On Tue, 27 Feb 96 16:49:57 MST you wrote:
SJ>If Yockey believes that "the origin of life...could not have
>happened by chance" then he is not a "Darwinist" in my book. Once it
>is admitted that the "origin of life" did not happen by "chance",
>then there is no justification for believe that it was "evolution"
>that "began after the origin of life".
JF>Got to disagree here, the question of how the first life arose is
>separate from the question of whether it evolved after that. There is
>nothing inconsistent with saying that God created the first life, but
>that it evolved subsequently (with or without further intervention).
OK. But then that wonderful, all-purpose, swiss-army knife word
"evolved" is being used in a different sense, from what *Darwinists*
usually employ it! :-) Johnson (and I) agree that God could have used
natural processes that could be called "evolution":
"The concept of creation in itself does not imply opposition to
evolution, if evolution means only a gradual process by which one kind
of living creature changes into something different. A Creator might
well have employed such a gradual process as a means of creation.
"Evolution" contradicts "creation" only when it explicitly or tacitly
defined as fully naturalistic evolution-meaning evolution that is not
directed by any purposeful intelligence." (Johnson P.E., "Darwin on
Trial", InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, Ill., Second Edition,
1993, p3-4).
But Johnson's (an my) point is that *Darwinists* reject God-guided
"evolution":
"Now the first thing to understand is that this term `evolution' as it
is used in the scientific literature, as it is used by all of the
popularisers and propagandists of Darwinism, as it is used by the
scientific establishment, rejects creation, not just in the literal
Genesis sense, but in the broad sense as well. They do not use the
word `evolution' as a word which can be consistent with creation in
the way in which I have just described it. Because to them
`evolution' means fully naturalistic evolution. It means evolution
which involved only purposeless material processes, because these are
the only processes which are open to science. So if we say we believe
in `evolution' what we are saying that we believe in (in the
scientific understanding of the word) is not a process which God
guided, not a process which God employed, directed, in order to
produce human beings for a purpose, but a completely materialistic,
purposeless process which is fulfilling no purpose whatsoever."
(Johnson P.E., "Darwin On Trial" , 2 tape set, First Evangelical Free
Church, Fullerton, CA, Oct 1992)
JF>Darwin did not say that life had to have arisen by chance; he seems
to >have been deliberately vague on the question:
>
> "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several
> powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into
> one; ..."
>
>That is certainly compatible with a supernatural origin of life. Was
>Darwin also not a Darwinist in your book?
Johnson considers Darwin to be a weak deist at best, although Gould
emphasises those parts of Darwin's writings that show him to be a
thoroughgoing philosophical materialist, ie. an atheist.
Both creationists and evolutionists doubt that Darwin really believed
in a "Creator" in the Christian sense:
"But the closing paragraph of The Origin of Species offered a sop to
the Christian tradition. There Darwin admits the possibility of a
divine origination of the first living cells from whence all else
came." (Henry C.F.H., "Science and Religion", in Henry C.F.H., ed.,
"Contemporary Evangelical Thought: A Survey", Baker: Grand Rapids
Mi, 1968, p253)
"Darwin, bending somewhat to the religious biases of his time, posited
in the final paragraph of The Origin of Species that "the Creator"
originally breathed life "into a few forms or into one." Then
evolution
took over: "From so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful
and
most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." In private
correspondence, however, he suggested life could have arisen through
chemistry, "in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and
phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc. present."
(Orgel L.E., "The Origin of Life on the Earth", Scientific
American, October 1994, p53).
After all, the full quote says:
Thus, FROM THE WAR OF NATURE, FROM FAMINE AND DEATH, the most exalted
object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of
the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view
of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by
the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet
has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so
simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful
have been, and are being evolved." (Darwin C., "The Origin of
Species", 6th. edition, 1872, Everyman's Library, J.M. Dent & Sons
Ltd: London, 1967, pp462-463).
Regards.
Stephen
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