Evolution vs Creation

[SuperSaint4GodDBZStyle]

Also Servant. How long have you been a scientist and what do you have a degree in?

 

[SuperSaint4GodDBZStyle]

I got an Associate's in Biology so far and a Scholarship from NASA.

 

[Servant222]

Thank you; very informative- I did a quick read through but obviously, this will take some time to digest. On first reading, though, there seems to be a strong case for macroevolution.

Again, I haven't dismissed evolution- quite the contrary. My question is with how much change evolutionary biology can tolerate within the bounds of good science. I am also participating here to learn- and an inevitable part of learning is a willingness to change one's mind. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."

In the geological sciences, I have occasionally had the same "frustrations" that perhaps are being expressed here when it comes to the question of the age of the earth. I have great problems with a young earth (<10,000 years)- if nothing else, the 400,000 years of ice layers found in the Vostok ice cores seem to provide very convincing evidence that the earth must be much older. The age of light coming from distant galaxies is also very difficult for a young earth adherent to explain if one accepts that the speed of light has been constant throughout time. I note these points only because they also relate to the issue of time in evolutionary theory.

So an obvious question (and a very sincere one) for all of the theistic evolutionists here is then this: how do you rationalize your Christian beliefs with your scientific endeavors? Is it simply that you believe that God used the mechanism of evolution to produce the multitude of species that we see today? Or, as I suspect, is it more profound than that?

 

[notto]

So an obvious question (and a very sincere one) for all of the theistic evolutionists here is then this: how do you rationalize your Christian beliefs with your scientific endeavors?

Christ's teachings had little to do with understanding biology. There is no rationalization to be done. Accepting mainstream science in no way prevents me from following Christ's teachings or being a Christian.

You might as well be asking how we rationalize Christian beliefs with acceptance of relativity or gravity.

Basically, I refuse to accept the blatant falsehood that creationists peddle that one must reject sound science to be a Christian.

What exactly do you think needs to be 'rationalized'? Science teaches us about the creation. It seems that it is really creationists who rationalize by attempting to fit their rigid biblical interpretation against the conflicting reality of the creation.

Suggesting things like changing speed of light, rapid plate tectonics, a vapor canopy, and rapid speciation after the flood (all contradicted by actual evidence) is where the rationalization in this debate is happening.

Glad to hear you are looking at this with an open mind. Hopefully after reading what has been provided you will realize just how off your characterization of the evidence was and won't repeat it in the future.

 

[chaoschristian]

If this analogy is valid, then what it implies is that in the reproductive organs/processes of all biological life are teams of teeny-tiny union workers labouring away at teeny-tiny assembly lines; that genetics is frivolous, as God directly and continuously creates every single new organism by direct command and action that the life forms themselves are not able to undertake themselves (in a physical biological sense, not a theological one).

When one cars gives birth to another car through organic means, then I will accept modern creationism.

I agree Servant. My favorite car is the Mistubishi Evolution Lancer. This is a good example of micro-evolution in which we observe. They have all these different types of Evo's from Japan but it doesn't turn into a Galant, it stays in the form of Lancer. As God created man, this is an example of Man creating cars. But many evolutionists say that it must be naturalistic, but it just can't happen without the help of a Creator.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

So an obvious question (and a very sincere one) for all of the theistic evolutionists here is then this: how do you rationalize your Christian beliefs with your scientific endeavors? Is it simply that you believe that God used the mechanism of evolution to produce the multitude of species that we see today? Or, as I suspect, is it more profound than that?


i read several of the books that gave rise to sociobiology. Now that the field is called evolutionary psychology and has exploded in volume i certainly haven't kept up with even the popular books or authors. but yet from the beginning of my reading i was impressed at exactly how much metaphysics was being imported into the science, how much expectations were being used to drive the theorizing. is it a "real science" or a metaphysics masquerading as one? i don't know. but i do know that the geology demonstrating deep time is not metaphysics, but good solid science primarily done 150-200 years ago by Christians seeking answers to questions that arose in Genesis. YECism is fighting good science with bad theology on this front. But does that make a battle with evolutionary psychology as a metaphysics also wrong? no, there is something fundamentally religious about much of their writings and conclusions, but i am at a loss as to how to define and combat it. Which is a shame, so much time is spent on the YECism debate that little energy is left over to combat the potentially really important issues like evolutionary psychology.

 

[random_guy]

I am not a biologist; my expertise is in geology and engineering so please bear with me if I appear to be ignorant of the language biologists use, and haven't read all the peer-reviewed papers in a field other than my own. But don't evolutionary biologists believe in the "tree of life"- that through natural selection, a single, accidentally-formed simple living cell produced every species seen today?

