What are the evidences against natural selection and random mutations explaining the complexity of life?

This is exactly my point. EC needs to answer this question. [quote=“Lynn_Munter, post:38, topic:36424”]
It would help enormously if you could pin down where the dividing line is for this concept you call self-awareness, and then we can look at the simplest creature you believe has self-awareness, and we can see if it could reasonably have developed from a more primitive creature without self-awareness.
[/quote]

EC says that life as we know it began with particles of energy inside a dense and hot singularity. The singularities’ explosion and subsequent cooling caused the conglomeration and reorganization of those very same particles. The key point is that the particles in the singularity are still the particles available after the explosion.

My question is, according to Evolution, when did self awareness FIRST arise in the conglomeration and reorganization of the same particles that exploded.

Did God intervene in the natural process of evolution and give less complex creatures self awareness? Did He then step in it again for homo sapiens at at time that they had evolved enough to be aware that He existed? This seems to be the EC position.

I keep getting … [quote=“heddle, post:39, topic:36424”]
I don’t believe questions like this (and others from this Hisword on this thread) are offered in good faith.
[/quote]

I know this is the most difficult question to answer. What God did or didn’t do and when He did or didn’t do it is the very crux of this debate. Because I’ve asked a difficult question that doesn’t seem to have a simple answer does not mean its not in good faith

I can’t get an answer from EC supporters as to when God steps in and acts supernaturally and when He leaves everything to flow according to natural selection and random mutation.

Are there multiple positions within EC?? According to EC… Does He intervene Once … at the Big Bang? Twice… At the Big Bang and then when He interacts with humans? Or multiple times along the way? Please can someone answer with details how EC works? I know what the Atheists say about Evolution, I just can’t seem to figure out how God fits into this system designed to prove He doesn’t exist.

The conclusion that there is no God. That is one reason they called Higgs Boson the God Particle".
I love finding that God is as wise, intricate, and amazing in the smallest forms as He is in the largest.

Not really, these questions about self-awareness are largely philosophical, and are just as valid for YEC proponents. Where did Gid place the dividing line between organism that are self-aware and those that aren’t?

According to the Big Bang the entire universe came from the singularity. At the moment of the explosion the elements (all particles) were not self aware. Today, the very same elements (you and me) are self aware.

Really? Citation please.

Maybe, instead of telling us what we say, you might consider asking first?

Or even better, just committing to answering our questions?

I’m in absolute agreement with @GJDS on this point. This is, in fact, a popular aspecdt of BioLogos: to show where a faith statement can be in agreement with much of a scientific stance.

For example, Christians can speak of God bringing the rain:

Job 36:27 For he maketh small the drops of water: they pour down rain according to the vapor thereof.
Psa 135:7 He causeth vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth; he maketh lightnings for the rain…

Here is the science of rain. But even here, God points out that this does not mean God is not intimately involved in something as ordinary as rain!:

Jer 10:13 When he uttereth his voice, there is a multitude of waters in the heavens, and he causeth the vapors to ascend from the ends of the Earth…

So when a BioLogos supporters says God uses evolution to make his many creations, is that really “vanity” or “presumption”? It is no different from saying that God’s word “causeth the vapors to ascend from the ends of the Earth”!

Nobody would even think that someone who claimed God’s use of evaporation was being inappropriate. Why would making any reference to the natural laws of the Universe - - the Universe which God has created - - would be out of place?

A faith statement? Yes. Inappropriate? No.

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Kendal, I appreciate your tone! Unfortunately, it is much better than mine when it comes to this topic. I’m not looking for science from the bible. First of all I haven’t looked at AIG or Ken Ham in almost two decades. I have no clue what they are saying nor do I care.

I like reading Richard Dawkins, (The God Delusion), Daniel Whiteson and Jorge Cham “We Have No Idea: A Guide to the Unknown Universe” and other secular science guys. They admit that they really know very little about the universe and are grasping at straws to understand even basic things like gravity, water, space, time, but they love the exploration of it all.

Whiteson is a Professor of Experimental Particle Physics in the Dept.of Physics & Astronomy at Cal Irvine ·He does experiments at CERN. The point of his book is to say that we know less that 5% of what is in the universe. And of that 5% that we do know we actually understand very little of it.

God has allowed us to know amazing things that we even have a hard time imagining. But we still don’t really even know what gravity is, or what matter and anti-matter are. We have theories but that is what they are, theories.

I agree 1,000% that the bible is not giving science information in Genesis. Why … God only knows Deut 29:29… God seems to have no desire at all to give us any information at all as to how he created.

