Of course I am interested it “how it happened” as should everybody. But the most important opinions on “how it happened” are those doing the research now. So Beaglelady is correct we should be looking at the latest papers to understand the latest thinking on “how it happened”. Since Collins’ isn’t doing that kind of research any longer AND he is a Government employee barred from discussing matter different from Obama administration policy, his thoughts are as relevant as “what would Darwin think of genome sequencing”
Wow, Roger … I thought I was making a pretty good effort to build a bridge. But I did not anticipate your objections!
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I do not think scientists are IGNORING ecology. If they were, we would never know what caused the extinction of the Terror birds… or the distribution into the deeper oceans of the proto-whales, who had spent millions of years in shallower water.
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I do not think they are being close-minded or scientifically irresponsible either. Ouch! That’s a pretty harsh dismissal … and now I have something much more specific about what is rubbing me the wrong way. How do you go from loving the Ecological side of Evolution to having so little regard for the people who have already told me plenty about ecological factors in evolution ?
I’ve already mention two specific scenarios where the ecology was specifically addressed … and I haven’t even mentioned the giant dragonflies … who grew to a huge size because the Earth once had much more oxygen in its atmosphere!
And then, finally, you implore: “do not claim that God guides evolution through genes, when God does not.”
For goodness sakes, why? I’m not following your intention here?
If God can send a meteor to clobber the Earth … why can’t he make the occasional crucial change in a few Amino acids?
And even if he didn’t do ANY “miracle/hand waving” stuff with Genes … he could STILL use ecological factors to make changes in genetics …
If the chromosomes never change … there will never be evolution, no matter how much ecological “stuff” happens?
George
Roger… now you are just confusing me … You say you “… never said that genes are not part of evolution.”
No … as you can see from the highlighted quote, you said God doesn’t guide evolution through genes …
Could you please explain the distinction? Or was the comment about God a typo?
George
If you two are having a conversation on a public forum, expect noise from the crowd. That is the way a public forum works. Bringing up Collins is also annoying, probably to him and to others as he can’t respond.
God guides evolution or the changing of genes through ecological Natural Selection. In other words God created a changing environment to create the need for evolutionary change and to select the right genetic change to make evolution work. God guides the ecology, and the ecology guides the genes. God does not work through or guide the genes.
It is all natural and it is all God’s plan.
Roger, I have to agree with Eddie here.
You have not offered any explanation for why God can send massive meteors … but cannot send one gamma ray to alter a genetic sequence.
Could it be you are using this WAITING GAME (for the right ecology to finally promote the desired/successful gene pools) is how you explain evolution requiring millions of years? I applaud the novelty of this approach … but it seems quite arbitrary.
I don’t see how you can tell the young people that gather around you in Sunday School that God is omnipotent and omniscient !!! … and capable of amazing wonders !!! … “…but he just doesn’t do chromosomes - - they are yucky!”.
Know what I mean?
George
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God does what God does. God does not need to tell me what God does, nor do I try to tell God what to do.
Or God does not do what God does not do. God does not need to tell anybody what God does or does not, nor do I try to tell God what to do or not do. Sounds very agnostic.
Roger, I think God DOES “do genes”.
Gen 2:7
“And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
Pretty clearly this means God had to make an entire set of chromosomes. In comparison, making individual changes in chromosome sets seems like child’s play, yes?
We see this when God takes a rib from Adam…and in essence, in addition to all sorts of miraculous activity, has to remove a “Y” chromosome, and DOUBLES the “X” chromosome - - in at least one cell, if not in millions.
I find it odd that you insist that God would never do any of this…
George
I gave you a clear choice. You either accept the flexibility that I point out is ALLOWABLE within the term “Front-Loaded”… or give me the term that YOU think I should use.
As for the choices you have offered me for what F. Collins is saying:
Choice (a). By front-loading, i.e., purely naturalistic events in domino-like strings of necessary causation;
NO - - because it doesn’t allow God to answer prayers in real time, and the occasional miraculous event that has ZERO to do with evolution - - unless that was not your intention to exclude possibiities like that …
Choice (b). By hands-on supernatural manipulation of the evolutionary process at many, many points, to guide the process to certain determinate ends;
NO - - because I believe Collins sees evolution as purely naturalistic (as described in (a), but ALSO with Prayers and a few miraculous events.
Choice (c). By a combination of front-loading and hands-on supernatural manipulation at fewer points (since front-loading, intelligently planned, would reduce the number of interventions necessary);
MAYBE - - as long as the “hands-on” supernatural manipulation is not about evolution. Personally, for me, I am okay with a few supernatural manipulations that influence evolution.
Choice (d). By the paradoxical “randomness according to BioLogos” approach, whereby God, at the beginning of time, throws out some hydrogen and helium atoms into space randomly (or perhaps, throws out some organic compounds into the primitive ocean randomly), but because even “true randomness” is creative, he neither has to front-load nor intervene/manipulate, but it just all falls out properly and the spiny anteater, okapi, Brazilian tree frog, and man (not an intelligent mollusk, as per Ken Miller, but man specifically) are produced, exactly as he wanted?
DEFINITELY NOT.
Now that you see why I am rejecting various options, perhaps you could re-word the most likely one… and I will confirm that’s what I mean.
George
I think the part of your sentence that I have put in BOLD should read:
“let’s say his position is that everything from the first DNA-based cell to man came about with[out] any special divine tweaking or steering.”
But both your version and my version sounds closest to your Choice (c) … and my own PERSONAL opinion regarding Evolution.
The advantage of “C” is that it seems the most flexible. But I do agree with your statement:
“If Collins is a pure naturalist, he must choose either a or d.”… even though you and i differ on how likely it might be that Collins adopt “D” - - I see NOTHING in what he writes that makes “D” possible.
You seem to think that it is “TERRIBLE” (my use of quotes and the word terrible) that Collins leaves us guessing about whether he has adopted “A” or “C”. I do not. Considering the number of people who are attempting to blunt the BioLogos goals through divisiveness, sometimes the more specific one gets, the harder it is to build a consensus.
This is why I began my “God-Guided” (or God-Directed) PUSH.
You say there is no reason for Collins to avoid the term “front-loaded”; conversely, I think the great intensity of this discussion between you and I is evidence for why Collins may be avoiding something specific.
Keeping in mind your guidance that we are NOT discussing non-evolution miracles (like answering prayers or resurrecting Jesus) … I think it is unimportant; sometimes a sincere Christian just sure which position seems most likely. And we should allow for this.
As my writings in this post suggests, I am modifying my position on Collins slightly. I make these modifications ONLY because of how you describe some of Collins’ other writings!
You wrote:
"Collins sees evolution as a wholly naturalistic process. (However, I recall one passage of Collins where he says that he can see the force of the argument that the first life required a supernatural intervention. That is, Collins does not insist that everything from the Big Bang to man occurred wholly naturally. On the other hand, he does seem to think that everything prior to the first life occurred naturally, and that, given the first life, evolution afterward proceeded entirely naturally. "
Perhaps I’m being unusually trusting in relying on YOUR memory or YOUR perception of his writings.
If you are going to continue to INSIST that it is a virtual life/death matter which side Collins comes down on (A vs C), then obviously we are going to need the exact quote that you “recall”.
So, again, I leave matters in your hand for deciding how we proceed.
George
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I think it is interesting because I think it shows that BioLogos writers are intentionally trying to avoid being divisive. The point of BioLogos is to magnify the number of people who can accept evolution took millions of years… rather than dispute the minutia of how millions of years of evolution occurred.
George