How well do Christianity and evolution mix?
Allow me to have a dialogue here with Xiangtao, via his latest commment:
If the evidence for evolution is so unconvincing, as long as your worldview is not already slanting your opinion in favor of disbelief in god (as I belive your assertion stands Radar. Please correct me if I'm wrong about that), why then do we have so many biologists such as Francis Collins, about whom you posted, or Kenneth Miller or Richard Colling or Denis Lamoureux... who believe both in god and in evolution.
Indeed, why? It is not an intellectually satisfactory position to my way of thinking. Yet it true that there are quite a few God-believers who also accept evolution.
These are clearly not people out to replace god with a materialistic worldview and yet, after years of studying the evidence much more closely than any of us here can claim, they are all both outspokenly Christians AND evolutionists.
Not a compelling argument. There are people who have studied world history and politics who still trust in the United Nations. There are people who have squinted at stars through telescopes for decades who believe in space aliens. Years of study do not guarantee one particular viewpoint.
If evolution is really a "theory in crisis" then why are there so many examples of Christians with legitimate degrees in intimately related fields who not only believe in evolution, but see it as an absolute fact of life? I am sure that this list is many times longer than any list you may find of qualified YEC scientists.
It may be. I know of know list comprised of God-believers who are evolutionists. I know of several lists of creationists and several lists of evolution-doubters and I know of several lists of evolution-believers. None of that means a hill of beans in terms of real evidence.
I think that what has happened is that evolution has been taught as an established fact and all sorts of people from every walk of life just believe it. In our newspapers, magazines, movies, whatever, the suppositions of evolution are presented as factual every single day! It is truly the most magnificent job of advertising or perhaps I should say brainwashing imaginable.
Macroevolution has never been demonstrated to occur and has never been proven to have ever occurred. Period. Refute me if you can. Yet news articles, even science articles will talk about dinosaurs that lived 130 million years ago as a proven fact.
I am told continually that evolution has a testable hypothosis that has been proven. I am waiting to see it demonstrated to me. Tiktaalik would not qualify, since it cannot be shown to be an actual transitional form. I want to see something that is tested and proven...not just told that it has been done. Not relating to microevolution and not a simple matter of genetics that is not necesarily evolution either. Show me your results that prove evolution, I am waiting.
Nor can I prove creation by God happened. Nor can I go back in time and see it happening and bring back the video. As always, we have to look at the evidence and come to the best conclusions available. I have asserted often enough that I believe the evidence, in the best tradition of Occam's Razor, more clearly supports the likelihood of creation and not evolution. I have asserted this for nearly a year on this blog. So I suppose rubber meets the road time might as well get here. Don't just talk about the testable hypothesis, let's see it!
~~~~~~~
lava said...
How do YECs explain vetigial organs, ostriches, emus, ostriches...?
What vestigal organs? We tend to discover that vestigal organs have uses, don't we. Know of any that you are certain are totally useless?
Why is there a need to "explain" an emu or an ostrich? I mean, more than there is to explain a bat or a shark? I think you have a harder time showing that it evolved than arguing that an ostrich is a mistake, if that's what you mean?
~~~~~~~
cranky old fart said...
Lava,
There's noting to explain. Everything is as it was when everything and everybody stepped on and then off the incredible ark.
And if ya buy that, Santa's still coming in a few weeks...
Very compelling argument, Cranky, enough to convince anyone completely. Other than you know that YEC'ers don't quite believe it that way because we know and accept microevolution, which is the loss of genetic information over time due to stress on genetic populations and changes in environment. Many animal types have become extinct and many have lost some of their possible characteristics since the Ark released its contents. Furthermore, I have previously demonstrated that the Ark was plenty big enough to carry the cargo that it was asserted to have carried in Genesis and it's dimensions prefigured by many centuries the design of large ocean-going vessels used today.
Oh, and Santa is actually imprisoned in a plastic snowglobe on the front yard of one of my neighbors, saw him there as we pulled in this evening. It looks like he is stuck there, so don't wait up.
~~~~~~~
lava said...
So evolution hasn't been proven true. And creationism hasn't been proven true. So, we have nothing. Wonderful.
In fact, creationism cannot be "proven" to be true since it asserts that creation has already occurred and won't happen again. Hmmm, sounds kind of like a law of theromdynamics in a way, eh?
However, evolution is supposed to be an ongoing process, so were it true one would expect it to be "proven" at some point. We are a couple of hundred years into the study of the thing but no proof, so I think it is quite safe to say that it won't be proven to be right, either...Which is just what creationism would predict.
