Posted on 01/16/2011 4:09:10 PM PST by balch3
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (ABP) -- A Southern Baptist seminary president and evolution opponent has turned sights on "theistic evolution," the idea that evolutionary forces are somehow guided by God. Albert Mohler
Albert Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, wrote an article in the Winter 2011 issue of the seminary magazine labeling attempts by Christians to accommodate Darwinism "a biblical and theological disaster."
Mohler said being able to find middle ground between a young-earth creationism that believes God created the world in six 24-hour days and naturalism that regards evolution the product of random chance "would resolve a great cultural and intellectual conflict."
The problem, however, is that it is not evolutionary theory that gives way, but rather the Bible and Christian theology.
Mohler said acceptance of evolutionary theory requires reading the first two chapters of Genesis as a literary rendering and not historical fact, but it doesn't end there. It also requires rethinking the claim that sin and death entered the human race through the Fall of Adam. That in turn, Mohler contended, raises questions about New Testament passages like First Corinthians 15:22, "For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive."
"The New Testament clearly establishes the Gospel of Jesus Christ upon the foundation of the Bible's account of creation," Mohler wrote. "If there was no historical Adam and no historical Fall, the Gospel is no longer understood in biblical terms."
Mohler said that after trying to reconcile their reading of Genesis with science, proponents of theistic evolution are now publicly rejecting biblical inerrancy, the doctrine that the Bible is totally free from error.
"We now face the undeniable truth that the most basic and fundamental questions of biblical authority and Gospel integrity are at stake," Mohler concluded. "Are you ready for this debate?"
In a separate article in the same issue, Gregory Wills, professor of church history at Southern Seminary, said attempts to affirm both creation and evolution in the 19th and 20th century produced Christian liberalism, which attracted large numbers of Americans, including the clerical and academic leadership of most denominations.
After establishing the concept that Genesis is true from a religious but not a historical standpoint, Wills said, liberalism went on to apply naturalistic criteria to accounts of miracles and prophecy as well. The result, he says, was a Bible "with little functional authority."
"Liberalism in America began with the rejection of the Bible's creation account," Wills wrote. "It culminated with a broad rejection of the beliefs of historic Christianity. Yet many Christians today wish to repeat the experiment. We should not expect different results."
Mohler, who in the last year became involved in public debate about evolution with the BioLogos Foundation, a conservative evangelical group that promotes integrating faith and science, has long maintained the most natural reading of the Bible is that God created the world in six 24-hour days just a few thousand years ago.
Writing in Time magazine in 2005, Mohler rejected the idea of human "descent."
"Evangelicals must absolutely affirm the special creation of humans in God's image, with no physical evolution from any nonhuman species," he wrote. "Just as important, the Bible clearly teaches that God is involved in every aspect and moment in the life of His creation and the universe. That rules out the image of a kind of divine watchmaker."
Your assumption that “more evolved” means larger and more complex and more intelligent is based upon a common fallacy that evolution means improvement rather than adaptation that increased survivability.
Scientists developed a fruit fly strain that is an entirely new species, it cannot reproduce with other populations of fruit flies, and it did not “return to normal”.
If you are implying that mutations only produce useless monstrosities then perhaps YOU can explain to me why bacteria under stress express error prone DNA polymerase? Not likely.
Humans are not that variable in our DNA, we are a very homologous species. We have a lot of different external characteristics, indicative of our worldwide distribution. But that is NOT based upon any sort of deep variation, but very small subtle changes that happened recently.
Perhaps if you understood speciation, and how it actually happens, your question wouldn't be such a mess of false assumptions. A speciation event is more likely on an isolated population than one that is widespread and in great numbers. You have it 180 degrees out of phase.
So now that I have taken the time to explain, as you requested, maybe you can explain to me why a bacterial population would HAVE an error prone DNA polymerase, and why would it be expressed during times of stress?
That is not speculation. That is a fact. If your faith were dependent upon that being a “myth” it seems your faith is fragile.
Genetic changes within a population are the only thing that DO result in changes in morphology of a population.
What do YOU suppose determines our inherited morphology if not our DNA?
Besides, my question didn't ask about “additional morphology”, I asked about fertility between populations. Fertility between populations IS based upon DNA similarity, in case you were wondering and that was going to be your next wrong answer.
Here is the question again, in case you want to take another stab at it....
“What would preclude two separate populations of the same species from accumulating enough differences in DNA over time that they could no longer reproduce between groups after sufficient time and the accompanying INEVITABLE change in DNA?”
Exactly. I knew you'd catch this. The lowly cockroach, by some measures, can be termed the "most successful" evolved life form.
Not just the lowly cockroach, something of a nuisance niche pest. The arthropod is, by many measures, the most successful life design, the most highly evolved. They have short reproduction times, have produced more species than you can shake a stick at!
