>On Sat, 14 Sep 1996, Glenn Morton wrote in reply to me:
>
>> I agree with you on the need for a real, historical Adam. I would
>> disagree that there is no possibility of explaining the source of
>> sin in the fashion that the Bible describes.
>
>I don't understand the latter statement.
>
Maybe I misunderstood you but I thought you had said that there was no
possibility of uniting evolution and Christianity. Maybe I was wrong.
>Perhaps I need to explain my position. I recognize the existence of
>fossils, I have even read some of the justifications of evolution,
>although I am not an expert in it. I also recognize and believe the
>Bible is the literalistic Word of God. I know Jesus is the truth,
>hence all truth must be from God. The Bible and the existence of
>fossils must agree, somehow.
>
I agree with you that the Bible MUST be historical. And I do not beleive that
that is incompatible with an evolutionary view.
>I am also an engineer. I have difficulty accepting much of the
>tenets of evolution because they fly in the face of the laws of
>thermodynamics (for evolution to work, God had to be in it). On the
>other hand, I am not totally convinced of a young Earth theory
>because, as I have already mentioned, there is a difference between
>the concept of day recorded in Genesis 1 and our modern concept of a
>day.
Are you familiar with Sierpinski's Gasket? Most Creationists say that "order"
can not come from randomness. While, the above terminology is not what I
prefer, the point is that in the presence of rules, random choices can produce
beautiful images. Take 3 dots and a starting point.(this will look bad in the
archives)
<pre>
.1,2
.starting point
.3,4 .5,6
</pre>
Roll a die and if you get a 1 or 2 move the starting point halfway to the 1,2
dot; a 3 or 4 move halfway to the 3,4 dot and similarly for a 5 or 6. Mark
the point and make this your new starting point. After you do this for 5-2000
times, you will have a Sierpinski's gasket, which is a beautiful object one
not likely to be generated by random chance and yet the movement of the dot
was purely by random chance. Here is a program to reproduce it in GWBASIC
5 RANDOMIZE:DIM Y(3),X(3,2),P(2)
6 CLS:KEY OFF:SCREEN 2
10 X(1,1)=160:X(1,2)=0:X(2,1)=80:X(2,2)=200:X(3,1)=240:X(3,2)=200
15 X=140:Y=100
20 FOR I=1 TO 20000
30 A=INT(3*RND+1)
40 FOR J=1 TO 2
50 P(J)=P(J)-(P(J)-X(A,J))/2
65 NEXT J
75 LINE(2*P(1),P(2))-(2*P(1),P(2))
100 NEXT I
If God programmed similar "rules" into the fabric of the biochemistry, then
God could be the designer and evolution is the design. I would suggest that
some of the recent experiements by Gerald Joyce's lab may be showing that the
odds of finding whatever functionality you want in an RNA or DNA molecule is
quite likely not at all unlikely. (see ~Peter Radetsky,
"Speeding Through Evolution," Discover, May, 1994, ca. p. 85 for a
non-technical discussion of what he is doing.)
>
> Nevertheless, no matter what position a person takes, they have to
>be consistent in their position. I point out Scriptural problems to
>Christians who hold to the evolutionary model because there are
>potential problems that must be resolved for a person to be able to
>claim that they believe in the Bible.
Take a look at my web page (address at bottom). I think I have made a
reasonable stab at doing what you suggest.
>
>Perhaps, but doesn't this still constitute special creation, not
>evolutionary derivation of humanity from lower organisms? Even if
>you explain Adam, what about Eve? The Bible is very specific that
>Eve was formed out of Adam, not from another semian (Genesis
>2:21-23).
>
The Bible says that Adam was a special creation. Science says the body shows
great evolutionary connections with the apes. The only way to have both be
true that I can think of, is what I suggested. For illustration, what I am
suggesting is that Adam's body is 99% evolved 1% special creation. His spirit
is 100% special creation.
>Let me ask another (maybe stupid) question. We are told humanity
>descended because of the presence of the pseudogenes that, I suppose,
>became functioning because of a mutation/God's intervention/etc.
>Could an equally likely interpretation be that apes descended from
>humanity, because the genes became disfunctional?
You misunderstand the pseudogene problem. The pseudogene does not work in any
of the species. The problem is this: If I ask you and 4 friends to go to 4
different rooms, take the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and type a
copy. Except that at some point, or your choosing, you are to stop typing,
randomly choose a paragraph from the Decline and Fall, and type it into that
place. Then continue on typing the rest of the book.
Do you think that the 4 people would choose the same location to insert the
paragraph? I don't. Do you think the 4 people would choose the same
paragraph to type in at this point? I don't. But that is what has happened
with the pseudogene. THe same mistake occurred at the same position in the
genomes of 4 species. The most simple means of explaining this coincidence is
that they are related to each other. The odds of this happening 4 times by
chance in the 4 genomes is something like 1 chance in 10^38. Not very likely.
>
>> Theologically, if a living body can be dust and upon death, you
>> are dust, then it is at least possible for God to have taken a
>> cadaver an converted it to a living being, an evolutionarily
>> derived body a specially created spirit, resulting ultimately in a
>> fallen being like us.
>
>Even better, John the Baptist said that God doesn't even need a
>cadaver to create people (Matthew 3:9).
Agreed. God doesn't NEED anything. But the real question is what did God DO?
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm