Evidence for God from Science

Now you're trying to be condescending when all I am doing is pointing out a valid issue with the view that God created animals AS IS to do EXACTLY what they do because He WANTS them to do it that way.

Sorry, Paul, no offense meant, merely poor sense of humor (that happens when you hang out on threads with the crazy clown).

But now we're getting off track. Naturalists/evolutionists (who believe there is no God involved in Creation) all speak of dumb, blind chance, and that evolution could have worked things out far differently but that what happened, JUST happened. They would never assign the words "horrific way" about animal behaviors, as there is NO morality to evolution-created behaviors. Obviously, even if theistic evolution-driven, the animal kingdom was put here for our beneficial usage, their predator/prey relationships. Ironic that any unbelieving evolutionist would not have a problem with predator/prey behaviors if they evolved, but would greatly if God created it. Plus anyone assuming that the PRESENT creation should be expected to be perfect, no blood shed by animals, all design made for great longevity and perfect function - they do not know the Bible very well. The present Creation was put in place and designed to maximize/optimize God's plans for the NEXT creation. Pointing out supposed God-caused flaws and bloodshed by animals is something I'd imagine only unbelievers would do, as they ignorantly think that everything is all about NOW/THIS creation.

And apparently many TEs believe that God doesn't control his creation - and yet Scripture tells us that ALL things will end up exactly as God wants it to - not just that He foreknows how it will end up (He does that as well), but that He is in control of the end results, just as He was of the Creation process, holding things together and directing it just as He desires, orchestrating all conclusions just as He ultimately wants. (No, I will not get sucked into any free will arguments). Truly, IF evolutionary processes were how God created the world, those processes were in no way random. So a TE can never truly look at naturalism's explanations in the way secular evolutionists do - or the Deists do.

Random doesn't mean to biologits what it means to us BUT that aside it is true that many (most?) evolutionary biologist think that evolution happens by pure chance.
They think that the mutations in DNA that lead to evolution happne by either mistakes in the reproduction of dna or by radiation or chemicals in the environment and that these mutations and natural selection is what drives animals to adapt and evolve.
I do NOT agree with this overly "random" view because it simply doesn't add up to the evidence we do have of evolution and I believe that what causes these changes is the built in surival adaptability of the living organism that cause sit to adapt to its environment.
The process has many steps and many "misfires" because it is NOT directly guided and because each organism is rather unique and because of the reproductive process. God created living organisms with the ability to adapt and survive bur does NOT interfere other than to sustain His creation.
I accept that I may be wrong of course
But it seems to me that PURE CHANCE is far more far fetched than I am willing to accept right now.
It seems to me that there is too many issues in how living organisms are and have been to accept that a loving and creative God created them exactly as is with the intent that they be exactly as is.

I think this view from WLC is a good one ot understand that not every evolutionist is a neo-darwinist:
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/why-is-e ... y-believed

(1) Why is the theory of evolution so widely accepted in mainstream science? I think the short answer is that it’s the best naturalistic theory we’ve got. If, as a result of methodological naturalism, the pool of live explanatory options is limited to naturalistic hypotheses, then, at least until recently, the neo-Darwinian theory of biological evolution driven by the mechanisms of genetic mutation and natural selection was, as Alvin Plantinga puts it, the only game in town. Rival naturalistic hypotheses could not equal its explanatory power, scope, and plausibility. No matter how improbable it seems, no matter how enormously far the explanatory power of its mechanisms must be extrapolated beyond the testable evidence, no matter the lack of evidence for many of its tenets, it has to be true because there isn’t any other naturalistic theory that comes close.

It’s helpful to remind ourselves that the word “evolution” is an accordion-word that can be expanded or contracted to suit the occasion. The evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala points out that the word “evolution” can be used to mean at least three different things:

1. The process of change and diversification of living things over time. It is in this sense that biologists say that evolution is a fact. But obviously this fact, so stated, is innocuous and would not be disputed even by the most fundamentalist Young Earth Creationist.

2. Reconstruction of evolutionary history, showing how various lineages branched off from one another on the universal tree of life.

3. The mechanisms which account for evolutionary change. Darwin appealed to natural selection operating on random variations in living things in order to explain the adaptedness of organisms to their environment. With the development of modern genetics, genetic mutations came to supplement the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection by supplying an explanation for the variations on which natural selection works. Accordingly, we can call this hypothesis “neo-Darwinism.”