Inordinately fond of beetles!
Yup.
kosta: I am not a contrarian. I see things my way. So does everyone else. It’s not a conspiracy.
Spirited: Give a sophist enough rope and he will hang himself. Your first claim is immediately refuted by your second, which serves as a confession against yourself.
What have you loudly confessed? Why that you suffer from such stiff-necked pride (Pride of Mind) that you take your evil desires as the foundation of your foolish arguments.
Your irrational arguments, though outwardly clothed in “reason,” nevertheless leap across unbridgable chasms, fall into bottomless pits, and roam through peculiar dreamscapes as they relentlessly twist and turn their way back to the autonomous will of Kosta, whose confession against himself says it all: I see things my way.
It is impossible to reason with one incapable of seeing reason due to the fact that his soul is inward-turned where it sees only its’ own darkness.
Pride of Mind is nihilism, for it voraciously consumes everything true, everything real, and everything good in its’ pursuit of “I see things my way.”
Kosta: “I see things my way. And so does everyone else.”
No Kosta, the rest of us are not like you. Because you take yourself as “first principle” you very naturally use yourself as the measure for all others, which is why you erroneously assume that everyone else must assuredly be “just like you.”
For this reason, liars always believe that all other people are liars; “gays” assume that inside every straight man is a “gay,” and the covetous assume that all others are as gluttonous, greedy, and avaricious as “self” is.
This is called transferral of guilt. You have transferred onto these good yet imperfect people your own vices in order that you can then crucify them, a process you call “reasoned argument.”
You are simply arguing for a common Designer, almen, who had a design, common building blocks, and a purpose. It must be obvious to you that the HUGE, INSURMOUNTABLE GAP between humans and chimps (or any other earthly creature) speaks loudly.
Since some would argue, as you have, that the common building blocks suggest a deeper common origin, I would offer that the huge ability gap argues eloquently for purpose. Randomness, you say, can’t account for the similarities. Likewise, randomness or accident does not account for the mammoth capability/potential gap. Both argue for a common Designer.
Answering “WHY is there such a gap?” can go the direction of accident or it can go the direction of purpose.
In recorded history, would you be willing to argue that the humans who are modern builders of trade centers are more intellectually capable than the humans who were ancient builders of temples? That the humans who are modern philosophers are more intellectually capable than the humans who were ancient philosophers?
So, over the 6 thousand years span of recorded history, we are left with no perceptible change to measure. Miniscule amount of time, some will argue. No so, really. The divergence between apes and humans is speculated at 6 million years or so. 6000 years is a tenth of a percent of that gap, and in that time no perceptible change, meaning, of course, that the level ALREADY reached 6000 years ago was quite arguably the STATUS QUO. One purpose ascribed biblically is that the human was to be herdsman of the earth. That certainly seems to be the case, doesn’t it?
Therefore, the immensity of the gap ITSELF argues for the Designer rather than for the accident, and the status “quo-ness” of the gap argues both against the accident and the gradual increase.
I appreciate the Utube link, but being a deep-in-the-woods resident of the very rural midwest, I’m still on dial-up. Most UTubes a even a minutes length take hours and hours to download.
I have not seen fit to go with satellite because of the problems I’ve heard it has....all of which also apply where I’m located. I tried air card, but it was actually slower than dial-up for whatever technical reason I was given at the time.
Perhaps you can summarize the utube for me.
Oh, it was a video on how one part of the body takes a more disadvantageous course of development in a certain species, even though a more efficient design would have been possible. The argument being that the convoluted development arose out of the fact that the body part served a different purpose than what it does now.
Indeed!
#4, a & b.
As I tried to state with my post #625, there is a hidden agenda in Dawkins addressing the nerve in question and the process whereby this nerve takes a circuitous route from the brain down to the region of the heart then back up to the voice box. Dawkins tried to assert as axiomatic that which he wanted to refute ... he framed the issue as 'if there were really a designer, he would have been more likely to start over eons ago when the evolutionary development went beyond the fish-like predecessors of mammals.
In other words, Dawkins defines the 'designer' the way he can refute the designer using his flawed reasoning on the 'units' designed. Presuming to know what is the best design methodology for a universe blossoming life, Dawkins then seeks to convince his audience that the designer Dawkins has assumed would not be blooming the variety of life we have as evidence of a designer ... therefore, in Dawkins' nihilistic mind, there is no designer because the designer Dawkins defines is not evidenced by the units of record.
So you allege, allmendream. But as far as I can tell, it's an unsupported allegation.
If all the human brain is, is a "larger, more resource-consuming ape brain," then how do you account for the (uncountable orders of magnitude) difference in what these brains can be observed to accomplish in the real world, respectively?
