Apparently, the new Science Minister in Canada, a country far more postmodern and post-Christian than my own, is a Christian.
See the article here.
And he won't say that he believes in evolution. Now, I'm not saying as a Christian one can't believe in evolution; I just love that this guy is up front - 'I'm a Christian.'
I also laughed out loud when I read evolutionary scientists stating that
1) evolution is a scientific fact
2) evolution is the foundation of all modern biology (they said this in my undergrad evolution classes - ridiculous then AND now)
3) evolution has been TESTED
Okay, seriously... regardless of whether you believe in it or not - evolution is not science. It hasn't been tested. There have been no repeated experiments in controlled environments that show that biological organisms are present on our planet today as a result of naturalistic evolution.
Sometimes it's amazing to me how utterly foolish very educated people can be.
Interesting. Hey, be careful when you say "evolution" vs. "Evolution"
ReplyDeleteI've read there's a difference between the two.
Interesting - I've not heard of a distinction, unless it's the same distinction between micro and macro mutation.
ReplyDeleteDerek,
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure what your exact position is, is clear.
Your original post, for example, seems to say that evolution and everything about it is ridiculous speculation.
Your reply to J Arthur Ellis, however, seemed to indicate that there are things that evolution teaches that pretty much cannot be denied by rational people, such as natural selection.
To the fully committed, atheistic evolutionist, once you grant natural selection, the rest falls into place deductively.
So what exactly is ridiculous about evolution, and what exactly is reasonable? That's what I'd like to know.
MG
In other words, I was making a comment about the intolerance of naturalists towards everyone else.
ReplyDeleteI could be wrong, not being a scientist, but I think natural selection does exactly what you say it doesn't.
ReplyDeleteDo bigger and stronger bears overwhelm the smaller bears because of finite resources? It would seem so. Does that mean bears have generally gotten bigger?
If that's true, then can it be that bears were only the size of a dog a million years ago (if there was such a thing as a million years ago)?
Now, I don't know about you, but I put a bear the size of a dog next to a Grizzly and I say that these are two different species.
How much change is required before we say that it's a new species?
Suppose I take a wooden ship, and I begin to replace planks on it. After a few planks get replaced, most people would say it's the same ship. But what if, over time, all the planks are replaced? None of the original wood remains. Is it still the same ship? However you answer the question, it's not clear either way.
So how much change is required before we say it's a new species? If a little change can take place in a few centuries perhaps, then how much change can take place in a few eons?
In other words, could a mouse spawn a bear in a few eons? Is it possible, granting natural selection, or ridiculous?
I'm not a scientist, but it doesn't seem ridiculous to me.
That's a very good question.
ReplyDeleteHere's the deal - bigger bears overwhelming smaller bears is the result of genetic variance.
In other words, the genetic material for bigger bears is already there. It's just that given a certain environment, the smaller bears haven't died out yet, though they eventually will.
But in that situation, genetic material hasn't been produced or added to what is the genetic material for a bear. It's just that within the species, the normal variance within the genetic material has resulted in a shift in the average size of a bear in a population of bears in a given location. (Remember the black vs. white moths example in your grade school text book?)
The issue here is that genetic material hasn't been added to produce a bear which is so different that it can't produce offspring with another bear - which is usually the rule of thumb in determining what a 'species' is.
Forgive me, but I don't understand how you answered my question. Probably because I'm not a scientist.
ReplyDeleteI grant, eagerly, that only a little change can happen at a time. But a little change takes place, then 100 years later another takes place, then another takes place 100 years later, and so on and on, so that little by little, the species is completely different.
I mean, I was taught that the genetic difference between me and a head of lettuce is actually quite small. Me and the head of lettuce, I remember being told, have like 80 or 90% of the same genetic material. So little tiny changes in the DNA can have big consequences, especially when a million little changes are added together.
All of this is not to pin down how evolution should be understood, or what it does or what it is or whatever.
What I am trying to get at is precisely what you're rejecting and on what grounds.
Perhaps, if I may make a suggestion, what you're rejecting is that all things happen by mere chance. I read recently that this was actually the view of the Epicureans.
Isn't that what you're rejecting as being ridiculous? Aren't you saying that to reject the existence of God and to reject his providence is just, well, dumb? Aren't you saying that it's scientifically/theologically anti-intellectual, inherently, to try to use evolution to disprove the existence of God?
Isn't it every bit as stupid to do that as it is to try to prove God's existence from the fact that there must be a first cause? After all, it remains to be seen that there must be a first cause, and it remains to be seen if that first cause, even granted that it must exist, is God at all. In other words, causation doesn't imply a first cause. It implies either a first cause or an infinite chain of causation. And the first cause, which is itself uncaused, does not have to be God, and certainly doesn't have to be the personal God of Scripture.
If causation really did logically demand a first cause, then there'd be no atheists. It's simple: the universe is eternal.
Isn't it equally simple to say that evolution doesn't prove that God exists because 1) evolution, while strongly likely, hasn't been proved to take place, and thus it's true nature is not known and 2) even if it were proved, couldn't it be the effects of God that we were observing?
So isn't it fundamentally anti-intellectual (logically fallacious) to say that evolution disproves God? And isn't that what you're really railing against here? If so, I couldn't agree more.
The fool says in his heart, "There is no God."
So I was trying to come up with an analogy of how genetics works here... how's this... (and just... bear with me... it might suck as an analogy)
ReplyDeleteA modern PC (I don't even know what iteration of the pentium we're on now) has a lot of similarities to a 486. A lot of the guts are the same. They'll even run some of the same programs.
But the guts have a lot of differences that are very significant. Amount of RAM, speed of the RAM bus, the complexity of the processor, etc - such that though a 486 could be updated and run programs that at one point it couldn't - it could never be a pentium without replacing the entire motherboard.
But that's not my point. My point here isn't to rail against evolution - my point was to rail against the idea that evolution is fact because facts are determined by the examination of data from a naturalistic worldview.
Or in other words, I'm railing against the somewhat arrogant claims that these scientists were making against the creationist Science Minister, even though I might disagree with the Science Minister in some ways.
Derek,
ReplyDeleteI'm coming to this post over a year late, but was goofing around on your blog and saw it.
Though I have grave doubts about the efficiency of the Darwinian mechanism, I'd take issue with the testability of scientific hypotheses being boiled down to being able to test it in a laboratory in a controlled situation. The real issue is whether or not the theory or hypothesis can make predictions that are confirmed by subsequent observation. This may observations that come from repeated experiments or repeated observations in the field. In this sense, hypotheses about what happened in the past are perfectly legitimate as we are uncovering more evidence about the past and we can see whether or not our hypotheses explain this evidence.
If the aforementioned suggestion were true, it would rule out my field completely, since essentially everything in astrophysics is seen out in space and we have no control over anything that happens. Even more pointedly, everything we see in space is coming to us from a great distance, and since the speed of light is finite, we don't see anything "now" but only as it was in the past. The sun: 8 minutes ago, Alpha Centauri: 4.3 years ago, the Andromeda Galaxy: 2.3 million years old, to give some examples. And the astronomical past tells quite a story, one that points to a singular creation of all matter, energy, space, and time, which is very suggestive of a purposeful Creator.
I think the distinction between "operational science" and "origins science" that young-earth creationists make is a red herring that has little merit, personally. It's not simply a matter of assuming uniformitarianism or not. There are just some things that we see in nature that give every signature of being old, and they do it in such a way that if it weren't true it means that God constructed them in such a way to make them look old when they are not.
And why would he do that? I don't pretend to know the will of God (I am Lutheran after all), but it seems to me that it's deceptive no matter how you slice it, and God doesn't lie.