Posted on 01/10/2005 2:47:28 PM PST by Mr. Silverback
Antony Flew, the 81-year-old British philosophy professor who taught at Oxford and other leading universities, became an atheist at age 15. Throughout his long career he argued—including in debates with an atheist-turned-Christian named C. S. Lewis—that there was a “presumption of atheism,” that is, the existence of a creator could not be proved.
But he’s now been forced to face the evidence. It comes from the Intelligent Design movement, led by Dr. Phillip Johnson and particularly the work of Michael Behe, the Lehigh biochemist who has proven the “irreducible complexity” of the human cell structure. Though eighty-one years old, Flew has not let his thinking fossilize, but has faithfully followed his own dictum to “go where the evidence leads.”
Christian philosophy professor Gary Habermas of Liberty University conducted an interview with Flew that will be published in the winter issue of Philosophia Christi, the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society and Biola University. Flew told Habermas that a pivotal point in his thinking was when he realized two major flaws in the various theories of how nature might have created itself. First, he recognized that evolutionary theory has no reasonable explanation for “the first emergence of living from non-living matter”—that is, the origin of life. Second, even if a living cell or primitive animal had somehow assembled itself from non-living chemicals, he reasoned it would have no ability to reproduce.
Flew told Habermas, “This is the creature, the evolution of which a truly comprehensive theory of evolution must give some account. Darwin himself was well aware that he had not produced such an account. It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.”
Flew has, thus, become a Deist—that is, he acknowledges God as creator but not as a personal deity. In his opinion, “There is no room either for any supernatural revelation of that God or any transactions between that God and individual human beings.” In fact, he told a group last May that he considers both the Christian God and the Islamic God to be “omnipotent Oriental despots—cosmic Saddam Husseins.”
But a crack is beginning to develop in his opinion that God hasn’t spoken through Scripture. When he reads the first chapter of Genesis, Flew says he’s impressed that a book written thousands of years ago harmonizes with twenty-first-century science. “That this biblical account might be scientifically accurate,” says Flew, “raises the possibility that it is revelation.” A book containing factual statements that no human knew about at the time of writing seems to argue that the authors must have had coaching from the Creator.
The evidence is there for all who will look, as his one-time adversary C. S. Lewis discovered, and as more and more thinking intellectuals are discovering today. So it is that Antony Flew, perhaps the most famous philosopher of atheism, is just a step or two away from the kingdom.
"But I'll bet we're going to be amazed at how different God is and His world is than what we imagine"
I already acknowledge that God is way beyond my understanding! :-)
Yup...He's something else all right.
Already posted.
The conclusion of the thread is that ID is only a religion and has no scientific validity.
Does not the choppy lake in the afternoon storms "organize" itself into a perfectly mirror flat surface in the mornings? It has gone from disorder to order using a simple rule called gravity. Same with evolution.
The other evidence you speak of has been quite thoroughly debunked. There are quite a few quacks in the Christian universe. Jim Jones, the guy who killed hundreds in Jonestown is a good example. As are some itinerant revival preachers. The quacks that make a living touting the "irreducible complexity" hogwash have a good line. And they take in lots of folks who don't really know the details of the science of evolution.
Just think of all those books, video's, and public speaking at churches that pass the plate. I'm sure it's quite a good living. They've probably convinced themselves they're right too, and have no conscience problem whatever.
"Yup...He's something else all right."
Amen. Could not have said it better.
God Bless you on your wonderful journey...see you up There a little later on...
Evolution is a Fact and a Theory
by Laurence Moran
Copyright © 1993-2002
[Last Update: January 22, 1993]
When non-biologists talk about biological evolution they often confuse two different aspects of the definition. On the one hand there is the question of whether or not modern organisms have evolved from older ancestral organisms or whether modern species are continuing to change over time. On the other hand there are questions about the mechanism of the observed changes... how did evolution occur? Biologists consider the existence of biological evolution to be a fact. It can be demonstrated today and the historical evidence for its occurrence in the past is overwhelming. However, biologists readily admit that they are less certain of the exact mechanism of evolution; there are several theories of the mechanism of evolution. Stephen J. Gould has put this as well as anyone else:
In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect fact"--part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus the power of the creationist argument: evolution is "only" a theory and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory. If evolution is worse than a fact, and scientists can't even make up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope was campaign rhetoric): "Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science--that is, not believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was."
Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.
