Agreed! I’m a little surprised that she would offer a critique of my posting, while at the same time totally dismissing any possible conflict between what she says she is researching compared to what she actually supports in that book. How odd.
We do not hide the age of the earth or of human fossils from anyone.
I can understand why you are angry about the book. My sole contribution was the editing of the science section. There are parts of it I would change if I could—but it’s my name on the cover, among others, so I bear some measure of responsibility.
All I can do is apologize for any representations that are false. Ask Stump.
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What you don’t hide is the scientific consensus on the age of the earth and human fossils. However, I don’t see any evidence in that article that DI commits to these conclusions. On the contrary, the article ends with a complete and vigorous rejection of the idea that humans and apes have a common ancestor. It finishes thus.
But in spite of all this conflicting evidence, the holy cow of Darwinian evolution of humans from ape-like ancestors may not be questioned. Why? Because that would challenge the ruling scientific paradigm of naturalism. God forbid!
How can you say DI accepts the age of the earth and human fossils while DI claims humans did not evolve from pre-human ancestors? DI says “human-like fossils and ape-like fossil are clearly distinct from one another, and the so-called transitional fossil record is highly fragmented”. If DI accepts the age of human fossils, then DI has to explain their origin in a way which either accepts evolution or provides strong evidence for an alternative explanation, or at the very least provides evidence falsifying evolution.
@jon[quote=“Jonathan_Burke, post:166, topic:37034”]
If DI accepts the age of human fossils, then DI has to explain their origin in a way which either accepts evolution or provides strong evidence for an alternative explanation, or at the very least provides evidence falsifying evolution
[/quote]
Your statement doesn’t follow. What would we have to do if we didn’t accept the age of fossils? Same thing?
We don’t _have_to do anything, until such time as we have a case to make, and you don’t get to tell us what that case is or should be. Lay off, Jonathan
I think you could do something a little more than apologize. All you have to do is use your considerable credibility within the Creationist community and explain to them that human genetic diversity is not compatible with a single mating pair, and their progeny, having only 6000 years to produce humanity as we find it today.
What reason would you have for not guiding the Evangelical community with truthful scientific realities?
@cwhenderson, or @Jonathan_Burke,
do either of you have some alternate suggestions for what else Dr. Gauger could do besides just apologize?
[quote=“agauger, post:167, topic:37034”]
Your statement doesn’t follow.[/quote]
Why doesn’t it follow?
No. You would have to explain their true age, and why the dating is wrong.
No one is telling you what your case is or should be. We know what your case is. You have already made your case. It’s called Intelligent Design. You claim it’s superior to evolution as an explanation of all the evidence which evolution purports to explain. But if you want people to believe it, which you very clearly do, then you need to provide evidence for it, which you are obviously trying to do. So I am not asking you to do anything which you don’t already believe you need to do, and which you aren’t already trying to do.
Remember, you’re claiming that ID is based on science. If you want people to accept your case for ID based on science, then at some point you have to actually do science. You’re clearly aware of that, which is why you have been doing science to try and find evidence for ID. But all your science so far seems to be focused on “How can we prove that evolution can’t explain everything?”.
However, if you would rather say “We believe it is legitimate to reject the scientific claim that humans are the product of evolution from pre-human ancestors, without the necessity of providing any alternative explanation for the origin of human and pre-human fossils which are explained by evolution, and without providing any evidence falsifying evolution”, then you should say that loudly and clearly.
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@gbrooks9
You have a high opinion of the power of my words. The experiments we are engaged in will demonstrate that 6000 years is not enough if it is true. It will become clear that you can’t model in enough diversity in 6000 yrs with the right allele spectra, linkage disequilibrium, etc. If all the books written so far have not persuaded YEC, my words won’t. But a serious demonstration might.
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That’s actually not what I am doing. I am asking if we can model human origins starting from just two. Using population genetics.
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I propose exactly the same thing in another thread. What is stopping you from developing a broad range of scenarios, to see which factors have the most influence, and the plus/minus range of results?
This “thing” that I am seeing so many ID proponents do lately - - where you ask a scientist to prove their assumptions for their calculations… that is an exercise guaranteed to foment all sorts of conflict.
It’s like asking someone to try on a pair of shoes and ask them to prove that those shoes really do fit right?
Instead, pull out your own pair of shoes, and see if your feet can get in them! If you can’t get a foot into a shoe, we all know there is something wrong.
And when you accomplish something with one of your more optimistic scenarios, everyone can focus their attention on what exactly gave it the ability to produce good results…
Of course we’ll do that. It’s how such things are done.
