NOTE: As of right now I have not heard back from John Baumgardner, but when he replies tomy email, I will be sure to post the information here.
God Bless,
jon
Of course the reply from John Baumgardner is in relation to the post:
[quote=âBurrawang, post:58, topic:52799, full:trueâ]
God Bless,
jon
God leaves us to ponder the best way to reconcile our flawed understanding of simple texts with the vast and overpowering reality of Creation. Let me suggest this:
- Creation is so perfect that life from nonlife IS built into the design. Biochemists have been studying this topic for decades, and continue to tear away veil after veil to find that perfection in the chemistry and physics of the Early Earth environment.
- Evolution ditto; just bear with me on this.
- As our species acquired what we allege to be intelligence, it also acquired a sense of morality. Being evolved across 3.5+ Billion years, every single ancestor BAR NONE managed to survive and reproduce. The ones that didnât reproduce contributed nothing to the DNA pool.
- Bred shaped formed and super-tuned to survive and reproduce, we sin.
- Since awareness of sin is key, becoming aware of sinfulness came first, and soul death ensued.
Long series of if - then - thus. Sorry I couldnât compress it to be shorter.
Creation is of God. Intelligence is an achievement that endows us with the shadow of Godâs image. We are now capable of reading the wisdom of the night skies (David, Psalm 19, first four verses) and it declares that the universe began at a starting instant we mislabel as the Big Bang.
But look carefully at the first chapter of Genesis
- verses 1 and 3 state that, all at once (Day One) God created time, space, matter, and light. THAT is the science and history, the factual part, of Genesis.
- verse 2, nestled between these two brawny arms of fact, grandfathers in the then-current cosmology, namely that the universe began as vast water, that Earth was something pulled up from beneath, that a firmament covered the universe and that the rest of the visible universe (sun, moon, stars) crossed within the bounds of that firmament while a forever supply of rainwater sat above the firmament.
- we see these things in Days Two, Three, and Four.
- yet Creation divulges that Planet Earth is a ball of iron nearly a thousand miles deep, coated by greater than one thousand miles thickness of lava, with a thin crispy crust of continents washed by films of water called oceans.
- even more directly counter to Day Four, Planet Earth orbits the nearest star, and the moon orbits earth.
â and the rest of those tiny flickering lights (planets donât flicker) are also stars, but so far awy that instead of daylight all they can do is twinkle in the vast distance.
Godâs Creation challenges our best minds to understand its myriad secrets; the beauty and perfection they find there brings many to know that the uncaused first cause that generated the Big Bang was sentient, thus God.
Genesis is theology. Its bounty is the life lessons we can draw from it. But since its overt factuality resides only in verses 1 and 3, drawing detailed inferences (such as the above discussion of whether sin came first or death) Soul death came after sin.
I think this is something that we all need to learn. When it becomes abundantly clear that someone is not paying a shred of attention to what he is being told, when he is repeating the same fallacies and falsehoods over and over again despite having been repeatedly told not just that they are fallacies and falsehoods but why they are fallacies and falsehoods, there comes a point at which the best course of action is maybe to just go from Proverbs 26:5 mode to Proverbs 26:4 mode, and let the badness of his arguments speak for itself.
Discussions such as these remind me of the school playground. If children find that you have something that pulls your trigger, they will pull it at every opportunity they can get in order to secure a satisfying reaction. The only correct response in such a situation is to restrain yourself and refuse to deliver the reaction they are after.
2 Likes
There has been tons of changes. You may just not be very familiar with morphological divergence within not only the different kingdoms but even within genera and families. Even within just humans, which there is thought to have been roughly 21 species depending on how you clump or split them, we all had unique characteristics and it seems many had very unique lifestyles. Neanderthals for example may have even underwent a form of hibernation.
When we look at things like ferns. We see tons of diversity. We see thin aquatic almost algae like ferns to climbing ferns that are vines, to the bulbous adder tongue ferns that almost seem to have basal leaves and we see tree ferns that are huge.
For each clade of animals, we can look back through history by observing the fossil record and modern genetic sequencing to reveal just how much mutating has been occurring.
