Should Christians embrace evolution ?

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donsnow said:
Maybe there’s a difference of interpretation, here? I go along with that fossils with partially developed members of body or organs would demonstrate transitional attributes. What definition of transitional are you and general evolutionists going by? Yes, semantics are important: it’s all in the interpretation of the data. To paraphrase Stephen Hawkings’ little ole turtle lady, “It’s interpretation, all the way down.”😛
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Donsnow, you are right to emphasize the significance of interpretation. The principle applies in science as well as in theology.

I use “transitional” in the sense of being an intermediary. Although not yet a fossil (pace my teenage son!), I am transitional between my parents and my children. Now, while three generations makes no perceptible difference, thousands and tens of thousands of generations do make a difference. With enough time and sufficient selective pressures, one species can incrementally diverge into two species. Tiktaalik is a transitional" stage between Eusthenopteron and Acanthostega, millions of years apart.

StAnastasia
 
rossum said:
Money. They sell a great many books and get a great many donations. See ministrywatch.com/profile/Answers-in-Genesis.aspx

They are running a commercial operation, $22 million revenue in 2008.

rossum
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OK. I’ve written fiction and some nonfiction. If you go to amazon.com, you’ll see the various reviews for books about recent (1945 and later) history. The competent reviewers waste no time zeroing in on the book’s faults. I’ve been turned away from some books after reading such reviews.

The missing part of your equation is that if I buy a nonfiction book, I expect it to be well written and to contain well researched information. Do you think the people buying these books have not examined them for bad research and a lack of a bibliography and footnotes, which would allow the careful reader to review any claims made?

Peace,
Ed
 
edwest2 said:
OK. I’ve written fiction and some nonfiction. If you go to amazon.com, you’ll see the various reviews for books about recent (1945 and later) history. The competent reviewers waste no time zeroing in on the book’s faults. I’ve been turned away from some books after reading such reviews.

The missing part of your equation is that if I buy a nonfiction book, I expect it to be well written and to contain well researched information. Do you think the people buying these books have not examined them for bad research and a lack of a bibliography and footnotes, which would allow the careful reader to review any claims made?
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Read the book reviews on the Talk Origins website. They are filled with details of the false and misleading claims published in Creationist books. Even Answers in Genesis has a list of arguments that they think Creationists should not use, yet we still see those same arguments being used by other Creationists. The Paluxy “man tracks” and “moon dust” are two classic ones that keeps coming back again and again.

rossum
 
rossum said:
Read the book reviews on the Talk Origins website. They are filled with details of the false and misleading claims published in Creationist books. Even Answers in Genesis has a list of arguments that they think Creationists should not use, yet we still see those same arguments being used by other Creationists. The Paluxy “man tracks” and “moon dust” are two classic ones that keeps coming back again and again.

rossum
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So do you think the people who buy and read these books do not read them critically? I mean, new books keep appearing with creationist themes. Do you think people do not correlate the claims being made with other sources?

Peace,
Ed
 
edwest2 said:
So do you think the people who buy and read these books do not read them critically? I mean, new books keep appearing with creationist themes. Do you think people do not correlate the claims being made with other sources?
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I think that people who buy one Creationist book also buy other Creationist books and look at Creationist websites. The whole thing becomes one inward looking circle with everybody repeating everyone else’s quotes from secondary sources without always going back to the original. There are even Creationist quotebooks giving lists of these quotemined falsehoods and misleading information. See here for a few examples.

To take one example, here are Whitcombe and Morris in “The Genesis Flood” quoting Ross and Rezak about the Lewis Overthrust:Most visitors, especially those who stay on the roads, get the impression that the Belt of strata are undisturbed and lie almost as flat today as they did when deposited in the sea which vanished so many years ago.
Now here is that same quote (in blue) in its original context:Folds that originated at the time represented by plate 53B but that have been accentuated and locally broken by the later pressures, are visible in ridges, cliffs, and canyon walls both in the mountains south of Glacier National Park and in the part of the Great Plains within some 20 miles of the mountain edge at the eastern border of the park. All the sedimentary rocks that were present were squeezed and folded, but the Belt series, being strong and buried under a blanket of other rocks, was deformed the least. Most visitors, especially those who stay on the roads, get the impression that the Belt of strata are undisturbed and lie almost as flat today as they did when deposited in the sea which vanished so many million years ago. Actually they are folded, and in certain zones they are intensely so. From points on and near the trails in the park it is possible to observe places where the beds of the Belt series, as revealed in outcrops on ridges, cliffs, and canyon walls, are folded and crumpled almost as intricately as the soft younger strata in the mountains south of the park and in the Great Plains adjoining the park to the east.
Do you think that the Morris and Whitcombe selection is an honest representation of what Ross and Rezak said? To me it looks more like those glowing notices that you see outside theatres, carefully edited from the reviews of the play. They even carefully omitted the word “million”, without ellipsis, in order not to disturb the preconceptions of the YEC faithful their book was aimed at. To me that is lying by omission, and that is why I call most creationist websites liars.

rossum
 
rossum said:
I think that people who buy one Creationist book also buy other Creationist books and look at Creationist websites. The whole thing becomes one inward looking circle with everybody repeating everyone else’s quotes from secondary sources without always going back to the original.
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Oh and that never happens with anti-theists, or anti-creationists, or darwinian evolutionists LOL LOL.
 
rossum said:
I think that people who buy one Creationist book also buy other Creationist books and look at Creationist websites. The whole thing becomes one inward looking circle with everybody repeating everyone else’s quotes from secondary sources without always going back to the original. There are even Creationist quotebooks giving lists of these quotemined falsehoods and misleading information. See here for a few examples.

