 Posted Sunday, February 06, 2005 8:26 PM
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In the scientific world, evolution works, is useful, and is continually in the process of being refined.
As someone who was trained in science (my background is chemistry), I've spent a lot of time looking into the question of evolution. It's a BIG topic, but here are a few things to consider when looking at the issue:
-- As defined by the pro-evolution community, the term “evolution” describes both natural selection (variation within kind, survival of the fittest) and increasing complexity (slime eventually giving rise to man, fish gradually turning into reptiles, etc.).
-- Natural selection has been widely observed in nature and is NOT the issue. Increasing complexity is the issue in question. However, since the two issues are lumped together, pro-evolutionists who want to cast non-evolutionists as stupid, ignorant, unscientific fools routinely offer evidence of natural selection -- not increasing complexity -- as proof of evolution, wrongly implying that the non-evolutionists are ignoring evidence of natural selection.
-- The theory of evolution leaves NO possibility for God to be involved in the creation of living things. The idea that "God directed evolution" is simply not an option -- it's not in the theory as laid out by Darwin or anyone else.
-- Examples of "increasing complexity" are strained at best. For example, it sounds plausible that reptile scales could have gradually frayed and developed into feathers until one really examines scales and feathers. They have fundamentally different structures and leave no room for a logical progression from one to the other.
In addition to Creation ministries like Answers in Genesis and Institute for Creation Research, there are MANY other scientists who have identified serious weaknesses in the theory of evolution. The "intelligent design" people are among them, and this crowd includes a number of former pro-evolutinists who finally decided that the scientific evidence points more toward design than to random chance.
Some of the issues these scientists question include the following:
-- From a statistical standpoint, there is an astronomical probalility AGAINST producing a single strand of DNA by chance, regardless of how much time is allowed for it to occur. And DNA is simple compared to the organism it's used to build.
-- Evolution doesn't account for "irreversible complexity," the fact that many parts of an animal don't work unless they are fully developed, and are therefore useless until they are fully developed -- defying evolutionary logic regarding why they would have started developing in the first place. One of my favorite examples of irreversilbe complexity involves the method a bombadier beetle uses for attacking its prey. It mixes two chemicals that it has stored in separate chambers within its body, using a catalyst to create an explosion which propels a hot liquid toward its prey. I have to wonder how many generations of beetles blew themselves up before they got the chemical mixture just right. . . .
I have seen three really excellent DVDs put out by the "intelligent design" scientists, and I recommend them to anyone interested in looking at the evolution question from a scientific standpoint. "Unlocking the Mystery of Life" and "Priviledged Planet" are available from Illustra Media (you can read about them on the web site) and "Icons of Evolution" is available from ColdWater Media. "Unlocking the Mystery of Life" is absolutely fantastic.
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Posted Monday, February 07, 2005 7:02 AM
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Dear Linda,
Is your beetle an example of how "a tenth of an eye doesn't work"?
I wish I were an expert in science, but I am not. I do read Science News--a digest of recent scientific developments--and it has had articles about all sorts of things relating to evolution over the past year. It comes out weekly.
The strange thing about bird's feathers and claws is that they are all made of the same stuff. The irreversible complexity is sort of a non-argument because things do--over mindboggling time--get more complex. I know that there are animals who excrete poisons from their skin, there are animals with separate compartments for poisons, and apparently there is an animal with a catalyst (your beetle). Evolution deals with vast quanities of animals, genetic mutations that can be quite startling, natural selection, and of course time.
Some animals do not change because they remain successful. Others do change. There are examples of dinosaurs with fuzz on their appendages that seems to be pre feathers. (I read an article about this in Science News).
I don't think this is the issue. The issue is what do people do when there are credible challenges to their belief system. We have all survived this. It was traumatic and I can see why people would not want to do it again if they have adopted what they consider to be an absolute answer to everything.
Everything is free to behave according to its nature, not just us.
But something created everything, and that is God. There is something called the Episcopal Herisy that says God is in everything. I find that very interesting.
I think I am going to get out of this thread. I just do not have the scientific background. This is the critical issue of our time for religion just as it was in the 18th century when their empirically based science went counter to the bible.
