Why do Things Evolve?
by Jack Hoehn
It is beyond amazing that a revelation given to an introverted genius written for the lowest socioeconomic classes in an ancient creation narrative can be understood easily by my 3 year old grandson and yet its outline is substantially supported by 21st century scientific revelations.
While scientists and Bible believers are often presented as at loggerheads over the history of the creation of earth and life on it, it would be beneficial for both sides to step back and see where the revelations starting with Genesis and the discoveries of science at least do not necessarily disagree.
| Bible Teaches | Science Discovers |
| God exists before and outside of Creation—Genesis 1:1 | Science admits it does not have the tools to nullify the existence of extra-material reality. |
| The universe is finite and had a Beginner—Genesis 1:1 | The universe is finite and had a beginning, a big bang. |
| Creation was progressive and sequential, step by step, day by day, not instantaneous—Genesis 1 | This earth was formed by a series of steps that can be traced through time. |
| God designed earth, water, and light before life was created—Genesis 1:2-5 | Physics and chemistry are behind all life. The origin of physics and chemistry are unknown. Their laws do appear to be finely tuned for life to exist. |
| Creation of conditions for life began with a watery world—Genesis 1:2 | A watery world showed the first life forms. |
| The Creator was the Word, the information transmitter—John 1:1 | Life in its most primitive forms shows complex information present, and the source of this information is a great unknown. |
| The atmosphere was created before complex life forms could appear—Genesis 1:6-8 | Bacteria had to enrich the atmosphere with Oxygen before advanced life forms could exist. |
| Landforms appear in gatherings during the creation sequences–Genesis 1:9-10 (And perhaps separations in Genesis 10:25) | Geology traces landmasses forming, separating, rising, falling, and rising again many times during the long history of earth. |
| Plants appear before animals—Genesis 1:11-13 | Plants appear before complex animals. |
| Sea creatures appear before land animals—Genesis 1:20-23 | Sea creatures appear before land animals. The icon of evolution is a fish crawling out of the sea! |
| Creation stopped with creation of humans—Genesis 2:1-2 | We no longer see new kinds arising; mostly we have loss of species since humanity appeared. |
| Catastrophes with loss of life were permitted for good ends—Genesis 6 | Catastrophes have happened many times in earth’s history. |
| Life is not perfect, it is fallen and represents both good and evil—Genesis 2:16,17; Romans 7:21; 8:20,22 | Life it not perfect, and has a series of accidents and mistakes selected for survival benefits. |
| Sexuality exists by design—Genesis 1:27 | Sexuality exists for unknown reasons. |
| Magic is a sin—Leviticus 19:31; 2Kings 21:6; Ezekiel 13:18; Acts 19:19. | Magic is falsifiable and your god sounds magical to me. |
| No, he’s not. | Well if your god is all that you claim then I would do a better job than he does with creation. |
| Prove it. | I’m trying to. |
Short term creationists and Darwinian evolutionists both agree in some manner that life evolves. Only the speed, cause, and limits on those changes are at issue.
Darwinians need a long time for this to happen with random events and natural selection of those random positive mutations. Short term creationists say millions of changes happened because of the moral fall of Eve and Adam, as the result of “the curse”. This is evolution on steroids for all these changes to occur in 2,000 years before the flood when all the fossils are claimed to be formed!
Different Kinds of Evolution
There are of course different kinds of change or evolution seen in life forms. Creationists see the predatory, thorn, thistle, carnivorous, death dealing, diseases and virus changes as evidence of evil, cruel, Satanic influence. But they do recognize that starting with one kind of dog-like animal and ending with many kinds from Teacup Poodles to Great Danes is a positive or pleasant kind of evolution. That having one kind of hummingbird and ending up with Ruby Throats, Broad Tailed, Calliope, Anna’s, Black Chinned, Costa’s, Rufous, Allen’s, and occasionally Cuban Emeralds in the USA is also a form of positive evolution. Perhaps we could call these adaptations, variations, speciation a form of godly-evolution?
So why do things adapt, change, mutate, evolve? Darwinians as near as I can understand say, just because, that’s what things do, given mutations and fitness selection and enough time. Creationists haven’t talked about this very much, but most would say, because God made it possible, or in some cases because God allowed Satan to do some of it?
Evolutionists scoff at all supernatural influences, but for the moment this is not my concern. I do understand that on the other hand many believers are also uncomfortable giving Satan that much credit. But at least Adventists should agree that our doctrine of the Great Controversy suggests that fallen angels and their leader are more capable than humans. Fallen angelic power then might do as much or more than humans can do. With gene splicing, artificial mutations, cloning, and other genetic manipulations human beings can cause and direct much change, adaptation, evolution of life forms. So it is no longer difficult for me to accept that the history of life on earth may give evidence of Divine creation of a system, subject to adaptation, variation, and change that can be manipulated for good or ill by intelligences like humans or like devils.
If God created a perfect creation that was finished and very good, why would He design change or the ability to evolve, into his creatures?
I can think of at least two reasons. One is that without chance there is no choice, and things that do not grow and adapt to chance changes may not survive changing circumstances. An elephant designed to function in warm weather, eating grass, might not be able to survive climate change and a colder temperature with different kinds of plants, unless his teeth could change from grass eating teeth to tree chewing teeth, and his skin from smooth warm weather skin to hairy cold weather skin. And so we see fossils of Mastodons chewing branches, followed by Mammoths grazing grass. We observe Asian elephants with sparse hair and the frozen fossils of cold weather American or Siberian elephants (Mammoths) with thick fur. (For examples see my Blog Summer Time and Time on Mastodons and Mammoths in the Rockies.)
The second reason is that an unchanging creation would become boring, especially during an eternal life!
Humans crave change and variety. If you have a Dachshund you want a Labrador. If you have a Parakeet you want an Amazon Parrot. If you have a 1990 car, you want the 2013 model, or if you have a new Chevy, you want a 1958 restored one. We enjoy new clothes, new paint, new house, new music, new hair styles. If you’ve seen London, you want to see Rome. If you had Lemon pie last Sabbath, you are ready for Pumpkin pie the next. If you had Apple pie, you are ready to try French Apple Pie, or Sour Cream Apple Pie. If Tide was good, New and Improved Tide must be better.
Evolution in the Life to Come
So how long would you be satisfied with a perfect but static life in the world to come?
Pastor Art Harms once told me a little story to help me comprehend eternity. “During eternity a little sparrow living in New York wants to visit San Francisco, so every 1,000 years he flies from the Atlantic to the Pacific and back again. On the way he stops and rests on the top of the highest peak he can find in the Rockies. By the time he has worn down that mountain flat, eternity will have just begun.”
So how many years of the same perfect garden, the same perfect animals, the same perfect mountains, the same perfect fruits, the same perfect vegetables can you stand? How many thousands of years would you enjoy eternity without change, variety, adaptation, alteration, novelty? Does not eternal life mean eternal change and growth and adaptation? Would not a perfect world need perfect adjustment, adaptation, change, novelty, to keep it interesting? I don’t see how you can really believe in eternal life, unless you also believe in eternal, godly change, or as we might call it, godly-evolution?
Therefore I think we are in danger of blasphemy when we say flat out that “evolution is evil”. I think things evolve because they were created capable of evolution. Things adapt, change, evolve, become different and more interesting or able to survive new challenges because the Creator made that possible. God, as I see it, is the originator of evolution.
Which is not the same as saying the Darwinian or Neo-Darwinian or Post-Darwinian godless evolutionists are right. Much evidence suggests they are quite wrong in maintaining that evolution creates anything at all, except adaptations on already existing and designed life forms.
But let’s at least talk about where we can agree. Yes, scientists and creationists agree that things evolve. Let’s now talk about how and why they evolve, and what the limits of evolution are, instead of denying that evolution occurs and maintaining that evolutionists are stupid for believing it happens. Darwin discovered evolution, but he didn’t create it. God created the mechanisms for the possibility of evolution, as part of His intelligent design. I want credit for evolution back where it belongs.
Beautifully stated, Jack. Very creative and thoughtful as well. It strikes me that one of the reasons for so much distrust of SDA university scientists by conservative fundamentalists is that too few believers in evolutionary theory are directing their creative energies towards affirming the reality of the creator God of scripture, and reconciling that God with His creation, as revealed through the lens of science and reason. In matters of faith, they come across as proud, haughty agnostics rather than humble, questioning believers. And in matters of science, they come across as dogmatic potentates rather than open seekers who recognize the limitations of their epistemological tools, and the gaps in their theoretical speculations.
It seems as if we're dealing in semantics here. What do we mean by "evolution?" Adaptation and change is not evolution. Evolution, as it is understood by the average person, scientist or layman, refers to that process by which things progressed from simple to complex over millions of years. I reject that theory, and the Bible contains no hint of it. On the contrary, "He spake and it was done; He commanded and it stood fast." No room there for gradual evolution. There is no question that organisms adapt and change, but they change within well-defined boundaries. Dogs do not change into cats; horses do not change into cows, etc. Natural selection can select only from what is available. Since the information for hollow bones and other avian characterisics, are not present in a reptile, it could not, by natural selection, evolve into a bird. A "simple" cell, which, it is assumed, is the ancestor of us all, does not have the information to devlop arms, legs, hearts, lungs, etc. It can only reproduce itself. The Bible says that everything reproduces "after its kind." That is what we observe, and we've never observed any exceptions to that rule. Mutations do not add genetic material; if anything they delete it.
Are you saying scientific observation then can be the basis of faith then? If so, have you told Stephen Foster this?
Yes Jean, I'm with you on much of this. But you are not an average person, you are an Adventist interested in saving the world to be ready for Jesus to return. So I am asking you to temper your fear of "EVIL-UTION" (godless creation) with an acceptance of change being designed into Creation, an acceptance that Creation by God does not demand that he made both Teacup Poodles and Great Danes in the Garden of Eden, and saved them all in the ark, and that you can talk about the reality of creation of the world as it is now, today, by gradual generational changes worked on by natural selection or artificial selection (breeding). Then you can have conversations with scientists if you start by asking them what if any are the limiting factors in evolution? What has been proved and what is being speculated? If we can do this in a non-threatening manner (easiest if we don't feel threatened ourselves) then perhaps we can have a conversation. But that path to salvation will be completely blocked if Adventists maintain the attitude, evolution is evil and never happened. And if we demand they accept that creation and the many changes we see all happened a short time ago, there will be no conversations and no conversions to saving faith in the Creator.
The Adventist who says, I don't really know what happened, but I do know Who made it happen, has a chance of being heard. Those of us who say we know what happened and how it happened has closed that door very tightly. Jean, Jesus has put before the world an open door, dare we shut it by our rigid opinions?
Good points, Jack. But I know of no reputable creationist who believes in the "fixity of species." What they believe is that God created each kind with a great capacity for adaptation and diversity, but within limits. That's why we can have chihuahua's and Mastiffs, all with a common ancestor. Where we draw the line is at the idea that creatures evolved from simple to complex; amoebas to antelopes, etc.. It's that kind of evolution which we reject, and for which there is no concrete evidence. In our coversations with evolutionists we must, of course, we wise as serpents and harmless as doves; and some of us should follow the counsel of Solomon in Prov. 17:28. That is often the hardest part.
Very good Jack.
“Fallen angelic power then might do as much or more than humans can do.”
As you noted, Adventist creationists accept that Satan and his fallen angels can assist in the change of animals and plants – in fact, they believe in far more rapid evolution than evolutionists!
Adventists have also traditionally accepted that sin existed pre-Eden, in that Lucifer rebelled prior to Adam’s sin. Thus, Adam’s sin was not the ‘original, original sin’ at all. Genesis attests that the serpent (Satan) was already in the perfect Garden, there was seemingly a less than perfect wilderness with thorns engaged in a Darwinian struggle already outside Eden (which Adam and Eve were expelled into), and Adam and Eve were not yet immortal because they had not yet taken the fruit of the Tree of Life.
Thus, when one boils it all done, the question is whether Lucifer started manipulating life before Adam’s own sin or afterwards? I note Ellen White’s statement somewhere that Adam and his offspring were created as replacements for Lucifer and his legion of rebellious angels. Thus, Adam was not the original, original cause of the Darwinian struggle we see around us, as Lucifer had already started that corruption way back before our world existed. Rather, Adam was created as God’s answer to Satan’s fall, and when Adam failed in that mission, it was incumbent upon God Himself to become incarnate as the Second Adam.
To accept evolution does not detract from our theme of the Great Controversy. Rather, it arguably enhances it. Anglican theologian Michael Lloyd has used the Great Controversy type theme as the best explanation as to the obvious question – if God could have created a perfect heaven, why did He create earth? The obvious answer is – God did originally create a perfect heaven, but there was a war there.
If evolution is true, then all it means is that this Great Controversy is far bigger and the actors, notably Satan, are far older, than we first expected.
“Therefore I think we are in danger of blasphemy when we say flat out that “evolution is evil”. I think things evolve because they were created capable of evolution. Things adapt, change, evolve, become different and more interesting or able to survive new challenges because the Creator made that possible. God, as I see it, is the originator of evolution.”
I am cautious of any view that sees evolution as ‘good’ and God’s purposeful intention. To gloss over the billions and billions of years of suffering by other animals, 99% of species are now extinct just so we got here, is not an easy thing to stomach. Evolution makes theodicy a much, much bigger problem. I probably reject Calvinistic-Reformed attempts to explain evolution in that way.
I much prefer other theories that see evolution as ‘necessary’ according to Wesleyan-Arminian notions of free will. Why God could not simply create a perfect universe and perfect world, as in heaven, I am not completely sure; however, I suspect the Great Controversy is a big part of the answer. Another big part of the answer is God Himself justifying all that pain by becoming incarnate and sharing in that suffering.
I believe part of the reason why so many Christians (and other religions) are against evolution, is because we are hardwired for some reason with anti-Darwinian tendency to not simply accept the world around us. We are on the most part a species that simply rejects the Darwinian struggle as simply ‘natural’. As John Haught likes to say, stories of Eden and heaven aren’t just stories about what the world was once like, they are stories about what we know the world should be like, but isn’t, and the eschatological hope of what the world will one day be like.
Thus, human beings are somewhat hardwired to reject the theory of evolution, regardless of its scientific merits. Whilst a problem for scientists, it is a boon for humanity. Even our extremist atheist scientists, such as Richard Dawkins, reject notions that human beings should embrace social-Darwinism.
But there has also been much pleasure and joy! Surely the view of natural history need not be one of continuous struggle and pain. And can't biological change and adaptation be seen as a continuously perfecting process?
I wonder if our egocentric concept of time sometimes blinds us regarding how a creative deity might have chosen to create. While He might have chosen to make everything perfect in an instant, as we have been taught and tend to believe, He might also have understood that creation of a self-adapting system was a far more sophisticated, elegant, and "perfect" creation than could be created in the blink of an eye. What we have in nature is wonderfully awe-inspiring. Being open to observing and studying and learning how this system works provides endless fascination and occupation, and even worshipful reverence.
Jack, your effort at integration of faith and evidence strikes me as something very worthwhile–something that could break the stalemate of talking past each other or perpetually butting heads. The topics of concern to us all are too important for us to become hopelessly mired in our respective ideologies. If we can set God free of the conceptual box(es) we have each created for him, we might, ourselves, become the transcendently free and mature human beings God intended to create.
Well stated, Joe. I like Stephen's point also. Philip Gourevitch observed in his disturbing book about the Rwandan genocide that "power consists of the ability to persuade others to inhabit your story of their reality." If the God revealed in the Adventist story is dependent upon a "natural" process and chronology that is refuted by science and empirical evidence, it is a story that few people of good will and common sense, living in the 21st Century, will inhabit.
I can't explain evil, much less the Christian doctrine that evil entered the world through the sin of Adam and Eve. But then I can't explain good either. As you say, Joe, creating conceptual boxes for God may make us feel more secure in the "Truth." But it will also close our minds to an elusive God who becomes a Frankenstein monster inside human boxes.
I am uneasy with the idea that freeing God from the boxes we have created for Him might make us "transcendently" free. I accept the possibility that you just meant it as a metaphor, Joe, and I know I can be pretty nitpicky about words. But I must say that I think there is an epistemological barrier between the finite three-dimensional world we experience and the transcendent realm. I believe we free God from boxes in order to experience Him as transcendent, not in order to become transcendent ourselves. I don't know where the barriers might be. But I don't think we get there from here except through a Savior.
Nathan, I take your point about the use of the term transcendent, and I'm okay with deleting it. We probably do not mean the same thing when we use the word. I noticed your use of it elsewhere.
Jack,
Thank you for a very thoughtful analysis.
Sometimes focusing on a single term to describe something is inadequate. "Evolution" means so many different things to different people that is can be difficult to understand what one person means when the hearer has a different concept. Much argument on the topic has arisen from this difference.
Perhaps it would be helpful to break the concept down a bit by adding some descriptives like "mutation" and "adaptation" to our vocabularies and giving them specific meanings. I view evolution as a conceptual description of origins, time of beginning and causation (God, or not) in the past where adaptation and mutation are how nature responds to the environment and changes in more recent time in response to those environmental changes. While evolutionists may say that the current processes are just a continuation of the past, it still provides a point of distinction for framing discussion. The value of such a differentation is that it allows us to examine what we can observe (adaptation and mutation) vs. what can only be projected or accepted on the basis of some evidence giving credibility to a belief (origins, time and causation).
