Chance or Design (Evolution or Creation)

[marke]

Darwin's great discovery was that it doesn't work by chance. Except in the sense you see in Ecclesiastes:

Ecclesiastes 9:11 I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Still, the smart money is on the swift, strong, and wise, even if time and chance are involved. And as Aquinas points out, God can use contingency as easily as He can use necessity to effect divine providence.

Darwin imagined that natural selection was a power, force, entity, or cause which promoted evolution in the absence of God. Much of what is labeled as natural selection is scientific fiction.

 

[marke]

Do you believe that God made evil?

God created Adam with the ability to choose to sin and bring evil into the world. Adam brought sin into the world even though evil existed before Adam. The fact that God created any living creature meant that sin and imperfection were unavoidable.

 

[marke]

There's a great deal of that. Your fellow creationist, Kurt Wise, writes:

Evidences for Darwin’s second expectation - of stratomorphic intermediate species - include such species as Baragwanathia27 (between rhyniophytes and lycopods), Pikaia28 (between echinoderms and chordates), Purgatorius29 (between the tree shrews and the primates), and Proconsul30 (between the non-hominoid primates and the hominoids). Darwin’s third expectation - of higher-taxon stratomorphic intermediates - has been confirmed by such examples as the mammal-like reptile groups31 between the reptiles and the mammals, and the phenacdontids32 between the horses and their presumed ancestors. Darwin’s fourth expectation - of stratomorphic series - has been confirmed by such examples as the early bird series,33 the tetrapod series,34,35 the whale series,36 the various mammal series of the Cenozoic37 (for example, the horse series, the camel series, the elephant series, the pig series, the titanothere series, etc.), the Cantius and Plesiadapus primate series,38 and the hominid series.39 Evidence for not just one but for all three of the species level and above types of stratomorphic intermediates expected by macroevolutionary theory is surely strong evidence for macroevolutionary theory. Creationists therefore need to accept this fact. It certainly CANNOT said that traditional creation theory expected (predicted) any of these fossil finds.
Kurt Wise, Toward a Creationist Understanding of Transitional Forms (emphasis mine)




Wise admits that there are many of these.



No. For example, disruptive selection tends to favor two or more populations evolving from one. Good example are Darwin's finches. Or flies in Hawaii, numerous species having evolved from two separate species that somehow made it there.

No, that's obviously wrong. And it's not just by disruptive selection. A hint was that unusual species tend to be found in isolated areas. Founder effect and a new environment tends to produce a new species, while the old species continues.



And now you know.



You're confusing homeostasis with evolution. One is merely the ability of the organism to alter body processes under stress. The other is a change in the allele frequency of the population. You are limited to the genes with which you were born; your body has the capacity to adapt to a degree, but not as much as a population can change by allele frequencies changing.



Happens to humans, too. Starve kids, even a little, and they will grow up smaller. But that's not evolution.



See above. There's a lot going on that you don't understand very well.



No, that's Michael Behe's story. He doesn't think God can make evolution work without tinkering with it from time to time. In the real world, that's not necessary.

While evolution is completely consistent with scripture, there are also some forms of creationism that are not ruled out by the Bible. The "life ex nihilo" doctrine of classic YE creationism is ruled out by Genesis, however.

Darwin lamented the fact that the fossil record contained a curious lack of 'missing links.' Because Darwin was ignorant of microbiology, he had no idea how many billions of missing links need to be found which are still not found to support abiogenesis and evolution between species.

 

[marke]

And most professional creationists now tell us that new species evolved rapidly after the flood from a relatively few basic "kinds."

So even creationists understand that evolution tends to produce more species, not less.

Adaptations within species is not the same as major speciation changes from dissimilar creatures, like between fish and mammas, for example. There is no evidence that such major speciation changes ever were made or even could be made.

 

[marke]

Do you believe He gave us freewill or made us robots, I think the answer is clear.

Freewill it is.

 

[marke]

Precisely what you just told me couldn't be.



