Jesus didn't believe Evolution - neither should we

[Gup20]

Jesus on creation
by Charles Taylor

‘But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female’ (Mark 10:6).

In these words of Jesus we find He teaches that Adam and Eve were created in ‘the beginning of the creation’—not billions of years after the beginning!

This means that God had prepared a world for them shortly beforehand—that is, over the five previous days. Furthermore, the expression ‘beginning of the creation’ rules out some second start, such as gap theorists hold.

Beyond this, I feel we should look at the implications of an early creation of humans. Because we were made ‘in the image of God’, we can have fellowship with God through His Spirit dwelling within—through accepting His offer of forgiveness in Jesus and repenting of our sins. What does this show us about God’s concern for us?

The Bible teaches throughout that we alone of the creatures can have that personal relationship with God. So it seems to have no logical purpose for Him to ordain billions of years with only rocks, algae, fish and even mammals, with whom He could have no spiritual communication.

Surely the true view of God is that He created us ‘for Himself’. If we were created after billions of years of other creative activity, this would send a strong message to us that mankind is really nothing special, not the focus of God’s loving intentions.

The more you look at the speed with which God brought us into existence, the more it suggests that His original intention was to bring into being a race He could love and cherish. He knew that we would rebel against His authority, yet He had already planned to demonstrate that love in Christ in taking, for those who will repent and believe, the deserved punishment for their rebellion.

Truly creation has an evangelistic message!

(this taken from Answers In Genesis)

 

[kcd]

Preach it bro, cause "Evolution Hopes You Don't Know Chemistry: The Problem With Chirality"

(By Charles McCombs, who has 20 chemical patents.)

http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-371.htm

Don't know why bb decided to shut down the devilution, or is it evilution(?), board.

Surely it would help Christians to have this site in order to gather material to refute the "scholars. Amen?

Thanks for starting the conversation

, & welcome to the site.

 

[Gup20]

Thank you for the welcome.

That was a fascinating read. It simply goes to show the complexity of our world and it's irrefutable reflection on The Creator.

 

[Johnv]

OTOH, Gup, Jesus said Jonah was in a whale, which contradicts the OT account of it being a fish (the hebrews had different words for "fish" and "whale", and knew the difference between the two). That being said, issue like whale/fish, literal/nonliteral creation, women and headcoverings, sabbath on sundays, etc, are non-docrtinal splittings of scriptural hairs, which result in discussions that do nothing but divide believers.

 

[Paul of Eugene]

???? I don't think you will ever find any evolutionist that would deny that from the beginning of mankind we were always male and female? That particular logic escapes me.

 

[UTEOTW]

Gup20

Welcome back. Haven't seen you in a while. I want to address the two new issues first and then get reaquainted with at least one of our prvious subjects. Maybe more.

Paul gave you the best answer to the problem you posed. As long as there have been men, they have been male and female. But let's delve a little deeper. I do not believe that the verse you quote is directly addressing creation but divorce, so I doubt the applicability to the situation. I amintain that in Genesis, God communicated what he intended for the people of the time (and us today) to know about God and man. He chose to do so in a way in which they could understand. By the same token, the reference you use (or at least the reference the person that wrote it used) got accross what was intended on the subject of divorce and marriage. It would have been completely unnecessary to go into the history of the world to make the point. And besides, they still did not have the needed knowledge to understand the true grand scale of God's creative methods. But in the end, for as long as God has been making humans, they have been male and female.

Next, the problem of chirality was brought up. The long odds of making proteins with the same "handedness" instead of racemized proteins. From memory, there is an enzyme found in all life on earth that helps make the amino acids. Now, this enzyme is left handed so all the amino acids it makes will be left handed. So all the proteins made from these amino acids will be left handed. Problem solved, there is no reason for there to ever be any right handed amino acids in there. But what about the first proteins you ask. No one has ever said that only left handed proteins can exist. Proteins can be made of any commbination of left and right handed amino acids. They'll function just fine. So there could have been a time when life was not all left handed. But once the enzyme that helps make amino acids came about, then they would have been lefthanded. Surely you can see the advantage of an enzyme that helps to make amino acids. That they were lefthanded...what of it? The long odds spewed by ICR in the reference are not long odds at all but a misunderstanding.

Next, the reference was made to "evilution." Surely we are not debasing ourselves to the point of name calling if you do not have a good argument to make, are we? An Ad Hominem does nothing to convince anyone of the correctness of your position.

