Remaining calm with YECs

By the way-I love beagles. had a beagle named JB a number of years ago and was the most incredible pet! He was good with our kids and actually had a conscience! He grabbed a piece of chicken one time off the counter while I was in the office (which he knew better not to do) and wandered into the office with the chicken still in his mouth and with his tail between his legs and his ears flat down on the side of his head. I looked at him and said, “What did you do JB?” then noticed that yet eaten chicken in his mouth! I took it and patted him…Miss him. What a great dog! His olfactory sense for rabbits was his weakness and he sensed one, one evening, took the shock from the collar across the invisible fence and we found him 2 weeks later on the side of a main road…

Do you have a beagle I assume…or a few?

Nice evening.

Greg

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Have you ever googled good sources that speak of the numberous archaeological finds that confirm Biblical historicity accuracy? Interesting study.

I look forward to the day when we meet our Savior and God…and to come to the fullness of knowledge and realization of how things were created by Him and how the story of the flood was intended.

Yes. At any given time I have 1-3 beagles. Enjoyed your story about your beagle (except for the sad ending.)

@grog

If you don’t believe God could evolve dogs from amoebas, then you still don’t understand evolution, or even God. If God can make a human from dirt, he can Certainly make a dog from an amoeba.

What is the one thing that you think you can teach a Christian evolutionist? You don’t seem to grasp the fundamentals of evolution by any means.

  1. Do you understand that as long as the average member of any population is more or less reproductively compatible with the rest of that population, the population (virtually by definition) can never divide into two or more very different life forms). Following so far?

  2. It is only when geographical separation, cultural differentiation, or mutation divide one part of the population from another part, that you can see how the unique history experienced (from then on!) by the two different groups can eventually (if not virtually inevitably) lead to some whopping differences.

Your example of dogs is helpful in some ways, and distracting in others. Yes, dogs have tremendous diversity. But this is not accomplished by God or nature. It is accomplished by humans creating “artificial barriers” between normal mating patterns.

But Here is where it gets really interesting, @grog ! One of the reasons that all these weird shaped and sized dogs are still generally compatible with each other reproductively is because that’s the normal result of all this inter-breeding stoked by humans!

Humans intentionally bring one type of dog into contact with a very different type… hoping to promote a good trait while culling out an undesirable one. So… guess what happens if they see that one dog doesn’t seem to father any puppies… or give birth to any…?? Come on, @Grog, what does a dog breeder do?

He removes that dog from the entire process! He might give him away. He might euthanize him (he better not!). But for centuries, any dog that seemed like it was heading in its own direction (evolutionarily speaking), losing its ability to serve as a reproductively compatible Delivery Truck of genes … that dog was removed from the gene pool!

@grog, why is it, exactly, that you don’t think genetic changes can affect reproductive compatibility? It’s the key to the whole thing … And until you grasp that, you are about as helpful as a Jewish Pope.

George

That would be Saint Peter (to Catholics, anyway)

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OOooooooo… that was a good response !!! I’ll have to adjust my “banter calibration” !!!

George

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First, you told me that you believe that God does have a role in creation via evolution. So tell me how it is that you say,“the population can NEVER divide into two or more life forms” Could God do that?

Frankly I sense that your idea of God as creator is one who is weak, inept and troubled in His ability to populate the earth. maybe I misunderstand how you believe that God interacted within the realm of how life got here?? Maybe you can explain this when you have time.

We both recognize that people are capable of breeding differing dogs artificially. Who is to say that God did not interact in nature in Australia x number of years ago in the same way? Who knows-it would be anyone’s guess really. The word “never” in light of the God I know in the Bible should NEVER be used. Can you agree with this in principle?

And genetic mutation normally results in character traits bad for survival and many times an inability to pass on these bad traits by achieving an inability to breed…does it not? So a mole with specialized front limbs for digging came from genetic mutation in some other marsupial crossing the land bridge to Australia? It just does not make sense. Has any lab ever demonstrated a mutation turning towards something good? It would make more sense that God created that marsupial with the option for digging front limbs maybe and Him triggering the trait for speciation than to suggest that mutation caused such specialized traits from a non digging kind via mutation. Am I still misunderstanding evolution? And both guys like you and me from two different slants are just guessing on these things and please don’t tell me otherwise because I would have to respectfully call that dishonesty!

