Friday
Mar062009
Modified Theistic Evolution
Friday, March 6, 2009 at 8:47AM 
Basically, people have 2 views on evolution... yes or no. It seems that the choice tends to be segregated on religious lines (sometimes). Those with more liberal religious views tend to approve of evolution and integrate it with their religious views (ie: agnostics or Christians that say that the creation story was not literal). Those with more conservative religious views disagree with evolution and believe that there are fundamental flaws with evolution theory (ie: fundamentalist Christians who say that since the earth is only ~7000yrs old, evolution can't work).
Growing up in a very conservative christian family/community, I have been taught about the "dangers" of evolution and on the various flaws of the theories. As such, for much of my life, I have been opposed to the idea of evolution completely. More recently, however, I have begun to logically review and challenge my religious & philosophical views.
After much thought, I have come to the conclusion that evolution is correct... AND the Bible is correct. I believe that the earth was created in 6 consecutive days by the God of the Bible as described in the Bible. I also believe that evolution as accepted & researched by the world's scientific community is correct (or at least as correct as any current scientific theory can be).
How can I reconcile these usually conflicting views? Easily! If God is smart enough to create millions of species of animals, multi-trillions of stars, thousands of galaxies, etc. etc. etc., why must we say that he created the earth, but not evolution? I believe that God created everything in 6 consecutive days and he created it "in the middle of the story." When he was done, the universe appeared to be ~13billion years old and the evidence on the earth shows how evolution works. There was oil in the ground, fossils to be found, and some species were extinct that never really lived. If the universe is allowed to continue for millions of years, animals will evolve. It will happen because evolution is accurate and correct. There is no logical reason that evolution and a literal view of the Bible cannot coexist. (edit: see my comment here for a better explanation)
Any questions? Logical mistakes to point out? Let me know in the comments.
evolution vs creation
(edited 8:29am March 9, 2009)
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tagged Random, Soapbox, opinion, philosophy in Soapbox
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Reader Comments (18)
I hate how people try to discount the correctness of scientific theories "(or at least as correct as any current scientific theory can be)". What are we talking about here, the theory of gravity? Thermodynamics? Conservation of energy?
And it's not like when a scientific theory is found to be incorrect it is discarded - no, it's refined and reintroduced/retested. Can't say the same of religion. Once something is found to be wrong, you can't really correct it without coming up with some nutjob story to explain the oddity.
I agree and that's what I was trying to refer to by saying "or at least as correct as any current scientific theory can be." Some theories are very solid and are not revised very often like relativity. Others are under revision regularly like evolution, though the revisions tend to be small and always based on evidence.
I'll try to keep my reply short, both because I don't have time to review/remember all of what I've studied in the past and because no one really wants to dig through a long response by me anyway.
As far as evolution goes, I simply can't buy it logically. I'd rather someone argue that we were created by aliens than that we happened by random chance. The complexity of life is an insurmountable obstacle for me.
As for theistic evolution, I don't buy that either. Evolution is a horrible way to create something. It's a huge trial and error system that requires millions and millions of things to die in the process. It doesn't require intelligence at all, which is part of why the theory came about in the first place - to introduce a worldview that requires no Creator.
Jason, I completely agree! What I am proposing is a different form of "theistic evolution" than is typically used. It is not that God "used evolution" to create everything. Instead, God created everything to use evolution!
I think you miss the whole point of evolution in that it says animals are becoming more "evolved." It says that some far distant relative of humanity started walking on 2 legs after walking on 4 for billions of years. It then mated with another relative and formed what we know as cavemen. I would have to argue that evolution can not be anywhere remotely related to true because of this basis. Now, what I will say is that it could be an issue of semantics because I believe in adaption. Every creature will adapt to it's surroundings and becomre more able to live in it's native environment. Take the Zebra for example. It was supper for the cheetah and found that if they stood close together, their sripes (which I believe developed over a period of time) confused the cheetah to the point of keeping the Zebra off the dinner table. This is not "evolution" because they are not becoming a more complex organism, they are simply adapting to their environment and are better able to survive due to that adaption. Plus, I have to point out the lasw of thermodynamics that you mention. You can see how well everything was created and how complex our bodies are just as an example. Everything was created in perfection and there was order to everything. The laws of thermodynamics state that everything moves from organization to chaos. This is the exact opposite of evolution which in essence says everything is moving from chaos to organization. I would also like to point out that it is a "law" not a "theory." Laws have to be proven to be true, theories are just ideas that someone came up with. Kinda like fairy dust, nobody knows if it's real or not. I'm sure you will have a witty response, and I look forward to a good banter on the subject. Enjoy reading the book I've just written.
