Why do you feel a NEED for theistic evolution?

Al Touthentop said:

Evolution of course isn't one monolithic theory but the first scientists to bolt from the general idea were the taxonomists. The Platypus just cannot be explained because it has too many "parents."

There's nobody who asserts that mammals descended from birds or that birds descended from mammals, yet that would have to be the case in the case of the platypus. It also seems to have descended from poisonous reptiles.

The weakest part of evolution, in my mind is it's failure to explain sexual reproduction. No way. It's absurd to think that such a perfect separation of function could have possibly evolved. The margin of error is too great. Any small part that doesn't evolve properly results in extinction. In fact, how could it evolve at all? The change from asexual reproduction to sexual would have to happen in a single generation. Otherwise the species dies off in a single generation. The idea of sexual reproduction coming about due to evolution is preposterous.

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Sexual reproduction is required for any process of evolution, it's central to it.

Jamdoc said:

Sexual reproduction is required for any process of evolution, it's central to it.

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It isn't possible for sexual reproduction to evolve from another type of reproduction. Two animals from the same species cannot develop sexual organs that work in cooperation with one another over more than one generation. Couldn't be done, wasn't done. The animals were created that way from the beginning. And let's not forget the plants.

SkyWriting said:

Search for "creation" language in greek suggesting "sudden" and you'll find the opposite.

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What word are you talking about specifically?

Al Touthentop said:

It isn't possible for sexual reproduction to evolve from another type of reproduction. Two animals from the same species cannot develop sexual organs that work in cooperation with one another over more than one generation. Couldn't be done, wasn't done. The animals were created that way from the beginning. And let's not forget the plants.

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I wasn't arguing that it happened on its own, what I'm saying is that where God created sexual reproduction, it was intended that there would be change over time in these "kinds".
You could say a "kind" is a taxonomical family or something along that lines. Like Canids, but there are many different Canids, and some are even close enough to breed and have offspring still (Coyotes and wolves for instance). We know that we ourselves were able to, through selective breeding, create a lot of different dog breeds. God can definitely surpass us in that capability.

Jamdoc said:

I wasn't arguing that it happened on its own, what I'm saying is that where God created sexual reproduction, it was intended that there would be change over time in these "kinds".

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This may be your own reconciliation of the theory, but the theory of evolution does not concede that male and female were there from the beginning. Thus it must explain itself as to how it is even possible for sexual reproduction to evolve from asexual reproduction. It can't of course.

Al Touthentop said:

What word are you talking about specifically?

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It really has much more impact if you look yourself. So I am ruining your life by making the case for you. I suck. It's only my pride that causes me to answer.
Just click on words you'd like to research. Consider, do they describe "fast" or "Really slow".

All of them, specifically.
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
25 God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds,
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image,
27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
10 And: “In the beginning, O Lord, You laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands.
13 Surely My own hand founded the earth, and My right hand spread out the heavens; when I summon them, they stand up together.

Al Touthentop said:

This may be your own reconciliation of the theory, but the theory of evolution does not concede that male and female were there from the beginning. Thus it must explain itself as to how it is even possible for sexual reproduction to evolve from asexual reproduction. It can't of course.

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okay, look man
the title of this thread, the whole theme of this thread, is THEISTIC evolution
not naturalist evolution.
THEISTIC
meaning God is involved.
Get over that hump first.

solid_core said:

As it is impossible to manage sailing or trading based on a mythological view of the world, so it is impossible to use mythological model of Genesis for biology, astronomy, meteorology or paleontology.

Therefore some other plausible models must be proposed like the Big Bang Theory or the Theory of Evolution.

But because there is still a need for God as the origin and purpose of all creation and reality, the theistic evolution works for most Christians. Also because we believe that Jesus is the Son of God.

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Way too many problems with theistic evolution. Apart from evolution itself being false, it then begs the question of how could mankind trace its origin to just one man. If you relegate Genesis to the realm of mythology, you are calling Jesus a liar. That's a big call.

The Bible makes it clear that Adam is the forbear of all humanity. He is not an ape like creature that evolved into a human. He was made in God's image. "Made" does not mean "evolved". How does a being receive a spirit? That is not evolution. God created man. From the beginning. It's in black and white.

Aussie Pete said:

Way too many problems with theistic evolution. Apart from evolution itself being false, it then begs the question of how could mankind trace its origin to just one man. If you relegate Genesis to the realm of mythology, you are calling Jesus a liar. That's a big call.

