Life only comes from other life. (Forgive me all you folks that believe in random naturalistic abiogenesis. I just don’t buy it.)
Life, for example the human body, has some very complex components and systems. Brains, kidneys, blood pumping heart muscles that never miss a beat (at least not for too long), one way heart valves, etc. etc.
Buy a medical student textbook on Anatomy and Physiology and peruse thru it. Then ask yourself if this could possibly be soley the product of random mutations and natural selection.
My conclusion is that a creator or higher intelligence had to have made (or at least been involved in making) living organisms.
Then the next question is what is the likelihood that this creator communicated with his created beings. The best logical answer FOR ME is the Bible.
Others may disagree with every single thing I said above. And that is perfectly fine. “Let every person be fully convinced in their own mind…”
These all can and do malfunction. Heart valves can let blood flow the wrong way–that is called a heart murmur. A heart that slows down or flutters instead of pumping can kill you, or allow a clot to form which can travel to the brain and give you a stroke. Lots of other problems also, but you get the idea.
I have an easier suggestion. Find a high school biology text. Start with the single cell life forms and work your way up to humans. Note the gradual changes in the various body systems, circulation, respiration, movement, digestion, elimination, nervous system, reproduction, etc. At the conclusion ask yourself if these systems could arise as a result of gradual changes, such as no heart, to a single chamber heart, to a two chamber heart, to a four chamber heart. It makes you realize how easy it is for evolution to explain the development.
Bill
Please consider the trochlear mechanism of the superior oblique muscle of the human eye. This is essentially a rope and pulley mechanism in simplistic terms. I have actually tried to imagine a gradual evolutionary process to create this.
If you can think or imagine one, please let me know. (I am not joking. I have actually put considerable thought effort into this.)
Don
I am no expect but I am pretty sure that is not the basis for the theory of evolution. Your background in genetics should show you common descent is true.
The neutral theory of evolution and that neutral drift can produce complexity probably had not made it into textbooks or the regular classroom when he was in school. (It hadn’t when I was, and our ages may be comparable. )
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
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As Alfred Russell Lord Wallace said to Darwin, so called organs of perfection are about lack of imagination.
Molecular genetics and common descent is another topic. But even there, you have to explain the molecular mechanisms (and their origin) for making a real 3 dimensional functioning structure like the superior oblique muscle of the human eye in the embryo.
This is part of what I mean by “magical thinking”. Just because an evolutionist can “imagine” a series of transitional processes to create a functioning organ like the kidney, doesn’t necessarily mean that is what happened in reality. It may or may not be in fact true.
I personally don’t know of any strictly random naturalistic process (certainly not the neutral theory of evolution) that could produce the complexity, and functionality, we see in living organisms.
But this is just my opinion that I have formed for myself from my own study. Like the Bible says “let every man be fully convinced in his own mind…”
But it seems to me you think the word “solely” up there is an essential aspect of the theory of evolution. Doesn’t that confuse methodical naturalism with philosophical naturalism? Doesn’t it do what I was complaining about in this thread:
Scientific theories don’t say anything about agency. They try to make sense of the order of the world by noticing predictable patterns in it. For the purposes of that, there is no need to invoke or to exclude the existence of God.
As a new believer with a background in science, apparently unlike others, I found no problem marrying naturalism with theism. I see God’s hand in everything. Just because I can answer a lot of “how” and “why” questions by reference to patterns science has uncovered, does not exclude the hand of God in those things. (Gary Fugle talks about this “dual causation” a lot in Laying Down Arms to Heal the Creation-Evolution Divide, very worthwhile if you’ve not already read it.) He doesn’t only live in the gaps.
Does it somehow insult God’s majesty to recognise that so much of his work conforms to patterns we can understand? I don’t think so. In fact I think it makes his Creation even more amazing.
What would it be like to live in a Universe where there was no predictability or order and everything was a random and unpredictable whim of God? It would be a very difficult place for humans to exercise free will, when actions don’t have predictable consequences.
In fact, much of Genesis 1 seems to be about God’s ordering of the Universe, not the creation of materials themselves.
The fact that He does this ordering, which is essential for humans to exercise free will, also fits well with the Christian idea that humans with mind and agency were integral to God’s plan (another key point of Genesis).
I do think there are things that it seems unlikely could be adequately understood by methodical naturalism. I trust the expertise and intentions of biologists who tell us the descent of species is not one of them.
But the existence of mind and agency, I think, has to be one of these. And the causation of the Big Bang. And the reason for the “laws of nature” and “constants of nature” being as they are. And, perhaps, abiogenesis.
Methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism seem the same to me. But I could be wrong.
It seems like both automatically eliminate the existence of God or a supernatural intelligence.
Bottom line for me is that I don’t believe that life could have come from a radom naturalistic (no God) process. Human anatomy and physiology (and embryology) is too complex and functionally purposeful, in my opinion.
Methodological naturalism just tries to find out how things work and how, within the laws of nature, they got that way. It does not preclude providential intervention, but neither can it prove it.
That is way different for the Christian than philosophical naturalism. Big bang cosmology has been the avenue by which of numbers of scientists have been pointed to the Creator and become Christians (more physicists than biologists, I am given to understand).
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