Ooops! Just found one of them-there testable hypotheses for creation. I say that creation asserts that evolution does not occur. Tests will take place seeking evolution in progress. Creation says that such tests will fail to observe creation. Such tests have been made. They have failed. Creationists therefore see their assertion being proven over and over again.
Just wondering- what are creationists main problems with evolution? Is it the incomplete fossil record? Or what?
If you do a search here on my blog for keywords like "science" and "creation" and "scientist" and "Darwin", you'll see more information than you can digest in a week's time, I would venture to say. The fossil record is certainly a problem for evolution as is the formation of the rocks themselves. The remarkable complexity of living things (oh yeah, search for "intelligent design", too) is strong evidence that evolution is ridiculously unlikely to the point of imposssibility. I could go on, but the main problem from my point of view is that with a creation, there has to be a God and there are so many people who cannot stand the thought or concept of God. Which brings us back around to the title of this post.
How well do Christianity and evolution mix?
If you insist on the actual purity of what evolution asserts, it is very difficult for a Christian to get on board. So many Christians make an alteration to evolution to accomodate God and go on their merry way. They will insist that God created but evolution was, and is, the ongoing method by which he continues to create.
Evolutionists like the idea that they have compromised their positions enough to agree with them, in part, but you can tell (check out that Time series of posts again) that many of them kind of laugh or sneer at theistic evolution, since evolution has no room or need for God at any point.
There is the problem of how life sprang from non-life. Abiogenesis has been impossible to explain outside of a supernatural agent involved. The study of abiogenesis, or rather now called chemical evolution, I believe, is a lot like the search for the philosopher's stone. Hundreds, nay, thousands of scientists seek to find the unfindable thing.
I like what Hubert Yockey once said:
"The history of science shows that a paradigm, once it has achieved the status of acceptance (and is incorporated in textbooks) and regardless of its failures, is declared invalid only when a new paradigm is available to replace it." (emphasis mine)
I believe this sums up why evolution remains so popular. It really is not well supported by the facts, but no one has presented a new idea to take its place and the previous idea, creation, was passed by because of worldview rather than science so it will be hard to reinstitute generally. However, the paucity of the idea of evolution should become more and more obvious over time and it will be interesting to see what people will be saying about it twenty years hence...when it still will be unproven...when its difficulties will have been shown to be insurmountable. What will the naturalistic materialists look to for their next solution?
If the evidence for evolution is so unconvincing, as long as your worldview is not already slanting your opinion in favor of disbelief in god (as I belive your assertion stands Radar. Please correct me if I'm wrong about that), why then do we have so many biologists such as Francis Collins, about whom you posted, or Kenneth Miller or Richard Colling or Denis Lamoureux... who believe both in god and in evolution.
Indeed, why? It is not an intellectually satisfactory position to my way of thinking. Yet it true that there are quite a few God-believers who also accept evolution.
These are clearly not people out to replace god with a materialistic worldview and yet, after years of studying the evidence much more closely than any of us here can claim, they are all both outspokenly Christians AND evolutionists.
Not a compelling argument. There are people who have studied world history and politics who still trust in the United Nations. There are people who have squinted at stars through telescopes for decades who believe in space aliens. Years of study do not guarantee one particular viewpoint.
If evolution is really a "theory in crisis" then why are there so many examples of Christians with legitimate degrees in intimately related fields who not only believe in evolution, but see it as an absolute fact of life? I am sure that this list is many times longer than any list you may find of qualified YEC scientists.
It may be. I know of know list comprised of God-believers who are evolutionists. I know of several lists of creationists and several lists of evolution-doubters and I know of several lists of evolution-believers. None of that means a hill of beans in terms of real evidence.
I think that what has happened is that evolution has been taught as an established fact and all sorts of people from every walk of life just believe it. In our newspapers, magazines, movies, whatever, the suppositions of evolution are presented as factual every single day! It is truly the most magnificent job of advertising or perhaps I should say brainwashing imaginable.
Macroevolution has never been demonstrated to occur and has never been proven to have ever occurred. Period. Refute me if you can. Yet news articles, even science articles will talk about dinosaurs that lived 130 million years ago as a proven fact.
I am told continually that evolution has a testable hypothosis that has been proven. I am waiting to see it demonstrated to me. Tiktaalik would not qualify, since it cannot be shown to be an actual transitional form. I want to see something that is tested and proven...not just told that it has been done. Not relating to microevolution and not a simple matter of genetics that is not necesarily evolution either. Show me your results that prove evolution, I am waiting.
