Posted by Mike O on: 09.25.2008 /
There is a quote that I found a few days ago that pretty well describes, from a Christian perspective, my interest in evolution, and all things atheistic.
“Unthinking faith is a curious offering to be made to the creator of the human mind.” ~John Hutchinson
This post in particular is not about me ‘wondering’ if evolution is true or not, although there is an element of that to my thinking. Rather, I’m taking the approach that there are an aweful lot of people that believe in evolution, and I believe in creationism. How, exactly does evolution work? Other than the fact that I am a Christian and believe in the Bible, what *don’t* I believe about evolution? Am I missing something? Are they?”
So I went out to www.howstuffworks.com and typed in “evolution” just to see if they would have anything. What I found is a sort of “evolution primer” - an “Evolution for Dummies” - of the theory. What I got is actually pretty good! Interestingly, even though it is not a religious site, they are willing to take a look at the holes, and .that leads me to believe they will present evolution from an objective, if not pro-evolution perspective.
My hope is that this will turn into a series where I try to look at the theory of evolution as objectively as I can - given that I’m very skepticaL - and relay my questions and reactions to what I find. Also, since I do invite several Christian friends to read what I write each week, this may be a good opportunity for them to ask questions, too. Again, the goal is not to prove or refute, but to understand what evolution is, and why it makes sense to so many people - and doesn’t make sense to so many others.
A couple of years ago, Eliza posted a series on her experience as an atheist, sitting in on a Lutheran membership class (look at articles titled ‘Class #__”), and relayed her perceptions of what it was like as an outsider. That’s kind of what I want to accomplish here - I want to look at what evolution has to offer, as objectively as possible, and see if it makes any sense. Parts will, I’m sure. And parts won’t, I’m equally sure.
If you click on the link I provided, it will take you to the actual article I will be working from. Please feel free to go look at it, too. I’m hoping that as questions arise - and they will - you will be able to help me through them.
Here endeth the intro :)
THE BASIC PROCESS OF EVOLUTION
I have two issues with what I read on the first page of the writeup. I don’t mean anything by this, except that this just doesn’t seem workable to me. Here’s the first one:
The change brought about by a mutation is either beneficial, harmful or neutral. If the change is harmful, then it is unlikely that the offspring will survive to reproduce, so the mutation dies out and goes nowhere. If the change is beneficial, then it is likely that the offspring will do better than other offspring and so will reproduce more. Through reproduction, the beneficial mutation spreads. The process of culling bad mutations and spreading good mutations is called natural selection.
I’m not sure what “beneficial, neutral and harmful” mean in the context of evolution. The word sort of implies that it is “immediately” beneficial to solve some specific problem, or to provide some useful new ability. But when people think of evolution in general, they speak in terms of millions of years. And in that case, what would “beneficial” mean to the organism(s) that actually mutated? Where is the actual advantage or benefit to the mutation? Take for example, a fish sprouting legs. If the fish did not need to leave the water, than there is no benefit to having legs. Sure, millions of years later, those legs may prove beneficial, but to the organism in question, it is no more likely to survive with them than without. My question goes to the implied immediacy of the benefit, AND the lack of immediate need for the benefit - how was it helpful?
Sorry, that was a bit longwinded and convoluted - it’s hard to explain the dilemma I see. I hope the question made sense. I’m not sure I’m even looking for an answer - just pointing out that this is a sticking point for me.
Here’s the other one:
Billions of years ago, according to the theory of evolution, chemicals randomly organized themselves into a self-replicating molecule. This spark of life was the seed of every living thing we see today (as well as those we no longer see, like dinosaurs). That simplest life form, through the processes of mutation and natural selection, has been shaped into every living species on the planet.
The obvious question to me is, how??? Did we just get really lucky? With no God, this makes no sense to me at all. Unrelated, non-living, non-productive chemicals “organized themselves into a self-replicating molecule?” Self-replicating is a HUGE evolutionary leap! And even if it did happen, which I don’t think it did, all you would have is a perpetual chemical reaction, right? And if you have a perpetual chemical reaction, it would be one that is improving on itself, which I don’t think can happen, can it? Don’t reactions burn out eventually? Don’t they consume whatever it was they were reacting with and end. Or maybe I just don’t understand - I’m no chemist! :) Aditionally, it seems that we would be seeing this sort of occurrance today, or at least recently). Do we? Are there examples? Is it reproducable? Is this a plausible explanation?
So, that’s where I’ll leave it for this week. Again, my goal is not to refute, but to expose the areas that cause me to remain skeptical. Could God have *used* evolution in his creation process? Sure, I suppose he could have. But I just don’t see how a Godless evolution could work.
Comment by: steve martin
1Hi Mike,
This is a huge topic - and a lot to respond to in your post. Probably the most important thing is to get some basic agreement on the definition (or rather definitions) of evolution. Allan Harvey (an evangelical christian & a scientist) has put together a helpful summary of 6 different definitions for evolution as a framework for Christians - see: http://evanevodialogue.blogspot.com/2007/10/what-does-evolution-mean-framework-for.html for a summary of this.
Comment by: Mike O
2Hi, Steve … nice to have you!
Yes, I usually try to steer away from it. I’ve been a Christian my whole life, never seriously considering any alternative to creation. But I don’t like that I don’t fully understand what I don’t believe - if that triple-negative makes any sense at all!
I doubt I’ll ever really buy into it, but I at least want to understand it. That’s why I was glad when I actually found it on howstuffworks.com. It’s not a Christian source, so I don’t need to parse out the theology of it, it’s just presented in laymans terms.
I honestly don’t know if that will raise more questions than it answers, but assuming what they are saying is accurate, at least I’ll gain some sort of foundation in the topic.
Thanks for commenting! I just popped over to your website for a sec. haven’t read anything yet, but it looks like it might be right up my alley!
Comment by: joe
3Hi Mike, I like your approach.
OK, we’re talking about the benefits to the species as a whole (or actually more accurately a specific genome). Think of it this way - if the gene was an idea. Someone discovers something. Initially few people take any notice, but over time people see the benefits and eventually the idea becomes dominant (if it is any good). Otherwise it is tested and rejected. There is no dramatic improvement for an individual by most genetic mutations (unless the individual has developed immunity to a drug if it is a microbe or something). Indeed, a mutation could easily be hugely inconvenient to the individual whilst being beneficial to the whole species. Beneficial meaning that it enables individuals to reproduce more than other individuals without the mutation.
In theory, given enough time you might expect unusual things to happen. I am no chemist either, but there have been experiments showing how molecules combine to become more complex. I have to tell you that I don’t consider this to be part of evolutionary theory and in itself isn’t proof of anything very much. We know that changes occur in living organisms. We can observe this. How we got from a bunch of chemicals to a living reproducing organism is more of a challenge, to my mind.
That said, it is possible to produce a simple reproducing organism from just the parts, and it is often done - a virus.
Comment by: Jason
4I applaud you for your very scientific stance. :)
One your first point I think it best to use an example. Let’s imagine a quadruped animal with a mutation that means that their neck bones are slightly longer. A longer neck allows the animal to reach higher and eat the succulent leaves on a bush that it’s brother or sister cannot reach. Better fed the animal is healthier and a more attractive mate and so passes on this mutation. Add several hundred generations to this and the quadruped’s offspring might become a giraffe.
A mutation for shorter necks on the other hand means that the animal is less capable of feeding and presents a less attractive mate. The short neck variant does not pass on the mutation and so it dies out.
Of course this is a simplification looking at only one mutation and one action. Perhaps a long neck actually gets in the way when trying to flee from predators. Short necks would survive and pass on that trait.
So “beneficial, neutral and harmful” refer to the ability to enhance the survival of the animal within the environment that it lives in.
Take your proto amphibian as an example. Your fish finds that food is available in the shallow waters of the beech and so develops traits useful for survival there. This might be air breathing lungs, eyelids and tear ducts for keeping the eyes moist when out of water, stronger fins for moving about in mud rather than water. Stronger fins have the added benefit of allowing for brief skirmishes onto land to escape predators or to return to the water when accidentally washed up on the beech.
Perhaps these modifications allow for longer periods away from water until the fin becomes more a foot. We now have a species well adapted to exploring the land. Further modification have longer legs for running or stronger legs for digging or hopping.
