God of Gaps?

[Mallon]

1) There is to many questions which evolution does not attempt to answer or cannot answer.

What questions would like to see evolution answer? How life started? How to train your dog? How to paint? Evolution is concerned only with those questions pertaining to the diversity of life on earth. To expect anything else shows a real misunderstanding of what evolution is and is not, on your part.

2) Evolution uses fragment evidence. A part of the evidence is used, not the whole.

The theory of evolution attempts to make ties between all sorts of lines of evidence, including genetics, comparative anatomy, biogeography, palaeoecology, functional morphology, etc. What "whole" evidence are you referring to? The Bible? While an excellent tool to help bring us closer to God, the Bible is about as useful for teaching us about the history of life on earth as it is for showing us how to change a tire. That's why science does not refer to the Bible. We only realized the earth was round and not at the centre of the universe when we stopped reading the Bible as a science textbook.

3) We do not know enough about DNA or RNA to make evolution a conclusion. We have only scratched the surface of DNA and RNA research and we don't know how to interprete what we do know.

I would argue that we do know enough about DNA and RNA to make conclusions about evolution, and could point out the research to back it up. What more would YOU like to know, specifically, that would put your mind at ease?

4) The fossil record does not have process of change from species to species.

Actually, it does. We can see the divergence of morphospecies from a single stock species splitting into two distinct species in the fossil record, especially given high resolution records of things like bivalves (see Finding Darwin's God for more on this). In fact, I've just finished writing a paper for the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences that documents the gradual, anagenetic evolution of a succession of three North American mosasaur species. The more we study the fossil record, the better able we are to spot trends like this.

5) Evolution is not testable.

Nonsense. Evolution IS testable for the very reasons outlined in this and other threads. What evolution is not is repeatable. Then again, nor are any events in the past, such as Jesus' resurrection, but I hardly see you begging for repeatability here.

6) There is no biblical support for evolution.

Agreed. There's no biblical support for the existence of cars and black holes, either. But that doesn't mean they don't exist.

7) There is support throughout the Bible that Genesis is literal with a literal Adam and Eve, a literal flood, a literal creation, a literal geneology, etc...

All of which have been dealt with here before...

8) There are just to many things biologically needed for life to be in place. Without those things life is not possible.

... and we are no longer talking about evolution.

I leave you all and challange you all to see God earnestly and allow the Holy Spirit to lead and guide you in the truth.

I did, and here I stand. I cannot do otherwise. God help me, Amen!

 

[gluadys]

Since when does a strawman expose inconsistencies of the other side's logic?

It doesn't. It only exposes the ignorance or deceitfulness of the person who proposes the strawman arguement. So, genez, are you ignorant or deceitful?

Wait! Wait! Wait! According to evolution, as you want us to see it.

No, evolution as it is understood in the scientific community. If you want to claim that evolution is not consistent science, you cannot use a caricature of evolution instead of the scientific account of evolution. Using a caricature (e.g. cats becoming dogs) is just a way to avoid the science of evolution. It shows that you do not understand evolution and that you want to avoid learning about it. You would rather continue to beat your strawman.

I never said it was.

If you knew it is not an accurate portrait of evolution why raise it in the first place? Deal with reality not imagination.

But if we do have the great diversity of creatures?

Please complete the question. "If we do have the great diversity of creatures....?" What? What is your question about this great diversity of creatures?

Which all share a common design which is ultra complex?

The common design was inherited from their common parents---just as the commonalities you and your siblings share was inherited from your common parents.


I sometimes wonder if creationists realise that species are living communities. Reproduction and inheritance account for most common characteristics. Descent with modification. Is that really such a difficult concept to grasp?

What can I say? If God created a dog? It will remain a dog.

What is your definition of "dog" in this case? Are you speaking of the domestic dog? In that case you already know it evolved from a wild wolf-type ancestor.

Are you speaking of the various members of the genus Canis? Do you have any problem with domestic dogs, wild dogs and wolves all evolving from a common ancestor?

