It’s dependent on rapidly generating new information by the fundamental Darwinian evolutionary mechanisms: heritable variation that is random with respect to fitness, and selection.
Another important medical application is using evolution to understand which aspects of infectious disease are caused by the pathogen itself, versus those aspects that are the body’s response to the pathogen. Nonintuitively, the latter generally are more numerous and important than the former.
Are antibodies the defense against being infected by bad creationist arguments? 
Ha Ha…school bus drivers can be fired for reading blogs while driving…but I do appreciate the time-management angle here…
You seem to be referring to microevolution (the empirical stuff) … that any YEC biologist would fully agree with. Please give me an example of Darwin’s evolutionary “tree of life” (ie, all life evolved from a microbe) is useful in applied science.
They have no need to reject Darwin’s “tree of life” in their work because there is no practical use in biology for such a concept.
This (micro) evolution would exist even if all biologists were YECs. Such a fact is not dependant in any way on the theory that life evolved over millions of years from a microbe to where it is now.
Reproductive compatibility and Speciation does have applicability in contemporary research.
Are you saying you would agree that bacteria, today, can change so quickly that they qualify to be considered new species? Because they can do that…
Hey Edgar, I’m not a professional biologist but there are at least a few around this forum that would contest this assertion.
It’s useful for determining protein function.
I recently listened to these short sermons by Dr John Lennox (mathematician). God in Creation 1 & 2.
He proposes progessive creation, as God had to create each of the items listed in the creation story. Therefore, sea life had a seperate beginning point from land animals etc. Evolution attempts to say all life came from a single beginning point.
He also links in, critically, 1 John ch1. What we see in creation, is the substance/evidence of the Word, which is God, both are unseen.
I also suspect that the Noah flood has caused massive interuption to any attempt to plot an evolutionary storyline? It re-set the order of life in every way, perhaps only secondary to Jesus turning up 2000 years ago?
Hello, NTassie; and welcome to the forum! A lot of people here will be happy to weigh in and critique these points. Our forum is a conversation ground for people all over the map on these issues including believers and non-believers, evolution proponents and opponents, though it may be fair to say you’ll probably hear more from the former here. To respond to any particular part of a post, just highlight the text that catches your interest and click on the grey “Quote” box that pops up. This will open up a new post for you with that quote inside it so that people know what you’re responding to. You can do that multiple times in any given post you are writing. I’ll do it here …
Indeed such a massive thing happening that recently would have left a sizable footprint, not only in the fossil record, but in cultural history as well. The trouble is that while there are indeed evidences of shifting oceans and such, none of it is consistent with a global flood happening within the last ten thousand years. Similarly, while there are cultural references to large floods, there are also many cultural histories that cross over any plausible global flood timelines, making it apparent that there was no uniformly-timed “great reset” of all different cultures in recent history. Those are a few of the barriers that flood-proponents have not overcome.
I do agree, though, that our Christ event from 2000 years ago is the truly significant center-piece of our history. Some of us here are rooted in the notion that it is this event more than any other that sheds light on all scriptural understandings of the old testament.
Many thanks Mervin. Im new to delving into the evolution vs God topic. My premace is that one requires much more faith NOT to believe in the holistic explanation for life as we know it - as presented in the bible/Jesus. But, i also want to help my kids navigate the overwhelming evolutionary teaching, which lacks balance i think.
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making it apparent that there was no uniformly-timed “great reset” of all different cultures in recent history.
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After initial excitement, im making a hasty retreat from YEC, which uses the great flood as a pillar. I wonder though, is there evidence of great flood when using the old earth paradigm? YEC throws up a lot of ‘evidence’ for the flood (coal, oil, geography etc), but perhaps their timeframes are clouded by the YE premise? The
Flood evidences may still be reasonable? Thanks again.
Welcome! It is good to have you here.
While the “flood” of resources on the website here may seem overwhelming, there are a lot of good articles to get to eventually. I just thought I would throw this thought out, however in light of the above statement: There is no evidence of a singular worldwide flood in the geologic record. There are lots of local floods, and lot of evidence of sea levels coming and going, and land rising and falling with water covering just about everything but at different times, and for ages at each time, but there is no evidence of a one great flood covering everything at the same time in the history of mankind.
I am open to hearing other opinions, but have not seen any convincing evidence otherwise. That of course, means we have to look at the Noah story a little differently.
The classic problem with Old Earth Creationism is that the school of thought accepts the great antiquity of the Earth because of the overwhelming preponderance of scientific information that all correlate and point to the same conclusion: the Earth is billions of years old.
And then they reject the same disciplines of science in order to reject Common Descent, Speciation and/or Natural Selection.
There’s really no explanation for accepting physics and chemistry to deny one part of Genesis, and then reject the same fields of knowledge in order to agree with another part of Genesis.
You seem to be ignoring the evidence, which you’ve already admitted to doing.
Are you really saying that the evolution of humans and tunicates:
from a common ancestor, and not the former from the latter, is microevolution? Are you saying that the sequence evidence, which you claim to lack the expertise to examine for yourself, is not empirical?
What is the mechanistic difference between micro and macro, and what evidence did you use to classify the basic mechanism of producing an immune response?
So if you concede that God designed a Darwinian evolutionary mechanism to provide you with an immune response, how can you conclude that He did not design a Darwinian evolutionary mechanism to produce the diversity of life today?
When you say, “from a microbe to where it is now,” do you realize that “where it is now” is still mostly microbes?
The evidence supports the conclusion that all vertebrates, from fish to humans, share a common ancestor through natural inheritance, just as you share DNA with your cousins.
It is also interesting that we find intermediate whale fossils which come after fish the first land mammals in the fossil record and have a mixture of whale and terrestrial mammal features.
There is an order to the fossil record which is one of the strongest pieces of evidence against a recent global flood being the cause of the fossil record. As you say, that order shouldn’t be there if there was a global flood that produced the fossil record.
Welcome, N Tassie. I really found that Denis Lamoureux’ books helped me–such as Evolution: Scripture and Nature Say Yes (though that’s more in that Scripture doesn’t say “no”! He also has a very good, free, online course at Coursera that taught me a lot. It is good to exchange ideas, though–we can learn from each other.
Thanks Randy.
Oh man, i had kinda hoped someone had already done all the legwork, so i can go straight to the conclusion/summary/answers 
Im forming the view that God, in his Soveignty, has not provided clear proof of his existence via the study of matter/nature. Faith (in Jesus) is a requirement or a doorway for us to enter His peace/commune. The road is narrow, and the gate is small. But, i still desire to give a rounded position/answer regarding my fairh and evolution science. Cheers for the homework tips.
My brother in law grew up in Zimbabwe, as a missionary kid (MK; I grew up in Niger the same way) and his good friend tried to do a research paper on the amount we can discover about God from empiric investigation of nature. He came to the same conclusion. In a way, that’s freeing, because there would be a huge tussle to argue over interpretation and extrapolation on any given proof (ID struggles about that, too, I think). My own impression of creation has changed over time and reading, so I really come back to the memory that God really loves us as children–Psalm 10e–“As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for He knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust.” He knows that we can’t figure all this out for certainty, but he remains the same, and looks on our hearts.
I suspect that none of this depends on life on earth evolving from a microbe. It’s probably discussing microevolution - which any creationist biologist would agree with 100%.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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