Now, back to a previous discussion. When you were last around, you were attempting to make hay based on your assertion that there cannot be new "information" for evolution to use. I am still not sure that this is a correct application of "information" but I'll go along with it for argument's sake.

I have been through a number of steps to disprove your assertion. I have done so by going through, in various ways, one method I assert can be used to gain new information: the duplication and mutation of an existing gene. First, both of these types of mutations have been observed. So nothing new there. Once a copy of the gene mutates, there is new information present. And nothing has been "lost" because there remains a copy to do the original function.

As evidence, I have presented several families of genes where the circumstantial evidence shows that these genes arose by the repeated duplication and mutation of genes.** SOme of these families of genes have widely varying functions throughout the body. Others may only have a variety of related functions. But they all show similarity in structure that indicated that they are the result of duplication and mutation. And this, I assert, is hard evidence of new "information."

One subtle, but key piece that shows that this is the result of mutation and not of common design is shown by looking at the details of the individual base pairs instead of just looking at the amino acids. As I have shown before, not all positions in each three letter codon are equal. Changes to the first base are major. But, changes in the third letter often result in either the same amino acid or a very similar amino acid being instructed to be added to the protein. Because of this, the first and second letters of the codon are more highly conservered than the third letter. If these families of proteins were similar because of common design, then you would expect to see the same amount of difference in all three positions. But, when we look, we actually find that there is much more variety in the third position of each codon than in the first two, consistent with the predictions of common descent. The variation we actually see is best explained my mutation and natural selection.

So, I have given one method that adds new information, contrary to your assertion, and I have backed it up with multiple lines of empirical evidence.

** Some gene families. There are many more. Quoting myself.

I have given you an example previously of how new information arises. A gene becomes duplicated. One copy serves the original function while a copy evolves a new function. This neatly gets around your information problem, but does it actually happen? Let's take a look at serine proteases.

These proteins cut peptide bonds in other proteins. SOme are secreted by the digestive system to break up proteins to aid in digestion. Some are proteins involved in blood clotting (you might be famialr with thrombin). Some are involved in the complement cascade of the immune system.

Now if you look at the sequence of amino acids in all of these various proteins, you will see that they are quite similar. (Since this is an example of a common situation, I leave it as an exercise for the reader to find further information.) You have very good circumstantial evidence that this whole family of genes is the result of repeated duplications of an original gene and the evolution of new functions from the varieties produced by mutation. If needed I'll give more later. But this is an example of not only how new information can arise, but evidence that shows that it has actually happened.

Development is controlled in part by a familt of genes called homeobox genes. They first have the odd trait that they contain a section of exactly 180 nucleotides called, well, a homeobox. There is great simularity between these selector genes indicating that they were the result of gene duplication and mutation. Another case of evolution making new use of something that prexisted when developing a new trait. The similarity of some genes of this family across great ranges of species is also a good piece of evidence for the common descent of all life on earth.

Another good family of related genes to look into in the hemoglobin / myoglobin family. These are oxygen carrying molecules.The evidence is that an original oxygen carrying gene duplicated early in evolution. One duplicate has since duplicated additional times, mutated, and become the myoglobins that carry oxygen withing muscle tissues. The other becamce hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen in the blood. Hemoglobin is further split into two families, the alpha and beta. All of these involve a cluster or family of related genes. Many of these genes are related to development where specific genes are expressed at different points in the life cycle.

 

[UTEOTW]

Some other unfinished topics.

"I don't know where you got your numbers - I certainly didn't bring them up."

I have told you. You brought up Baumgarder and I use his own numbers. I think the correct citation is Baumgardner, John R., 1990a. Changes accompanying Noah's Flood. Proceedings of the second international conference on creationism, vol. II. Pittsburgh, PA: Creation Science Fellowship, pp. 35-45. The number is his. The number is also 3 times larger than the number of joules needed to evaporate ALL of the water on earth. This is also the paper where he admits "The main difficulty of this theory is that it admittedly doesn't work without miracles." Furthermore, we have not even really discussed the heat problem that his model requires a hotter mantle to reduce the viscosity to let things happen the way he claims. All that heat had to go somewhere also.

"Often, layers are classified according to the fossils found in them."