Biblical science has been superceded, I hope we can agree on that.
Broncho
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Posted Monday, February 07, 2005 8:43 AM
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Broncho,
This topic is probably well beyond the scope of this forum except for the parallels it represents to following CS.
The issue is what do people do when there are credible challenges to their belief system.
Your reaction to our challenges to your evolution belief system have been interesting and unexpected. Presented with credible scientific evidence to the contrary, you seem to choose to ignore the facts or even consider the possibility that evolution is a flawed belief system. On the other hand, I have studied evolution and found it for myself to be flawed.
Yes, there are animals that excrete poisons, have catalysts, and all kinds of other variations. That proves there is diversity in God's Creation not evolution as presented by Darwin and those who followed him.
Sorry if this sounds harsh, but I don't have the words to say it any other way. If you don't choose to continue the discussion, at least please be honest with yourself in admiting that you have chosen to follow evolution based on instinct or belief in certain experts rather than facts which you have yourself examined.
Biblical science has been superceded, I hope we can agree on that.
No agreement on that from me. The more I read and understand of the Bible and science, the more convinced I am of the Bible's literal truth. That's one reason I am interested in birds rather than reptiles being the first named species.
Do Go Be Man
<><
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Posted Monday, February 07, 2005 10:57 AM
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Broncho,
I am able to accept difficult, counter to Scripture ideas when they are presented as well as evolution has been.
Sorry, but you are doubly deceived. Firstly, counter to scripture means counter to God, according to Paul:
All scripture is given by inspiration of God, . . . (2 Tim. 3:16)
If he was wrong here then he could be wrong elsewhere. But Paul wrote scripture, according to Peter (2 Pet. 3:16), and so now doubt is cast on Peter. And on I could go . . . (Yea, hath God said, . . . ).
Secondly, I will debunk the deception that is the theory evolution.
Credible scientists from all over the place are rejecting evolution as a tenable theory. In fact, it is not a scientific theory like any other, because -- except in bacteria and the like -- it cannot be tested. I suspect its strongest promoters are those scientists desperate for there to be no God.
Linda's statement in bold highlights a crucial distinction -- that between microevolution (change within species) and macroevolution (change of one species into another). (Hopefully I'm not mis-using these terms.)
The first of these is not in dispute and can be observed experimentally in bacteria. It is the expression of the potential for variation which God built into every kind. Thus we have varieties of birds, dogs, humans etc., distinguishable populations of which have emerged over time due to pressures exerted by environmental factors, i.e. natural selection.
Macroevolution involves the falsehoods that life originated by some chance collision of chemicals in a primordial soup, and that one species can change into another. Here's just a small sample of the problems with these views:
(1) Every amino acid exists in two mirror image forms, left-handed and right-handed: they are said to be "chiral". All amino acids in DNA and RNA are of the right-handed form, while all amino acids in most proteins in living systems are of the left-handed form. Such constructions cannot be the product of chance.
(2) The chemical reactions which bond amino acids to form proteins and which bond nucleotides to form DNA are both "reversible condensation reactions". This means that DNA or protein will dissolve if left long enough in a watery environment, like the putative "primordial soup". So, life cannot get started.
(3) The replication of DNA requires complex machinery built from proteins. But these proteins are coded for by the DNA. Which came first? This is not answerable naturalistically.
(4) There is no mechanism by which one species could change into another. Mutation has been proposed, but mutations are always harmful to organisms and degrade their genetic information.
(5) There are no proven transitional forms in the fossil record. Those proposed as such simply belong to one pre-existing kind or another. E.g. Archaeopteryx, touted by the textbooks as transitional between dinosuars and birds, was a bird.
(6) In any case, fossils cannot tell us whether anything was the ancestor of anything else.
The irreversible complexity is sort of a non-argument because things do--over mindboggling time--get more complex.
Even if evolution had billions of years to work -- and I don't believe it has had -- it could not work. Things do not get more "complex" over time. Actually, the issue is not one of complexity but of order and information content. I could start typing randomly, for example, and it would look complex yet be meaningless. The second law of thermodynamics is accepted as a basic principle in every branch of physical science, except evolutionary biology! It states that order in a closed system can only decrease and can never increase.
