What does ‘that word’ 
mean, Richard? It means change over time. Yeah, the cosmos does that. So does weather. So does biology. Science studies the ‘how’ in all of those. Your distinction is purely imaginary and you will never be able to talk to real scientists in your blinkered and foolish persistence.
It seems to me that in order for God to express his creative power through the mindless mechanical process of neo-Darwinian evolution, he would have to …
(a) supernaturally manipulate genomes to produce the mutations he wanted;
and
(b) supernaturally manipulate environmental conditions in order to select the mutations he wanted selected.
While I agree that those are good reasons to teach evolution, I don’t think there is a need to evangelize convinced young earth creationists about evolution. If they have questions or are doubting their faith, Christians knowledgeable of evolution should point them in the right direction, but it would probably be futile and counter-productive to try to convince every Christian that evolution is true.
Thank you for your response, I see where you’re coming from but I disagree with your conclusions.
Not all convinced creationists will doubt their position. In fact, I think most don’t give it a second thought, and are largely dismissive of the scientific disciplines in general (at least when it’s convenient for them)
Some creationists will doubt their position, and I believe that intellectually honest and humble inquiry will lead them to reject creationism. I don’t think we should wait until people doubt, and then hope that they navigate that crisis maturely. I think that the pervasiveness of creationism in Christian circles is a very problematic, for the reasons I listed in the OP as well as some reasons that others have brought to light, and I think that it is very important that we graciously and humbly, but fervently, combat it. For the greater good of humanity.
2 Likes
The Cambrian explosion isn’t as much of a problem as it’s often made out to be. The Cambrian lasted for 52 million years.
They may not all rely on universal common ancestry, but they do rely on the underlying mechanisms of evolution, such as the ability of mutations and natural selection to produce new information.
The oil industry needs to know absolute ages, not just relative ages. This is because they need to predict how mature the oil deposits are before drilling for them. To do this they need to know both their ages and their thermal histories. Too young, or too cold, and the deposits will be “premature” and you won’t be able to get them out of the ground. Too old, or too hot, and they will have baked away into oblivion.
As far as I’m aware, the oil industry does make use of the evolutionary relationships between different fossils when studying the relationships between rock strata, though you’ll need to ask someone with experience in that industry for the details. But on that specific question, they are the ones who I’m going to listen to.
That may be so, but it’s the research that is successful, that doesn’t fail, that doesn’t end up down dead-end streets, and that does produce practical benefit or use that you have to account for.
Here is an article to get you started:
(Edit) Evolutionary research plays an important role in medicine for starters, and some of that does rely on the fact that humans and animals share a common ancestor. Genetic studies in particular can use evolutionary relationships to figure out what different genes do and therefore which ones are likely to cause different disorders or diseases.
I’m sure that others who are more familiar with medicine and the state of the art of medical research will be able to provide more details on these than I can.
4 Likes
Love that imagery!
Quite so. Out where I do conservation work there are places (primarily thanks to uninformed humans) where some invasive species grow so tightly that rabbits can’t penetrate, thus reducing rabbit habitat. An interesting results is that coyotes out there roam more and will attack dogs that stray too far from their humans.
No more than does chemistry, cosmology, or geology.
As my one atheist physics professor noted, no science can rule out God’s involvement because there is no way to measure for God (and he had pointed comments about a colleague or two who thought otherwise).
No more than do cosmology or geology.
2 Likes
As I read through the last couple of days of posts, I think I see both @Buzzard and @RichardG arguing against the specific Theory of Evolution (TOE) concept of all life on earth descending from one original living organism, and not against any of the other concepts (with the possible exception of significant changes of species). Then the scientists reply that they (B & R) are presenting no scientific evidence, or any other observational evidence, to support their claim that TOE is not proven, thinking of TOE as not just one conclusion, but a whole lot of other observations that are also explained by the total TOE.
In some earlier posts in this thread, Richard was very clear that he does support the concepts that the earth has been here for a long time, and that evolutionary processes, including survival of the fittest, help explain a lot of changes in life forms that have occurred.
What this leads me to guess is that there is less real difference of opinion, and a fair agreement that most (all?) of the points of disagreement are not able to be definitivly resolved by any observational evidence that has been discovered up to this time.