Thank you for making an excellent point. We can often get fairly close on the date just by looking at what fossils are found in a given layer. They are not jumbled up. How could we ever make use of index fossils if everything was jumbled up. I believe that the discovery of index fossils lead to the recognition of the geologic column and the abandonment of flood geology way back in the 19th century. But of course you know that index fossils are not of use without the other part of the story. You have to find this mix of index fossils in layers that CAN be directly dated. And they always have a habit of working out.

But, let's look at another large sea creature, the shark. Do we not find sharks in all these layers, except the Cambrian, starting with the earlist sharks way back in the Ordovician and getting more modern as we go forward? If sharks, why not whales? Maybe we'll look at something else later. You still have no explanation on how the fossils were sorted into the peculiar pattern we see rather than being all jumbled up.

"We do not claim that no mutations are beneficial. We claim that all mutations, beneficial or not, decrease information."

Once you allow that beneficial mutations happen and that new traits can develop, then you have lost your position. I don't really care what you have to say about information theory at that point. It is all talking around the facts. I'll give you one good way to get new information. Some segments of the DNA will get duplicated. One copy continues to provide the existing function. One copy is free to mutate into something new and useful.

"As I said, this comes from the lack of correct information you have about our position. Beneficial mutations happen and we are fine with them... however, they still represent a loss of information. "

So, the specific example I gave in that post. You substitute one base pair. The new protein does its job slightly better. Improvement and no loss of information.

" In your example you say that CAC becomes CAA. However, for molecules to man evolution, CAC must become CAC+CAA."

Yes, as I said, sometimes genes get duplicated allowing both to exist. You give a great example of how we get new "information."

"even in the famous nylon eating bacteria, the nuclear DNA of the bacterium remains unchanged, but the change is on a plasmid that can be seen to only become activated when the bacterium is under stress"

You can define anything away. The bacteria's genome changed. It gained the ability to metabolize something new. So what if it is a plasmid. I believe environmental stress is accepted as a driving force for evolution, so why is that included.

While we are talking about genes, do you yet have an answer to the problem of retroviral inserts? Both the part where we share sequences with the apes and the part where we have such a large portion of our DNA filled with this junk. If all those sequences were placed recently, there would be wide variation amoung humans. There is not. If common descent did not happen, man would not share specific sequences with the other apes. We do.

"See the following account of Dr. Carl Wieland (MD):
http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/337.asp "

Let's take a look.

Wieland gives three posibilities on how "superbugs" come about.

"1. Some germs already had the resistance."

He gets this right. He just draws the wrong conclusion. Some of the existing bacteria developed mutations that turned out to be useful in resisting antibiotics. Before they were exposed to these antibiotics, they did not serve much of a purpose. But they were not harmful, either, so they just sat around. When the environment changed and placed these microbes under the stress of antibiotics, those with the right mutations survived. You see this idea in punctuated equilibrium. For long periods of time, the population remains in relative stasis while random mutations collect in the population. Natural selection can go ahead and weed out the harmful ones. But when the situation changes, the formerly neutral mutations now have pressure applied and some allow some individuals to have a better chance of survival. He is talking about evolution.

"2. Some germs directly transfer their resistance to others."

Similar to that above except that we are adding that bacteria can laterally transfer genes. If you see how this can be useful then you see why sex evolved.

"3. Some germs become resistant through mutation."

Ah, your favorite. Now he talks about no new information. Let's look and see if there is evidence of new information, as you put it, in biology.

I have given you an example previously of how new information arises. A gene becomes duplicated. One copy serves the original function while a copy evolves a new function. This neatly gets around your information problem, but does it actually happen? I think I have shown above that it does.

 

[UTEOTW]

One more...

But Paul brought up another interesting, and related, topic when he mentioned vestigal parts a few posts ago. Evolution tends to reuse or change existing parts rather than invent from scratch. (Though plenty has been invented from scratch!) Think of birds. They did not sprout wings from nothing and have their existing arms waste away over the eons. No, over time, the arms of the theropod dinosaurs was changed into functioning wings. And not with flight in "mind." It was hunting. The larger theropods, think T. rex, had small arms that do not appear to have been useful for much. But the smaller ones have bone structure that indicates that they were used for grasping prey. And as it turns out, the motion they used for grasping prey, according to the form of the bones, is exactly the same motion used for the powered upstroke of flight. The bone structures, such as the fused clavicle, and muscle structure that was later used in flight, was originally selected for based on a better ability to hunt. Only later was it coopted for flight.