The irreducible complexity argument is most definitely a valid argument. Irreducibly complex structures are those which cannot have been formed by any gradual process of change, even if that were possible, since no simpler intermediate version would hold together functionally as a whole or have any purpose assigned to its individual parts. An analogy is: you can't build a simpler mousetrap -- non-existence to existence of the mousetrap is a quantum leap in design.
Biblical science has been superceded, I hope we can agree on that.
The Bible is not a science textbook, but no solid scientific discovery has contradicted the Bible, only confirmed it. Some people seem to think the Bible teaches such stuff as a flat earth or an earth centred solar system. This is not true.
I hope everybody realizes this is the question for religion in our time. I still find it hard to believe it is intelligent for so many species to belly up. How is that intelligent?
The intelligence is in the design, not the extinctions. Besides, since sin entered the world, life is tough and everything dies. I'm sure God will redeem everything He deems important which had no capacity to respond to the Saviour.
Yes, it's a big question alright, and from secular sources I can take the lie with equanimity. Forgive me, but I am just a little flustered to hear it coming from a Christian perspective, hence the length of my reply. (I'm not calling you a liar, of course.)
Science News does not appear to be serving you well in regard to biological science. I hope you will check out the links others have provided. (Also National Geographic Shoots Itself In The Foot—Again! is a good article.)
I speak the truth in love,
Clive
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Posted Monday, February 07, 2005 11:47 AM
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I’m jumping in here as one of the only-semi-educated ones who knows little terminology in this area . . . but I’ve done a lot of thinking about it. I’m also not going to pull out my Bible gun. I will say though, that it was in examining evolution that I came to believe in God as the creator of all.
I’ve been simply amazed that scientists believe in evolution. To think that any plant/animal/moneran/whatever could “tell” its offspring to make a change is beyond me. Even if it did take millions of years for significant change to happen . . . that means that every generation was remembering to tell the next FUTURE generation to make the change. And then one of those offspring finally decided to make the change?!?
Mathematically, the number of years required to make the number of changes from pre-protistan to today’s plants & animals is beyond counting. To say that this happened in millions or billions of years is laughable.
One place where I totally lose belief in evolution is when they talk about parallel evolution, or coevolution – where TWO Species have actually worked things out together for mutual benefit. Like the Madagascan orchid & sphinx moth. That means these two have been communicating not only to their future offspring, but to their symbiotes, and they’ve agreed to change at the same rate. Over millions of years.
Just my .02, as a non-scientist, one who loves Scientific American – but simply doesn’t believe everything in it. 8-)
Bonnie in WI
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Posted Monday, February 07, 2005 12:44 PM
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Bonnie,
I really like your fish:
><((((º>
Clearly they are a product of intelligent design.
After CS I was an atheistic pantheist. (Despite MBEs protests, she was clearly a spiritual pantheist.) Then I came to accept that the universe demanded a transcendent Creator. Like you, it was through questions relating to evolution that I was guided in this direction. Thankfully, this was one factor which led me to examine genuine Christianity as found in the Word of God.
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Posted Monday, February 07, 2005 1:24 PM
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Dear CW friends,
I found a website on Google that had a lot of the information I do not have at my fingertips. It is the national science teachers assoc. or something on that line. It answers just about everyone's objection pretty clearly. Of course, as far as the idea that folks won't believe it even if it is proven because it contradicts Scripture--well I don't know what to do with that one!
http://www.nsta.org/pbsevolution4
Broncho
PS My PhD computational chemistry husband is a Christian who believes scientists can be religious.
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Posted Monday, February 07, 2005 2:36 PM
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>>led me to examine genuine Christianity as found in the Word of God.<<
Clive - I left that part out . . . I came to The Word shortly after my "awakening" in 1976. Long story, not part of this discussion. 8-)
The fish have double meaning . . . as a Christian symbol, and representing my interest in fish. (I keep fresh- & salt-water tanks, and was a sysop at Compuserve for the fish-hobbyist forum.)
