Should BioLogos produce science textbooks for college use?

[beaglelady]

YOU are the one who started this whole thing. You wrote post after post, claiming that the BioLogos scientists are woefully out of date in their knowledge (mostly because they are old) and haven’t been trained in the new ways or whatever, and that [list of scientists] are much better and more up-to-date, and so forth.

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

It is not a BioLogos position that God “directs” evolution.

Right, Eddie…

Millions of dollars have been spent on the creation of BioLogos because people think God MIGHT direct evolution.

George

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

Oh, there is no doubt that many of the DONORS to BioLogos believe that God directs evolution. And there is no doubt that thousands of evangelical Christians in the pews think that God directs evolution. What is not evident is that any past or present director or columnist on BioLogos thinks that God directs evolution.

Eddie,

I think you should relax a little and pray for God’s grace. Your assertions don’t make any sense to me.
We already have plenty of organizations that “take no position on God and Evolution” - - why you seem to think BioLogos is one of these groups is beyond my ken.

George

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

It would help if you would read exactly what I say before responding. I never said that BioLogos “took no position on God and Evolution.” I said that BioLogos has never said that God directs evolution.

Eddie,

Why would a supporter of BioLogos OPPOSE the idea of “God directing evolution” - - unless it was to pretend he supported BioLogos while seeking to undermine its mission and goals?

George

[gbrooks9 (George Brooks)]

@Eddie

I said – and was 100% correct in saying so – that since the founding of BioLogos not one columnist or management figure has said that he or she believed that God directed the evolutionary process.

Eddie,

If I was being hounded by an anonymous detractor … perfectly willing and capable of blowing every grammatical mis-step into a major drama … I don’t think I would say anything specific either…

George

[benkirk (Benjamin Kirk)]

[quote=“Eddie, post:101, topic:3653”]
I admit that Ussery is an evolutionary biologist. But he is not a “regular” on BioLogos, only an occasional guest columnist. [/quote]
Hello Eddie,

We both know that your attempt to move the goalposts is irrelevant to the false points you were trying to make.

@Eddie

None of the BioLogos people are evolutionary biologists by graduate training or by research field.

[quote=“Eddie, post:57, topic:3653”]
I’m sorry, but it’s just a fact that Shapiro knows far more about evolutionary theory than any past or present columnist…[/quote]

See, you even specified “columnists” in the broadest way, which could not possibly have excluded Dr. Ussery. Why do you insist on digging deeper?

You’ve blown the whole discussion over Shapiro, Wagner, etc. way out of proportion.

How is my pointing out that your weird emphasis on name-checking is anything but the opposite? There’s no reason to discuss PEOPLE. There are FACTS and IDEAS to discuss.

My original comments on these thinkers, months and months ago, were only to the effect that there exist non-Darwinian interpretations of evolution within the discipline of evolutionary biology,

But your comments in this thread alone are anything but only to that effect.

and that these non-Darwinian interpretations of evolution have received scant coverage on BioLogos,

You’ve made much more specific and false claims that have been refuted by both Christy and me in this comment thread.

You and beaglelady and on occasion one or two others, have, by employing the strategy of constant digs against Shapiro, Newman, Margulis, etc., turned the discussion into a gauntlet-throwing contest of “My evolutionary biologist is better than your evolutionary biologist,” a sort of schoolyard taunting exercise.

I have pointed out that your “My evolutionary biologist is better than your evolutionary biologist” is not only lame, but based on objectively false quantitative premises. Let’s review:

@Eddie

I’m sorry, but it’s just a fact that Shapiro knows far more about evolutionary theory than any past or present columnist or President of BioLogos, including Francis Collins. And far more than Ken Miller, and far more than Eugenie Scott, and far more than the lawyers at the ACLU who wanted to smash ID.

@Eddie

Carl Woese, a world authority, says that Shapiro’s book is a “game-changer.” Woese knew more about evolutionary theory than anyone on BioLogos.

@Eddie

There are more detailed facts about the nitty-gritty of molecular and genetic transformations in Shapiro’s book alone than have been presented in all the columns of BioLogos since its inception.

@Eddie

None of the BioLogos people are evolutionary biologists by graduate training or by research field.

@Eddie

[BioLogos] cannot equate the professional judgment of the BioLogos people regarding evolutionary mechanisms to the judgment of professors of evolutionary biology at Chicago and Yale.

Note: your hero Shapiro is a Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, not evolutionary biology.

@Eddie

So I rephrase my assertion:

“It is a fact that Shapiro has demonstrated through publication more knowledge of evolutionary theory than …”

Your attempt to deny all of these is incredible.

Thus, you have bashed Shapiro’s accomplishments in evolutionary biology in an aggressive way,

No, I have patiently refuted your false claims about Shapiro vs. Collins, and Christy and I have patiently refuted your bashing of BioLogos people with false claims. Keep denying, though…

causing me to counter with the judgment of Woese, etc., and then it turns into a showdown between Eddie-Shapiro and Joao (benkirk)-status quo.

Wow, Eddie, finally some forthrightness on your part! (except that I’m not causing you to counter with lame claims)

This is supposed to be a discussion forum, but you clearly are viewing it as a fight (“causing me to counter with the judgment,” etc.) to support your ever-deflating ID movement. Have you ever considered discussing ideas and facts, instead of viewing authors’ mere names as arrows for you to pull out of a quiver and shoot at your perceived enemies, in this thread propelling those arrows with multiple objectively false claims?

But it was never my intention to set up Shapiro as an infallible authority on evolution or to say that all his views on evolution are correct.