The Bible makes it clear that Adam is the forbear of all humanity. He is not an ape like creature that evolved into a human. He was made in God's image. "Made" does not mean "evolved". How does a being receive a spirit? That is not evolution. God created man. From the beginning. It's in black and white.

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You proclaim evolution "false" because you don't understand what it actually is.
We can demonstrate evolution within a species within a matter of weeks with bacteria. Macroevolution is the same concept on a larger scale. It becomes less and less probable of an occurrence of something that'd happen on its own, but outside stimuli (like environmental pressures, radiation, man selectively breeding them, or simply God acting on them) can pressure evolution to occur. If you shut off a gene in a chicken, it doesn't grow a beak, it grows a dinosaur like snout.

Jamdoc said:

You proclaim evolution "false" because you don't understand what it actually is.
We can demonstrate evolution within a species within a matter of weeks with bacteria. Macroevolution is the same concept on a larger scale. It becomes less and less probable of an occurrence of something that'd happen on its own, but outside stimuli (like environmental pressures, radiation, man selectively breeding them, or simply God acting on them) can pressure evolution to occur. If you shut off a gene in a chicken, it doesn't grow a beak, it grows a dinosaur like snout.

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Genetic manipulation in a laboratory is not evolution. The chicken may have a snout, which may make it ugly but it is still a chicken. It probably won't be for long because it is unlikely to survive The vast amounts of genetic manipulation required to produce a new species have to occur completely randomly, in the real world, and somehow produce a viable creature. "God created" makes vastly more sense to me.

"Researchers estimate that the chicken has about 20,000-23,000 genes in its 1 billion DNA base pairs, compared with the human count of 20,000-25,000 genes in 2.8 billion DNA base pairs."

That's an awful lot of DNA pairs. Quite a lot of genes also. It's hard enough in the lab. In the wild? Nah.

Aussie Pete said:

Genetic manipulation in a laboratory is not evolution. The chicken may have a snout, which may make it ugly but it is still a chicken. It probably won't be for long because it is unlikely to survive The vast amounts of genetic manipulation required to produce a new species have to occur completely randomly, in the real world, and somehow produce a viable creature. "God created" makes vastly more sense to me.

"Researchers estimate that the chicken has about 20,000-23,000 genes in its 1 billion DNA base pairs, compared with the human count of 20,000-25,000 genes in 2.8 billion DNA base pairs."

That's an awful lot of DNA pairs. Quite a lot of genes also. It's hard enough in the lab. In the wild? Nah.

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Again, you're skipping something vital, you're making the same assumption over and over and over, you guys always do this.
Nobody here is saying it is happening on its own, that's the point of Theistic evolution, that it does not happen on its own, that God is working through it. If we can shut off the genes that separate a chicken from a therapod dinosaur, don't you think God can as well, and to a much larger degree than we can?
Theistic evolution IS saying God created, it's just saying God created using this process, where you say God created by poofing it into existence from nothing. Nobody here is debating that God created all life. The only debate is how.
and when I talk about demonstrating microevolution in bacteria in a lab, all you have to do is grow bacteria on media plates with discs of small concentrations of antibiotics on the plate. Each successive culture, you swab from the colonies growing closest to the disc, onto another plate, with more discs of antibiotics, and you titer up the dose. After several generations, you'll find that the bacteria grow right up to the edge of the disc, as they have evolved a trait that makes them not susceptible to that antibiotic's mechanism of action. How is it happening, are the bacteria as each individual cell "learning" to adapt to the antibiotic? No. Some of the bacteria have mutant genes that resist the antibiotic, and while the other bacteria die, they survive and reproduce, you are selectively culturing the bacteria that are able to survive, and moving a trait to fixation. That trait has helped them to survive in an ecological niche, and now you have a new strain. Now repeat that enough times over enough generations with varying different environmental pressures, and theoretically, the bacteria you grow will be so different from the original culture, that they won't be recognizable as the same species anymore.
Where do the original mutations come from? Most spontaneous mutations are deleterious, incompatible with life. So there are 2 options. A naturalist thinks that radiation and errors made in DNA replication are the source of these mutations, that is a very low chance and requires a very long time and a lot of a lot of coincidences and for it to happen across enough breeding pairs in a population for the ball to get rolling. Very low chance of that happening. Theistic evolution? God is manipulating the genes as He wants. It becomes easy then.

KenJackson said:

If evolution was a plausible explanation for how life developed from a microbe, I could understand theistic evolution. The Lord God created us. So the only issue is whether he used something like evolution or not.

