Finding Darwin's God OR Evolution and Christianity are Compatible

Brown Alumni Magazine ^ | November, 1999 | Kenneth Miller

[shubi]

Spell check is our friend. ;-)

[RaceBannon]

So what that you are familiar with it?

Most of us creationists are familiar with the evo line, too, so, why dont you evos stop posting articles?

[RaceBannon]

Actually, debating gets me too mad too fast, I was getting snippy, sorry.

[shubi]

"I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true."

Darwin rejected creationism's interpretation of the Bible, which was dogma at the time. For some reason, a sect of Christians resurrected a nonsense view of the Bible about a hundred years ago.

There is no need to interpret God's Word so it does not comport with reality. In my view, many of the literalists have made up their own god. My God is not fond of nonsense.

[shubi]

I am glad you found Christ, but He would not want you to misunderstand what the Bible means.

Without understanding the principles of evolution Darwin discovered, there is no real understanding of Biology.

Darwin's views and Christ are not incompatible. Creationists have substituted the Gospel for a misinterpretation of Genesis.

[shubi]

There are many transitional fossils. When you look at life now, there are obvious transitional forms from one Class to another.

Scientists on these threads have refuted the "no transitional claim" repeatedly, but someone always posts it again.

Sigh...

[Diva]

Thanks for posting this article. The Catholic Church teaches that it is fine to believe in the process of evolution as long as you believe it was a system designed by God and applies only to the evolution of the physical world, our spirit does not evolve. Sort of seems to be what Miller is saying.

[RaceBannon]

Im sorry, I misunderstood your post.

[RaceBannon]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-religion/1334745/posts

The Bible is totally against combining Evolution and Creation, though.

Please read through that post, and have your Bible open when you do.

[JohnnyM]

Thanks for the ping.

I find it very telling that he does not use any Scripture to support his claim.

The Bible and evolution are incompatible.

JM

[JohnnyM]

I have enjoyed your posts and the Scriptural support used. Further showing that the Bible and evolution are not compatible.

I found it funny that the same people who argue against ID, do the very thing they despise when defending the theistic evolution. They use no evidence from the Bible to support their claim. None. All of their support is based on "reasoning", but none is based on Scripture as this article attests to. The Scriptural support is just not there for evolution.

JM

[JohnnyM]

"Creationists love the KJV until it forces them to realize their interpretation of the Bible is wrong."

Im personally a fan of the NAS. I rarely use the KJV. However, any Christian who does not realize that these are TRANSLATIONS of Hebrew and Greek text will get themselves in trouble. There are things that get lost in translation or that get obscured or paraphrased. To say that one translation is the definitive one will get you in trouble. When there is an issue of translation it is best to go the original document.

JM

[shubi]

Yep, but evolution is a fact no matter what you think the Bible says.

[VadeRetro]

OK, it's the cold light of day and I have a bit of time. What's so funny about a Gish rant from 1989 against Archoepteryx? Take this sentence.

Recent fossil discoveries and recent research on Archaeopteryx argue strongly against the suggestion that it is transitional between reptiles and birds.

Even more recent fossil discoveries (late 90's) have found Archy's closest relative to be a Chinese Feathered Dinosaur, a species called Sinornithosaurus. It has a highly similar skeleton and some feathering, but not enough for flight.

Here's Archy's skeleton:

It's so saurian that Fred Hoyle claimed it simply was an ordinary dromaeosaur upon which someone had faked feather impressions. (Creationists still often cite that, although the standard mantra is that Archy is somehow indistinguishable from the robin in your back yard.) Here's one of the better fossils with feathers.

Now, here's a juvenile Sinornithosaurus, a superbly preserved specimen.

Note how the intro page of the American Museum of Natural History site blithely--with no sense that it is doing the impossible--describes this dinosaur as has having a bird for a close relative.

The entire skeleton is preserved on two counter slabs, in a pose much like that of its close relative the oldest bird (Archaeopteryx lithographica) from the Jurassic of Germany.

