DescentBB

You'll all know I am a staunch supporter of evolution. The inability to accept the fact of evolution is a direct consequence of being unable to distinguish fact from fiction effectively. Mostly this is due to a flawed education, deliberate misrepresentations, or reliance on inaccurate "facts".

The University of California Museum of Paleontology has launched an outstanding Evolution resource which pays close attention to the misconceptions about Evolution.

An understanding of evolution, in many ways, is core to understanding the human condition, and this new web site will, hopefully, go some way towards combating the antievolutionary lobby.

Hmm. Well researched and fairly written, though shallow in places. Cute, though, and fair on a popular level.

Entirely off topic, I find myself somewhat amused at being told that as an evolution skeptic, I rely on "flawed education, deliberate misrepresentations, or reliance on inaccurate 'facts'." And moreover that I am "unable to distinguish fact from fiction effectively." And all that coming from Mobius, too. Ouch.

You're an evolution skeptic??? How?

People that don't think evolution makes sense are smoking the crack.

"Evolution, simply put, is descent with modification."

Is it just me or does the word descent have a completely different feel to to it now. Strange!!

Nice site.

FC

Mobius:

Thanks for the link. I am not an Evolutionist, nor am I a Creationist (anyone who thinks the universe was created in 6 literal days is blind to many facts). However, anyone who thinks Evolution is the answer for everything is also missing many facts. The answer lies somewhere in between the two. But I doubt many from either camp will ever arrive at the truth because of too much bias on both sides of the argument - the things that disprove are often shoved aside and derided as fodder for the uneducated - typical defensive reaction from both sides - error propagates . . . and the gulf between Evolution and Creation just gets wider.

Mobius wrote: An understanding of evolution, in many ways, is core to understanding the human condition, and this new web site will, hopefully, go some way towards combating the antievolutionary lobby.

I think there are different ways to understand evolution as well as different ways to interpret the human condition (even if there is some truth to evolution).

Shoku wrote:(anyone who thinks the universe was created in 6 literal days is blind to many facts)

Define a "day" for an entity that would be capable of creating a universe. Especially since "In the beginning", our "day" wouldn't have existed, since our "day" is defined as a single revolution of our hunk of rock that didn't exist yet. Certainly six of our days would be a bit much to swallow, but say one "day" was a stage of evolution? Matter is created, coalesces into stars and planets, these bodies grow and develop, life begins, and so on. Creationism and Evolutionism don't have to be mutually exclusive. And if you look at it the right way (don't take what the Bible says as completely literal, especially in today's words), they actually can agree.

ThunderBunny wrote:You're an evolution skeptic??? How?

It isn't hard, though I sure don't intend to get into a debate about it. But I do think anyone that thinks the evidence forces them to be an evolutionist (or creationist) simply hasn't read the other side. I have a lot of evidential problems with evolution. It may yet be true, but nothing I've seen is very convincing. I have evidential problems with creationism, too, though. I haven't studied it to my satisfaction yet, but it is becoming a very real possiblity to me that nobody's right.

Everyone who cares about this topic at all should read "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" by Daniel C. Dennett. And if you're bothered by his quick, early dismissal of creationism and other alternatives, please don't let that stop you from finishing the book. It's not perfect, but it covers a lot of stuff you should know about.

aldel, what does his book actually cover?

It covers the history of evolutionary theory, spends a lot of time answering criticisms of evolution by natural selection (and explaining key points of the theory in the process), and examines the social and philosophical implications. There's a longer summary of the book in the first chapter, which can be found through Amazon's full text search here. The summary starts in the final two paragraphs of that page and continues on the next page.

Evolution is bad science. anytime you go looking for data to support a thoery then modify fact to fit that thoery as well .. that's bad science. ... creationism, evolutionism, or uplift.. it's still BAD science.

"anytime you go looking for data to support a thoery then modify fact to fit that thoery as well "

Hi,
Please post proof

Actually, what they do is modify the theory to fit the fact. This is because scientists can adapt their thinking when proven wrong. Repeated iterations of this produce stronger theories.

The website is interesting, but it doesn't really introduce anything new to the debate, IMO. Anyone worth their salt should already know it.

Shoku wrote:(anyone who thinks the universe was created in 6 literal days is blind to many facts)

Just too hard to come to grips with is it? Let's face it, if the universe could be created at all I doubt there is any issue with timeframe.

Plebeian wrote:Creationism and Evolutionism don't have to be mutually exclusive.

Agreed. The only problem I have with 'evolutionism' is the way naturalists try to use it. And they say it can do things it basically can't. The main thing I'm referring to is the difference between 'microevolution' - which everyone knows DOES happen, or we wouldn't have the breeds of different animals we do - and 'macroevolution', which I kind of have a problem with. Micro-evolution requires only different genetic combinations and perhaps a few well-placed mutations to make the organism better suited to the environment. Macro-evolution, well. Essentially it requires huge amounts of new information to appear out of nowhere to make highly complex species out of very simple ones. And mutations don't really account for that since they are invariably a loss of information as far as I am aware... therein lies the problem.