But evolution is not plausible. By evolution I refer to the formation of all the taxons from the hypothetical first microbial life to the taxonomic families observed today and in fossils. Evolution should not refer to the formation of new species and genera caused by mutations breaking genes. This speciation (or micro-evolution) is observed and is not contentious so conflating it with evolution only confuses the discussion.

Those of you who believe in theistic evolution, do you actually believe evolution is possible? Do you think there is any evidence from molecular biology? Or do you think fossils actually support evolution better than being hard proof of the flood?

For decades, I didn't investigated the evidence but just accepted what I was told science revealed. Does that describe you?

Why do you feel a need for theistic evolution?

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You say that speciation is not contentious. This is all that evolution is, biologically. It is continuous speciation.

In order to suggest that evolution on a macro scale, is not accurate, you would have to explain what invisible or imaginary barrier ever stops speciation from continuing to occur.

Monna said:

I don't think very much, and I'm not sure I'm so bothered. I am not molecular biologist. But I do have a question: apropo the current pandemic, a professor of virology tells me that a virus is not a living thing. I understand that the corona virus is RNA that cannot reproduce by itself; it is a chain of molecules. Yet viruses mutate, i.e. evolve. The common cold is a corona virus that has mutated into numerous varieties. Does this constitue evidence of evolution at the molecular level? If the virus is not a living thing, is it even part of "biology?"

This is not a challenge, just a straightforward couple of questions.

I have lived and travelled in the tropics most of my life. I had my first bout of malaria when I was 5 months old. (Malaria is not a virus, it is a parasite.) Through the years, and across the tropics, I have experienced a constant change in prophylactic and treatment medicines, in two directions - 1. in one location through time, and 2. within a short period of time but in many different locations. Malaria in one place has become "immune" to the drugs used over time, i.e. there must have been molecular changes to enable malaria to resist the drug being used. Drugs work at the molecular level. But there is variation over space too, so the rate as well as the type of change has apparently been different in different locations. Does this type of change constitute evolution at molecular level?

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It certainly does.

At a biological level, evolution could only be the continuous change of allele frequencies over time. So long as those mutations occur, there is evolution. Just as if someone is taking steps down a side walk, they are walking.

I mentioned this to the OP. The only way to truly suggest that larger scale evolution could not occur, is to demonstrate the existence of a barrier at a small scale. Or a barrier that would stop those steps from being made. But never in the history of mankind has anyone ever seen things like malaria or covid-19 or the flu, stop changing. They've never stopped changing and there is nothing that we are aware of that suggests that they ever would.

KenJackson said:

I don't follow fossils, but it's my understanding that lots of fossils are virtually the same as animals alive today. But 5000 years is lots of time for speciation to make little changes. And of course, a lot have gone extinct.

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I happen to be a geologist published in paleontology of invertebrates. Fossils of the fossil record become more and more different the further in time we go back.

Animals of the pleistocene for example, in some cases are like animals today, such as the case of a whooly mammoth or sabertooth tiger. These animals are similar to elephants and similar to tigers and lions. We also had giant armadillos and giant sloths and giant bears. These sort of similar to what is alive today, yet different.

If we go back into the early cenozoic, whales transition, going backwards, back into land animals. Horses have multiple toes, elephants become more like pig sized without tusks, etc. A lot of animals change.

Some animals remain somewhat similar, such as alligators and sharks. Though as we know, megalodon and prehistoric alligators were some 30+ foot long, far larger than sharks and alligators today. There were titanaboas as well.

Shellfish and starfish, and other species of fish remain similar yet slightly different over time.

As we go back into the mesozoic, of course we have dinosaurs, unlike anything that is alive today (except for birds in that they share talons and feathers, their hip bones are somewhat similar as well, and the shape and details of their skills.

Mammals were largely different. We had anapsids and synapsids, mammal-reptile hybrids, unlike anything today. Flying reptiles such as pterodactyls and swimming reptiles such as pleisiosaurs. Also unlike anything today. Shellfish and some fish and animals of the deep seas still changing yet slowly and somewhat similar to those today.

And as we reach back into the Paleozoic, things stretch back and change even more. Of course fish with toes and wrist bones were present by the early devonian. In the earlier Paleozoic up until the silurian there were no land animals. Which obviously is different from today. Prior to carboniferous there were no reptiles or birds or mammals at all, in the sea or on land. Much different than today. Though after the carboniferous reptiles began to dominate, still long before mammals and birds appeared.

And as we stretch back further to the early Cambrian, all we have to do is Google "opabinia" and "anomalocaris", and within a matter of seconds we can see that life was significantly different then than today. And even as we go back further into the pre Cambrian, we have microscopic shelled animals like cloudina and sinotubulites. We have worm-arthropod hybrids and contested species of arthropod, mollusks and annelids. Animals that are difficult to classify because they hold traits of multiple genus'. They being soft bodied are also few in number. But again, very very different than modern day life.

