Creation vs Evolution

[PhilVaz]

Apologia100 << If one were to look at the skeleton of a donkey, mule, and horse without the modern context of being 3 independent species, one could reasonably assume that the donkey evolved into a mule, which in turn evolved into a horse. >>

I don’t know where you get these kinds of arguments. Why do you find them compelling? The evolution of the horse is very well documented. Same for the donkey, mule, etc. Paleontologist Bruce MacFadden is your expert there.

But I’ll let HECD (Alec) or whoever else wants to take over. And yeah like Marcia said, the fossil record is not the only evidence for evolution, there is biogeography, similar morphology, vestiges and atavisms, the molecular sequences, etc all with good evolutionary explanations that make sense, while intelligent design or “creationism” explains none of this.

Phil P

 

[marciadietrich]

PhilVaz:

Way to go Behe. See also Darwin’s Black Box, page 5. One of the leaders in the “intelligent design” movement accepts the 4.5 billion year old earth, accepts descent with modification or the “common descent” (macroevolution) of plants, animals, and homo sapiens (us), and is therefore a theistic evolutionist, like me, like Pope John Paul II.

Now Phil …

JP II has never said he is a theistic evolutionist. The most has been some general ‘isn’t what science is discovering amazing’ type praise, but very general and nothing explicit in support of common descent of mankind or creation in general. Just because there is some allowance for allegory and symbolism in Genesis, there is also specific teachings of the Church he upholds which seem contrary to what science indicates. There is very much a leaning toward literal take on creation in JP II’sTheology of the Body. Definately leaning to special creation of man and woman in the image of God - the initial isolation and loneliness of Adam in the garden, etc… and when the Pope says “anthropology” he uses it in the classical Christian sense of the origin, nature and destiny of humanity (created by God, to know love and serve God) and not common descent and evolution.

Plus, real scientists absolutely reject “intelligent design” - even with common descent being allowed within that. ID’ers are considered creationists in sheep’s clothing.

Marcia

 

[PhilVaz]

Marcia << JP II has never said he is a theistic evolutionist.>>

All right, he’s an evolutionary creationist like Denis Lamoureux, with the faint hope that Adam and Eve were specially created so that original sin can be salvaged.

I should start a new topic on Hurricanes and the Problem of Evil since EWTN in Birmingham, Alabama is being wiped out as we speak. If your EWTN channel goes down for a few hours, you know what happened. I live in Tampa Bay area, Florida and was spared the Wrath of Ivan the Terrible.

Phil P

 

[TheGarg]

6 days! Whom among us is to say how long a day is to God?

DING DING DING, we have a winner folks. I voted for the “seven days” (even though the seventh day was the day god rested). God is timeless, so therefore a day for him could be a billion years…I firmly agree

 

[buffalo]

PhilVaz:

Alec can do a good job answering this, but I will answer also. Evolution (defined as “descent with modification” or simply “common descent”) is considered a fact, as much a fact in science as the “theory of gravity,” or that the earth rotates and goes around the sun, or that the earth is greater than 4 billion years old, or that the universe is greater than 10 billion years old, or that fish came before amphibians before reptiles before mammals before us homo sapiens, and one form slowly evolved into another over millions of years (around 600 million years since the Cambrian). Those are considered facts in science and should be because of the overwhelming evidence from various branches of science. Alec can and will provide details.

Now evolution is also considered a “theory” in science because we do not know precisely how all of this happened. Nor do we know precisely how “gravity works.” Therefore, gravity is a fact, and also a theory. Natural selection is probably the major mechanism for evolution, but the mechanism is debated in science. “Darwinism” as I understand, can be defined as “evolution by natural selection” or “descent with modification by natural selection.” Darwin’s major contribution was the mechanism for evolution, as geologists (even creationist ones) knew the earth was very old well before his time (early 19th century).

%between%

The weakness in these arguments is that it is considered a fact. The weakness is also that the facts we observe are only facts throught the scientific lens we look through. That leaves a lot of unexplained issues.

Considering a fact leaves a weak foundation that much science depends on. I believe we should be humble enough to consider that our facts as we know them could be in error.

Bottom-line - we are searching and really don’t know. This much unexplained.