I say all that as an introduction. We can look at the human body and see examples of where function is shared across species.

First, the familar. We are all familar with animals puffing up their fur. Cats can do it to make themselves look bigger when frightened. Sometimes you will see animals do it in the cold to puff up the fur for greater warmth. Now look at you own arm the next time you are cold and feel goose bumps coming up. Or when something frightens you with the same reaction. We have hardly any body hair. Raising the hair on end will not keep us warmer nor will it make us look bigger. Yet we retain this function from our harrier past.

Can you wiggle your ears? Why? It has no benefit. At least to us. Our distant ancestors could turn their hears to help them hear better. Watch a dog or cat. (Not that I am saying they are our ancestors!) Some of us have not lost this ability.

Most of us are sitting on our bottoms. These muscles are huge (I think they may be the largest in the body.) and are essential to upright walking like ours. The other apes have the same muscle, but it is much smaller. This is why when you see a chimp ambling around on two legs they have that funny look where their knees are sharply bent with the thigh bones much closer to horizontal than in a human. Humans have devoloped this into a large muscle for walking but it is the same muscle as in the other apes. For that matter, look at the whole subject of upright walking. Our bodies have many problems because the bodies of our ancestors were on all fours. When moved upright, problems insue. Look at how many people have lower back troubles.

While talking about four legged ancestors... There is a muscle, the subclavius, that goes from the first rib to the collarbone. In other animals this muscle is used in moving the front legs for walking. Humans have not completely lost this relic. Some people maintain both of these on each arm, some only one, and some people none. They serve us no purpose.

Another muscle we no longer use is the plantaris muscle. This is used by other primates to grasp with their feet. We have no use for it and it has shrunk to the size of a nerve fiber.

There is a similar muscle in the lower arm called the palmaris. It is used by primates for hanging and climbing. In humans it has no function and is often taken by surgeons in need of a muscle elsewhere for reconstructive surgery.

I have many others, but I think that gets the point across. Why do we have all these shared traits with the animals that we cannot use if we do not share ancestry with them?

 

[Gup20]

???? I don't think you will ever find any evolutionist that would deny that from the beginning of mankind we were always male and female? That particular logic escapes me.

I don't find a lot of evolutionists who believe the Bible is true. If they do, then they only believe that Genesis 12 and onward is true while 1-11 is a fairy tale.

Fortuneatly Jesus doesn't put the of mankind caveat in his statement (which would probably be confusing and contradictory to the rest of scripture). He refers directly to "the beginning" and "creation". Genesis 1:1 says "in the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

OTOH, Gup, Jesus said Jonah was in a whale, which contradicts the OT account of it being a fish (the hebrews had different words for "fish" and "whale", and knew the difference between the two).

OTOH Johnv, the Old Testament is in Hebrew and the New Testament is in Greek. It would be out of the ordinary to use the same word when quoting OT in the NT because you would be speaking a completely different language. So the period translative equivelents were used.

That being said, issue like whale/fish, literal/nonliteral creation, women and headcoverings, sabbath on sundays, etc, are non-docrtinal splittings of scriptural hairs, which result in discussions that do nothing but divide believers.

I agree - it's not nearly as foundationally essential as the creation/evolution debate, for example. Evolutionary comprimise/capitulation by the church has lead to a severe handicap of Biblical authority - especially in the US - as well as contributing to an overly secularized anti-God, anti-christian movement, and extreme moral decline.

 

[Johnv]

Originally posted by Gup20:
I don't find a lot of evolutionists who believe the Bible is true. If they do, then they only believe that Genesis 12 and onward is true while 1-11 is a fairy tale.

Whoa, you're confusing the Bible being true with the Bible being fact. Youre saying that if someone doesn't believe a specific item to be completely factual, then they don't believe it's true. That's not the case. That's a common, and honest, error in thinking.

OTOH Johnv, the Old Testament is in Hebrew and the New Testament is in Greek. It would be out of the ordinary to use the same word when quoting OT in the NT because you would be speaking a completely different language. So the period translative equivelents were used.

Sorry, that doesn't fly. Both Greek and Hebrew have words for "fish" that differs from "whale". But again, these issues are, imo, the splitting of hairs, and whether Jesus said "fish" or "whale", it doesn't detract from the point he was trying to make (which had nothing to do with what type of animal it was that swallowed Jonah).

