Is not natural selection just the demise of the least fit?
My understanding is that selection happens when an organism has fewer offspring than another organism. That might happen, for instance, if an animal dies young but also if it is just less successful in a given environment. Darwin first postulated "natural selection" which was a synthesis of his observations of the natural world and the wide-spread understanding that animals could be engineered by breeding practices. The leap was to postulate that the same process would yield an altogether new species.
But we know a lot more than Darwin did. We know there are several different processes that can change the makeup of a population, including genetic drift, mutation and more. We can see populations of short-lived organisms change before our eyes, like the antibiotic resistant bacteria, sometimes changing into forms not existent before, like a new strain of flu. We know the importance of diversity in a population because that gives it something to change to. We know that sexual reproduction is more successful than mitosis or budding because sexual reproduction yields more diversity. In other words, we know God is pretty darn smart.
The motivation for my question is I think you have allowed atheists, or non Christians at least, to set the terms of the debate and you have accepted those terms. "If evolution is true my religion is false."
Science can make mistakes and have dead ends, especially on the margins. The big bang or worm holes or string theory could be bogus. But your characterization of science you find problematic as dogma is simply false. I'm not a biologist. My degree is in physics. But I know first hand that scientific literature is full of competing hypothesis and attempts to support or disprove all of them. But, after a while, some explanations become widely accepted because they survive every credible challenge while predicting new phenomena.
Saying "God did it" is not considered credible because, by definition, it's not science. That doesn't mean there is no God. Nor does it mean that salvation is not achieved through accepting Jesus. It just means that invoking God is not science anymore than making a movie is science.
If you respond by trying to spar with the tedious work and considered conclusions of thousands upon thousand of scientists over 200 years you are going to lose because the evidence they go by has become gargantuan. If your response to all that is to claim you can PROVE "God did it" then how will you do that?
We cannot even PROVE to the Buddhists they are wrong. Nor have the Amish been able to PROVE to the Roman Catholics they are wrong who can't prove to the Greek Orthodox who can't prove to the Jews who can't prove to the atheists....
My goal is not to convince you that your faith is wrong. Quite the contrary. I believe you have set up a false dichotomy and, in so doing, it is YOU who have jeopardized your faith.
If you believe that your faith is incompatible with evolution, or any other science, you will end up doing more and more complex mental gymnastics to deny the science that becomes all but irrefutable over time. Maybe you'll be lucky and the scientists will discover, on their own, they were all wrong. I wouldn't want to have my faith depend on that.
Your only option, then, will be to deny that reason works to find truth and to call reason a faith-based dogma as you have already called evolution. If that happens you will be marginalized and have no hope of ever convincing anyone who does not already agree with you.
"My understanding is that selection happens when an organism has fewer offspring than another organism. That might happen, for instance, if an animal dies young but also if it is just less successful in a given environment. Darwin first postulated "natural selection" which was a synthesis of his observations of the natural world and the wide-spread understanding that animals could be engineered by breeding practices. The leap was to postulate that the same process would yield an altogether new species.
But we know a lot more than Darwin did. We know there are several different processes that can change the makeup of a population, including genetic drift, mutation and more. We can see populations of short-lived organisms change before our eyes, like the antibiotic resistant bacteria, sometimes changing into forms not existent before, like a new strain of flu. We know the importance of diversity in a population because that gives it something to change to. We know that sexual reproduction is more successful than mitosis or budding because sexual reproduction yields more diversity. In other words, we know God is pretty darn smart.
The motivation for my question is I think you have allowed atheists, or non Christians at least, to set the terms of the debate and you have accepted those terms. "If evolution is true my religion is false."
Science can make mistakes and have dead ends, especially on the margins. The big bang or worm holes or string theory could be bogus. But your characterization of science you find problematic as dogma is simply false. I'm not a biologist. My degree is in physics. But I know first hand that scientific literature is full of competing hypothesis and attempts to support or disprove all of them. But, after a while, some explanations become widely accepted because they survive every credible challenge while predicting new phenomena.
Saying "God did it" is not considered credible because, by definition, it's not science. That doesn't mean there is no God. Nor does it mean that salvation is not achieved through accepting Jesus. It just means that invoking God is not science anymore than making a movie is science.
If you respond by trying to spar with the tedious work and considered conclusions of thousands upon thousand of scientists over 200 years you are going to lose because the evidence they go by has become gargantuan. If your response to all that is to claim you can PROVE "God did it" then how will you do that?
We cannot even PROVE to the Buddhists they are wrong. Nor have the Amish been able to PROVE to the Roman Catholics they are wrong who can't prove to the Greek Orthodox who can't prove to the Jews who can't prove to the atheists....
My goal is not to convince you that your faith is wrong. Quite the contrary. I believe you have set up a false dichotomy and, in so doing, it is YOU who have jeopardized your faith.
If you believe that your faith is incompatible with evolution, or any other science, you will end up doing more and more complex mental gymnastics to deny the science that becomes all but irrefutable over time. Maybe you'll be lucky and the scientists will discover, on their own, they were all wrong. I wouldn't want to have my faith depend on that.
Your only option, then, will be to deny that reason works to find truth and to call reason a faith-based dogma as you have already called evolution. If that happens you will be marginalized and have no hope of ever convincing anyone who does not already agree with you."