To try to understand what real differences there are, would @Buzzard and @RichardG be willing to state more specifically what TOE concepts you disagree with, and what, if any, you agree with? And for any with which you disagree, is your disagreement that the concept is absolutely wrong, or is your disagreement that the concept has not been proved by the evidence, so the concept should be qualified by a statement perhaps giving an estimate of the liklihood the concept is correct? Then, can you give a brief overview of why do you believe what you believe about this concept?
I am only asking to try to get clarification for myself, to help me understand the real problems we are trying to discuss. I suspect the answers will help other relatively new readers as well.
4 Likes
Theory of evolution as taught when I was a university student resulted in a number of biology majors turning from atheist or agnostic to theist, and most of them to Christians.
Plainly not so.
Then explain why those agnostic and atheist students I knew became Christians due to studying evolution.
Just for what it’s worth I’ll remind the reader of the fellow student who concluded that God only needed to intervene seven times to get humans.
I had a Christian geology professor who’d been the equivalent of YEC when younger, but then he served as a geologist for an oil company for a decade and ended up rejecting the idea of a young earth.
3 Likes
Thanks for asking this. It’s something that I had in mind to ask myself.
The theory of evolution is a multi-faceted topic, encompassing both mechanical and philosophical aspects of science. Very often people who object to evolution do so in terms that are vague, unclear, inaccurate or evasive about what exactly they are objecting to. You see this in the tendency of ID supporters to make a lot of noise about how they object to “Darwinism,” in terms that give them enough wiggle room to accept pretty much everything about evolution that gets taught in schools and universities, even down to universal common ancestry, while at the same time leaving their audience with the impression that they’re advocating a young earth, dinosaurs on the Ark and the Flood as the origin of the fossil record and the Grand Canyon. (Some of my friends at church believe that all the signatories of the Scientific Dissent from Darwinism were young earthists. They weren’t.)
Anyone rejecting the theory of evolution, whether in whole or in part, needs to state clearly and unambiguously what aspects of the theory they are rejecting, whether they believe it to be incorrect or merely incomplete, and what parts of the theory they do accept.
For my own part, I accept the mechanical aspects of the theory of evolution: the underlying mechanisms, their ability to produce new species, the timescales over which they operated, and the details of which species are related to each other. However, I reject certain philosophical claims about the theory of evolution: for example, claims that it is fundamentally atheistic in nature, or that it is undirected or purposeless, or that we should view it as the basis for any moral or ethical values.
4 Likes
I can’t … i don’t know any if them. If you provide me with their names and contact details, maybe I can ask them. How many of them were there?
Fascinating. Well, your fellow student would know, having seen it all take place.
Whey should that matter? Don’t you claim to know the motivations of all atheists?
I’ve lost track of them over the years.
Eight who became theists, six who became Christians.
I think you’ll remember the Psalm I put together to express their conclusion:
A Psalm of the Designer
Evolution declares the glory of God,
and the chromosomes in cells proclaim His handiwork!
Day to day pours out research,
and night to night reveals studies.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them,
yet their message has gone out to the whole earth,
and their words to the ends of the world.
He has set a tent for DNA,
which sends its messengers out from its chamber
like strong men they run their course with joy.
Its reach is from the birth of the Earth,
its circuit all around it,
and there is no life apart from that reach. selah
O Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory within the cell.
When I look at all life, the work of your fingers,
the nucleus and the mitochondria§, which you have set in place –
What is man that you are mindful of him,
and the son of man that you care for him?
You have made them a little lower than the angels
and crowned them with glory and honor.
You made them rulers over the works of your hands;
you put everything under their feet:
all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild,
*the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea, *
all that swim the paths of the seas.
Oh Lord, our Lord,
how majestic is your name in all the earth!
§ or, “the plants and all animals”
1 Like
am sorry but your experiences are possibly unique, or if not unusual. In my experience, people either ignore evolution in terms of rationalisation or they find it anti-God or even a means of disproving His existence
Finding God within nature is not the same as finding God in evolution. Thec omplexity, order, and balance of the universe is something that compels people to think of a creator or designer. The random, chance of evolution is what turns people away. If you have removed the chance element then it is easy to attribute it to God But chance does exist…
IOW it was not TOE that converted but the belief that God can work invisibly and appear not to ne doing anything even though He was. (Your divine-o-meter)
Richard
1 Like
I have done this more than once.