@Jason - There is an entire field of computer science dedicated to replicating the biological process of evolution. It's called Evolutionary Computing - I've written code that evolves sorting networks and code that evolves a function from known data (a different way of performing regression). All that happens is sexual recombination and random mutation. By "chance", good solutions come out of these evolutionary methods - if you dig deeper, you find that you're not really relying on random chance; there is a pressure to evolve into something better by the mere fact that the weaker members of a population die off while the stronger members survive.
I guess I have two points here. First, that you can simulate evolution. It's pretty easy to see that it works. And second, that evolution doesn't equate to random chance. Darwinian evolution is survival of fittest - so when one of those random changes becomes beneficial, pressure comes to bear on the less equipped members of the population.
I'm sorry, I'm tired so my writing above sort of trailed off. But I wanted to finish by pointing out the logical fallacy at the end of your second paragraph - just because you cannot understand something doesn't mean it cannot be correct.
And my final finally - evolution does not equate to abiogenesis. Evolution doesn't attempt to address the beginning of life, just the refinement of life.
@Brian
About those laws of thermodynamics... the second law of thermodynamics states that "The total entropy of any isolated thermodynamic system tends to increase over time, approaching a maximum value." Don't forget that this only applies to an isolated system. A system that we add energy to can become less entropic. So, given the system of the earth which we add energy to in the form of the sun is not held to the second law of thermodynamics as long as energy is being added. A much much smaller example would be where we have 2 base chemicals that we add heat to, to get a more complex chemical from due to a reaction instigated by the heat.
@Jason
I re-read my last comment and I don't think I explained myself well. What I am proposing is not theistic evolution in the traditional sense that God started the big bang & let things just happen over billions of years.
What I am proposing is this: When God created the universe, he created everything, including stars, planets, nebulae, genetics, and the laws of physics. Thousands of years ago, a common belief was that the earth was held in place (or the sun) by (the power of) some deity. Over time and observation, we have found that the laws of physics describe how the earth moves around the sun. Well, now we are struggling with species! In a similar fashion, we are deciding whether God created separate species that will never evolve (because God created them that way and that's the way they will stay!), or if there is something underlying species & genetics that describes how they change over time. It is just like physics and physical objects.
Physics describes how physical object change over time, be it through motion, deformations, collisions, or otherwise.
Evolution describes how living objects change over time, be it through adaptation, speciation, or extinction.
Now, for the religious twist: The earth did not exist before it was created approx 7000 yrs ago, but physics can still extrapolate where it would have been 8000 yrs ago. Likewise, no animals or dinosaurs or protozoa existed before life was created approx 7000 yrs ago, but evolution theory & research can still extrapolate how things evolved! We can see fossil & genetic records and from them, we can figure out what species would have been like before creation. And yes, God did put the dinosaurs in the ground! :D
@A Guy
I agree that a lack of understanding certainly does not disprove something. I don't know how it all works for my tv to show me a live football game - but I do know that as complicated as it is, it was designed by an intelligent being. Same thing with my car, the airplane I rode in over Christmas break and the internet we're using to communicate.
The human body is significantly more complicated than any of those, and it would take a very large and convincing amount of data for me to believe it did not have an intelligent creator as well. Reading Michael Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" is enough scientific opinion for me to see that evolution (the development of new species) simply doesn't work at the molecular level.
And I agree that evolution does not attempt to explain the origin of life, sorry to have implied that.
Tim, I understand your viewpoint and have heard this argument before. First of all, I do not claim to understand all the biological elements that go into evolutionary theory, and in no way am I an expert on either side of the issue, either the religous or the scientific. Having said that, I have tried to defend this concept on different occasions with various scientific minds. I have learned that what you and I would consider to be proven evolutionary theory is not the same as what a Darwinian would believe. The staunch evolutionist would argue that believing in evolution is an "all or nothing" situtation. (Similar to a Dr. Dino argument, except on the opposite extreme.) Due to this revelation, I have grown to dislike what is commonly refered to as "theistic evolution." Tim, I know you are a very thoughtful man and I believe you have spent a great deal of time on this issue and I respect your opinion. However, I ask that you do not go and present your idea to Darwinian evolutionist, unless you specifically define your terms involving evolution in a factual and Biblical manner.
You make a good point on the added energy, but let's step back in time. Go read the story of the tower of babel again. God said that man was so intelligent that nothing would be held back from him unless God did something about it. So he scattered them amongst the earth confused their tongues. After that, let's fast worward a few thousand years to the time of the Egyptians. This is a society that performed brain surgeries and even developed a from of the battery in use today. How is it that we have not "evolved" as a species into a higher being? We use on average 10% or less of our brain and if my memory serves me correctly, that number is diminishing over time. That being said, you can definitely see that we are not evolving as a species. We are continuously dwindling in our intellgence level and becoming more lazy as a global society. We have created more advanced tools to make our lives easier, but it has taken us thousands of years to gain the understanding of our universe that I believe our distant ancestors had. I'll have to look up the name of a book, but it talks about the people of earth having space travel abilities before the tower of babel. Pastor Phil references it in D2, not as a factual book, but as something to stimulate your thinking.
@Tim
1. Go read your Bible again. Pay close attention to when God decides to come down and intervene in the affairs of man. It says that they decided to build a tower to heaven. If you got back to Gen 1 the heavens are the waters above the waters separated by the firmament. So if they planned to build a tower that far, and God said they had the ability, why wouldn't they have the ability to travel into the heavens? Look at the ability we have today. We've sent a man to the moon and have sent hundreds of missions into space, but never has God come down to confuse the men again. Obviously He has no reason to do so because we don't have the ability to reach as far as they could.
2. My point about Egypt and Babel was that in a primitive world, they created technology that we consider to only be a few decades old and didn't know it existed until after we figured out how to create it ourselves. If you wanted to base intelligence off technology, then we should be living in the ages of Star Trek or Star Wars. I don't think technology is a true measure of intelligence levels. Technology is based on knowledge, not intelligence. Once we get the knowlege of how something works, it is common sense that allows us to put that together and form technology.
3. Again, I want you to go back to your Bible. God created man perfectly in His image. We were perfect when we were created. How can you believe the Bible and say that evolution is a real thing when we were create in perfection. By it's definition, there can never be anything better than perfection. So, how could we evolve into something better than perfect?
5. 10% myth debunked. However, I want you to take into consideration sin in the world and in the body (flesh). We may utilize our entire brain, but I don't believe we are gaining intelligence as we go forward. The affects sin has on the body are evident in our lifespan (which has only recently been increasing) and in our society. The law of sin proves the law of thermodynamics. We were created in perfection and now we are moving toward chaos.
6. I understand how the logical deductive fallacies work. I want you to show me in the Bible where God says that he created evolution. It's not in ther. If you think he created everything "middle of the story" then why don't we see any new species that would have been in the process of evolving and would have come to fruition in our lifetime? Go back to Ecclesiastes. God says there is nothing new under the sun. Why would he say there is nothing new under the sun if he created evolution to "evolve" everything into something else.
7. The reference was simply to point out that most people underestimate how truly intelligent the ancient societies really were.
I wish I could remember all the stuff I typed earlier today, but good 'ol faceboock erased everything because I forgot to put in my name and email address.
