That's right. They are discussing it and hopefully they will do it next season!!
MythBuster Adam Savage said on the Skepticality Podcast,
"My goal this year is to prove natural selection on the show. It's gonna take a while, it's gonna be very hard to make it fascinating on film in the context of our narrative structure, but I figure screw it. The sky's the limit. Let's do, Let's do natural selection. I'm sick of fifty percent of this country thinking creationism is reasonable. It's appalling. And I have the unique ability, maybe, to sell this idea to Discovery, and they'll, they might allow me to do it, and I'm gonna try as hard as I can."
The thing about doing a show on Natural Selection is that most creationists already accept it. I think it might be a good idea to create an evolutionary computer algorithm for the show to demonstrate that mutation and selection can and do produce complexity.It would also be a good idea to show that cerain things (homologous structures, vestigial organs, atavisms, etc.) are present when evolution from common ancestry is simulated, and that these things are present in the real world.
Friday, August 8, 2008
Twenty Reasons, Part 4
This is a followup to my last post, in which I looked at the twenty reasons to Reject theistic evolution by Ken Ham and a rebuttal to them provided by "Answers in Creation" and add my own commentary. The other posts in this series may be found by simply scrolling down on this page. By the way, I am going to frequently just use the paraphrases that AiC uses (to save space), although I am checking the original AiG article to make sure AiC did not caricature or distort Ham's position.
Reason 11 will be skipped since it is just a rephrased version of the Tenth Reason.
12. Days cannot be Millions of Years
My Opinion:
This was Ham's best point:
"There are many other aspects at which we could look to show that the days must be ordinary days. For example, Adam was created on day six. He lived through day six, and day seven, and died when he was 930 years old. If each day were a million years, there are big problems here, too. It also needs to be made clear that the passage in 2 Peter 3:8, that compares a day to a thousand years is not defining the word “day” as a thousand years. In fact, taken in context, 2 Peter 3:8 has nothing to do with the days of creation, but with the fact that God is outside time."
AiC does not discuss this. This does seem to me a good, though not conclusive, evidence that the Genesis writers did indeed mean 24 hour periods when they wrote the word "day".
13. Animals reproduce "After their kind".
My Opinion:
Indeed. But kinds are defined by their characteristics, and characteristics can and do change all the time... So which characteristics can not change, and why not? All genes mutate, even the ones responsible for development (The Hox Genes). I think that a Christian might quite correctly interpret this as meaning that animals always bear offspring of a strong resemblance to themselves, with which all biologists agree.
14. The Order of Events in Genesis
My opinion:
Ham points out that the evolutionary timeline and the Genesis account are different. AiC insists that the two are not incompatible; Yet a quick look at Genesis 1:20-22 states that fish and birds were created on the same day before the day that land animals were created. As we all know, land animals have existed for over 300 million years (if not longer) while birds have existed for only about 100 mllion years. This could be reconciled with Genesis, but only if one agrees to take the superliberal stance that the entirety of Genesis is a metaphor. Even then, why didn't God just have the Hebrews right down the real order of events, instead of inventing an incorrect metaphorical one?
15. The Earth came first, not the Sun
My Opinion:
This is a restatement of the last point. AiC's rebuttal was unsupported and weak in my opinion. They said, "If you look at Genesis 1, the account is written from the perspective of an observer standing on the face of the earth (4.5 billion years ago)... The atmosphere was not yet developed, and was a swirling mix of materials which blocked out all light. Once the materials cleared enough to allow light through, the first life forms could begin (the algae). Also, light would have appeared (the Day 1 light). The sun would not be visible, however, until Day 4, when the atmosphere was clear enough to actually see the light source."
Sounds like a stretch to me. Once again, a superliberal interpretation of Genesis might solve the problem, but why not just write down the correct order of events?
Reason 11 will be skipped since it is just a rephrased version of the Tenth Reason.