Again, look at angiosperms. Even if ignore the development of plants from green algae into club mosses and ferns into gymnosperms and then finally angiosperms and just start with flowering plants we see a ridiculous amount of differences. We have so many flowers out there. We have flowers that are so tiny you have to use a magnifying glass to see it clearly to some that are just huge. We see their leaves going from pitchers, to bells, to traps to dozens of other types.
Even looking at just one species like the oaks. There are 21 species in my county. Good chance you have plant blindness and most oaks just look like oaks, or maybe even just looks like a tree. But they have distinct acorns with very different cap sizes and shapes and their leaves are all unique. Their growing conditions are very different. Some are evergreen and some are deciduous. Even their tannin compositions widely change.
Ever looked at all the types of fungi? Even just the mushrooming ones comes in all kinds of shapes, colors and textures. Just boletus mushrooms alone. Even overlooking the very few gill ones, the porous ones are all pretty unique even though to the vast majority of people they look the same. But the veining on the stalk of one may be reddish and bluish on another. One stalk may be thick and the other thin, one solid and one hollow. They may have rounded or angular pores. Maybe they have net veining or false net veining. The chemical composition can be the difference between tasting delicious to tasting like vomit and one may be a choice edible and the other leaves you throwing up. Genetics can show us how closely related this one is to thst one and even sometimes genetics show us one does not even belong in the same genus anymore.
We can also see morphology created by the environment to the point completely different families converge. Sea snakes and eels are sometime confused for one another. Dolphins and sharks look a lot alike on the outside but their insides are very different. The bones of a dolphin looks very different from the cartilaginous skeletons of sharks. When we look at dolphins we see they are tetrapods meaning four legged even though they no longer have legs. We can see how they are related to elephants. Whales and dolphins are both Cetacea but look a lot like fish.
So the idea that there is limited differences and life looks the same going back is ridiculous. Just look at modern mollusks.
4 Likes
Hi Joel,
thanks for your considered post, I found it interesting and although I see some things quite differently to some of the points you have suggested, I certainly agree that God's Creation challenges us all to comprehend the basic facts let alone the deeper mechanics.
It is correct I believe that all of Creation has been designed, fine tuned in fact by God for the purpose of supporting life in abundance and primarily for us, i.e., mankind created in Godâs image.
Some of the fine-tuning of the universal constants and the solar system include:
The electromagnetic coupling constant binds electrons to protons in atoms. If it was smaller, fewer electrons could be held. If it was larger, electrons would be held too tightly to bond with other atoms.
- Ratio of electron to proton mass (1:1836). Again, if this was larger or smaller, molecules could not form.*
- Carbon and oxygen nuclei have finely tuned energy levels.*
- Electromagnetic and gravitational forces are finely tuned, so the right kind of star can be stable.*
- Our sun is the right colour. If it was redder or bluer, photosynthetic response would be weaker.*
- Our sun is also the right mass. If it was larger, its brightness would change too quickly and there would be too much high energy radiation. If it was smaller, the range of planetary distances able to support life would be too narrow; the right distance would be so close to the star that tidal forces would disrupt the planetâs rotational period. UV radiation would also be inadequate for photosynthesis.*
- The earthâs distance from the sun is crucial for a stable water cycle. Too far away, and most water would freeze; too close and most water would boil.*
- The earthâs gravity, axial tilt, rotation period, magnetic field, crust thickness, oxygen/nitrogen ratio, carbon dioxide, water vapour and ozone levels are just right.*
Former atheist Sir Fred Hoyle states, âcommonsense interpretation of the facts is that a super-intelligence has monkeyed with physics, as well as chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces in nature.â
The above text from: The universe is finely tuned for life
But perhaps the most, no it is the most important aspect of this whole discussion is bringing others to know our Lord and accept salvation.
I certainly get it that there many people here on this forum site who are Christians and who am I to judge, I canât even turn one hair black or white, so whilst my beliefs about Creation differ considerably, the most important thing is to ensure that others come to know the Lord.
And this is where I do worry about people being saved.or lost depending on what they hear from people professing to be Christians.