@Tim
I just remembered something else that I wanted to point out. You say that you don't believe dinosaurs ever roamed the earth and that God put their bones in the ground. Read Job 40 and Job 41 where it talks about behemoth and leviathan. If you can't see in those passages that Job would have known what these animals were, then you need to take a reading class again. There are no other animals that have a "tail like a cedar." Dinosaurs are the only creatures known to man that were that large. Leviathan is also some marine type dinosaur and is referenced in Psalms. I find it very interesting that I keep going back to the Bible (which you say you believe) and you keep going back to "Scientific" resources. If I were you, I would study my Bible more and study science less. Don't forget that God created science too.
One more thing I just remembered. It has to do with sin. The Bible says that all of creation groans under the pain of sin. It compares it to the birth pains of labor. I keep going back to being created in perfection and due to sin, we have been thrown into a downward spiral toward chaos.
@Tim
I remembered some more stuff just a few minutes ago and wanted to write it before I forget again. Do you remember the story of putting a man on the moon and how Nasa thought the world was so many billion years old? The moon gains a small amount of dust on it's surface each year, and they calculated that it would have foot upon foot of dust so they built these huge feet on the pod so it wouldn't sink into the dust. When they got there, they found only a few inches (about 6000 years worth). I don't know what your opinions are on God, but I don't think an infinite God would forget to add a couple billion years worth of dust on the moon if he created it "mid story." And if you want to try to explain it with some asteroid theory, anything large enough to knock the dust off the moon would have knocked it out of orbit around the earth.
The next thing I want you to think about it is statistical analysis. If you run the statistics on just 1 portion of evolution, you will find that it is next to impossible for just 1 pice of the puzzle to randomly fall into place. If you take the whole theory that we evolved from some sludge of single cell organisms that became some form of fish or amphibian or whatever you want to believe, it is a statistical impossibility for everything to fall into place and we get a human body that is so complex that medicine and your beloved science cannot explain or understand. We know how most organs work, but we really don't fully understand how it all works together. We can explain how food intake creates proteins and sugars that our body uses to produce energy, and yadda, yadda, yadda. But look at the brain. It has not been until very recent years that we have begun to understand the complexity of the brain. For many years people thought it just worked, they didn't want to admit that there could actually be something wrong in the millions of nerve endings firing millions of electrical pulses. Now we know that there are true mental diseases where the brain has been damaged in some way. I just want you to see that we are nowhere near as smart as we think we are.
Lastly, I want you to know that you are by far the most intelligent person I have ever known. I'm not talking about how good you are at math or science or computers. I'm talking about just shear intelligence. Your ability to deduce logic puts mine to shame any day, and I'm pretty sharp on logic. I find it sad that someone as intelligent as you and someone who understands so much about how things work could be deceived by a fallacy created to explain away the God you say you believe in. In every story that I read in the Bible where God knew the outcome, he planned and worked every scenario to the smallest detail. I don't see how this meticulous attention to detail would forget to explain that we are constantly evolving.
That is one interpretation. Genesis 11:4 says
"And they said, 'Come, let us build us a city and a tower whose top may reach unto heaven; ...'"
Another likely interpretation is that they were building a city with a tower as tall as they could. With the likely tech at the time, this would not have been more than a dozen or two stories.
Now, when God said, "and now nothing will be withheld from them which they have imagined to do." He did not say how long it would take them to accomplish these things so this is not proof that they had the tech to get into space, just that they were trying to get into space.
Fair enough but how does this relate to a discussion (what I am now calling) Modified Theistic Evolution?
Do you really believe people are perfect? I have 2 different responses to this
1.) When Genesis 2:27 says, "So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him;" it says nothing about being perfect. Yes we were made in the image of God, but that does not mean we inherit all his attributes. Some of his attributes are perfection, sinlessness, omnicience, omnipotence, all-powerfull-ness. Since we obviously do not have all his attributes, why do you single out "perfection" as one we do have.
2.) Evidence that people are not perfect is located in the nearest jail for your convenience. Yeah, this is due to sin. But if god made sin (and he did make sin) which makes us not perfect, what precludes him from making evolution which describes how genetics works over large periods of time?