Given this - is it possible it could have happened just like the Bible and Tradition say?

 

[AlanFromWichita]

I agree that no options were ideal for me. I voted for #3 because it came closest to my opinion.

I don’t know whether the theory of evolution as it applies to species converting from one to another (a.k.a. macroevolution) is true or not, because we still have missing links, but it certainly is possible and I would not presume to tell God the He cannot use that as a tool.

Adaptation (microevolution) is a proven, scientific fact. That doesn’t prove macroevolution, but it would seem to make it more plausible.

Regarding 6 day or 7 day creation, I have no idea what to think of that. My children were taught by their high school religion teachers that Genesis and Revelation are to be interpreted figuratively.

Alan

 

[Melchior]

AlanFromWichita:

My children were taught by their high school religion teachers that Genesis and Revelation are to be interpreted figuratively.

Alan

Time to start homeschooling! The teacher was right about Revelation and wrong about Genesis. The genres of the two books are so completely different I seriously question this teacher’s education.

Mel

 

[hecd2]

Apologia100: ‘I am not a Darwinian Evolutionist, nor am I a literal Creation Scientist. I believe the truth is more of an amalgamation of the two’

Stobie: ‘This represents my view as well’

Della: ‘I cannot believe in a strict Darwinian evolution because it does not answer some very basic questions about the nature of man’

larryo: ‘Dittos, here’

Timbo: ‘I should also note that I don’t believe in Darwinism. The man wasn’t even a scientist. God created the earth, the animals and humans. Macro-evolution (evolution between species) has not been proven, but I do believe there has been enough evidence to support micro-evolution (evolution within a species such as humans becoming taller throughout many years).’

Della: ‘I do not believe in strict Darwinian evolution’

Tobias: Evolution is no more a provable reality than the existence of the human mood.

Apologia100: It just means that unless someone builds a time machine to be able to observe the formation of the fossil record in context, we will never objectively know the truth

buffalo: The weakness in these arguments is that it is considered a fact. The weakness is also that the facts we observe are only facts throught the scientific lens we look through…Bottom-line - we are searching and really don’t know

No-one answered the questions I asked, so I’ll ask them again: Why is it that in the matter of evolution, all sorts of people, lacking the burden of actual knowledge, feel free to express their prejudices and biases in public? These people wouldn’t dream of posting their opinions in a thread debating, say, the implications of the mass of the Higgs boson for fundamental physics, or a thread debating the relative merits of the strict Copenhagen interpretation versus Bohmian mechanics. Or a thread on string theory versus loop quantum gravity. But molecular and evolutionary biology is fair game for people who don’t have the faintest idea about what evolutionary theory actually says.

I am really interested in an answer to this question, because not one of you has even attempted to post a definition of ‘Darwinism’, the hypothesis that you are giving us the benefit of your opinions on. Not one of you, with all due respect, has shown that you understand either what the theory of evolution claims or the evidence for it. So, I am genuinely interested - why do you feel able to give an opinion on one scientific matter (evolutionary biology) about which you seem, on the evidence of his thread, to know absolutely nothing, when you would not countenance the idea of giving your opinion on, say, the latest hypotheses on protein folding or the importance of the recently discovered phenomenon of RNA Interference or the role of Hox genes and the genetic casette in the development of tetrapod limbs.

I am genuinely interested: why do you feel that you can have an opinion about one thing you seem to know nothing about, when you would recoil from seeming to hold an opinion on something else you know nothing about? Why is evolutionary biology different? (this is not a rhetorical question - I really do want to know).

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[hecd2]

Della:

Alec, maybe you can explain why evolution is taught in our schools as if it were indisputable fact, instead of a scientific theory?

Because evolution is a fact as surely as heliocentrism is a fact. There is some debate and much to learn about the mechanism of evolution, but no serious debate about the fact that evolution (in the sense of common descent) occurred. All of modern biology, which is a huge and successful discipline, is based on this fact.

And why are we ordinary people supposed to just swallow whole whatever any scientist says no matter the fact that s/he has no expertise in religion or philosophy any more than any other ordinary person?