More properly, the earth brought forth living things, as God intended. But as you learned earlier, that has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution, which is about the way living things change over time.



It comes down to evidence. As you saw before, the evidence is compelling. Even your fellow YE creationist, Kurt Wise admits that we have "very good evidence for macroevolutionary theory."

Would you like me to show you some of it, again?

There are only theory and flawed prejudicial interpretations of data to support evolutionist science fiction.

 

[marke]

How much "freewill" do you think you have exactly? It certainly isn't absolute.

Every sinner has enough free will to believe and receive the Gospel to be saved or to reject the Gospel and be damned.

 

[marke]

There is more genetic variation among these different kinds of insects than there is among primates. God merely says the earth brought forth different kinds, but doesn't say how it happened. As Wise admits, the fact of many, many transitional series is very good evidence that it happened by macroevolution.

There is not enough evidence of speciation changes to even begin to support evolutionist nonsense.

 

[marke]

Yep. It's merely denial, with nothing to show that Wise didn't mean exactly what he said:

Evidences for Darwin’s second expectation - of stratomorphic intermediate species - include such species as Baragwanathia27 (between rhyniophytes and lycopods), Pikaia28 (between echinoderms and chordates), Purgatorius29 (between the tree shrews and the primates), and Proconsul30 (between the non-hominoid primates and the hominoids). Darwin’s third expectation - of higher-taxon stratomorphic intermediates - has been confirmed by such examples as the mammal-like reptile groups31 between the reptiles and the mammals, and the phenacdontids32 between the horses and their presumed ancestors. Darwin’s fourth expectation - of stratomorphic series - has been confirmed by such examples as the early bird series,33 the tetrapod series,34,35 the whale series,36 the various mammal series of the Cenozoic37 (for example, the horse series, the camel series, the elephant series, the pig series, the titanothere series, etc.), the Cantius and Plesiadapus primate series,38 and the hominid series.39 Evidence for not just one but for all three of the species level and above types of stratomorphic intermediates expected by macroevolutionary theory is surely strong evidence for macroevolutionary theory. Creationists therefore need to accept this fact. It certainly CANNOT said that traditional creation theory expected (predicted) any of these fossil finds.
https://creation.com/images/pdfs/tj/j09_2/j09_2_216-222.pdf

Your guy just denied what Wise carefully documented. Here's his denial:

I have to disagree with Dr Kurt Wise when he suggests that creationists should not be concerned with the issue of 'transitional forms'.1 It has long been recognised that in any battle one should attack the enemy at his weakest point. The creahttp://theologyonline.com/editpost.php?p=5343726&do=editposttion-evolution issue is a battle, and the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record has long been recognised as evolution's biggest weakness.

Notice that Wise demonstrated that there are many, many entire series of transitional forms in the fossil record.

It's true that almost none were known in Darwin's time, which makes Darwin's prediction that they would be found all the more compelling. And Wise notes that, admitting that all these predicted transitional series are very good evidence for Darwin's theory.

Another misconstrues Michael Denton's position. Although an IDer, Denton repeatedly recognizes the fact of evolution:

It is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science--that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school." According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving God's direct intervention in the course of nature, each of which involved the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world--that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies.

In large measure, therefore, the teleological argument presented here and the special creationist worldview are mutually exclusive accounts of the world. In the last analysis, evidence for one is evidence against the other. Put simply, the more convincing is the evidence for believing that the world is prefabricated to the end of life, that the design is built into the laws of nature, the less credible becomes the special creationist worldview.
Michael Denton, Nature's Destiny

(emphasis mine)

And Wise nicely picks apart their faulty reasoning. While he remains convinced of YE creationism because of "my understanding of scripture", he quite honestly admits the the large number of transitional series is evidence for macroevolution.

Saying variations in or between species is due to evolution is not a scientifically proven fact, but unscientific hypothetical speculation.

 

[marke]

That's what the evidence shows. Genetic analyses indicate a common ancestor for all known living things on earth. And we can check that by analyzing the genes of organisms of known descent. So do the very large number of series of transistional fossils. So do embryos, which have traces of evolutionary development in their growth. And many other ways.



God said it. And I believe it, and you should, too. Science is just catching up.





Something very important. Science is, by its very methodology, unable to look at the supernatural. Scientists, however, are not limited to science as the only way of knowing. It's O.K. to be unscientific when circumstances call for that. I am often unscientific myself. If this still puzzles you, perhaps this will help:

"Plumbing can't confirm God. But plumbers can."




Of course. That was Huxley's response when he realized how simple evolution is. "How stupid of me not to have realized it." While the details can be incredibly complex, the fundamental process isn't that hard to understand.

There was a huge flaw in classic Darwinism. Darwin was unable to explain how a new characteristic could survive and spread in a population. Everyone assumed heredity was in the blood and if so, a new characteristic would be swamped like a drop of red paint in a barrel of white paint.

And then Mendel's work was rediscovered and suddenly it all fit. It was the rediscovery of Mendel's work that convinced scientists that Darwin was right. The last world-class anti-Darwinian biologist died early in the 20th century.



Creationists now generally limit evolution to new species, new genera, and new families. A few might allow it to the level of new classes of animals, but most don't. It's progress. In my youth, creationists usually denied that new species evolve.

The biggest problem for the "evolution, but only within limits" argument, is that no one can show us any such limits or even any organism that has evolved as far as it can with no further mutations or change.

Stuff like DNA analyses fitting phylogenies done before anyone knew what DNA is. The many, many series of transitional forms noted by Kurt Wise, even as he doesn't believe the evidence. The numerous predictions of evolutionary theory that have been since confirmed. Would you like to learn about some of them?



All hard evidence, as even honest creationists admit.

Barbarian observes:
The greatly improved hearing of mammals could have been engineered more simply than by borrowing some jaw bones (which gather sound in reptiles) and miniaturizing them.



Knowing what one is talking about is a huge advantage, yes. Those two additional bones make the eardrum much, much more sensitive by a relatively inefficient series of "levers" that would not be found in an engineered solution. But it works. And more importantly, as the fossil record shows, it could be done in a series of steps, each one advantageous enough to be preserved by natural selection.

BTW, I know a secret for appearing to know everything:

Only talk about things you know.

Darwin also showed bad speculative judgment in his "tree of life" evolutionary theory of the development of the various species from a common ancestor. That foolishness was debunked more than 20 years ago by new understandings in biology. Only those still clinging to error can still support the concept of the felled tree.

 

[marke]

So, for example, randomly dropping toothpicks on a piece of lined paper could never improve information about pi?
https://ogden.eu/pi/

Turns out, it does. The universe is much, much more amazing than creationists imagine it to be. Why wouldn't it be? He created it, after all.

God did create the universe and Adam and Eve in just 6 days, in spite of foolish speculations to the contrary.

 

[marke]

Barbarian observes:
The universe is much, much more amazing than creationists imagine it to be. Why wouldn't it be? He created it, after all.




I'm a Christian. And yes, I recognize that some Christians are creationists. But not most of us. Creationism is to creation, what legalism is to legal. The term has been taken over by those who don't accept the way He creates new taxa.



You have a point. But I doubt if anyone here is unclear on the distinction between "creationist" and "Christian."

In a Venn Diagram, "Christian" and "creationist" slightly intersect. You're at that intersection. I'm not. But we're both in the "Christian" section.



From what I see here and elsewhere, it's easier to slide out of that intersection to merely "creationist, not Christian" for some, creationism has replaced God. I don't think you, personally are in much danger of that, but many are.

Barbarian observes:
So, for example, randomly dropping toothpicks on a piece of lined paper could never improve information about pi?
https://ogden.eu/pi/

Turns out, it does. The universe is much, much more amazing than creationists imagine it to be. Why wouldn't it be? He created it, after all.



