I am interested to know what you mean by this statement. When you say “science,” are you using the word as a placeholder for the TOE or are you talking about where the evidence points? What is an example of “conflating falsehoods,” especially as it applies to what I have put on the table here?
thanks
So, I guess to sum up the arguments against Theistic Evolution that came up in this topic,
@deliberateresult thinks that Christians should shun evolution because unsuspecting students will have their faith shaken if they are taught evolution, although I have shown throughout this thread how old earth fits with the text of the bible and how it is impossible to disprove God’s utilization of evolution.
@GJDS thinks that evolution is a weak theory and that we should not go and mess with orthodoxy on the basis of a weak theory, even though I would argue that there are lots of different orthodoxies including the Methodist, Greek Orthodox and Catholic which have no problems with the theory of evolution.
@Christy and @Casper_Hesp think that in order for the Bible to be reliable, the creation story has to be interpreted as literature describing functional creation and Adam has to be interpreted as an archetype and not a literal person. I’ve tried to show that cosmology that does not actually describe the creation of the universe is not actually cosmology. I’ve also tried to show that Genesis 1 fits with the literal natural history of the earth as it would be described by an unsophisticated observer standing on the surface of the planet witnessing milestones and summaries of various evolutionary processes. I’ve also tried to show that Genesis 2 is the story of actual people used by God to prove his goodness and the appropriateness of the human condition (an imperfect world for people who choose to be responsible for their own imperfections).
@gbrooks9 thinks that the old testament is mythology written during one of the exile periods of Israel, with deeper meanings to be mined, but no actual historical facts. Frankly, I am not concerned with the accounts of the Exodus since they are either true, or they aren’t. I am concerned with Genesis 1 and 2 and with the Flood since these are the portions of the bible that have physical evidence in the geological column and the genome that scoffers can point to as justification for their scoffing.
Joe,
You’ve talked a lot about what you don’t believe, but you haven’t really said what you do believe. What do you believe?
I appreciate the thoughtful reply Mervin, but I likewise stand on the ground of firm conviction. Let me try to separate what I am saying from what the straw man has said. I am not looking for God to fill any gaps. I have always sought a worldview rooted in what is true, knowing that ultimately, what is true, is true, whether I found it palatable or not. Nor do I claim that at any time in my life, I have managed to rise to the status of wisdom. However, I have always struggled honestly to line my worldview up with what I understood to be true. Growing up, I understood God to be real and I believed that the Bible was true. I also understood that one of the essential truths about God is that He Created all life, and mankind in particular. He did not simply put things into motion; He actively Created all life. He emphasizes this not only in Genesis, but through the psalmists and the prophets, and He affirms it in many different ways through the Gospels and the epistles. He leaves us with no doubt about His active work of Creation (unlike puddles, on which He spends very little time).
Along comes the TOE and abiogenesis (press releases aside, the two are at the very least, intimately intertwined), “showing” us that life is the result of purely natural processes. Now here’s the thing: natural processes are at the complete mercy of the four fundamental forces. Inanimate matter unfolds in a completely deterministic manner. No effect of purely natural causes is an intended result, nor could it be. An intended result requires choice contingency: the freedom to choose from a list of real options. Wholly constrained by deterministic forces, natural processes are devoid of choice contingency by definition. There is no purpose in inanimate nature; there is only the inevitable unfolding of inviolable law.
You see, its not as if we need to insist on finding God in empirically evidential terms; He has promised us that we will find Him. The TOE says “not here.” But unlike your puddle, the Creation of life is a place where the Almighty has clearly planted His flag and rested His case. Thus, the TOE and the Creator of life cannot coexist. A purposeless process cannot produce an intended result.
May I ask you this: Do you believe that there is a good evidential case for God’s existence or not?
[quote=“Rob_Scott, post:189, topic:4659”]
Perhaps if we (the church) did a better job of explaining the harmony between science and faith, we wouldn’t have such a situation.
Rob, if I wasn’t paying attention, I would not be here. May I suggest that you might not be paying attention? I have brothers and sisters who are YE, EC, TE, and ID. I do not know one of them who would say that there is not harmony between science and faith. Therefore, the word you really want is “evolution,” not “science.” It is possible for you and I to have a good conversation if you drop the placeholder and use the word you really intend.
Which of these two letter abbreviations would you use to describe yourself?
I like your summing up, but I would add one correction - I do not have a problem, so to speak, with TOE - nor is my outlook all that different from other denominations; I simply do not add so much weight to it, and instead look to ALL scientific insights, to the best of my ability. Thus, orthodox Christianity, as far as I understand it, does not have a problem, as you put it, but many of us look at all of science critically.
