Kenneth Miller: Respected Christian Champion of Evolution

[RighteousnessTemperance&]

The New Jerusalem Bible is well respected for its unique sensitivity to Hebrew nuance. This sensitivity is illustrated by its translation of the most relevant biblical text to the evolution-creationism debate:

"I [Lady Wisdom] was beside the master craftsman, delighting him day after day, ever at play in his presence, at play everywhere on his earth, delighting to be with the children of men (Prov.8:30-31)."
Wisdom here is personified and speaks as if She is a 2nd Person of the godhead. This personification prompted the earliest doctrine of the Trinity (Greek: "trias") in 180 AD as expressed by Theophilus bishop of Antioch, the church that discipled Paul: "God, God's Word (= rist), and God's Wisdom." Note the Wisdom precedes the Holy Spirit as a member of the Trinity. The NT of course never uses the word "Trinity." Lady Wisdom in Proverbs functions in part the way Mother Nature does in modern parlance.

The biblical concept of creation as divine "play" in principle allows for divine experimentation through evolution, random evolutionary processes, mass extinctions, and evolutionary dead ends. In the poetic Genesis narrative God does not simply speak vegetative and animal life into existence; rather, God decrees, "Let the earth bring forth" vegetative and then animal life (1:11, 24). But this narrative does not explain how the earth brought forth this life. This omission leaves the door open to the divine use of evolutionary processes.

It is important to recognize the scholarly consensus that the first creation story is a poetic narrative created for use in the Temple liturgy and intended to justify Sabbath rest on the 7th day. Note the liturgical repetition of the phrases, "And God said....and it was so...and God saw that it was good...Evening came, morning followed, the first (second, third, etc.) day." I believe God used evolutionary processes in the development of life forms. By like Kenneth Miller, I also believe that the Big Picture reflects Intelligent Design and divine guidance of this process as a whole. I don't believe genetic mutation and natural selection are sufficient principles to explain the evolution of creation. Science does not yet grasp the nature and principles that govern consciousness and life energy and I believe that these unrecognized principles were vital to the evolutionary process.

The Bible teaches us to be honest in every way, including intellectual honesty and commands us to love God with all our mind as well as our heart. This means we are required to endure the discomfort of loose ends and conflicting evidence in our belief system and the discomfort and doubts that this honesty brings. The "fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom," but so is the willingness to admit exactly what we know and don't know through current rational processes. I believe the Holy Spirit is grieved by the refusal of most evangelicals to even consider the case for evolution by watching videos featuring experts like Ken Miller. I started this thread to demonstrate this indemic evangelical dishonesty in refusing to even consider contrary evidence seriously.
Leia mais em: https://www.bibliacatolica.com.br/en/new-jerusalem-bible/proverbs/8/

You keep making this about Evangelicals. You do know that Michael Behe, one of the main advocates for Intelligent Design, is Catholic, don’t you? Are you being honest by not bringing that out?

How about honesty in the court case? Did Miller admit his bias regarding Intelligent Design is religious, not scientific? Miller maintains science is unable to detect signs of intelligence, which is nonsense, yet when it comes to some scientists, I feel forced to agree. Did he admit he believes intelligent design is inherent in the universe and in nature? If not, was that honest? If so, why did he argue against intelligent design? Because of a religious bias, not on a scientific basis. It’s hard for me to believe you honestly cannot see the problem with this.

 

[Yeshua1]

You are sadly misinformed. In fact, that the evolutionary affinities between humans, apes, and chimps are even more devastating for an anti-evolutionary stance that you imagine. Consider this quotation about primate genetic relationships from the prestigious Smithsonian website:

"While the genetic difference between individual humans today is minuscule – about 0.1%, on average – study of the same aspects of the chimpanzee genome indicates a difference of about 1.2%. The bonobo (Pan paniscus), which is the close cousin of chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), differs from humans to the same degree. The DNA difference with gorillas, another of the African apes, is about 1.6%. Most importantly, chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans all show this same amount of difference from gorillas. A difference of 3.1% distinguishes us and the African apes from the Asian great ape, the orangutan. How do the monkeys stack up? All of the great apes and humans differ from rhesus monkeys, for example, by about 7% in their DNA."

the comparison is not ornage for orange though, as Humans are a distinct race form any primate, as we were created By God in His own image, and NO other animal was!

 

[Yeshua1]

You keep making this about Evangelicals. You do know that Michael Behe, one of the main advocates for Intelligent Design, is Catholic, don’t you? Are you being honest by not bringing that out?

