Also, it is up to those who claim that God influences evolution to provide the evidence that God influences evolution. Until such evidence is presented, we will stick with the mechanisms that we have evidence for.
As for the mechanism which people have evidence for, I see no reason to believe that an atheistic worldview is backed by science. When I wrote, "Couldn't we say God created various forms of life which later evolved..." I was responding to the post in a way to attempt to meet in the middle, and say yes, we can also believe in evolution, we don't need to fight over it, and we don't need to force people to give up God to believe in evolution. I wasn't trying to get the atheist community to accept my idea.
What part of the theory of evolution would need to change if the first life on Earth were created by God, and all the life and species we see today evolved through natural processes from that first created life that we all share as a common ancestor?
One user answered, "The random, mindless, meaningless, purposeless, goalless part." Later, you asked why.
Christians believe God made life with a goal in mind. Life is purposeful, which isn't random, or mindless.
We also point to the genetic data which supports a lack of guidance. (...)
What we see is a nested hierarchy which is consistent with unguided natural selection and random mutation.
In what way does genetic data support a lack of guidance? As far as I know, it does not. I believe in mutations, but the add-on of the word random is gratuitous and not empirically backed. Show me the empirical evidence for randomness, as far as I know, there is none, and belief in randomness is like belief in a multiverse, there is no empirical evidence for it.
A creator would be able to put the same sequences in very distantly related species, but that isn't what we see. Instead, we see genes with the same function that have very different sequences. We also see lineage specific adaptations which is what you would expect to see from an unguided process.
According to a source I came across, it seems that we do see the same sequences in different species with the same functions.
One of the most profound impacts of the last decade of research in developmental biology has been the realization that the development of a large number of what were previously thought to be analogous structures in diverse animal Phyla is in fact regulated by homologous genes, to the point that the non-homologous origin of such structures is questioned.
In other words, what developmental molecular biologists have recently discovered is that the same genes and genetic regulatory networks seem to be sometimes used to transform totally unrelated embryonic structures into totally different organs… that serve the same function! A very crude comparison would be as follows: imagine that you could build a cargo train and a trailer truck with different raw materials but the exact same instructions and toolbox. - See more at:
http://www.hypothesisjournal.com/?p=287#sthash.8VTTd5W8.dpuf
As for lineage specific adaptations, care to elaborate? I don't see how such things give us reason to think of life a ateleological.
Additionally, please note that I believe evolution can be unguided in the sense that God can create something, ie the universe, and watch it work like a clock. He doesn't have to guide the hands to make time go. I just wanted to clarify that a christian can believe in evolution as unguided in that sense, but still have a teleological view.
Both experiments demonstrate that mutations are random with respect to fitness.
They actually don't. Rather they presuppose randomness. The point wasn't to make a metaphysical claim either.
Here's what the article says:
Their results, along with those of many other experiments, have shown that environmental stress does not direct or cause genetic changes; it simply selects rare preexisting mutations that result in phenotypes better adapted to the new environment.
Perhaps unbeknownst to them, randomness is a philosophical add-on, unless of course, they refer to statistical randomness, which is related to how we conduct surveys.
It does model randomness, and when the data fits the random model the conclusion is that the process is random. That is the case for mutation.
Explain what you mean by random. Do you mean, without cause? Do you mean without procedure or method?