Remember what "information" actually means. It's mathematically shown to be exactly what you see here.

And I've already demonstrated how a mutation in a population produces new information. If you missed it, I can do the numbers for you.



Do you doubt that God can use contingency for His purposes?



Do you agree that this confirms Genesis 1:1? It's the same message, different words, with one important added idea; God remains itimately connected to every particle of creastion. It's a rejection of deism.



"Random chance" wouldn't produce a directed result. And yet, this simple demonstration of order in His creation gives you an increasingly accurate estimate of pi.



It's not a coincidence. If this were not true, physics would be wildly different, and we wouldn't be here.



Here's what you're missing:

The effect of divine providence is not only that things should happen somehow, but that they should happen either by necessity or by contingency. Therefore, whatsoever divine providence ordains to happen infallibly and of necessity happens infallibly and of necessity; and that happens from contingency, which the divine providence conceives to happen from contingency
St. Thomas Aquinas Summa theologiae, I, 22,4 ad 1

I am not of the Christian sect who refuse to believe God created the universe and life on earth in just 6 days just like He said.

 

[marke]

Barbarian observes:
Yes. As you see, humans have evolved markedly in the past few thousand years. Tibetans, for example, can now thrive at altitudes where just a few thousand years ago, humans could not. They were originally indistinguishable from Han Chinese, but now they are something else. Dogs are not wolves. Indeed, the wolves you see today are as different from the common ancestor as dogs are. Each of them are now something else, not that common ancestor. Would you like to learn how we know this?



No. Animals can only have at most 2 alleles for each gene locus. So very little variability is in one organism. It's spread out though an entire population. But you won't get a jaguar from the variability in leopard population or any other interbreeding group. The alleles don't exist for them. Hence, although humans and chimpanzees have very, very similar genomes, there are still many, many alleles in each one of them, that don't exist in the other, and never did.

And yet wicked rebels against God still cannot prove humans descended from monkeys' uncles.

 

[marke]

God says life was brought forth by the earth, air, and waters. You think those are alive, or do you think God is wrong?

The breath of God which breathed life into Adam did not come from a raging wind which just happened to be in the vicinity by lucky accident.

 

[marke]

If "genetic entropy" is really a thing, how do you explain this:

The E. coli long-term evolution experiment (LTEE) is an ongoing study in experimental evolution led by Richard Lenski that has been tracking genetic changes in 12 initially identical populations of asexual Escherichia coli bacteria since 24 February 1988. The populations reached the milestone of 50,000 generations in February 2010 and 66,000 in November 2016. Lenski performed the 10,000th transfer of the experiment on March 13, 2017.​

​

Over the course of the experiment, Lenski and his colleagues have reported a wide array of phenotypic and genotypic changes in the evolving populations. These have included changes that have occurred in all 12 populations and others that have only appeared in one or a few populations. For example, all 12 populations showed a similar pattern of rapid improvement in fitness that decelerated over time, faster growth rates, and increased cell size.​

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment#Changes_in_fitness

And yet E. coli bacteria remains E. coli bacteria in spite of the many changes in its diet and performance.

 

[marke]

I understand why Christians wish the Earth to have been made in six days. That’s what I meant.

PS. And that I understand why Christians don’t like evolution.

Nobody should favor erroneous secular speculation over the scientific evidence supporting creation.

 

[marke]

Most of the world's Christians do not think the 6 "Yom" mean literal days. Nor do the vast majority of the world's Christians think that evolution is contrary to our faith.

Even in the United States where YE creationism first took hold, it's a dying belief:

In U.S., Belief in Creationist View of Humans at New Low

https://news.gallup.com/poll/210956/belief-creationist-view-humans-new-low.aspx

It's dying hard, but it's dying.

YE creationism has been believed by Bible-believing Christians for thousands of years. It is the foolishness of Darwinism which is new to society. The Scopes Trial of 1925 proved creation by God is supported by science while Darwin's evolutionist nonsense is not.