Christians can't afford to oppose evolution [says evangelical-biologist]

The fuel driving this science education debate is easy to understand. Scientists are suspicious that Christians are trying to insert religious beliefs into science.

They recognize that science must be free, not subject to religious veto. On the other hand, many Christians fear that science is bent on removing God from the picture altogether, beginning in the science classroom--a direction unacceptable to them.

They recognize that when scientists make definitive pronouncements regarding ultimate causes, the legitimate boundaries of science have been exceeded. For these Christians, intelligent design seems to provide protection against a perceived assault from science.

But does it really lend protection? Or does it supply yet another reason to question Christian credibility?

The science education debate need not be so contentious. If the intelligent design movement was truly about keeping the legitimate plausibility of a creator in the scientific picture, the case would seem quite strong.

Unfortunately, despite claims to the contrary, the Dover version of intelligent design has a different objective: opposition to evolution. And that opposition is becoming an increasing liability for Christians.

The reason for this liability is simple: While a growing array of fossils shows evolution occurring over several billion years, information arising from a variety of other scientific fields is confirming and extending the evolutionary record in thoroughly compelling ways.

The conclusions are crystal clear: Earth is very old. All life is connected. Evolution is a physical and biological reality.

In spite of this information, many Christians remain skeptical, seemingly mired in a naive religious bog that sees evolution as merely a personal opinion, massive scientific ruse or atheistic philosophy.

"How does this statement reconcile archaeological sites in the western US which have pretty much continuous occupation during the 4,000-5,000 years ago time period during which most sources claim the flood occurred?"

(1) How were those dates determined? It is possible that the dating methods are faulty.
(2) It is possible that Creationist timelines are faulty.

Most of the dates have been obtained by radiocarbon dating, with some based on other means. Radiocarbon dating has been found to be pretty accurate; even biblical scholars have agreed with to this. These sites are good examples:

The American Scientific Affiliation: Science in Christian Perspective Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective by Dr. Roger C. Wiens.
This site, BiblicalChronologist.org has a series of good articles on radiocarbon dating.

Are tree-ring chronologies reliable? (The Biblical Chronologist, Vol. 5, No. 1)
How does the radiocarbon dating method work? (The Biblical Chronologist, Vol. 5, No. 1)
How precise is radiocarbon dating?
Is radiocarbon dating based on assumptions?
Has radiocarbon dating been invalidated by unreasonable results?

There is a continuous, unbroken occupation of much of the western US between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago. To accept the global flood, we would have to accept that the people living in that area were disrupted by the flood yet repopulated the area immediately, and that the flood left no trace. Even more telling, there is continuity in mtDNA before and after this time period.

There is good evidence in a couple of places for a large-scale flood (the Channeled Scablands of eastern Washington, for example). The dates, locations, and events which occurred there are pretty well understood. Too early for a global flood, and pretty well restricted to specific areas of the Northwest.

I am only bringing this up because of the attacks on science which have become common on these threads. Some of these have become pretty bitter, and there has been a tremendous amount of disinformation.

You seem much more reasonable. I would prefer if science went one way and religion went another, and left each other alone. Deal?

(But if science is attacked, I tend to fight back.)

"I think the evidence is that human nature is biased just enough toward cooperation & abstract thinking that the rise of moral systems & civilization was more likely than not. IOW, I see the generation & teaching of systems of moral values as a natural outcome of our basic human nature. "

But you are speculating, not citing scientific evidence...

True enough. But there are two facts I find compelling: In game theory, strategies based on cooperation & enlightened self-interest are superior to those based on immediate gratification across a wide variety of rule-sets. (Tit-for-tat with a moderate bias toward forgiveness is an example of a very successful simple strategy) Plus, history shows that civilizations based on these concepts have been much more successful & resilient than ones (the USSR for example) based on fundamentally different principles.

Can you even point to historical or contemporary examples of successful civilizations that were based on a bad moral system?

how could evolution have created the concept of a "God", since it is argued scientifically that there is no evidence of one. Dogs don't worship at the altar of the unseen Bone....dolphins arguably as intelligent as man don't seem to worship at the altar of the Great Fish. It seems that the best evidence of man having evolved should have been his "lack" of the concept of guilt and morality!