That site is correct that evolution is not a religion in any sense of the word. That description would go to something more like humanism.

Sirius wrote:
Just too hard to come to grips with is it? Let's face it, if the universe could be created at all I doubt there is any issue with timeframe.

Exactly my point. One point 6-day Creationists fail to consider is the very simple and "timeless" statment at Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." There is no time limit set for these creative events. Everything mentioned after that statement is a discription of how God prepared the already created earth for habitation. As is evident beginning with the next verse which says "the earth proved to be formless and waste and there was darkness upon the surface of the deep (the sea)."

Sirius wrote: That site is correct that evolution is not a religion in any sense of the word. That description would go to something more like humanism.

I think a better candidate than humanism would be scientific naturalism, a belief system (or quasi-religion) commited to the assumption that nature is a closed network of causes and effects -- so every event in nature has a strictly natural explanation. Another tenet is that there is no purpose or design in nature. (I would prefer a reconsideration of such ideas as the logos of Heracleitus, the nous of Anaxagoras, or the telos of Aristotle.) In this system, evolution functions as a creation myth in which order emerges out of chaos.

"I think a better candidate than humanism would be scientific naturalism, a belief system (or quasi-religion) commited to the assumption that nature is a closed network of causes and effects -- so every event in nature has a strictly natural explanation. Another tenet is that there is no purpose or design in nature. (I would prefer a reconsideration of such ideas as the logos of Heracleitus, the nous of Anaxagoras, or the telos of Aristotle.) In this system, evolution functions as a creation myth in which order emerges out of chaos. "


Fantastic post. I can't agree more.

This is something I wrote for school a few years ago while trying to get an idea of the various ways to think about the creation-evolution debate.

The significance of Darwinism for theology is mixed: some theological positions are able to absorb the evolutionary understanding of nature, while others positions are not. Some of the issues arising from theologyâ??s encounter with Darwinism are the existence and nature of God, the nature of man and the nature of creation. One crucial issue for theology is hermeneutics because how well a theological position combines with Darwinism depends to a large degree on how scripture is interpreted. Should our understanding of nature be based on our interpretation of scripture, or should scripture be interpreted based on our understanding of nature? It is interesting to note that the century which produced Darwinism also produced new ideas concerning biblical criticism and interpretation.

One far-reaching result of Darwinism is the philosophical justification is gives to atheism. Indeed, some have said that Darwin made atheism intellectually satisfying. Darwinism has been enlisted to promulgate a self-contained, naturalistic worldview that has no need for God. In reaction to this development, theologians might retreat into subjectivism or fideism, or they might try to reconcile theology with science in order to make room for God in the scientific view of the world. The three major attempts at reconciliation are young earth creationism (YEC), progressive creationism (PC), and theistic evolution (TE). YEC interprets Genesis literally as saying that the earth is thousands of years old and that living organisms were specially created as they now exist. They have little to offer when trying to account for scientific data that contradicts their position except, perhaps, to say that the data are only misleading appearances. Adherents of PC incorporate more interpretive flexibility, e.g, they see a gap of time between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 and they allow a day of creation to be indefinitely long. They can concede that evolution may have played some role in the development of nature, but deny that it played an exclusive role. They still insist that special acts of creation have occurred in history and these account for the emergence of new species. This view defers to science on the age of the earth, but not on the emergence of species. A problem for this view is that it is vulnerable to the objection that God is introduced into the theory in an ad hoc manner when a simple appeal to the laws of nature might suffice. TEâ??s marvel at these laws of nature and conclude that God created them as the means through which He indirectly orders creation. (Some appeal to the â??anthropic principle,â?

Wow, that was excellent!

Compare that to what Mobius' website said:

Religion and science (evolution) are very different things. In science (as in science class), only natural causes are used to explain natural phenomena, while religion deals with beliefs that are beyond the natural world.

The misconception that one has to choose between science and religion is divisive. Most Christian and Jewish religious groups have no conflict with the theory of evolution or other scientific findings. In fact, many religious people, including theologians, feel that a deeper understanding of nature actually enriches their faith. Moreover, in the scientific community there are thousands of scientists who are devoutly religious and also accept evolution.

That's mostly true on a simplistic level and from a certain perspective, but certainly simpler than the overall situation and in some ways misleading.

For example, the view that science studies only nature and religion studies only the supernatural is one of the views out there that a lot of people subscribe to, and evidently one that this website subscribes to. But to state it as fact is wildly misleading--both I and my favorite Systematic Theology book consider the idea heretical!

