I hope you’re doing well. Life as an agnostic is good, quite frankly no different than life as a Christian was. I’m writing to question my own beliefs. I’ve written before that certain things within evolution give me pause (the evolution of biological, complementary sexes (not complementarian), and morality). So I’m looking to challenge my views. I don’t find divine command ethics to be satisfying, even as a Christian. But I’m trying to find good resources that posit a real challenge to current evolutionary thinking, whether that is Christian or not. So if you think a current intelligent design or other form of creationism better explains certain aspects of life I would love to see them.
I’m not sure how helpful I’ll be since I don’t find any problem between evolutionary processes giving rise to two sexes or morality as I believe that God is involved in the process (though couldn’t identify specific mechanisms). I don’t believe that God supernaturally zapped morality into some member(s) of the homo genus or that he supernaturally made two sexes.
Some of these questions certainly have scientific aspects that we don’t yet know about, but that never means that a supernatural (intelligent design or other creationism) better explains the origins of something. For example, here is an article by Reasons to Believe, an Old Earth Creationist organization that rejects common ancestry and various parts of the theory of evolution, that aims to highlight things we can’t yet explain. I would assume that this is expected to bring great confidence to someone who believes God supernaturally created certain things. I don’t think this can ever be a helpful or useful approach.
However, I and many others think it is nothing more than a fancy repackaging of standard evolutionary mechanisms. This is probably the most heated debate in scientific circles right now, even if it is a small fire.
As to the evolution v. creation debate, I have yet to see a real scientific challenge to the theory of evolution. ID/creationism still fails to explain the most basic observations in biology, such as the nested hierarchy. If you are up for it, there is a really interesting essay written by George Romanes clear back in 1882 that discusses the challenges of ID/creationism and evolution. The evidence Romanes talks about is still applicable today.
I think that the emergence of two biological, complementary sexes is an issue for naturalistic evolution. But if you bring in god you just end up with a ‘god-of-the-gaps’ and the deist understanding of god, IMHO. But that’s why I’m looking to challenge my perspective, so if you can help me understand these things or point me to some resources, I’d be grateful. Since I’m not a Chirstian anymore, I don’t see YEC or OEC to be very convincing since many times a literalistic reading of the bible is in play. ID and EC are a lot different, hence my desire to understand!
Deism doesn’t allow for God answering prayers, or engaging in minor miracles through time, once humanity arrives on the scene.
For example, a deist is certainly not going to argue that Jesus was miraculously born, or that he was born God, or that Jesus experienced a resurrection.
It is pretty complicated and heavy in scientific jargon. To over-generalize, the Third Way says that evolution is much more complicated than Darwin thought, which everyone pretty much agrees with anyway.
Separate sexes could easily evolve from hermaphroditic species where a single individual carries both sets of sex organs. This is seen in species like the earthworm, and even in basal vertebrates like the sea squirt. An even earlier stage could have individuals releasing identically sized gametes into their aquatic environment where any two could fuse together.