Now evolution in the senses of (2) and (3) is not an established fact, despite what is said and believed in popular culture. According to Ayala, “The second and third issues—seeking to ascertain evolutionary history as well as to explain how and why evolution takes place—are matters of active scientific investigation. Some conclusions are well-established. Many matters are less certain, others are conjectural, and still others. . . remain largely unknown” (Darwin and Intelligent Design). With respect to (2) Ayala emphasizes, “Unfortunately, there is a lot, lot, lot to be discovered still. To reconstruct evolutionary history, we have to know how the mechanisms operate in detail, and we have only the vaguest idea of how they operate at the genetic level, how genetic change relates to development and to function. . . . I am implying that what would be discovered would be not only details, but some major principles” (Where Darwin Meets the Bible). As for (3), he cautions, “The mechanisms accounting for these changes are still undergoing investigation. . . . The evolution of organisms is universally accepted by biological scientists, while the mechanisms of evolution are still actively investigated and are the subject of debate among scientists”(“The Evolution of Life: An Overview”).

Once you realize that the word “evolution” can be used to refer to any of these three aspects, you begin to understand how misleading it can be when it is asserted that evolution is an established, universally recognized fact.

Indeed, there are very good grounds for scepticism about the neo-Darwinian mechanisms behind evolutionary change. The adequacy of these mechanisms is today being sharply challenged by some of the top evolutionary biologists. In fact, I was intrigued recently to learn that Ayala has apparently since given up on the adequacy of the neo-Darwinian mechanisms. Lyn Margulis, one of the so-called Altenburg 16, a group of evolutionary biologists who met in 2008 at a conference in Altenburg, Austria, to explore the mechanisms behind evolutionary change, reported, “At that meeting [Francisco] Ayala agreed with me when I stated that this doctrinaire neo-Darwinism is dead. He was a practitioner of neo-Darwinism, but advances in molecular genetics, evolution, ecology, biochemistry, and other news had led him to agree that neo-Darwinism’s now dead” (Suzan Mazur, The Altenberg 16 [Berkeley: North Atlantic, 2010], p. 285).

Now it needs to be clearly understood that Ayala is not about to embrace some sort of creationism. Rather additional natural mechanisms will be sought to supplement genetic mutation and natural selection. These are already being suggested in the scientific literature. I have every expectation that during the course of this century the neo-Darwinian mechanisms, which have been long challenged by creationists of various stripes, will come to be recognized as inadequate, and new mechanisms will be recognized. The irony will then be that the community of evolutionary biologists, rather than admitting that the criticisms of the creationists were justified, will say, “Oh, well, we knew all along that the neo-Darwinian mechanisms were inadequate!”--this, despite the public posturing that goes on now in the name of neo-Darwinism!

So while evolution in an innocuous sense is well-established, belief in evolution in senses (2) and (3) is not universal among scientists, and the dominance of neo-Darwinism heretofore is due to the constraints of methodological naturalism and the want of a better naturalistic alternative.

2. If evolution is true, then why didn't God write Genesis differently? It seems to me that the answer to this question must be that the purpose of Genesis is not to teach science. Rather its purpose is theological; it demythologizes the pagan creation myths of Israel’s neighbors, so that the sun, moon, and stars are no longer deities but just things God made, like the plants and animals. It is the demythologization of nature and an assertion of God’s sovereignty.

Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/why-is-e ... z2JUljHT8I

Random doesn't mean to biologits what it means to us BUT that aside it is true that many (most?) evolutionary biologist think that evolution happens by pure chance.

This is a tough comment to respond to. On one hand, yes, evolutionary biology operates under the notion that evolution is not pre-determined. If that is the assumption you are operating under, you can't really call it a science (because you can't really study something if its direction is completely arbitrary and beyond studying via natural means). On the other hand, many evolutionary biologists (and biologists and scientists in general) believe in various types of theistic evolution as well. It would be difficult to perfectly quantify, but even at a very liberal and evolution-centered biology school like the one I attend, most of the professors I've had are not atheists.

They think that the mutations in DNA that lead to evolution happne by either mistakes in the reproduction of dna or by radiation or chemicals in the environment and that these mutations and natural selection is what drives animals to adapt and evolve.

To an extent, yes. Evolution is typically driven by mutations or by various forms of gene transfers between individuals. For instance, bacteria can essentially "trade" genetic information with other bacteria in certain circumstances, creating hybrid bacteria in the process. Or, in cases of reproduction, gene splicing/mixing/rearrangement can cause interesting new things without mutations being directly involved.

