[_ Old Earth _] Is evolutionism compatible with the Bible?

[Barbarian]

I know that Behe believes in common descent but I've never heard him refer to himself as an evolutionist.

Seems to me Darwinism is a theory in trouble

Even many YE creationists admit that it isn't.

Evolution is not a theory in crisis. It is not teetering on the verge of collapse. It has not failed as a scientific explanation. There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it. It is not just speculation or a faith choice or an assumption or a religion. It is a productive framework for lots of biological research, and it has amazing explanatory power. There is no conspiracy to hide the truth about the failure of evolution. There has really been no failure of evolution as a scientific theory. It works, and it works well.

I say these things not because I'm crazy or because I've "converted" to evolution. I say these things because they are true. I'm motivated this morning by reading yet another clueless, well-meaning person pompously declaring that evolution is a failure. People who say that are either unacquainted with the inner workings of science or unacquainted with the evidence for evolution. (Technically, they could also be deluded or lying, but that seems rather uncharitable to say. Oops.)

Creationist students, listen to me very carefully: There is evidence for evolution, and evolution is an extremely successful scientific theory. That doesn't make it ultimately true, and it doesn't mean that there could not possibly be viable alternatives. It is my own faith choice to reject evolution, because I believe the Bible reveals true information about the history of the earth that is fundamentally incompatible with evolution. I am motivated to understand God's creation from what I believe to be a biblical, creationist perspective. Evolution itself is not flawed or without evidence. Please don't be duped into thinking that somehow evolution itself is a failure. Please don't idolize your own ability to reason. Faith is enough. If God said it, that should settle it. Maybe that's not enough for your scoffing professor or your non-Christian friends, but it should be enough for you.

I think that's all I want to say today. Rant over.
http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2009/09/truth-about-evolution.html

You didn't mention Meyers.

Meyers is a founder of the Discovery Institute, which has declared it's purpose to advance a particular religious philosophy.

Governing Goals

• To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
• To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.

"Wedge Document" of the Discovery Institute.

So really not relevant to the scientific question. Moreover, his particular belief does not rule out evolution.

 

[Papa Zoom]

Even many YE creationists admit that it isn't.

Evolution is not a theory in crisis. It is not teetering on the verge of collapse. It has not failed as a scientific explanation. There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it. It is not just speculation or a faith choice or an assumption or a religion. It is a productive framework for lots of biological research, and it has amazing explanatory power. There is no conspiracy to hide the truth about the failure of evolution. There has really been no failure of evolution as a scientific theory. It works, and it works well.

I say these things not because I'm crazy or because I've "converted" to evolution. I say these things because they are true. I'm motivated this morning by reading yet another clueless, well-meaning person pompously declaring that evolution is a failure. People who say that are either unacquainted with the inner workings of science or unacquainted with the evidence for evolution. (Technically, they could also be deluded or lying, but that seems rather uncharitable to say. Oops.)

Creationist students, listen to me very carefully: There is evidence for evolution, and evolution is an extremely successful scientific theory. That doesn't make it ultimately true, and it doesn't mean that there could not possibly be viable alternatives. It is my own faith choice to reject evolution, because I believe the Bible reveals true information about the history of the earth that is fundamentally incompatible with evolution. I am motivated to understand God's creation from what I believe to be a biblical, creationist perspective. Evolution itself is not flawed or without evidence. Please don't be duped into thinking that somehow evolution itself is a failure. Please don't idolize your own ability to reason. Faith is enough. If God said it, that should settle it. Maybe that's not enough for your scoffing professor or your non-Christian friends, but it should be enough for you.

I think that's all I want to say today. Rant over.
http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2009/09/truth-about-evolution.html



Meyers is a founder of the Discovery Institute, which has declared it's purpose to advance a particular religious philosophy.

Governing Goals

• To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
• To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.

"Wedge Document" of the Discovery Institute.

So really not relevant to the scientific question. Moreover, his particular belief does not rule out evolution.

I have listened to Meyers and typically people criticize his goals or him personally but never do I see people address his arguments head on. I personally think he's spot on.

 

[OzSpen]

Homology is evidence for evolution. However, the YE creationist doctrine of evolutionism cannot explain homology.