12. Days cannot be Millions of Years
My Opinion:
This was Ham's best point:
"There are many other aspects at which we could look to show that the days must be ordinary days. For example, Adam was created on day six. He lived through day six, and day seven, and died when he was 930 years old. If each day were a million years, there are big problems here, too. It also needs to be made clear that the passage in 2 Peter 3:8, that compares a day to a thousand years is not defining the word “day” as a thousand years. In fact, taken in context, 2 Peter 3:8 has nothing to do with the days of creation, but with the fact that God is outside time."
AiC does not discuss this. This does seem to me a good, though not conclusive, evidence that the Genesis writers did indeed mean 24 hour periods when they wrote the word "day".
13. Animals reproduce "After their kind".
My Opinion:
Indeed. But kinds are defined by their characteristics, and characteristics can and do change all the time... So which characteristics can not change, and why not? All genes mutate, even the ones responsible for development (The Hox Genes). I think that a Christian might quite correctly interpret this as meaning that animals always bear offspring of a strong resemblance to themselves, with which all biologists agree.
14. The Order of Events in Genesis
My opinion:
Ham points out that the evolutionary timeline and the Genesis account are different. AiC insists that the two are not incompatible; Yet a quick look at Genesis 1:20-22 states that fish and birds were created on the same day before the day that land animals were created. As we all know, land animals have existed for over 300 million years (if not longer) while birds have existed for only about 100 mllion years. This could be reconciled with Genesis, but only if one agrees to take the superliberal stance that the entirety of Genesis is a metaphor. Even then, why didn't God just have the Hebrews right down the real order of events, instead of inventing an incorrect metaphorical one?
15. The Earth came first, not the Sun
My Opinion:
This is a restatement of the last point. AiC's rebuttal was unsupported and weak in my opinion. They said, "If you look at Genesis 1, the account is written from the perspective of an observer standing on the face of the earth (4.5 billion years ago)... The atmosphere was not yet developed, and was a swirling mix of materials which blocked out all light. Once the materials cleared enough to allow light through, the first life forms could begin (the algae). Also, light would have appeared (the Day 1 light). The sun would not be visible, however, until Day 4, when the atmosphere was clear enough to actually see the light source."
Sounds like a stretch to me. Once again, a superliberal interpretation of Genesis might solve the problem, but why not just write down the correct order of events?
Thursday, August 7, 2008
Religion - Evolution's Answer to Disease?
From The Economist:
"SOME people, notably Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford University, regard religion as a disease. It spreads, they suggest, like a virus, except that the “viruses” are similar to those infecting computers—bits of cultural software that take over the hardware of the brain and make it do irrational things.
Corey Fincher, of the University of New Mexico, has a different hypothesis for the origin of religious diversity. He thinks not that religions are like disease but that they are responses to disease—or, rather, to the threat of disease. If he is right, then people who believe that their religion protects them from harm may be correct, although the protection is of a different sort from the supernatural one they perceive."
(I am skipping down to the evidence for this idea):
"The two researchers also looked at anthropological data on how much people in “traditional” (ie, non-urban) societies move around in different parts of the world. They found that in more religiously diverse (and more disease-ridden) places people move shorter distances than in healthier, religiously monotonous societies. The implication is that religious diversity causes people to keep themselves to themselves, and thus makes it harder for them to catch germs from infidels.
Of course, correlation is not causation. But religion is not the only cultural phenomenon that stops groups of people from mixing. Language has the same effect, and in another, as yet unpublished study Mr Fincher and Dr Thornhill found a similar relationship there too. Moreover, their search of the literature turned up work which suggests that xenophobia is linked psychologically with fear of disease (the dirty foreigner…). Perhaps, then, the underlying reason why there is so much hostility between ethnic groups is nothing to do with the groups themselves, but instead with the diseases they may bring."