I particularly appreciated your point about change being essential. Change comes to us in a couple distinct ways. One is simply learning more about something regardless of whether or not the focus of our attention is changing. Another is watching things change and gaining understanding of why it happened. Given the immense creativity of God we see in nature around us and the great expanses of the universe God has waiting for the redeemed to explore, I expect to be thoroughly challenged and stimulated for a very, very long time.
I find the chart interesting and useful.
But the premise of the piece is based on confusing two very different processes: growth and development on the one hand, and mutation and adaptation on the other.
A child's growth and development is not a random process driven by external accidents. It is internally driven, programmatic, and systematic. The same with a plant, animal, etc.
Evolution is a process of random mutation, with "non-adaptive" mutations pruned away by Great Death. Adaptation is change in response to external changes.
If God is infinite, as we believe, then the notion that He should change resembles Buzz Lightyear's characteristic exclamation: "To infinity– and beyond!"
If we to "grow more and more like God," or "closer and closer to God," then forever/eternity is an appropriate time frame for infinite beings to approach infinity.
On the other hand, the notion that God should randomly mutate in response to external stimuli is, well, to redefine 'God' as 'a really big being.' To paraphrase C.S. Lewis, God is not in creation; creation is in him.
'If God is infinite, as we believe, then the notion that He should change resembles Buzz Lightyear's characteristic exclamation: "To infinity– and beyond!"'
Not if you are willing to explore Process Theology, Open Theism and the notion of a World Soul or Noonsphere, which reject the traditional doctrine of Divine Impassability. Not saying I do necessarily, but many evolutionary-theologians do reject the notion that God can't change.
Pierre de Chardin, in his seminal work that no one really understands, argues that God and the universe are moving towards an 'Omega Point', and thus see evolution and eschatology very much hand-in-hand. Process theology emphasises that as God knows everything, the experiences of all things in the universe help God Himself (or Itself) to grow and change in response. Kind of as if God were a giant cosmic internet.
That sounds a bit like "pan-theism," not that there's anything wrong with that…. ; -: )
If God is "infinite" then change is impossible and by definition unnecessary. What changes is not the infinite but the finite–our understanding changes, God remains God. That is why we are not pantheists. Pantheists limit God to what they see, put him into nature and leave him locked up there. Theists don't see God in nature, they see God through nature, not in nature. Joe you're shaking my Adventist chain!
It is not only pantheists (a term that has been grossly misused in describing people and beliefs) who limit God and lock him up. Adventists are great at defining and adding doctrines and putting them in lock boxes that should never be disturbed.
Where is there in Adventism the desire or willingness to bring out some old doctrinal statements and check for their "past due" date as being totally irrelevant for the 21st century? (Most come straight from the little red books, not the Bible.)
Sorry, Elaine, but our doctrines come from the Bible, not the SOP. She only fills in many details. I can't think of any that are irrelevant for the 21st century. Do you believe everything in the Bible except the Golden Rule is irrelevant for the 21st century?
Sorry about the triple post. Computers . . . . I hope a moderator discovers and deletes a couple of them.
Yes it annoyingly does that. Also, it would be great if one could edit typos as well.
Joe, I am not personally endorsing any of these theories – just noting their existence. They don't promote pantheism but rather panenthism – there is actually quite an important difference. Just wikipedia 'process theology', and they note it involves the following:
I think it is important to recognize that phylogenetics is a developmental process just as ontogenetics is. The term "random" is used in many ways in association with "mutations" and "evolution." Some of the usages of "random" are, I think very misleading and confusing, and to some degree the notion of random changes is an inaccurate way of thinking about processes involved in change and adaptation.
Any genetic/genomic changes that occur in any kind of living thing occur on the foundation of a system that was already functional. Many MANY single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) occur and many are maintained across many generations as variants within populations. Some of them are neither random in origin nor in consequence. These are much smaller changes than the traditional concept of "mutation" implies, in which many variants are lethal. Many SNPs are not lethal at all, and can be neutral in function, or can be of positive or negative advantage depending on the environmental conditions to which the organism is exposed.
Of course, we also now know that ontogeny is not merely an unfolding process that occurs without genetic and environmental interaction. Genomics now recognizes the roles of mobile elements and many epigenetic influences on gene expression, proteomics, and individual development. The importance of ecological niches as opportunities for emergent variants also must be appreciated.
Personally, I don't think anyone needs to deny that God has a creative role in order to study and recognize the actual processes that occur in the natural world. The problem comes when WE decide how God MUST have done or not done things–when we try to just make up the answers instead of actually examining the evidence of what happens. Doing that need not threaten anyone's faith.
People are still arguing against assertions made by Wallace and Darwin and Lemarck and Mendel, when those people knew very little about inheritance, genetics, and genomics. Their knowledge of population and molecular biology was, essentially, nil. To put it bluntly, they did not know what they were talking about. Even so, they made some remarkable guesses. But if your knowledge of biology is more than five or ten years old, you are liable to be waaaaaay off track regarding developmental and evolutionary mechanisms. That is true whether you are working on "doing" science or whether you are criticizing it.
If you're trying to say that a child growing into an adult human being is essentially the same process as one organism evolving into a different type of organism– good luck with that. If you're not–so what?
My Creationist position is that things evolve, but that evolution doesn't make the things evolving. But I am open to Joe's suggestions that things can be improved and polished by evolution. And by Ed's reminder that growth happens because it is programed to do so. Recent evidence suggests that modification of living things happens because they were made or created capable of doing so. That there are designed and capable mechanisms for change and adaptation in the genome. That like birth and development, so evolution and adaptation and change. It happens because it is possible.
I understand what weight words carry, and it was with trepidation and some warnings from friends that I dared try out "godly-evolution" on my Adventist audience. So much depends upon how we say things, but I am convinced I need to stop wincing at words others find beautiful and even worshipful.
My late father, Gus Hoehn, MD loved to go to meetings where a dermatological basic scientist named Albert Kligman would speak. On a couple of occasions dad took his pre-med son along. Dr. Kligman was a thorough evolutionist I am sure. But he would wax eloquent when he would describe the biochemistry, the physiology, the functionality of some little skin organelle that had "evolved" in such an exquisit manner, to his dermatologist audiences. And often he would just stop and say in amazement, "It's a god-damned miracle!"
Dad would turn to me and whisper, "what he meant to say, Jack, was 'It's a miracle of God!'" These are the conversations I want Adventists to continue having, to be able to suggest to secular scientists that their "god-damned miracles" might also be seen as "miracles of God." Not as a spooky mysterious God of the gaps, but as the God of the big bang, the tuned universe, the Cambrian explosion, and yes even the fact of evolution.
"And it was good". Is God's concept of good the same as man's? If evil was present in the garden before & at the time of Adam, what chance did Adam have to escape evil? In the garden was the tree of good & evil. Hmm, how could that have been "good", for Adam. Adam was not God, as was Jesus Christ, who was able to resist Satan in the wilderness. With this scenario, man was a set up for Satan, as was Job. Are both Adam & Job allegorical? Would liken both circumstances the same as if you were to throw a newborn baby in mid-ocean, to see if it could swim or drown. What's the wisdom of it? No one knows the mind of God, but God. His ways are not our ways. Could God's ways be totally beyond man's comprehension or understanding? With God's infinite intellect, & space to use, He could never be bored, as man considers boredom. As an adult, i've never been bored. i dislike being tired, sleepy, or having low vitality, because i am thrilled with learning, & hate the weakness in my body that makes be take time outs. Believe you could specilize your study for a thousand years &
never come close to the mystery of God, and why he created man. Never learn what's beyond the
double helix, & nano. Why must the billions of life forms be subject to mutations & adaptations where unbelieveable changes occur? Man for instance, from Gorilla to various creatures who are biped. So, we have 1%-3% of Neanderthal in our DNA. Or partial similarities of other living creatures in our DNA.Why would that preclude the Maker's choice of ingredients in different species,
as God , being ALMIGHTY, could utilize any ingredient in His formulary He desired? Critically observing what my eyes see, recognizing no one can possibly know these mysteries, i am of the opinion of each kind as a unique creation, with minor environmental adaptations, but no evolvement
from one kind to another. Have read that over 90% of life forms are extinct, of course that can be a
impossible estimate, as the fossil record is unreadable over billions of years or eons. Don't believe
God created Earth, Man, & all living creatures here because He was bored. What was his motive for
creating all that we comprehend? Don't believe the Bible with it's human scribes is in anyways adequate for Mankind to know the mysteries of the ALMIGHTY. We must have something more.
Faith, to believe our heart's desire, recognizing it may not be according to our understanding.
Oh Yes, Earl, Yes. We must not diminish creation and the Creator in any way, we are trying to enlarge creation, to let it be bigger than we thought, to let God out of boxes we may have created. I fear if we END our understanding of creation with Genesis, for as you wrote "the Bible with its human scribes is [not] in anyways adequate…to know the mysteries of the Almighty". Jesus on the other hand used Moses to BEGIN the understanding of his mission (Luke 24:27 And beginning with Moses….he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.) I strongly feel we must BEGIN our understanding of Creation with Moses, but not end it with Genesis. Earl, you've never been bored because you are always growing mentally, always exploring, always going deeper. In the natural world this is called science. Creationists need to embrace science, it's God's plan for us. It's what we were created for, going deeper into the truth about this natural universe. And yes it has been hijacked by atheism and naturalism, but it belongs to us, and Believers need to take it back; not oppose it, but reinterpret it.
I was born into a truth loving, tradition unbound, movement called Adventism. I want that movement to keep moving, leaving behind traditions proven to be unreliable, and exploring new truths and greater reasons to worship "Him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water."
I am trying to grasp how you using the term "evolution" Jack.
Below is some very interesting finds from last year that seem to indicate that, at least the 'program switches' for limb development were front-loaded before 'limbs' ever appeared. This rules out progressive mutation/selection as a creative force and undermines classic evolution.
Is this type of 'front-front loading of code for programmed expression what you are thinking of Jack as 'evolution?'
Genetic instructions for developing limbs and digits were present in primitive fish millions of years before their descendants first crawled on to land, researchers have discovered.
Genetic switches control the timing and location of gene activity. When a particular switch taken from fish DNA is placed into mouse embryos, the segment can activate genes in the developing limb region of embryos, University of Chicago researchers report in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The successful swap suggests that the recipe for limb development is conserved in species separated by 400 million years of evolution.
“The genetic switches that drive the expression of genes in the digits of mice are not only present in fish, but the fish sequence can actually activate the expression in mice,” said Igor Schneider, PhD, postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Organismal Biology and Anatomy at the University of Chicago and lead author on the paper.
The results contradict a previous finding that a developmental switch from pufferfish DNA was not capable of gene expression in the limbs of mice, suggesting that tetrapods evolved a novel developmental system. But the new experiments suggest that the genetic switch controlling limb development was in fact present deep in Earth’s evolutionary tree.
“There previously was the idea that these switches had to be generated from scratch de novo, but no, they already existed, they were already there,” said Marcelo Nobrega, MD, PhD, assistant professor of human genetics at the University of Chicago Medical Center and another author of the study. “Maybe the key was expressing a gene earlier or later or in a specific territory, but it was just a modification of a program that was already encoded in the genomes of fish almost half a billion years ago and remains there to this day.”
ScienceDaily (July 11, 2011)
To a naive non-biologically educated gal, what factors cause the gentic switch to develop a limb when to activate after millions of years? Who and what turns on the "key"?
Well, in a more temporal frame, we see today one creature changing into another creature based on genetic switches governed by cellular clocks. The catipilar is programmed to become a butterfly for the apparent purpose of aiding pollination across the country as it migrates. 'Who' did this? Is the correct question. Pre-programming of such magnificent systems supposes a super intellect who wrote the code and built the programs for this and all interdependent systems.
I'm not technically able to judge the merits of this suggestion, but it fits my contention that evolution is programed to happen, not random and not by chance mutations, but by intelligence, and in my case by a Creator who wanted things to change and evolve, or at least have the capacity to do so. The tools to do so were designed. There may be randomness in when and what happens, but not in why it could happen from this view.
Genetic/genomic change occurs (e.g., new single nucleotide polymorphisms, SNPs, emerge). In some cases the proximate causes are identifiable. The changes have a wide range of potential consequences, ranging from no effect at all, or disability or death through diminished, adequate, enhanced, or optimal functioning–and even emergent qualitative changes in function, when changes in organisms align with permissive niches. All this is factual as Jack suggests, I think.
Questions about ULTIMATE causes are quite different from those about PROXIMATE causes and about objective descriptions of natural/material structures and events. Perhaps we can agree that the farther we get from the objective realities that we can describe and measure, the more we enter the realm of faith or hypothesis or speculation or belief. Essentially, the farther we go into uncertainty and diverse explanations.
So, if you understand in a proximate sense how something about brains or lungs or kidneys work, I'm not so concerned about whether you think they are ultimately the product of natural or supernatural design. I care about the accuracy of your description and whether you know how to therapeutically intervene to correct dysfunction.
But, then, I kind of have to evaluate whether you intend to do a surgical repair, or pass some chicken entrails over the offending site, or rattle some beads, or seek the assistance of a diety I may or may not believe in. I tend to trust most if the proposed therapeutic intervention has a rational evidential basis, but that is not a the same as a denial that something else–natural but not understood or supernatural–could have some role, even a designing or shepherding role.
Where has “Genetic/genomic change” resulted in “enhanced, qualitative changes in function, when changes in organisms align with permissive niches,” ever been documented? New organs with “qualitative function” have never been demonstrated to appear by mutation and selection! Please document where this has been demonstrated.
Joe, I am not looking for change beak shapes and scale colouration. I am asking for realy change–new organs. This is what evolution requires!
Darrel, are you suggesting that the differences among brains of birds and reptiles and rodents and primates do not qualify as "real" differences? You would have to see a brain or heart or liver morph into some other kind of organ in order to qualify as a "real" change that could be seen as "evolution?"
I'm afraid you are using the term in some special way–not that you cannot do that. After all, who is the master, we or the words we choose to use.
Not at all Joe. I am saying that there is no demonstratable evolutionary process taking us from fish brain to human brain, for example.
So you are saying what? That fish brains are qualitatively different from all other brains?
Seeing as fish brains has come up. Some may find the link below interesting. It is a very fish tale, but no bull!
The video is of a growing human face. "It has been created from high quality scans of human embryos at early stages of development, provided by universities and hospitals.
This unique time-lapse video shows the face developing from a one-month-old embryo to an age of 10 weeks."
It is hard not to see this footage supporting the concept that we are in fact a result of a long series of genetic mutations. Stop that process anywhere back in time and you will have a quite different creature. Other animals are living examples of branches, variations, and links from the process. Just do a google for vids on how pig embryos develop and you will see similar things. We all start out with a tail too!
note. you may have to watch through the little advert before the video gets started.
Link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-13278255
Hi Chris, welcome back. Very interesting. But on proof!
Thanks for the welcome Darrel.
If that time lapse video is not, at the very least a suggestive demostration of a background "evolutionary process taking us from fish brain to human brain…" (face), I don't know what would be for you.
"Suggestive?" Please! When did we abandon science? It is probably highly suggestive to a child or a believer. But the complexity of the information systems behind the phenomenon, and the irreducible fact that every molecule in the process is human, seems to me more strongly suggestive of a common designer. Fish brains and faces do not ever turn into anything remotely resembling human brains and faces except in the imaginations of scientists and animators. But hopefully we can all agree that the video is "a suggestive demonstration of a background… process" of being fearfully and wonderfully made.
Nathan,
In case you did not read the article beneath the "animation". It was not an animation out of the imagination of anybody. It was a time lapse, real life, process of exactly what happens to the fetus during that period of developement. It was real images forming a time lapse picture.
Suggestive? Yes. Nothing can be proven. Tell me. IF humans have always been exactly that: Human's. Why would the embryo not resemble more precisely what we end up looking like at all stages of developement? Why this convoluted, complicated sequence?
Unless you have better, I have to admit that to me, it does "suggest" a process quite unlike one would expect for a creature designed to be exaclty what it is, was and always has been. Fully and solely human.
I do not use the word "suggestive" to abandon science, but to allow the element of openness to conclusions that should accompany good science. Nothing is proven. Weight of evidence is what matters. There is none that fits what one would expect of a created being in that vid. There is much one would expect if evolution were/is true.
I know it wasn't an animation, Chris. What I meant was that animators have wonderful imaginations, and can make any animate or inanimate object morph into any desired feature of humanity. And I agree with you about the importance of scientific imagination to form and test hypotheses. Weight of evidence certainly matters as well. But the plausibility of an untested, untestable hypothesis, without even so much as empirical evidence to support it, isn't science just because it comes from the imagination of a scientist. No matter the number of pieces, no matter the relative convincing force of the evidence, non-scientific evidence doesn't become scientific because it is believed by scientists.
A scientist would look at the video, and say "Wow, that's amazing! Let's watch fish to see if they start turning into human fetuses." The absence of confirmatory evidence would tend, in my mind, to falsify the evolutionary hypothesis. But I'm just a layperson, not a scientist. Adding time is great, especially when there is overwhelming scientific evidence of deep time. But time only makes the hypothesis more difficult to falsify. A proposition is not more likely to be true simply because there is no reliable methodology by which it can be falsified.
Not some more of that crossing over of physical science into metaphysical speculation? Don't tell me nothing can be proven and one is required to take a bit of a leap of faith? Don't tell the militant atheists – they'll tell you that unless it can be proven by empircal evidence, then it is so much 'Theo-Masturbation' (to use Dawkins own term).
The facts are that we can see and measure individual differences, population differences, species differences, etc. in brains, hearts, lungs, livers, kidneys, skeletal systems, placentas, etc., and when we find differences, we try to explain why those differences exist. The explanations (or "suggestions") can be testable, to some extent, and levels of confidence in data and hypotheses can be statistically addressed. Scientific methods do not usually yield the level of ABSOLUTE certainty and authority that most of us who were reared as adventists learned to demand. Thus, it is not surprising that some of us, as adults, demand a level of certain PROOF that is beyond what science asks of its methods. The use of the term "suggestive" is quite appropriate in a discussion of scientific evidence. It is, of course, a hedge against dogmatism, and scientists (like everyone else, I suppose) vary in their reliance on, or tolerance of, dogmatism.
For those who decide in advance to believe that God (or Someone/Something) designed everything in advance, or designed a process that would unfold according to his intended plan, or created a self-refining or self-designing process, I'm not sure there is any sort of evidence that adequately (for them) would explain that away. And I do not see why it should be my goal, or a purpose of science (or scientists) to explain away this view. It is not really a view that is based on science, but actually, I'm pretty comfortable with people holding that as a sort of "world view."
At least, I hope, we can all agree on physical/natural structural and functional information that can be compared across ontogeny and individuals and populations. And why should we not all be amazed and inspired by nature? Isn't that what Jack was saying here?
"For those who decide in advance to believe that God…designed a process…I'm not sure there is any sort of evidence that adequately (for them) would explain that away."
I disagree. I think if that belief could be falsified through scientific methods, most reasonable, open-minded folks would reject it.
Can't you just as readily say that for those who have decided in advance that there is no God; that everything came into being through random, unguided, undesigned, chaotic, natural processes, you're not sure there is any sort of evidence that would adequately (for them) explain that away? The problem, as we have noted many times on these blogs, is that scientists draw logical conclusions from scientific evidence, based upon certain a priori beliefs, and they graft those conclusions onto the tree of science. Falsifiability is the litmus test of science. If it is not falsifiable, I maintain that it is not science. I don't accept that scientists get to define the boundaries of their domain.
Do you really believe that "suggestive of" is quite an appropriate metric to determine whether a belief is scientific? If so, then why is I.D. so vigorously rejected by scientists?
Nathan,
I'll tell you imho what happened to ID. Its power of suggestion is being destroyed and undermined by it very proponents through their refusal to stop using it to take them beyond where its "evidence" suggests. Just follow my questions to Darrel on Jacks previous thread if you want that expanded a bit.
I note also your replies to me above. Did you miss my question?
Here it is agian:
"IF humans have always been exactly that: Human's. Why would the embryo not resemble more precisely what we end up looking like at all stages of development? Why this convoluted, complicated sequence?
As for falsifiablity. Along the lines of Joe's comments. There is vast amounts of empirical evidence in the fossil record, the human body (retroviral, dna, genome), etc that coroborate with the implications of that video.
Your point about I.D. is valid, Chris, and equally applicable to evolutionary theory – "Its power of suggestion is being destroyed and undermined by its very proponents through their refusal to stop using it to take them beyond where it's 'evidence' suggests." Misapplication and misuse of science, psychology, and other branches of learning have never led to them being discredited as windows on reality.
Arguing evolution from developmental morphology seems intuitively nonsensical to me. Mammalian zygotes look alike. So What does that prove? If embryos looked like rutabagas and evolved in the womb to look like donkeys before becoming human, what would you conclude? Your question is kind of nonsensical to me. The answer is: "I have no idea, and neither do you." Correlation does not equal causation. But I am not a scientist. It is really foolish for me to argue science with you, and certainly a waste of your time to argue it with me. I choose to believe in a Creator God. My inability to definitively prove His existence, or to definitively disprove what cannot by its nature be falsified, doesn't shake my faith. And I am quite confident that, if each human cell looked like a miniature person under a microscope, and morphologically developed in the womb as a person, it would in no way shake your faith in naturalistic evolution. Why is a human infant at birth not proportioned as an adult human? Maybe it means humans started out as dwarves. Why use something as proof which, if did it not exist, would make no difference to you?
Nathan: "I have no idea, and neither do you".
Actually I do. It is demonstrative of the myriad of changes, mutations, retroviral insertions, etc etc that have shaped what we are. These embryonic stages represent the "switchings on and off" of reflections, steps etc in that process. We can see reflected in that process the very tree of life of which we are a part.
Certainly, in isolation it means nothing. In context of the raft of other evidence it is meaningfull.
You choose to believe in God. Great. To some degree so do I. But let neither of us allow that belief to blind us to conclusions strongly suggested by emprical evidence and science.
Nathan, perhaps you could give some examples of how/where people are using the evolutionary theory to take it beyond where its evidence suggests? ie, what conclusions are they coming to that are not justified and validated by the evidence or weight of evidence?
Your point about I.D. is valid, Chris, and equally applicable to evolutionary theory – "Its power of suggestion is being destroyed and undermined by its very proponents through their refusal to stop using it to take them beyond where it's 'evidence' suggests." Misapplication and misuse of science, psychology, and other branches of learning have never led to them being discredited as windows on reality.
Arguing evolution from developmental morphology seems intuitively nonsensical to me. Mammalian zygotes look alike. So What does that prove? If embryos looked like rutabagas and evolved in the womb to look like donkeys before becoming human, what would you conclude? Your question is kind of nonsensical to me. The answer is: "I have no idea, and neither do you." Correlation does not equal causation. But I am not a scientist. It is really foolish for me to argue science with you, and certainly a waste of your time to argue it with me. I choose to believe in a Creator God. My inability to definitively prove His existence, or to definitively disprove what cannot by its nature be falsified, doesn't shake my faith. And I am quite confident that, if each human cell looked like a miniature person under a microscope, and morphologically developed in the womb as a person, it would in no way shake your faith in naturalistic evolution. Why is a human infant at birth not proportioned as an adult human? Maybe it means humans started out as dwarves. Why use something as proof which, if did it not exist, would make no difference to you?
Over 500 doctoral scientists have now signed a statement publicly expressing their skepticism about the contemporary theory of evolution.
The ‘Scientific Dissent’ statement reads: "We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life."
The list of 514 signatories includes member scientists from the prestigious US and Russian National Academy of Sciences. Signers include 154 biologists, the largest single scientific discipline represented on the list, as well as 76 chemists and 63 physicists. Signers hold doctorates in biological sciences, physics, chemistry, mathematics, medicine, computer science, and related disciplines. Many are professors or researchers at major universities and research institutions such as MIT, The Smithsonian, Cambridge University, UCLA, UC Berkeley, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, the Ohio State University, the University of Georgia, and the University of Washington.
Darrel, I could sign that statement, because it is now quite clear that "random mutation" is not the basis of much of the genomic variation upon which selection has acted.
I expressed exactly that kind of skepticism more than 40 years ago. Fortunately, we now know that many nonrandom factors are involved in the introduction of genomic variation–and that is becoming clearer all the time.
The term "random" is used in many different ways in discussions of biological change across time. Even the meaning of the term "mutation" has changed as knowledge of genomics has increased.
i am chuckling a bit here re: the foregoing thread. Until yesterday i had never communicated with an
avowed atheist about suggestive or speculative thoughts of life forms. Tim, corrected my suggestive
speculations as something he would not even consider, unless he was able to prove it impiracally, he
would not speculate. Yet here now is the suggestion that various different life forms resemble each
other in their earliest embrionic stages. Hmmm, is there a suggestion here that the Creator would not be able to initiate a different kind of life form that did not visually have a similar shaping?
Earl, I'm Joe, born and raised an SDA, mainly in northern and central California. I'd like to get to know you better and learn about your background. I was homeschooled and later went to SDA schools in Stockton and Modesto, where my Mom taught in an SDA elementary school. I graduated from academy in 1958 and went to PUC in the fall of that year. A couple of years later I taught all grades and all subjects in a one-room SDA school near Prescott, AZ. Many of us who grew up in the church have not communicated much with people who do not share our world view. Perhaps that is also true for you.
Not sure if this blog is still alive, but for the silent readership I'd like to offer an alternative to the fairly discredited idea offered above that there is an evolutionary "tree of life". Most evolutionists now agree that there is not a branching "tree" of stepwise deveopment, but now a bush or multiple bushes of life, with similar processes happening with unrelated types of life. This has required fairly significant changes in the old and unsustainable contention that things could have happened without design, without a plan, by chance and natural selection. Just aint so.
Now that we know that many life forms conserve vital genes, that there is not much junk DNA/RNA but mostly functional stuff, it is not longer clear how in the world this all happened by any unguided and unplanned process.
The old tree of life concept has been clear-cut away by the evidence. Simplicity is not present in the story of life.
Complexity and irreducible complexity is no problem to Intelligent Design theory so most of us feel pretty comfortable with what we are learning about DNA and RNA and changes.
Finally watching pictures of an embryo develop and calling out "tadpole, fish, snake, chimp" as you go is just a Rorschach test on the psyche of the viewer! And really not really proof of anything other than imagination. Would we all expect little homonuclei before we can recognize a system, a program, a pattern, a design? 🙂
In all honesty, I find it really hard to follow you all. This I lament is my problem – who should I believe if I can't review the data myself? For every expert one way, there appears to be another the other way?
Jack,
The "tree of life" is far from discredited.
You are confusing the move from a more "vertical" tree concept to more emphasis on horizontal. The awareness of horizontal gene transfer, as oposed to vertical, which fitted the "vertical" tree imagery does not cut the tree down!
Even if the concept ends up as "bushes" or several "bushes", So what? It still demonstrates, or better, illustrates the relatedness of all life and is an indefensible distance from a traditional creation where one would best illustrate it with a ranch full of little, vertical bushes! Of course, because 98% of species that have ever lived are extinct, the ranch is pretty shrunken. God's not a good rancher.
I would suggest the link below is a good read.
ps. I did send you an email the other day….so happy to receive your notes?
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html
Not sure if this has already been covered by you more science-minded.
Prominent atheist scientists, such as Richard Dawkins, claim evolution destroys the proof for belief in God as a designer. However, is evolution as a 'system' itself proof of a designer?
Even when creationists call God 'creator' they don't literally mean He personally created them (especially Adventists who reject belief in an immortal soul). Our actual creators are our parents. Rather, they mean God designed the system (starting with Adam and Eve) that allowed us to be born.
Isn't evolution just an extension of that concept but to be far, far, far, far older and bigger? In some ways, doesn't that make the system even more amazing? Doesn't that increase, rather than decrease, the argument for a designer?
We know scientifically in a way how evolution works. But really, where does it as a system come from originally? How are the laws in the universe, and then on earth, so finely perfectly tuned to allow anything to exist at all – both in the universe and on planet earth?
We also know about conception, but really, how can I originally be from two separate individuals and now be a completely new being? How is it that life has continually existed in a chain without end for billions of years? We are so sceptical about notions such as immortality, but isn't all around us – aren't we products in a chain of immortality?
Do we take all this for granted, that we fail to see just how truly amazing the system of creation is? Henry Ford wasn't famous as a maker of cars; he was famous for the system of car making, which is much more amazing, and in many ways is a far more impressive example of design.
I find it amazing that people don't believe in God or an afterlife, and say there is no possibility of the same, and yet they life as part of a massive, immortal, living system billions of years old. Just stop and truly appreciate that for a moment.