That is the best evidence that Genesis is not about science…it is about time and trust. It is a narrative which is sequential. Morning and Evening, over and over again, the number of years Adam lived and so on. Those statements aren’t about science, they are about time. Time is related to faith. The Israelites couldn’t gather more manna than they needed for 1 day. Why? Because trusting God is related to time! He gave new manna every morning. His mercies are new…when… Every Morning, Perseverance is related to time. That is what is so ironic about turning Genesis into Billions of Years. Why are those billions of years needed? Darwinian Evolution.

No. In fact, I have no idea how you decided that “Evolutionary Creationism” makes such a claim. In order to say that life as we know it began inside of the singularity would require a definition of life that appears in no textbook I’ve ever seen. Among other things, biological life requires reproduction. It sounds like you are confusing the beginning of life with the beginning of matter.

I get the impression that you think that a Creator who makes use of the natural processes he created in order to make other things is somehow inferior to a Creator who “instantly poofs” things into existence. (If I’m wrong about that, please correct me.) Yet, Genesis 1 says, “Let the land bring forth [living creatures]…” and “Let the waters bring forth…” Both of those statements sound the very opposite of “instant poofing” and they imply that God meant for natural processes to produce the ecological systems we observe today. Of course, we see the same idea where Genesis says that Adam was made from “the dust of the ground”, the non-living chemical elements of the earth’s crust. The Book of Ecclesiastes says the same about all other animals: they are made from non-living dust. So this is a basic concept upon which both the Bible and modern science totally agree: living things come from non-living ingredients, also known as soil. (For that reason it always amazes me that some of my Christian brethren get very angry about the concept of abiogenesis, life from non-living ingredients, when that is exactly what the Bible describes. The fact that God was involved is not contrary to any science. Science doesn’t make theological claims or deal with the existence of God because the Scientific Method has no means of doing so.)

I think we are dealing with several additional terminological differences. Could you please tell us how you define word evolution as well as the Theory of Evolution? That might help us to avoid talking past one another. I hope we can agree that the Theory of Evolution has nothing to do with the Big Bang Theory, which was first published (though not under that name) by a Christian clergyman physicist who strongly affirmed God as the creator of the universe. Indeed, he got a lot of criticism from many atheist physicists because he was claiming that the universe had a beginning—and they realized that that naturally implied a “beginner” and they accused him of letting his Christian beliefs dominate his physics. Of course, since that time the “Steady State Theory” of the universe as eternal has largely fallen away, or at least has been significantly re-worked, and Dr. Lemaitre’s view of the singularity and the rapid expansion of space-time to birth the matter-energy universe is now found in every astrophysics textbook. (Of course, the theory still has its critics—but there is obviously nothing “atheistic” about it. Indeed, at the time Dr. Lemaitre, an adamant creationist, had to caution the Pope to curb his overly-exuberant enthusiasm for the new theory as “a proof of God’s creation of the universe!”)

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  1. God is everywhere in everything.
  2. Most natural selection acts on existing variation, not new mutations. So you’re very misinformed on the fundamental science there.
  3. Neutral evolution acts also. You’ve ignored it. Why?

[quote]
Are there multiple positions within EC?? According to EC… Does He intervene Once … at the Big Bang?[/quote]

There is no “according to EC,” Larry, so just stop with that. OK?

There is no such thing. Please stop with the straw man fallacies.

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I might have worded it more gently, but I must agree with Benjamin on the problem of your posts containing a lot of straw man arguments. I have no doubt that you, Hisword, are unaware that they are straw man arguments, so I don’t doubt your sincerity. But I want to make sure that you understand why many of us are feeling strong reactions to what you are posting. Keep in mind that there is no formal “Theory of Evolutionary Creationism”, and therefore many of your statements about “according to EC” make no sense. (Indeed, some of them strike me as quite bizarre. Explaining why will require a post or two. I hope that you find that intriguing. I do think that you are taking us into important and useful territory.)

Am I understanding you correctly? That sounds like an expression of pantheism—which, if that was your intention, is fine as a summary of your beliefs. I’m not trying to debate it. I just want to make sure that I’m reading you accurately. (Sometimes people use similar wording when all that they are trying to communicate is God’s omnipresence. Thus, my request for clarification. Thank you.

As has already been stated, there is no single “EC position”. Moreover, it’s my guess that a large percentage of those inclined towards EC thinking would find the questions quite foreign to their thinking. Yet, I think you are probing in some excellent directions, nonetheless. But I think a good place to start would be by asking people how they would describe their views on evolution and creation. That would help us to avoid straw man questions and talking past one another.

As for me, I’m a Molinist. I’m not eager to start a new thread on that well-worn topic but I’ll just say at this point that I don’t see God needing to intervene at all because that implies that God’s created universe did not develop as God willed and that it somehow needed the Creator to make “corrections” and lots of tweaks and fixes along the way. That sounds like a deity who is less than omniscient and omnipotent–and I believe that the God of the Bible is both! (In fact, one of the reasons I left behind the Young Earth Creationism of my younger years is because it seems to imply a very weak and less than omniscient creator. Yet that too is its own thread topic so I’ll try to keep focused. I just wanted to give you a little bit of an idea why Molinist Christians are not going to find your questions well suited to their understanding of creation and the Book of Genesis.)