I have heard it said that people who believe in evolution think that denying evolution and âdeep timeâ will turn people away from the gospel. And undoubtedly there would of course be some truth in that, but I fear that
a far, far, far greater number will dismiss the gospel because they wrongly believe that evolution and âscienceâ in general has done away with God,i.e., they think it has been proven that God does not exist.
A lot of this is due to the evolution story being at odds with the Creation account in Genesis.
Hence they think the Bible is untrustworthy and consequently distrust the entirety of the scriptures and the Gospel of our Lord and Saviour.
It is my understanding that the creation account that is consistent with the Biblical text in Genesis is more acceptable to the majority than the compromising evolutionary story.
God Bless,
jon
What assumptions lithostratigraphy makes: layers are deposited from the lowest to the highest, if we do not have evidence of tectonic changes to that order; layers are identifiable.
What assumptions biostratigraphy makes: species are recognizable as fossils.
What assumptions calculation of extinction rates makes: species are recognizable as fossils; the sampling level of the recent is high enough to have a decent amount of data.
What assumptions radiometric dating makes: fundamental constants do not change over time.
If all of these layers were deposited by one event, they should come nowhere close to lining up as well as they do.
Why should something that worked in the past never work again?
It hit on something that has kept working for that long; and what difference does a complex genome make? That would tend to impede rapid change.
Correct, modern coelacanths are not transitional, but again, deep water has been around for a very long time.
Sure, tapirs have been around for a while, but again, this is not a huge number of examples.
Snakes are very widespread and successful, so why should they not have been around for a while?
Sulfur and sulfur compounds have been around for longer than life has, so itâs no surprise whatever that bacteria that can exploit them last a while.
Donât have very stringent requirements for habitat, so they havenât lost places to live.
like habitats that are basically everywhere (dirt, on plants, etcetera) and donât disappear easily.
They havenât changed in a way that preserves as fossils.
What is this about? Non-avian dinosaurs did go extinct. Birds being a cladistic subset of dinosaurs is a different issue.
Amber does a very good job of preserving outlines of animals and surface features, so this is no surprise whatever.
So? if bacteria can preserve, Iâm pretty sure that eukayote gametes can as well, under extremely favorable conditions.
Generally live in habitats that havenât changed enough to have much effect on them or live in habitats that change dramatically within a single lifetime of theirs.
Again, what does this have to do with anything?
Havenât heard that claim before.
If you study mollusks, pretty frequently.
No they do not, and evolution is not about âfantasticâ changes.
Again, they live an environment that tends to be present somewhere at any time in history.
They had a much wider distribution in the past.
In outline, not necessarily other features.
They donât
They are found in those rocks and in the recent because they are ones that do things that have kept working for a very long time. And why are they not on display? Because museums do not have an unlimited amount of space or funding for exhibits, so they focus on what the public will find of interest in displays and leave the less-exciting-looking specimens in the collections for researchers.
Both trees and the organisms in the amber lived near the waterâs edge, perhaps?
At times, probably. Are these article titles? Definitely.
Yes, and their age is disputed.
Those are probably actually not true Anadaras, but that is a whole separate issue that I wouldnât expect anyone who doesnât work with molluscan systematics to know about or need to know about. In general, mollusks have pretty stable forms, and genera lasting for 10-20 million years is normal.
Can you actually give any evidence that they are not transitional, as opposed to simply asserting that they arenât?
I JUST LISTED 3 THAT IâVE FOUND MYSELF. And I could give at least a dozen more that Iâve found MYSELF.
2 Likes
Ladies and gentlemen, in one corner we have someone with no professional experience in paleontology whatsoever, who gets all his information on the subject by being spoon-fed articles from science denialist websites, telling us in no uncertain terms that there are no transitional fossils.
In the other corner, we have a real, working paleontologist with actual field experience, who has published in the scientific literature on the subject, giving specific examples of at least three transitional forms that he himself has found in the course of his own research.
Who do you think is the credible source on the question of whether transitional fossils exist or not?
5 Likes
Remeber for every transitional fossil you find youâve just made two more gaps, when there was only one before.
3 Likes
And my response to you was that the first step in answering that question was to determine whether common descent was true. To aid in answering that question, I pointed you to some genetic evidence and asked what process other than common descent could have produced it. You gave a clearly incorrec answer. Now youâre simply trying to ignore the question.