I do NOT agree with this overly "random" view because it simply doesn't add up to the evidence we do have of evolution and I believe that what causes these changes is the built in surival adaptability of the living organism that cause sit to adapt to its environment.

I'm not sure what you mean here. In a static environment that has been around for a while, the populations living there are unlikely to undergo any type of major evolution. Without any kind of environmental pressure, there is nothing to "adapt" to...that is, the ancestors of those currently living there survived because they were better suited to that environment, while others died out.

Now, say this ecosystem undergoes various drastic changes in climate or terrain. The populations living there aren't really capable of just changing to adapt to their environment. They have to inherent way of changing their DNA to become better at surviving in this new environment. What might happen is that most of the individuals die out, but a select few already had some feature that was effectively neutral in the old environment, but now serves as a beneficial mutation in the new one, allowing them to out-compete the others. In a few generations, the ones that just happened to "randomly" have the feature(s) that aided their survival will have produced the most offspring. The population will have evolved into a new species or subspecies that is better suited to its environment. That is the evolutionary definition of "random" in evolutionary terms.

According to evolution, there are an effectively infinite number of potential outcomes to evolution, based on what are effectively random changes in the organisms themselves and the environment. That is why the term "random" is used...because evolution is the effect of a number of variables that are not correlated with each other.

And now, to Philip:

Truly, IF evolutionary processes were how God created the world, those processes were in no way random. So a TE can never truly look at naturalism's explanations in the way secular evolutionists do - or the Deists do.

Perhaps not random in the sense that you mean, but take this example: natural selection is a law of nature. Gravity and the other forces of the universe are a law of nature. Any kind of Christian will tell you that God created the laws of nature, obviously.

Now, when I roll dice, I consider the rolls to be random. However, in technical terms, every roll is explicitly "pre-determined" by the laws of physics. I consider them random (as a human), but once you dig deep enough, when I roll a certain way, it has to end up facing the way it ultimately does. No exceptions.

Evolution is analogous in many ways to the dice roll. You are just trading laws of physics for biological laws. While God may have set up the laws of nature so that they will act in a way that guides evolution, to us it is as random and non-seeing as rolling dice.

Another way of seeing it: Natural selection, when put in the circumstances that it has for the past few billions of years, will always work the way it did. Change the various variables and life could easily have evolved in a totally different direction, but for the variables that have affected it in our universe, it ended up here. Just like if I changed the variables of my dice throw (force, weight of the dice, direction of the toss, etc.) the results may have been different. This is how the evolutionary biologist defines randomness.

Philip wrote:

Now you're trying to be condescending when all I am doing is pointing out a valid issue with the view that God created animals AS IS to do EXACTLY what they do because He WANTS them to do it that way.

Sorry, Paul, no offense meant, merely poor sense of humor (that happens when you hang out on threads with the crazy clown).

But now we're getting off track. Naturalists/evolutionists (who believe there is no God involved in Creation) all speak of dumb, blind chance, and that evolution could have worked things out far differently but that what happened, JUST happened. They would never assign the words "horrific way" about animal behaviors, as there is NO morality to evolution-created behaviors. Obviously, even if theistic evolution-driven, the animal kingdom was put here for our beneficial usage, their predator/prey relationships. Ironic that any unbelieving evolutionist would not have a problem with predator/prey behaviors if they evolved, but would greatly if God created it. Plus anyone assuming that the PRESENT creation should be expected to be perfect, no blood shed by animals, all design made for great longevity and perfect function - they do not know the Bible very well. The present Creation was put in place and designed to maximize/optimize God's plans for the NEXT creation. Pointing out supposed God-caused flaws and bloodshed by animals is something I'd imagine only unbelievers would do, as they ignorantly think that everything is all about NOW/THIS creation.

And apparently many TEs believe that God doesn't control his creation - and yet Scripture tells us that ALL things will end up exactly as God wants it to - not just that He foreknows how it will end up (He does that as well), but that He is in control of the end results, just as He was of the Creation process, holding things together and directing it just as He desires, orchestrating all conclusions just as He ultimately wants. (No, I will not get sucked into any free will arguments). Truly, IF evolutionary processes were how God created the world, those processes were in no way random. So a TE can never truly look at naturalism's explanations in the way secular evolutionists do - or the Deists do.

Evolutionists and naturalists are two totally different viewpoints - don't mix the two up. Essentially evolution is neutral on the matter - it has only got the stigma it has because the new atheists hijacked it for their agends

PaulS wrote:
Actually, the issue isn't mine, the issue is one that is raised by skeptics to counter the argument of a intelligent design and, perhaps more importantly, a loving God that create all AS IS.
It is quite clear that God could have created that wasp so that it still does it's job BUT not in such a horrific way and yet He didn't.
How does one reconcile that?