No-one isasking you to ‘swallow whole’ what ‘any’ scientist says. But there is a consensus in science on some fundamental and key matters - the fact of evolution is one of these. If one wishes to debate and take exception to the conclusions of scientists, one should at least be acquainted with the arguments and evidence and have a compelling and well-informed reason for not going along with the consensus.

And tell us there is no bias in the scientific community against organized religion.

Some scientists are proselytising atheists (which they are perfectly entitled to be). Many, many scientists are devout believers. Scientists, as a broad community, recognise that science has no authority or valid opinion in the religious realm; most scientists leave religion to religious enthusiasts and theologians.

I explained why I cannot accept evolution alone as a viable explanation for who and what humans are. Perhaps you can answer them with your favorite theory of evolution?

Most of your arguments are God of the Gaps arguments, but see below.

Alec
volutionpages.com

 

[wanerious]

Apologia100:

Here is what I mean by context. In our time, we have donkeys (equis asinus), mules, and horses (equis caballus). We know empirically that donkeys and horses are different species of the genus Equidae. Mules are the offspring of the pairing of a donkey and a horse. If one were to look at the skeleton of a donkey, mule, and horse without the modern context of being 3 independent species, one could reasonably assume that the donkey evolved into a mule, which in turn evolved into a horse. One would then make the determination that a mule is a transitional species between a donkey and a horse. But in context we know that is not true.

Yes, I remember you posting this before. My answer was that you don’t seem to have an appreciation for how science works. No one, digging up these 3 skeletons millions of years from now, would propose such a hypothesis since they all exist at the same time and would be deposited in the same geologic layers. If, on the other hand, we had horse skeletons at an early period, followed by mule and then later by donkey skeletons, then perhaps someone might offer that horses were the ancestors of mules and donkeys. This hypothesis and the data it is based upon would then undergo rigorous tests for duplication and precision, be presented at conferences and papers to (probably) hostile crowds of scientists championing different hypotheses, and ultimately surviving based upon the degree to which the hypothesis is a reasonable account of the data. This is how science works. Being an astronomer, I’ve seen it firsthand with cosmology data in the mid-90’s. Scientific colleagues can be vicious, and the process needs them to be. We should allow for the fact that these scientists, being probably very smart and working on this stuff for 10 hours a day for their entire professional lives, have probably thought of most of the things we have thought of and much more. This is not to say we must simply take scientific consenses on authority without question, but a healthy dose of respect for the thought and careers of these people is a good thing.

 

[hecd2]

Della:

My reply will not fit with the 3 options given in the poll, either.

I cannot believe in a strict Darwinian evolution because it does not answer some very basic questions about the nature of man. Some of these are:

Why is man so much more intelligent than any other creatures on this planet?

He has a much bigger brain.

Why would nature produce a creature capable of creating major imbalances in nature?

Why not? Nature is not a intelligent being with the ability to arrange matters to her best advantage. Arguments abound as to whether selection works at the genetic, the individual or the species level, but no serious scientist claims that selection works at the level of all nature and no evidence for this has been presented.

Why does mankind have a sense of morality based on belief in a higher Being to whom we are accountable?

As for the sense of morality, learn about evolutionary psychology and the evolution of co-operation. With regard to the higher Being, try Pascal Boyer’s ‘Religion Explianed’

Why are we unhappy with our flaws and foibles?

Are we?

Why are do we regret doing things that hurt others?

See Matt Ridley’s ’ Origins of Virtue’ and Robert Axelrod’s ‘Evolution of Co-operation’.

And I could go on. G. K. Chesterton wrote that man is either a creation of God or a monster of nature. I prefer to believe in the former.

False dichotomy. But, what you prefer to believe carries no weight in the scientific debate which bases its conclusions on the existence of evidence.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[wanerious]

buffalo:

The weakness in these arguments is that it is considered a fact. The weakness is also that the facts we observe are only facts throught the scientific lens we look through. That leaves a lot of unexplained issues.

Such as…? What is the “scientific lens”? Science is the process by which we can deductively and objectively ascribe probability likelihoods to statements about the natural world. Scientific “facts” are like slam-dunk courtroom cases. They have been shown to be a close approximation to the “truth” beyond a reasonable doubt.

Considering a fact leaves a weak foundation that much science depends on. I believe we should be humble enough to consider that our facts as we know them could be in error.