I’ll come back to the second point later after I have a cup of tea.
Comment by: joe
5In particular it refers to the ability to produce live progeny and propagate the gene, Jason.
I think your example is problematic as it is likely that a mutation would only cause a very slightly longer neck. The question is then whether a very slight increase in neck length would have any effect on reproductive success. And you’d need a lot more positive mutations (so not just more generations, but more mutations leading to ever longer necks).
Comment by: Mike O
6Yes, that is the problem I’m having with “beneficial.” Is any given mutation beneficial enough to matter? Or doesn’t each mutation have to matter?
Comment by: joe
7In these things we have to work backwards, Mike. For example in British society people have generally gotten taller over the last 200 years*. One might therefore argue that mutations which lead to taller gait are more beneficial (ie enable people to produce more children) than those that don’t.
And we might try to explain that: people generally like taller people, therefore find them more attractive therefore taller people are more likely to reproduce than shorter people.
*of course that effect is also a lot to do with health improvements.
To be honest, the simplest example is of a microbe. A mutation which allows it to be less susceptible to antibiotics means that it survives when others don’t. Because it survives, it reproduces more than those who do not survive so long. Eventually the trait is shown throughout the remaining population.
Comment by: Jason
8Good point Joe, it isn’t just a single mutation that is important. Often it is a combination of mutations over many generations. Micro evolution might produce a long necked horse or a short necked horse better suited to their own environment. Perhaps a tendency to be piebald in horses allows piebalds to survive more than their monochromatic siblings because it provides better camouflage. Add a longer leg to the mix for greater speed and larger lung capacity and you have a winner who successfully breeds to produce more horses with the same trait. Over time the whole herd will gain these traits and, as long as they are useful to survival, the herd will prosper and grow.
Think of the introduction of grey squirrels in England. The red squirrel population native to the island has specialised to live in coniferous forests. They are generally solitary and survived quite well.
The grey squirrel is larger and faster, operated in tighter family groups, could eat a greater variety of foods and is generally more adaptable. The loss of many coniferous forests reduced the red population but did nothing to curb the more adaptable grey. The red squirrel is now a protected species in England, almost unseen on the mainland and all because their traits allowed them a competitive advantage.
That is really what natural selection accounts for. One species has a competitive advantage over another and so succeeds where the other fails.
The problem, of course, comes where micro evolution becomes macro evolution. Where one species diverges to become two or more distinct species. How many small changes are necessary for this to occur? What actually sets one species apart from another? What differentiates a wolf from a dog? Or a rat from a mouse?
More questions, I’m sure, for later.
Comment by: joe
9Ah now we’re talking. I spent a whole term at university struggling to understand the notion of ’species’, which in botany at least is extremely difficult to define.
Good example with the squirrels, I wish I’d thought of that.
Comment by: Mike O
10Part of the problem I have with evolution is that it seems to only work when looking backwards. There’s just so much random mutation (slightly longer neck) upon random (slightly longer neck) etc. until you get the giraffe, it makes me wonder, what if the right zillion mutations didn’t happen in the right order?
Sure, looking backwards you can find a path from B back to A. But going forward from A to B, could we even make it happen if we wanted to? Could we “design” a new feature and eventually a new animal? I’m not talking about breeding, for example. That could get you from one giraffe to a better giraffe, or from one strain of corn to another. But could we make something new? I don’t think so. Evolution seems to be a theory that only makes sense when you run it backwards.
In the squirrel example, shouldn’t the red squirrel have been able to adapt and evolve the traits needed to compete in the changing environment? What I’d really like to see is a red squirrel *become* a grey squirrel. Evolution involves a lot of randomness. But if we understand so much about how it works today, it seems like we should be able to remove the element of chance and actually cause something to evolve by design. In theory, we should be able to turn a red squirrel into a grey squirrel over time. Just define the necessary mutations, get the DNA to mutate that way (next week’s topic, I think) and make it happen. I say that only half in jest. If it can happen by chance, we should be able to make it happen on purpose. And faster!
Comment by: joe
11Exactly. There are a big pile of mutations that were not beneficial so are not spread throughout the population. If we are talking enough generations and enough mutations, mathematically, even very unlikely events (eg something requiring a series of mutations one after another) will happen. Even if there are some superfluous intermediate forms which didn’t quite make it.
Wildly unlikely things happen in big populations. Someone can go on a long journey involving many forms of transport only to find someone they know at the other end. We hear about it because it is unusual - we don’t hear about all the times when it didn’t happen. When there are a lot of people travelling, eventually the unlikely happens. This is the same kind of thing.
Well, this is the nature of science. We are talking about changes that usually happen over extended periods of time because they require lots of generations and many mutations. How would you measure it in real time, given that you cannot know what is a beneficial trait until afterwards?
I don’t think we know enough about the individual genes we’d have to change to turn a grey into a red squirrel. But you’re right, if the red squirrel is to survive it needs to develop grey squirrel-like behaviour (and/or find some other way to survive). We haven’t had enough generations to notice this happening, so it is most likely going to die off due to being out-competed by the grey. Natural selection occurring before our eyes.
Comment by: Jason
12A grey squirrel cannot evolve into a red squirrel. At some point in the past a red squirrel and a grey squirrel shared a common ancestor. One branch of the family moved off into the coniferous forests and developed traits useful for survival there and one branch went off in another direction. The reds became geographically isolated which meant that they weren’t in competition with the greys and their evolution continued to diverge. When the greys were reintroduced into the red environment they proved better able to survive and so ousted the reds from their ecological niche.
The red squirrel only survives by remaining isolated from competition either on smaller islands that greys have not reached, like the Isle of Wight, or in remote areas where their smaller size and specialised diet is an asset, like the coniferous forests of northern Scotland.
Imagine forward a few hundred generations. isolated from one another the red squirrels of Scotland and the Isle of Wight have adapted to their own environments, their mutations allowing for survival in their own environments. Perhaps the Scottish Red will have evolved a thicker coat and grown larger for the colder climate. Perhaps the Wight red has evolved longer limbs to move faster and steal food from the tourists who frequent the island, maybe their teeth become weaker as a result of their new diet of cake and discarded peanut butter sandwiches.
You can see how a red squirrel becomes a Wight squirrel and a Scottish squirrel but not a grey squirrel. The reds cannot retrace the steps and then go forward to become greys anymore than the greys can become Scottish Reds.
Maybe the evolved Scottish Red spreads south and displaces the dominant grey whose own evolution has slowed as a result of a lack of competition.
Scientists can change the environment of an animal and predict how they will evolve to adapt to the new environment. Unfortunately the time scales involved only make this practical with things like bacteria or some plant species.
Another example is the daisy. A small flower that grows in grass. Daisy breeds have evolved to become shorter as a result of human intervention. Mowing a lawn cuts grass and flowers off at a certain height. Short daisies survive to propagate and pass the trait of shortness to their offspring. We see an increase in short daisies in cities but the long daisies continue to thrive in the country where the height is an asset in attracting insects. this is something that has been noted in living memory.
Comment by: Mike O
13You’re talking about coincidence, not science. And your’e making the assumption that the coincidence is possible. If the someone you knew had been dead for 10 years, I would say that no matter how much the “wildly unlikely” can happen, if it’s not possible, it can’t happen.
You’re making the assumption that evolution *can* happen, and then jumping to the conclusion that it *did* happen because it’s wildly unlikely, but there was plenty of time. What if evolution doesn’t work? What if nothing ever evolved into something else?
It’s like looking back from point B to point A again … if evolution works, let’s go from point B to point C.
Regarding mutating viruses, are they becoming different viruses, or just different strains of the same virus? Have we ever taken something from one thing to another completely different thing? Going forward?
We could cause it. We could choose an environment (say, a desert), look at the animals that survive there, pick some beneficial characteristic and cause some other animal to develop it. If evolution works, we should be able to remove the element of chance, shorten the timespan and design the creature to generate the beneficial trait. Even if we can’t get the whole way in our lifetime, we should be able to make progress towards the goal, and let it be a multi-generational project lasting hundreds of years if necessary (rather than millions).