Has anyone here heard Ken Ham and his gang talk about science & evolution?
Bonnie in WI
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Posted Monday, February 07, 2005 3:01 PM
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I found some more interesting information on the connection between birds and dinosaurs.:
According to a Jan. 23, 2003 National Geographic report (this is not the one that proved to be a hoax)
"Much fossil evidence has been uncovered supporting the idea that birds evolved from a group of bipedal carnivorous dinosaurs called theropods. Within the theropod group, birds are most closely related to dromaeosaurids. Velociraptor, a star in the movie Jurassic Park, is probably the most famous of dromaeosaurs."
The article goes on to say that a region in China, Liaoning, has been an area where other bird-like dinosaurs were found. It says
" the earliest dromaeosaurs were small, feathered animals with forelimbs similar to those of Archaeopteryx, the oldest known bird at around 150 million years old, and feet with features comparable to modern tree-living birds."
The part that was of interest to this thread is:"This species provides another link in the emerging transition from small, meat-eating dinosaurs to birds," said Hans-Dieter Sues, curator of vertebrate paleontology and associate director for science and collections at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. "These fossils fill in a blank in the fossil record."
I remembered having read something like this in Science News, but since I really never imagined I would be taking part in a discussion on evolution in the future, I did not mentally book mark it. There are other reputable sites that discuss Chinese feathered dinosaurs.
I have read significant parts of the Origin of the Species (It was part of a Freshman Studies I taught years ago). I did sense that Darwin was a religious man, for what it's worth.
I volunteered (until I had to quit for health reasons) at a Botanical Garden where research on plants and their taxonomy was conducted. My supervisor said that taxonomy is a very hard field because ultimately, plants are all made of the same stuff. I do remember thinking that was interesting at the time.
Hope this helps clarify the issue.
The question that interests me is what do we do when we have proof that the bible is in error. As part of my dissertation, I ran into Champollion, the translator of the Rosetta stone. His patron supported him on the condition that he report nothing that was contrary to scripture until the patron's death. After his death, Champollion came out with a chronology based on his study of Egyptian sources that proved the chronology of the bible was incorrect. This did not impact my faith, because it really didn't impinge on religion.
The idea that if one part of the Bible is flawed, can you cannot trust the rest is counter to logic. It is a hasty generalization: making a generalization and accepting it as truth without testing it for reliability. An example: an instructor finds that the first student questioned in class is unprepared and conclludes without further thought that the class as a whole is unprepared.
It does mean that we have to use our brains a lot more than I want to sometimes!! when we read. This is a book that must be studied for a lifetime!
Broncho
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Posted Monday, February 07, 2005 5:51 PM
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Broncho, Are there apemen in your ancestry?
I read your nsta link, thank you. It failed to prove anything. The best question raised, I think, was
"If homology can be evidence for common descent, as stated in the PBS Evolution series, why can't it equally be evidence for common design?"
My answer: it is indeed evidence for common design. The answer given simply showed the limitations of the scientific method in the area of the supernatural:
". . . Darwin provided a scientific explanation, rather than a theological explanation for such anatomical similarities. It was a scientific explanation because a basic premise of science is that everything in nature can be explained by natural processes that can be investigated and understood by humans. Supernatural events and processes are outside the realm of science."
The explanatory power of the theorised natural processes is flawed and inadequate, however. Not everything in nature can be explained naturalistically. (The birth, life and death of Jesus are prime examples.)
We could argue further and post more links to opposing material . . . supposing you were to trudge through creationist or ID arguments and their sway left you with doubts about your current views on evolution -- would Scripture then be the determining factor for you?
I can't comment knowledgeably on Champollion. Are we to assume that sources contrary to the Bible automatically trump the Bible? Why are the Jewish Scriptures not more trustworthy?
"Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." (Mat. 5:18), "the scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35), "All scripture is given by inspiration of God" (2 Tim. 3:16), "prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost" (2 Pet. 1:21), "The words of the LORD are pure words" (Psa. 12:6), etc..
The Bible teaches its own innerrancy, not in part, but in whole. Through a singular source of inspiration it is integrated in such a way that your classroom analogy breaks down.
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