Absolutely. We can never prove a theory true, only false. We can only accumulate evidence in support of a theory to strengthen the conviction that it is an accurate model of nature to some arbitrary degree of uncertainty. I can assert that an apple will fall from a tree at 9.81 m/s^2, and that is good enough to be verified by many experiments, but is ultimately wrong in the sense of being not accurate enough. These discrepancies must eventually be explained (here, by general relativity).

Bottom-line - we are searching and really don’t know. This much unexplained.

Given this - is it possible it could have happened just like the Bible and Tradition say?

Saying there is much unknown and unexplained is true, but no, there are things in the Bible that cannot be reasonably explained by any current scientific model. No one has proposed one that takes into account all previous historical and scientific data as well as Biblical data.

 

[hecd2]

Don’t bother creating this argument in Word - it’s not worthwhile.

Apologia100:

Here is what I mean by context. In our time, we have donkeys (equis asinus), mules, and horses (equis caballus). We know empirically that donkeys and horses are different species of the genus Equidae. Mules are the offspring of the pairing of a donkey and a horse. If one were to look at the skeleton of a donkey, mule, and horse without the modern context of being 3 independent species, one could reasonably assume that the donkey evolved into a mule, which in turn evolved into a horse. One would then make the determination that a mule is a transitional species between a donkey and a horse. But in context we know that is not true.

Why on earth would one conclude, given skeletal data, that a mule is a transitional beween a donkey and a horse; what specific transitional features between donkey and horse exist in a mule? Why indeed would one conclude that donkeys evolved into horses when we find them in the same geologic horizons? What are the primitive features in donkey’s skeletons to compare with derived features in horse’s skeletons?

In short, your analogy is of no value.

Therefore, regardless of the academic accumen of the scientific community making the observations and drawing the conclussions, the fact remains that they are in fact making assumtions based on an undefined premise, the premise being the context of the fossil record.

Actually, we do not rely exclusively (or indeed very much) on the fossil record to demonstrate the fact of evolution. Indeed more powerful arguments such as biogeography, the nested hierarchy of species and many independent lines of molecular evidence add up to an incontrovertible set. The premises are solid (for those who understand them) and the conclusion inevitable. Common descent is a fact.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

 

[SocaliCatholic]

hecd2:

No-one answered the questions I asked, so I’ll ask them again: Why is it that in the matter of evolution, all sorts of people, lacking the burden of actual knowledge, feel free to express their prejudices and biases in public?

Pride.

If I take evolution as fact, may I humble myself and propose that you would be making an illogical assumption by assuming that the resulting product of evolution [man] should indeed not be acting precisely in the manner that evolution itself allowed them to act.

You can not have your cake, and eat it too.

 

[Melchior]

hecd2:

Don’t bother creating this argument in Word - it’s not worthwhile.

Why on earth would one conclude, given skeletal data, that a mule is a transitional beween a donkey and a horse; what specific transitional features between donkey and horse exist in a mule? Why indeed would one conclude that donkeys evolved into horses when we find them in the same geologic horizons? What are the primitive features in donkey’s skeletons to compare with derived features in horse’s skeletons?

In short, your analogy is of no value.

Actually, we do not rely exclusively (or indeed very much) on the fossil record to demonstrate the fact of evolution. Indeed more powerful arguments such as biogeography, the nested hierarchy of species and many independent lines of molecular evidence add up to an incontrovertible set. The premises are solid (for those who understand them) and the conclusion inevitable. Common descent is a fact.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

Alec,

You dismiss a valid claim by taking a paragraph to ask questions that you do not answer, and then you make a defintive conclusion that the analogy has no value based on absolutely nothing but a few unaswered questions.

It is no wonder you believe in macro-evolution. You are willing to make completely unsubstantiated pronouncements without even coming close to proving your point. And you act as if Apologia has said nothing worth discussing. Until you learn to actually critically examine something you are in no position to be convinced of anything based on facts or good reason. You will remain convinced only by your own speculation and selective “facts”.

Now prove me wrong by actually engaging what Apologia wrote instead of dismissing it as having no value without proving that it has no value.