I do wish you would do your research on YEC websites before you make an ignorant statement like this. These are articles on homology straight from a YEC website:

Homology made simple

Does homology provide evidence of evolutionary naturalism

‘Not to Be Used Again’: Homologous Structures and the Presumption of Originality as a Critical Value

A serious problem for homology

Limb design homology

Homology, Genes, and Evolutionary Innovation book review

Homology and Embryology Questions and Answers

Etc, etc.

Oz

http://creation.com/embryonic-recapitulation-questions-and-answers

 

[OzSpen]

Even many YE creationists admit that it isn't.

Evolution is not a theory in crisis. It is not teetering on the verge of collapse. It has not failed as a scientific explanation. There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it. It is not just speculation or a faith choice or an assumption or a religion. It is a productive framework for lots of biological research, and it has amazing explanatory power. There is no conspiracy to hide the truth about the failure of evolution. There has really been no failure of evolution as a scientific theory. It works, and it works well.

I say these things not because I'm crazy or because I've "converted" to evolution. I say these things because they are true. I'm motivated this morning by reading yet another clueless, well-meaning person pompously declaring that evolution is a failure. People who say that are either unacquainted with the inner workings of science or unacquainted with the evidence for evolution. (Technically, they could also be deluded or lying, but that seems rather uncharitable to say. Oops.)

Creationist students, listen to me very carefully: There is evidence for evolution, and evolution is an extremely successful scientific theory. That doesn't make it ultimately true, and it doesn't mean that there could not possibly be viable alternatives. It is my own faith choice to reject evolution, because I believe the Bible reveals true information about the history of the earth that is fundamentally incompatible with evolution. I am motivated to understand God's creation from what I believe to be a biblical, creationist perspective. Evolution itself is not flawed or without evidence. Please don't be duped into thinking that somehow evolution itself is a failure. Please don't idolize your own ability to reason. Faith is enough. If God said it, that should settle it. Maybe that's not enough for your scoffing professor or your non-Christian friends, but it should be enough for you.

I think that's all I want to say today. Rant over.
http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2009/09/truth-about-evolution.html

Meyers is a founder of the Discovery Institute, which has declared it's purpose to advance a particular religious philosophy.

Governing Goals

• To defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural and political legacies.
• To replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God.

"Wedge Document" of the Discovery Institute.

So really not relevant to the scientific question. Moreover, his particular belief does not rule out evolution.

A non-Christian, Michael Denton, with an MD and PhD in biochemistry, published this in 1985:

Thirty years later (in 2016), what was the conclusion for Denton's research?

You state that 'There is evidence for evolution, gobs and gobs of it'. Yes, for microevolution, but NOT for macroevolution.

Macroevolution is contradicted by Gen 1-2. Seems as though you are overcome by the evolutionary model and it contradicts Scripture.

Oz

 

[Barbarian]

I do wish you would do your research on YEC websites before you make an ignorant statement like this. These are articles on homology straight from a YEC website:

I didn't say that YE creationists don't attempt to explain homology. They just can't do it. Would you like me to show you from one of those articles?

A non-Christian, Michael Denton, with an MD and PhD in biochemistry, published this in 1985:

Here's his opinion, from his book Nature's Destiny.

it is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science--that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school." According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving God's direct intervention in the course of nature, each of which involved the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world--that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies. (Barbarian's emphasis)

In large measure, therefore, the teleological argument presented here and the special creationist worldview are mutually exclusive accounts of the world. In the last analysis, evidence for one is evidence against the other. Put simply, the more convincing is the evidence for believing that the world is prefabricated to the end of life, that the design is built into the laws of nature, the less credible becomes the special creationist worldview.
pages XVII -XVIII

And this:

One of the most surprising discoveries which has arisen from DNA sequencing has been the remarkable finding that the genomes of all organisms are clustered very close together in a tiny region of DNA sequence space forming a tree of related sequences that can all be interconverted via a series of tiny incremental natural steps. So the sharp discontinuities...between different organs and adaptations and different types of organisms, which have been the bedrock of antievolutionary arguments for the past century, have now greatly been diminished at the DNA level.
pages 267-277

Denton's faith is in some kind of creator setting up the universe so that the variety of life we see will evolve naturally. Other than his failure to accept the God of Abraham as that creator, he's essentially a theistic evolutionist.