I hope this post will help introduce a fruitful discussion in illustrating how Christians can hold to a variety of viewpoints on evolution and how God used natural processes to carry out his sovereign will for his creation.

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I too was struck by the obvious disconnect between the thread’s title and Hisword’s focus on “according to EC”.

As to “the evidences against…”, I hope Hisword understands that no evolutionary biologist today would claim that NS & RM are the entirety of all evolutionary processes. So most of the potential answers to the question as worded would be about the evidence for processes like genetic draft and genetic drift, for example. Other than that, it is the fact that piles and piles of evidence support the Theory of Evolution which makes the theory among the very best supported in all of science. I would recommend watching some of the Biologos videos on the basics of evolutionary biology as well as Potholer54’s Youtube series “Evolution Made Simple”.

I would also encourage Hisword to consider dividing the questions of interest into separate threads. The scientific questions and the theological questions are each deserving of their own separate consideration. These can be very important and informative topics to discuss.

Thanks @Socratic.Fanatic Thanks for the reasoned response.

My original post was to find out what things related to EC did people struggle with before they were convinced of an old earth. The answer I received was in essence NOTHING. Everything makes perfect sense. I found that disingenuous among thoughtful folks. So I prodded. I admit that I don’t get what belief is being put forth. I read the article “Evolution and the Historical Fall: What Does Genesis 3 Tell Us about the Origin of Evil?” on this site. He must be a Molinist in that he says the conscience evolved to the place of being aware of God’s call. Since the site (BioLogos) posted it I assumed it was the position taken by all here. So, when do you start with creation? Do you start with the Big Bang?

Yes, I was simply referring to God’s omnipresence.

No, that was neither your question(s) nor the answers you received at all. Perhaps you should review them more carefully before claiming what they essentially mean.[quote=“Hisword, post:52, topic:36424”]
Everything makes perfect sense.[/quote]
Why don’t you quote a response that says that?

[quote]I found that disingenuous among thoughtful folks.
[/quote]I think you’re projecting.[quote=“Hisword, post:52, topic:36424”]
Since the site (BioLogos) posted it I assumed it was the position taken by all here.
[/quote]
I think the site is very clear that such is not the case.

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@Hisword

Larry, you did not respond to my response to you above.

I think you have things turned around. You say that evolutionary creation will destroy the reliability of the Bible. That is false. Evolution has been around a long time and it has failed to destroy the reliability of the Bible, although it does raise the question as to whether the Bible is the literal, infallible Word of God.

Fortunately the Bible does not teach that the Bible is the infallible Word of God, it teaches that Jesus Christ is the sinless perfect Word of God. Jesus Christ is the Alpha and Omega of our faith, and not Genesis 1 through 3.

John 1:1-5 (NIV2011)
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was with God in the beginning.
3 Through Him all things were made; without Him nothing was made that has been made.
4 In Him was Life, and that Life was the Light of all mankind.
5 The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome It.

14 The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We have seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son, Who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The purpose of BioLogos is to reconcile the truth of science with the Truth of Jesus Christ. It has a ways to go in completing this task and you are welcome to participate. What we cannot do is say that these two truths are irreconcilable, since they both come from God.

Please go back to what I wrote above.

When did CERN conclude that there was no God? I’ve been out of particle physics for a while now, but I still think I would have heard the news if they’d discovered that.[quote=“Hisword, post:42, topic:36424”]
That is one reason they called Higgs Boson the God Particle".
[/quote]
“They” don’t call the Higgs the God Particle; Leon Lederman called it that in a book he wrote. Every particle physicist I’ve known has thought it was an idiotic name.

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@glipsnort A survey of scientists who are members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press in May and June 2009, finds that members of this group are, on the whole, much less religious than the general public.Indeed, the survey shows that scientists are roughly half as likely as the general public to believe in God or a higher power. According to the poll 33% of scientists say they believe in God. By contrast, 95% of Americans believe in some form of deity or higher power, according to a survey of the general public conducted by the Pew Research Center in July 2006.

I wonder what conclusions are found when 66% of scientist believe God is non-existent. If you don’t believe he exists you’re certainly not looking for evidence that he created the heavens and the earth? What % of Particle Physicists would you estimate believe in Christ? Do the unbelievers look for God in creation?

OK

Responses

Most everyone here says they used to have a different view and now their view is different. So the question “what are the evidences against EC” implies “why did you hold your previous view?” What was the evidence that kept you in your previous view? These responses seem pretty clear to me. There was NONE

Yes. That was your first post—but I think what you are missing is that that has far less to do with your thread title than you might think. At least, most readers will interpret it that way. Perhaps I can help. This was your original thread title:

“What are the evidences against natural selection and random mutations explaining the complexity of life?”

