Today we had a lovely walk in Crombie Park. It was exhilarating to experience the Autumn colours even in what started out as a grey day and ended up sunny – this is after all Scotland, where you can get four seasons in one day. I wondered at the glory of the Creator in the variety of nature and then thought why do people think that this all just happened – that it was all undirected? I realise that Christians have different positions (young earth creationists, old earth creationists and theistic evolutionists) and I don’t really want to get into that argument for the umpteenth time – but surely no Christian can argue that it was all undirected?
Anyway as I mused I came across this fascinating article about an interview between Dennis Prager and Stephen Meyer. Prager told Meyer this:
Until I met you, to be honest, my view was, I didn’t really care about evolution. It didn’t bother me if it was true, and it didn’t bother me if it wasn’t true. I believe in God as the creator of the heavens and the earth, the God of Genesis 1, and if God used evolution, what do I care? It’s all a miracle, anyway. Then I read you and talked to you, and my wife, frankly, who as you know, knows a fair amount about evolution, and it has become less and less tenable, not for religious reasons, but for scientific reasons, to endorse evolution as it is generally taught.
I have become increasingly aware of a number of scientists who are rejecting some of the basic premises of Darwinian evolution – because of their scientific not religious views. It will be interesting to see how this develops. Meanwhile we continue to see the glory of God in the Creation.
It’s hardly Darwinian evolution it’s moved on quite a bit since Darwin’s initial work.
Interesting… you know of scientists concerned about evolution and that it might be wrong? Well, how about naming names? ‘Scientists’ is far to braod a term. It might included scoial scientists who have nothing to do with Evolutionary Biology. So… names or they are invented.
It is alos really odd that no one hae got a paper into Nature that disagrees with The Theory of Evolution. If there were good grounds to question it, would you not think someone would want a Nobel Prize? Such is the likely outcome of anyone who can come up with a better theory.
Perhaps the clergy should stick with the bible. It’s a lot dafer and there’s no0 evidence needed
Read the articles and the links. Yes it is biologists and others. Try to have a more open mind.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/scientists-seek-to-update-evolution-20161122/
Royal Society meeting November 2016
Looking at the lovely outdoors scenes you posted, and imagining the details you noticed as you walked along the wooded road and around the lake, I have no doubt that God created them and still is creating there.
Was I off school the day they revealed the MISSING EVOLUTIONARY LINK in the fossil record, between man & his hypothesised ancestors?
No such link has ever been substantiated. Proving were indeed proof needed, that this theory does not support all the weight of the claims ascribed to it.
I have observed over the years that those who claim to look to science for the answers, seem to be missing the very objectively that manifests itself in an open enquiring mind.
Rather I’ve found it to be a cynical attempt at an intellectual smoke screen to justify their own religious prejudice as David has revealed above.
Oh how i long to find those with a genuine open enquiring mind!!
Quite an incredible claim to suggest that those who rely on science are simply manifesting their apparent dislike of religion.
There is no missing link. There are gaps in the evidence that fossils etc give us but you seem to misunderstand a number of things. Where do you think the gap would be given that we what we share with other species. Neanderthals and humans share DNA.
Evolution did not make one big species leap to another. Millions of incremental changes (probably combined with forced environmental changes) resulted in us as we are now. Every incremental change does not result in a species change but the accumulation will eventually be that.
There is little that separates us from animals other than we can do things on a grander or more complicated scale. In fact, pretty much the only thing we do that animals don’t is cultural accumulation and transmission. Many animals learn. Only humans teach.
The Prager/Meyer thing is interesting. I am surprised that that when scientists seek to use the evidence they’ve accumulated to suggest changes to things like evolution or astronomy or physics, there is a burst of hopeful straw clutching by various religious types. Look, Darwin was wrong! We were right in saying God did it! I mean, this ignores that Darwin made corrections from one edition of his book to another. Also, why anyone listens to Meyer on this topic is odd. His book on Darwins doubt is “plagued with misrepresentation, omission, and dismissal of the scientific consensus; exacerbated by Meyer’s lack of scientific knowledge and superficial understanding in the relevant fields, especially molecular phylogenetics and morphogenesis.” That was a comment by Charles R. Marshall who has some qualifications on the topic at hand. Meyers qualifications on rocks and history are less relevant.
The difference between science and religion is that evidence is important to science along with the need for a mind that looks at new evidence and weighs the evidence. Science also uses multiple sources and retestable results. Religion, not so much.
But looking at a pretty landscape can also show you science. Crombie Park was a man made reservoir. An ongoing programme of tree planting has seen conifers replaced with wildlife-attracting oak, alder, rowan and hazel. Scientific evidence based approaches to rewilding landscape. Its a nice place. It has a creator, Angus Council since 1982.
The human beings who did a man made reservoir were tools (in the best sense of the word)….they created nothing!
Your disparaging of Meyer is a cheap shot….anyone can google for nasty comments about someone we don’t agree with – Have you actually read Signature in the Cell? If not I suggest you do…
If humans were tools then that doesnt say much for the wielder of said tools. Humanity is a catastrophe for this planet…..
Statements of fact are not nasty. You set out, often in clear and strident terms, where people are wrong. Charles R Marshall on Meyer on understanding that relevant area of science is no different to you on Vicky Beaching when it comes to what the Bible has to say. Why does one person with expertise (you) get to disagree with another person (Beaching) yet Meyers views are unassailable.
