Replies

" A very unchristian revisionism and goal-post moving on the part of evolution-deniers."

I just got here. You are painting with a very broad brush. I never said that Darwin had nothing useful to contribute. Biology has been greatly enriched by his observations. I don't think I have ever challenged mutation and natural selection in my life. It is unfair for you to attack my character based on the actions of others that you lump in the same group.

Biology is not evolution. Evolution is a theory within the science of biology. I do not deny all of evolutionary theory nor the usefulness of related nomenclature as a learning tool. The discovery of the mechanisms of mutation and natural selection is a tremendous achievement for biology. But the proposition that all life came from a single common ancestor is not essential to scientific progress and the application of biology in practical areas like medicine or agriculture.

"In my last post I gave you 29+ Lines of Evidence for common descent."

Thanks again for this link. I have been reading it. The information presented does support very well the idea that all life is related. That is not equivalent, in my mind, to universal ancestry. Perhaps I am biased from the lack of understanding of how fossils are dated. My lack of confidence in this aspect of archeology undermines the persuasiveness of the detailed, and well presented I might add, evidence presented on this site.

My faith relies on, among other things, firsthand experience which includes supernatural intervention in response to prayer to the God of the Bible. If experience contradicts my understanding of Biblical doctrine then I will be forced to reconcile my interpretation of the Bible's meaning with these new experiences. I can no more abandon my faith than I can abandon science. But, so far, I am skeptical about the scientific propositions I have seen.

"What examples can you provide of a possible designer being unintelligent? Jury-rigged design."

The arguments at the link you posted (in this answer) all come down to two basic ideas. Some features of living things serve no apparent purpose (for that particular living thing). And certain characteristics of living things appear inefficient in the way they work. While your link provides several good examples and cleverly shows how evolutionary theory answers the supplied "problems", they do not even begin to build a case against intelligent design, to my satisfaction. You really do not need the latest discoveries to find examples like this in nature either. Why an ostrich can't fly comes to mind. (I think that example may have been used on the site actually.)

But these things are explained by the part of evolutionary theory we agree on. It is a matter of fact that living things adapt and mutate, and that natural selection occurs. It is factual that current life forms are different in many characteristics from their ancestors. (The degree of DNA change is subjective because we can only speculate the amount of genetic information that has been added, subtracted or otherwise transferred from or to various creatures. That is, we do not have physical samples of ancient DNA, but we can make some reasonable assumptions.)

The brick wall of evolutionary theory is the organizing principle of the basic building blocks of life - genetics. For example, quantum mechanics may explain or nearly explain why matter is organized the way it is. In the sun it is plasma due to the environment there. On the earth and, we assume, many other places in the universe, it is the periodic table. The underlying harmonic patterns have a reason or cause. But there is no experimental data that shows any environmental condition that results in matter self-organizing into even the simplest living thing. I understand that evolutionary theory does not claim to explain this, nor does it need to in order to stand as a theory. Yet, statistical odds, even superficially, support the idea that organizing matter into living forms requires an outside force or environment that organizes the matter with conscious intent; it is not random. Since intelligence appears to be involved, it is not unscientific to propose that intelligence was involved in origin of species.

There is no aberration or inefficiency in nature that cannot be explained by three factors. One, neither the environment nor life today is the same as it was long ago. (Evolution agrees.) Two, intelligent design does not negate possible intelligent intervention that may have resulted in less than optimum conditions in the environment and less than optimum performance of living things. (This is indeed what Biblical creationism has ALWAYS held. This is not an attempt to adapt creationism to fit modern science.) Three, by way of simple analogy, computer programs are simpler but similar to living things. All computer programs exist as a direct or indirect result of "intelligent design" (of the programmer). Most programs by the same programmer use code libraries to make the process of design more efficient. This results in unnecessary, redundant and inefficient (technically) code in subsequent programs. This concept of programming design is called "re-usability". This analogy fits perfectly within the scientific findings of biology.

" the Quixotic Message ...Behe touts as irreducibly complex in Darwin's Black Box. Maybe it's IC...."

Very funny. I can appreciate the humor of the Quixotic Message.

I have not really considered the issue of irreducible complexity. It seems to me that it would be more of an issue of the location of information than its complex organization. For example, at the beginning of life, where did all of the genetic information reside? Perhaps, living things naturally self-organize due to the very nature of matter, but this has not been demonstrated if it has been proposed at all. It seems that this information (various DNA patterns) must have come from one of four sources. One, self-organization, i.e. it is built into matter. Two, common descent from a single living organism that was HIGHLY COMPLEX (because it contained ALL of the genetic information of all living things for all history). Three, the information existed in a "primordial soup" which was available for living things to absorb and which we do not know or need to know the origins of for the purpose of evolutionary theory. (And we do not know why this soup has vanished.) Four, the information was designed intelligently.

Please forgive my ignorance if this is a simply answered question, because I just have never studied evolutionary theory enough to know if there is a satisfactory answer. Please tell me why common ancestry makes sense in light of the genetic information issue. In other words, as I postulated in items two and three above, genetic inheritance leads me naturally to assume that IF life had a single common ancestor, it would need to be incredibly complex, containing all of the information of all currently living and now extinct living things. This does not fit the idea of a simple life form being the original ancestor. However, if this genetic information existed outside of this single ancestor, would it not logically reside in other living things? Therefore, I would expect either a single, complex ancestor or many simple ancestors that collectively contain all genetic information. But this diversity contradicts the proposed common ancestry unless this form of life could simultaneously be one species yet vary GREATLY in its genetic structure from one instance to another. So I find a paradox in following the logic of universal ancestry. Either ancestry should become simpler and MORE diverse as we look backward through history, or it should be MORE complex. Does that make sense?

"Before you even bother to tell me I dare not question His purposes, ask yourself if you can base a science on not daring to question His purposes."

It is neither unscientific or irreverent to ask "Why". Jesus taught, "I no longer call you 'servants', I call you 'friends'; because a servant does not know what his Master is doing."

The desire to know why is itself an evidence of a spiritual dimension to this issue. Our innate desire to understand where we came from and why we are here has been described by some as the God-shaped void within our hearts.

Faith does not contradict science, it complements it.