On Mon, 18 Nov 1996 13:37:58 -0600, Andy May wrote:
AM>Don't think I'm a hick or anything; that's just how we say hi here
>at Texas A&M. The FAQ said to introduce ourselves when we join the
>mailing list, so I guess that's what I'm doing now.
Howdy Andy, for Western Australia, the State that is at least two or
three times the size of Texas! :-)
>AM>I am a freshman studying ABSOLUTELY NOTHING here at A&M (that is,
>I'm in General Studies until I can figure out my major.) Despite my
>present academic indecisiveness, I harbor an intense interest in
>Questions of Origins and Other Big and Important things.
You've come to the right place! Welcome:-)
>AM>My introduction into the debate came during the summer of 1995,
>where I received a heavy dose of YEC (Morris, Gish, etc) at a
>Christian conference in Colorado. Ecstatic with my new "discovery",
>I came home and was promptly brought down to earth by the
>anti-creationist works of Futuyma, Kitcher, Gould, Dawkins, and
>others. I subsequently underwent an examinations of both positions,
>and am still forming my opinions, under the influence of PEJ, Behe,
>Moreland's _Creation Hypothesis_, Ratzsch, etc.
I am glad you thought to check out the alternative to YEC. Mostly the
"anti-creationist works" only mention what Johnson calls the
"official caricature" of creationism, namely YEC.
There is an emerging "Mere Creation" position being forged by
Johnson, Moreland, Behe, etc., which concentrates on the primary
issue of creation by an external Intelligent Designer and avoids
(for the time being at least) the minefield of Bible-Science
issues:
"Deciding what is primary and what is secondary is often difficult,
but in the case of evolution, it was easy for me. The primary point
is not how long it took God to create, or whether he created things
abruptly or gradually, or whether the first chapters of Genesis are
to be interpreted literally or figuratively. These are all important
issues in their way, but they are secondary. The primary issue is
whether God created us at all. The naturalists say that our creator
was not an all-knowing and loving God, but a combination of chance
events and impersonal natural laws. What is more, they claim that
evolutionary science has proved this to be the case." (Phillip E.
Johnson, "Shouting `Heresy' in the Temple of Darwin", Christianity
Today, October 24, 1994, p26)
A secondary issue (although arguably it is primary) is the issue of
naturalistic vs supernaturalistic ways of thinking. If there is no
God, then clearly the debate is over before it begins. Something
like Neo-Darwinist evolution just has to be true, because by
definition there was nothing else available.
But Christians by definition, believe there is a God, so the issue
comes down to if He intervenes supernaturally in His creation.
Theistic evolutionists would either deny this, or minimise it. YECs
would maximise it, and Progressive Creationists (like me) would
expect that God has intervened supernaturally in biological
history at strategic points, by analogy with His interventions in
human history.
So vehement has been the denial of some TEs that God intervenes in
biological history that Johnson argues this is, in effect, "Theistic
Naturalism":
"What theistic evolutionists have failed above all to comprehend is
that the conflict is not over "facts" but over ways of thinking. The
problem is not just with any specific doctrine of Darwinian science,
but with the naturalistic rules of thought that Darwinian scientists
employ to derive those doctrines. If scientists had actually
observed natural selection creating new organs, or had seen a
step-by-step process of fundamental change consistently recorded in
the fossil record, such observations could readily be interpreted as
evidence of God's use of secondary causes to create. But Darwinian
scientists have not observed anything like that. What they have done
is to assume as a matter of first principle that purposeless material
processes can do all the work of biological creation because,
according to their philosophy, nothing else was available. They have
defined their task as finding the most plausible-or least
implausible-description of how biological creation could occur in the
absence of a creator. The specific answers they derive may or may
not be reconcilable with theism, but the manner of thinking is
profoundly atheistic. To accept the answers as indubitably true is
inevitably to accept the thinking that generated those answers. That
is why I think the appropriate term for the accommodationist position
is not "theistic evolution," but rather theistic naturalism. Under
either name, it is a disastrous error." (Phillip E. Johnson,
"Shouting `Heresy' in the Temple of Darwin", Christianity Today,
October 24, 1994, p26)
>AM>I confess that I am still somewhat uninformed, although that it
>changing every day. Next semester I have signed up for an
>introductory course entitled Principles of Evolution, and hope to
>learn as much as I can. Most of my reading so far has come from the
>popular material on both sides, but that too with change in the next
>several months. I beg the readers' forgiveness if I make any naive
>or unsupported arguments, and will try to back myself up as often as
>possible.
