Evolution Delusion

It’s funny how the ’scientific’ anti-religionists have to resort to twisted evidence and leaps of faith to make their case; precisely what they accuse us ‘irrational’ believers of doing.

I used to think that I was too wedded to science and reason to believe in God (I studied archaeology), but since I became a Christian, my proclivity to rational thought has only strengthened my faith. Life and all its processes and facets is too complex and elegantly incorporated, much like a finely built automobile, to be the reult of random mutations over time. I recently read an article online somewhere (on some science feed) that described how a developing baby and its placent produce enzymes or something that defeat the mother’s immune system which would otherwise attack the baby as a foreign intruder to the body. I never thought of such a thing before, but it makes since, since the baby has its own unique DNA. Such finely worked details about life can’t possibly be the result of some evolutionary accident.

Whew! Sorry for the long comment!

You are spot on. I know you won’t let the evolutionists sway you but what do they think everything started out as? I mean everything not just the start of life but before. If it was the “big bang” who did the banging?

Excellent topic La Shawn. ID is an excellent alternative theory to be compared and tested just as evolution.

Bottomline, looking to the past to divine what really happened requires an eyewitness or a primary source document. We have “primary sources” in nature, the problem is we can’t really be sure that we have decoded them properly.

From the Christian perspective, we do have an Eyewitness who also happens to be the Creator. While we may quibble about the young earth vs old earth and the role of evolution; what is indisputable, as Jerry McCellan pointed out years ago, is the issue of Original Sin. Regardless of how we may interpret the timelines, original sin had to precede evolution because evolution requires death to progress.

I look forward to more discussions on this.

I agree with the earlier post of science trying to disprove God. It’s always fun to read reports of archeologists finding areas already described in the Bible. (ex. the recent find of Hezekiah’s tunnel underneath Jerusalem)

A great website on the topic of evolution vs. ID is http://www.answersingenesis.org/. Their resources are top rate and they are the group responsible for building the Creation Museum in Kentucky.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving holiday.

Yay comments! Happy Thanksgiving, La Shawn and readers.

This, from the halfawing article linked in #2, cracks me up: “Every organism is fully adapted to its environment all the time, assuming the environment is stable.” Er, ok. Sooo…how did the environment “decide” to change? If the beginning was soup & goop, how did those little primeval critters decide who would emerge as trees, rocks, etc. to influence the development of animals? And weather –who decided to be weather?

Also, can someone please address the ludicrous amount of time needed for all these mutations to occur?

FL Mom, a lot simpler to believe that God created a set of perfect creatures in the beginning and set them loose. Along came sin (death) and messed everything up.

It’s been said that the universe is over 10 billion years old, based on the distance. Fine, I have no problem with that. To conclude that the earth is 4.5 billion years old based on the age of the materials is what I have a problem with.

To wit, if I take a bunch of cosmic material (without form) and mash them up to create a planet, is that planet as old as the oldest material in it or as old as the day I created it?

I also have no problem with a big bang, if there is Someone behind it to do the “banging” and establish the laws of nature that will be followed. However, I find it to be an incredible leap of faith to believe that it just happened spontaneously. The laws of nature is quite clear on that — nothing is for free and you don’t get something from nothing.

Religion has always been there to comfort the ignorant.

Ignorance isn’t bad! It’s the natural state of people! It’s where the vast majority of humanity has been for almost it’s entire existence.

It’s when those who use ignorance to give their religion power. Why does X happen? Our God made it happen. And if you do as I say and live the way I tell you, good things will happen to you.

So when science figures out why the sun shines, the wind blows, and how to make crops grow better, it really does take away power from their God. You won’t see any new Sun gods. Or Fertility goddesses.

There is still a place for religion. A code for living a good life. For self examination and dealing with others. For improving your spirituality and making the world a better place.

It doesn’t belong in examining DNA though. :-/

Kman @ #12:

Science is always trying to ‘disprove’ the idea of God.

Really?