This is not a shock under evolution, you see. Archy's classification as a bird is the result of historical processes. When it was found, any specimen with feathers WAS a bird. No contest. Everybody knew that.

What Gish did in his 1989 article was to simply comb the literature for every citation he could find in which someone found a birdlike attribute on Archy *and he took only those for his paper.* That's the whole trick. That's creation science.

There are and already were in 1989 at least as many saurian features as avian on Archy. Tail! Teeth! Claws!

Events since 1989 have utterly undercut Gish's position, but he blithely sails on, his paper still up on the AiG website and still cited by creationists everywhere.

The sudden appearance, fully formed, of all the complex invertebrates (snails, clams, jellyfish, sponges, worms, sea urchins, brachiopods, trilobites, etc.) without a trace of ancestors, and the sudden appearance, fully formed, of every major kind of fish (supposedly the first vertebrates) without a trace of ancestors, proves beyond reasonable doubt that evolution has not occurred.

Never mind the funny segue from Jurassic birds to the Cambrian. I guess there's (irony alert!) more lack of evidence in the Cambrian, so he'd rather look there. What a science! Anyway, never mind that. We'll follow him and shift to fish. Why fish? Ask Gish!

The argument is still balderdash, on two counts. Holes in the historical evidence trail are evidence for holes in the history. There's evidence of phyla coming from other phyla.

In particular, there's evidence that fish emerged from simple chordates. The hatchling form of the most primitive modern fish, the lamprey, resembles a lancelet (simple chordate) just as a frog hatchling resembles a fish or an insect hatchling resembles a worm.

Then, when Gish was writing, the earliest known fish was something very like a lamprey from the early Ordovician. Now, the first fishes are from the early Cambrian. Guess what? They're even more primitive than the previously known earliest. They're not even like lampreys, more like a lancelet growing a head. Even God needs to practice with the simple stuff first. He spent a billion and a half years just playing with bacteria, after all.

Haikouella. From here. Some fish, huh?

His slightly more fishy cousin, Myllokunmingia fengjiaoa.

From here.

From here.

For comparison, here's a modern not-quite vertebrate, the lancelet Amphioxus/Branchiostoma, from the web page with his song.

I'll stop here. You don't have to eat a whole omelet to know it's got a bad egg.

[VadeRetro]

Holes in the historical evidence trail are evidence for holes in the history.

If I was trying for sarcasm, it doesn't work. I think a "not" belongs in there.

Holes in the historical evidence trail are NOT evidence for holes in the history.

[Stultis]

why dont you evos stop posting articles?

Uh, we don't need to stop because we haven't started posting whole articles within threads. We'll stick to posting relevant comments, relevant excerpts, and otherwise linking, and continue suggesting spamming is bad. How's that?

[Modernman]

There is evidence that animals are degrading due to negative mutations as well.

There will always be certain species of animal that will be heading towards extinction. Cheetahs are a good example- they've been heading towards extinction for tens of thousands of years. Other species of animals go in the opposite direction. Manta Rays, for example.

This is not evidence of some "de-evolution" concept.

[Modernman]

Impossible to address your spam posting, but one point stood out:

Neanderthal Man was found in Neanderthal Valley in West Germany. Long accepted as a missing link, Neanderthal man has been proven to be human, very similar to Europeans today, yet with proven diseases such as rickets, syphilis, and arthritis

The first Neanderthal skeleton that was discovered was in fact that of an older Neanderthal suffering from a variety of ailments. Subsequently, additional (healthy) Neanderthal skeletons have been found. Several are on display at the Smithsonian's Natural History Museum, for example.

The current debate is whether Neanderthals are a separate species of hominid or more akin to a subspecies of Homo Sapiens. However, no reputable scientist would argue that Neanderthals were just plain old Homo Sapiens.

[RaceBannon]

But...But..it was reputable scientists who first declared it to be human the day it was first examined!

It was only after the heathen evolutionists got ahold of it that the fairy tales began...

[RaceBannon]

(Creationists still often cite that, although the standard mantra is that Archy is somehow indistinguishable from the robin in your back yard.)