The article I pointed you to provides evidence that, for example, all primates, including humans, share a common ancestor. Whether you think humans are more complex or have new structures or not I donât know, since those seem to be subjective judgments. So Iâve offered relevant evidence. Could you address it?
3 Likes
Please tell me why it is always Genesis v Evolution. Genesis or Evolution? Evolution v God creation?
I thought we had agreed that Evolution does not exclude God. But no one ever argues Godâs inclusion! All we get are Evolution self contained (ie without God) Transitions are not a problem if God is guiding things or at least has set parameters within which changes can occur. But no, Evolution is self contained with God looking in, disinterested, from a distance, resting!
Richard
Well, Iâm glad you agree that the carbon in your body is the result of stellar nucleosynthesis from billions of years ago.
Also great that you reject nonsensical accelerated nuclear decay and the RATE project!
Thatâs a start.
1 Like
I would like to probe this assertion more:
My question is: what is it about biological evolution (ie. âdescent with modificationâ of species with adaptation to local environments determining âsuccessâ) that is anti God? I do not accept the following fallacious assertions (I have heard them all):
(1) Persons X, Y and Z believe in the Theory of Evolution (ToE), and they are atheists. I wonât dignify that fallacy with an explanation.
(2) ToE is responsible for bad things, like thinking people living in poverty are somehow genetically inferior. That is âsocial darwinismâ and is a misapplication of ToE.
(3) ToE makes God the Creator unnecessary. Of course it doesnât. ToE doesnât even deal with the origin of life. And even if life began by so-called natural processes, those and the building blocks were created by God.
I havenât seen a philosophically coherent, scholarly treatment in support of the assertion.
1 Like
I have always wanted to tell this story. As a small child, and I have no idea exactly how small, after sitting through Sunday School and church sermons I had a very clear picture of what the world looked like and it matched that picture almost exactly. In particular I always thought the blue sky was a solid dome over my head. Without giving away my age (although I did know dirt when it was new) we didnât have a TV or radio to inform me I was incorrect. At some point my mental picture did get corrected, but I donât have a clear memory of when that happened. Fortunately since no one had said I had to believe the first mental picture was true or else the whole Bible was false the change didnât cause me any problem. Perhaps this is why I had no trouble accepting evolution.
5 Likes
If what you say is true, then Christ did not die on the cross for any individual in the evoutionary timeline outside of the garden of Eden. He died only for the descendants of Adam and Eve and i doubt you will find any support for such a notion, however, id be interested in reading about it if you have any!
Hi Jon,
and thank you! We differ on the importance of seeing Genesis via traditional reverence: âIt is stated so matter-of-fact-ly that reverence requires us to hear it that wayâ vs realizing that Genesis, to be fact, would have had to go way Way WAY past verses 1 and 3. Short-circuiting Creation into six Days enhances its immediate impact as theology, the seven day week including a day of divine rest.
We donât appreciate the impact of Godâs might, purity, and intentionality as against the pagan theology-lite of that day - humans were an afterthought that had to be expunged by a Flood. Genesis needed to have a Flood narrative to touch base the same way verse two touched the extant view of the universe beginning as nothing but water.
Today YEC folk, and bless their hearts, witness to folly not fact. That, to me, impedes bringing the unchurched the wonderful message of Salvation through Christ. An accurate understanding of Godâs Word in Genesis is required to counter the âOh, youâre a Christian, and yet you believe in evolution? Get outta my faceâ response. Explain why Genesis begins with the Big Bang and why its focus on theology is perfect; that is how to reply to that kind of rejection.
At least, it seems that way to me.
1 Like
mormonism has brought people to Christ, drugs have brought people to Christ, war has brought people to Christ⌠your argument is not evidence for claiming evolution is sanctioned by God.
The theological denier to your claim which remains unanswered is thisâŚ
If Adam and Eveâs warning that they âshould not eat of the fruit of the tree in the middle of the garden lest they should surely dieâ is not fulfilled in the need for a saviour once they did sin, why did Christ die physically on the cross as atonement for the wages of sin is death?
Even by your own admission on these forums, a living soul is both spiritual and physicalâŚso if living souls die, then clearly Christ atoned for living souls because at the second coming the dead in Christ rise to meet those WHO ARE ALIVE in the air. Clearly it is living souls that are raised to meet Him! Doubting Thomas was directly asked by the Saviour to physically touch His Lords scars from the crucifixionâŚChrist was clearly physical when in the upper room.
Hi Joe,
thank you for your reply.
After reading and re reading Genesis in many translations and looking at the meaning of key Hebrew words used in the text, the âtraditionalâ understanding of the Creation account is what I get every time.
I just donât get how the plain text can be stretched to mean evolution is how God created when it seems to me He went to considerable lengths to make it clear that He Created in six ordinary days by speaking each part of Creation into existence, brilliantly written in a manner that ALL peoples of all periods of history will understand.
It is clear that Jesus is the Creator, and we see Him performing miracles in the same manner. Jesus speaks and it happens. This shows us that the Creator is omnipotent, Iâm sure He could have Created the universe and the time dimension instantaneously but He chose to drag it out over six days for our instruction.
I truly believe that it is the belief of the unsaved masses in all societies worldwide that evolution is an established scientific fact that has prevented them from reaching out to find answers to the big questions we all have as we develop and grow, you know, things like; Where did I come from; How did life begin; What is the purpose of our existence etcâŚ
People just donât believe that God exists anymore, many think Christians are just deluded God botherers!
And it is more than anything else, EVOLUTION that they believe God is no longer necessary, a relic of a bygone age, going by what I have observed in western cultures over my lifetime.
It is not that Genesis needed to have a Flood narrative to touch base with anything, it is simply a historical account or what actually happened. The Creation events over the six days are historical narrative, that God has provided for us to know. There is no need to try and weave into the straightforward historical account the make believe theory of evolution to account for how lifeâs diversity came about, that is forced onto the text where it plainly causes massive theological problems about why the gracious self sacrifice of our dear Lord Jesus needed to come to Earth incarnate to substitute His blameless self for our evil sinful selves.
The Big Bang is another nonsense as far as I am concerned. Sure it appears the universe is expanding, but so what, that doesnât automatically mean everything expanded from a dimensionless minute point. Dark energy and dark matter are likely dark because they are mathematical constructs that donât exist, designed more to rescue the theory than account for anything in reality.
If we all just accept the text in the scriptures, we will all be a lot better for it. And unsaved people will see a unified body of Christ across the planet that would be a far better testimony than what we have at present, with compromising Churches, the Woke brigade, the forcing of evolution onto the text of the Bible etcâŚ
When I was young just about everyone in the society here in Australia went to Church. Since evolution has been hammered into the societies psyche, now in 2024 most churches have a handful of grey haired congregants, a few Pentecostal Churches have larger numbers of younger people but even there the decline from the blanket bombardment of evolutionary belief in the mass media and educational institutions has resulted in the massive decline in salvation of people since the 1950âs. I wish it werenât so but that is what I have observed with my own eyes.
I know it is true, despite whatever objections come as a result of writing this fact down in the above paragraphs.
God Bless,
jon
Jon whilst you I appear to have similar views (beliefs on this topic), i would like to add a caveat to my own belief as a result of engaging in this forum.
Theistic evolutionists may still be ChristiansâŚand very decent ones at that. Christ made it quite clear in His ministry that we are to be good Samaritans just as much as followers of the law of Love (10 commandments).
Obviously, we must be careful to not think its by doing works that we are saved, rather, these are the fruits of our faith. I see many individuals on these forums who truly are wonderful Christians and I thank Christ for showing us that what really matters are at least the following things:
- we do unto others as we would have them do to us (help the sick, feed the poor, show kindness to those who despise us)
- love the Lord thy God with all thy heart soul and mind and thy neighbour as thyself. In the case of the Samaritan, His neighbour was unthinkableâŚeven a Jew! (i have capitalised His because in the metaphor, Gods neighbour is a sinner and He died for sinners)
6 Likes
Thank you Adam,
and yes, of course you are absolutely correct and I second ALL that you have stated.
Praise Him who loves us all though we do not deserve it!
God Bless,
jon