Methinks if we were talking a billion years ago, and we saw a red and grey squirrel, we would use them as support for evolution and natural selection, assuming one evolved into the other. Or at least accepting the possibility because “wildly unexpected” things happen.
So let’s do it again. Isolate it, create whatever conditions are necessary, do whatever is needed by design, and get it to change. I know I must sound like a raving idiot, but if it could happen by chance, why is it not possible to do it on purpose? Do we even know where to start? And if not, why are we so sure evolution even works? Again back to the “going from point B back to point A” argument I have.
I feel like y’all think I’m being argumentative and I don’t mean to be … I just don’t see how you can be so sure it worked in the past if we can’t get it to work now.
It’s like you not believing in miracles, but I do. I just can’t accept evolution on blind faith simply because it looks like it may have happened. I need proof, and I don’t see it - I just see evidence and assumptions. I don’t think evolution works — at least not without supernatural intervention.
I’m still stuck at the chemical reaction becoming a self-replicating molecule - I just don’t believe it works. if it did, let’s do it again.
Comment by: joe
14I’m just saying that evolution is a reasonable explanation of the facts. At first glance it sounds wildly unlikely, but unlikely things happen, period.
Depends what you mean. Define ’something completely different’.
We do. It is called ‘animal husbandry’ otherwise known as artificial selection. In the middle ages, dogs were more like wolves, look what human selection has produced - a wide variety of creatures which someone unsuspecting might easily conclude are different species.
I don’t understand your point here..
Breeding works. See above.
Unfortunately that is the nature of science. We observe phenomena and work out explanations for it. Evolution is a good explanation for the facts. Yes, there are assumptions, but the assumptions are reasonable. It is not reasonable to conclude that the world is 4000 years old, for example.
I have no opinions on miracles. I hope they exist. That has nothing to do with my scientific thinking.
Comment by: Jason
15I do think that these are valid questions.
Firstly on the self-replicating molecule I must confess that I have had to look high and low for an explanation. All I had was that molecules form in a variety of shapes and forms based on natural chemical reactions with one another. Given enough time and the right circumstances a molecule will form the right shape to become a protein and to replicate this shape. I have to admit that this explanation feels wholly unsatisfying.
With a bit of looking I found this explanation of laboratory produced self-replicating molecules. It’s very interesting but will probably raise more questions. :) Which can’t hurt, can it?
Now onto the effort to engineer traits in animals. Look to the canine family. Humans have engineered greyhounds, ratters, pointers, bulldogs and a host of other types. We see a trait that we desire, in the Bulldog it’s a squashed face and thick upper body, and breed the dog with others who possess this trait. Animal husbandry really is forcing evolution into a mold set by humans. I’m sure you would agree that animal husbandry is true. Animal husbandry or agriculture in plant selection are just examples of micro-evolution.
What is the difference between forcing certain traits into an animal and changing one species into another? Only the degree of change exacerbated by many generations. What differentiates spelt grass from wheat grass but divergence from a common ancestor and human encouragement in growth of wheat crops?
Actually that reminds me of a very common misconception in evolution most often expressed in this falsehood: “We evolved from chimps.” We really didn’t evolve from chimps. Humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor, like spelt and wheat share a common ancestor. The ancestor may no longer exist as in the case of the shared hominid of humans and chimps. An Australopithecus or Ardipithecus perhaps where our paths split 5-7 million years ago.
The time scales are almost incomprehensible for us to imagine that amount of time. Hundreds of thousands of generations exist to separate our species. That is what we need in order to witness speciation. Even if a generation for an animal were a week it would be a few thousand years to witness a significant change. Even though we share 98% of our DNA with our chimpanzee cousins.
Comment by: joe
16Apparently we share 70% of our DNA with the carrot plant. Which always amuses me in these conversations. :)
Comment by: steve martin
17Hi Mike,
Regarding Joe’s comment that:
is exactly right IMHO. In fact, depending on your definition for evolution, I’d state it even more strongly and say “evolution is an excellent explanation of the current scientific evidence for the development of life on earth”. In Darwin’s day, there were lots of good reasons to doubt his theory (many in the scientific community did – not uncommon for any new scientific theory). But, today with so much more evidence (eg. genetics) we now understand that Darwin got it basically right (ok, so he was wrong on the primary cause of variation). Interestingly, many evangelical Christians accepted Darwin’s theory; it was only in the beginning of the 20th century that evangelical Christians came to unanimously reject his theory … but that is another story.
Maybe to connect a few of the conversations here I can summarize some of Harvey’s evolution definitions (referred to in comment #1):
E2: Common ancestry: As Joe & Jason have alluded to, we share many of the same genetics to all other life on earth. Based on the fossil record (very different life forms throughout the geological column) and genetics, common ancestry is extremely well supported by the evidence.
E3: Evolutionary Mechanisms (eg. natural selection (NS) and random genetic mutations (RM)): Virtually no one argues that these mechanisms are not factors – extraordinarily strong evidence. The question is, are these physically sufficient to describe what happened? (A side note: NS & RM are only 2 of the mechanisms – arguably “most important”. I’ve seen lists of about 50 others that are also factors – eg. genetic drift.
E4: Evolutionary mechanisms E3 account physically for E2. This is probably the key definition that most evangelicals reject. (It is certainly the one the ID community contests quite strongly). Although scientifically, it does not have as strong evidence as E2 and E3, I’d say it is still pretty strong. And more importantly, I do not see why it is theologically a problem for Christians. Note the qualifier “physically”.
E5: Ambiogenesis / chemical evolution / the occurrence of first life on earth. Here is where I disagree with the stuff you found on “How evolution works”. They are stating as fact something that, frankly, is still in the realm of almost pure speculation. I don’t think we have a clue how first life formed. Three things to note: a) Creating (synthetic) life in the laboratory is a really, really hot topic in the science community right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the next decade, someone is able to crack this riddle (then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t. The point is, no one should be putting there eggs in the basket of “Humanity will not be able to create life”. b) even if we were able to generate this life, we may be no closer to solving how first life actually occurred on earth. In fact, if / when this achievement is announced I suspect the ID community will take this as evidence “that a designer is needed for life”. c) As in E4, I don’t see a theological necessity for rejecting a physical explanation for chemical evolution.
E6: Evolutionism – belief that biological evolution implies lack of purpose for the universe & non-existence of God. From my point of view, this is really the only definition for evolution that Christians should reject. And frankly, its not even science – it is a metaphysical statement.
Hmm. Sorry, this comment turned out to be way longer than I planned.
Comment by: Jason
18Joe said:
Apparently we share 50% of our DNA with lawn grass. It’s an amazing string of molecules and proteins. Absolutely amazing.
Steve raises an important point besides his excellent explanation. Why reject evolution as false when the evidence supports the theory so well? I can only assume that it is because of the time scales involved. a literal reading of the Old Testament makes the earth 6,000 to 10,000 years old. This is far too short a time to account for the generational changes necessary to agree with evolution. There is also the point that evolution places us firmly as part of the animal kingdom and not above it. That might be difficult to accept.
To me that doesn’t mean that you have to reject the Old Testament, just that you don’t take it literally. Christians don’t take Jesus’ parables literally so why should they have to take the stories in the OT literally? Why not view it as guidance rather than fact?
Comment by: Mike O
19Say, for example a cold virus turning into chicken pox. Or a rat.
You had said that you we couldn’t get from a red squirrel to grey, and I’m just surmising that, if we were talking a couple million years ago instead of today, you wouldn’t think it was impossible, that’s all. I don’t mean that in an accusing way, it’s just easy to say things happened a million years ago when nobody was around.
Just to kind of tie things back to the original post, I’m not trying to disprove anything - I along with a lot of other people are skeptical, that’s all. It feels kind of wierd, actually, that I’m the skeptic for once! :) Kind of a role-reversal thing going on here. :) And again, I really am trying to learn here - I just don’t happen to buy what y’all are saying. But it’s interesting!
Comment by: Mike O
20I do. Somehow, though, it just doesn’t seem like enough of an explanation until we can turn a bulldog into a banana. :) I do get your point, however.
That would be another fun one! Actually, I know people with the personality of a vegetable :) That’s a start.