It would be interesting to hear what is being taught under
"Principles of Evolution". Indeed, it would be amazing if they
managed to define what "Evolution" means, let alone its "Principles"!
In my experience, about two-thirds of the arguments for "Evolution"
are arguments for *common ancestry*. (The other one-third are
theological arguments that "God wouldn't have done it this way").
But since pre-Darwinian evolutionists like Buffon and Lamarck
accepted common ancestry (as acknowledged even by Darwin in his
Origin of Species), this is a necessary but not sufficent diagnostic
of *Darwinian* "Evolution". Indeed, creationists of all stripes
accept some form of common ancestry. Indeed, Mike Behe and David
Wilcox accept common ancestry, yet deny Darwinian macroevolution:
"The word "evolution" carries many associations. Usually it means
common descent - the idea that all organisms living and dead are
related by common ancestry. I have no quarrel with the idea of
common descent, and continue to think it explains similarities among
species. By itself, however, common descent doesn't explain the vast
differences among species." (Behe M., "Darwin Under the Microscope",
New York Times, October 29, 1996)
"This paper concerns the appearance of biological structure, not the
tie of such appearance to biotic descent. Evidence for structural
difference/descent does not constitute evidence for the mechanism by
which structural transformation took place. Therefore, the sorts of
evidence that simply indicate relationship and/or descent from a
common ancestor (e.g., molecular clock data, fossil sequences,
chromosomal banding, and other measures of similarity) are not
relevant to this question unless they indicate the nature of the
creative mechanism that produced novelty during that descent.
Evidence of ancestry does not imply knowledge of the morphogenetic
mechanisms that are able to produce novelty. This was perhaps better
understood in the nineteenth century than it is today (Muller and
Wagner, 1991). Indeed, by 1850, almost all researchers accepted
common descent (Gillespie, 1979; Desmond, 1989). The unique
implication of Darwin's theory was therefore not descent, but its
suggestion that the source of biotic order was to be found in the
natural (material) order." (Wilcox D.L. "A Blindfolded Watchmaker:
The Arrival of the Fittest", in Buell J. & Hearn V., eds.,
"Darwinism: Science or Philosophy?", Foundation for Thought and
Ethics: Richardson TX, 1994, p195)
What *Darwinian* "Evolution" purports to offer is a *naturalistic
mechanism* by which all living things have descended, with
modification, from a common ancestor (and before that from non-living
chemicals). Darwin himself admitted that anything less than this was
"unsatisfactory":
"In considering the Origin of Species, it is quite conceivable that a
naturalist, reflecting on the mutual affinities of organic beings, on
their embryological relations, their geographical distribution,
geological succession, and other such facts, might come to the
conclusion that species had not been independently created, but had
descended, like varieties, from other species. Nevertheless, such a
conclusion, even if well founded, would be unsatisfactory, until it
could be shown how the innumerable species inhabiting this world have
been modified, so as to acquire that perfection of structure and
coadaptation which justly excites our admiration." (Darwin C.R.,
"The Origin of Species", 6th edition 1872, Everyman's Library, J.M.
Dent & Sons: London, 1967 reprint, p18)
Yet this is precisely the situation today. All evolutionists claim
that "evolution is a fact", yet they all admit that they do not
know exactly *how* this evolution has taken place (particularly
at the higher taxonomic levels). That is, they have no *mechanism*
that explains this so-called "fact":
"Evolution is the process by which all living things have developed
from primitive organisms through changes occurring over billions of
years, a progression that includes the most advanced animals and
plants. Exactly how evolution occurs is still a matter of debate, but
that it occurs is a scientific fact..." (Volpe E.P., "Evolution",
Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia, 1995)
"Although the fact of evolution is scientifically accepted as underlying
modern biology, theories that concern themselves with the processes
of evolution continue to be debated and refined." (Valentine J.W.,
"Evolution," Microsoft Encarta, Microsoft Corporation/Funk & Wagnall's
Corporation 1993)
Of course creationists could say the same thing: Creation is a fact,
but "exactly how" it "occurs is still a matter of debate"! :-)
>AM>This may be the last heard from me for a while-I'm just going to
>hang around and read posts until I catch up with all of the ongoing
>conversations. See you in a bit. . .
Looking forward to hearing from you.
God bless.
Steve
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