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James Knight (Guest) |
25/03/2022 10:15 |
It’s always amusing when YECs make a big deal out of their credentials, and when other YECs try to defend their position on account of the so-called credentials of these charlatans. Ask yourself why these people are always banging on about credentials – it’s because deep down they know they are trying to sell snake oil, and they need other tools to persuade. But that’s not how ordinary people with actual credentials actually work; the physicist, brain surgeon, dentist or doctor don’t have to teach or perform by continually going on about their credentials – they perform because the discipline is trusted based on layers of empirical knowledge and research.
In short, a YEC who claims to be a scientist is likely to be even less trustworthy than the acolytes who follow him. Nathaniel Jeanson may be a qualified biologist, but he is betraying his qualification with projections of counterfactual nonsense – which is why he needs to remind everyone he is a biologist, because his aim is to generate trust where none is warranted.
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Lisa Skipper, PhD (Guest) |
26/03/2022 14:45 |
More than 1,200 scientists (PhD or MD/Prof) from countries all over the world have signed a public statement known as the Scientific Dissent From Darwinism. The full statement reads: ‘We are sceptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.’ The organisers stress that there are no political or religious motivations – the objections are based solely on scientific grounds.
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Timothy V Reeves (Guest) |
26/03/2022 17:05 |
..and Lisa, how many of that 1200 are Christian young earth literalists? I could add my name to that statement, but I have to confess that although I'm within the evangelical camp I am miles from people like Nathaniel's Boss Ken Ham. That's not because I see myself as moving from the Biblical faith, but because of the stance of AiG which strongly condemns even Christians who believe in a 10k year universe. Moreover Ken has made the most extreme accusations against those with an evangelical faith who disagree with him, such as the devout William Dembski of Intelligent Design fame, not to mention Tom Wright and Francis Collins. As far as I can tell it's Ken that's moved the goal posts. And while I'm here let me comment that your fellow interlocutor on the Jeanson video who I'm sure is nice chap, has taken his cue from his superiors and is also very inclined to make unnuanced, unqualified statements about other Christians based on his subjective reading of the Bible and gets riled up if we disagree with him. Oh, and by the way, have you ever heard of John McKay, Ken Ham's one time business partner?
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Andrew Holland (Guest) |
27/03/2022 14:41 |
God’s Genius in Creation James We have met before on these pages, and I am sorry to conclude that though you may be a little older, you don’t appear to be any wiser! Firstly, I will comment on your last paragraph. The olive branch! It appears that you very much desire that we Christians should “agree with one another” in what we say and that there will be “no divisions among us” and “perfectly united in mind and thought”. What is truth? I for one consider that absolute truth is contained in what God has revealed in His Word, the Bible, and that it stands above all human ideas and scientific interpretations. To me, if the Bible states that God created the heavens and the earth as described in Genesis then that is what I believe. Why would God deceive us? So you are saying that a human philosophy or scientific theory should be believed, rather than what God has said. Should we be perfectly united in mind and thought with your beliefs or mine? Secondly, I would like to comment on the title of your article. I believe that God’s genius is displayed in His CREATION. As Paul writes in the first chapter of his letter to the Romans, “Since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead.” To make God the inventor of evolution to my mind is ludicrous, as it belittles Him and calls Him a liar. We all know who the father of lies is! Evolutionists place suffering and death millions and billions of years before Adam was around to sin, placing the cause of death (and prickles and thorns, Genesis 3 v 18, and disease like cancer, all found in the fossil record) squarely at the feet of God, and NOT because of the fall of mankind. The whole of the Bible is in agreement with the fact that God created the world in six days, and that Adam and Eve were created on the sixth day. Romans 5 tells us that sin came through the first man Adam, and through sin came death. Paul goes on to say that the second Adam, that is Jesus Christ, came to bring life, and to free us from death. This is the theological basis of the gospel. If creation and the fall did not happen as described in Genesis, then that throws doubt not only on the doctrine of the gospel, but on virtually the rest of Bible. When Jesus instructed His disciples to go into the entire world and preach the gospel, then the account in the early chapters of Genesis must be part of that gospel, otherwise it is an incomplete gospel. You say that there are three mechanisms for evolution: natural selection, genetic mutation, and genetic drift. Let’s examine these in a little more detail. Natural Selection An important equation we should all be aware of is ‘Natural Selection is not equal to evolution’. Christians should know it so they do not get conned, and evolutionists should know it as a reminder that they still have lots of work to do to be able to claim that they have a mechanism for evolution. If we think of the work ‘selection’ in our common daily experience, we select from something pre-existing. This is true in the biological context too. The all wise Creator knew the different environments that His creatures would have to adapt to after the Fall and Curse, and particularly after the flood of Noah, in order to survive. He included in the genetic information of each ‘kind’ of creature He created, a smorgasbord of variety in their makeup. This includes those features that would interact with the environment: the overall size of a plant, animal or person; the size of individual organs or limbs such as beaks and noses, leaf sizes, skin colours, hair and feather lengths, textures and colours. All of these and many more variations were programmed into the DNA of His creatures in order that as populations of the various kinds moved into new environments, expression of those variations enabled individuals to survive those environments. Individuals with those variations then passed them on to their young. When these variations and the habitat of the population expressing that variation are distinct enough, we might distinguish different ‘species’. In all of this selection process, new information is never added. It can be conserved or lost, but never gained. The creationist chemist/zoologist Edward Blyth (1810–1873) wrote about natural selection about 25 years before Darwin misappropriated it to support his theory of evolution. Blyth clearly saw this remarkable phenomenon as arising from the providence of the all-wise, all-knowing, ingenious Creator God. Knowing God’s love for beauty (reflected in men and women who are made in His image), God probably also had in mind the spectacular array of birds, fish, dogs and cats that we have varied by ‘artificial selection’ purely for the sake of ‘beauty’ rather than survival. But whether variation is selected naturally by the environment, or artificially by breeders for a particular trait, it remains just that, ‘selection’ from existing genetic information. Nothing new is created. Patent law calls for a product to have an ‘inventive step’ in order for it to be patented. Mere changes in design of an existing product cannot be patented. Many legal battles over patent rights have been waged over this point. Evolution requires the same thing—an ‘inventive step’, a novel organ or body part, facilitated by new information in the DNA that wasn’t there before. Despite the huge resources thrown at evolution in universities and research institutions, natural selection has never been shown to bring about this type of ‘inventive step’. Today’s Darwinists point to mutations as the mechanism which provides this novelty from which ‘Natural Selection’ selects. Evolutionists should then focus on mutations to defend their theory, instead of ‘Natural Selection’. When pressed for examples of novel genetic information or body organs created by mutation, they typically point to instances such as wingless beetles on islands, or the flightless cormorant on the Galapagos islands. The problem with these examples is obvious. While they may confer a benefit to the creatures in a specific, very unusual environment, nothing ‘new’ is added to the DNA or creatures’ body parts. They actually involve a loss or corruption of existing genetic information. Evolution desperately needs ‘Natural Invention’, ‘Natural Novelty’ and ‘Natural Creation’. ‘Natural Selection’ just does not pass muster as exhibit A for evolution. Rather, it is a wonderful tribute to God’s design, and His providence for a fallen world. Natural Selection ? Evolution. Genetic Mutation God did not create fixed species. Nor did He create static genomes. If a gene is duplicated, the information content has changed, but a new kind of information has not been created. One common hypothesis in evolutionary theory is that gene duplication followed by mutational divergence can create the diversity we see in living things. But this does not lead to new kinds of genes which code for proteins with entirely new functions. If evolution is true, the thousand or so genes in some ancient bacterium must have multiplied and diversified into hundreds of thousands of new genes, with all sorts of new abilities. New families of enzymes, structural proteins, regulators, etc. would have to be added to this expanding and diversifying genome. Yet we simply do not see this process occurring today. Rearranging segments of DNA, duplicating and deleting genes, etc., is not a recipe for the wholesale invention of brand-new biochemical pathways. Think about Down Syndrome. This is caused by the duplication of a small piece of DNA. It is nearly fatal and has drastic consequences for those who carry it. You can’t just duplicate any gene you want, for gene copy number is one of the primary means of genetic regulation in the cell. Also, if a gene were duplicated, and if it did not confer any specific advantage or disadvantage to the individual carrying it, the duplication would be a prime candidate for deletion. We see deletion occurring in many different species in all sorts of environments. There