Is Theistic Evolutionist an oxymoron?

So, Jack, how many of those refutations of quote mining did you read? Do you now agree with me that it is dispicable for folks to lie in the name of God about what scientists have said trying to advance their own agenda?

"Just because one claims to be of the Christian religion, that doesn't make them Christian."

So you are now the judge of someone's salvation? I did not know that you were God! I thought you were Jack.

I think we are warned against such actions...

"As for the laws of science, we have this..."

And you ignore my reasoning.

Can you please, pretty please, show me some things in biology that you think should be laws? Do you know of anything in biology that happens with such regularity and repeatability that it never varies and could therefore be called a law.

Let's start with something basic, like determining if something is even alive or not. Try and find consensus on whether a virus is a form of life. Or nanobacteria. How about a prion.

"And that is why the theory of evolution is still classified as a theory and not a Law. Yet it is still taught as fact without allowing any other theory to be introduced. Why is that might I ask?"

That evolution happens is considered scientific fact. I think that is one thing that could conceivably be considered a law. It is on par with the fact / law of gravitation. But like gravity, we are still working out just how that occurs. I'd dare say that we know more about how evolution works than gravity.

"'No ability' you say? I might suggest that you read 'Darwins Black Box', or perhaps any of the many books by A.E. Wilder-Smith. And there are hundreds of other credible scientific rebuttals to that half-baked theory of evolution."

Have you read Darwin's Black Box? Did you notice where, right at the very beginning, Behe says that he accepts common descent, including that of humans and the other apes? Maybe you missed that part.

The works you mention may parade themselves as authoritive rebuttals, but they are not such. They refuse to even put their work up for peer review. The IC claims of folks like Behe have been shown repeatedly to not really be IC. His famous flagellum has versions that operate with fewrer parts than his IC version and most of those parts have other uses. Some of the most important parts first evolved as part of the type three secretory system.

"The theory of evolution contradicts already established Laws of science such as the Law of Probability..."

Yeah, I'd like to see that shown. Most attempts fail by making these unrealistic calculations in which something really complex is shown to be unlikely to pop into existance randomly. It is a good thing that this is not how evolution claims to work.

"...and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics."

That should really be the one that gets the laugh graemlin.

Have you taken any thermo classes? I have taken a couple. Let's see how my thermo textbook defines the second law. (Introduction to Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics Smith and Van Ness 4th Edition 1987)

Here is how it discusses the disorder part.

For completeness, let's use the description of physicists Richard Feynman, one of the greatest physicists of the last century.

Now, please tell me just how the inability of heat to flow from cool areas to warm areas spontaneously prevents evolution. Please give me your mathematical analysis of entropy and evolution that tells us just what the problem is. Show your work.

Even better, please give me one hypothetical step in the evolution of man from his last common ancestor with the other apes that is prevented by 2LOT. Please be precise. Show your math. And document you ideas back to thermo texts and other similar material.

"And all of your examples of evolution are examples of micro-evolution. What I am looking for, like all evolutionists as well, is an example of macro-evolution. You know, a dog becomes a cat. An ape becomes a man, etc. Not a man develops more red corpuscles so that he can carry more oxygen in his system, or a bug that develops a taste for a man made substance."

Moving the goal posts I see. Another traditional YE tactic.

I can give you modern examples that show evolution in progress. I can give you modern speciation events. I can give you genetic processes like duplication and mutation, exon shuffling, recombination, promoter shuffling, etc. I can show you physical processes like migration, natural selection, gene flow and sexual selection. I can show you new and useful genes. I can show you new metabolic pathways. I can show you all of the processes by which evolution happens going on in the real world.

So now you move the goal posts. That is not good enough for you. New species are not enough. You want things that not even predicted by evolution such as "a dog becomes a cat." I think you mean you want to see more dramatic transitions. This is where I drag out the fossil record. Look in my post above for a good example of a transition; the detailing of the fossils in the transitional series between reptiles and mammals.

Now these things take along time. It is several million years ago to trace back to the last common ancestor between humans and chimps. There is very little physical difference there, yet it is much, much longer than the change you can expect to see within a human lifetime or even within human history.

But the fossil record does an amazing job of detailing these major changes. The even more amazing thing is how the genetic record backs the fossil record up.

You are probably not aware, but the fossil record shows that whales evolved from the same land dwelling ancestor as the pigs and deer and camels and other even toed hooved animals. You are even less likely to know that genetic testing shows whales to be very closely related to these same animals. You might know that whales have rear legs during development that are absorbed before birth. And you might even know that occasionally whales are born with formed rear legs. You likely do not know that whales carry the full set of genes for a sense of smell that only land dwelling animals have and none of the genes that other marine life possess.

The fossil record shows that dinosaurs, including birds, and crocodiles both evolved from the archosaur branch or reptiles. Genetic testing shows birds and crocodiles to be closely related.

The fossil record shows that horses and rhinos evolved from the same generalized browsing animal. The genetic record confirms their close relationship.

This can be repeated over and over and over. The fossil record shows a rich history of transition, the kind of transitions that someone has apperently misled you about and told you that they do not exist. The genetic record has a wonderful ability to confirm these changes. Even thins as unlikely seeming as a whale and a camel as being closely related.

 

UTEOTW

I realize that repeating this is as useless as shoveling manure against the tide but here goes.

Evolution is an atheistic philisophy that chaims that everything that exists came from some pre existing matter/energy. That is the sole fact about evolution. You may deny this fact all you choose but that does not change the truth.

The evolutionists are really on par with those the Apostle Paul describes in Romans 1:22-25:

22. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools,
23. And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
24. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
25. Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.

 

OR,

Wow. We agree again. Theistic evolution really does not satisfy anyone who takes their beliefs seriously. The non-theist does not want any mention of the God he denies and those who accept the Bible as the perfect Word of God cannot accept the denial of special creation that is implicit in the term "theistic evolution".

 

God is not the author of confusion. That is the reason theistic evolution is an oxymoron.

 

JackRUS

No point in talking to UTEOTW about the 2nd Law. His knowledge of that law is apparently limited to one thermo book: Introduction to Chemical Engineering Thermodynamics Smith and Van Ness 4th Edition 1987.

 

Here is how it discusses the disorder part.

For completeness, let's use the description of physicists Richard Feynman, one of the greatest physicists of the last century.

Now, please tell me just how the inability of heat to flow from cool areas to warm areas spontaneously prevents evolution. Please give me your mathematical analysis of entropy and evolution that tells us just what the problem is. Show your work.

Even better, please give me one hypothetical step in the evolution of man from his last common ancestor with the other apes that is prevented by 2LOT. Please be precise. Show your math. And document you ideas back to thermo texts and other similar material.

"And all of your examples of evolution are examples of micro-evolution. What I am looking for, like all evolutionists as well, is an example of macro-evolution. You know, a dog becomes a cat. An ape becomes a man, etc. Not a man develops more red corpuscles so that he can carry more oxygen in his system, or a bug that develops a taste for a man made substance."

Moving the goal posts I see. Another traditional YE tactic.

I can give you modern examples that show evolution in progress. I can give you modern speciation events. I can give you genetic processes like duplication and mutation, exon shuffling, recombination, promoter shuffling, etc. I can show you physical processes like migration, natural selection, gene flow and sexual selection. I can show you new and useful genes. I can show you new metabolic pathways. I can show you all of the processes by which evolution happens going on in the real world.

So now you move the goal posts. That is not good enough for you. New species are not enough. You want things that not even predicted by evolution such as "a dog becomes a cat." I think you mean you want to see more dramatic transitions. This is where I drag out the fossil record. Look in my post above for a good example of a transition; the detailing of the fossils in the transitional series between reptiles and mammals.

Now these things take along time. It is several million years ago to trace back to the last common ancestor between humans and chimps. There is very little physical difference there, yet it is much, much longer than the change you can expect to see within a human lifetime or even within human history.

But the fossil record does an amazing job of detailing these major changes. The even more amazing thing is how the genetic record backs the fossil record up.

You are probably not aware, but the fossil record shows that whales evolved from the same land dwelling ancestor as the pigs and deer and camels and other even toed hooved animals. You are even less likely to know that genetic testing shows whales to be very closely related to these same animals. You might know that whales have rear legs during development that are absorbed before birth. And you might even know that occasionally whales are born with formed rear legs. You likely do not know that whales carry the full set of genes for a sense of smell that only land dwelling animals have and none of the genes that other marine life possess.

The fossil record shows that dinosaurs, including birds, and crocodiles both evolved from the archosaur branch or reptiles. Genetic testing shows birds and crocodiles to be closely related.

The fossil record shows that horses and rhinos evolved from the same generalized browsing animal. The genetic record confirms their close relationship.

This can be repeated over and over and over. The fossil record shows a rich history of transition, the kind of transitions that someone has apperently misled you about and told you that they do not exist. The genetic record has a wonderful ability to confirm these changes. Even thins as unlikely seeming as a whale and a camel as being closely related. </font>[/QUOTE]UTEOTW.
Don't worry (or maybe you should), God will explain to you the science of it some day and might start out with something like, "Where were you when I laid the foundation of the world?"