Mel

 

[buffalo]

hecd2:

buffalo: The weakness in these arguments is that it is considered a fact. The weakness is also that the facts we observe are only facts throught the scientific lens we look through…Bottom-line - we are searching and really don’t know

No-one answered the questions I asked, so I’ll ask them again: Why is it that in the matter of evolution, all sorts of people, lacking the burden of actual knowledge, feel free to express their prejudices and biases in public? These people wouldn’t dream of posting their opinions in a thread debating, say, the implications of the mass of the Higgs boson for fundamental physics, or a thread debating the relative merits of the strict Copenhagen interpretation versus Bohmian mechanics. Or a thread on string theory versus loop quantum gravity. But molecular and evolutionary biology is fair game for people who don’t have the faintest idea about what evolutionary theory actually says.

I am really interested in an answer to this question, because not one of you has even attempted to post a definition of ‘Darwinism’, the hypothesis that you are giving us the benefit of your opinions on. Not one of you, with all due respect, has shown that you understand either what the theory of evolution claims or the evidence for it. So, I am genuinely interested - why do you feel able to give an opinion on one scientific matter (evolutionary biology) about which you seem, on the evidence of his thread, to know absolutely nothing, when you would not countenance the idea of giving your opinion on, say, the latest hypotheses on protein folding or the importance of the recently discovered phenomenon of RNA Interference or the role of Hox genes and the genetic casette in the development of tetrapod limbs.

I am genuinely interested: why do you feel that you can have an opinion about one thing you seem to know nothing about, when you would recoil from seeming to hold an opinion on something else you know nothing about? Why is evolutionary biology different? (this is not a rhetorical question - I really do want to know).

Alec
evolutionpages.com

The best answer I can give is that Revelation has told us about some things and is silent on others. Catholics have information on the origins of man. Revelation doesn’t speak to us much about quantum physics or string theory.

 

[Apologia100]

hecd2:

Don’t bother creating this argument in Word - it’s not worthwhile.

Why on earth would one conclude, given skeletal data, that a mule is a transitional beween a donkey and a horse; what specific transitional features between donkey and horse exist in a mule? Why indeed would one conclude that donkeys evolved into horses when we find them in the same geologic horizons? What are the primitive features in donkey’s skeletons to compare with derived features in horse’s skeletons?

In short, your analogy is of no value.

Actually, we do not rely exclusively (or indeed very much) on the fossil record to demonstrate the fact of evolution. Indeed more powerful arguments such as biogeography, the nested hierarchy of species and many independent lines of molecular evidence add up to an incontrovertible set. The premises are solid (for those who understand them) and the conclusion inevitable. Common descent is a fact.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

First, I have to admit that i was a little taken aback by the fellow who accused me of not know how science works. That is the first time in my 37 years I have ever been told that, considering I have a BS in Biotechnology from UM and a 3.85 GPA. I have a couple of questions for you, since it appears that you are so much smarter than I.

1. How long does it take for a striation in the geological column to form? 10 years, 100,000 years, 10,000,000 years? Best guess? verifiable evidence? Scientific speculation?
2. How long does it take for one species to evolve into another? If it takes less time for a species to evolve than it does for the stratifcation of the geological column, wouldn’t you find several transitional subspecies within one layer of the column? or is that against the rules? Since I know you can’t answer this question, noone can, because no-one on earth knows how long it take for a creature to evolve its physical characteristics enough to define it as a new species, we are going to have to assume that it is possible. Therefore if, as I postulated, a species can undergo several observable microevolutionary changes within a short time period (geologically speaking), if the donkey and mule were in fact genetic ancestors of the horse, you would find them within a single layer in the geological column. So my theory has merit. Science will never know the context of the formation of anything but the gross anatomy of the fossil record.

I rest my case, next.

 

[Melchior]

Apologia100:

First, I have to admit that i was a little taken aback by the fellow who accused me of not know how science works. That is the first time in my 37 years I have ever been told that, considering I have a BS in Biotechnology from UM and a 3.85 GPA. I have a couple of questions for you, since it appears that you are so much smarter than I.

1. How long does it take for a striation in the geological column to form? 10 years, 100,000 years, 10,000,000 years? Best guess? verifiable evidence? Scientific speculation?
2. How long does it take for one species to evolve into another? If it takes less time for a species to evolve than it does for the stratifcation of the geological column, wouldn’t you find several transitional subspecies within one layer of the column? or is that against the rules? Since I know you can’t answer this question, noone can, because no-one on earth knows how long it take for a creature to evolve its physical characteristics enough to define it as a new species, we are going to have to assume that it is possible. Therefore if, as I postulated, a species can undergo several observable microevolutionary changes within a short time period (geologically speaking), if the donkey and mule were in fact genetic ancestors of the horse, you would find them within a single layer in the geological column. So my theory has merit. Science will never know the context of the formation of anything but the gross anatomy of the fossil record.

I rest my case, next.

Well done.

 

[wanerious]

Apologia100:

First, I have to admit that i was a little taken aback by the fellow who accused me of not know how science works. That is the first time in my 37 years I have ever been told that, considering I have a BS in Biotechnology from UM and a 3.85 GPA. I have a couple of questions for you, since it appears that you are so much smarter than I.

No, I apologize that I was condescending. I didn’t mean to be, it was an honest assessment of what I was reading, though I shouldn’t have written it.

1. How long does it take for a striation in the geological column to form? 10 years, 100,000 years, 10,000,000 years? Best guess? verifiable evidence? Scientific speculation?

I’ll admit right now that I’m not a geologist, and I wish there were one here to answer that in a detailed way. My hunch is that it depends on the kind of rock, the width of striation, and the local geologic environment. To take a whack at the order of magnitude, I’d put it closer on the average to 100,000 years as opposed to your other choices. I’m fairly confident, though, that there is a good theory for striation formation of which I am merely ignorant.

1. How long does it take for one species to evolve into another? If it takes less time for a species to evolve than it does for the stratifcation of the geological column, wouldn’t you find several transitional subspecies within one layer of the column? or is that against the rules? Since I know you can’t answer this question, noone can, because no-one on earth knows how long it take for a creature to evolve its physical characteristics enough to define it as a new species, we are going to have to assume that it is possible.

Sure, it is possible, and sure, we can answer the question. The problem is that you keep using words like “transitional” species. Every species is transitional. They tend to be more “speciated”, if you will, as we look back in time because there are fewer and fewer fossils per time interval. The answer to the question is yes, there may be ancestors and descendants together in the same geologic strata, and that means that we can’t necessarily resolve ancestor from descendant from the strata alone. That might be a problem were it not for other avenues of inquiry as outlined by Alec.

Therefore if, as I postulated, a species can undergo several observable microevolutionary changes within a short time period (geologically speaking), if the donkey and mule were in fact genetic ancestors of the horse, you would find them within a single layer in the geological column. So my theory has merit. Science will never know the context of the formation of anything but the gross anatomy of the fossil record.

I rest my case, next.

I still say it has no merit, because I still say that if they were all found together, no hypothesis of descent would be made or supported. My argument runs like this: to my (limited) knowledge, assignment of evolutionary positions on the ladder has never been done for fossils found in strata unresolved in time (without some kind of independent evidence). You claim that this is what happens, so if you can produce a case of fossils that have been asserted to be ancestor/descendant when found in the same strata, with no other supporting phyletological or molecular evidence, then I will be suitably astonished.

 

[TheGarg]

hecd2:

He has a much bigger brain.

Why not? Nature is not a intelligent being with the ability to arrange matters to her best advantage. Arguments abound as to whether selection works at the genetic, the individual or the species level, but no serious scientist claims that selection works at the level of all nature and no evidence for this has been presented.

As for the sense of morality, learn about evolutionary psychology and the evolution of co-operation. With regard to the higher Being, try Pascal Boyer’s ‘Religion Explianed’

Are we?

See Matt Ridley’s ’ Origins of Virtue’ and Robert Axelrod’s ‘Evolution of Co-operation’.

False dichotomy. But, what you prefer to believe carries no weight in the scientific debate which bases its conclusions on the existence of evidence.

Alec
evolutionpages.com

I see your lips movin, but all i can hear is “Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah”…your explanitions are all fine and good, but just remember this, the consequence for a christian being wrong, is a dirt nap, the consequence for non-believers is hell…you’d better pray your right …er, well, i guess you have no one to pray too…good luck! May the Peace of the Lord be with you