Hey, thanks everyone for playing along. When I logged on tonight, I honestly thought you would all be showing me how silly I was, but you didn’t, and I appreciate that. It’s late, and I haven’t been able to read everything steve wrote yet, so I’ll look at that tomorrow. But I should add that I used to be a new earth creationist, but I’m actually leaning towards old earth - that God created it, but did it over millions of years. There’s just a lot of history to account for that doesn’t fit into 6000 years. I only say that so you don’t think I’m “rejecting evolution” (which I’m not, I’m only skeptical) because I have to to make the 6000 year thing work. I’m not.
And with that, I bid you farewell till morning.
Comment by: Raghu Mani
21Oh goody!! Here we go again!!
“Beneficial” in the context of evolution means immediately beneficial. Evolution has no foresight.
Regarding fish sprouting legs. What did not happen is that a fish fin suddenly turned into a fully formed leg. All land animals evolved from tetrapod fish - which (to oversimplify) have four fins corresponding to where our four limbs are. Gradually these turned more leglike enabling the fish to “walk” underwater. Why would a fish want to “walk” underwater rather than swim? Turns out that in shallow stagnant water, “walking” is a much more efficient way of getting around than swimming.
This isn’t entirely speculation. There are fish species alive today which do precisely that. Lungfish are tetrapod fish that often live in shallow stagnant water and use their fins to “walk” underwater. Also, as you can guess from the name, they have lungs as well as gills. Why both? Turns out that shallow stagnant water has very little oxygen dissolved in it and having the ability to breathe air is a significant benefit.
So, why did tetrapod fish evolve the ability to walk and breathe? Because these two abilities allowed them to live in shallow stagnant water. The ability to walk longer distances helped when the pool the animal was in dried up and it had to walk to another pool that was some distance away.
You seem to be completely unaware of how science is done. How do you come up with and verify a scientific theory? What happens is that you see a bunch of disparate facts and come up with a logical, naturalistic explanation that connects these facts. Please note the word “naturalistic.” That is why God can never be part of any scientific explanation. Once you have come up with the explanation, you wait for more facts. Now if they contradict your theory then you end up throwing it out and starting from scratch. If not, your theory lives to fight another day. We start believing that a theory is true when a huge amount of evidence has accumulated that supports the theory and none has been found that contradicts it.
What people are doing in this discussion is giving you one example after another and you keep saying - “just because it could happen doesn’t mean that it did.” It’s like you’re the defense attorney in a murder trial and you ask the prosecution for evidence that your client committed the murder. OK, says the prosecutor, he had a motive. You dismiss that by saying “just because he had a motive does not mean that he did the crime.” All right, says the prosecutor, he was seen in the neighborhood at the time of the crime. You dismiss that by saying “just because he was in the neighborhood doesn’t mean he committed the crime” and so on and so on. Now each single piece of evidence can be easily dismissed. However, take all the pieces of evidence together, and it becomes harder and harder to dismiss the prosecutor’s case. The jury is forced to conclude that your client did actually commit the crime.
The case for evolution has been made by thousands of independent lines of evidence. Each individual piece of evidence can be explained away. Each individual piece of evidence could point to some other hypothesis as well as natural selection. However, taken as a whole, it supports evolution by natural selection overwhelmingly. It is almost impossible to explain away the entire body of evidence.
We cannot do that right now. Unfortunately, we cannot read and write DNA like a book. At this time, the language of DNA is one in which we know a good deal about most of the words but not all that much about the grammar. However, our understanding is improving by leaps and bounds and the day is not too far off when we could write our own books in DNA language and we could take that dog DNA and turn it into a radically different type of creature. Would we have proved evolution then? Actually, no. All that we would have done is to show that humans have gotten the ability to do this artificially. To prove evolution to be true you need to show that nature can achieve this. Unfortunately nature takes huge amounts of time to make significant changes - so we’ll never have eyewitness evidence of massive evolutionary changes happening. All that we can get from eyewitness evidence is to show how many changes can happen in 5, 10, 20 years of evolution and estimate what could happen in millions of years by extrapolating.
As in the case of that murder trial, direct lines of evidence are largely unavailable to us and we have to, for the most part, rely on indirect evidence. Evolution is hardly the only science where direct lines of evidence do not exist. Cosmology and particle physics are other sciences where the objects we are studying are “remote” in one way or another. The only way to study them is through indirect lines of evidence and that doesn’t make the evidence weaker nor does it make these sciences invalid in any way.
The problem with your argument above is that chance is an integral part of the theory of evolution by natural selection. If you remove chance it is no longer the same theory. You know what - people have already done far more radical things than what you suggest above. Some of the tomatoes that you are eating today contain a gene that helps them resist freezing if there is a sudden frost. This “anti-freeze gene” comes from antarctic fish. We took a beneficial trait from an animal and caused a plant to develop that same trait!! And it didn’t take us hundreds of years to do it! However, does that prove evolution? No it doesn’t - because you have taken away the element of chance. All you are showing in this case is a form of “intelligent design.”
Raghu
Comment by: joe
22Gosh, isn’t this fun?
Jason said
Good question Jason. I don’t see many people who have cut off their limbs because they are leading them into sin.
Mike said
Good. Either the young earth theory is complete cobblers or God is a liar and deliberately put evidence in place to deceive us.
So let us accept for now that the earth is old. Given there are proven mechanisms for genetic change, what would you expect to happen to organisms over many generations? If mutations cause small observable changes, is it not reasonable to suggest that over a long time period and compounded mutations that the resulting changes will (or at least could potentially) be large?
To go a step backwards, do you understand what we are referring to when we talk of mutations?
Comment by: Jason
23Mike, as a former Young Earth creationist did you ever have any sort of grounding in evolution at all? I ask because some of the concepts that we’ve been talking about might go against some of the assumptions that you’ve always held which would naturally make it harder for you.
Personally I find almost any question worthwhile as long as it’s grounded in some sort of logic. A good question is an effort to better understand the world. I always find that more refreshing than its natural opposite. Maybe you’ll identify a point that no-one else has questioned and we’ll be able to look at evolution or something else with a new perspective. If not we certainly gain a better understanding of how you think and so come to know you a little better. Everybody wins.
I also feel that it is important to say that just because literally thousands of lines of enquiry and thousands of minds have gone over these questions before is no reason for you not to. 150 years ago everybody knew that man had been placed on Earth by God and that animals we were in no way related to humans. Similarly 600 years ago the idea of Earth being a globe of rock spinning round a fusion reactor in space would have been unthinkable.
Evolution isn’t perfect and hasn’t been absolutely proven (just like gravity) and it is only through challenging ideas that we can better understand the universe and our place in it. if we accept an idea without question then it ceases to be an idea and becomes dogma. I’ve no time for dogma.
Comment by: Mike O
24I’m with you on this one. Actually, I would be surprised if they found a way to create life, but then again, I’m skeptical, so I should be surprised. But I do think it could happen. And like you said, if it did happen, I would still hold to the idea that it was designed and not randomly occurring. But at least if we found a way to create life in a lab, that would play in favor of evolution. Actually, we would still be a ways away, but it *would* be a great step!
And I don’t see a theological necessity for rejecting a theological explanation. After all, If there’s a god (theological explanation), he probably did it.
I think you’re onto something here, Steve. I’ll admit that’s the paradigm I’m working from. Not saying it’s right, just that, right or wrong, it’s what I was raised on, and I’m still there philosophically. Just being honest about it.
Comment by: Mike O
25For me, it has nothing to do with the 6-10,000 year old earth. Maybe for other Christians, but not me. For me, I think it’s more a matter that I’ve spent my whole life seeing things one way (ID) and now I’m looking at evolution and finding some issues with it. IIt’s not that that easy to change one’s worldview - and it shouldn’t be. In fact, I think it’s fair to say I’m accepting the facts (that I know) and skeptical of the assumptions (which are many).
True statement. I do believe we are above the animals. That, I think, is clearly stated in scripture, and evolution would tend to undermine that. On the other hand, let’s say that evolution really were true - man still is on top of the animal kingdom, so that wouldn’t necessarily undo the “man is over the animals” concept.
I personally think Christians over-literalize scripture in places where we shouldn’t. I’m actually working through a commentary on Genesis right now for this very reason. Christians today apply meaning that may very well not have been there when Moses wrote it. We are a different audience at a different time, fully capable of misinterpreting near-eastern concepts with our western minds.