That is a scientific question which is not only worded in a strange way that reflects what no modern day scientist would assert, it sounds very similar to the poorly titled “A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism” petition, which was one of The Discovery Institute’s most ridiculous propaganda campaigns. (They make a big deal out of the fact that a bunch of scientists signed their so-called “Dissent from Darwinism” petition, but I don’t know of a single evolutionary biologist or paleontologist who would not agree with the two sentences of the petition if not for the way their agreement would be misrepresented to the public. If that sounds surprising, you might want to post it as its own thread topic. EVERY scientist should agree with both of the statements of the petition, despite the disconnect with its title and the unfortunate history of the Discovery Institute.)

Putting all of that aside for the moment, your very first post was this:

That is an entirely different question. Moreover, it refers to a theory which doesn’t exist (“the theory of evolutionary creation”) and it is basically a theological question (or at least, a philosophical question.)

I would have suggested that your original thread title be reworded and reposted as a scientific topic. It is basically asking about the evidence for the Theory of Evolution. Your first post, however, is—I assume—asking people to explain their theological position, that God used evolutionary processes to creation the living things we observe today. Indeed, I assume that the later question would be focused heavily on how Christians harmonized their evolutionary biology understanding with the scripture evidence, especially from the Book of Genesis.

At the very least, if your interest was in learning more about the evidence for the Theory of Evolution, a science topic, then I would recommend avoiding the theological/philosophical term “evolutionary creationism”. (By the way, “evolutionary creation” is a term that I can’t even define. The Theory of Evolution has nothing to do with the creation of the matter-energy universe, so “evolutionary creation” sounds like a confusion of the origin of the biosphere and the origin of the universe, even if that wasn’t your meaning. That’s because the word “creation” has multiple meanings. Some people assume that it refers to the very beginning of the universe, as in the initial moment of the Big Bang. Others will assume that it refers to a theistic view of the universe and/or the Genesis 1 account.)

In any case, Christy explained this (though far more concisely) in the second post of this thread. After that point, there was really nothing more to be said because your next post seemed to ignore her distinction between the theological issue and the scientific issue. In retrospect, I might have recommended that you start a new thread asking if there was any scientific evidence against evolutionary processes and the Theory of Evolution, and yet another thread asking if there was scriptural/theological or philosophical evidence which had troubled those of an evolutionary creationist position (or something similar.)

Of course, it is always easier to avoid confusion after the fact! So I’m not trying to be dismissive or flippant about the issues. Not at all. I’m just explaining why the thread did not proceed in the ways that you were intending. Moreover, many got the impression that yours was a debate challenge rather than a information seeking question. (Obviously, it is easy to misread motives on an Internet forum.)

I think the discussion was also getting more confused when you asserted/asked:

Furthermore, I’m still not sure what you meant when you asked:

Are you asking about scientific evidence against a theological/philosophical position? And are the “top 25” referring to scriptures which you assume stand as evidence against an EC belief or do you mean twenty-five scientific evidences against the Theory of Evolution? You may still feel that our reactions to those questions are “disingenuous”—a word choice sure to cause the discussion to degenerate further—but I can assure you that even now I can’t say that I know exactly what you are asking. Also, there is certainly nothing disingenuous about my response to this topic and it would be better to say that you are perhaps surprised or baffled by our responses rather than to attribute motive or a lack of sincerity.

I think you will find most participants here to be eager to help and to explain their beliefs and conclusions. But also keep in mind that many of the questions which get posted on this forum have been asked in some form perhaps a hundred times. So I will be the first to admit that I am more likely to post if a topic is something novel or someone has brought up an interesting angle. On the other hand, if someone has come here to debate or to post some long-ago debunked pseudo-science argument which they copy-and-pasted from some website, you will probably see them ignored or casually dismissed by some. Yes, we are all human and sometimes the initial reaction can be “Not again!” or “I’ll let Christy handle that one.” (If I were prone to use emoticons, I suppose here is where I should use one to indicate humor.) Anyway, whether it is fair or not, these are some of the likely explanations for why this thread didn’t proceed as you had hoped.

Because the initial topic has gotten a bit muddled and people will come and go from these discussions without reading everything which preceded the latest post, you may want to consider starting a new thread for each of the topics which interest you. That may make things easier for everyone. That’s just my reaction to the confusion.

I decided to extract and post this separately from my previous comment, for whatever value it may have for a newcomer:

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Do you think the conclusions or the data would be any different for that 66% as opposed to the other 34%? Personally, I think they would be the same assuming equally honest and competent researchers, but you may feel differently.
Of course, I feel scientific results stand independently of theologic constructs. Now, the application of those findings may vary quite a bit.