Are you speaking of the family Canidiae which also includes coyotes, jackals, foxes and various other dog-like creatures? Do you have any problem thinking of all these diverse creatures as descendants of a single original dog-like species?

And yes, whichever of these definitions you are using, the descendants of the "dog" will remain a "dog". Did you not know that evolution requires this? That is the way God made evolution to work.

Maybe, to mutate slightly from time to time.

Yes, most successful mutations are slight. But mutations also accumulate one on another. How many slight mutations before a species is significantly different from its ancestors and contemporary cousins? If foxes and jackels are both descendants of the original dog-like species, how did they become distinct species?

But? If you try and claim we are an offshoot from the Paleozoic era? Then a lot more than simply dogs becoming cats has taken place! Yet? You say, dogs can not become cats! I agree! That is why we can not have evolved from the Mesozoic era!

I believe this is one of the crucial matters that confounds those that do not understand evolution. Until you look into the sciences that deal with relationships and classification and building the family trees of evolution (e.g. taxonomy, phylogeny, cladistics) it seems ridiculous to say on the one hand that cats do not become dogs, but whales and hippopotami have a common ancestor.

Yet it is not really a terribly difficult thing to understand. Would you say that your cousin is the parent of your children? Of course, not. You are the parent of your children. Your cousin cannot possibly be the parent of your children. But your cousin can have children of his/her own.

Now if you are a dog and your cousin is a cat, you can see easily that no cats turned into dogs. It is not possible because cats are cousins to dogs, not ancestors.

But would you say that your grandparents and your cousins grandparents are the same couple? Yes, of course, you would. That is what makes you cousins--that you share the same grandparents. And through you and your cousin, your children and his/her children share the same great-grandparents and gr.-gr.-gr.........great grandparents as far back as you can go right to the beginning of humanity.

Just so, an animal of long ago can be ancestor to both cats and dogs if we trace their lineage back to the beginning of mammalian carnivores, or to both whales and hippos, if we trace their lineage back to the beginning of mammals.

Why can't you see why I always sic those cats and dogs on you? Its to make you face your own inconsistencies.

But there is no inconsistency when you understand the whole picture.

Cats can not evolved into dogs. I know that. Yet? I am to believe that creatures from the Jurassic period ended up becoming what we see today? How?

Through descent with modification, through evolution. What do you understand about the process of evolution? Where do you see the problem? In mutation? In variation? In inheritance? In natural selection? In speciation? These are the mechanisms of evolution. Which one of them is the weak link?

For, if cats can not become dogs? But, we have come to be what we are from a kingdom of creatures that do not even resemble what we see today? That is what I call...."inconsistency."

But this "inconsistency" is grounded in an incomplete and inaccurate understanding of how evolution works. Improve your knowledge of evolution and the "inconsistency" disappears as the pattern of evolution becomes clear. There is no scientific inconsistency here--only one created by your lack of understanding.

It would be easier for me to believe that a cat evolved from a dog, than to think that the creation we now have living on this earth evolved from bacteria, or a single cell creature (that is still with us today!).....

Given your present lack of good information about evolution, of course it would be easier. But it is also wrong. So you need to let go of what is easy and engage in the work of learning the truth about evolution.

For if it were only a strawman? Why do you stomp on it so fiercely, as you do?

To get it out of the way. As long as you are blinded by the smoke of your burning strawman, you cannot see the reality of evolution.

There was a previous creation. Fossils abound in evidence of this. All life was wiped out. That world was a quivering mass when God got done with it.

While there are evidences of several mass extinctions when almost all life was wiped out, there is no evidence of a time when all life was wiped out. Your theology is not consistent with the history of life on earth.

 

[gluadys]

Since I joined CF I have come and gone and come back to the OT board. In this time it seems to me that the debates are circular. TEs present their "evidence", creationists give the biblical truth, TEs say "God of gaps" or "strawman", creationists say "evolution of gaps" and the whole thing goes around and around and around again. Since I came back I have asked questions (I am thank all who responded to my questions) to try to understand the TEs pov. I have even read material on both sides of the debate and links posted in responce to my questions.

