I think this comes from a strict division of the world into “us” and “them.” Anytime you start to sound like the people who have been designated “them,” it is labelled compromise, regardless of what you are actually saying. For example, I work for a faith-based NGO that partners in many countries with UNESCO. Some Christians have decided that UNESCO is “them” and therefore, our partnership is a compromise. If we talk about “empowering women” or “fighting the disenfranchisement of minority populations” we sound too much like “them” to some people and it doesn’t seem to matter how many Bible verses or parallels with Jesus’ ministry we point to, it is all taken as evidence of liberal corruption. Scientists are “them.”
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Compromise?
I think Compromise is saying: Genesis is figurative and a-historical … but Exodus… yep,
it happened long before the Philistines ever arrived in the region.
Hello George,
No, I say that because selection is the antithesis of randomness. Drift is random, but I’d bet my firstborn that drift is not the aspect of evolution to which Nick is objecting.
What I was saying is that evolution that is unguided is atheistic evolution. Evolution that is guided is theistic evolution. Also, what I am hoping to do with this thread is to create a concise list of all of the objections to theistic evolution so that I can create a concise list of refutations to those objections.
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Drift can be random to scientists … and STILL guided by God…it’s a matter of definitions…
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The person who leads the area Reasons To Believe group emailed around that his church is having Genesis Academy do a multi-week presentation. The first will be tomorrow evening. I offered to attend as moral support. This should provide some interesting material, assuming I live through it.
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Me:
No, I say that because selection is the antithesis of randomness. Drift is random, but I’d bet my firstborn that drift is not the aspect of evolution to which Nick is objecting.
I agree completely, George. I was trying to point out the irony of associating randomness with Darwin, when in fact the only truly random type of evolution is NON-Darwinian.
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Hello Nick,
How does one prove a negative–the absence of guidance? Shouldn’t you be describing it as “evolution for which there is no evidence of guidance”?
The point of the recent posts, I think, is to present a suite of inter-connected definitions:
- There is randomness - as in unpredictable.
- There is non-randomness - as in "following natural law - - but STILL unpredictable because of the limitations of the human mind and human knowledge.
- There is God-guided randomness - as in the theological position of God knowing AND PLANNING all things … even the landing of dice thrown by humans. The throw of dice is considered by most people to be an expression of RANDOMNESS… but theologically, if God is ultimately planning the dice throw, it is still guided (whether dice is controlled 100% by natural law or not).
As you can see, these 3 different notions are inter-connected …
One cannot prove a negative. Therefore one cannot prove that evolution is not guided by God. Therefore when an atheist states that God does not control evolution, that Atheist is making a statement of faith.
Turns out this Genesis Academy thing is every Thursday night for 7 weeks. I was hoping that I would get to hear a bunch of considered objections to theistic evolution. Mainly it was a bunch of good people justifiably concerned with the direction that society is headed and looking for a way to keep their kids from leaving the faith. I had to object when the group leader tried to conflate Einstein and General Relativity with moral relativism (patting myself on the back). Apparently young earth has a problem with the speed of light being a constant ('cause it implies lots and lots of time. . .). I have high hopes that Biblically Inerrant Theistic Evolution will catch on with a few of these folks, since it achieves what they are trying to accomplish in 15 minutes with a whiteboard and a Bible, instead of 7 weeks with 2 textbooks.
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hi george. i guess you are a theistic evolutionist. how do you explain the different in the creation order between the bible and evolution?
at last … an easy question! The Genesis order of creation, like it’s explanation for the origin of women, and it’s origin of snakes without limbs and the enmity between snakes and humanity, is fictional.
but george. the order isnt the same as evolution claim.
Yes… of course… Because it isn’t a factual account of anything. It is poetry and figurative
Ted Davis linked this excellent resource by Conrad Hyers on another thread last week. D:\ASAWEB~1\PSCF\1984\JASA12-84Heyers.htm
It goes through the ANE cosmogony and numerology and packs quite a bit in a few pages.
hey christy. i speak about the order of species creation. according to the bible first come birds and then land species. according to the fossil record the opposite is true.
Yes, because as the article I linked pointed out, it was clearly not the objective of the Genesis 1 account to describe the order of the fossil record. Or even the order in which God created. To insist otherwise is to misread Scripture.
The Bible describes “storehouses” (treasuries) of snow and hail and rain (See Job). Do you think JOB is correct in its understanding of the global weather system?
Job is close enough for people 4000 years ago. Genesis 1 is also close enough for people living 4000 years ago. I was thinking about this earlier today. If someone was given a vision of the evolution of the surface of the earth, why would they leave out dinosaurs? Then I remembered that many dinosaurs are now thought to have been covered with downy feathers. Dinosaurs may have been left out of Genesis 1 simply because 30 foot tall killer chickens with big teeth might have been to weird for shepherds around the campfire to believe.