The problem is that it is not just a case of dissecting TOE it is a variance in understanding or concepts, and language and reasoning and to a limited extent how much theology can or cannot be included.
I have no problem with the existence of the evoltionary process, but it appearrs that that process is no longer defined the way I was taught it, which causes the first problem
No one here will ever define what that process actually is. They just waffle on about change and development and . Natural selection, Anything but to define how much a single evolutionary change can accomplish. And that makes so much difference.
If evolution can instantly grow a complete set of lungs, or a pair of wings (intact tiwh ancilliaries) then most, if not all my objections go out the window. You end up with a glorified shop with features waiting to be added when the right code is either found or supplied. There would be no transitions, just one giant leap for mankind.
But
Evolution was never that
My objection to TOE is, and always has been that there is no means to achieve the changes it claims. That the evolutionary changing process is incapable of developing a single cell into a human.
With that in mind common heredity goes out the window, Not because it doesn’t appear, but because it is impossible to achieve.
So all this talk about DNA is irrelevant if evolution cannot achieve the changes it claims.it doesn’t matter what connection you see if the process cant join the dots.
Then there is the driving mechanism: random.
It appears that random can mean
- God controlled
- ordered sequencing
- A limited number of possible variations
- A computer program that knows what has been tried before and doesn’t repeat
- A computer program that instinctively knows what variation to produce
- Given enough time we will find the right coding
Anything but
A variable that has no pattern or control or constraint
Evolution relies on the deviation producing a viable change. Natural selection cannot work if it has nothing to work with.
The notion of cosmic fluke becomes a repeated occurrence for every change
But that is what I was taught..
Change that and you rewrite TOE.
I won’t even go down the road of defining what the word evolution might mean beyond describing developmental change.
(Most dictionary definitions include at least one variant of meaning and it helps if we agree on which one we are using at any one time)
Richard
“Evolution is the greatest engine of atheism ever invented.”
“Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear, and I must say that these are basically Darwin’s views. There are no gods, no purposeful forces of any kind, no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be completely dead. That’s just all—that’s gonna be the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either.”
William B. Provine.
William B. Provine (1942–2015) was the ‘Andrew H. and James S. Tisch Distinguished University Professor’ at Cornell University and was a professor in the Departments of History, Science and Technology Studies, and Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.
1 Like
Will we turn our backs on science because it is perceived as a threat to God, abandoning all the promise of advancing our understanding of nature and applying that to the alleviation of suffering and the betterment of humankind? Alternatively, will we turn our backs on faith, concluding that science has rendered the spiritual life no longer necessary, and that traditional religious symbols can now be replaced by engravings of the double helix on our alters?
Both of these choices are profoundly dangerous. Both deny truth. Both will diminish the nobility of humankind. Both will be devastating to our future. And both are unnecessary. The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate and beautiful - and it cannot be at war with itself. Only we imperfect humans can start such battles. And only we can end them.
“Language of God” ― Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, a physician-geneticist noted for his landmark discoveries of disease genes, his leadership of the international Human Genome Project, and a devout Christian, who it appears knows a site more what evolution is (and isn’t) about than pretty much everyone else.
You can take your theological cues from militantly atheistic voices if that’s your choice. As for my own theology, I’ll pay more attention to believers who know the Bible and also know what they’re talking about when it comes to evolutionary science.
3 Likes
Why is there always a perceived dichotomy of extremes?
All science? All Evolutionary theory? All Bible?
I always thought a happy medium was one who successfully talked to dead people.
Perhaps there is no other kind?
Richard
1 Like
I don’t think Francis Collins position is extreme.
Just … right.
3 Likes
Of course.
Shall we discuss the definition of right? Or truth? Or absolutes?
Suffice it to say, what is right for one (or in one’s mind) is not automatically the same for another. And truth is a spectrum not an absolute. You might see it as a pie to which we have different slices which may or may not overlap.
Richard