My thoughts:
As the last paragraph states, correlation is not causation. Perhaps xenophobia, be it racial, cultural, or otherwise, served our ancestors well**. It is well known that Europeans brought some nasty diseases to the Native Americans back in the day. Then again, perhaps this study is flawed; After all, the Journal of Religion and Society found that, "higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies."
** I want to make it known that I do not approve of racism or any other prejudice even if it had or has a biological benefit.
"SOME people, notably Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford University, regard religion as a disease. It spreads, they suggest, like a virus, except that the “viruses” are similar to those infecting computers—bits of cultural software that take over the hardware of the brain and make it do irrational things.
Corey Fincher, of the University of New Mexico, has a different hypothesis for the origin of religious diversity. He thinks not that religions are like disease but that they are responses to disease—or, rather, to the threat of disease. If he is right, then people who believe that their religion protects them from harm may be correct, although the protection is of a different sort from the supernatural one they perceive."
(I am skipping down to the evidence for this idea):
"The two researchers also looked at anthropological data on how much people in “traditional” (ie, non-urban) societies move around in different parts of the world. They found that in more religiously diverse (and more disease-ridden) places people move shorter distances than in healthier, religiously monotonous societies. The implication is that religious diversity causes people to keep themselves to themselves, and thus makes it harder for them to catch germs from infidels.
Of course, correlation is not causation. But religion is not the only cultural phenomenon that stops groups of people from mixing. Language has the same effect, and in another, as yet unpublished study Mr Fincher and Dr Thornhill found a similar relationship there too. Moreover, their search of the literature turned up work which suggests that xenophobia is linked psychologically with fear of disease (the dirty foreigner…). Perhaps, then, the underlying reason why there is so much hostility between ethnic groups is nothing to do with the groups themselves, but instead with the diseases they may bring."
My thoughts:
As the last paragraph states, correlation is not causation. Perhaps xenophobia, be it racial, cultural, or otherwise, served our ancestors well**. It is well known that Europeans brought some nasty diseases to the Native Americans back in the day. Then again, perhaps this study is flawed; After all, the Journal of Religion and Society found that, "higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies."
** I want to make it known that I do not approve of racism or any other prejudice even if it had or has a biological benefit.
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Twenty Reasons, Part 3
Part Three Baby!!
This is a followup to my last post, in which I looked at the twenty reasons to Reject theistic evolution by Ken Ham and a rebuttal to them provided by "Answers in Creation" and add my own commentary. By the way, I am going to frequently just use the paraphrases that AiC uses (to save space), although I am checking the original AiG article to make sure AiC did not caricature or distort Ham's position.
8. God is Good. Quote from original article:
"God pronounced of His creation that 'it was very good.'... Now think about the methods of evolution: elimination of the weak, survival of the fittest, death and struggle in an evolutionary progression, elimination of the unfit, and so on. Would God have used this method in bringing all life into being and then describe it as good?
AiC Rebuttal:
"Young earth creationists will agree with me that the laws of nature have been instituted by God. According to these laws, God put in place a system of renewal, including death and decay. He created this specifically so that the world would last. If He created a world without death and decay, it would soon be overrun by the organisms that He created. The beauty of the system He created awes scientists and lay people alike each day. Based on the multiplication rate of some bacterial organism, this would only take a few days, unless there was some method of curbing that growth."
My Opinion:
It is shocking to me that creationists have the nerve to say, "Well if God did it this way he must be a monster", but at the same time, how often do you hear, "The Lord works in mysterious ways" or "Who is man to judge God?" This is shameful inconsistency.
Personally I don't find this argument convincing, because most of the organisms who have lived on earth (bacteria, plants, fish, etc. most likely do not (and did not) have consciousness. I do find it odd, though, that the Native Americans did not (apparently) know about Jehovah until Europeans taught them. Isn't it shocking that God let generations and generations live and die without knowing the truth? Why not share it with them?
One more thing: The theistic evolutionist's answer makes little sense. Why install death as part of natural law? Couldn't he simply have made nonreproducing organisms eternal?