To take one example, here are Whitcombe and Morris in “The Genesis Flood” quoting Ross and Rezak about the Lewis Overthrust:Most visitors, especially those who stay on the roads, get the impression that the Belt of strata are undisturbed and lie almost as flat today as they did when deposited in the sea which vanished so many years ago.
Now here is that same quote (in blue) in its original context:Folds that originated at the time represented by plate 53B but that have been accentuated and locally broken by the later pressures, are visible in ridges, cliffs, and canyon walls both in the mountains south of Glacier National Park and in the part of the Great Plains within some 20 miles of the mountain edge at the eastern border of the park. All the sedimentary rocks that were present were squeezed and folded, but the Belt series, being strong and buried under a blanket of other rocks, was deformed the least. Most visitors, especially those who stay on the roads, get the impression that the Belt of strata are undisturbed and lie almost as flat today as they did when deposited in the sea which vanished so many million years ago. Actually they are folded, and in certain zones they are intensely so. From points on and near the trails in the park it is possible to observe places where the beds of the Belt series, as revealed in outcrops on ridges, cliffs, and canyon walls, are folded and crumpled almost as intricately as the soft younger strata in the mountains south of the park and in the Great Plains adjoining the park to the east.
Do you think that the Morris and Whitcombe selection is an honest representation of what Ross and Rezak said? To me it looks more like those glowing notices that you see outside theatres, carefully edited from the reviews of the play. They even carefully omitted the word “million”, without ellipsis, in order not to disturb the preconceptions of the YEC faithful their book was aimed at. To me that is lying by omission, and that is why I call most creationist websites liars.

rossum
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I see. Thank you for your reply.

Peace,
Ed
 
In my opinion, people who believe we came from monkeys probably did, because they have the brains of a monkey.🤷
 
Renko said:
In my opinion, people who believe we came from monkeys probably did, because they have the brains of a monkey.🤷
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To reciprocate, people who deny evolution did not benefit from the process 🤷
 
St Anastasia said:
Albert Ball, how do you see the theory of evolution as inimical to religious belief?

St Anastasia
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Because, and again this is just my opinion…

We know the processes that drive evolution, and we know that not only is no god required but if a god was interfering with evolution that would raise a lot more question than answers.

A small example… people claim that god guides evolution, but the facts suggest the exact opposite. We know that mutations are random, this is an observable fact. Random but its very nature means unguided. Therefore is god was twiddling with the mutations why is he doing it in way that suggest he is not?

This extends to every observable fact, why is evolution exactly they way it would be if no god exists?

Evolution completely removes the need for, and positively suggests there is no god involved in the development of life. IMHO this is deeply corrosive to the god hypothesis.
 
AlbertBall said:
Because, and again this is just my opinion…

We know the processes that drive evolution, and we know that not only is no god required but if a god was interfering with evolution that would raise a lot more question than answers.

A small example… people claim that god guides evolution, but the facts suggest the exact opposite. We know that mutations are random, this is an observable fact. Random but its very nature means unguided. Therefore is god was twiddling with the mutations why is he doing it in way that suggest he is not?

This extends to every observable fact, why is evolution exactly they way it would be if no god exists?

Evolution completely removes the need for, and positively suggests there is no god involved in the development of life. IMHO this is deeply corrosive to the god hypothesis.
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This guy strikes a profound blow against theistic evolution. We creationists appreciate his perspective. 👍
 
Do some Christians accept textbook evolution because the’ve decided it’s OK as long as they believe God was somehow involved? If you’re one of those people, what did God do? Have you asked yourself that?

Peace,
Ed
 
Imho, for millenia we all accepted everything in Creation as evidence for the presence of God. Now, some evolutionists come along, take the same evidence, and claim it proves there’s no god. What I see doesn’t change there being our God involved in His creation, it just declares evolutionists tweaking the data their apriori viewpoint of no god. Their claims don’t change the truth of God in His creation.

It’s interpretation, all the way down.
 
Renko said:
In my opinion, people who believe we came from monkeys probably did, because they have the brains of a monkey.🤷
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Unfortunately, your comment betrays a basic ignorance of science in general, and of evolution is particular. Please note: evolution in no way includes the notion that humans “came from monkeys.”

Gaudium de veritate,

Cruciform
+T+
 
Cruciform said:
Unfortunately, your comment betrays a basic ignorance of science in general, and of evolution is particular. Please note: evolution in no way includes the notion that humans “came from monkeys.”

Gaudium de veritate,

Cruciform
+T+
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Hi, Cruciform -

Gee, in 1949, our First Grade teacher told us that evolution said we were descended from monkeys, for real she did (and no science classes in that First Grade, at all; and they say that evolutionists don’t proslytize).
Now, who am I supposed to believe?? :rolleyes:
 
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