IMO, the belief in God is the result of

our instinctive tendency to think of abstractions as if they were concretes ("reification"),
our instinct to anthropomorphize things that shouldn't be, and
our instinct to look for a person to thank (or blame) when a piece of random good luck (or bad luck) happens to us.

Now, was there an evolutionary benefit to our ancestors to reify & anthropomorphize & personalize the unknown? I don't know. But I'm confident that any answers to where the concept of God came from will be found in those other answers.

The apostle Paul believe it or not throws evolutionists a bone when he stated "If there be no resurrection of the dead, then let us eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we die!" The power of Christianity lies in the power of the resurrection, if science could prove it did not happen then let Christianity be consigned to the dustbins of history....

Eat drink & be merry. Yes, that's a great philosophy if you are 1. atheist and 2. have no sense of empathy. IOW, a good philosophy for sociopaths. But for the rest of us, we recognize that our actions have long-term consequences, and we viscerally understand that our loved ones who will outlive us (which can include our countrymen & even humans in general) deserve a good life too.

p.s. Was it really Paul who started the "eat, drink & be merry" quote? It's amazing how a bad argument can last for thousands of years!

"biologists have been pointing out and explaining constantly that chemical processes are not equivalent to random assembly"

Yes! Someone gets it!

Of course, not in the way you think :)

You seem to miss that creationists have been very _generous_ when presenting such estimates. In fact, all biological reactions are _equilibrium_ reactions, and therefore the ability to have this happen without specific outside direction is just 0.

You also might check out this paper in Cell Biology International, Chance and Necessity do not Explain the Origin of Life.

I've been working on a short article on creationist views of information which is somewhat along these lines, but is not yet finished. You can check out the current draft here.

"Better get some better sources than the Institute for Creation Research if you want to get an understanding of how science works - these people clearly have no idea what they're talking about."

The person in the article is a research scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratories, and his computer models of the Earth's mantle processes is one of the best in the world, and is used by NASA. Whether he is right or is wrong, I think he might have some idea what he is talking about.

"Most of the dates have been obtained by radiocarbon dating, with some based on other means. Radiocarbon dating has been found to be pretty accurate; even biblical scholars have agreed with to this."

It is really not _that_ accurate. It is _somewhat_ accurate, but there are a lot of variables that make it difficult to determine if the date is right without calibration.

The actual pattern of migration matches the flood record, because they migrated along the coasts. The flood would have left the oceans much warmer, but caused an ice age on the mainland. This left the outer edge of the continents to be habitable, because they had the water to warm them. And this matches the migration patterns of the american indians (I may be totally wrong about this -- I have no direct references but am going off of what I remember from an AiG conference last year).

Just FYI -- carbon dating gives a young age for all organic objects in the geologic column. Even diamonds can date under 50,000 years.

"There is a continuous, unbroken occupation of much of the western US between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago. To accept the global flood, we would have to accept that the people living in that area were disrupted by the flood yet repopulated the area immediately, and that the flood left no trace. Even more telling, there is continuity in mtDNA before and after this time period."

I think it is simply a post-flood population.

"There is good evidence in a couple of places for a large-scale flood (the Channeled Scablands of eastern Washington, for example). The dates, locations, and events which occurred there are pretty well understood. Too early for a global flood, and pretty well restricted to specific areas of the Northwest."

But proposing such floods again comes into the face of the evidence of massive upheaval throughout the paleozoic and mesozoic. Certainly many large but local floods have occurred in many times and places. But none of this compare to what would have caused such large-scale geologic features throughout these time periods.

"You seem much more reasonable. I would prefer if science went one way and religion went another, and left each other alone. Deal?"

Nope. That would only be a valid way of operating if religion were a fairy tale or a set of morality stories. What Christianity says is that God is active within His creation. If that is true, then His activities must necessarily have left its mark on the universe. If such marks are studied by assuming beforehand that the creator of the marks does not exist, it will, by necessity of its assumptions, misinterpret the marks. If God has not left marks, then the Bible is false, and you should feel sorry for me even thinking to believe in it.