Moreover, "fact" doesn't mean "absolute certainty"; there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us falsely for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
Evolutionists have been very clear about this distinction of fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory--natural selection--to explain the mechanism of evolution.
- Stephen J. Gould, " Evolution as Fact and Theory"; Discover, May 1981
Gould is stating the prevailing view of the scientific community. In other words, the experts on evolution consider it to be a fact. This is not an idea that originated with Gould as the following quotations indicate:
Let me try to make crystal clear what is established beyond reasonable doubt, and what needs further study, about evolution. Evolution as a process that has always gone on in the history of the earth can be doubted only by those who are ignorant of the evidence or are resistant to evidence, owing to emotional blocks or to plain bigotry. By contrast, the mechanisms that bring evolution about certainly need study and clarification. There are no alternatives to evolution as history that can withstand critical examination. Yet we are constantly learning new and important facts about evolutionary mechanisms.
- Theodosius Dobzhansky "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution", American Biology Teacher vol. 35 (March 1973) reprinted in Evolution versus Creationism, J. Peter Zetterberg ed., ORYX Press, Phoenix AZ 1983
Also:
It is time for students of the evolutionary process, especially those who have been misquoted and used by the creationists, to state clearly that evolution is a fact, not theory, and that what is at issue within biology are questions of details of the process and the relative importance of different mechanisms of evolution. It is a fact that the earth with liquid water, is more than 3.6 billion years old. It is a fact that cellular life has been around for at least half of that period and that organized multicellular life is at least 800 million years old. It is a fact that major life forms now on earth were not at all represented in the past. There were no birds or mammals 250 million years ago. It is a fact that major life forms of the past are no longer living. There used to be dinosaurs and Pithecanthropus, and there are none now. It is a fact that all living forms come from previous living forms. Therefore, all present forms of life arose from ancestral forms that were different. Birds arose from nonbirds and humans from nonhumans. No person who pretends to any understanding of the natural world can deny these facts any more than she or he can deny that the earth is round, rotates on its axis, and revolves around the sun.
The controversies about evolution lie in the realm of the relative importance of various forces in molding evolution.
- R. C. Lewontin "Evolution/Creation Debate: A Time for Truth" Bioscience 31, 559 (1981) reprinted in Evolution versus Creationism, op cit.
This concept is also explained in introductory biology books that are used in colleges and universities (and in some of the better high schools). For example, in some of the best such textbooks we find:
Today, nearly all biologists acknowledge that evolution is a fact. The term theory is no longer appropriate except when referring to the various models that attempt to explain how life evolves... it is important to understand that the current questions about how life evolves in no way implies any disagreement over the fact of evolution.
- Neil A. Campbell, Biology 2nd ed., 1990, Benjamin/Cummings, p. 434
Also:
Since Darwin's time, massive additional evidence has accumulated supporting the fact of evolution--that all living organisms present on earth today have arisen from earlier forms in the course of earth's long history. Indeed, all of modern biology is an affirmation of this relatedness of the many species of living things and of their gradual divergence from one another over the course of time. Since the publication of The Origin of Species, the important question, scientifically speaking, about evolution has not been whether it has taken place. That is no longer an issue among the vast majority of modern biologists. Today, the central and still fascinating questions for biologists concern the mechanisms by which evolution occurs.
- Helena Curtis and N. Sue Barnes, Biology 5th ed. 1989, Worth Publishers, p. 972
One of the best introductory books on evolution (as opposed to introductory biology) is that by Douglas J. Futuyma, and he makes the following comment:
A few words need to be said about the "theory of evolution," which most people take to mean the proposition that organisms have evolved from common ancestors. In everyday speech, "theory" often means a hypothesis or even a mere speculation. But in science, "theory" means "a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or causes of something known or observed." as the Oxford English Dictionary defines it. The theory of evolution is a body of interconnected statements about natural selection and the other processes that are thought to cause evolution, just as the atomic theory of chemistry and the Newtonian theory of mechanics are bodies of statements that describe causes of chemical and physical phenomena. In contrast, the statement that organisms have descended with modifications from common ancestors--the historical reality of evolution--is not a theory. It is a fact, as fully as the fact of the earth's revolution about the sun. Like the heliocentric solar system, evolution began as a hypothesis, and achieved "facthood" as the evidence in its favor became so strong that no knowledgeable and unbiased person could deny its reality. No biologist today would think of submitting a paper entitled "New evidence for evolution;" it simply has not been an issue for a century.