In the meantime, let's discuss something simple for all of us. What came first, the chicken or the egg? Some scientic evidence would be appreciated if you have any.

 

Ya, I like to know what he feels about the 2nd Law as it applies to entropy.

Could you imagine the birth defects we would have today if man had been interbreeding as a species for 60 million years as the 'experts' suggest? Not to mention the population!

 

Scripture says that Christ will not come until there is first a great falling away (apostasy)within the church. 2 Thes. 2:3

I would say that having professing Christians actively teaching evolution as fact certainly qualifies.

Rev. 22:20

 

"In the meantime, let's discuss something simple for all of us. What came first, the chicken or the egg? Some scientic evidence would be appreciated if you have any."

What kind of question is that supposed to be?

If you mean any egg or a chicken, well of course the egg. Fish lay eggs which are usually fertilized outside of the body. Amphibians use a mixture of internal and external fertilization depending on which amphibians you are interested in. Reptiles lay fertilized eggs. A chicken is a bird which is a dinosaur which is a branch from the archosaur line of reptiles. So, reprodcution was taking place by way of eggs before chickens were ever around.

Now if you mean a chicken egg, well they evolved together. Neither came first.

"Ya, I like to know what he feels about the 2nd Law as it applies to entropy."

You did find out if you had paid attention. The second law says that "it is impossible by a cyclic process to convert the heat absorbed by a system completely into work." The part not converted to work is lost. Entropy is a measure of this lost energy. Entropy can be statistically described as "disorder" in the way molecules are arranged with respect to one another as in the Feynman quote.

Entropy has absolutely nothing to do with what a layperson thinks of as "disorder" on a macroscale.

And while we are at it, i'd like to know "just how the inability of heat to flow from cool areas to warm areas spontaneously prevents evolution. Please give me your mathematical analysis of entropy and evolution that tells us just what the problem is. Show your work.

Even better, please give me one hypothetical step in the evolution of man from his last common ancestor with the other apes that is prevented by 2LOT. Please be precise. Show your math. And document you ideas back to thermo texts and other similar material."

 

UTE.
You wrote:

I don't have to show my work, just God's work. Take a look around you. Everything in this sin cursed world goes from order to disorder without directly applied energy. Why do you think that people lived for hundreds of years in early Genesis and now we have short lives and much more disease? We only live longer now than we did a few hundred years ago because of God's mercy in allowing us to have advanced medicine and good hospitals. We are not evolving UTE, we are devolving. How many people do you know personally that have cancer?

And your assumption that both the egg and the chicken both evolved at the same time without a shred of evidence shows how evolutionists make up their stories as they go. How then was your miracle "Adam" chicken born without coming from an egg? I would like to see your math thesis on that one.

Here is why your gross assumption is impossible:

"The chicken egg. (Taken from "The Evolution of a Creationist" by Jobe Martin.)

A fertilized egg is a very special creation. Before even thinking about a chick developing in a egg, it is interesting to ponder how the chicken manages to get a shell around that slippery, raw, fertilized egg.

The shell itself is highly specialized. Each egg shell has about 10,000 tiny holes or pores. How does that chicken form a shell around a soft, messy egg and design the shell to have porosity? Put a raw egg in warm water and soon you will see tiny bubbles floating up. These bubbles are escaping through the pores in the shell. The developing chick needs these pores to breathe. Evolution requires a need before an organism will change. How does a chicken know it needs to make a shell with porosity, and how can it manufacture such a shell? The chick does not know it needs the holes in the shell to breathe until it dies for lack of air. Of course, dead chicks cannot evolve.

Within the first days of after the egg is laid, blood vessels begin to grow out of the developing chick. Two of these attach to the membrane under the eggshell and two attach to the yolk. By the fifth day, the tiny heart is pumping blood through the vessels. What makes those blood vessels grow out of the chick, and how do they know where to go and to what to attach? The chick feeds from the yolk with the yolk vessels and breathes through the membrane vessels. If any of these vessels do not grow out of the chick or attach to the correct place, the chick will die.

By the nineteenth day, the chick is too big to get enough oxygen through the pores in the shell. It must do something or die. How does it know what to do next? By this time a small tooth called the "egg tooth" has grown onto it's beak. It uses this little tooth to peck a hole into the air sack at the flat end of the egg. When you peel a hard-boiled egg you notice the thin membrane under the shell and the flattened end of the egg. This flattened end, which looks like the hen did not quite fill up her egg shell, is the air sack. The air sack provides only six hours of air for the chick to breathe. Instead of relaxing and breathing deeply with it's new-found air supply, the chick keeps pecking until it breaks a small hole through the shell to gain access to the outside air in adequate amounts.