Really. You need look no further than Darwin’s Rottweiler and his opus, The God Delusion.

Pure science isn’t predicated on denying the existence of God, it is trying to find and define nature’s truths. However, there are plenty of scientists with a vested emotional interest in proving that God does not exist, ergo we are no better than mere animals, albeit advanced, and that morality is relative.

I can understand why many people of no-faith feel threatened by faith. To acknowledge that there might be a Creator is to acknowledge their accountability to a higher power. It also means that one can never be greater (lestways evolutionary) than what he was designed to be. In the words of the immortal King Louie, “I’ve reached the top, and had to stop, and that what’s bothering me. Oooh. Uh-uh“.

But is such a fear of faith necessary or even useful? Remember, the first scientists understood that there was a creator and endeavored to discover God’s creation. Barring that recognition of a higher being, there would be no point in conducting science, since fate happens and what is, is.

It is not for nothing that many a great discovery were by “faith-based” scientists. Likewise, the rigorous principles of doing science is encapsulated within Biblical doctrines. In a sense, the atheists have leveraged the art of science and hijacked Christianity’s best practices to support their search for the non-existence of God.

Far from religion making a mockery of itself when it tries to play at science, it seeks to explain our raison d’être, just as atheist seek to explain that we have none. This battle of diametrically opposed faiths is played out in the fields of science. Hence the hyperbole, hysteria and what have you contending with one another.

Atheism and evolution, is just as faith-based as creationism or ID. Therefore, to put true separation of “church and state” into practice, as espoused by the ACLU & Secular Progressives, means that the state should not promote one system to the exclusion of all other theories. That said, let each and every contender fight it out within the halls of academia. And leave it up to each student to figure out which theory, or combinations thereof, makes sense.

Several things:

I agree with the overall point of your post: darwinism is bull***t.

However, the premise of I.D. not implying a creator God is nonsense. “In the beginning God…”

To postulate ‘no creator God’ is to open up all sorts of idjut arguments proposing ‘flying green spaghetti monsters’, ‘mother ships’, and ‘alien genetic seeds’ etc.

As such, postulating ‘GOD’, is not science as modern man defines the term. Therefore, ‘first cause’ is not science, but faith & philosophy. This applies equally well to I.D. as it does to darwinism. Neither can prove their theories.

But, in the realm of proving ‘purpose’ vs ‘utility’; design vs random materialism, I.D. compiles the most logical collection of evidence as vetted by Occam’s razor.

Kman,

The problem with Evolutionary theory isn’t the micro-level adaptations within the genera leading to the proliferation of many species, which you rightly assert are scientifically verifiable. This evolution is not questioned by either IDers nor Young Earth Creationists either. The problem is where certian scientists try to make the scientific evidence for micro-level adaptations to then argue for the ape to man, dinosaur to bird quantum leap, for which the evidence is far less convincing.

Kman, I’m looking forward to addressing your questions later this evening. Hopefully others will pile on so we can have a merry-go-round on the points & counterpoints raised thus far.

Keep em coming folks!

I really shouldn’t have to point this out, but the fact that evolution is a theory has nothing to do with its veracity. A theory is defined as: “any systematic and coherent collection of ideas that relate to a specific subject.”

Number theory, theory of relativity, these are theories. Evolution is not considered a mere theory any more than the theory of relativity is.

We hear this alot: “Evolution is theory, not proven fact.”

You have to understand what “theory” means in scientific terms: it is a means of describing the overarching phenomenon that appears to govern a host of hard evidence. In other words, theory is how fact is interpreted: and there is MOUNTAINS of evidence–hard data–that is best explained by evolutionary theory (there are particular aspects WITHIN evolutionary theory that are debated among what most of you folks here claim are “evolutionists”–this however doesn’t warrant throwing out evolution in broader terms).

Gravity is also a theory, so is General Relativity. Both of these, which I presume you would accept as being convincing explanations of the physical world, don’t actually have as much support in terms of testable, repeatable data across so many different scientific disciplines as evolutionary theory does.