Comment by: Mike O
26Again, my sticking point isn’t the evidence, it’s the lack of ability to actually *do* evolution - we can surmise how it worked, but we can’t get it to work - we can’t make it happen. Animal husbandry is a good example, but it’s only modifying a species, not changing it into something different. At the risk of sounding fecitious, if we’re that similar to a carrot (70% match?) then we must know the differences. And if we know the differences, we should be able to someday make a carrot from human DNA.
Fair enough. Where I’m coming from, though, is that let’s say everyting is a big connect-the-dots puzzle. Only the dots really don’t connect, they are just a bunch of dots. When there is no underlying pattern, you can connect those dots in any way you want, and then say the fact that we connected so many dots verifies that the pattern must be right. Maybe it does - I’m probably failing at it, but I’m trying to look at evolution from the perspective that I a) WILL NOT reject hard evidence (like there are fish with legs that can walk from one body of water to another), and b) I WILL be skeptical of the assumptions (there are fish, and there are animals with legs, and there are fish with legs, therefore fish evolved into animals with legs). Again, from a spritual paradigm, if God created everything, there is no reason he couldn’t have created fish, fish with legs, and animals with legs. it doesn’t imply a pattern.
Whether it should or not, it should make sense to you that people who believe in God don’t necessarily assume the pattern you see. I accept the dots, but I’m skeptical of the pattern people (I think) superimpose over those dots. You may be right - I’ll admit that! But skepticism is a virtue, right? :)
True, but isn’t it a valid scientific technique (maybe it’s a mathematical technique only?) to simplify the complex problem? Yes, “causing evolution” in a lab isn’t really evolution because it removes the necessary element of chance. But solving this simplified problem would bring us one step closer, wouldn’t you agree?
Comment by: Mike O
27I would expect breeds, strains, and different types of a species, but I would not expect a species to become another species.
Another thing I wouldn’t expect is plants and animals to come from the same common ancestor. But I don’t know anything about that yet. Only that the point I’m at with it now, I don’t believe it happened. BICBW! I believe God created the distinct species “after their kind”, and that plants and animals do NOT have a common ancestor. But I have nothing to base that on, except that I don’t believe it. And I’ll concede that that opinion *is* based on my theological leanings, which isn’t a scientific basis. I admit that.
Well, I *thought* so. I thought it was a variant of something, like breed of a dog, or strain of corn. Or maybe a genetic handicap like Downs Syndrome.
I looked it up, and mutation was defined as “a permanent change in the DNA sequence of a gene.
Comment by: Raghu Mani
28You are missing the following points
1. Evolution is the only scientific explanation that connects every dot. Nothing else comes close.
2. It isn’t as if we knew about every dot beforehand and evolution just connected them. Far from it. When the theory was first proposed we were aware of only a few of these dots and we are discovering more and more of these dots every day. What makes the theory of evolution compelling is that it predicted the existence of many of these dots long before we actually found them!
Raghu
Comment by: Mike O
29No. Until recently, I rejected evolution out of hand. Now I’m interested in it, but I still can’t see it working without divine intervention. Like I said somewhere before, reconsidering concepts you were sure of for 43 years is not an easy task!
Oh, I’m sure that’s the case!
That’s what I’m doing with creationism. I’ve always accepted it without question. Now I’m asking the questions. I’m not necessarily questioning creationism, I’m trying to understand why so many people reject it. If I’m right, then what is it that other people see that I don’t see that’s bringing them to a different conclusion? That’s the question behind my evolution questions. And I think it’s a good question to ask - what do they see that I don’t see? And (hopefully), what do I see that they don’t see?
After this whole exercise this week, the big sticking point seems to be that I think we should be able to reproduce it - maybe not today, but sometime soon. And until we do, I’ll probably remain skeptical.
Comment by: Jason
30Do you mean to reproduce the entire process of evolution or to demonstrate the evolutionary path from evidence as predicted by the theory? For instance, we can expose a bacteria culture to a drug that kills 90% of them. The remaining 10% are resistant or immune to the drug. If the resistance is passed down to the next generation of bacteria we can test and see evolution in action. If only 10% of the culture dies we have engineered a drug resistant strain of bacteria using our understanding of evolution.
That is micro-evolution in practice and I think you largely accept that as fact. I think that your sticking points are when one species diverges and becomes something different and abiogenesis.
Macro-evolution in simple terms is just micro-evolution raised by a factor. Our best evidence for macro-evolution is in the many transitional fossils available to us. Archaeopteryx is perhaps the most famous one that shows a reptilian bird (or a bird like reptile) but there are many, many others.
Abiogenesis has been covered already but it really does take a leap to accept it. It doesn’t feel right that organic molecules should become self replicating. Well, there are weirder things in science.
Comment by: Raghu Mani
31If we could reproduce it, we would not have proved evolution, we would just be demonstrating a form of intelligent design.
You are not proving anything by artificially advancing evolution. We are not too far from knowing enough about DNA that we can effect radical transformations turning a living creature into something quite different. No one with any significant knowledge of biology (not even creationists) doubts this. I fail to understand why this is such a big objection for you. Read articles by knowledgeable creationists and this will not be one of the objections they raise to evolution. No one - I repeat - no one doubts that we could artificially accomplish this in the not too distant future.
What most creationists have a problem with is the notion that nature could accomplish this through chance mutation and natural selection. Once an intelligent entity picks the mutation and does the selection, you’ve taken nature’s role out of it altogether. Already we have done crazy things to the DNA of various living things - like using fish genes in tomatoes (BTW, they are not on the market yet, so you would not have eaten any). The very fact that something like this, while not a proof of evolution, is an illustration of how closely related all life is. No one would think of a fish and a tomato as being similar in any way and yet a gene from one works perfectly well when transplanted into the other.
Raghu
Comment by: danielg
32These might be a little too critical,but check out my posts on this same subject - I hope these many links are not considered spam:
Evolution and Religion: Not Compatible?
Why Most Evangelicals Don’t Like Evolution
On Leaving Evolution
Grieving the Death of Evolution
Evolution is Science, Creationism is Religion? Defining terms
Comment by: joe
33Mike said
Mike, I’m really not understanding why this is a sticking point. All cars have a common ancestor and are largely the same. That doesn’t mean that we can make a Rolls Royce from a Skoda.
I’m sorry to press the point, but I also don’t think you understand the complexity of defining a ’species’. In the simplest form it is simply a cohort of organisms which can reproduce and birth live progeny - but that definition has lots of problems. Can you not imagine random changes in a species which means that individuals are more likely to reproduce with each other than the rest of the cohort?
Regarding genetic differences. Without overloading detail, it is possible to compare the similarity of genomes without knowing the actual differences. If you look up the practice of genetic fingerprinting, what is actually happening is that the genome is being cut into various lengths and the distribution of the lengths are compared. This is where we get the familiar barcode assay from - the lengths are laid out so we can see the distribution of the lengths. I hope that isn’t being too technical nor simplifying overly.
Regarding mutations. The best way to think of this is that DNA is a long string of numbers like machine code. Cells need to read and replicate the code to complete all their functions. Sometimes during replication there is a problem which means it is not an exact copy and an error has crept into the process. Sometimes the resulting changes can be quite big (for example in plants you sometimes get multiple copies of the chromosomes) and sometimes very small (one number different, leading to one gene being different). These differences can have a big (or small) effect on the individual and population. I know that is tangential, but it is important to know something of the process we believe causes genetic changes and ultimately drives evolution.
Well I think that is fair enough. Again, I would point out that evolution is not a ‘package’ so you are not accepting or denying all of it. I know other opinions differ, but in my experience one can accept that there is strong evidence in some areas and weak supposition in others.
Creationism in its modern construct is a very recent phenomena. Given that it makes great claims, it is only reasonable to subject it to the same rigour as any other theory. Given that it fits none of the facts we can measure, it is reasonable to suggest it has no rational basis.
Comment by: Mike O
34OK, I didn’t know that - that’s interesting! Can you give me an example, because I’ve never heard this before. Thanks!
Just a demonstration - if evolute is a verb, I’d like us to evolute something. Even if we remove chance to simplify the problem, a demonstration would go a long way! Sure, the ID people (myself included) would still say that design was required, but at least it would be a step in teh right direction.