Nothing. That’s our plan .
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I look forward to seeing your results. Do you have any idea how long this is going to take given the resources that are currently available to you?
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When the DI first went down this path - claiming that the entire field of population genetics was an exercise in question-begging is how Stephen Meyer put it, if I recall correctly - I was very surprised. This has nothing to do with detecting design - it makes no sense for an organization devoted to design detection to spend time and resources on such an activity. To me this indicated that the DI was willing to be more overt about its specifically Christian concerns.
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It’s always dangerous to estimate research progress. I would guess a year or two, but it depends on unknowns
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The “You’re” in my previous post refers to the ID group, not you personally.
I am sure we can do that.
You can blame this on me. I have explained elsewhere how it happened.we recognize the religious association but DI has been moving in that direction, as can be seen by the TE book. Our methods are still scientific.
[quote=“DennisVenema, post:176, topic:37034”]
When the DI first went down this path - claiming that the entire field of population genetics was an exercise in question-begging is how Stephen Meyer put it, if I recall correctly - I was very surprised. This has nothing to do with detecting design - it makes no sense for an organization devoted to design detection to spend time and resources on such an activity. To me this indicated that the DI was willing to be more overt about its specifically Christian concern
[/quote] sorry for the answer before the question.
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I am not sure what was witnessed. The earliest list, 1 Cor. 15, mentions Jesus “appearing,” but not where, when, what time day or night, how far off, how near the appearance was, whether any words were spoken/heard. It just says, “he appeared.” And only to “brethren.”
The earliest Gospel doesn’t mention the name of Jesus’ alleged birth place (Bethlehem), nor the name of his father, and no genealogy, but just begins with Jesus being chosen at his baptism at which time the Spirit descends on him and he is called “son,” which repeats a line from a coronation psalm in the OT. So the earliest Gospel has Jesus chosen at his baptism.
The earliest Gospel also ends with little fanfare, because the figure at the tomb is described as a “young man,” which is a possible reference to an angel, or maybe not. It is an ambiguous phrase since Mark is also the only Gospel to mention another unnamed “young man” who was the last to leave Jesus on the night of his arrest, fleeing naked because the guards pulled his clothing off trying to capture him. Then soon afterwards another “young man” appears in the tomb fully clothed? Coincidence? Later Gospel writers don’t mention the “young man” in either case, but instead elevate him to a definite angel “who comes down out of heaven” (Matthew), or in the lattermost Gospels Luke and John mention “two angels.”
Speaking of upping the ante, Matthew inserts into his basically Markan passion narrative two earthquakes with two groups of Roman soldiers being terrified, but none of the other Gospels adds mention of even a single earthquake, and none mention Roman soldiers being terrified.
In short, the earliest Gospel, Mark, ends on the most anti-climactic note of all of them, merely with an empty tomb, and a “young man” who says to the women, “tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him.” So, it ends with a promise of a future appearance in a far off place 50 miles or so away rather than describing any post-resurrection appearance at all, and none in Jerusalem at all. And the last line in Mark says that the women “told no one anything.” The Greek involves a repeated word in order to emphasize that the women kept their mouths shut. Did they tell the disciples what the young man told them?
Later Gospel writers were not satisfied with Mark’s baptismal beginning nor its anti-climactic ending. Matthew adds marvels galore, as already stated. Luke-Acts has two angels at the tomb and has the risen Jesus appear to his disciples in Jerusalem not Galilee, then prove he is “not a spirit” but “flesh and bone,” after which he ate some fish and “led them” on a stroll out of Jersualem to ascend bodily into heaven from a nearby town (with fish in his tummy–quite unlike what Paul, our earliest source of all, said about the “spiritual body,” i.e., “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” and, “Food is for the stomach, and the stomach is for food; but God will do away with both of them.” 1 Cor 6:13 & 15:50).
John, most probably the last Gospel completed, also has two angels as in Luke, and has the risen Jesus prove he is fleshly, and even cooks some fish in chapter 21, and Peter gets to take back his three denials of knowing Jesus via repeating three affirmations, convenient more for theological reasons than historical ones. Theological concerns of the Gospel authors appear to take precedence over historical ones when you compare Gospel stories in chronological order of their development. So when I compare Mark with the later three Gospels it looks like the Jesus story started off relatively tamely, with Jesus being chosen at his baptism (and only Jesus seeing the Spirit descend and only Jesus hearing the voice of God calling him Son, per Mark the earliest telling), and ending with the women meeting a young man but telling no one anything. Mark also has Jesus insist that his disciples tell no one about the transfiguration until later. Makes me wonder if these “tell no one” stories were themselves told later and their later invention was covered over with the excuse that “no one told anyone anything until later.”