Interesting. But the lifespan of humans is a direct curse by God, not just an unintended side-effect of sin. Up till the flood, men lived many hundreds of years. Then in Genesis 6:3, God decided to limit humanity's lifespan to 120 years. This was a direct decision by God, not an effect of sin.
Sure! Just as soon as you show me where it says that he created physics, or the laws of thermodynamics, or relativity, magnetism, or quantum mechanics.
Problem is, it's not in the Bible. You have to take it on faith that it is included when God created everything.
By this logic, we would not have pencils, computers, or hats or any innovation. Saying that there is nothing new under the sun does not preclude anything new from being made!And, that was not God speaking, it was Solomon, a depressed leader trying to write poetry (lol). While useful & full of lessons, it is not God speaking so it does not preclude the possibility of evolution. The Bible is not the end-all be-all handbook of the universe. It doesn't contain every answer to our questions.
As far as no new animals, remember that we only have a few thousand years (at most) of direct observations. This is not enough time to see anything evolve!!!
When did I say that?
Yeah, seems pretty obvious doesn't it.....Which is why I believe it. You'll notice that my comment, "God did put the dinosaurs in the ground" doesn't exclude the possibility of dinosaurs living at the same time as men. It just explains my opinion of how dinosaur bones are found fossilized in the ground, nothing more.
I find it ironic that in the same paragraph, you tell me that "God created science," but that I need to "study science less." If God created science, should we not study it to understand God and our world better? And if that same science which God made points us towards evolution, should we not reconcile that with our beliefs? Or do we pick and choose what science we want, and reject science we don't like just because we cannot understand how it fits with the Bible?
Good point. God is smart enough that he wouldn't miss something like that....
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Which is why he didn't. :)
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v15/i4/moondust.asp
Remember, my proposed theory is based on God designing how evolution works, therefore the statistical likelihood you bring up is irrelevant. If God designed it to work that way, the statistical likelyhood of it occuring randomly without God's help doesn't matter.
It is probably true that we are nowhere near as smart as we think we are. But who cares? What does this have to do with the plausibility of my theory?
Ok, so apparently I read way too much into your original post. I cannot argue with the plausibility of your theory, but I believe you are compltely wrong. Also, your point about sin is incorrect. God did not create sin. Everything God created was perfect (definition being without sin in this case). You are going on a basis of duality meaning there is good and bad, hot and cold, perfeciton and sin, etc. There is no separate entity for cold. Cold is simply the lack of heat. Just like bad is the lack of good. Everything God created was without sin. The creator of sin was Lucifer (read Isiah). He was the first one to commit an act that was not fully good in nature. Also, you say we didn't inherit all facets of God. That is obvious because we did not have the ability to discern good from evil. I do believe though that we inherited all of the traits a human can have, mainly based on the fact that we can still obtain these traits with study of God's word and a daily walk. The irony of my statement about God creating science was all from frustration and trying to make a point when I couldn't remember half of what I wanted to say. Science is something we use to study and explain apsects of our universe. In and of itself, it is not bad and is a very good study for us. My opinion is that we should study more about the Bible than we do about science, or anything else for that matter.
It's all good. This is just a theoretical philosophical discussion to ascertain the logic of my new theory.
As for sin, I have a more Calvinistic view than a Baptist one. I think I'll start on a new post for that... :D
I was just thinking about something. Why would God use evolution in His timeline? We know that there are ~4,000 years before Christ, and ~2,000 years after Christ in the Bible. Every prophecy before the second coming of Christ has already been fulfilled. Once Christ comes back, all will be set as it should have been at the beginning of creation. What would be the logical purpose for creating the process of evolution? Something else I want you to look at is a point I made earlier. Man was created in the image of God and was perfect, meaning without sin, without blemish, flawless. This is why I cannot find a logical reason for God to create or use evolution in His plans. Why would He create anything that needs improvement? Correct me if I'm wrong, but that is the whole purpose of evolution isn't it?
Another good book on this subject is Finding Darwin's God by Kenneth Miller.