True statement.
I don’t know, it’s just where I’m stuck. I wish I had a better answer.
Yes, I would agree with that. If I’m stuck because of my own lack of study, then good, that gives me hope to get past it. If creationists believe it, that makes it easier for me to believe. I don’t know if it should or not, but it does.
Comment by: Mike O
35To Joe’s comment,
I think the difference between creationists and evolutionists comes down to one base assumption - whether or not there is a God. I’m not saying evolutionists don’t believe in God - I know many do - I’m just saying that if one does believe in God, like I do, it’s easier to toss out the random nature of evolution in favor of design. Even a “designed evolution.” I mean, if there’s a God, it’s more likely that that God did this on purpose than not.
And again, the purpose here isn’t to determine if evolution is true or not - we’ll never do that. My point was to bring up the stickingpoints and talk about them. And to that end, this has been a GREAT discussion!
I hope that doesn’t come across as a major brush-off. I’m just not there yet. Lot’s of people aren’t. But if we boil our differences down, I wonder if we wouldn’t come to the point that people’s belief in the existance of a god influences their willingness to believe in pure natural evolution.
Comment by: Raghu Mani
36Instead of looking at sites like howstuffworks.com, you should check out the talk.origins website. The material there is less easy to read than the simplistic summaries you’ll find on howstuffworks but there is a huge amount of information there.
Anyway, here are a couple of the predictions for you. Mammals have a single lower jaw bone. Reptiles have several. However the mammalian ear bones look similar to several of the reptilian jaw bones so it was theorized that the mammalian ear was formed using bones that were once part of the reptilian lower jaw. The prediction was made that we would find some fossils that showed precisely the transition from reptilian jaw to mammalian ear. Sure enough, those fossils turned up - looking precisely as predicted.
Another even more impressive prediction is regarding how living things are related to each other. Initially all we had were fossils. Based on those fossils and the study of currently living things, we were able to construct a tree of relationships between all creatures alive today. Work on this actually started even before Darwin proposed his theory.
When Darwin proposed his theory little was known about the internal molecular structure of living things. Take, for example, the cytochrome C protein. This is a vital protein found in all living things but it isn’t exactly the same everywhere. Human cytochrome C is somewhat different from chimp cytochrome C and even more different from rat cytochrome C. A prediction of the theory of evolution was that if you took the molecular structure of the this molecule in various living things and built a relationship tree based on that alone, what you got should be extremely similar to the tree you built based on study of physical features alone.
This prediction was made long before people knew anything about the structure of this molecule. Sure enough, that’s precisely what you find. In fact, you could take any molecule that is part of living things and construct this kind of relationship tree and you get essentially the same tree in each case. Obviously this hasn’t been done for every single molecule but whenever it has been done, you have gotten pretty much the same tree. Note that when the theory of evolution was first proposed we had none of these trees except for the one based on physical characteristics.
That’s how any science works - not just evolution. When a theory is first proposed, you really don’t have all the data. All that the theory can do at that time is to connect all the dots that you know about. However, a theory is a logical construct. It has logical implications, it makes predictions about what data you will find down the line. If we find data that is inconsistent with those predictions then the theory has a problem. If the inconsistency is minor then the theory might be adjusted a little to account for the inconsistency. If the inconsistency is major then the theory has to be thrown out and we have to start again from scratch.
Finally, it’s kinda weird for me, an atheist, to suggest this but what is your issue with the notion that God set up this entire process to “just work” without his having a constant need to tinker with it? That’s what religious evolutionists like Ken Miller, Simon Conway-Morris, Francis Collins and others believe.
Raghu
Comment by: Mike O
37Other than the fact that it runs contrary to the way I’ve thought my whole life, I don’t don’t know. I guess I don’t see it as tinkering, so much as involved. Why wouldn’t He be hands-on in this little project of his?
It probably comes down to the Christian perception of God as a God that created us because he loves us. I don’t know if you have kids or not, but assuming you do, why would you give birth to a child, and then detach yourself from it? Just to see how it turns out? The hands-off approach isn’t appropriate in non-scientific, experimentation-type scenarios. If he created us and he loves us, there’s no reason he would be a hands-off God. At least that’s how I see it.
Comment by: joe
38Mike, it sounds to me like you are attempting to second guess God. This is the main problem for me with creationism: it puts God into a box when the universe cannot contain him.
To me it is not inconsistent to imagine a God who gives us the mental faculties to work out for ourselves what is going on around us. Part of the fun of a growing kid is watching them discover the world, learn to finish the jigsaw puzzle and beat you at cards. OK that last one isn’t so fun when they’re only 8 years old..
For me and most scientists ‘because God did it’ is an incomplete answer to any question. I want to understand the things I see. I want to know why I see daisies in one place and not another. I want to know what the Adam’s apple does. I want to understand the nutrient cycles so I can better manage the soil.
And I don’t want my questioning to have boundaries. In a sense I’m not bothered if other people are not interested in the things that fascinate me - that questioning is part of my make-up and I feel that the typical Christian responses are an attempt to stop me from thinking, reasoning, working out things for myself.
I don’t believe in this ‘hands-off’ God. I believe he is constantly at work in and through creation. As any scientist will tell you, as you study something more you find there is more to study and within that complexity lies the handiwork of God. That want to discover is Godly and it is a vicious lie to say anything else.
More than that, one would laugh at someone who claimed to practice Pharmacy based only on the book of Job or Agriculture based on the book of Amos. Pharmacy and Agriculture are based on years of careful study and the results are obvious. So on what basis can you suggest that the same scientific processes that brought massive pharmaceutical and agricultural changes give incorrect answers in other forms of biology?
Frankly, finally, I feel this exchange has largely been a waste of time. It is impossible to prove anything to someone who holds a scintilla of information which he then uses to fight off those who are trying to reason with him.
My only advice left is for you to go away and learn about the scientific process and the philosophy of science. If you cannot accept that it works, is reasonable and produces testable results, I’m afraid there is no point in trying to discuss any other terms mentioned in any of the posts above.
Comment by: Raghu Mani
39By that logic you shouldn’t believe in gravity either. Note that gravity and other basic forces are responsible for the way the universe, our galaxy, our solar system formed and how they are held together. By your logic, that should count as being ‘detached’ and ‘hands off’ as well. Is God yanking you back to earth each time you jump up? Is God pushing the planets along in perfectly elliptical orbits? Does God spend his spare time randomly throwing asteroids and comets in our general direction - including one which, in a few decades time, is going come so close to us that it will pass under the orbits of many of our satellites and stands a more than trivial chance of slamming straight into us?
This is getting weirder and weirder for me because I normally never argue this side of the issue but why should the human definition of “hands off” apply to God? If we set up an experiment that did something similar it would count as being “hands off” because the forces guiding the experiment are not under our control and were not of our making and we have no clue as to what is going to result down the line. That clearly does not apply to an omnipotent and omniscient God.
As an aside, there is no such thing as “the Christian perception of God.” It isn’t as if your view of God is held by every Christian out there. The scientists whose names I keep mentioning - Ken Miller, Simon Conway-Morris and Francis Collins (and many others) - are Christians too and their conception of God differs greatly from yours. They believe that God does interact with the universe all the time but at a level far deeper than what we can perceive or understand.
Raghu
Comment by: Raghu Mani
40I think this is being unfair to Mike. For someone who was once an unquestioning creationist to actually interact with non-believers and try to re-evaluate his view of evolution is laudable, to say the least. You don’t make such a journey overnight and maybe Mike will never complete it but let us give him credit for coming as far as he has.
Raghu
Comment by: steve martin
41Hi Raghu,
That is a pretty impressive bit of explanation from the opposite side of the river – I’m curious. Is this because you were well versed on the benefits of the theist bank before you switched sides (maybe because you felt the benefits were largely illusionary) or because you’ve discussed this with other evolutionary creationists (EC)? (humor me – I like that term better than TE).
Mike:
Articulating a solution for divine action in an evolutionary creation can be really tough. But I just don’t think it is necessary to choose between
a) “setting up the process to work” and
b) God being intimately involved with and active in creation.