You sure you want to promote that view?

 

[OzSpen]

One thing about scientific theories; when we find one that works and lasts, it tends to be elegant, simple and complete with very little complexity. And it's beautiful.

God seems to prefer simplicity and elegance.

You must be joking! Try giving that story line to the Jews who were slaughtered by the Nazis (before the Holocaust). Was Hitler a Darwinian?

Here's more insight on Hitler and Darwinism: 'The Darwinian underpinnings of Nazi racial ideology are patently obvious. Hitler's chapter on "Nation and. Race" in Mein Kampf discusses the racial struggle for existence in clear Darwinian terms' (source).
https://www.csustan.edu/history/was-hitler-influenced-darwinism
Oz

 

[OzSpen]

I didn't say that YE creationists don't attempt to explain homology. They just can't do it. Would you like me to show you from one of those articles?

Here's his opinion, from his book Nature's Destiny.

it is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science--that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school." According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving God's direct intervention in the course of nature, each of which involved the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world--that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies. (Barbarian's emphasis)

In large measure, therefore, the teleological argument presented here and the special creationist worldview are mutually exclusive accounts of the world. In the last analysis, evidence for one is evidence against the other. Put simply, the more convincing is the evidence for believing that the world is prefabricated to the end of life, that the design is built into the laws of nature, the less credible becomes the special creationist worldview.
pages XVII -XVIII

And this:

One of the most surprising discoveries which has arisen from DNA sequencing has been the remarkable finding that the genomes of all organisms are clustered very close together in a tiny region of DNA sequence space forming a tree of related sequences that can all be interconverted via a series of tiny incremental natural steps. So the sharp discontinuities...between different organs and adaptations and different types of organisms, which have been the bedrock of antievolutionary arguments for the past century, have now greatly been diminished at the DNA level.
pages 267-277

Denton's faith is in some kind of creator setting up the universe so that the variety of life we see will evolve naturally. Other than his failure to accept the God of Abraham as that creator, he's essentially a theistic evolutionist.

You sure you want to promote that view?

You missed my point. Here I gave you evidence from a world renowned researcher into evolution that:

A naturalistic, secular biochemist and medical doctor is convinced that evolution has big holes in it - it is in crisis- but you are pushing the evolutionary wheelbarrow on an evangelical Christian forum.

I have not read much of your views on God's creation of the universe.

Oz

 

[Barbarian]

The first example of your links I checked:
To explain; quite often, animals have similar organs or structures which, in the thinking of evolutionists, cannot be explained by common ancestry. A good example is the ‘camera-eye’ which has a lens and retina, a design found in both humans and octopuses (see fig. 5). Since humans and octopuses are not thought to have inherited their eyes from a common ancestor, these are not regarded as homologous. Instead, evolutionists would refer to them as an example of homoplasy. This is also known as ‘convergent evolution’ because it is understood that the evolutionary process has ‘converged’ upon the same design independently.

The obvious evolution of cephalopod eyes is demonstrated in numerous transitional forms still existing in living mollusks. The most important demonstration of homoplasy is quite simple; the retina in vertebrate eyes develops from the endoderm and that of cephalopods develops from mesodern.

So what? so our retinas are actually extensions of brain tissue. And thereby, they are "backwards" compared to cephalopods. The sensory cells are facing backwards in vertebrates, which means the light has to filter through layers of cells to get to the sensors. In cephalopods, the retina is "right side out" and the sensors face forward.

These structures as you now see, are analogous, not homologous.

This is very basic introductory comparative anatomy. How is it your author didn't realize this?

 

[Barbarian]

You must be joking! Try giving that story line to the Jews who were slaughtered by the Nazis (before the Holocaust). Was Hitler a Darwinian?

In fact, as you should have known, the notion of eugenics touted by the Nazis were denounced by Darwin as "an overwhelming evil." More importantly, Darwinians like Punnet and Morgan demonstrated that Nazi racial ideas were scientifically insupportable and were shown to be so by Darwinian theory.

On the other hand, creationists have often been enthusiastic eugenicists and racists:

William J. Tinkel, secretary of the Creation Research Society...
Much more troubling, however, are Tinkle’s opinions of almost 30 years later, in his book “Heredity. A study in science and the Bible” published in 1967, while Tinkle was the Secretary of the Creation Research Society. In its chapter “The prospect for eugenics”, far from having abandoned his support for the practice, Tinkle sounds more radical about it. He writes positively about sterilization for the “feeble-minded” (carefully classified as “morons”, “imbeciles” and “idiots”) and people with other hereditary conditions. Sterilization in a male, he says “is a simple operation”, and “in a girl or woman, [it] is as serious as removal of the vermiform appendix” [11, p. 139]. While he admits that it is impractical to sterilize all “defectives”, he still thinks it’s worth a shot when possible:


At the present time there are in the United States more than a million people with serious hereditary defects, and to reduce their numbers by even a few thousand would reduce the amount of discomfort and hardship in the future. Unfortunate births are reduced by segregation also but there are not enough institutions to house nearly all the ones who have unfortunate genes. Institutional care is expensive but as compared to total government expenditure it is small.


Sterilization is sometimes employed with the consent of the patient for non-eugenic purposes. An example is a woman who has borne three children by Caesarean section and could not stand another birth. Persons who are on the borderline of normal mentality may be able to marry and care for themselves but would not be good parents. Their children might be normal or might be defective, and at any rate would have poor home discipline. Such persons sometimes are prevailed upon to submit to sterilization, to their own advantage. [11, pp140-141]
https://pandasthumb.org/archives/2007/05/dr-west-meet-dr.html

Henry Morris, Director of the Institute for Creation Research, arguing that "negroes" are intellectually and spiritually inferior to other people:
Yet the prophecy again has its obverse side. Somehow they have only gone so far and no farther. The Japhethites and Semites have, sooner or later, taken over their territories, and their inventions, and then developed them and utilized them for their own enlargement. Often the Hamites, especially the Negroes, have become actual personal servants or even slaves to the others. Possessed of a genetic character concerned mainly with mundane matters, they have eventually been displaced by the intellectual and philosophical acumen of the Japhethites and the religious zeal of the Semites.
Henry Morris The Beginning of the World (2nd edition)

On the other hand...

Among the first and most important critics in the United States was Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866–1945), a geneticist at Columbia University and prior to 1915 a moderate supporter of eugenics. Morgan felt that the movement had become more propagandistic than scientific and criticized eugenical claims in print, starting with his book Evolution and Genetics (1925). He chastised eugenicists for lumping many mental and behavioral conditions together under a rubric like "feeblemindedness" and treating it as if it had a single underlying cause in a single gene.
http://science.jrank.org/pages/9250/Eugenics-Criticisms-Eugenics.html

In 1917, Punnett calculated how many generations it would take to reduce "feeblemindedness" if all were sterilised in each generation. He worked out that to reduce the frequency from 1/100 to 1/1,000 would require 22 generations, to 1/10,000 90 generations and 1/1,000,000 700 generations! To give an idea of the magnitude of this, 22 generations takes us back to before the Black Death reached Europe. A debate ensued in which RA Fisher was taken to task in his attack on Punnett's work by Herbert Jennings. By 1932, these criticisms had reached the New York Times.
http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/nov00.html

The eugenical Jeremiahs keep constantly before our eyes the nightmare of human populations accumulating recessive genes that produce pathological effects when homozygous. These prophets of doom seem to be unaware of the fact that wild species in the state of nature fare in this respect no better than man does with all the artificality of his surroundings, and yet life has not come to an end on this planet. The eschatological cries proclaiming the failure of natural selection to operate in human populations have more to do with political beliefs than with scientific findings.
— Theodosius Dobzhansky
Genetics and Origin of Species (1937)

"...if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.”
Charles Darwin The Descent of Man

Playing the Nazi card is a huge error for creationists. This is post is not to tar all creationists as being racists like so many of their leaders. The vast majority of them are not. Creationism can, as Morris demonstrated often lead to racist ideas, but it's not intrinsically racist. Evolutionary theory is inimical to the sort of racism promoted by the Nazis, since it shows that the very basis of Nazi racial thinking is in error.