So the point is that, when we really spread the geologic column out, we certainly see continual change over time, and no modern day species is found anywhere in the fossil record beyond the latest parts of the cenozoic.

KenJackson said:

If evolution was a plausible explanation for how life developed from a microbe, I could understand theistic evolution. The Lord God created us. So the only issue is whether he used something like evolution or not.

But evolution is not plausible. By evolution I refer to the formation of all the taxons from the hypothetical first microbial life to the taxonomic families observed today and in fossils. Evolution should not refer to the formation of new species and genera caused by mutations breaking genes. This speciation (or micro-evolution) is observed and is not contentious so conflating it with evolution only confuses the discussion.

Those of you who believe in theistic evolution, do you actually believe evolution is possible? Do you think there is any evidence from molecular biology? Or do you think fossils actually support evolution better than being hard proof of the flood?

For decades, I didn't investigated the evidence but just accepted what I was told science revealed. Does that describe you?

Why do you feel a need for theistic evolution?

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As I seem to recall from my early days in college, all life is made up of a mixture of only 5 base pairs of DNA. A tree might appear to look similar to something else but perhaps every 5,000 strings of DNA code there is a separation from being identical to something else. I am trying to recall the first estimate of the probability that life is elsewhere in the universe. On that point I heavily disagreed with the estimate. A more recent estimate done by I assume a Christian scientist put the probability at 1 in 10^40,000. That is a number so big that it might equal a fair fraction of all the particles in the universe. I’m trying to recall if the current estimate for total number of particles in the universe is 1X10^80,000. The Bible in the New Testament when Speaking of the gathering
Mark.13

1. 
   [27] And then shall he send his angels, and shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from the uttermost part of the earth to the uttermost part of heaven.

Matt.24

1. 
   [31] And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.

1. 
   I have no problem believing that God created life elsewhere in the universe based on The Word Above. However I do have a major problem believing that anyone from a different solar system ever visited earth. Occam’s Razor is a very simple yet powerful way to find the truth. We were very well trained in how to breakdown seemingly impossible problems and then solve them. For a number of years a subscribed to Scientific American and MIT Review. The amazing theories that have been strongly supported by reality and from what I’ve seen always based on a very simple principle. God gave us an inquisitive nature. I believe that God’s elect will spend an eternity ever learning the Wisdom and understanding that only The GodHead can deliver.

KenJackson said:

If evolution was a plausible explanation for how life developed from a microbe, I could understand theistic evolution. The Lord God created us. So the only issue is whether he used something like evolution or not.

But evolution is not plausible. By evolution I refer to the formation of all the taxons from the hypothetical first microbial life to the taxonomic families observed today and in fossils. Evolution should not refer to the formation of new species and genera caused by mutations breaking genes. This speciation (or micro-evolution) is observed and is not contentious so conflating it with evolution only confuses the discussion.

Those of you who believe in theistic evolution, do you actually believe evolution is possible? Do you think there is any evidence from molecular biology? Or do you think fossils actually support evolution better than being hard proof of the flood?

For decades, I didn't investigated the evidence but just accepted what I was told science revealed. Does that describe you?

Why do you feel a need for theistic evolution?

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They need it because people in white coats have said that evolution is a fact.

However, Evolution does not explain how life, DNA, the cell and protein got here.. they skip right over all of that because it's impossible.

So, along come Christians who are trying to accept the atheistic Darwinian model of how we all came to be us. (goo to you by way of the zoo so to speak) and they just say that God made the DNA, the cell and the protein and gave it life... and they are good to go and not debate with their professors and scientists.


In my opinion.. listen... this is my opinion.. If God said that He did it... and God can do it... HE DID IT... just like He said that He did.. Six days.


The so called wisdom of men will show them to be fools.

SkyWriting said:

It really has much more impact if you look yourself. So I am ruining your life by making the case for you. I suck. It's only my pride that causes me to answer.
Just click on words you'd like to research. Consider, do they describe "fast" or "Really slow".

All of them, specifically.
1 In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
25 God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds,
26 Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image,
27 So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.
10 And: “In the beginning, O Lord, You laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands.
13 Surely My own hand founded the earth, and My right hand spread out the heavens; when I summon them, they stand up together.

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Well you said Greek words. Then you point to scriptures written originally in Hebrew as if that's responsive.

The words you are quoting do not at all suggest slowness. Barah is the word used in Genesis 1:1 and it means to shape or create. The Hebrew scholars of 300 BC translated that word to the Greek 'εποιησεν' which means "made." There isn't anything in the grammar to suggest that this was a slow process. What the grammar actually suggests that the making was completed action.

In fact, the text tells us that on the third day the plants were made fully mature with fruit already on them. "Made" in the Greek is not perfective in verse one (action that continues) but aorist.

The time statements tell us that these creations occurred in 24 hour periods and also give us the basis by which the Jews would eventually measure their own days from evening to morning rather than from morning to evening as is our current custom. For the Jews, the days began at dusk rather than dawn.

Jesus himself says that man was created whole and complete at the time they were created. They weren't made to evolve.

Mark 10:6 -- "But from the beginning of the creation, God 'made them male and female.'

There's no indication of any delay or slowness or process. They were made instantaneously as adult humans. You will have to do better than this to ruin my life.

KomatiiteBIF said:

And as we stretch back further to the early Cambrian, all we have to do is Google "opabinia" and "anomalocaris", and within a matter of seconds we can see that life was significantly different then than today. And even as we go back further into the pre Cambrian, we have microscopic shelled animals like cloudina and sinotubulites. We have worm-arthropod hybrids and contested species of arthropod, mollusks and annelids. Animals that are difficult to classify because they hold traits of multiple genus'. They being soft bodied are also few in number. But again, very very different than modern day life.

So the point is that, when we really spread the geologic column out, we certainly see continual change over time, and no modern day species is found anywhere in the fossil record beyond the latest parts of the cenozoic.

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Actually, what you have with those examples is a tiny fraction of the data needed to make the conclusions you are making. If you went into a house once inhabited by a family of humans and find a Polaroid snapshot in a forgotten corner and then try and deduce from that the whole world's makeup, you're just operating on pure conjecture. You can't reasonably assert that the the entire world is a particular way because you found one or two odd artifacts. It seems that only with evolutionary theory would such a tiny data set be used to draw such broad conclusions.

The platypus holds traits of multiple genus. What does that say about the rest of the species of the world? One thing it would tend to suggest is that animals that appear to have descended from multiple sources exist even now and past evidence of this does not prove anything other than there also once were more animals like this. If you found a fossil of a California Condor because they hadn't been saved from extinction, all it would prove is that animal once existed. It wouldn't tell you what other animals also existed at that time. The absence of animals in a particular era of the fossil record is not proof of anything. You can't use this absence as proof that the varieties of species we recognize today didn't exist at that time also.

Al Touthentop said:

Actually, what you have with those examples is a tiny fraction of the data needed to make the conclusions you are making. If you went into a house once inhabited by a family of humans and find a Polaroid snapshot in a forgotten corner and then try and deduce from that the whole world's makeup, you're just operating on pure conjecture. You can't reasonably assert that the the entire world is a particular way because you found one or two odd artifacts. It seems that only with evolutionary theory would such a tiny data set be used to draw such broad conclusions.

The platypus holds traits of multiple genus. What does that say about the rest of the species of the world? One thing it would tend to suggest is that animals that appear to have descended from multiple sources exist even now and past evidence of this does not prove anything other than there also once were more animals like this. If you found a fossil of a California Condor because they hadn't been saved from extinction, all it would prove is that animal once existed. It wouldn't tell you what other animals also existed at that time. The absence of animals in a particular era of the fossil record is not proof of anything. You can't use this absence as proof that the varieties of species we recognize today didn't exist at that time also.

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The platypus actually fits in quite well with the fossil record.

And what I mean by this is that, the platypus actually appears in the fossil record post-monotreme and post mammal. We have platypus ancestral fossils as well.

It is true that it has a bill similar to a ducks, but that doesn't mean that it is half bird, nor does having venom make an animal part reptile. Some catapillars are venomous too, but that doesn't make a king cobra part-insect. Surely you understand this.

It's a matter of cladistics, and if you would like further explanation, feel free to ask.

And If you have a personal problem with there not being rabbit fossils of the cambrian, you are more than welcome to join us in our digs so that you have the opportunity to find your rabbit. Nobody is stopping you.

KomatiiteBIF said:

And If you have a personal problem with there not being rabbit fossils of the cambrian, you are more than welcome to join us in our digs so that you have the opportunity to find your rabbit. Nobody is stopping you.

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I don't have a personal problem with the absence of a rabbit in the fossil record. I have a problem with one drawing a conclusion that it couldn't have existed. The absence of a fossil recording of a rabbit is not proof that the rabbit didn't exist during that period.