If you only choose a), that is really a Deist position and not something any orthodox Christian could accept. However, the ID / creationist God is often portrayed in no better terms since he seems to only show up when a miracle is required. (eg. to create first life). That is not the God portrayed in scripture; the God of the bible continually sustains and upholds creation (Col 1:17).
If you really want to tackle some of the tough theological issues in the science / faith area (including divine action) – but you want to do it from an Evangelical perspective, I’d suggest John Polkinghorne’s writings – for example “Science and Creation”, “Science and Providence”, and “Faith of a Physicist” – they are all excellent. But this is not easy bedtime reading material. For a taste of his ideas, you may want to check out my post The Creator as Author, Producer, Director, and Actor in the Cosmic Drama.
I’d second Raghu’s comments that talk.origins is a good net resource, although for this investigation of yours I might suggest a good book by an Evangelical scientist. I myself am partial to Darrel Falk’s “Coming to Peace with Science”, but depending on your background, I might suggest something else (eg. if you have a Reformed background, check out Loren and Deborah Haarsma’s “Origins”).
Comment by: Raghu Mani
42Actually, I’ve been an agnostic/atheist pretty much all my life - so I never “switched sides”. My dad is a non-believer too but the vast majority of others in my family (including my mother and my wife) are religious and so are a majority of my friends. So, I know how religious people think and have seen first hand why some have issues with evolution and how others are able to reconcile it with their faith.
I am interested in the evolution/creation debate because it affects my kids’ education. None of the other topics discussed here interest me much - which is why I rarely comment on anything else. It isn’t as if I don’t want to interact with believers (as I said above, most of my friends are religious) - it’s just that I’d rather talk about other things.
This is why I find discussing theological viewpoints with Mike so weird. I’m much more comfortable talking about science than telling someone how he should interpret a religion that I don’t believe in.
Raghu
Comment by: Mike O
43Joe, in my defense, I have to say that I don’t think I’m closing my eyes and rejecting ANY facts. I’m willing to accept a theistic evolution if I ever come to that conclusion - I’m just not there yet. As you’ll see in my post that comes out tomorrow, my issues don’t have so much to do with whether or not things work the way they do, but rather the origins of those processes and the completeness that, I think, is required for evolution to work. If things evolve, they evolve. But so far, evolution seems like a process that can’t have started without divine intervention.
Based on what you said, you believe in a theistic evolution, right?
Comment by: Mike O
44Steve, I’m not trying to “solve” anything. I just see a lot of people who believe in a purely natural, godless evolution and I wonder why.
Yes! I agree completely. And that could include evolution if that’s how it actually went down - I understand that.
I’m actually hoping to spend some time out on your blog. I honestly didn’t know that there were a lot of Christians who believed like you do. I come from an environment where “evolution” is almost taboo, but I don’t know why - other than tradition.
Comment by: Raghu Mani
45Huh? I’m not too sure how you can make that statement now. I think many of us on this message board have pointed this out to you many times in the past. There are tons of Christians who have no problems reconciling evolution with their faith - including some biologists. Many of them have written books on how they were able to accept both. There’s the one that Steve mentioned by Darrel Falk.
I believe I have mentioned in the past books by Francis Collins, Ken Miller, Simon Conway-Morris, Joan Roughgarden and many others. The Ken Miller book is probably the earliest and most popular of these.
Read some of them. The authors are all by Christians, all distinguished biologists. Maybe you’ll see that accepting evolution does not mean becoming an atheist.
Raghu
Comment by: joe
46I’m not arguing with your final statement there. The problem scientists have with people-of-faith is that the latter’s fall-back position is often ‘because God did it’ (or equivalent).
I have some technical problems with evolutionary theory: for example, complex systems tend towards entropy, so it is a bit bizarre to suggest that biological systems tend towards increased complexity. For me that means I cannot accept it is blind chance - because I do not believe a bunch of monkeys would ever type the complete works of Shakespeare however long they tried.
That said, it is a solid scientific theory with plenty of evidential support. The mechanisms for change certainly exist, the world is certainly old and mostly the dots seem to join up. I think a reasonable person looking at the evidence without an agenda would conclude it was a reasonable explanation of the observed facts.
I am a ‘theist’ in the sense that the systems are extremely complex and I cannot see how they can have occurred by chance even if there had been a much longer time than we believe there has been from the beginning.
The fact that the universe is ordered and capable of being understood by reason suggests strongly in a deity in my opinion.
Comment by: Mike O
47To Raghu Mani - I know. Hit me with a board enough times and eventually I get the message. I *knew* there were christians who believed in evolution. But Steve is an *evangelical* christian - like me. Don’t ask me why it mattered to hear him say that, it just did.
I’m trying not to have an agenda.
Comment by: Raghu Mani
48Mike, Francis Collins is also an evangelical Christian and he is an extremely distinguished biologist and was head of the Human Genome project to boot. I think I have pointed this out a couple of times in the past. Collins has no problem being one of the leading biologists in the country, a strong supporter of evolution and still remaining an evangelical Christian. If I am not mistaken, Darrel Falk - whose book was recommended by Steve - is also an evangelical Christian.
I don’t know Steve’s background and I mean no disrespect to him whatsoever but I think that, given Francis Collins’ background and stature, having him come out strongly in support of evolution should mean a lot more to you than Steve’s endorsement of the idea.
Raghu
Comment by: Jason
49I’m not sure why some creationists choose to hold evolution up as opposing God’s intervention. Perhaps the “God of the Gaps” idea is too small to allow for creationism so they try to make the gaps bigger. I don’t know. I don’t see science, the pursuit of knowledge to understand how and why things work and the principles underpinning them, as being incompatible with the idea of gods. I’m not a believer for a whole range of reasons including a lack of evidence supporting the idea of gods but I’ve not been exposed to all the evidence or ideas where some evidence might be considered compelling. I don’t believe but I can see how others can.
The Deist idea is a whole lot more comfortable for me that Christianity or Islam though. Einstein’s God is even more comfortable ;)
Comment by: Steve Martin
50Raghu,
Ah come on, you don’t think my view carries more weight than that of the director of a project acknowledged to be one of the top scientific achievements of all time??? I’m seriously offended :-)
Comment by: danielg
51>> I’m not sure why some creationists choose to hold evolution up as opposing God’s intervention.
Well, first of all, true evolution denies divine intervention at all stages. Only Theistic evolutionists would allow for such interventions.
Most of the reasons that evangelicals find evolution and Christian faith incompatible, however, are for other reasons. See
Why Most Evangelicals Don’t Like Evolution
Evolution and Religion: Not Compatible?
>> I don’t know. I don’t see science, the pursuit of knowledge to understand how and why things work and the principles underpinning them, as being incompatible with the idea of gods.
Christians would say that, since God is objectively real, that true science which accurately understands reality will NEVER be at odds with the reality of God. However, science in many cases is inadequate in being able to prove God’s existence. However, it CAN *eliminate* ridiculous claims of religions and gods that are so contrary to reality that they can be demonstrated as false.
>> The Deist idea is a whole lot more comfortable for me that Christianity or Islam though. Einstein’s God is even more comfortable ;)
Well, if by ‘comfortable’ you mean in keeping with your idea of what is reasonable, OK. But if the reality of the Bible’s God makes you morally uncomfortable, that’s hardly a good epistemology ;)
Comment by: Jason
52Does it? I think rather than denying divine intervention it looks for the mechanisms for change and ignores the divine entirely. That’s entirely different from denying it.
Yes it can. However these “ridiculous claims” (the universe was created in 6 days, a flood drowned the entire world, the Earth is held up on pillars, clouds are God’s footprints, etc) could easily be taken metaphorically rather than literally.
I meant it as what makes logical sense to me. Not that every single scientific idea does…often you have to look at an issue from a different angle to really understand the question. If you look at the Flood story for instance directly as you might a news story then the evidence works against it. It you take it as a parable or metaphor for a cutting off ties to a corrupt society, for example, then it makes more sense.
Comment by: danielg
53>> However these “ridiculous claims” (the universe was created in 6 days, a flood drowned the entire world, the Earth is held up on pillars, clouds are God’s footprints, etc) could easily be taken metaphorically rather than literally.