To put it another way, if the ape could make up that less-than-two percent deficit in the DNA he shares with humans, would he then be able to go build, say, a Hoover Dam? Construct a mathematical theory? Compose a symphony?
And so forth.
Your reductionist view makes no sense to me. It actually explains very little.
That’s about on par with your deceitful effort to confuse folks with the agenda laden foolery of Dawkins in the video you offered.
Oh, I so agree, dear padre!
I have long believed that there is a Common Ancestor: God Himself. :^)
A/K/A the Common Designer.
This being the case, we are speaking of intelligence and purpose as the ground of Nature itself, its Logos. The universe is not accidental; it is created, and it is structured. And Christians and Jews believe that creation is on-going.
Thank you so very much, dear xzins, for your outstanding essay/post!
LOLOL dearest sister in Christ, but that's just the effect your posts have on me!
Thank you so very much for your kind words of support!
Well, that was the video. It’s freely available for viewing and coming to a conclusion on what was shown in the dissection.
BB thank you for the ping.
FWIW, not being the greatest scientific mind I try to break discussions down to the simplest point possible. In this case, the argument for or against a designer of nature, it seems the question is how did inorganic matter become organic and then self replicating. The deeper question of course is where did the matter come from. For me the answer is obvious.
However, I have a good friend who is in charge of the biology department at a prestigious medical school. He runs the research dept and teaches medical students. He will agree there is no explanation for how inorganic matter became organic and then self replicating, but continues to deny there was a designer that caused it.
Funny to see, isn't it, how for all the verbose self-congratulatory posts, this basic paradox remains to be explored, leave alone resolved? All that has been done is place an arbitrarily chosen deity, and attribute all the limits of current understanding to its mystery alone, scriptural contradictions (even moral contradictions) within the dogma of that chosen deity notwithstanding.
The root, elephant-in-the-room contradiction that seriously afflicts the assumption of a "timeless, changeless first causer" has been conveniently ignored in the entire "solution" for the paradox, and the chosen modus operandi, instead, is to provide pseudo-solutions based on definitions to pretend to resolve the daughter paradoxes that the first one produces, thereby successfully ignoring the latter.
Anyone dwelling in the ignorance of such a solution cannot have the peace of self-conviction they pretend to possess.
amd: The biology of the human brain has no transcendental or mystical properties. It is a larger more resource consuming ape brain.
Spirited: Either we are dual beings in the Biblical sense or we are not. If we are, then it is only because our mind transcends the material that we are able to “be in our material bodies” yet simultaneously transcend them mentally and say such things as: “I (allmendream) have but an ape brain.”
Your argument is based in materialist scientistic presuppositions and assumptions (naturalism). In the main, materialism is revamped “pagan-monism”-—Epicurean Materialism. Naturalism by any name is pagan monism. From the essay, “Occult Pagan Revival Signals Death of America and the West, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2659568/posts :
“Materialism teaches that all that exists is merely material or energy which is impersonal, totally neutral to any moral system or any interest in man as man. In this view, there is no basis for law, and no basis for man as unique and important.
Materialism is of the world view of monism which teaches that all that exists is “one self-creating, self-sufficient substance” which may be divine spirit (pantheism) or spiritless substance (materialism).
Monism is held in common by materialism, pantheism, and spiritualism and dates back to pagan antiquity and was or is taught by all non-biblical thought systems from Buddhism to Epicureanism, Gnosticism and today’s New Age Cosmic Humanism.
Monism teaches that all things, including mankind, are merely diverse parts of the one-substance. God is acceptable to this monistic frame of mind only if He is not something outside of and superior to the one-substance but one with it. In other words, God must be dispersed throughout the whole substance.
In his book, “Utopia: The Perennial Heresy,” Thomas Molnar explains that evolution, whether Darwinian or a spiritual conception such as Teilhard’s idea, serves as an imaginary mechanism of perfection for both man and the one-substance:
“Through evolution the world substance becomes progressively pure, homogenous and perfect until the terminal point is reached...” (p.235) At that point, there is either a perfected non-spiritual substance (materialism) or a perfectly spiritualized substance (pantheism). For utopians this means a heaven on earth ruled by perfected god-men.
In that materialism excludes the transcendent Creator, angels, demons, heaven, and hell it must also explain away man’s God-given individual spiritual endowments —soul, mind, free will, and conscience— attributes defined by the Founders as self-evident truths, for it is self-evidently true that all men think, choose, and feel guilt. In short, in denying the existence of God the Father and man’s supernaturally endowed attributes, materialist scientism abolishes our unalienable rights, thereby making worthless both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.”
Theistic evolution also rests upon the notion that evolution “perfects man,” which really means that man perfects himself.
Here in the West, all who are offended by Jesus Christ, judgement, and eternity flee to some form of evolutionary conception.
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