Anyway, some of you no doubt will never be convinced of this line of argument, for reasons that have been well covered above. Oh well. However, proposing ID as an alternative or rival theory is pure nonsense. Despite La Shawn’s insistence otherwise it IS a negative theory as its only “work” is to poke at evolution–it offers no other testable means of learning anything about life’s origins, including its most basic claim: a testable means of proving that something couldn’t have evolved, and therefore must have been intelligently designed. It’s creationism masquerading as science. You are free to tout creationism all you like (it’s a free country), but trying to pass it off as science is absurd.

Finally, if it really is that “[God] did it,” where does that leave us? Where do we go from there? Why learn anything more about anything?

Evolutionary theory is totally agnostic (Dawkins’ PERSONAL views about God notwithstanding). Whether God created things or not is immaterial: science seeks to understand HOW and WHEN, not so much why or by whom. If discerning how and when life was “created” is threatening to you, then your faith is on MUCH shakier ground than it should be.

And incidentally, nobody has ever satisfactorily answered where it all came from, whether you’re talking the singularity or God himself. Now THAT is a juicy mystery!

Kman @ #16
First off, for the sake of this discussion, we’ll refer to the Judeo-Christian faith, even if there might be parallels in islam, buddhism, wicca, giaism etc, etc and etc.

Except that The God Delusion isn’t a scientific article in a scientific publication.

Tossing in the requirement for scientific article is a canard. Even if such an article has never been published, it does not diminish the assertion that “Science is always trying to ‘disprove’ the idea of God.” Granted, the phrase is a generality, however, Dawkins, among others, is using his credentials as a scientist and leveraging his subject matter expertise to beat down any “idiot” foolish enough to believe in a God. Hence the logical extension to the following:

Please explain what you mean by “vested emotional interest”. Do you truly believe that scientists become scientists for that reason — to disprove God?

That’s not my contention, altho it would not surprise me if a few were drawn into science as a result of wanting to disprove God. Just as some are drawn into it as a result of being inspired by Star Trek, Nova etc. I meant exactly what I wrote — there are atheist scientist that will irrationally refuse to consider any evidence or theory that might support Biblical claims.

For them it is an emotional force that drives them to lash out at any hint of injecting God into the discussion of science. Call it God Derangement Syndrome or GDS. May I present such a example?

Let me give another example: scoffers like to tag Believers as “flat-earthers”. Implication being that because certain religious authorities took umbrage at Copernicus & Galileo’s scientific work & discoveries, such as the world is round & the universe doesn’t revolve around the earth, therefore Judeo-Christian faith and/or the Bible is at odds with the truth. If so, can one of those brainiacs explain Genesis 22:17, Isaiah 40:22, Job 26:7? Odds are they can’t be bothered with such “nonsense” because of their vested emotional interest, or as pointed out by Trish in #22, “it’s rejection of thought”. As for those “religious authorities”, they were WRONG, plain and simple, but not because the Bible told them so.

Are you making this up as you go along?

No. Are you? All I did was turn your original statement around to show that while yours was illogical on the surface, the irreducible truth remains that to acknowledge the existence of a creator is to owe your existence to the same.

As mentioned by others, atheists operate on a belief system just as Christians do. If one choses to not to have faith, he still has faith, not proof, that his is the right choice.

Why should people of no-faith be threatened by accountability to a higher power? Every person is accountable to a higher power of SOME sort or another, whether it be parents, teachers, employers, the police, etc. I don’t know of anyone, believer or not, who feels “threatened” by accountability to higher powers.

Nice try at deflection. To the “unknown” Believer, if Hades isn’t a “threat”, then your strawman is fireproof. The higher power here is the atheist’s creator, not some elevated authority figure. As Pascal noted, if God exists, then the atheist has two painful choices, burn or repent.

But as I said (and you’ve acknowledged), the first scientists, who were believers, DID conduct science. In fact, many men of science are and were believers.