That is not the same as being anti-anything.
thanks for the opportunity to set the record straight Nick:
(deliberate result)[quote=“Nick_Allen, post:204, topic:4659”]
thinks that Christians should shun evolution because unsuspecting students will have their faith shaken if they are taught evolution, although I have shown throughout this thread how old earth fits with the text of the bible and how it is impossible to disprove God’s utilization of evolution.
[/quote]
My contribution to your survey pointed out the logical incoherence of attempting to reconcile the TOE with Scriptures. I don’t know how in the world an argument for an old earth (something I have certainly never argued against or even brought into this conversation) does anything to diffuse the incoherence. By the way, I do challenge your claim as stated, that “it is impossible to disprove God’s utilization of evolution.” This is something that could come down to nuance; we would have to flesh it out, but specifically, purely natural processes, being wholly deterministic, preclude the possibility of an intended result; hence the logical incoherence.
But what do I believe? I believe that the Scriptures are clear: all life is a deliberate, special Creation of God. Not a natural process; a special Creation. From Genesis, through the psalmists, the prophets, the gospels, and the epistles, He makes it crystal clear that He has Created us and one crucial way that we can know that He is God is because He Created us, and He Created us for a purpose, and with a plan.
I believe that ideas have consequences.
I believe that the evidence from life testifies of the necessity for an active, intervening Creator of life. I believe that this has been evident from the Sequence Hypothesis forward. I believe that everything we have learned from that point has only served to underscore and add exclamation points to this evidence. Unless we are willing to believe that the most advanced data meta system we have ever encountered as well as the most technologically advanced marvels of engineering we have ever encountered, have come about through purely natural processes, then we know that this evidence is right in front of our faces (or at least our microscopes).
I believe, given all we know about life today, that the only way we can possibly believe that the evidence for naturalistic evolution rises above the level of pathetic, is to take the a-priori assumption that evolution is true. If we approach the evidence from a purely objective point of view, we will marvel at the sophisticated information systems and molecular machinery of life with a clear head that there is only one possible cause for such systems: intelligent agency. We will confess that the discovery of the epigenome magnifies the problems of the evolutionary narrative in exponential ways. We will see the fossil record as the clear falsification of Darwin’s expectations that it is, revealing a top-down, as opposed to bottom-up diversification of life. We will see a geological record of life that reveals fully formed creatures and stasis and note that this, too, refutes Darwin’s expectations. We will look at the endless examples of so-called “convergent evolution,” at the growing list of orphan genes and we will concede that it strains credulity to not see both of these as severe blows to the theory. We will honestly note that in all of the scientific literature there is not one single instance of an empirical, functional, adaptive continuum leading to a novel genetic feature (wings, for example), yet if the TOE is true, every one of the endless novel genetic features throughout life should have such a continuum. We will see that all of the laboratory experiments have indeed produced evidence of what evolution can (and what it cannot) do, and we will honestly note that this evidence says it cannot do much. We will, at last, confront the mathematical realities that evolutionists have long refused to confront, and confess that, yes, unless we really just want to believe that naturalistic evolution is true, regardless of what the evidence says, there is no reason to believe it.
In short, I believe that everything we know about what lies at the heart of life - information processing and sophisticated molecular machinery - provides clear evidence for the necessity of a Creator of life, and that the foundational expectations of the TOE have been blown out of the water.
And I believe that all of this is good news for Christians.
These are some of the things I believe concerning this topic, Nick
Regarding points [1] and [2], I would like to say the following.
Actually I’m open to the existence of a historical Adam. I don’t think that Adam needs to be interpreted completely allegorically. (edit based on Jon’s comment)
Your statement [2] is actually a bit circular. You start out by assuming that “that cosmology does not describe the universe” and hence what qualifies as a “description” in your eyes. Then based on that, you reject it as cosmology. From my perspective, Genesis 1 does describe the universe. It does so in a very beautiful and insightful way, but not in terms of modern physics. I view Ancient Near-Eastern cosmology as a valid phenomenological description of the world in which the Ancients lived. We don’t have to “judge” it as worthless just because we were raised with different standards of truthfulness. Our postmodern Western standards shouldn’t be telling the Scriptures what they are worth or what they should be telling us.
A quick interjection on a thread I’ve not been following. As far as John Walton’s thinking goes, one of the important differences between an _archetype _ and an allegory is that an archetype in the ANE often is, and is pretty well always believed to be, a literal person.
Abraham, then, is an archetype of those who have faith - he is a real historical character, as far as the Bible is concerned, who has a real relationship with Israel generatively, and with Christians spiritually. In fact, it would be difficult to account for his spiritual importance if he were a fictional, or typological, invention.
Walton points out that the ANE had no such concept as the allegorical “everyman” in its literary culture. They simply would not have considered abstracting truth from the human condition and inventing a character to narrate it. Bunyan would, but Moses wouldn’t.
That’s why Gilgamesh, an archetype of the (frustrated) human desire to live forever, was a real king on the ancient king lists, however embellished his adventures were by the time the epic was composed.
So archetype/literalperson is a false dichotomy. Or to put it another way, Adam is only interesting as a real person because he is an archetype.
Thanks Jon, that’s a useful interjection. I didn’t mean to fall victim to any false dichotomies here. I’ve edited my reply to emphasize that I was referring to the allegorical aspect.
Are there examples of archetypes that are not historical persons? Would it be fair to say that an archetype contains both literal and allegorical aspects?
As discussed in earlier posts … your objection is an objection of those who believe evolution is NOT part of God’s plan.
Your objection is not applicable to the BioLogos which believes evolution LOOKS random to human eyes, but is directed by God.
And thank you for your continued, thoughtful replies.
The latter. Or to clarify a bit more, I am thinking of science as a limited empirical activity within its proper place. Based on what I see from some of your other comments, it seems a safe conclusion that I am not using what you refer to as TOE as a synonym for science. You (if I understand correctly) have accepted TOE in its expanded philosophical claims that go far beyond simple science to add in non-supported words like “unintended”, “unplanned”, “meaningless”, “not needing God”. And with you, I reject all that as an attempt to hijack science in the service of a worldview. We do both have common fellowship in our commitment to seeking truth.
Where I differ is that I do see evolution (small “e” --just the science, not the philosophy, and nor do I even see it as encompassing abiogenesis, though I realize you see all that as an inseparable package) – anyway I see biological evolution as being so integrated into some of the life science disciplines that it would be hard to practice (edit that to: “understand”) them in any meaningful way currently apart from that theory. Just as it would also be nigh impossible (I imagine) to practice geology without accepting deep time --though again, this is different than evolution. Where famous science popularizers/writers go “hog wild” with the word evolution, wanting it to apply to everything from biology (it’s proper scientific context) to cosmic development to deep time to even just anything/everything that exhibits any kind of slow change at all … (and I’m guilty of absorbing this casual usage) … I hold all that at arm’s length, meaning it’s just a rhetorical device now in a different context bereft of its scientific moorings. It may be a good enough descriptive word to press into service in all those different areas, but too often it has been embedded and barbed code language for “I’m a ‘progressive thinker’ who is happy to distance myself from anything that looks like traditional thinking.” But that may have been more true a couple decades ago. Now I think it has become innocent enough vocabulary in most places it’s heard.
So let me offer up another question here. If evolution (here meaning: the development of all life from an already pre-existing common ancestor) necessarily puts God out of a job, why is evolution, and evolution alone singled out for this accusation? You don’t like my puddle example as you see that as in some way as beneath God’s attention. (I would use caution here, and do not follow you into that hasty judgment … not a sparrow alights apart from God’s loving attention…) But why not gravity? Our planet and cosmos could not be here as it is without gravity, so why didn’t Newton put God out of a job? Or if you object that it is the special creation of human beings that distinguishes evolution from, say, gravity, then let’s move the question to the medical sciences of prenatal development or related fields. Why has the acceptance of so much of that knowledge not put God out of a job? Apart from the unwarranted, unscientific addition of theistically-hostile appendages to otherwise scientific evolution --what makes evolution stand apart as the only worthy target?
Among those four, I am decidedly ID
Ideas have consequences, George. Thus, when you say:[quote=“gbrooks9, post:214, topic:4659”]
the BioLogos (position) which believes evolution LOOKS random to human eyes, but is directed by God.
[/quote]
you need to take ownership of this position.Just as the YE must take ownership of her position and the ID his, so you must take ownership of this one. I am not talking about a process that “looks random.” I am talking about a process which, by definition, is devoid of choice contingency, and therefore, purpose, and therefore intention; a process which, whether we believe in God or not, unfolds without Him.
I see only two possible escapes for you here, George. Either you hold the position that there is some sort of natural law or combination of natural laws that have made the unfolding of life up to and including Man, inevitable. Or you believe that in the Creation of the initial conditions (the four fundamental forces), God set a process in motion that would inevitably culminate in mankind. I can have a conversation with you on either of these possibilities. But if your belief is that God has been actively working behind the scenes, guiding natural processes, then I would suggest that you believe in active guidance, not evolution.
I am not trying to put words in your mouth, I am simply trying to discern where you are coming from so that I can address you in an intelligent way. Perhaps there is an option that I have not considered. In any case, I think it would be much better if you tell me exactly what it is about the unfolding of life that distinguishes you from, say, Lawrence Krauss.