It also seems, per Mark, that the “risen Jesus” movement started in far off Galilee rather than in Jerusalem.
As I also mentioned, Mark has Jesus begin his mission after being baptized, and only in Mark does it say his mother and brothers feared Jesus was going out of his mind, something they would not have thought if his mother had known her birth was supernatural and accompanied by miracles as in later Gospels. So it looks like stories about Jesus’ birth and death grew over time as seen in Gospel stories that followed in the wake of the Gospel of Mark.
I am not saying I deny the possibility of miracles. They are possible, but so are growing legends surrounding an apocalyptic end times cult leader and enthusiastic followers who felt the final judgment was near and Jesus was the final prophet or supernatural figure with the final Gospel that needed to be shared. So he had to be a new Elijah/Elisha, Moses figure, rolled into one as the Gospel writers attempted to do. Matthew’s nativity story appears to have been constructed as a midrashic tale to deliberately parallel the story of Joseph, Moses, the Exodus, as even some Evangelical commentators point out.
One might add…
Why were some of Jesusʼs most spectacular nature miracles only seen by a few (unlike Mosesʼ alleged miracle of dividing an entire sea which would have been viewed by the multitudes)? Jesusʼs nature miracles include the stilling of the storm and the walking on water allegedly seen only by some people in a boat. While only three apostles apparently saw Jesusʼs transfiguration on an unidentified “mountain.” Quite a miracle, Jesus shining bright as the sun and speaking with Moses and Elijah. But only for the eyes of three people? And Jesus told them to “tell no one” about it until later? (That might just be a convenient excuse for how and why such a tale arose later among some Christians.)
As for the miracle of the feeding of the multitude, the first two Gospels say it took place in an unidentified “wilderness.” Thereʼs also no indication in the earliest telling of the story in Mark that anyone saw a miracle taking place, nobody says anything about being awestruck, nor is any miracle described such as extra fish appearing out of thin air or the flesh on the fish being instantly replaced as soon as one piece was torn off. The apostles also are depicted a little later as still worrying over where their next meal was going to come from, and rebuked for not understanding concerning the multitude being fed. But instead of Jesus mentioning how they saw fish coming out of thin air, or any other miracle they allegedly would have seen taking place, he points them to the baskets of leftovers. By the time of the fourth Gospel the people do proclaim it as a miracle taking place, but still no description as to how it occurred. (Though if one believes something like that story happened, I also suspect that people would not simply walk out into the wilderness to listen to a prophet without taking along at least some provisions of their own, non-perishables like bread or dried fish as the story suggests. So how miraculous would that be if some people brought out their own provisions after being inspired by seeing Jesus and the apostles sharing what food they had with the crowd?)
Why did the three towns in Galilee in which Jesus performed most of his Gospel miracles reject him? Jesus allegedly performed most of his miracles in or around those three towns, what scholars call “the Evangelical Triangle” (Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum), and Jesus says those towns will be judged more than Sodom and Gomorrah for having rejected him. Also, there is no record of Jesus performing miracles in large cities in the same region such as Sepphoris which was located near Nazareth, nor did he perform miracles in other large cities like Caesarea Philippi, Tiberius, Hippos (the last two being on the shores of the Lake of Galilee), nor any miracles performed in the large city of his final destination, Jerusalem, at least none that the earliest Gospels mentions, aside from the resurrection which in Mark is merely an empty tomb tale, because no one sees the miracle of Jesus exiting the tomb, and the young man in the tomb says “He has gone before you to Galilee, there you will see him.” In other words the earliest Gospel has the risen Jesus not appearing in Jerusalem at all.
I think you have posted your comments on the wrong thread? This thread is 18 days old, and is dealing with Venema’s analysis of population sizes.
Feel free to re-post in the thread of your choice. And perhaps you can dwell on the issue of how many types of “Raising Up” there is: Jesus is raised up bodily from “death”. And then he is raised up bodily from Earth into the Heavens. Two very different kinds of resurrection. . . and neither one having much to to with an afterlife of immortality.
My apologies, I was responding to Wright’s comment about Gospel author “eyewitnesses,” which also was not part of the original Venema article.
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Yes, I also was surprised to this response here.
For a short reply to a long post, yes, I should have stated that John is written as an eyewitness account, and Mark and Matthew were understood to be written by the apostles Matthew and Mark, which would make those gospels,“accounts of Jesus’ life by eyewitnesses.”