Sorry to see you leave. You asked thoughtful questions. It seems that you have not always absorbed the answers. From the questions you list below, you still seem not to have grasped the difference between abiogenesis and evolution. On the off chance you will read this response, therefore, I will go through your questions.

Oh, and I would not agree that creationists present "the biblical truth". That, in fact, is the heart of the issue. Whose interpretation is a better representation of the biblical truth?

1) There is to many questions which evolution does not attempt to answer or cannot answer.

No scientific theory attempts to answer all questions. It will only attempt to answer questions appropriate to its field of study. How many of the questions evolution does not attempt to answer or cannot answer are actually inappropriate questions? How many questions are still up in the air once inappropriate questions have been eliminated? Are there good reasons why these questions have not been answered yet? Is there ongoing research on these questions--i.e. is science attempting to answer these questions?

What appropriate questions are there for which there is not even an attempt to find an answer?

2) Evolution uses fragment evidence. A part of the evidence is used, not the whole.

Science uses all the evidence that is available. What part of the evidence is not being used in relation to evolution? Can you be specific on this?

Even when all the evidence available is being used, the evidence will still be fragmentary. This is true not only in evolution, but in all fields of science. That is one reason science is not fixed knowledge, but an ongoing accumulation of knowledge. It is also why science cannot be dogmatic about knowledge. It can only claim to have the best explanation of our observations based on current information.

Perhaps the problem is that you are expecting science to have the certainty of religious dogma?

3) We do not know enough about DNA or RNA to make evolution a conclusion. We have only scratched the surface of DNA and RNA research and we don't know how to interprete what we do know.

We certainly do know enough about DNA and RNA to make evolution a conclusion. I think you may actually be referring to abiogenesis here. We do not yet have firm conclusions about abiogenesis.

4) The fossil record does not have process of change from species to species.

In many cases it does. There are beautiful smooth sequences of mollusc evolution which show species to species transitions. Where we do not have species-to-species transitions, we still have transitions that connect genera, families and higher taxa.

5) Evolution is not testable. None of use were at the creation of the first life and any experient that is done is in a controlled enviroment made by humans. The only thing that such experiements prove is that as intelectual beings we can manipulate some change. However in the end as one poster said "a fruitfly and the end of such an experiement is still a fruitfly" (paraphrased).

Again you are actually speaking of abiogenesis, not evolution. Evolution is testable and has been tested, in laboratories and in the wild. Species change is an observed fact.

Your reference to "first life" indicates you are actually thinking of abiogenesis, not evolution. But processes of abiogenesis are also testable and being tested. We may never know exactly how the first life on earth came to be, but I wouldn't be surprised if we eventually come up with half a dozen possibilities and just don't know which one God chose.

The poster you quote obviously doesn't understand evolution. Evolutionists expect the descendants of fruit flies to be fruit flies, as the process of evolution does not allow for a different result. Some descendants of fruit flies will, however, be different species from their ancestors. And that is what evolution is about: origin of new species.

6) There is no biblical support for evolution.

There is no reason to expect biblical support for any scientific theory not known in the life-time of the biblical writers. There is no biblical support for the theory that some diseases are caused by bacteria and viruses either.

7) There is support throughout the Bible that Genesis is literal with a literal Adam and Eve, a literal flood, a literal creation, a literal geneology, etc...

No, there is not. The support for a literal interpretation of these passages is extra-biblical. It comes from a hermeneutic that gives preference to literal interpretations of these passages. Nothing in the bible itself requires this hermeneutic.

8) There are just to many things biologically needed for life to be in place. Without those things life is not possible.

This makes no sense. It amounts to saying that without life, life is impossible. Had you said there are physical and chemical things that need to be in place to make life possible, I would agree. But biological things come from life. So you can't have them before life exists.

What it comes down to is do you believe God is who He says He is and did/does what He says did/does or do you not?

C'mon pastor. You know better than this. Here in OT, we all believe God is who He says and did what He says He did.

We don't all agree with your interpretation of what He said or how He did what He did.

You surely understand that disagreeing with your POV on scripture is not the same as disagreeing with God.