I agree - it's not nearly as foundationally essential as the creation/evolution debate, for example.

I don't think the creation/evolution issue is any more essential than the other items listed. It's certainly not a doctrinal issue. The only doctrinal item is that God created. If someone doesn't believe God created, then I would agree with you. But every Genesis non-literalist Christian I know believes firmly that God created.

 

[Gup20]

Hello my uterine friend (I developed a little mind trick to remember the spelling of your name - it reminds me of 'uterus of the week' -ute o.t.w.). Thank you for the welcome.

The correlation I was pointing out in starting the thread was less emphasis on male and female, and more emphasis on the fact that Jesus stated that Man and Woman existed in the beginning of creation. Clearly, if it took billions or millions of years to evolve into Man, it would not be created, and it would certainly not be 'the beginning'. As I pointed out, it an additional caveat (which Jesus doesn't actualy say) to qualify the statement 'beginning of mankind'. Jesus simply says 'the beginning'. In fact Jesus has TWO opportunities to qualify himself -

Mat 19:4 And he answered and said unto them, Have ye not read, that he which made [them] at the beginning made them male and female,

Mat 19:8 He saith unto them, Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.

"the beginning" doesn't mean 'the beginning of man', It means The beginning.

I do not believe that the verse you quote is directly addressing creation but divorce, so I doubt the applicability to the situation.

I don't believe it directly addresses creation either (although it does indirectly)... however, I do not believe that Jesus ever spoke flippently or without purpose. Truth is found here regarding creation and marriage regarless of the directed overt topic. For example, if I was talking to someone about Gay Marriage, and I said that "one reason against gay marriage was that God ordained marriage 6000 years ago at the creation of the earth as a union between one man and one woman". Clearly gay marriage is my direct topic, but what I believe to be true is clearly evident by the framework of my statement. I have 'indirectly' conveyed information about what I believe about Creation.

Regarding Chirality, firstly, it has been determined repeatedly that you find even distributions of right and left handed in nature. You don't find an overabundance of a specific handedness naturally occuring. Secondly, it is a fact that even IF these ammino acids could somehow combine to form proteins, there is nothing about this mixture that would cause life, or be considered 'living'.

Once very common misconception propagated by those with an evolutionary paradigm is that these are 'building blocks of life'. They may be the parts that make up living things, but by no means demonstrable can/could/have they ever build up into any living thing. DNA and proteins are reactions between acids and bases... and what could be more natural than that, right? Nothing... except for this is EXACTLY how death and decay happen. This is exactly how molecules are broken down, not built up. It can be said that death is the triumph of chemistry over biology.

It would seem that Chemistry is not the friend of the evolutionist afterall.

... will reply to more of this later when time permits.

 

[Johnv]

These threads often go in the same direction as the KJVO debates. The get fiery, offensive, combative, and inappropriate, and they bear little, if any, fruit. They instead become a venue for permission to engage in unchristian behavior. This is why I rarely comment on these threads. I will be surprised if this thread does not go down that same road.

 

[UTEOTW]

Regarding Chirality, firstly, it has been determined repeatedly that you find even distributions of right and left handed in nature. You don't find an overabundance of a specific handedness naturally occuring.

Exactly. And, as I said, there is no reason to suppose that the first proteins were entirely left handed. They are now because life uses a left handed enzyme to help it make the amino acids which makes them all left handed. It does not mean that this was always the case. I do not see a chemistry problem.

Besides, you are arguing abiogenesis and not evolution, anyway. The evidence is in for evolution and it happened (and happens). There is not a whole lot to go on as far as abiogenesis goes because there really is not a chance of the evidence being preserved. With evolution, we can look and see how it happened. With abiogenesis, we can make educated guesses, but nothing is preserved to check against. But, if you check into it, I think you will see that there are some very plausible mechanisms that have been recently hypothesized. Maybe I'll even look one up for you later when I have a chance.

DNA and proteins are reactions between acids and bases... and what could be more natural than that, right? Nothing... except for this is EXACTLY how death and decay happen. This is exactly how molecules are broken down, not built up. It can be said that death is the triumph of chemistry over biology. It would seem that Chemistry is not the friend of the evolutionist afterall.

Your chemistry, here, is confused. I do not believe that "base" in this context means something with a pH of greater than 7. It means that these bases are the building blocks of the larger DNA molecule. And, as we all know, DNA is deoxyribonucleic acid. So it is acually an acid, not alkaline. The premise is wrong and so, therefore, is the conclusion.