How about honesty in the court case? Did Miller admit his bias regarding Intelligent Design is religious, not scientific? Miller maintains science is unable to detect signs of intelligence, which is nonsense, yet when it comes to some scientists, I feel forced to agree. Did he admit he believes intelligent design is inherent in the universe and in nature? If not, was that honest? If so, why did he argue against intelligent design? Because of a religious bias, not on a scientific basis. It’s hard for me to believe you honestly cannot see the problem with this.

there is really no good scientific data available to support Darwinian Evolution, much less Theistic kind

 

[Baptist Believer]

there is really no good scientific data available to support Darwinian Evolution, much less Theistic kind

The only problem with your assertion is that there is plenty of good scientific data available to support theistic evolution.

However, I would agree that there is no good scientific data available to support atheistic evolution, since atheism has no means to account for the necessary primordial elements and material conditions required for evolution to occur.

 

[Yeshua1]

The only problem with your assertion is that there is plenty of good scientific data available to support theistic evolution.

However, I would agree that there is no good scientific data available to support atheistic evolution, since atheism has no means to account for the necessary primordial elements and material conditions required for evolution to occur.

There are no known real transistional fossils, and mankind is in very Image of God, as there were no Humans before adam and eve, and they did not come from Ape parents!

 

[Baptist Believer]

There are no known real transistional fossils, and mankind is in very Image of God, as there were no Humans before adam and eve, and they did not come from Ape parents!

As I have pointed out to you repeatedly, the human genome itself tells the story. We don't actually NEED fossils to make the assertion that humans have evolved. However, the fossil record does support the evidence found in the human genome.

 

[Yeshua1]

There was no change in humans from time of Adam and Eve until now though!

 

[Baptist Believer]

There was no change in humans from time of Adam and Eve until now though!

What do you mean by "changes?"

There are a number of genetic irregularities and variants throughout the ages of human history, as well as dramatic changes to the appearance of human beings based on the climates in which people groups have traditionally lived. That is obviously -- at least -- micro-evolution.

 

[Yeshua1]

What do you mean by "changes?"

There are a number of genetic irregularities and variants throughout the ages of human history, as well as dramatic changes to the appearance of human beings based on the climates in which people groups have traditionally lived. That is obviously -- at least -- micro-evolution.

There has never been since Adam and eve a Non Homo sapien human being!

 

[Baptist Believer]

There has never been since Adam and eve a Non Homo sapien human being!

It depends how to categorize things. The classifications are highly arbitrary in my opinion.

Neanderthals are considered to be a separate species by some scientists. As a person of European descent -- and according to genetic testing -- I have about 4% Neanderthal DNA, higher than most people tested. That is almost certainly through my mother's side. I think that Neanderthals were probably human (in the image of God) as well.

 

[Deadworm]

"RighteousnessTemperance&: "You keep making this about Evangelicals. You do know that Michael Behe, one of the main advocates for Intelligent Design, is Catholic, don’t you? Are you being honest by not bringing that out?"

You haven't watched the Miller video. Behe gets humiliated at the trial because he is forced to profess ignorance of the relevant scientific journal articles that refutes his claims about the flagellum.
Also, Miller decisively refutes Behe in his videos.

The claim that only 70% of DNA is common to chimps and humans is unreplicated rubbish promoted by a biased Fundmentalist website and is rightly dismissed until replication experiments can confirm it.

https://www.filthymonkeymen.com/2013/05/06/humans-are-only-70-chimp/

Nor can Baptist posters respond to the gemetic evidence cited by Miller that Chromosome #2 fused with its adjacent chromosome millions of years ago to bring the 24 chimp chromosomes down to the 23 we now see in humans.

This thread is really unfair to Dr. Miller because the video and the references are ten years old and scientifically obsolete and we do not know if he still holds this obsolete position that the chimp and the human have DNA that is about 98% the same. More recent advanced study of the DNA and genetics has shown the two DNAs are only about 70% or less alike, so the whole theory is scientifically obsolete:

Only 69% of the chimpanzee X chromosome was similar to human and only 43% of the Y chromosome. Chimp autosomal similarity to human on average was 70.7% with a range of 66.1% to 77.9%, depending on the chromosome (Table 1 and Fig. 1). Genome-wide, only 70% of the chimpanzee DNA was similar to human under the most optimal sequence-slice conditions.