Due respect, but I don’t think you’ve thought this through.

Come again? I was just coming full circle to show why the first scientists were believers and that faith in a purposeful life is what drives mankind forward.

Atheism is, in a manner of speaking, faith-based. Not evolution. You can call something “faith-based” all you like, but you really should stop and consider what that phrase means.

There is undeniable proof of the central tenets of evolution. It is, for example, observable at the micro-level. We can observe it, record it, repeat it. Faith is not required when you have two plus two equaling four.

Technically, you are correct, however, plenty do treat evolution as a faith all of its own. Meaning that evolution, is not limited to kind after kind, but is the answer to everything, even such that all life descended from one bacteria what emerged from the primordial soup. Come to think of it, what do you suppose “dust” is in Genesis 2:7? Dehydrated P-soup?

When one looks at Genesis’ 6 stages of creation, the order of events pretty much parallels the chain of events posed by our best secular theories, with the primary issue being the timeline. In that case, what’s with the phobia of secular scientists in even discussing ID/creationism?

As for micro-level, about the only thing we’ve witnessed is the evolution of superbugs. We’re still waiting to see the next evolutionary stage of any critter or fish. That said, as interesting as the Discovery Channel series on the Caveman was, it is still a matter of faith, not fact, that we evolved from apes.

To “Deep thoughts” (#14) who writes: “every article of clothing has a designer and buildings have their architects. cannot the earth and everything in it have a designer as well?”

Certainly. And can’t evolution be thought of as the mechanism by which the “designer” designed the earth and everything in it?

In other words, why couldn’t God have created us through the process of evolution, just as he “created light” through a scientifically-verifiable celestial body we call Sol (or the Sun)?

Sure! As long as we’re clear on the concept that Biblically speaking, evolution could not begin until death entered the garden of Eden as a result of sin (original sin).

Did dinosaurs exist? Of course, Job 3:8 & 41:1 and Psa 74:14

Is it possible that the Garden of Eden was a safe & walled garden and that there was other, untamed life outside the garden? Yes, that’s debatable.

So why don’t we drop the animus and toss all the theories out there and let the students figure it out for themselves? Surely that can’t be too difficult or dangerous for them to suss out on their own, especially when we expect demand that 11-year olds make life or death decisions regarding their bodies w/o parental involvement.

Come to think of it. That’s pretty ironic since those same schools probably require that kids be escorted by parents from cars up to the schoolhouse door lest they get run over by a bus or something.

Greg, good explanation on what a theory is.

The problem is that Darwin’s theory does not hold up under the data. As stated above, micro-evolution (the change of organisms over time to adapt to changes in the enviornment) is readily apparent, and is borne out by the fossil record. The other aspect, macro-evolution (in which all species evolved from a common ancestor) is refuted by the fossil record. If Darwin were correct, then how do you explain the Cambrian Explosion (the period in the fossil record in which a great number of species appear virtually overnight (in geological terms))?

Darwin himself admitted that at the time he devised his theory, the fossil record did not support it, and hoped that future discoveries would bear him out. They haven’t. It seems to me that a good theory makes use of available data, not hinging on data to-be-determined-at-some-future-date.

That is the major criticism that ID proponents have of Darwinian evolution.

Andy @#27:

“Tossing in the requirement for scientific article is a canard. Even if such an article has never been published, it does not diminish the assertion that “Science is always trying to ‘disprove’ the idea of God.” Granted, the phrase is a generality…”

That’s all I was saying. It’s so much of a generality as to be untrue and/or meaningless.

“Dawkins, among others, is using his credentials as a scientist and leveraging his subject matter expertise to beat down any “idiot” foolish enough to believe in a God.”

Okay, but when did Dawkins (and a few others) become the standard-bearers for all scientists?

“That’s not my contention, altho it would not surprise me if a few [scientists] were drawn into science as a result of wanting to disprove God.”