Ok. Then I'm sorry Paul. I assumed by what you wrote, that YOU had an issue with it. I really have nothing to reconcile. I don't find animal death "horrific", in the sense that it is evil. Sure, it can be brutal, but for me to have an issue reconciling animal death with a loving God, I'd have to see it as evil. Which I don't. We get the same argument from some YEC's regarding animal death before Adam's sin. The critics say that God couldn't be a loving God if there were millions of years of death and suffering before man's sin.

Philip wrote:
Sorry, Paul, no offense meant, merely poor sense of humor (that happens when you hang out on threads with the crazy clown).

Hey, watch it Mister!!! I resemble that remark!

RickD wrote:Paul, this is from your macro evolution link:

It is not necessarily easy to "see" macroevolutionary history; there are no firsthand accounts to be read. Instead, we reconstruct the history of life using multiple lines of evidence, including geology, fossils, and living organisms.

So, since macro evolution is not observable, then believing in macro evolution comes from the interpretation of available evidence. So, the evidence for macro evolution really isn't overwhelming. The number of people who interpret the evidence as assuming macro evolution from micro evolution, which is observable, is overwhelming.

Again, look at the Cambrian Explosion. Evidence shows a huge amount of new phyla "suddenly" appearing over a relatively small period of time. Where's the evidence that shows life evolving from non skeletal life to skeletal life?
The Cambrian Explosion fits nicely into the Progressive creation model.

Rick - can you please give me your opinion of the reasons I gave on how the Cambrian explosion could have helped the progress of evolution a few posts back - just to know what you thought. Thank you.

Silvertusk wrote:

RickD wrote:Paul, this is from your macro evolution link:

It is not necessarily easy to "see" macroevolutionary history; there are no firsthand accounts to be read. Instead, we reconstruct the history of life using multiple lines of evidence, including geology, fossils, and living organisms.

So, since macro evolution is not observable, then believing in macro evolution comes from the interpretation of available evidence. So, the evidence for macro evolution really isn't overwhelming. The number of people who interpret the evidence as assuming macro evolution from micro evolution, which is observable, is overwhelming.

Again, look at the Cambrian Explosion. Evidence shows a huge amount of new phyla "suddenly" appearing over a relatively small period of time. Where's the evidence that shows life evolving from non skeletal life to skeletal life?
The Cambrian Explosion fits nicely into the Progressive creation model.

Rick - can you please give me your opinion of the reasons I gave on how the Cambrian explosion could have helped the progress of evolution a few posts back - just to know what you thought. Thank you.

Sure. I'll get to it as soon as I can. I'm at work now.

Philip wrote:Truly, IF evolutionary processes were how God created the world, those processes were in no way random. So a TE can never truly look at naturalism's explanations in the way secular evolutionists do - or the Deists do.

And I agree with that statement.

PaulSacramento wrote:Random doesn't mean to biologits what it means to us BUT that aside it is true that many (most?) evolutionary biologist think that evolution happens by pure chance.
They think that the mutations in DNA that lead to evolution happne by either mistakes in the reproduction of dna or by radiation or chemicals in the environment and that these mutations and natural selection is what drives animals to adapt and evolve.
I do NOT agree with this overly "random" view because it simply doesn't add up to the evidence we do have of evolution and I believe that what causes these changes is the built in surival adaptability of the living organism that cause sit to adapt to its environment.
The process has many steps and many "misfires" because it is NOT directly guided and because each organism is rather unique and because of the reproductive process. God created living organisms with the ability to adapt and survive bur does NOT interfere other than to sustain His creation.
I accept that I may be wrong of course
But it seems to me that PURE CHANCE is far more far fetched than I am willing to accept right now.
It seems to me that there is too many issues in how living organisms are and have been to accept that a loving and creative God created them exactly as is with the intent that they be exactly as is.

The mechanisms in place that drive evolution are anything but random and are highly dependent on physical laws of nature.

Ivellious wrote:
Perhaps not random in the sense that you mean, but take this example: natural selection is a law of nature. Gravity and the other forces of the universe are a law of nature. Any kind of Christian will tell you that God created the laws of nature, obviously.

Now, when I roll dice, I consider the rolls to be random. However, in technical terms, every roll is explicitly "pre-determined" by the laws of physics. I consider them random (as a human), but once you dig deep enough, when I roll a certain way, it has to end up facing the way it ultimately does. No exceptions.