9. "Many claim that Genesis is only symbolic—a kind of analogy... However, if applying this idea—that Genesis is only symbolic—then one has to ask the question, 'Where do we learn that God is Creator?' We can, of course, go to Genesis 1:1 which says, 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' But if Genesis is only symbolic, to be consistent we would have to question whether the words 'God created' are also symbolic. We would have to ask what this really means."
I am skipping the AiC rebuttal: Many christians interpret Genesis as a story with the point that nothing comes except by the will of God. I think this argument was mainly a "filler" to get the number of arguments against T.E. up to a nice even twenty.
10. Quote "Christ died on a cross because of sin and death and the necessary shedding of blood for the remission of sins. The origin and basis of this is in the Book of Genesis. We wear clothing because God gave clothes because of sin. We read this in the Book of Genesis. To understand Christian doctrine we must understand the foundations of doctrine given in the Book of Genesis. If Genesis cannot be taken literally, there is no foundation for Christian doctrine—therefore, Christian doctrine no longer has meaning."
(One Paragraph later):
"There are other instances where Jesus quoted from, or referred to, and thus accepted Genesis. For example, Matthew 24:37–39: 'But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark. And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.'"
My Opinion:
Once again, this argument seems weak to me, and I believe it is probably another "filler". I think Christians might be able to see the story of Noah as literally true, except that the entire world was not covered in water. They have some fine arguments to support this, for instance here.
Stay tuned for the next installment. And by the way, I need to state that I do not agree with theistic evolutionists that the Bible is correct. I am not on a crusade to unite science and religion, nor to make it okay for Christians to accept evolution (I care very little whether they can or can not, and don't have any interest in telling them so in order to stop the textbook wars). I genuinely do not see these arguments as fatal to the TE position. On the other hand, my last post ecieved a comment which does seem to pose a problem for TE.
This is a followup to my last post, in which I looked at the twenty reasons to Reject theistic evolution by Ken Ham and a rebuttal to them provided by "Answers in Creation" and add my own commentary. By the way, I am going to frequently just use the paraphrases that AiC uses (to save space), although I am checking the original AiG article to make sure AiC did not caricature or distort Ham's position.
8. God is Good. Quote from original article:
"God pronounced of His creation that 'it was very good.'... Now think about the methods of evolution: elimination of the weak, survival of the fittest, death and struggle in an evolutionary progression, elimination of the unfit, and so on. Would God have used this method in bringing all life into being and then describe it as good?
AiC Rebuttal:
"Young earth creationists will agree with me that the laws of nature have been instituted by God. According to these laws, God put in place a system of renewal, including death and decay. He created this specifically so that the world would last. If He created a world without death and decay, it would soon be overrun by the organisms that He created. The beauty of the system He created awes scientists and lay people alike each day. Based on the multiplication rate of some bacterial organism, this would only take a few days, unless there was some method of curbing that growth."
My Opinion:
It is shocking to me that creationists have the nerve to say, "Well if God did it this way he must be a monster", but at the same time, how often do you hear, "The Lord works in mysterious ways" or "Who is man to judge God?" This is shameful inconsistency.
Personally I don't find this argument convincing, because most of the organisms who have lived on earth (bacteria, plants, fish, etc. most likely do not (and did not) have consciousness. I do find it odd, though, that the Native Americans did not (apparently) know about Jehovah until Europeans taught them. Isn't it shocking that God let generations and generations live and die without knowing the truth? Why not share it with them?
One more thing: The theistic evolutionist's answer makes little sense. Why install death as part of natural law? Couldn't he simply have made nonreproducing organisms eternal?
9. "Many claim that Genesis is only symbolic—a kind of analogy... However, if applying this idea—that Genesis is only symbolic—then one has to ask the question, 'Where do we learn that God is Creator?' We can, of course, go to Genesis 1:1 which says, 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' But if Genesis is only symbolic, to be consistent we would have to question whether the words 'God created' are also symbolic. We would have to ask what this really means."