On the twenty-first day, the chick breaks out of the shell. If one step in the development of the chick is missing or out of order, the chick dies. And dead embryos don't go on to evolve.

Each step in the development of the chick defies evolutionary logic. All of these complex systems must be fully in place for the birth of a chicken. (Not to mention every other creature on this planet.)

So then, God created the chicken fully developed, and these male and female (ever think of that requirement UTE?) chickens go on to produce eggs that are ready to be born chickens.

Question: In a survival of the fittest world, why did every species evolve a way to procreate a virtual rival for the same types of food sources, and why did they all see a need for this?

 

UTEOTW

We have been down the road of the 2nd Law and evolution before. I believe that evolution violates the 2nd Law, you don't. I believe the Biblical account of creation, you don't.

 

"Take a look around you. Everything in this sin cursed world goes from order to disorder without directly applied energy."

There is your fatal mistake right there. You are trying to equate "disorder" in the layman's macro sense with the very specific definition of that term in thermodynamics. Your argument that this is how entropy prevent evolution falls apart right there.

"And your assumption that both the egg and the chicken both evolved at the same time without a shred of evidence shows how evolutionists make up their stories as they go."

What do you mean no shred of evidence. I laid the basics right out in fromt of you. Do I have to go through each and every bit of evidence showing the evolution of the fish &gt; lobe finned fish &gt; amphibians &gt; reptiles &gt; archosaurs &gt; dinosaurs &gt; birds &gt; chicken? Do I have to document all the fossilized eggs along the way? Fossilized egg shells? Fossilized bits of reproductive systems? You have your answer in terms detailed enough for this level of discussion. We have enough data to show where birds came from in an evolutionary sense and we can show the changes that happened in relation to reproduction and eggs along the way. That is your answer.

"Here is why your gross assumption is impossible"

This error is called the argument from incredulity. Just because you think something is too difficult to have happened, does not mean that it could not have. You argument does nothing to indicate that it is not possible for the egg to have evolved.

The main problem is that you seem to think that we had to have a creature that did not use an egg followed immediately by a creature who used an egg just like the chicken's. You ignore that the chicken's egg developed gradually over the course of hundreds of millions of years. All along the way, the version of the egg present served its job well for that species. Changes to both the organisms and their means of reproduction happened over time.

You are basically making the case for irreducible complexity. Unfortunately for you, biologists have already studied and written extensively about how such systems evolve. It certainly is not impossible.

"Question: In a survival of the fittest world, why did every species evolve a way to procreate a virtual rival for the same types of food sources, and why did they all see a need for this?"

Are you talking about offspring? Because if they did not reproduce, they died out. The pressure to pass your genes on to the next generation is intense. If you cannot, your lineage dies out. If you can do it better, then you genes for reproducing more successfully get spread more widely.

 

UTEOTW wrote:

All that so called evidence carries all the weight of the' evidence' that the dolt who held a single pig tooth in the air and declared "I have found the Nebraska Man!", and went about fashioning the rest of his discovery in his deluded mind. Complete with his wife to boot.

http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/emne.htm

Did you know that even years after that farce was exposed that the University of Nebraska wouldn't take down their model of the lovely couple in the hall of their university?

And didn't you get it at all concerning the chicken egg? All of those complex systems had to be in place at the same time for the chick to be born in the first place.

You concluded with:

You didn't get my point. How does survival of the fittest warrant a rival for their food source? And where did the all of the species all at once decide that they need to intensely desire such rivals? And why would they care if their species died out, even the most simple of life? Sorry UTE, it doesn't float.

 

"All that so called evidence carries all the weight of the' evidence' that the dolt who held a single pig tooth in the air and declared "I have found the Nebraska Man!", and went about fashioning the rest of his discovery in his deluded mind."

Never be afraid to change subjects when things aren't going your way.

In any case, while you call it "Nebraska Man," can you tell me of any single scientist who said that it was a human ancestor? A single one? Even Osborn, the guy who made the huge mistake, said that it was not "in the direct line of human ancestry."

For that matter, can you name me a single scientist outside of Osborn and his colleagues who even thought that it was a primate at all? A book entitled Human Origins which was published before the mistake was pointed out for good said in 1924 that "the validity of Osborn's determination has not yet been generally accepted."