I hear you on the dogs and of course I understand about breeding techniques etc. Point is, is that dogs have all those genetic opportunities within them for evolving to meet their environment. Isn’t this intriguing to you? We will call it the wolf looking dog has within its genetic capability of being the size of a small horse or a rabbit. It has within its genetic capability thick fur like a husky or thin like a Doberman. It is as if God created them with the genetic capability of evolving if you will to meet the environmental circumstances. And whose to say that some marsupial was not designed with a whole set of differing options for this same type or evolution.

Anyway, I understand that when a dog evolves, it actually loses genetic information, not gains it. So the principle could be applied to Australia the same. Some spin this whole picture somehow towards a conclusion that they are evidence that they evolved from bacteria over billions of years. I would suggest that this is because God is NOT allowed in their science classroom.

Not meaning to be argumentative. I like your fire Mr. Brooks! You always shoot straight with your views regardless of how much I disagree and I have sensed more than once your incense towards me and your disdain for what I sense is your sense of my seeming ignorance and foolishness. And I am an admitted fool. In light of a God of such wisdom and greatness we are as good a rotting stumps with no cognition comparatively speaking. So hopefully you can appreciate guys like me who have not wholeheartedly bought into hook line and sinker the plethora of various creationist views, yours included (although I have bought into revering the words in the Bible) and who remain incredulously cautious about the whims of man whether it be economic or otherwise in bolstering claims to one of those views.

The other day I read a list of about 25 items that prove the validity of naturalistic evolution (from a purely secular resource.) and for all 25 of these, they were just as much evidence for the idea that God created animals with the ability to adapt and evolve as they were for macro evolution from simple cells via energy from the sun and mutation…I am not kidding either. The one and only difference was the spin you want to put on them from either a camp that believes that God is indeed alive and well and created man in His own image or that God is not allowed in the science classroom. I side with the God camp and that is the faith camp that all Christians are called to. Faith comes from hearing the Word of God.

Thanks for the ongoing discussion! I have been blessed in more ways that you will know talking to you all!

Good evening Mr. Brooks

@grog

In all that writing, you could not find one thing to agree about with my positions, or most of the positions of my colleagues on this site.

It seems all you want to do is say God can do ANY thing… no matter how crazy it looks. One day I suddenly realized that the story of the Flood and Noah’s Ark was the perfect story. Every step of the way, the plot was so inconceivable and so impractical that all a person had to say was God made it happen that way.

How can anyone refute that, right? It comes down to what you feel in your heart. And frankly, there is nothing that tells me that God would do things the way you think he did. And so … we shall forever remain apart.

I think you are wasting your time here.

George

Remaining humble and not assuming that your position is right and the other (in this case YEC) is wrong by default would help greatly.

Hi Mark,

It’s not a case of “assuming” that YEC is “wrong by default.” It’s about having evidence that the YEC organisations are making claims that are demonstrably and indisputably untrue.

For example, when a YEC organisation puts out a news bulletin claiming that scientists are now acknowledging that all the different species appeared at the same time, and when they cite in favour of this claim an article in a mainstream science publication that says the exact opposite, the fact that they are wrong can be indisputably demonstrated. There’s no “assuming” involved whatsoever, and there’s nothing “by default” about it.

Or when they say that historical assumptions can’t be tested because nobody was there to see them happen, when you are then confronted with real scientists explaining exactly how they test supposedly untestable historical assumptions, again, the fact that they’re wrong can be indisputably demonstrated. There’s no “assuming” involved whatsoever, and there’s nothing “by default” about it.

Or when they say that old-earth results are motivated entirely by ideological desires to make way for evolution, and you then discover that on the contrary, vast swathes of old-earth results are motivated entirely by a desire to find oil, and thus have to be correct rather than ideologically convenient, again, the fact that they’re wrong can be indisputably demonstrated. There’s no “assuming” involved whatsoever, and there’s nothing “by default” about it.

There’s this YEC tendency to assume that anything that contradicts YEC is automatically an assumption. This is simply not the case.

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I looked at one link. The claims are outrageous. Such chutzpah!

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That was such a valuable quotation. I hate to see this thread die out without a reply from those who consider the YEC position viable. My life was greatly impacted, toward the negative, by my Young Earth Creationist background in the church. I trusted people like Morris, Whitcomb, and Gish to be honest about the evidence and to properly represent the science. They weren’t and they didn’t. I foolishly assumed that those who held to the same theological doctrines that I held dear would not mislead me. I was wrong.

