Re: [asa] Advice for conversing with YECs (and now the flood)

Hi Dave,   Dave said:  Your suggestion makes God about as bright as the automotive engineers who designed the dubiously functional cars. We have genes for every step in the synthesis of ascorbate, with a mutation in one that renders it nonfunctional for the one step. Why?   An engineer's dream would be to invent an automatic evolutionary process that would make not only new kinds of engines but new kinds of cars.  Better still: new kinds of drivers.  But who gets to define "better"?  If a species gives way to another, then is failure attributed to the inventor of evolution.  I would disagree with this view.    Consider how auto engineers benefit from the sense of need within the community of drivers.  Could this not offer motive for self-development?  On the other extreme, what becomes of us if perfect things are designed and built with ease?  We’re not in heaven yet, after all.  Life involves choices and these are apparently important to our development, and from a God who still loves us.    Dave said: God [would be] as stupid as the human engineers that just added more mechanisms to old technology. God left the old stuff in the genome to mislead honest investigators (see the appearance of age in YEC views).   I disagree with this view and it does not follow that God must be considered dishonest.  Consider the challenge for exobiologists to determine if we could live on some other lush planet.  It might appear serene but will our immune system be up to the challenge?  I seriously doubt it.  [Of course, exobiology really has it rough since it may be the only discipline that has zero data to work with, so far.]  Upon arriving to other planets, if we could manufacture, somehow, bodies using indigenous DNA that it would be far superior to any design we could bring with us.  I'd bet a donut on this, though I'm no biologist.    If you prefer, however, that the making of Adam be far superior, then I would agree.  [This might help explain those long life spans.] Even so, God would still be wise to take the information that was found in homo sapiens (pre-Adamites) and use this to make a fully adaptable physical form for Adam knowing that such form was quite adaptable to our planet's environment.  Extending the pre-Adamite view means that Cain’s wife would have been a pre-Adamite and subsequent mitochondrial DNA would not appear so perfect, so perfection may never be found.  [In this case, the y-chromosme story is more complicated, of course.]   Dave said: I prefer to junk such speculations and recognize that the Almighty, under his providential care, had all creatures evolve according to "natural law." Did he control the process? Of course, but in ways that are not discoverable through empirical methods.   I think we agree here, though I see no need for intervention (assuming you mean such).  I am unclear how you would grade God for all those “dubiously functional” organisms that are formed from "natural law" based on what you said before.    Howdy Schwarzwald, You ask: …doesn't the idea that God would only create the 'best' creatures imply a God vastly more foreign to Christianity than a God who would allow for the creation of 'inferior' creatures, and nevertheless offer hope and betterment to them? Your argument seems fine to me.  Apparently, Darwin’s views were appreciated by some strong Bible believers because of the sense of consequences and judgements upon unfit life forms, which seem to reflect better judgements due to spiritual unfitness.  Lemarckian and others must have seemed to sweet for these groups, and arguably so.   I think only in the case of Adam (called a “son of God”) do we have a created life form that might be considered “best”, but I think the evidence is quite clear that there is a lot of “junk” in our micro building blocks, though this “junk” may very well prove critical in some fashion for an effective mutation process.   Yousaid:  Just a thought. And I say this as a TE myself.   I am an odd literalist who sees a possible interpretation concordant with science (M-Genesis – still under construction).  You are with the majority here. :)   Coope ----- Original Message ---- From: "D. F. Siemens, Jr." <dfsiemensjr@juno.com> To: georgecooper@sbcglobal.net Cc: asa@calvin.edu Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2008 5:08:28 PM Subject: Re: [asa] Advice for conversing with YECs (and now the flood) On Wed, 29 Oct 2008 16:21:21 -0500 "George Cooper" <georgecooper@sbcglobal.net> writes: > Bernie, > > If God uses evolutionary processes to produce a plethora of life > forms for > His own satisfaction and glory, it seems to me that we should > consider the > possibility that He would, when a very rare planet hosts a sentient > life > form, simply use the evolved DNA and other molecular structures of > such > species as His template for anyone He elects to make from scratch > and give > spiritual life to by His own spiritual "breath" (eg Adam). > > Thus, no hide and seek is played, of course, and no proof that would > nullify > faith due to evidenciary knowledge is found (per James point).  > > Coope > A vital point here is that God is free to act as he pleases, without any external constraints. That said, we need to look at the consequences of the assumptions behind this view. Some years ago I owned a Chevy Cavalier. It was at the time that the engineers were trying to control emissions by adding mechanisms. One result was that mileage was lousy, with the additional benefit that it did not run well, even though one time an engineer came out from Detroit to see what could be figured out. But the result was so effective that my daughter told her mother, "Get rid of this car before it kills us all." More recently, the automobile engine has been rethought, all the additions are pretty well gone, and cars run much better and more efficiently. Your suggestion makes God about as bright as the automotive engineers who designed the dubiously functional cars. We have genes for every step in the synthesis of ascorbate, with a mutation in one that renders it nonfunctional for the one step. Why? I see two possibilities that fit this view. God is as stupid as the human engineers that just added more mechanisms to old technology. God left the old stuff in the genome to mislead honest investigators (see the appearance of age in YEC views). I prefer to junk such speculations and recognize that the Almighty, under his providential care, had all creatures evolve according to "natural law." Did he control the process? Of course, but in ways that are not discoverable through empirical methods. Dave (ASA) ____________________________________________________________ Click here to find Medical Transcription Training programs. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/Ioyw6i3nFN8jtZ0tfj8xNet9UQv7vMs8L0LpxPxdvH4qUSp46NUJfo/

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Received on Thu Oct 30 01:44:33 2008