In the 1927 article that exposed the mistake, the author stated that the "scientific world, however, was far from accepting without further evidence the validity of Professor Osborn's conclusion that the fossil tooth from Nebraska represented either a human or an anthropoid tooth."

And as far as the display at the university goes, Osborn himself said of the drawing on which the display was likely based that the artist "has made a remarkable sketch to convey some idea of the possibilities suggested by this discovery. As we know nothing of the creature's form, his reconstruction is merely the expression of an artist's brilliant imaginative genius."

The final point to be made with respect to Nebraska man was that the scientific method worked. Someone made a mistake and in a very short period, his fellow scientists noticed the mistake and corrected it. You emphasize for us the importance of following the scientific method. When applied, mistakes and frauds are uncovered eventually and corrected. Bad ideas cannot survive in the market place that is the peer review process.

It is very telling that YEers and IDers will not generally put their ideas through such a process. They would fail the test. You can also look around this thread and some of the others in this forum and see all of the long discredited ideas that YEers come here and proclaim. YE is not self correcting of its mistakes. It does not weed out the bad arguments. It does not censor its own. It does not submit itself to review by those who are the most qualified to judge.

YEers and IDers will generally not put their ideas down in a specific enough form that they can be tested. They cannot make predicitions. Their ideas are not in a form tha can be falsified. They are not scientific and they do not jive with reality.

"
And didn't you get it at all concerning the chicken egg? All of those complex systems had to be in place at the same time for the chick to be born in the first place."

I did get it. You were making an argument from incredulty by asserting that the eggs process is irreducibly complex. But you failed to demonstrate your assertion was true. You told us how complex it was but never in there did you say why this degree of complexity could not develop over long periods of time through tiny changes.

"You didn't get my point. How does survival of the fittest warrant a rival for their food source? And where did the all of the species all at once decide that they need to intensely desire such rivals? And why would they care if their species died out, even the most simple of life? "

Was there a point then? You seem to be asking why organisms would make offspring which compete with them for resources.

Let's try again. If you genes do not call for making little yous, you die out. If your genes do call for making little yous, those genes get passed on. Only genes that call for reproduction have any possibility of being passed on. Most environemnts are not so constrained in resources that a single new offspring will cause the parent to die immediately in any case. Now that you see that only organisms that reproduce can exist, then you should see why genes that make reproduction more likely will be favored. You will also see why most fish, who for the most part lay eggs and do not provide care, can afford to produce hundreds of offspring at a time. While something like an ape who gives live birth and invests years of parental care can only afford one child at a time. Different species balance the resources available for reproduction differently. Some make alot and do not invest in care while others make only a few and invest heavily in care.

 

I have a question. Why is it that some Christians are so intent on proving that the Scriptural account of creation is wrong and that atheistic evolution is correct?

 

I believe the scriptural account of creation is correct and atheistic evolution is not. I believe theistic evolution to be the best current understanding of God's special revelation of the bible and general revelation of creation although it is probably wrong too in many ways.

 

I believe the scriptural account of creation is correct and atheistic evolution is not. I believe theistic evolution to be the best current understanding of God's special revelation of the bible and general revelation of creation although it is probably wrong too in many ways. </font>[/QUOTE]Theistic evolution is an oxymoron! :D

 

Gave up on this thread awhile ago, but today got the following email which I think might be amusing to some and a warning to others:

___________

The following quote from Darwin's Autobiography (pp 34-35, 2005, B+N edition) is sequenced between his telling of the return of the Beagle and his marriage two years later. And, by the way, as near as I can tell, he married his sister's daughter. At any rate, I interpret the following quote to mean that, in scientific matters, one should not be dogmatic and insist upon just ones own point of view as the only possible correct idea. If you insist upon exclusion, you might have to eat crow.

"During these two years I took several short excursions as a relaxation, and one longer one to the parallel roads of Glen Roy, an account of which was published in the _Philosophical Transactions_. This paper was a great failure, and I am ashamed of it. Having been deeply impressed with what I had seen of the elevation of the land in South America, I attributed the parallel lines to the action of the sea; but I had to give up this view when Agassiz propounded his glacier-lake theory. Because no other explanation was possible under our then state of knowledge. I argued in favour of sea-action; and my error has been a good lesson to me never to trust in science to the principle of exclusion."

 

Definitely. Darwin understood science. Science is not dogmatic. Everything in science is wrong because one day, there will be a better explanation for it. Until then, the scientific explanations that we have now are as good as it gets.

 

I disagree. The Bible is as good as it gets. Every time the Bible and science disagree and then enough evidence comes to light, we find that the Bible was right all along and science -- or man's knowledge -- has to make an adustment.