I agree with you Nick. In fact, I know of at least one person who endured his own faith crisis. He was taught YE in his church growing up, which was responsible for his faith crisis. Unfortunately, he became a chemistry phd and aligned himself with evolution, blind to the damage that belief in evolution has done to faith.
“Evolution is the greatest engine for atheism ever created” Wil Provine
In fact, I see a clear similarity between YE and TE in that each begins with a rigid core belief and interprets Scriptures in light of their core belief.
19And so we have the prophetic word confirmed, which you do well to heed as a light that shines in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts; 20knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, 21for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.
1 Peter, 19-21
I didn’t have anything you’ve said (that I recall reading) specifically in mind. By falsehoods I was referring to that general practice of so magnifying any problems associated with evolutionary theory and so minimizing or dismissing anything explanatory it has going for it that the practice (as taught and encouraged for others to emulate) has strayed far into the realm of falsehood, or “bearing false witness”. Whether you specifically are in that camp or not, I won’t venture. I may have my own suspicions from my own stereotypes and impressions based on your types of responses, but I have no interest or intention in going back to search for something to “catch you up.” While I don’t have interest in aggressive, adversarial-style debates, I don’t mind aggressively arguing for truth against or amongst all the philosophical systems, principalities, and powers as it were --even Evolutionism and Creationism. If some people identify so closely with some of those that they take such argumentation against them personally, that is a danger. But relationship with people is what interests me as a sometimes neglected component of evangelism (historically, anyway).
Truth is of little service or use when it is crippled or rendered immobile [lack of relationship]. (Just as mobility [relationship] can become pointless, even dangerous, without Truth). But neither can say to the other: “I have no need of you”. That is my main point.
So I freely throw around criticisms, even caustic ones sometimes, of the many ‘-isms’ out there, but I’ll soften my tone considerably when ‘face-to-face’ with a real person. I can’t have a relationship with an ‘-ism’, but I can with a person. And to me, this forum counts as close enough in that regard. Thanks for your thoughts, Joe.
Hi Casper. You need an ANE expert to answer it, really, but my impression from reading a lot of Walton, and one piece of personal correspondence with him, and reading around the literature, is that allegory is quite a different matter, and wasn’t around in that form, at least, at that time. So comparing Adam to allegorical tales is just anachronistic, and potentially rather rmisleading.
There are biblical examples of a king being allegorized as a great tree, or whatever, but that’s really a different genre altogether. I think the archetype thing is closer to the “mythic”, in the sense that it is more foundational than representative. “Because Adam, therefore us”, just as “Because Abraham, therefore the believer”: not so much “See Adam and you see everyone’s experience.” Adam tells us about origins, and of our own story because he was a forerunner, not because he is a “typical us”.
Two things must be added:
(a) To say that Adam (or any archetype) was regarded as existing is not to say, critically speaking, that he did. No doubt scholars would point to ANE examples like Adapa and argue that they didn’t exist (but who knows?) But it gets closer to a truth-claim in inspired Scripture than, say, the existence of Job would, since the latter is used as a test-case, not an archetype (and not as an allegory, either).
(b) The story of Adam is told in “mythic” style - the making from the dust of the ground (parallel to royal origins in Babylonian stories), the stylised isolation of Adam and Eve in the garden, the tempter represented as a talking snake etc. But such elements, it seems to me, aren’t allegorical, but stylistic. My own suspicion is that, in a period before history, as such, was invented, such a style appeared suited more to the momentous subject matter than something prosaic and journalistic would.
So, for example, the tree of life does not “represent” eternal life - it’s a representation of the availability of eternal life itself, and pretty transparently represents being in communion with God. And so on. It’s not literal, but it is (I argue) historical.
The more interesting question, to me, is what the writer had in view for the link between the archetype and the reader. There are only so many possibilities, and they appear to me to be the kind of possibilities raised by the old theologians who treated the garden narrative as a literal account, with no knowledge of ANE archetypes, and no inclination to view it as an allegory of Everyman
If it’s wrong to treat Genesis 2-3 as a scientific account, because science did not exist then, then it’s also wrong to apply to it modern categories of interpretaton like representative allegory - unless one can provide evidence that such a literary genre exited back then.
I think you just invented your own little thing there …
Evolution is “any change in a population’s gene pool”. Whether the change is done WITHOUT guidance or WITH guidance … it is STILL change… and thus it is STILL evolution.
It’s funny what people will come up with in order to change the discussion …
Now we are getting somewhere.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
This is a place for gracious dialogue about science and faith. Please read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting.