Evolution

[FaithT]

I’m very sorry to hear that! Let me just say, first of all, that you will not go to hell if you believe in Macroevolution. Many Christians do.

However, I believe this to be very problematic for the reasons mentioned above, namely because this is an unsuccessful attempt to explain the miracle of creation. It is an attempt to harmonise what is essentially Pantheism (the unscientific belief that nature created itself) with Christianity. Macroevolution, simply, is not hard factual science, but consists of different competing theories.

We do well to trust God’s Word, and to remember that what is created out of nothing cannot be measured.

I don’t know if I believe in macroevolution or not. I’m just not sure.

 

[FaithT]

I could write now a 3-page long explanation why the dating methods that are used by scientists are not reliable, but maybe you'd prefer getting a good book about the topic.

Here are some recommendations:

1) In six days - Why 50 scientists choose to believe in Creation, edited by John F. Ashton PhD

2) Thousands, Not Billions by The R.A.T.E. Project Team at Institute for Creation Research

3) The Answers Book (any volumes) by Ken Ham and associates

4) Dating Rocks and Fossils, video presentation by Mike Riddle

5) How Old Is the Earth? by Eugene Sattler

6) “The Collapse Of ‘Geologic Time’”, by Steve Taylor, Andy McIntosh, and Tas Walker, Creation, September 2001

7) Radioactive ‘dating’ in conflict, Andrew Snelling, Creation, December 1997.

8) The Young Earth, Dr. John Morris

9) The Young Age of the Earth DVD

10) Starlight and Time, Dr. Russell Humphreys

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

[FaithT]

I’m very sorry to hear that! Let me just say, first of all, that you will not go to hell if you believe in Macroevolution. Many Christians do.
.

yes, but do many LCMS Lutherans believe in macroevolution.

 

[Daniel9v9]

yes, but do many LCMS Lutherans believe in macroevolution.

I don’t know how many, but some do. It would be understood as a heterodox view.

 

[Roymond]

To this very day there is no mechanism in any cell that could increase/add information. There is not a single mutation known that is not a loss of information.
To this very day there is also no single case known of a species developing into a different species. Dogs stay dogs, bacteria stay bacteria. No matter how much you breed them, no matter how much you change their DNA on purpose.

Survival of the fittest (natural selection) is easily observable, but there is no observable evidence that would hint to a evolution from amoeba to man.
One of evolution’s leading advocates in the world today, Steve Jones, Professor of Genetics at University College, London, wrote: „The fossil record – in defiance of Darwin’s whole idea of gradual change – often makes great leaps from one form to the next. Far from the display of intermediates to be expected from slow advance through natural selection, many species appear without warning, persist in fixed form, and disappear, leaving no descendents. Geology assuredly does not reveal any finely graduated organic chain, and this is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against the theory of evolution".

Your first sentence is completely false -- there are several ways that genetic information gets increased -- in fact I've observed two of them in my flower bed: duplication of chromosomes, and genes jumping from one organism to another.

Your second sentence is also false. My favorite example is a species of bacteria that lived in a stream that got polluted/poisoned due to improper management of a gold mine. A ranger got curious and took samples from along the stream, going continually downstream until he was getting live microorganisms. He put those into an aquarium and let them multiply, and in the meantime set up another aquarium. When he had a large population in the first aquarium, he transferred some to the second and let them multiply -- and then he added the same poisons to the water that existed in the stream. A few of the organisms died off, but most lived just like their fellows out in the stream. So the second aquarium became the control, unchanged thereafter. In the now-experimental aquarium, he increased the concentration of poisons slightly. Most of the microorganisms died, but the survivors multiplied; he took some out and stored them, numbering them to show they were the first survivors of an increase. Then he repeated the increase in poisons; again some survive, he set some aside and let the others breed.
He continued this process, occasionally losing a whole batch but trying again without as large an increase. But then one day something odd happened: not only were some microorganisms surviving the latest increase in the poisons, the concentration of those poisons dropped. Wondering if he'd made a mistake, he ran that batch again, and again the poison concentration dropped. So he let that batch multiply and increased the concentration again -- and this time the concentration dropped even more!

So he got someone who knew how to analyze the genes of his microorganisms to help. They first sorted the different species into separate populations, and ran another test. This time, only one tank showed a drop in concentration -- so that was the one they wanted to examine. It turned out that this population of whatever species it was had one chromosome that was longer than its ancestors had had (example of increase of information). On close examination, it was found that a section of that chromosome had gotten copied, so there was a stretch of it that repeated -- and in that stretch, something had changed one of the sequences (example of new information). The result of that change was that this population of microorganisms had an ability its ancestors had lacked: it didn't just survive at a higher level of poisons, it actually metabolized one of them and broke it up, thereby reducing the concentration of that poison! (not just new information but a new ability).

And your third statement is false. One of the classic examples is a population of birds on the Atlantic coast of Europe. The original population lived in a limited region; I'll call that population group A. For some reason, a portion of that population migrated northward and settled in to a slightly different environment -- this is group B. Over the years, the same thing happened again, a group migrating away from B and settling in to become group C. The process repeated, resulting in population D -- and then E, and then F.
This sequence of population shifts was documented. No one thought much of it until some biologists got interested. First they established that each group could successfully mate with its neighbors. Then they learned that while A was fully fertile with B, A was less fertile with C. Pursuing this, they found that A was barely fertile at all with D -- and that A could not interbreed with E or F at all, while B could not interbreed with F.
By the standard definition of a species, groups E and F were different species than A, and B was a different species than F. It took four steps of changing populations, but a new species had arisen due to genetic changes resulting from the successive populations adjusting to their new environments.
Unfortunately the article where this was reported didn't include any information about the actual chromosomes being examined.

Just two more: One blew me away when I read the paper in university botany class -- in bomb craters in London after World War II, plants were found that no one had ever seen before. They were examined genetically, and the botanists figured out what their ancestors had been and tried to crossbreed them. In some cases it worked, in others it didn't. By the standard definition of a species, the impact of pressure, heat, and chemicals on the seeds of some common plants in London that managed to grow, new species had been made -- and not with a slow process, either.
[Of course there were also weird versions of known plants that could still be recognized -- stems changed from straight to crooked, flowers had more petals and/or sepals, leaf spacing changed, etc.]

The second happened in a biology lab as an accident (which just means they weren't trying to do it): a species of single-celled organisms suddenly became multi-celled! The cells were all still the same, but they were connecting and interacting in ways they hadn't done before. Last I read, there's no explanation yet, but the switch from single-celled to multi-celled is huge!

 

[Roymond]

What about the great leaps from one form to the next, appearing and disappearing? Doesn’t that suggest Macroevolution? if not, why not?

Actually what suggests macroevolution is the large number of forms that have been found that were predicted on the basis of forms already found. It's enough that one prominent biologist has said that almost all that are being found now are transitional forms!

 

[Roymond]

In my university days I belonged to an informal club we called our "intelligent design" club. It was made up almost completely of former atheists and agnostics who due to studying science had concluded that there must be a Designer. What's relevant to this thread is that a not-quite-majority of these students reached the conclusion that there must be a Designer due to studying evolution. They understood the theory well and saw in it a system so elegant that only a super-intelligent entity could have come up with it.

The other side of that situation was that students who had been raised believing in young-Earth Creationism comprised the majority of Christians who abandoned their faith, for the simple reason that just about every single science contradicts the claim of a young Earth.

For this reason I say that the LCMS is foolish for having officially stepped into the young-Earth camp: it will drive people away. And I have never once seen or even heard of someone coming to faith due to hearing the claims of a young Earth.

Believing in a young Earth adds nothing to anyone's knowledge of God. It is therefore not worthy of being made a doctrine!