I am skipping the AiC rebuttal: Many christians interpret Genesis as a story with the point that nothing comes except by the will of God. I think this argument was mainly a "filler" to get the number of arguments against T.E. up to a nice even twenty.
10. Quote "Christ died on a cross because of sin and death and the necessary shedding of blood for the remission of sins. The origin and basis of this is in the Book of Genesis. We wear clothing because God gave clothes because of sin. We read this in the Book of Genesis. To understand Christian doctrine we must understand the foundations of doctrine given in the Book of Genesis. If Genesis cannot be taken literally, there is no foundation for Christian doctrine—therefore, Christian doctrine no longer has meaning."
(One Paragraph later):
"There are other instances where Jesus quoted from, or referred to, and thus accepted Genesis. For example, Matthew 24:37–39: 'But as the days of Noah were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noah entered into the ark. And knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.'"
My Opinion:
Once again, this argument seems weak to me, and I believe it is probably another "filler". I think Christians might be able to see the story of Noah as literally true, except that the entire world was not covered in water. They have some fine arguments to support this, for instance here.
Stay tuned for the next installment. And by the way, I need to state that I do not agree with theistic evolutionists that the Bible is correct. I am not on a crusade to unite science and religion, nor to make it okay for Christians to accept evolution (I care very little whether they can or can not, and don't have any interest in telling them so in order to stop the textbook wars). I genuinely do not see these arguments as fatal to the TE position. On the other hand, my last post ecieved a comment which does seem to pose a problem for TE.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Twenty Reasons, Part 2
This is a followup to my last post, in which I looked at the twenty reasons to Reject theistic evolution by Ken Ham and a rebuttal to them provided by "Answers in Creation" and add my own commentary. By the way, I am going to frequently just use the paraphrases that AiC uses (to save space), although I am checking the original AiG article to make sure AiC did not caricature or distort Ham's position.
5. Creation Is Finished. Ken Ham states that, "[M]odern evolutionary theory accepts that evolution is still going on (therefore, man must still be evolving!), so if a Christian accepts evolution he has to accept that God is still using evolution today. Thus, He is still creating. But God tells us that He finished His work of creating. This is a real dilemma for the theistic evolutionist."
AiC Response:
Ham is right...creation is finished. He claims that evolutionists have a problem, since evolutionary principles are still happening today, therefore God is still creating through this process. The answer to this is very simple. During God’s creative period, He would have been guiding and directing the evolutionary process. Now, He is not. Although the same scientific principles are still in effect, the Hand of the Almighty no longer directs them.
My opinion:
Sounds good enough, but this does contradict the position held by some theistic evolutionists, namely Ken Miller, who thinks that God does not control evolution, but simply set up the universe in a way so that life would eventually emerge and then give a soul to some creature. My verdict is that this poses no problem for the theistic evolutionists, so long as they are willing to believe that God was very active in tampering with life on earth to make sure it got the way it is today. Then again, instead of tampering with the evolution of life, why not just create it? That is a questin worth pondering.
6. Dust to Adam, Rib to Eve.
AiC Response:
Ham claims that evolutionists claim that the “dust to Adam” phrase summarizes the fact that Adam came through evolution, and it summarizes the entire millions of years process. In this he is essentially correct. Ham claims that this presents a problem, in that Eve was created from Adam’s rib. To be consistent, evolutionists would have to explain a similar evolutionary origin, explaining how Adam’s rib evolved into Eve. While the logic appears to be sound, we must also remember that we are dealing with God, who can create at His will. If you consider evolution, and the development of humans, the fossil record contains numerous steps in this process, over the last few million years. Once God ended this process with Adam, he had the final product. In order to be a genetic match for Adam, God created Eve with the exact same DNA as Adam. Thus, His final products were perfectly matched to each other. Requiring an evolutionary tale for Eve is merely a young earth complaint, but there is an easy answer. Eve was created from Adam’s DNA, obtained from Adam’s rib. I know that young earth creationists will scoff at this idea...but then again, they scoff at everything. The truth is this is a possible explanation. It may not be the best explanation, but it is possible.