- Douglas J. Futuyma, Evolutionary Biology, 2nd ed., 1986, Sinauer Associates, p. 15
There are readers of these newsgroups who reject evolution for religious reasons. In general these readers oppose both the fact of evolution and theories of mechanisms, although some anti-evolutionists have come to realize that there is a difference between the two concepts. That is why we see some leading anti-evolutionists admitting to the fact of "microevolution"--they know that evolution can be demonstrated. These readers will not be convinced of the "facthood" of (macro)evolution by any logical argument and it is a waste of time to make the attempt. The best that we can hope for is that they understand the argument that they oppose. Even this simple hope is rarely fulfilled.
There are some readers who are not anti-evolutionist but still claim that evolution is "only" a theory which can't be proven. This group needs to distinguish between the fact that evolution occurs and the theory of the mechanism of evolution.
We also need to distinguish between facts that are easy to demonstrate and those that are more circumstantial. Examples of evolution that are readily apparent include the fact that modern populations are evolving and the fact that two closely related species share a common ancestor. The evidence that Homo sapiens and chimpanzees share a recent common ancestor falls into this category. There is so much evidence in support of this aspect of primate evolution that it qualifies as a fact by any common definition of the word "fact."
In other cases the available evidence is less strong. For example, the relationships of some of the major phyla are still being worked out. Also, the statement that all organisms have descended from a single common ancestor is strongly supported by the available evidence, and there is no opposing evidence. However, it is not yet appropriate to call this a "fact" since there are reasonable alternatives.
Finally, there is an epistemological argument against evolution as fact. Some readers of these newsgroups point out that nothing in science can ever be "proven" and this includes evolution. According to this argument, the probability that evolution is the correct explanation of life as we know it may approach 99.9999...9% but it will never be 100%. Thus evolution cannot be a fact. This kind of argument might be appropriate in a philosophy class (it is essentially correct) but it won't do in the real world. A "fact," as Stephen J. Gould pointed out (see above), means something that is so highly probable that it would be silly not to accept it. This point has also been made by others who contest the nit-picking epistemologists.
The honest scientist, like the philosopher, will tell you that nothing whatever can be or has been proved with fully 100% certainty, not even that you or I exist, nor anyone except himself, since he might be dreaming the whole thing. Thus there is no sharp line between speculation, hypothesis, theory, principle, and fact, but only a difference along a sliding scale, in the degree of probability of the idea. When we say a thing is a fact, then, we only mean that its probability is an extremely high one: so high that we are not bothered by doubt about it and are ready to act accordingly. Now in this use of the term fact, the only proper one, evolution is a fact. For the evidence in favor of it is as voluminous, diverse, and convincing as in the case of any other well established fact of science concerning the existence of things that cannot be directly seen, such as atoms, neutrons, or solar gravitation ....
So enormous, ramifying, and consistent has the evidence for evolution become that if anyone could now disprove it, I should have my conception of the orderliness of the universe so shaken as to lead me to doubt even my own existence. If you like, then, I will grant you that in an absolute sense evolution is not a fact, or rather, that it is no more a fact than that you are hearing or reading these words.
- H. J. Muller, "One Hundred Years Without Darwin Are Enough" School Science and Mathematics 59, 304-305. (1959) reprinted in Evolution versus Creationism op cit.
In any meaningful sense evolution is a fact, but there are various theories concerning the mechanism of evolution.
"God Bless you on your wonderful journey...see you up There a little later on..."
Amen to that also!
Really? Then you read much more detail into those few hundred words in Genesis than I do.
There are several apparent contradictions in Genesis. The first chapter starts with one creation story. If you read chapter 2 verse 4 (or thereabouts) there is an entirely different creation story.
You can rationalize that the two are the same thing, merely re-worded. But once you rationalize sequence order differences, and timing conflicts etc. you've then rationalized that there is no explicit description of HOW God created life in Genesis. The Bible basically says "God did it", and really doesn't attempt to explain how. That's what science does, with more and less success sometimes.
Since you've thrown out sequence and time from the problem, the scientific view of how life came to be fits in Genesis just fine.
Bottom line, this is a disagreement on the interpretation of Genesis. It is not something that should be brought up in science class, and is not something that should allow the political left to distract us from the important issues we face.
"In any meaningful sense evolution is a fact, but there are various theories concerning the mechanism of evolution."