In those days of the 1960’s and 1970’s, there was much concern among American evangelicals that society was headed in to “situation ethics” and a loss of absolutes. Today we would call it “moral relativism” and post-modernism. How ironic that so many within the same evangelical movement have embraced that kind of loss of “absolutes” where evidence can be ignored and an honest treatment of the data can be shrugged off. I turn on Christian talk radio and hear the most ridiculous “reasoning” for why “global warming” is an alleged conspiracy of “so called scientists.” And those who used to say that one president’s lies made him totally unqualified to lead now find it easy to excuse nonsense of today which makes that president of a generation ago seem almost saintly by comparison. (Sorry. I won’t pursue the political topic any further.) Then yesterday I discover that a group of famous NBA sports stars are claiming that the earth is flat----not as a joke but in a series of bizarre “common sense” appeals to reason. They call NASA photos “made up.” What is happening? We are reaching a bizarre “everybody is entitled to their own version of reality” evaporation of sanity.

There is something almost----I hate to say it—apocalyptic that is happening. Reason itself is being abandoned by far too many people who have far too much influence. (Yes, the loonies have always been with us. But they haven’t always had this much power in the modern era.) I find someone like Ken Ham easier to understand than a Georgia Purdom. She surely has to know that she is defying the very foundations of science. (I will dare say it: Every time she repeats AIG mantras like “That ignores the difference between observational science and historical science!” and “Science is simply knowledge” and “Everybody starts from the same evidence but applies different worldviews”, she serves as Ken Ham’s Kellyane Conway. The more defiantly she speaks, the more applause she gets on the AIG Facebook pages.

My atheist friends and colleagues within the science academy have asked me for years, “Why aren’t you reasonable Christians denouncing those who are giving you and Jesus such a bad reputation?” And even some of my Young Earth Creationist friends tell me that the relative silence of the evangelical world toward AIG, ICR, and CMI “shows that they know deep down that people like Ken Ham and other YEC leaders are doing exactly what the Bible tells them to do, even though they are afraid to stand up for the Bible in an atheistic society.”
Are we too accommodating towards our Christian brethren? I wonder.

Truly. I don’t know the answer. But I do know that without harsh confrontation, I might have continued as a science-denialist and in drinking the cool-aid (trademark avoided) for years longer. If judgment begins in the household of God, I have to wonder how much I share in the blame for my relative apathy. Am I tolerant or timid?

Again, I don’t claim to know the right course. I just wonder if I have been far too passive about allowing the Gospel to be misrepresented by $150 million arks and silly pseudoscience.

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You just gave me the laugh therapy I needed! Well said:)

Well, all I can say is I am looking for a posture of honesty and humility among the Biologos discussion members, as would be becoming of professing Christians, and honestly I don’t see much of that here.

Also, I would appreciate specific links on the ‘outrageous’ claims mentioned. I would want to look at those honestly and with an open mind.

Thanks.

@marktwombly,

Maybe you can blame that on me being a Unitarian Universalist?

If I was demonstrably more tolerant of Creationists who repeatedly visit these pages and say that my fellow participants are promoting bogus science, would you be able to accept the position that Evolution is God-ordained, and that the Earth’s creation was billion’s of years ago?

If you said yes, I think I could turn a new leaf !

Hi Mark,

I think you’re missing my point here. I wasn’t talking about honesty and humility, I was merely making the point—with examples—that there are certain claims that can objectively and irrefutably be shown to be incorrect, and that it isn’t all assumptions and presuppositions as you claim. There is a difference between being wrong and being dishonest. It is possible to make wrong claims in good faith if you don’t have the skills and expertise needed to fact-check them, or to understand them correctly. They only become dishonest if you know, or should reasonably be expected to know, that they are untrue.

However, since you’re making accusations of dishonesty against BioLogos supporters here, I thought I’d better address that. First of all, you must provide evidence. Exactly what claims are you seeing being made that you can show to be untrue, and what evidence do you have that those who are making them should reasonably be expected to know that they are untrue?

Secondly, you need to make sure your own house is in order before you accuse “evolutionists” of dishonesty. There’s a good reason for this. Examples of evolutionist dishonesty do not say anything either good or bad about Christianity itself. They merely show that people are people. However, examples of creationist dishonesty reflect badly on all of us as Christians, whether we’re young earth or old, evolutionary or not. As Romans 2:24 says about people who make such claims, “God’s name is blasphemed among the Gentiles because of you.” So please, make sure that you have carefully fact-checked anything you are claiming to the best of your ability.

Take another look at my last post. I think you’ll find I actually did provide some links. If there are any others that you feel I need to include, please be specific.

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