 

[BobRyan]

Originally posted by Johnv:
OTOH, Gup, Jesus said Jonah was in a whale, which contradicts the OT account of it being a fish (the hebrews had different words for "fish" and "whale", and knew the difference between the two).

This is in fact an assumption that the Hebrews did not class all animals in the sea as fish - and yet we find in several places that they did just that "The Fowl of air and the fish of the sea" is meant to cover all flying animals and all swiming animals ... Your point does not work.

More specifically - even for western man taxonomy as we know it did not exist until relatively recently - thanks to a Christian by the name of Carl Linnaeus, also known as Carl von Linné or Carolus Linnaeus, is often called the Father of Taxonomy. He lived in the 18th century.

You are simply reading back into the text - what you wish.

And you are ignoring the point of the opening text - Christ taught that God created mankind - male and female. Christ taught direct divine Creationism.

Of course you guys already admitted that the people teaches creationism because the people of Bible days were so stupid - so no news here that the Bible and Christ in the Bible is really teaching creationism.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Originally posted by Gup20:
The correlation I was pointing out in starting the thread was less emphasis on male and female, and more emphasis on the fact that Jesus stated that Man and Woman existed in the beginning of creation.

Quite obviously that was the point. But the flaw in that is that you were appealing to Bible "evidence" and support for Creationism. You were pointing to the fact that Christ SAID that God "MADE" them Male and Female - speaking of humans - not of prions or Amoebas.

However that is using "Bible evidence" something that has no meaning at all to an atheist evolutionist - and something that the Christian evolutionists here have already conceded that the Bible DOES teach - because humans back then were not adept at creating world or at observing abiogenesis (and by that we mean alchemy).

Basically they have already conceded the Bible argues for Creation not evolutionism.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

Regarding Chirality, firstly, it has been determined repeatedly that you find even distributions of right and left handed in nature. You don't find an overabundance of a specific handedness naturally occuring.

Originally posted by UTEOTW:
Exactly. And, as I said, there is no reason to suppose that the first proteins were entirely left handed.

Not if your a clinging to the evolutionary tale of abiogenesis BUT if you are a scientist observing LIVING systems then you SEE that "emperical science" is always showing evolutionism to be false - and this is just another area. Good science today "observes" that all living organisms use the levro chirality AND also "observes" that when incidentals occur the right-handed bond is eliminated by the correcting mechanism that is a part of the system.

ONLY by "assuming your salient point rather than proving it" do you have the mythical time of rasomized distributions of amino acid chirality among living systems.

But then -- we all knew that.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

UTEOTW --
Besides, you are arguing abiogenesis and not evolution, anyway. The evidence is in for evolution and it happened (and happens).

That has already been debunked - as you have yet to show that the mythologies of evolutionism are able to overcome the hard science objections to it that we see in nature - principles that EVEN atheist evolutionists admit to.

UTEOTW --
There is not a whole lot to go on as far as abiogenesis goes because there really is not a chance of the evidence being preserved.

I guess that is the part where you "confess" that your blue sky speculation that "in the beginning living cells consisted of rasomized chiral distributions of amino acids" was pure fabrication stated only because you "need it" to be true for the myth of evolutionism - not because you (or anyone else on the planet) observes such a thing to be true.

Confession is good for the soul and I see you getting healthier all the time.

Richard Dawkins is Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University. He is the author of many books including the international best-sellers "The Selfish Gene", "The Blind Watchmaker", and "Climbing Mount Improbable."
From: http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/transcript/dawk-frame.html


QUESTION: What is your response to the view that some Christians are putting forward that God is the designer of the whole evolutionary system itself?

MR. DAWKINS: In the 19th century people disagreed with the principle of evolution, because it seemed to undermine their faith in God. Now there is a new way of trying to reinstate God, which is to say, well, we can see that evolution is true. Anybody who is not ignorant or a fool can see that evolution is true. So we smuggle God back in by suggesting that he set up the conditions in which evolution might take place. I find this a rather pathetic argument. For one thing, if I were God wanting to make a human being, I would do it by a more direct way rather than by evolution. Why deliberately set it up in the one way which makes it look as though you don't exist? It seems remarkably roundabout not to say a deceptive way of doing things.