are species of marine bacteria, for example, which have lost entire biochemical pathways. They survive because other species are present that produce the desired product and excrete it into the water. In environments where these other species are not present, the first species has retained the genes. The model of ‘duplication followed by divergence’ does not work in the real world. Genetic Drift Because of grievous deficiencies in the standard neo-Darwinian Model of evolution, which is largely selection driven, scientists proposed an alternative postulate called the Neutral Model in the late 1960s. The Neutral Model is also mutation driven, but selection is deemed to be an insignificant force of change. Instead, random genetic drift is alleged to be the main driver. Since its inception, the Neutral Model has come to be incorporated in many theoretical evolutionary scenarios at some level. However, due to numerous discoveries in genomics and genome function, the Neutral Model has become deficient, prompting a new move in science called the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis or The Third Way, which takes a position of blissful ignorance and offers nothing tangible to extend or support evolutionary theory. While Third Way proponents recognise the deficiency of all popular evolutionary models, they maintain that more research is needed to elucidate unknown evolutionary mechanisms and processes despite the fact that the progress of scientific discovery is revealing nothing but unimaginable complexity. Conclusion We see that none of the so-called mechanisms for evolution are satisfactory, and the search goes on. For the last 150 years the top scientists in the world have failed to find any convincing mechanism for molecules to man evolution, and none will be found, because this evolution has not happened! So, James, we have every reason we need to turn our backs on the so-called evidence for evolution and turn to God in repentance, knowing that His Word is complete and final. Perhaps then we can concentrate on preaching the gospel in fellowship with each other in full confidence in the Word of God, which is “living and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart (Hebrews 4 v 12).
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James Knight (Guest) |
27/03/2022 17:47 |
Oh dear Andrew, we had this exact same debate years ago, and you didn't come out of that very well. For anyone who wants to see for themselves, go to my Philosophical Muser blog page, and look for Going 12 Rounds With An Evolution Denier.
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James Knight (Guest) |
27/03/2022 18:01 |
Lisa, that just means you've heard about 1200 people who are as confused as you are about evolution.
Amusing that you put PhD by your name - that's likely because deep down you're not very confident about this, but you think PhD will help you look more convincing.
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Timothy V Reeves (Guest) |
27/03/2022 21:36 |
I believe there to be many flaws in Andrew's analysis which I would like to point out, both in his concept of how scripture works and how evolution putatively works. I will take his writings away with me as they provide an excellent case study of sectarian thought & religious partisanism and perhaps respond in due time.
It's unfortunate that, as expected, the question has become mingled with faith quality testing.
Epistemology, Ontology, Creation & Salvation......
hxxps:\\drive,google,com/file/d/1KFJrDPNt6gJlBOVID4x50nCUtpLG-kn9/view
(Edit link to get it to work)
If Keith decides to delete, no worries as I have copy and will publish elsewhere.
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Timothy V Reeves (Guest) |
28/03/2022 12:27 |
Before I get back about Andrew's presentation, see the link below for more on Lisa's "1200 scientists" which I was hoping (against hope) that she might get back to us on. My guess was that she would be rather coy on this matter!.
The statement is soft and ambiguous enough to make it agreeable to many people. It originates from the Discovery Institute who in main are not fundamentalist Genesis 1 Young Earth literalists but are an Intelligent Design umbrella group who encompass any who might have doubts about standard evolutionary mechanisms; so in fact they may actually be evolutionists in a weaker sense of the word! (As I am, although an ID supporter)
hxxps:\\en,wikipedia,org/wiki/A_Scientific_Dissent_from_Darwinism
The usual edits are needed to access the foregoing link.
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Timothy V Reeves (Guest) |
28/03/2022 12:29 |
BTW: I wouldn't support the ID Discovery Institute mostly on the basis of their politics although I do also have some technical quibbles with them.
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Timothy V Reeves (Guest) |
30/03/2022 14:47 |
This thread has probably cooled off by now which may not be a bad thing. However, I'm still working on a reply to Andrew Holland's post above and will provide a link on this thread to my deliberations in due time. If in the meantime Keith as our good & fair moderator decides to delete or close comments, then no worries because the post will in all cases appear on my blog which can be accessed here: hxxps:\\quantumnonlinearity,blogspot,com/ (Replace xx with tt, \\ with // and the commas with dots)
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