Evolution: A note on terminology...or being wise

[Gold Dragon]

Theistic evolution, like the Gap Theory and Progressive Creationism, completely undermines the authority of the Scriptures. I have known a man for almost 50 years who literally is a rocket scientist, and a believer. When I bring up the subject of Creation vs evolution, he simply refuses to talk to me. I can't get him to understand that if the Biblical account of the Creation isn't believable, we have no good reason to believe anything else the Scriptures say. If the Creation was just a parable then maybe the resurrection of Jesus was too. Anytime truth compromises with error, truth loses. It is a tragic mistake for Christians to try to reconcile the Bible to science. Science done properly will always be compatible with the Word of God. The Word never changes, but science changes all the time.

I believe in theistic evolution. But if you don't that is ok. Christians have many different beliefs about all sorts of things in the world and in scripture.

I also believe that the bible is God's inspired, pure, authoritative and trustworthy word to us. The Creation story, like the rest of the bible is absolutely believable. It is not a parable like Jesus' parables that were purely illustrative. But it isn't telling people the story that many think it is telling them. The bible is not a science textbook, it is not a rule book and it is not one big allegory. If we read the bible or a portion of the bible using the wrong literary framework, we misinterpret the text.

Good science and good biblical hermeneutics of Genesis and the bible are definitely compatible. Good science requires proper interpretation of the available data, without pre-existing beliefs (religious or otherwise) clouding those interpretations. Good hermeneutics and interpretaion of Genesis 1-3 does not require reconciling the Bible to science but reading the passages in its proper historical/cultural and literary context and not letting pre-existing beliefs (religious or otherwise) cloud those interpretations.

 

[Phillip Diller]

I can understand the man’s frustration with you.
Science is designed to make us ask questions about our beliefs

“Science done properly”
Science is about evidence, theories, experiments.
Science attempts to understand the physical world around us.
When you lay your own personal theological constraints upon those that do research, you check or smother their ability to do any real scientific work.

The universe is governed by natural laws which are discoverable through observation and reasoning. Through science, we begin to understand and define these natural laws.

Scriptures carry the authority vested in them through the character of God; scriptures are ‘God-breathed’. Since God does not change, neither will that which proceeds from him.
Science is not vested with this characteristic.
Because science is about evidence, by itself, it carries no “authority.”
Any questions relating to its authority are answered by an appeal to the facts, determined through experiments. Show me the facts!

The world about us is govern by laws that proceeded from God.
It is by understanding these laws that we can begin to understand how things about us function and begin to glimpse at how complex God is; one aspect of his character.

When one limits science by determining beforehand what they want it to say, it’s not science anymore, they have entered into the study of theology.
You may debate all you like about ‘death before sin’ and the theological implications relating to it. It is a theological discussion, not science.

Rob

Phillip,

I understand the scientific method. What you don't seem to understant is that evolutionism has profound theological implacations. My "personal theological constraints" are not a hinderance to doing real science any more than it was for men like Lister, Pasteur, Newton, Kepler, Boyle, Maxwell, Mendel and many other believers in Creationism. What hinders "Science done properly" is people of the stature of Gould who said "No properly trained scientist questions the validity of evolution", or Dawkins who said that anyone who claims not to believe in evolution is either ignorant, stupid or insane, or Sagan who proclaimed that the cosmos is all there is, ever was or ever will be. All of these are highly unscientific statements that frame the culture of scientific bias.

Phillip

 

[Phillip Diller]

One more thing "science done properly". Science controlled by philosophical naturalism is demonstrably dishonest when it routinely ignores data that runs counter to it's worldview. Case in point: the age of the Earth. In order to protect the premise of evolution scientist have insisted that the Earth is some 4.6 billion years old, and offer a wide variety of dating methods to prove it. The problem is that all of those methods are flawed and demonstrably unreliable.

Carbon 14:

 

[Phillip Diller]

One more thing "science done properly". Science controlled by philosophical naturalism is demonstrably dishonest when it routinely ignores data that runs counter to it's worldview. Case in point: the age of the Earth. In order to protect the premise of evolution scientist have insisted that the Earth is some 4.6 billion years old, and offer a wide variety of dating methods to prove it. The problem is that all of those methods are flawed and demonstrably unreliable.

Carbon 14: Carbon dating has only been around for about 70 years and claims, with AMS technology, to be able to date artifacts up to about 100,000 years old. Beyond that there can't be enough C-14 left to detect. First of, C-14 is routinely found in coal and diamonds - both of which are assumed to be much too old. Secondly, since the test revolves around the ratio of C-14 to C-12, the researcher must know what the atmospheric ratio was at the time the artifact was alive. What we do know is that atmospheric atomic bomb testing and volcanic activity can significantly effect those values, but nobody was checking on that back in the 1940's. Thirdly C-14 dating on artifacts recently alive or still living don't indicate correctly. So, the question is, why would trust the results of a test on an artifact of unknown age when the test can't give accurate results on objects whose true age is known?

Potassium-Argon: K-Aar studies have been done on dacite samples taken from the lava dome at Mt. St. Helen's when they were fewer than 10 years from crystalization and they tested a minimum of 280,000 years. Uranium to lead testing done on whole rock samples does not yield the same age as they get when performing the same test on individual crystals extracted from the same rock. Also, testing the same rock with a variety of different test methods produces different ages, ranging from the low end up to ages orders of magnitude greater. There is no consistancey and researchers with an evolutionary bias are left trying to conjure up an explanation for why they accept one age and reject the others - and it's called bias

The truth is that nobody can determine with certainty the age of a rock unless there is historical evidence of its formation. So, since the age of the Earth is a central issue in the discussion of Creation vs uniformitarian geology, it should be understood that science cannot prove that the Earth is old enough for evolution to be a reasonable explanation for the existance of life. Besides, evolution and abiogenesis wouldn't be feasable even if the Earth and universe were as old as evolutionists claim - for a lot of reasons. The Creation took six normal days and happened about 6,000 years ago, and science done properly doesn't prove otherwise. The NOMA Priciple is garbage.

Phillip