Chimpanzees and humans share many localized protein-coding regions of high similarity. However, overall there is extreme DNA sequence discontinuity between the two genomes. The current study along with several other recent reports confirm this. This defies standard evolutionary time-scales and dogmatic presuppositions about a common ancestor.

https://answersingenesis.org/answer...analysis-of-chimpanzee-and-human-chromosomes/

You are talking about just one dubious study reported by a biased fundamentalist group, Answers in Genesis. Tompkins's methodology and algorhythms must be dismissed as biased until his findings are replicated by subsequent research. For a more detailed explanation of why no one should be excited by Tomkins's claims, see:

https://www.filthymonkeymen.com/2013/05/06/humans-are-only-70-chimp/

Even if Tomkins were right--and that claim hasn't been confirmed--that doesn't address the discovery of the markers of a fused chromosome that demonstrate a transition from 24 chimp to 23 human chromosones. And no, Miller has rightly maintained the 99% claim and you would know this if you watched his recent youtube lectures.[/QUOTE]

 

[Yeshua1]

It depends how to categorize things. The classifications are highly arbitrary in my opinion.

Neanderthals are considered to be a separate species by some scientists. As a person of European descent -- and according to genetic testing -- I have about 4% Neanderthal DNA, higher than most people tested. That is almost certainly through my mother's side. I think that Neanderthals were probably human (in the image of God) as well.

I think they were still us, as was 99% same Dna!

 

[RighteousnessTemperance&]

You haven't watched the Miller video. Behe gets humiliated at the trial because he is forced to profess ignorance of the relevant scientific journal articles that refutes his claims about the flagellum.
Also, Miller decisively refutes Behe in his videos.

Your post seems to be corrupted somehow. The only part I saw that responded to mine, about Behe, completely failed to address the point I made. It makes no matter what you think about Behe's success or failure, the point is that he is Catholic and an accomplished scientist. Also, as has been pointed out, David Berlinski, an agnostic (or skeptic?), defends ID and skewers the pretentions of evolutionism. Some non-theistic scientists have looked at the evidence and felt that aliens must have seeded earth, that is, they saw intelligent design. The point is that the debate is not with Evangelicals.

Everyone sees intelligent design. Some seem desperate to explain it away, their objections being religious, not scientific. Either intelligence preprogrammed life to be able to morph into ever more elaborate and complex forms, or intelligence frequently intervened to accomplish the design task. The former represents an unimaginable amount of intelligent design, and so does the latter. The former is missing the many millions or billions or trillions of remains needed as evidence to be a settled solution. The latter does not need to have such evidence, only to point out the ubiquitously missing "missing links" and note that we do not see it happening anymore.

And please don't drag in "microevolution" as proof, as it is most definitely nothing of the sort. It cannot get the job done without an unimaginable amount of intelligent design to make the leaps.

 

[church mouse guy]

ID proves nothing because people such as Bill Nye believe life came from Mars so Martians could have designed something for earth.

Your point about 99% is obsolete scientifically. No geneticist believes that. As for the fusion of the chromosomes, that just proves that they are fused. It is inconsequential.

 

[Yeshua1]

Your post seems to be corrupted somehow. The only part I saw that responded to mine, about Behe, completely failed to address the point I made. It makes no matter what you think about Behe's success or failure, the point is that he is Catholic and an accomplished scientist. Also, as has been pointed out, David Berlinski, an agnostic (or skeptic?), defends ID and skewers the pretentions of evolutionism. Some non-theistic scientists have looked at the evidence and felt that aliens must have seeded earth, that is, they saw intelligent design. The point is that the debate is not with Evangelicals.

Everyone sees intelligent design. Some seem desperate to explain it away, their objections being religious, not scientific. Either intelligence preprogrammed life to be able to morph into ever more elaborate and complex forms, or intelligence frequently intervened to accomplish the design task. The former represents an unimaginable amount of intelligent design, and so does the latter. The former is missing the many millions or billions or trillions of remains needed as evidence to be a settled solution. The latter does not need to have such evidence, only to point out the ubiquitously missing "missing links" and note that we do not see it happening anymore.

And please don't drag in "microevolution" as proof, as it is most definitely nothing of the sort. It cannot get the job done without an unimaginable amount of intelligent design to make the leaps.

Since there is NO proof of there even being any transistional species change occuring, and since the evidence would much better supprter younger than extremely old earth/univede theory...
Still say that the reason ythere is theistic Evolution is due to trying to mash evolutiony into the scriptures, due to the mistaken belief that it is proven fact!
And it would literally rip arart how paul/Jesus viewed the genesis records...

 

[Yeshua1]

ID proves nothing because people such as Bill Nye believe life came from Mars so Martians could have designed something for earth.

Your point about 99% is obsolete scientifically. No geneticist believes that. As for the fusion of the chromosomes, that just proves that they are fused. It is inconsequential.

There is still no real proof of other human races are there? As Adam and Eve would be the first humkans, and all of their offsrpring and still be Homo sapiens, correct?

 

[Aaron]

There really is no question about the Genesis days. The issue is whether or not one believes what he is being told, and no one in this thread is scientist.