If that is the conclusion you have drawn based upon the "data", then I won't argue with you. I just have drawn a different conclusion based upon the same "data". Apparently, we have each brought different paradigms to the analysis of data. Irreconcilable differences.
The evidence says he will soon die and he wants to cover the bases.
There are no atheists in fox holes.
"Since you've thrown out sequence and time from the problem, the scientific view of how life came to be fits in Genesis just fine."
IMHO you better reread the passages. The order of appearances of life forms does not square with current "scientific" consensus even if one concedes that "days" can mean incredibile long "ages". BTW - There are not "two" different creation stories in Genesis. The "second" story is merely an amplification of the first -centering on mankind specifically.
What data has ID collected? I know of none other than misinterpreted Bible verses.
Gen 1 is close enough considering the non-scientific nature of the culture and the language. Day is an indefinite period of time confirmed by Gen 2:4.
The Adam story is an attempt to explain where we came from, adapted from a pagan story that was told many centuries before.
To take either Gen 1 or Gen 2 in a simplistic manner without injecting the milleu of the time of writing and the spiritual aspect is just plain silly.
No, you had better do the re-reading.
The two creation stories have specific sequences, and they are completly different. Let's go in sequence.
Genesis 1:1 [created heaven and earth]
1:3 [created light]
1:4 [created darkness]
Hold it. Isn't darkness the lack of light? How could darkness be created AFTER light?
1:9 [created land and water]
1:11 [plants]
1:14 [created sun and moon]
Now lets stop for a second. God created light and darkness, then plants. But THEN he created the sun and the moon? How is that?
Quite obviously we have to throw out Genesis 1 as a sequential description of the creation of life, because plants cannot live without sunlight. And it makes little sense either that the earth would have light (Gen 1:3), but no sun and moon (Gen 1:14)
And what was the Earth doing all this time with no sun to orbit? Are you also throwing out orbital mechanics along with Evolution? And the gravitational disruption that would happen when God zapped the sun and moon into being. Think of the Tsunamis that would happen by turning on the tides suddenly like that.
Let's continue:
Genesis 2:4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, [This is the preamble of an entirely different creation story. How do you think the book of Genesis came into being anyway? My Old Testament History class at Oklahoma Baptist University taught me that Genesis was a collection of oral stories first transcribed by Moses. The fact that there are two stories here would seem to confirm that explanation]
Genesis 2:5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. [This is important in this creation story. God did not yet create plants, because there was no man to tend them]
Gen 2:6 [created mist and water]
Gen 2:7 [formed man from dust]
Gen 2:8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. [The second story explicity says that the garden (plants) were not created until AFTER man. This disagrees with the explicit sequence in Gen 1]
These clear contradictions must be rationalized, and to do so you must acknowledge that the Bible does not spell out a clear sequence of creation, or of the time involved. Once you throw sequence and time from the creation stories, the Bible can easily be rationalized to allow for Evolution.
It is just so much easier to interpret the Bible in a way that allows God to be great enough to have created evolution first. The bottom line is that the Bible isn't a science text. It says WHO did it, not HOW.
While atheism may make more sense to them it doesnt offer them any hope of something after death. A lot of people prefer to have that hope than to think they are just going to rot in the dirt.
Well, I figure I'm the product of a sperm and an egg, well, eeeewwwww. I don't want to think about it.
After that, the idea that God may have used a lowly centipede a few million years ago as a tool isn't much different than making me from dust.
Do you like dust more than centipedes?
"What data has ID collected? I know of none other than misinterpreted Bible verses."
When I said "data" I was referring to what is observeable in the world - life forms, fossils, DNA, etc. All the same things evolutionary proponents use to state their case. I draw different conclusions from the same observable data.
BTW - Would you please stop tying me to ID proponents. Most of those folks would not accept a creationist. Creationists and ID folks are two separate groups.
"These clear contradictions must be rationalized, and to do so you must acknowledge that the Bible does not spell out a clear sequence of creation, or of the time involved"
No they don't have to "rationalized", and no one must not acknowledge what you state. Your exegesis of text is flawed - I don't have the time to explain and I don't think you are an appropriate pupil(no insult intended). However, you have made the point I was trying to emphasize. The sequence of the chapter 1 does not square with science, even assuming great spans of time. To say we must "throw it out" is clear folly.
While we throw it out, then throw anything else that doesn't fit in Genesis or anyone's particular belief system? IMHO it is you that are rationalizing. You are trying to live in two worlds at the same time.
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