed with the possibilities of evil uses of science that the positive uses of science seem to escape your attention. Maybe I missed something you said (quite possible, given the length of your posts). But the positive uses of science, including the theory of evolution, abound.

Okay, Greg, you have made a statistics claim. Show us your math.

If you can’t show the math, Greg, you are probably missing something. So go ahead…

SHOW US YOUR MATH!

I’ll even give you a hint, Greg: Bayesian inference provides a good statistical framework for understanding whether or not common descent is the best explanation for biological data.

Have you ever studied Bayesian inference? It is used to analyze a wide variety of data, such as the orbit of the planets and the area where flight MH370 probably crashed.

So what is you understanding of Bayesian inference? Or in the alternative, what different mathematical framework supports your statistical assertion?

Best,
Chris Falter

Hi Lynn: I do believe in evolution! I never said that I did not. I believe that life is not meant to sit still. God calls us to live, grow walk with Him and he designed us to be able to evolve within our set design in order to adapt to our environment for survival.

Look at the genetic make up of the wolf dog. within the fabric of its creation are many differing types…some that look like horses and others that look like rats. Differing eyesight capability and differing olfactory ability and He gave these traits for the purposes of survival in all the various environments in which they would be imposed.

It is a whole other thing however to suggest that the environment which God placed plants and animals within have the power and ability to take a bacteria and over millions of years by the amoral powers within it to create things like sexual beings and the human brain etc. This goes against what I believe mankind was given as a gift of common sense and this goes against the grain of the entire Bible.

The old “the enemies of my enemies are my friends” approach.

I will be so bold as to answer a question not directed to me. @Lynn_Munter - I welcome whatever you would care to write after I make this post.

Here’s my belief, Greg: it is not possible for bacteria, or for any other living thing, or for any other thing in the universe, to exist even one femtosecond if God does not sustain it by His providence. He is continuously upholding the universe and everything in it by His glorious power. That was true 2 billion years ago when life was all prokaryotes, and 1 billion years ago when there were eukaryotes, and 500 million years ago when the trilobites ruled the earth, and 80 million years ago when T. Rex roamed. And it is true this very instant, today. God has sustained the universe and everything in it by His providence for every one of the 4.35 x 10e17 seconds that have elapsed since the Big Bang.

It is impossible to speak of anything happening anywhere in the universe at any time outside the bounds of God’s providence and authority. Does this statement include common descent? Of course it does!

Best,
Chris Falter

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It is specifically the concept of ‘within our set design’ you use that I don’t think is logical or Biblical. No one has ever convincingly been able to show boundaries that specific, other than “would take too much time to evolve for us to be able to observe it happening” or “anyone can obviously tell these are different kinds of animals.”

…Well, no, that doesn’t really hold up. Let me repeat what I said:

This is starting to sound ridiculous. You’ve been repeatedly corrected on this point theologically, so I will just start saying that by the amoral powers of the breakfast I ate this morning (energy!), I am advancing one more day (time!) towards my eventual decay (mutation!) and old age, and obviously I cannot therefore contribute to society in any meaningful way between now and then, because it would have to be by amoral powers!

Can a bacteria exchange genetic information with other bacteria? Can it ‘decide’ to move in one direction over another? If so, you have starting points. How do you determine, if you consistently select for these traits to improve, what limits you will hit and be unable to evolve past? Can you realistically test this in a lab?

Can you say, oh, maybe bacteria could evolve into something like a sponge with a sponge nervous system, but no further! Or a fish brain could evolve into a turtle brain, but definitely couldn’t ever reach anything like a human brain!

Something going against the grain of the entire Bible is a serious claim indeed. Would you also say that the Bible goes against the grain of the entire observable world? And what would it mean if you did?

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That is a fair question, and I would answer “no” as he sustains all things. I would have to qualify the answer by asking what you mean by supernatural. I am coming to understand that God while outside nature also is in nature and works through nature to achieve his aims.

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Ok let me reply this way that starts with a statement to set the stage and ends with a question. So there is the human male and female species who can get married can procreate and represent a picture of the relationship between Christ the groom and His bride the church. God who exists outside of time wanted this, it was planned and it was so. I think we can agree with this so far. Tell me if I am wrong.

So my question for you is this. With the following ingredients:

  1. bacteria that God created or some similar form which was designed with the ability to duplicate, adjust and adapt to its environment.
  2. placed in an environment suitable for life which God created we call earth.
    3 with energy which God created by the sun and stars.
  3. Lots of time…millions of years
  4. And last ingredient is that God has absolutely no interaction in the process of the development, adaptation and change in the life of this bacteria like substance in not one single piece of that multi million year span. I choose to call this the “miraculous”

Do you believe that these ingredients in numbers 1 through 5 are the soil enough for the incredulous complexity and sexual design of both of the differing human genders who have the ability to procreate to come to fruition via the process of the evolution of the bacteria like substance?

If not, what ingredient/s would you add or subtract from this list?

This is absolutely the truth. We attended a Bible study where one of the AIG staffers with 4 kids would hunt to supplement their food budget. I am not kidding. Used cars, nominal houses. The guys I know in this ministry are not in it for the money.

Are you saying God could not have done it that way if he wished?
Hum…

Kind of tough to agree to your last condition if you believe God sustains all things. To accept your conditions would essentially make you a deist. It is a mystery, though, however he did it.

I am saying that God did in the way that is sensible to human reasonableness as it is fashioned after the image of God. We are given the ideals of the natural and we all see that they are unintelligent yet evolutionists claim that there is almost magical nature in the sun. We see in everyday things like a magazine page and recognize that there was intelligence behind it yet an evolutionist cannot admit that the handiwork such as a human brain is God’s direct work but instad the result of Him placing a simple little celled creature into the more important designers such as time, chance and energy to produce the final masterpiece. This is all small god stuff…the same ingredients that most seeker churches adhere to. God is not small. He is Creator. He does not need us to explain Him and He does not need us to defend Him, but for the sake of all people we should take reserve in order to get to the truth before just trusting in our own instincts bolstered the naturalism blasting at us in every hour of our existence.