I think it was your intention to promote multiple absurdities: that bacterial geneticist Shapiro knows more about evolutionary biology than Francis Collins (whom many geneticists would describe as the foremost human geneticist in the world) and evolutionary biologist David Ussery, that there’s more evolutionary meat in Shapiro’s publications than there is in Collins’s 534 papers that you haven’t read, that there’s hardly anything on BL about evo-devo, and that no “BioLogos people” are evolutionary biologists. In every case you’ve been refuted and you’ve lamely moved the goalposts in response in every case but one.

So let’s end this pointless discussion of “my evolutionary biologist is better than your evolutionary biologist” discussion.

I’ve been trying to get you to do that. The tactic is not working well for you.

[quote]Anybody here is free to read some of the writings of those authors, and make use of whatever is helpful in their writings.
[/quote]And I encourage them you to discuss IDEAS and FACTS, leaving opinions and (I suspect deliberately) fuzzy labels behind. You might learn something!

Steve explained your problem to you quite clearly:

@glipsnort

Given your apparent definition of neo-Darwinism (e.g., it excludes genetic drift), it is under question in the same sense that the Roman Empire is under attack: it’s ancient history at this point. The borders were breached, the walls came down, the lands were conquered, and it was destroyed. The war is over and the empire is gone.

Steve’s analogy is a beautiful explanation of the false dichotomy and fuzzy labeling you promote here. You didn’t bother to respond to Steve (one of those evolutionary biologists) on this point. Can you grasp this fact and stop tilting at windmills?

[BradKramer]

@Eddie

Yet BioLogos will not utter those words.

“We believe that the diversity and interrelation of all life on earth are best explained by the God-ordained process of evolution with common descent. Thus, evolution is not in opposition to God, but a means by which God providentially achieves his purposes.” - See more at: The Work of BioLogos - BioLogos

How much clearer do you want us to get?

We think evolution is the best scientific description of how God providentially achieves his creational purposes, in regards to the development and diversification of life. That’s guidance, in my book.

The issue here, @Eddie, is not whether BioLogos thinks God guides evolution. We’ve made that very clear in our official position statement linked above. And you know that. The issue that we don’t say it in the way in which you think it should be said, with exhaustive exploration of the relevant theology and explicit statements about the when, what, and how of God’s guidance. We’re agnostic on that subject, because specificity about God’s action is dangerous ground in these matters. Stop pretending that “BioLogos doesn’t say this the way I wan’t it to be said” is the same as “BioLogos doesn’t say this”.

Be honest, Eddie. The issue is your perception of a theological agenda (dare I say “conspiracy”) that you’ve dedicated literally hundreds of thousands of words on this Forum is “expose”. If you didn’t think we had a hidden agenda, you wouldn’t be spending so much time and energy saying the same thing thousands of times over and over and over. There’s no agenda. We just see things differently. Our theological caution is ascribed to us as reticence, or worse. That’s unfortunate, and untrue.

[beaglelady]

@benkirk

You and beaglelady and on occasion one or two others, have, by employing the strategy of constant digs against Shapiro, Newman, Margulis, etc., turned the discussion into a gauntlet-throwing contest of “My evolutionary biologist is better than your evolutionary biologist,” a sort of schoolyard taunting exercise

@Eddie Please point me to where I criticized Shapiro, Newman, and Margulis.

[beaglelady]

Very strange. You even have scripts about how your conversations with us should go and how they should not go.

[BradKramer]

@Eddie

But in any case, in this discussion with George, I wasn’t asking anything. I wasn’t asking you anything, or BioLogos anything. I wasn’t criticizing anyone. I was just noting that no one had committed to hands-on terms like “directing” evolution. That’s all I was trying to get George to concede.

You’re right that I inserted myself into the conversation. For that, I apologize. And if your point is that BioLogos is hesitant to use the word “guides”, yes, that’s correct. The hesitation comes from being part of a conversation where misunderstandings are incredibly rampant, when it comes to God and science.

@Eddie

If I asked BioLogos people whether they affirmed the Trinity – not as a scientific truth, not as something they could prove, but just something that they believe – they would tell me what they think. But if I ask any of them whether they think God’s used front-loading or hands-on manipulation, they will not tell me what they think. Yet that question is theoretically much less complicated than the deep questions involved in the Trinity.

This is apples and oranges. My thoughts about the Trinity come from the creeds. So does everybody else’s opinion here at BioLogos. Last time I checked, there’s nothing in the creeds about front-loading. The Trinity is a complex topic, but one for which the church has come to relative consensus. God’s role in evolution is an open (and very difficult) question which is not necessary to answer with specificity if one is to be an orthodox Christian. You’re compared a “macro” theological issue with a “micro” theological issue. This is like asking everyone at BioLogos to have a fine-grained opinion on the Filioque clause, and then complaining when they don’t respond. Actually, that’s not even the right metaphor, because one can make arguments from Scripture there. The question of how exactly God is involved with the evolutionary process is entirely speculative. Scripture doesn’t speak authoritatively on that specific issue, and frankly, science isn’t much help there either. So BioLogos puts a “macro” level statement in our beliefs and leaves it at that, focusing on God’s providence without putting our foot down on a topic that is wholly speculative and prone to misunderstanding by Christians who have been trained to see interventions as the main way that God interacts with nature.

@Eddie

But if you really, honestly think that the statement you quoted indicates that God directs evolution, then we have such different notions of the English language that I don’t see how the discussion can get any further. We will just have to agree to disagree.

fair enough.