The only way to separate science from theology is either to (a) remove science from historical inquiry, or (b) get rid of religion altogether. I think an integrated approach works much better. Understanding God according to the revelation we have will give us a much fuller understanding of the evidence than if we try to do it ourselves alone. My 3-year-old tries to do a lot of stuff all by himself. To be certain, he is quite amazing and I'm continually impressed with what he can do. But, ultimately, he does better with my help and instruction than he does on his own. If he listens to me, he learns faster, and understands better. If he ignores me, he is trapped by his misunderstanding of the world.

Some people say that Christians use God as a crutch. I resent that. I use God as a wheelchair :)

"Most of the dates have been obtained by radiocarbon dating, with some based on other means. Radiocarbon dating has been found to be pretty accurate; even biblical scholars have agreed with to this."

It is really not _that_ accurate. It is _somewhat_ accurate, but there are a lot of variables that make it difficult to determine if the date is right without calibration.

Actually, all radiocarbon dates now are calibrated against the tree-rings going back some 11,600 years. In the area I work I have recalibrated all previous dates with the latest calibration curves. I threw out a third of the samples in the database when I could not ascertain what was sampled. Better to throw it out than get wrong information.

The actual pattern of migration matches the flood record, because they migrated along the coasts. The flood would have left the oceans much warmer, but caused an ice age on the mainland. This left the outer edge of the continents to be habitable, because they had the water to warm them. And this matches the migration patterns of the american indians (I may be totally wrong about this -- I have no direct references but am going off of what I remember from an AiG conference last year).

If you are getting your information from AiG conferences, it would be wise to check against other sources. The primary migrations of American Indians occurred so far before the dates given for the flood that they are not even distantly related. The first migration may have been some 25,000+ years ago, through Canada, followed by a second migration down the Pacific coast in watercraft some 15,000 years ago, followed in turn by the main migration across the land bridge after the glaciers began to retreat, perhaps 12,500 years ago. After that, there is a steady increase in population and improvement in technology, with some climatic disruptions, for 10,000+ years. There is no evidence for a global flood--and it would be very easy to see in this kind of an occupation site.

There is also mtDNA continuity for 11,000 years on the west coast of North America, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. With the latest differentiation in Haplogroup A, experts have been able to track one of the population movements, and to establish in which direction it went.

Just FYI -- carbon dating gives a young age for all organic objects in the geologic column. Even diamonds can date under 50,000 years.

I am aware of these dates, and have read many of the papers on both sides of the issue (this is one of my specialties). When you have a laboratory that can date something back to about 40,000-50,000 years, at which point the signal gets lost in the background noise, it doesn't take much contamination to give a reading in that range. You need to use AMS dating in that range, and be very careful of contamination. Even so, ground water and natural radiation in rock and soil can give produce readings in that time frame. The dinosaur bones and diamonds dated in this time frame mean nothing.

The real question is whether calibrated dates from the last 10,000 years are accurate, and that is something that everyone but the creationists can agree on. They are quite accurate. And they show a continuous occupation of western North America during the entire time. I could show you the dates, or you could probably find many of them on line. There are a lot of professional papers posted now.

The evidence for the world-wide flood is in the paleozoic and mesozoic, not in the cenozoic which is where these artifacts are found. It is possible that the date of the flood could be pushed back a few thousand years, but there are many secular geneologies that go back to Noah which support the current date, as well as the Mayans which support the same date for the flood.

Tree-ring dating is not as accurate as many believe. It was once thought that the bristlecone pines gave accurate tree-ring dates, but Lammerts discovered evidence that they can grow many in a single year.

I personally think that historical records from multiple, independent groups should be believed over tree rings. But I guess that's where a lot of the differences between creation and evolution lie.

"There is no evidence for a global flood--and it would be very easy to see in this kind of an occupation site."

It occurred in the paleozoic and mesozoic. You are still referring to the cenozoic, much of which is considered post-flood (the exact boundary is not certain, but usually either at the mesozoic/cenozoic boundary or late cenozoic -- see http://www.trueorigin.org/cfjrgulf.asp and http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/magazines/tj/docs/v10n1_cainozoic.pdf)

"There is also mtDNA continuity for 11,000 years on the west coast of North America, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. With the latest differentiation in Haplogroup A, experts have been able to track one of the population movements, and to establish in which direction it went."

