[_ Old Earth _] Times are a' changin'

[turnorburn]

Science is subject to the supernatural the heavenly and the earthly. As Christians we're instructed how to live and its not according to anything scientific.. Theories are of this world.

Romans 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.

tob

 

[Sparkey]

I like this thread.

 

[Barbarian]

As Christians we're instructed how to live and its not according to anything scientific.. Theories are of this world.

Science is just the way we use our God-given abilities to understand the world He has given us. There is no conflict between God and His creation. How could there be? A Christian should never be afraid of the truth. God is truth.

You are right that we shouldn't live according to scientific ideas. We shouldn't live according to plumbing ideas, either. That's not what those things are for, as useful as they are in other areas...

 

[Vaccine]

"The discovery of pervasive HGT and the overall dynamics of the genetic universe destroys not only the Tree of Life as we knew it but also another central tenet of the Modern Synthesis inherited from Darwin, gradualism. In a world dominated by HGT, gene duplication, gene loss, and such momentous events as endosymbiosis, the idea of evolution being driven primarily by infinitesimal heritable changes in the Darwinian tradition has become untenable.

Equally outdated is the (neo)Darwinian notion of the adaptive nature of evolution: clearly, genomes show very little if any signs of optimal design, and random drift constrained by purifying in all likelihood contributes (much) more to genome evolution than Darwinian selection 16, 17. And, with pan-adaptationism, gone forever is the notion of evolutionary progress that undoubtedly is central to the traditional evolutionary thinking, even if this is not always made explicit.

The summary of the state of affairs on the 150th anniversary of the Origin is somewhat shocking: in the post-genomic era, all major tenets of the Modern Synthesis are, if not outright overturned, replaced by a new and incomparably more complex vision of the key aspects of evolution (Box 1). So, not to mince words, the Modern Synthesis is gone."
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2784144/?report=classic

Just so we're all on the same page here : THAT IS A PEER REVIEWED ARTICLE FROM THE NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF HEALTH.

 

[Barbarian]

Koonin's view is a radical departure from the consensus. If he's right, he's the new Darwin. If not, well there's been a lot of that before. How will we know if his idea is correct?

What I mean is not so much theoretical knowledge, but rather an indelible feeling for the absolute centrality and essentiality of evolution in biology. I am inclined to reword the famous dictum of the great evolutionary geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky ("Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.") (Dobzhansky, 1973) in an even more straightforward manner: Biology is evolution.
Eugene V. Koonin, The Logic of Chance: the Nature and Origin of Biological Evolution, p. x

I don't think he gives you much comfort. He's more of an evolutionist than Darwin was. And his ventures into molecular biology have nailed down many of the earlier predictions of Darwinian evolution. Like Darwin, Mendel, Morgan, Dobzhanski, and others, if he's correct, he'll have made predictions that will start to be verified. When enough have been verified, his new theory will be validated. If not, he's another Lysenko.

Time will tell.