BB says what he says because he read it somewhere. Same with wormy. They dismiss the more noble of scientists who believe Genesis and expose the presuppositions and weaknesses in the theories, and who are candid about the lack of consensus in the scientific community.

Genesis doesn't say God made man from an animal. He made Adam from the dust in a special act distinct from the act of creating any other living thing. BB has God changing one kind of animal into another until mankind appears. So who are you going to believe? Moses or BB?

If it occurred as BB asserts is so obviously is the case, isn't it a simple task to say it happened that way? I described it in few words in the paragraph above. Surely there would be no impedance to its reception inherent in 'the understanding of mankind in those days.' Paganism is rife with such stories and they were widely received.

If Adam were formed from an animal or part of an animal, God would have said as much. He said as much with the creation of Eve when He said He made her from one of Adam's ribs.

So it all boils down to whose creation story you're going to believe. Moses's or BB's.

 

[Yeshua1]

There really is no question about the Genesis days. The issue is whether or not one believes what he is being told, and no one in this thread is scientist.

BB says what he says because he read it somewhere. Same with wormy. They dismiss the more noble of scientists who believe Genesis and expose the presuppositions and weaknesses in the theories, and who are candid about the lack of consensus in the scientific community.

Genesis doesn't say God made man from an animal. He made Adam from the dust in a special act distinct from the act of creating any other living thing. BB has God changing one kind of animal into another until mankind appears. So who are you going to believe? Moses or BB?

If it occurred as BB asserts is so obviously is the case, isn't it a simple task to say it happened that way? I described it in few words in the paragraph above. Surely there would be no impedance to its reception inherent in 'the understanding of mankind in those days.' Paganism is rife with such stories and they were widely received.

If Adam were formed from an animal or part of an animal, God would have said as much. He said as much with the creation of Eve when He said He made her from one of Adam's ribs.

So it all boils down to whose creation story you're going to believe. Moses's or BB's.

Or even higher authority than Moses, either BB or Jesus Christ!

 

[Baptist Believer]

There really is no question about the Genesis days. The issue is whether or not one believes what he is being told, and no one in this thread is scientist.

Not really. My views come from careful study of scripture -- including the study of the Genesis narratives in Hebrew -- with about 30 years of analysis that includes geology, astronomy, and the human genome. I have had close friends and family members who are Christians and scientists, including an astrophysicist, two biologists, and a chemist. The branch of science that finally confirmed theistic evolution to me was biology, through the subject of the human genome. I read the book, Adam and the Genome, in conjunction with a biologist (a strong Christian who was struggling to reconcile Genesis with observable and confirmed science), and he confirmed the science presented in the book. He was blessed by the theology section that helped him unpack the Genesis narratives and the OT and NT use of "Adam." I was aided in the biology section and was also thrilled with the depth of the theology section which opened up a better understanding of the importance of the creation narratives and the rich depth of truth they provide.

BB says what he says because he read it somewhere. Same with wormy. They dismiss the more noble of scientists who believe Genesis and expose the presuppositions and weaknesses in the theories, and who are candid about the lack of consensus in the scientific community.

That is simply a false accusation.

Genesis doesn't say God made man from an animal. He made Adam from the dust in a special act distinct from the act of creating any other living thing.

Genesis follows a form of ancient cosmology that was present when it was written. It repudiates the competing cosmologies and establishes the God revealed to Abraham and Moses as the true God. It is not meant to be interpreted with wooden literalism any more than Jesus saying He is the door to the sheep or the bread of life.

BB has God changing one kind of animal into another until mankind appears. So who are you going to believe? Moses or BB?

You should believe Moses in the proper way. I believe that happens to be the way I understand the writing of Moses.

If it occurred as BB asserts is so obviously is the case, isn't it a simple task to say it happened that way? I described it in few words in the paragraph above. Surely there would be no impedance to its reception inherent in 'the understanding of mankind in those days.' Paganism is rife with such stories and they were widely received.

You just answered your own question. Since humankind is not just another category of animals, the emphasis of the story is to explain how we were created in the image of God. The narrative is not at all concerned with the process.

If Adam were formed from an animal or part of an animal, God would have said as much.

Why? What purpose who it have served? That's not the point of Genesis.

He said as much with the creation of Eve when He said He made her from one of Adam's ribs.

Was that on the first day of creation (Genesis 2:4) or the sixth day of creation (Genesis 1:27, 31)?

So it all boils down to whose creation story you're going to believe. Moses's or BB's.

Believe Moses properly. I think my understand of it is a proper interpretation.

 

[Baptist Believer]

Or even higher authority than Moses, either BB or Jesus Christ!

Believe Jesus and Moses. But to do that, you actually have to study and be open to hearing them speak to you. I have done that. Have you?