I admit to valuing actual expertise. For example, I offer no opinion on the truth of epigenetics (which I find really interesting but the science isnt agreed so I leave statements of fact out of it). Myer is an expert in the idea of Intelligent Design but lacks expertise in the wide range of sciences that underpin evolution. I am not going to read Signature in a Cell because it offers nothing in terms of actual new science and instead works on opinion and belief. Daryl Falk stated it “If the object of the book is to show that the Intelligent Design movement is a scientific movement, it has not succeeded. In fact, what it has succeeded in showing is that it is a popular movement grounded primarily in the hopes and dreams of those in philosophy, in religion, and especially those in the general public.”. A Falk supports divinely guided evolution.
Try to argue against what is being said. I never said that Meyer’s views are unassailable – such a view would be stupid. Your statement that you are not going to read his book but then you give an opinion about it only shows your prejudice. ‘I am not going to read anything which may challenge my beliefs but I feel free to comment on what I havn’t read’ is a sad summary of your closed mind!
Why does the undoubted loveliness of the scene presume a creator? Maybe a more interesting question is why to we find the scene so lovely? And as for the science. I have read many biologists whose work suggests that the genetic history of life on earth is not quite as simple as Darwin’s original descent by modification. As we find out more we take note of horizontal gene transfer between organisms for example. Very few however (if any) are suggesting that Darwin’s basic idea is wrong just that it is not the entire story. It is still a or the major factor in explaining the genetic patterns we can observe. This is what you would expect isn’t it? As our technology becomes better we find out more and have to adapt our ideas. This is how science works. It is a pretty good example of sceptical open mindedness at work. As for the ‘where is the missing link?’ comment above…
Science has no answer to why we find anything lovely.
Science offers no explanation for beauty.
Yet a simple observation of the eye, evokes awe, wonder. Arguments about what made the object of beauty, and how, (days or millions of years) fails to address the author of the fact we find beauty in such things in the first place.
Science may explain a scene and a sunset, but offer nothing toward why we like it.
As CSLewis said, he believes in the sun, not becaus he can see it, but because by it he sees everything else.
“There is little that separates us from animals other than we can do things on a grander or more complicated scale. ”
Okay, so a chimpanzee would be quite capable of producing a comment pretty much along the same lines as your own? If you disagree with that suggestion perhaps you might like to tell us what sort of a comment a chimpanzee could have posted and then tell us how this is just ‘less complicated’ than your own comment. I find it quite difficult to understand how a swallow can migrate from one place to another over such a large distance but I doubt there has been much discussion among swallows about choosing some other destination just for a bit of variety.
I’m maybe going beyond my pay grade here but could it be said that the swallow has a tremendous ability to achieve an incredible feat but has no ability to go beyond that whereas a human being has free will and can spend hours upon hours thinking about where they are going for their next summer holiday. That seems to me to be more than just a matter of doing things ‘on a grander or more complicated scale.’
Well you can teach Gorillas sign language so great apes can communicate. What is a comment on a blog other than a grander or more complicated method of communicate.
If you dont understand the words grander or more complicated then let me know and I will educate you.
Dolphins and birds have been observed adopting habits through cultural transmission. Migration routes are habits but not unchangeable. The UK’s increasingly warmer and wetter winters have induced some short-distance migratory birds to give up their journeys entirely and remain in the UK. The breeding numbers of blackcaps and chiffchaffs have both more than doubled since 1970. I very much doubt that they have decided to have staycations instead but, like humans, have reacted to their environment. We do it by going on holiday to get a bit of sun or do something new. So do birds.
There is no doubt that the human brain can do incredible, astonishing things. Should it be classified in with the whole raft of amazing things that organisms have evolved to do? Or is it a different kind of amazing. Is the human brain just a tremendously well adapted organ like the wing of an albatross or the nose of a shark? I honestly don’t know.
Thanks, David,
your point is well made.
Current sciendicy [‘the justification of science’] considers the exclusion of creationism from scientific thinking to be of first importance. It could be argued that the most obvious result of the vigorous pursuit of that goal is the reported 40% of Americans who don’t believe in evolution. People don’t like being told what they must think; especially when one of the riders is that they are too ill-informed to understand the issues involved.
However, if ones main line of defence is to yell ‘Creationist’ any time Neo-Darwinian orthodoxy is questioned, what happens when an atheist is the questioner? It seems to me that the snobbery of the ‘hard’ scientist shows itself quickly when the questioner is dismissed as ‘only’ a philosopher, an historian, or — heaven forfend — a mathematician. Amazing how experts who write the papers think no-one else is capable of reading them with understanding. Is it the last line of defence to dismiss the residue of critics as contrarians? Contrarians are by definition lovers of discord rather than lovers of God but sooner or later somebody’s good idea is initially going to be dismissed only because of the combatative personality of the proposer and the anti-contrarian defence will be greatly weakened when the truth of the matter comes out as it will.
It has been very interesting to see the all-or-nothing attitude of posters from both sides of the debate. The impression given by evolutionists that any credence given to teleology would fundamentally undermine the principle of natural selection serves to dangle a very big carrot before evidentialists but it’s not necessarily so. I argued way back when that Dawkins et al would very quickly find a way to argue that irreducible complexity was not dependent on God’s intervention but that was before I realised that his undoubted intelligence is seriously compromised by his anger at God and his overreaching hatred of that imaginary granfalloon that he calls ‘Religion’. Instead what we get in The Greatest Show on Earth is a collection of things that he imagines Creationists will not like as evidences that evolution is true. It would be an interesting exercise for anyone informed with the basics of Evolutionary Biology and Biblical Theology to look at these (what I suspect are) non-evidences. For example, Dawkins’s take on the ability of some cultures of e. coli in the long running Richard Lenski experiment to metabolise citrate aerobically is that it is evidence of evolution but any biologically-aware creationist ought to see it as more likely evidence that there can be recovery from the effects of the Fall.
Yours,
John/.