No, I agree very much that this is one continuous population.

"When you have a laboratory that can date something back to about 40,000-50,000 years, at which point the signal gets lost in the background noise, it doesn't take much contamination to give a reading in that range."

Actually, the equipment they used is accurate to 90,000 years. The background that was checked against was 70,000 years. There is no reason to discard dates at 50,000 years.

"The real question is whether calibrated dates from the last 10,000 years are accurate, and that is something that everyone but the creationists can agree on. They are quite accurate."

Actually, two points.

(1) Those dates don't call creationism into question. While creationists disagree, it is a rather minor point.
(2) Creationists aren't the only ones disagreeing.

But, as I said, it is a rather minor point. My personal take is that I'll take written history over other methods any day. The other methods must assume a history to be accurate. With the historical method, the history is written down instead of assumed. But if you disagree and have a slightly elongated timeline its really not a major issue.

You seem to miss that creationists have been very _generous_ when presenting such estimates.

No. In fact, they seem to not be able to grasp the point that one cannot model probabilities with that many boundary conditions with any accuracy at all, and that one cannot look at statistics in hindsight with any meaning. This is basic statistics stuff, and creationists over and over and over again seem to be unable to grasp it, and what's more, want this kind of shoddy speculation to be taken seriously as science.

Chance and Necessity do not Explain the Origin of Life.

No one is claiming the abiogenesis model does this to a tee yet, and it may never. This doesn't in any way falsify the vast amount of evidence that still supports evolution through the well-documented 3.5 billion year history of life on earth, or in any way validify the vastly flawed model of creationist history.

The person in the article is a research scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratories, and his computer models of the Earth's mantle processes is one of the best in the world, and is used by NASA.

Then he should stick to modeling mantle processes, because his musings about probability don't have any scientific validity whatsoever, and like any well-trained PhD, his credentials don't have much significance when it comes to fields outside his area of expertise.

So, according to Genesis, did plants come before man (Genesis 1:11-13 then Genesis 1:26,29)?

...or did man come before plants (Genesis 2:5-9)? HUH? read it below.....

If you believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis, then you must believe that one of these passages are incorrect. (Not necessarily...)

However, if you do not interpret Genesis literally, then you realize that these two passages were written by different authors, (Not necessarily...) but they both make the SAME points: that God was the Creator and the Provider - God gave man dominion over the Earth - and that man was His greatest creation.

Chapter One is the Creation account and Chapter Two is a re-cap of the first events, and an expanding in detail of Man.

Genesis 2

¹ Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array.

² By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested ^[a] from all his work. ³ And God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.

Adam and Eve

⁴ This is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created.
When the LORD God made the earth and the heavens- ⁵ and no shrub of the field had yet appeared on the earth ^[b] and no plant of the field had yet sprung up, for the LORD God had not sent rain on the earth ^[c] and there was no man to work the ground, ⁶ but streams ^[d] came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground- ⁷ the LORD God formed the man ^[e] from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.

⁸ Now the LORD God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. ⁹ And the LORD God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

¹⁰ A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. ¹¹ The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. ¹² (The gold of that land is good; aromatic resin ^[f] and onyx are also there.) ¹³ The name of the second river is the Gihon; it winds through the entire land of Cush. ^[g] ¹⁴ The name of the third river is the Tigris; it runs along the east side of Asshur. And the fourth river is the Euphrates.

¹⁵ The LORD God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. ¹⁶ And the LORD God commanded the man, "You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; ¹⁷ but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat of it you will surely die."

¹⁸ The LORD God said, "It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him."

¹⁹ Now the LORD God had formed out of the ground all the beasts of the field and all the birds of the air. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name. ²⁰ So the man gave names to all the livestock, the birds of the air and all the beasts of the field.
But for Adam ^[h] no suitable helper was found. ²¹ So the LORD God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs ^[i] and closed up the place with flesh. ²² Then the LORD God made a woman from the rib ^[j] he had taken out of the man, and he brought her to the man.

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