Nor can I prove creation by God happened. Nor can I go back in time and see it happening and bring back the video. As always, we have to look at the evidence and come to the best conclusions available. I have asserted often enough that I believe the evidence, in the best tradition of Occam's Razor, more clearly supports the likelihood of creation and not evolution. I have asserted this for nearly a year on this blog. So I suppose rubber meets the road time might as well get here. Don't just talk about the testable hypothesis, let's see it!
~~~~~~~
lava said...
How do YECs explain vetigial organs, ostriches, emus, ostriches...?
What vestigal organs? We tend to discover that vestigal organs have uses, don't we. Know of any that you are certain are totally useless?
Why is there a need to "explain" an emu or an ostrich? I mean, more than there is to explain a bat or a shark? I think you have a harder time showing that it evolved than arguing that an ostrich is a mistake, if that's what you mean?
~~~~~~~
cranky old fart said...
Lava,
There's noting to explain. Everything is as it was when everything and everybody stepped on and then off the incredible ark.
And if ya buy that, Santa's still coming in a few weeks...
Very compelling argument, Cranky, enough to convince anyone completely. Other than you know that YEC'ers don't quite believe it that way because we know and accept microevolution, which is the loss of genetic information over time due to stress on genetic populations and changes in environment. Many animal types have become extinct and many have lost some of their possible characteristics since the Ark released its contents. Furthermore, I have previously demonstrated that the Ark was plenty big enough to carry the cargo that it was asserted to have carried in Genesis and it's dimensions prefigured by many centuries the design of large ocean-going vessels used today.
Oh, and Santa is actually imprisoned in a plastic snowglobe on the front yard of one of my neighbors, saw him there as we pulled in this evening. It looks like he is stuck there, so don't wait up.
~~~~~~~
lava said...
So evolution hasn't been proven true. And creationism hasn't been proven true. So, we have nothing. Wonderful.
In fact, creationism cannot be "proven" to be true since it asserts that creation has already occurred and won't happen again. Hmmm, sounds kind of like a law of theromdynamics in a way, eh?
However, evolution is supposed to be an ongoing process, so were it true one would expect it to be "proven" at some point. We are a couple of hundred years into the study of the thing but no proof, so I think it is quite safe to say that it won't be proven to be right, either...Which is just what creationism would predict.
Ooops! Just found one of them-there testable hypotheses for creation. I say that creation asserts that evolution does not occur. Tests will take place seeking evolution in progress. Creation says that such tests will fail to observe creation. Such tests have been made. They have failed. Creationists therefore see their assertion being proven over and over again.
Just wondering- what are creationists main problems with evolution? Is it the incomplete fossil record? Or what?
If you do a search here on my blog for keywords like "science" and "creation" and "scientist" and "Darwin", you'll see more information than you can digest in a week's time, I would venture to say. The fossil record is certainly a problem for evolution as is the formation of the rocks themselves. The remarkable complexity of living things (oh yeah, search for "intelligent design", too) is strong evidence that evolution is ridiculously unlikely to the point of imposssibility. I could go on, but the main problem from my point of view is that with a creation, there has to be a God and there are so many people who cannot stand the thought or concept of God. Which brings us back around to the title of this post.
How well do Christianity and evolution mix?
If you insist on the actual purity of what evolution asserts, it is very difficult for a Christian to get on board. So many Christians make an alteration to evolution to accomodate God and go on their merry way. They will insist that God created but evolution was, and is, the ongoing method by which he continues to create.
Evolutionists like the idea that they have compromised their positions enough to agree with them, in part, but you can tell (check out that Time series of posts again) that many of them kind of laugh or sneer at theistic evolution, since evolution has no room or need for God at any point.
There is the problem of how life sprang from non-life. Abiogenesis has been impossible to explain outside of a supernatural agent involved. The study of abiogenesis, or rather now called chemical evolution, I believe, is a lot like the search for the philosopher's stone. Hundreds, nay, thousands of scientists seek to find the unfindable thing.
I like what Hubert Yockey once said:
"The history of science shows that a paradigm, once it has achieved the status of acceptance (and is incorporated in textbooks) and regardless of its failures, is declared invalid only when a new paradigm is available to replace it." (emphasis mine)
I believe this sums up why evolution remains so popular. It really is not well supported by the facts, but no one has presented a new idea to take its place and the previous idea, creation, was passed by because of worldview rather than science so it will be hard to reinstitute generally. However, the paucity of the idea of evolution should become more and more obvious over time and it will be interesting to see what people will be saying about it twenty years hence...when it still will be unproven...when its difficulties will have been shown to be insurmountable. What will the naturalistic materialists look to for their next solution?