 

[Barbarian]

You missed my point. Here I gave you evidence from a world renowned researcher into evolution that:

it is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science--that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes.
Michael Denton, Nature's Destiny

Denton is an evolutionist. He specifically says so. He just thinks a creator set the universe up so as to make evolution happen. Which is true enough; if he'd just accept that the Creator is the God of Abraham, he'd be spot on.

 

[Barbarian]

I have not read much of your views on God's creation of the universe.

I think St. Augustine is right. Our universe was created in an instant and developed from there as God intended it to do. Every tiny aspect of the physical universe is under God's purview, and if He took His mind from us, we would not even continue to exist.

He makes the universe consistent and predictable because that is the sort of universe in which we could become and live.

 

[calvin]

Homology just tells us how God created each kind.

Homology does not now, never has and never will speak for God..sorry you will need to try much much harder.

 

[Barbarian]

Homology does not now, never has and never will speak for God..

Rather, God speaks for homology. It's another way he tells us how He created things.

 

[calvin]

Rather, God speaks for homology. It's another way he tells us how He created things.

He told us never how, but only out of what, and it wasn't out of scraps left over from the day before.
Gen 1:7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so.Did you know that a lot of water has been discovered 'above' the expanse of late? Even making news now is the (surprising to some) discovery of significant deposits of water under the Luna surface.
Trust the Bible and not man's pseudo intellect.

 

[Barbarian]

He told us never how, but only out of what, and it wasn't out of scraps left over from the day before.

He says it's from existing creation that He made each new living thing. But that's pretty much all the figurative passage in Genesis says. Homology is His way of showing us how He did it.

Gen 1:7 And God made the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse.

Good example. The sky isn't actually a big dome over a flat Earth with windows in it to let the water being held above the sky some out.

And it was so.Did you know that a lot of water has been discovered 'above' the expanse of late?

There is no dome. That's what "raqua" means. And there's no water up there to speak of. If there was, light wouldn't get through to the Earth. Two hundred meters would assure that no photosynthesis went on, on Earth. One thousand meters would shut out all light to the Earth.

Even making news now is the (surprising to some) discovery of significant deposits of water under the Luna surface.

That was hypothesized long ago, based on the fact that the moon is so cold unless exposed to sunlight that any water should have frozen solid rather than evaporating.

 

[Cygnus]

Well I'll bet I can find some engineers that disagree. Seems to me Michael Behe and Stephen Meyers would have something to say about your position.

Signature of the cell....Stephen Meyers

 

[Cygnus]

He says it's from existing creation that He made each new living thing. But that's pretty much all the figurative passage in Genesis says. Homology is His way of showing us how He did it.



Good example. The sky isn't actually a big dome over a flat Earth with windows in it to let the water being held above the sky some out.



There is no dome. That's what "raqua" means. And there's no water up there to speak of. If there was, light wouldn't get through to the Earth. Two hundred meters would assure that no photosynthesis went on, on Earth. One thousand meters would shut out all light to the Earth.



That was hypothesized long ago, based on the fact that the moon is so cold unless exposed to sunlight that any water should have frozen solid rather than evaporating.

All your little tid-bits answered.

 

[Cygnus]

Rather, God speaks for homology. It's another way he tells us how He created things.

And now I thought Adam was created from the dust the Eve from Adams rib....bible style.

 

[Barbarian]

Signature of the cell....Stephen Meyers

Meyers is just another flubadub who thinks evolution is about the origin of life. Even if God just magically poofed the first living things into existence, it wouldn't matter at all to evolution. Darwin didn't have a theory as to the origin of life; he just supposed that God created the first living things:

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
Charles Darwin, last sentence of On the Origin of Species, 1872

Meyers has had some problems with identifying anything in molecular biology that can be proven impossible to have formed naturally. That's why his colleague, Michael Denton, argues that the universe was made to produce all of it naturally. Maybe your guys should get together, get their stories straight, and try again?

 

[Barbarian]

All your little tid-bits answered.

Sorry, nothing therein says that the sky is a solid dome with holes in it to let out the water stored above it. If you think there's something in the video that supports your beliefs, how about telling us what it is?

BTW, light-years are a major issue for creationists who want to say "light went faster in those days." You see, the speed of light is a constant that is tied to a lot of other things, like radioactive breakdown. If the speed of light was significantly greater in earlier times, the increased radiation from the Earth would have fried all living things.

Rock and a hard place.