My opinion:
I have, for a while now, considered the Eve-came-from-Adam's-rib story a bit weird: Eve would have been essentially a female clone of Adam. I have a hard time thinking that anyone would be attracted to a female clone of themselves, but that's me. One issue that could be raised here is the fact that this scenario boils down to the worst case of interbreeding imaginable; Yet I'm sure theistic evolutionists would cover this by saying that Adam and Eve had perfect DNA, so there would not be any nasty recessive alleles causing Cystic Fibrosis.
7. The Return to Dust.
AiC Response:
Ham says that some people say that the dust represents the animal from which man evolved. Thus, when God says man shall return to dust, it only stands to reason that he would return to being an animal. On this one I agree with Ham. Man will return to dust and decompose, and his components will re-enter the cycle of life to renew other life. This one is no problem when you consider the life cycle.
My Opinion:
This is a very Buddhist/Lion King Response. It's the circle of life, and it moves us all! I think that AiC should interpret "dust of the earth" to mean the raw materials of earth. We know that primordial earth was swimming in amino acids, nucleic acids, fats, etc., And we are certain that life as we know it began from such. And guess what? After we die, and begin to rot, we are nothing more than a disorganized bunch of amino acids, water, and so on.
5. Creation Is Finished. Ken Ham states that, "[M]odern evolutionary theory accepts that evolution is still going on (therefore, man must still be evolving!), so if a Christian accepts evolution he has to accept that God is still using evolution today. Thus, He is still creating. But God tells us that He finished His work of creating. This is a real dilemma for the theistic evolutionist."
AiC Response:
Ham is right...creation is finished. He claims that evolutionists have a problem, since evolutionary principles are still happening today, therefore God is still creating through this process. The answer to this is very simple. During God’s creative period, He would have been guiding and directing the evolutionary process. Now, He is not. Although the same scientific principles are still in effect, the Hand of the Almighty no longer directs them.
My opinion:
Sounds good enough, but this does contradict the position held by some theistic evolutionists, namely Ken Miller, who thinks that God does not control evolution, but simply set up the universe in a way so that life would eventually emerge and then give a soul to some creature. My verdict is that this poses no problem for the theistic evolutionists, so long as they are willing to believe that God was very active in tampering with life on earth to make sure it got the way it is today. Then again, instead of tampering with the evolution of life, why not just create it? That is a questin worth pondering.
6. Dust to Adam, Rib to Eve.
AiC Response:
Ham claims that evolutionists claim that the “dust to Adam” phrase summarizes the fact that Adam came through evolution, and it summarizes the entire millions of years process. In this he is essentially correct. Ham claims that this presents a problem, in that Eve was created from Adam’s rib. To be consistent, evolutionists would have to explain a similar evolutionary origin, explaining how Adam’s rib evolved into Eve. While the logic appears to be sound, we must also remember that we are dealing with God, who can create at His will. If you consider evolution, and the development of humans, the fossil record contains numerous steps in this process, over the last few million years. Once God ended this process with Adam, he had the final product. In order to be a genetic match for Adam, God created Eve with the exact same DNA as Adam. Thus, His final products were perfectly matched to each other. Requiring an evolutionary tale for Eve is merely a young earth complaint, but there is an easy answer. Eve was created from Adam’s DNA, obtained from Adam’s rib. I know that young earth creationists will scoff at this idea...but then again, they scoff at everything. The truth is this is a possible explanation. It may not be the best explanation, but it is possible.
My opinion:
I have, for a while now, considered the Eve-came-from-Adam's-rib story a bit weird: Eve would have been essentially a female clone of Adam. I have a hard time thinking that anyone would be attracted to a female clone of themselves, but that's me. One issue that could be raised here is the fact that this scenario boils down to the worst case of interbreeding imaginable; Yet I'm sure theistic evolutionists would cover this by saying that Adam and Eve had perfect DNA, so there would not be any nasty recessive alleles causing Cystic Fibrosis.
7. The Return to Dust.
AiC Response:
Ham says that some people say that the dust represents the animal from which man evolved. Thus, when God says man shall return to dust, it only stands to reason that he would return to being an animal. On this one I agree with Ham. Man will return to dust and decompose, and his components will re-enter the cycle of life to renew other life. This one is no problem when you consider the life cycle.
My Opinion:
This is a very Buddhist/Lion King Response. It's the circle of life, and it moves us all! I think that AiC should interpret "dust of the earth" to mean the raw materials of earth. We know that primordial earth was swimming in amino acids, nucleic acids, fats, etc., And we are certain that life as we know it began from such. And guess what? After we die, and begin to rot, we are nothing more than a disorganized bunch of amino acids, water, and so on.
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Twenty Reasons, Part One
In this series, I am going to look at the twenty reasons to Reject theistic evolution by Ken Ham and a rebuttal to them provided by "Answers in Creation" and add my own commentary.
1. "No Death Before Adam's Fall"
AiC response:
"It is true that evolution teaches that there was death prior to Adam. Ham uses Romans 5:12 and 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, which state that death came by sin. I agree. Whereas Ham believes this includes animal death, old earth creationists hold the opposite view, that this represents human death. The passages involved can be interpreted either way."
Okay, but what about the people before Adam and Eve? Did they not have souls? If so, when did Adam and Eve live? For the past three million years, homonids have been very creative and intelligent, so just when was this, and how is it determined? Other than that, this is not fatal to theistic evolution.
2. Paraphrased: Everything was created good, and then became bad when man sinned. Theistic Evolution says that things evolved into complexity and haven't changed drastically since.
AiC Rebuttal:
"If you look closely at the curse, he cursed Adam, Eve, and Satan. He did not curse the whole of creation. Yes, the whole creation groaneth, but a better interpretation is that the creation groans under the oppression of sinful man. We see that clearly today in the pollution, global warming, and other issues that show how man is failing to take care of God’s creation."
Once again I do not view Ham's objection as fatal.
I am going to skip number three, as it is basically a restatement of the claim above (View the article here).
4. Animals were created Vegetarians
Genesis 1:29-30
“And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.”
AiC Rebuttal:
This makes sense only if you consider that it is God’s directions for the Garden of Eden, which is the location this edict was given.
I do not find AiC convincing. I agree with them that "many animals are uniquely designed as predators, and their digestive systems are designed to process meat. Young earth creationists explain this away by saying the curse changed animals...but then again, animals were not cursed"; However, this cannot be explained as directions for the garden of Eden as it seems to apply to the entire earth.
1. "No Death Before Adam's Fall"
AiC response:
"It is true that evolution teaches that there was death prior to Adam. Ham uses Romans 5:12 and 1 Corinthians 15:21-22, which state that death came by sin. I agree. Whereas Ham believes this includes animal death, old earth creationists hold the opposite view, that this represents human death. The passages involved can be interpreted either way."
Okay, but what about the people before Adam and Eve? Did they not have souls? If so, when did Adam and Eve live? For the past three million years, homonids have been very creative and intelligent, so just when was this, and how is it determined? Other than that, this is not fatal to theistic evolution.
2. Paraphrased: Everything was created good, and then became bad when man sinned. Theistic Evolution says that things evolved into complexity and haven't changed drastically since.
AiC Rebuttal:
"If you look closely at the curse, he cursed Adam, Eve, and Satan. He did not curse the whole of creation. Yes, the whole creation groaneth, but a better interpretation is that the creation groans under the oppression of sinful man. We see that clearly today in the pollution, global warming, and other issues that show how man is failing to take care of God’s creation."
Once again I do not view Ham's objection as fatal.
I am going to skip number three, as it is basically a restatement of the claim above (View the article here).
4. Animals were created Vegetarians
Genesis 1:29-30
“And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so.”
AiC Rebuttal:
This makes sense only if you consider that it is God’s directions for the Garden of Eden, which is the location this edict was given.
I do not find AiC convincing. I agree with them that "many animals are uniquely designed as predators, and their digestive systems are designed to process meat. Young earth creationists explain this away by saying the curse changed animals...but then again, animals were not cursed"; However, this cannot be explained as directions for the garden of Eden as it seems to apply to the entire earth.
Friday, August 1, 2008
Theistic Evolutionists
Reader Discretion Advised: The this blog post and the video discussed in herein contains offensive language.
The video in question is TheAmazingAtheist's Fuck Theistic Evolutionists. He explains that atheists should not show favoritism to theistic evolutionists simply because they accept the truth of it while other christians are in the strangleholds of fundamentalist christianity. He is half right. Theistic evolutionists may be viewed as more open minded, thoughtful and intellgient (in general) than fundamentalists. However, creationism is only one of the many fire breathing heads growing from the beast of religion; Likewise religion is only one terrible creature amongst a monsterous species of irrationality. Just as Charles Darwin once said, promoting Scientific Thought (Or Critical Thinking) may be key to showing just how irrational some thought systems are. The next step, of course, is to show that Nontheism and Critical Thought go hand in hand. So in order to further Nontheism, we must first further Critical Thinking.
This brings me to another point of TheAmazingAtheist's: That Atheism has "sold out", or become too popular, and now is like anyother belief system/subculture/(quasi?)religion. In a way this is true: Atheism is now usually associated with thoughtful people who embrace Science, Skepticism, and are way too harsh in their critiques of religion. Of course, he realizes that what Atheism has been associated with and what it is are two different things: Atheism is really and truly a lack of belief in a or any god(s). To solve this problem, he introduces what he calls "Amazing Atheism": A Ruggedly individualistic framework which also embraces Atheism. I would change the name of his idea to something a little less self serving: We should promote Skepticism and Science above all else, and state that until further notice Atheism is most compatible with this framework of thought, the reasons we think this, and then encourage others to challenge these arguments.
The video in question is TheAmazingAtheist's Fuck Theistic Evolutionists. He explains that atheists should not show favoritism to theistic evolutionists simply because they accept the truth of it while other christians are in the strangleholds of fundamentalist christianity. He is half right. Theistic evolutionists may be viewed as more open minded, thoughtful and intellgient (in general) than fundamentalists. However, creationism is only one of the many fire breathing heads growing from the beast of religion; Likewise religion is only one terrible creature amongst a monsterous species of irrationality. Just as Charles Darwin once said, promoting Scientific Thought (Or Critical Thinking) may be key to showing just how irrational some thought systems are. The next step, of course, is to show that Nontheism and Critical Thought go hand in hand. So in order to further Nontheism, we must first further Critical Thinking.
This brings me to another point of TheAmazingAtheist's: That Atheism has "sold out", or become too popular, and now is like anyother belief system/subculture/(quasi?)religion. In a way this is true: Atheism is now usually associated with thoughtful people who embrace Science, Skepticism, and are way too harsh in their critiques of religion. Of course, he realizes that what Atheism has been associated with and what it is are two different things: Atheism is really and truly a lack of belief in a or any god(s). To solve this problem, he introduces what he calls "Amazing Atheism": A Ruggedly individualistic framework which also embraces Atheism. I would change the name of his idea to something a little less self serving: We should promote Skepticism and Science above all else, and state that until further notice Atheism is most compatible with this framework of thought, the reasons we think this, and then encourage others to challenge these arguments.
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