But the other point is it's a superfluous part of the explanation. The whole point -- the whole beauty of the Darwinian explanation for life is that it's self-sufficient. You start with essentially nothing -- you start with something very, very simple -- the origin of the Earth. And from that, by slow gradual degrees, as I put it "climbing mount improbable" -- by slow gradual degree you build up from simple beginnings and simple needs easy to understand, up to complicated endings like ourselves and kangaroos.

Now, the beauty of that is that it works. Every stage is explained, every stage is understood. Nothing extra, nothing extraneous needs to be smuggled in. It all works and it all -- it's a satisfying explanation. Now, smuggling in a God who sets it all up in the first place, or who supervises the details, is simply to smuggle in an entity of the very kind that we are trying to explain -- namely, a complicated and beautifully designed higher intelligence. That's what we are trying to explain. We have a good explanation. Why smuggle in a superfluous adjunct which is unnecessary? It doesn't add anything to the explanation.

QUESTION: What do you say to the argument that some people are raising now that it's all very well for evolution to be the mechanism once you have a self-replicating structure like DNA -- but how do you get that complex structure in the first place? Maybe DNA is the work of God?

MR. DAWKINS: It's a different argument to say how did the whole process start - how do we begin with the origin of life? The origin of life -- the key process in the origin of life was the arising of a self-replicating molecule. This was a very simple thing compared with what it's given rise to. By far the majority of the work in producing the elegant complexity of life is done after the origin of life, during the process of evolution. There does remain the very first step -- I don't think it's necessarily a bigger step than several of the subsequent steps, but it is a step. And it's a step which we don't fully understand -- mainly because it happened such a long time ago, and under conditions when the Earth was very different. And so it's not necessarily possible to simulate again the chemical conditions of the origin of life. There are various theories for how it might have happened. None of them is yet fully convincing. It may be that none of them ever will be, because it may be that we shall never know fully what the conditions were. But I don’t find it at all a deeply mysterious step.

Dawkins claims that what is not understood is not all that mysterious though improbable - in fact "mount improbable".

Never let it be said that evolutionists are at a loss for double-speak when it comes to explaining away God - at least Dawkins wasn't.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[Alcott]

Originally posted by Gup20:
The correlation I was pointing out in starting the thread was less emphasis on male and female, and more emphasis on the fact that Jesus stated that Man and Woman existed in the beginning of creation. Clearly, if it took billions or millions of years to evolve into Man, it would not be created, and it would certainly not be 'the beginning'.

How long a period does "in the beginning" cover? If God created man first, and then woman, obviously man was created before woman ... yet woman also is said to be from 'in the beginning.' Extending this, the heavens and the earth and the plants and animals were created before man (Gen. 1), so a lot happened before man came, yet he is still from the "beginning."

 

[BobRyan]

Gup20 said -- It would seem that Chemistry is not the friend of the evolutionist afterall.

Certainly not biochemistry in this case. UTEOTW has already confessed that we do NOT abserve living systems to be composed of amino acids having a random distributions of Right and Left handed chirality. He also admitted he has no way of showing that any change from what is actually SEEN in biochemistry today - ever existed in all of time.

So your point that chemistry is not providing "hard observable evidence in support" of the alchemy of abiogenesis - you are quite right.

In Christ,

Bob

 

[BobRyan]

‘But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female’ (Mark 10:6).

No! No! Absolutely NOT! says the devoted evolutionist.

From the begining they are swimming in amonia seas and living in a reducing atmoshpere - and lightning strikes saying "let cell structures appear in the seas" and then RNA forms and then... and then... more magic!... and then more good stuff ... until ... until the cell suddenly finds food and then ... more magic... and then... the cell starts to divide of its own free will and then... more magic... and then more cells arive on the scene...and then...


‘But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female’ (Mark 10:6).

No! No! Says evolutionism's faithful. "God did not come right out and MAKE mankind! Far From it! The Bible only SAYS that because people did not know how to create new species back then".

No things started dying you see.. and then disease and then starvation and then predation and then PRESTO! Mankind started walking out of the hominid caves looking for fellow humans to mate with and looking for their monkey-brain breakfasts... yes! Yes That's the ticket. Oh yes - I almost forgot - and THEN mankind "fell".

Hmm. So why would an evolutionist WANT to get OFF the topic of

‘But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female’ (Mark 10:6)

-- by side stepping the point with each post?

hmmm. That's a hard one.

In Christ,

Bob