It would surprise me a great deal if anyone (short of an actual satanist) would devote one’s entire livelihood and income into such an endeavor. Very few atheists have the a “calling” to atheism in the same manner as believers have to faith.

Furthermore, as another commenter said, science itself is agnostic. It is the search for truth without an agenda.

“Let me give another example: scoffers like to tag Believers as “flat-earthers”.”

The name invokes that of early Christian scholars who interpreted the Bible (wrongly, I agree) that the earth was flat. It is not meant to suggest that people today who believe in the Bible believe in a flat earth; it is meant to suggest that those who look to the Bible as a scientific text often come to the wrong (and comical) conclusions.

“As Pascal noted, if God exists, then the atheist has two painful choices, burn or repent. “

But even if the atheist is wrong about God’s existence, does that mean that the “believer’s” vision of God is right?

Even if an atheist were to concede that he could be wrong about God’s existence, it’s another large leap for him to admit that God will punish him for his lack of faith. So most atheists, even if they have a doubt about their atheism, still aren’t going to “fear” God.

“When one looks at Genesis’ 6 stages of creation, the order of events pretty much parallels the chain of events posed by our best secular theories, with the primary issue being the timeline. In that case, what’s with the phobia of secular scientists in even discussing ID/creationism?”

Well, many clearly do discuss ID/creationism, if only in the negative. So it’s not a phobia.

And when they discuss it, their main thrust is that it is not “science” by its very nature, and therefore has no place in science classrooms. The crux of ID is “Well, we can’t explain everything, so there must be an invisible hand at play”. That’s fine as a philosophy (or religious standpoint), but since the goal of science is to explain what and why things are, ID is explicitly anti-science (”anti” meaning “the opposite of” rather than “in opposition to”).

“So why don’t we drop the animus and toss all the theories out there and let the students figure it out for themselves?”

Well, won’t they anyway? Didn’t you? Didn’t I?

Part of the problem with “tossing all the theories out there” is that you would have to let in ALL the theories (yes, including the “Flying Spaghetti Monstor” theory, Scientology, etc.) Since most students first encounter evolution as part of biology class, you would pretty much have to scrap the rest of the school year’s curriculum. Same to with “earth sciences” and other scientific subjects. In essence, you would be turning the science curriculum into religious survey curriculum. (I suspect most people at some level or another realize this, which is why there is a push among believers for ID to be taught in schools).

More importantly, those kind of lessons don’t belong in a SCIENCE class any more than evolution and “big bang” theory being preached from a pulpit. Time and place, my friend, time and place.

“I can understand why many people of faith feel threatened by science.”

But they shouldn’t, and here’s one who isn’t.

Favorite quotes:
on topic-
The trouble with this idea of “God’s thumbprint” is, first of all, it denies the fact that it’s ALL thumbprint. And so, I don’t want to say that this is proof of God, but that over there was just accident.

Somewhat off topic, but very well put-
The trouble is that some people think they can use science to prove God. And that puts science ahead of God; that makes science more powerful than God. That’s bad theology. In fact, some philosophers have said that’s what led to atheism in the eighteenth century — the fallacy of the God of the gaps. You say, “I have no idea how this could have happened. It must have been God’s design.” And then fifty years later, somebody explains how it did happen, and you say, “I don’t need God anymore.” If your faith is based on science, that’s a very shaky kind of faith.

If the universe is this good, then it’s worth our while to spend the time and money studying it, even if it’s not going to get me rich, even if it’s not immediately going to give me better crops or fancier Teflon or any of those other excuses. It’s the motivation behind why we’re all here doing this stuff. It’s because we’re in love with the truth, it’s because we’re in love with this physical universe, and our love of the universe is what gives us the courage to spend our lives studying it. So, our science is based on our religion. You can’t do it the other way around.

Read Judith Hooper’s” (an atheist) “Of Moths and Men” for the complete unravel of Darwin’s theory. Still a theory because it has never been proven, and never will. Animals adapt to their surroundings and do not evolve. fyi, the moths changed back to their original colors after their environment changed.