Likewise, there are some Christian groups that have no conflict with the theory of evolution--the Theistic Evolutionists De Rigueur mentioned--but to call it "most" is pretty wild. In my experience YEC and OEC are pretty dominant, and TE's are pretty rare. I only personally know one of them. Perhaps I don't move in sufficiently liberal circles, but to say that anyone who thinks there's a conflict between science and scripture is misled is one of the major viewpoints out there, and evidently the opinion of that website. But it certainly isn't a generally fair statement about the broader culture! There are a lot of people out there who would disagree.

As an addendum, I wanted to illustrate that people are theologically all over the map on evolution.

Theologan Wayne Grudem discards theistic evolution in general as something that is theologically impossible. He writes,

Instead of the the straightforward biblical account of God's creation, the theistic evolution view has to understand events to have occured something like this:

And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds." And after three hundred eighty-seven million four hundred ninety-two thousand eight hundred seventy-one attempts, God finally made a mouse that worked.

The pastor at the church I now attend feels the same way--that the sense of immediacy in the commands and account in Genesis render a long, slow, painful and random evolutionary process simply irreconcilable to scripture.

Apologist Greg Koukl discards theistic evolution for a different reason: he believes it's a contradiction in terms. On his website, he writes,

What sense does it make to say that God used randomness? Design by chance is an oxymoron, a contradictory concept. This is not God using evolution, because "using" is teleological; it has a specific end result in view. It accomplishes something particular.

Now, in natural selection, specific circumstances in the environment allow a particular individual to survive and reproduce, passing its mutated genes on to the next generation. Serendipitous conditions in nature make the choice, not God. And--watch this, friends--if nature is selecting, then God is not selecting. The two are at odds with each other. I don't know what could be more obvious.

The problem with any form of theistic evolution, even Michael Behe's, is that it means design by chance. That's like a square circle. There is no such thing. Blending evolution with creation is like putting a square peg in a round hole. It just doesn't fit.

On the complete other end of the spectrum, physicist Howard Van Till thinks theistic evolution not only makes theological sense, but that it's theologically necessary--that a universe in which God would have had to supernaturally "tinker" to create life would be a lesser one than one in which God set up the universe in advance to generate life by its own natural laws.

I fall into a camp somewhere in the middle--of people who think evolution is a theological possibility, (if an unlikely one) and that it's mainly a scientific question.

And then there are those who think Genesis literally spells out what happened in the first six days of creation, and any other interpretation compromises scripture.

Finding a mainstream or orthodox theological view here is very, very difficult--let alone reconciling such a view to the scientific world. Francis Schaeffer listed several possibilities to illustrate the boundaries of the theological debate, even among Christians with reasonably similar assumptions about the truthfulness of scripture:

1. There is a possibility that God created a "grown-up" universe.

2. There is a possibility of a break between Genesis 1:1 and 1:2 or between 1:2 and 1:3.

3. There is a possibility of a long day in Genesis 1.

4. There is a possibility that the flood affected the geological data.

5. The use of the word "kinds" in Genesis 1 may be quite broad.

6. There is a possibility of the death of animals before the fall.

7. Where the Hebrew word "Bara" is not used there is a possibility of sequence from previously existing things.

All of that is to say, the field is complicated--as to the relationship between evolution and Christianity, there are some who embrace it as necessary, some who investigate it as a possibility, and those who discard it as impossible or even heretical.

But anyway. I always wonder about those that brush off the conflict between science and religion in regaurds to origins so casually. I suspect that is a commentary, not on the fact that they posess the solution which will solve the conflict, but rather that they are not aware of the theological positions out there, nor the depth of the argument. I am always astonished at those who think they have solved the problem because they can conceive of a world in which God exists and evolution has happened--when they are not even aware of the several main interpretations of Genesis 1, and their exegetical, theological, and scientific strengths and weaknesses!

In short, I think those who find the problem of origins easy to solve haven't seriously tried.

Drakona wrote: In short, I think those who find the problem of origins easy to solve haven't seriously tried.

I think the contemporary debate on the subject is more about shaping public opinion than solving the problem of origins. The statement "Evolution is not a theory, it's a fact" is not a statement of science, rather it is political propaganda. The scientific naturalist cannot afford to concede anything in the debate without abandoning a major part of his/her worldview. On the other hand, the theist has more options in trying to accomodate the 'advances' of science. For me, the ultimate puzzle is what makes a person take one side of the debate rather than the other.

Well said.

People are going to hate me for this, but Evolution is a religion, not science. Religion affects our world view, science lets us see deeper into the world. Evolution affects world views a ton.

Meathead, your statement isn't entirely accurate. Science can also affect how people see the world. Take, for example, the proof of the heliocentric model of the solar system. That changed many people's views about the world and their place in it, and it may have also made some people question their beliefs. Also, evolution is definitely NOT a religion; it is a scientific principle. I'm a Catholic, and I have no problem with evolution at all; so, do I have two religions?