Evolution is analogous in many ways to the dice roll. You are just trading laws of physics for biological laws. While God may have set up the laws of nature so that they will act in a way that guides evolution, to us it is as random and non-seeing as rolling dice.

Another way of seeing it: Natural selection, when put in the circumstances that it has for the past few billions of years, will always work the way it did. Change the various variables and life could easily have evolved in a totally different direction, but for the variables that have affected it in our universe, it ended up here. Just like if I changed the variables of my dice throw (force, weight of the dice, direction of the toss, etc.) the results may have been different. This is how the evolutionary biologist defines randomness.

Good post - In actual fact it is now getting to the stage where Biologists can almost predict where evolution will go in certain species - nothing random or chance about that me thinks.

Silvertusk,

I believe this is what you were referring to:

Silvertusk wrote:
You could have had a breakdown of the continents providing continental shelves which provides a ideal environment for life to flourish and develop. It could have been the end of a long period of glaciation that again changed the environment again providing powerful extrinsic causes. Brian Cox even suggested that maybe at that time light may have broken through the dense cloud barrier at that time where the process of photosynthesis finally worked its magic - the extra abundance of light provided another power extrinsic cause. There are many other theories for the explosion which then led to powerful intrinsic causes in the organisms around at the time. Or of cause God could have caused anyone of these big changes or directly created the massive influx of life himself. Everything I have said above is plausible.

Silver, This is what I was talking about before. When the conditions on earth are ideal for specific kinds of life, God created it. None of what you said points to evolution. It all fits nicely in an OEC/PC worldview. The atmosphere finally allowed sunlight through, so God created plants that need sunlight, etc.

Silver, do a search on the Cambrian Explosion. From what I've read, even from Evolutionist sites, they admit that the evidence shows a rapid appearance of new phyla. That points towards PC, not sped up evolution. Remember the evidence shows an appearance of NEW phyla. Skeletal creatures that didn't exist before.

Silvertusk wrote:

Ivellious wrote:
Perhaps not random in the sense that you mean, but take this example: natural selection is a law of nature. Gravity and the other forces of the universe are a law of nature. Any kind of Christian will tell you that God created the laws of nature, obviously.

Now, when I roll dice, I consider the rolls to be random. However, in technical terms, every roll is explicitly "pre-determined" by the laws of physics. I consider them random (as a human), but once you dig deep enough, when I roll a certain way, it has to end up facing the way it ultimately does. No exceptions.

Evolution is analogous in many ways to the dice roll. You are just trading laws of physics for biological laws. While God may have set up the laws of nature so that they will act in a way that guides evolution, to us it is as random and non-seeing as rolling dice.

Another way of seeing it: Natural selection, when put in the circumstances that it has for the past few billions of years, will always work the way it did. Change the various variables and life could easily have evolved in a totally different direction, but for the variables that have affected it in our universe, it ended up here. Just like if I changed the variables of my dice throw (force, weight of the dice, direction of the toss, etc.) the results may have been different. This is how the evolutionary biologist defines randomness.

Good post - In actual fact it is now getting to the stage where Biologists can almost predict where evolution will go in certain species - nothing random or chance about that me thinks.

Silver, if what you said is true, then look at the key words you said:" in certain species ". That's not macro evolution. Micro evolution does not equal macro evolution.

Rick - can you please give me your opinion of the reasons I gave on how the Cambrian explosion could have helped the progress of evolution a few posts back - just to know what you thought. Thank you.

Rick responded: Sure. I'll get to it as soon as I can. I'm at work now.

You mean Rick actually WORKS? When, HOW? I always thought he was like the godandscience webmaster or something, and that one perk of his job is that he gets to post all day long, yet under the guise that he's supposedly insuring the forum section is properly working. I can always tell when he's been taking a bathroom break or desk sleeping (as there's been at least a 15-minute lag between his post times).

Philip wrote:
You mean Rick actually WORKS? When, HOW?

Oh Gawd, you sound like my wife! Philip, are you sure we weren't married in a past life?

Philip wrote:
I always thought he was like the godandscience webmaster or something, and that one perk of his job is that he gets to post all day long, yet under the guise that he's supposedly insuring the forum section is properly working. I can always tell when he's been taking a bathroom break or desk sleeping (as there's been at least a 15-minute lag between his post times).

I don't know how to even respond to this. I don't know if I should laugh, cry, or jump off a bridge!


Remember Philip, the Klowns know where you live!!!!