Okay, maybe this analogy makes sense. As a geologist, you know that YECism has been falsified by geology. Processes such as plate tectonics, radioactive dating, and geological column all faslify YECism. How do you feel about Creationists who have not studied your field, but declare your work to be false since no one was there to observe any of these processes? How do you feel about Creationists who say "historical" geology is not a science since things may have been different in the past (Flood causing the Earth's magnetic field to reverse very rapidly, etc...)?

You're basically making the same claims as the Creationists when it comes to evolution. There's lots of evidence, but unless you're in the field or take time out to study it, you may think that it's based on assumptions, when in fact, common descent is a conclusion based on evidence. You may think that common descent is not scientific, but to the scientists that actually work in the field, they follow the exact same scientific method as you and other geologists. Does this make sense?

Many Christians subscribe to the notion that God created most individual species, including humans, in one instant of creation. Some of those individual living species (like dinosaurs) became extinct, others evolved to produce the variations that we see in each species (Europeans, Asians, Afro-Americans, First Nations, etc.; which begs the interesting question of what race Adam and Eve were).

So one theory is that life began as a single point, the other that life started from many points- all created by God in one instant of creation, as described in Genesis.

Well, according to evidence, it points that all of life descended from a common ancestor, and that all the fossils we found were not extant at the same time. Likewise, many Christians believe that there was a global Flood in the past 6000 years, but as a geologist, you know that there is no evidence for a global Flood as described in the Bible. How do you reconcile your field with Flood geology or YECism?

 

[Servant222]

random_guy wrote:

You're basically making the same claims as the Creationists when it comes to evolution. There's lots of evidence, but unless you're in the field or take time out to study it, you may think that it's based on assumptions, when in fact, common descent is a conclusion based on evidence. You may think that common descent is not scientific, but to the scientists that actually work in the field, they follow the exact same scientific method as you and other geologists. Does this make sense?

It does- and I stand corrected.

But your last point is worth expanding on. Until the exploratory voyages in the Mediterranean Sea of the research vessel Glomar Challenger in the 1970's, no one ever dreamed that a massive flood of Biblical proportions was possible.

However, the data collected by the team led by Kenneth J. Hsu indicates that at some point in the past (I'm deliberately leaving out the dates to avoid sidetracking controversies), northward movement of the African plate closed off the Mediterranean at the strait of Gibraltar, which then in turn caused the Mediterranean Sea to dry up (more water evaporates from its surface than comes in from its contributary basins). This encouraged civilized enclaves that bordered the Mediterranean to move down hill as the waters receded. Eventually, continued movement of the African plate caused downwarping of the land bridge at Gibraltar, and allowed a sudden and massive flood of Atlantic ocean water to inundate the entire Mediterranean basin. Now I realize that this was not a global flood as described in the Bible, but it was certainly an event that would have registered quite strongly with the people of that era, and caused massive destruction.

To get the full story, one really should go back to the original papers written by Hsu on this subject; the best that I have is in a special oceanographic volume of Scientific American published in 1977 or so.

 

[random_guy]

It does- and I stand corrected.

But your last point is worth expanding on. Until the exploratory voyages in the Mediterranean Sea of the research vessel Glomar Challenger in the 1970's, no one ever dreamed that a massive flood of Biblical proportions was possible.

However, the data collected by the team led by Kenneth J. Hsu indicates that at some point in the past (I'm deliberately leaving out the dates to avoid sidetracking controversies), northward movement of the African plate closed off the Mediterranean at the strait of Gibraltar, which then in turn caused the Mediterranean Sea to dry up (more water evaporates from its surface than comes in from its contributary basins). This encouraged civilized enclaves that bordered the Mediterranean to move down hill as the waters receded. Eventually, continued movement of the African plate caused downwarping of the land bridge at Gibraltar, and allowed a sudden and massive flood of Atlantic ocean water to inundate the entire Mediterranean basin. Now I realize that this was not a global flood as described in the Bible, but it was certainly an event that would have registered quite strongly with the people of that era, and caused massive destruction.

To get the full story, one really should go back to the original papers written by Hsu on this subject; the best that I have is in a special oceanographic volume of Scientific American published in 1977 or so.

Oh, I'm not saying that there wasn't ever a great flood that wiped out a large part of humanity. I believe that this has happened and helped inspire flood stories. I was talking about a Global Flood, as the one described by Creationists (waters rose over all the mountains, waters breaking from the depths of the Earth, mountains all being created by the Flood, all living life except those on Noah's boat surviving, etc...). I don't doubt that there was a massive flood in the Mediterranean.

 

[Assyrian]

I agree Servant. My favorite car is the Mistubishi Evolution Lancer. This is a good example of micro-evolution in which we observe. They have all these different types of Evo's from Japan but it doesn't turn into a Galant, it stays in the form of Lancer. As God created man, this is an example of Man creating cars. But many evolutionists say that it must be naturalistic, but it just can't happen without the help of a Creator.

Species don't evolve into another already existing genus. Dogs will never evolve into cats, but a distant ancestor evolved into both dogs and cats. Your Lancer could never evolve across into a Galant, does that mean they didn't have a common ancestor? Your Mitsubishi and my Renault, all of the cars and trucks we see today have a common ancestor in the 1885 Benz Patent Motorwagen.



If cars could reproduce that is. Maybe they do by infecting engineers with the automotive design meme...

 

[shernren]

So an obvious question (and a very sincere one) for all of the theistic evolutionists here is then this: how do you rationalize your Christian beliefs with your scientific endeavors? Is it simply that you believe that God used the mechanism of evolution to produce the multitude of species that we see today? Or, as I suspect, is it more profound than that?

I'd agree mostly with notto that there isn't really much to "rationalize". It's not as if we have a square peg and a round hole and need to do some modifications before the two fit together.

But switching from YEC to TE did involve some changes for me, some of which are still open questions to me now. Most of these changes came in the form of questions that opened up as I considered the evidence. For example, YECs often argue that an old earth means that death and suffering existed before sin. This isn't actually a spurious argument (although it has its answers), and it was something I needed to work through. What does it mean in Genesis 1 when God says everything is "very good"? How does this connect with Job 39 where God essentially presents a bestiary of cruelty and wantonness to Job? What does perfection mean, anyway, in a world where nature is red in tooth and claw - and furthermore that this savagery seems to be utterly ingrained into the mechanisms of our biosphere?

Another angle related to the relationship between Scripture, revelation, and God. When I say that God reveals Himself in Scripture, to what extent is this true? After all, Scripture itself says that Jesus is God's Word (John 1) ; doesn't this mean that Jesus is the ultimate revelation of God, not the Bible? What is the relationship of one to another? And how are science and the natural world related to both? When I use my common sense to interpret the Bible, am I not actually using my knowledge of the natural world to interpret the Bible? Is this different from using science to interpret the Bible, and if so, how?

The final angle was the relationship between God's workings and science. What does it mean for God to "do something" in our world? When I thank God for good weather, or good grades, am I not thanking God for something that has a naturalistic explanation - and how is my thanking God related to that naturalistic explanation? And how are miracles related to science? What role, if any, does science play in "authenticating" miracles?

These were the "more profound" things, as you put it, that came with me accepting evolution.

 

[SuperSaint4GodDBZStyle]

Servant a lot of people suggest the earth is old because that they have thought like that for a long time and it is very difficult to change your thinking.

I have heard this from Dr. Steve Wolfe, a Geologist by profression and a college professor. You can watch his seminar

Dinosaurs and The Bible on

www.nwcreation.net

 

[Mallon]

Servant a lot of people suggest the earth is old because that they have thought like that for a long time and it is very difficult to change your thinking.

The original thinking was that the earth was young. Old isn't the default; young is. People switched to thinking the earth was old because of the evidence, not because of some ingrained fundamentalism.

 

[Dannager]

Servant a lot of people suggest the earth is old because that they have thought like that for a long time and it is very difficult to change your thinking.

Nah, they suggest that because the earth really is old and know this because of a freaking enormous body of empirical evidence that attests to this.

In general, scientists have a pretty easy time changing their thinking when contrary evidence is presented. In fact, it's a job requirement. Religious fundamentalists, on the other hand, seem to have an incredibly difficult time changing their thinking in light of contrary evidence. You might say that's also a job requirement.

 

[SuperSaint4GodDBZStyle]

I object really. Becuase I believe on the actually 6day account that God said in the Bible. So, I take God's word as absolute truth.

"God's Word is the judge, not majority opinion." - Quote from Dr. Kent Hovind.

 

[SuperSaint4GodDBZStyle]

In a sense, I know for a fact that some scientists do have a hard time with looking at an old earth and comparing to what Scripture says about Creation.

 

[Mallon]

"I didn't do it." - "Dr." Kent Hovind.

 

[SuperSaint4GodDBZStyle]

Okay now you're talking about Dr. Hovind's financial court cases. You're getting off topic.

 

[rmwilliamsll]

I object really. Becuase I believe on the actually 6day account that God said in the Bible. So, I take God's word as absolute truth.

"God's Word is the judge, not majority opinion." - Quote from Dr. Kent Hovind.

no. to be accurate you take your interpretation of what Scripture says to be authoritative and absolute Truth. unless you are God Himself, your interpretation is not the same thing as what the Scriptures say, but rather a human attempt to understand them, and therefore as frail and erring as all human thought is.

 

[Dannager]

I object really. Becuase I believe on the actually 6day account that God said in the Bible. So, I take God's word as absolute truth.

You're not taking God's word as truth, though. You're taking a literal interpretation of God's word, that happens to be glaringly incorrect, as truth.

Oh, and Mr. Hovind is a crock. Don't listen to him. He is a liar, a cheat, and a criminal.