I would NOT include the six day creation in the group of easily disproven scientifically, nor a global flood. I think you have to be careful about what you call definitively disproven, and based on your lumping of these all into one group, I doubt that you have meaningful criteria for what you determine is ridiculous, beyond “it doesn’t fit the current status quo.” At the very least, I’d say your criteria lack specificity, and are very blunt, grouping things too simply as “in” or “out”
>> If you take it as a parable or metaphor for a cutting off ties to a corrupt society, for example, then it makes more sense.
All historical events can ‘make sense’ as metaphor, but the problem with your logic is that to ‘make sense’ to you, you have to believe that it matches your current understandings of what science has proven.
However, you can look at it an entirely different way. Rather than trusting science in matters of history (because to a large extent, you can not do empirical science to prove historical events, but must rely on piecing together historical evidence with your assumptions about history), you might assume FIRST that the bible is an accurate history.
Why? Because in matters that we can ascertain surely, the Bible is the MOST confirmed ancient historical source, and its accuracy has been found to uncanny, if not NEVER clearly controverted. If that is so, then perhaps in matters that you can NOT yet confirm historically, nor disprove scientifically, you should give IT the benefit of the doubt, rather than your scientific guestimates which are often just educated guesses with huge data gaps, not proven ideas.
The second reason why your assumption that these stories are merely metaphors is not great is because basic hermeneutics demands that you use rules for interpreting ancient texts.
First, you must determine the literary type. If the literary type is, for example, poetry or parable, you might not want to primarily interpret it as historical narrative. However, if what you are reading is obviously written as historical narrative (as Genesis is), then reading it only as metaphor is really a poor way to interpret it, logically speaking.
Additionally, you must interpret it in light of what other authors in the same text thought of it. In the NT, for example, both Jesus and Paul talked of Adam and Eve as if they were real individuals, not metaphors or archetypes. So to assume that Genesis is metaphor means that you now have a problem interpreting the words of Jesus and Paul. Something will have to give - you will be forced to declare that either of them was mistaken, because trying to force the ‘metaphor’ interpretation won’t really hold up to proper rules for interpreting these texts.
Comment by: Jason
54DanielG, I do understand where you are coming from and appreciate your candor. There are factual errors in Genesis as well as inconsistencies. Whether they comes from translation, interpretation or simply mistake isn’t really important. What is important in this discussion is that the bible is not absolutely incompatible with scientific knowledge. For instance we know that a rabbit does not chew the cud (Leviticus 11:5) and that insects do not have four feet (Leviticus 11:23). The passages are open to interpretation. Maybe Leviticus is not talking about rabbits but a predecessor animals, maybe four legged flying creeping things are not insects but some form of flying squirrel. Sticking to a literal reading and placing the description in a modern context makes the “claim ridiculous” (your words).
I see the problem with science and religion as having three solutions:
1. We can abandon the bible as inaccurate because of these perceived flaws.
2. We can interpret the bible in such a way as to conform to the facts as we understand them.
3. We can take those bits that help us in life (Parts of the Sermon on the Mount for example) and not worry about the other stuff.
I think that rejecting science because the good book calls coneys chewers of cud or the geological evidence for a flood does not exist is to miss out on understanding the world. If you believe that the world is God’s Creation then surely understanding it is a way of understanding God? If you don’t believe then trying to understand the religious objections to science helps you to better understand the motivations of people. What I strongly object to is the view that the bible says rabbits chew cud so the evidence that they are ruminants is false, that the Bible says X so Y is wrong. Maybe the bible says look and try to understand, don’t limit yourself by sticking to one view.
Proverbs 3:13 says Happy is the man that findeth wisdom, and the man that getteth understanding.
Comment by: joe
55They are disproven in the scientific sense - there is no evidence for them occurring and plenty of evidence of them not occurring.
I am not ‘trusting science in matters of history’, I am trusting the scientific process to provide hypothesis for observed phenomena backed up with reasoned argument and evidence.
Just because you assert things about the bible does not make them true. Remember that. The difference between what you’re saying and science is that science has evidence. You just have assertions backed up with no evidence.
Again, you are asserting something which is debatable. Given that the word ‘Adam’ is a generic word for mankind, I’d say that there is at least some evidence of usage which implies that the first few chapters of Genesis are to be read figuratively.
Even if parts of Genesis are proven to be ‘historically untrue’ I don’t really see the problem. We all learn things from imperfect examples all the time. Indeed, Jesus taught using imperfect examples (dishonest managers, crooked judges).
Is it not possible to imagine a situation where Moses sat at the top of the mountain asking God to show him how the world came about. And God thinks for a bit, and instead of telling him information which he would never understand, tells him a parable for him to think about and a brain to work things out?
Comment by: joe
56Jason said
Funny you should mention that, Jason, as this is one of the bits of the bible that most conservative Christians refuse to take literally. Indeed, a small bunch of Christians are starting to think seriously about what the world might look like if more believers took the Beatitudes as if they were actually meant to be lived.
Comment by: Mike O
57There is a geneology back to Adam. I think he was a real person. Maybe not the first person, or the only first person (could God have created more than one?), but I think it’s reasonable to conclude that he was a real person.
I’m reading a commentary on Genesis - a Christian commentary - and it goes into the literary stuff. ANd the writer of the commentary goes into the likely meaning of the word “create” etc. It leaves room for history prior to “In the beginning God created …” When Moses wrote Genesis, he wrote (and/or edited) it for a specific audience to get a specific message across. Somehow, I don’t think Moses was too caught up in the theology of “six days”. He was likely just saying, “look, in the beginning God created this and that and the other things” Was 6-days really the point way back then? Or is it just the point now?
Comment by: Jason
58Yes, but only in the Bible. There is no independent genealogy or record to verify the Biblical one. From a point of view of an historian the evidence is therefore weak. Of course, we’re talking about a genealogy that predates writing. An oral record is prone to error through faulty memory, outright invention and a whole host of unintentional and intentional mistakes. I don’t think that it is reasonable to conclude that he was a real person at all.
That isn’t to say that he wasn’t, only that the evidence supporting the claim is poor. another example is Jesus’ genealogy. The records in Matthew and Luke contradict each other. Could Jesus have had two genealogies to David? Certainly, but it is also possible that the records were invented to fulfil the earlier prophecy.
The invention is actually a good bit of evidence that Jesus (the man) did exist. Why invent or doctor a genealogy if he wasn’t a real person? Perhaps David was the fictional person or the line was broken or lost before Joseph. Without further independent evidence it is impossible to know for sure.
“Day”, as I’m sure you are aware, can sometimes signify an indefinite time. The Hebrew “Yom”, meaning day, has several different meanings.
Reading Genesis 1 with this information makes a lot more sense given what we now know about the formation of the universe, stars, the planets and life.
makes more logical sense when we assume that the fifth day was a vast amount of time that we can barely comprehend.
There’s also nothing to indicate that day 1 was an independent “day” from day 2 or day 3.
It’s only when you try to force it into a literal interpretation that it stops making sense.
Ha, look at me, I’m defending Genesis. I’ll have to hand my atheist membership card back.
Comment by: Mike O
59Yes, that’s a question I have, too.
According to the writer of the commentary I’m using (and they don’t all agree), Moses likely meant 24 hr day, which kind of threw me given all we’ve been talking about here. But he also said that Moses didn’t write a science textbook. The point he was trying to make wasn’t “how” God created everything, or “how long” it took him, but rather “that” God created everything, and when he created it, it was good. Whether ‘yom’ means day or a billion years is a scientific question, and Moses probably wasn’t trying to speak scientifically.
Wanna trade cards?
Comment by: danielg
60>> The difference between what you’re saying and science is that science has evidence. You just have assertions backed up with no evidence.
What I am saying is that you are trusting primarily historical evidence, not empirical. And the biblical record is not only supported by archaeology and rarely controverted by such, the bible’s amazing record in historical matters makes it, in some sense, it’s OWN evidence for it’s claims. That is not necessarily circular. It is evidence for my claim that there was an Adam and Eve.
Comment by: joe
61I’m sorry, you need to get out more. The historical record is even disputed within different biblical accounts, it is not taken to be a text-book by archaeologists any more than a science-book by scientists. Only a very strange archaeologist would take the bible to be anything more than an account produced from a certain point of view. Again you assert things which are blatantly not true.