Thomas Kuhn gave us a good description of how scientific paradigms collapse. He wasn’t really talking about the theory of evolution, but what he said applies to that theory, and applies by the shovelful.
When a new paradigm is adopted, there are a few anomalies that remain unexplained. Think of the new paradigm as a wagon, and of the anomalies as rocks that the wagon has to haul. As time progresses, the anomalies accumulate, which means that somebody is throwing extra rocks into the wagon. But the wagon has been hitched up, it is going down the road, and we just deal with it. Wagons carry rocks, that’s all. But over time, the number of rocks will become a matter of concern. And a little bit past that point, the performance of the wagon starts to suffer. And right after that, the wagon collapses, we buy a new wagon, and head on down the road. The new wagon, remember, has some rocks in it.
When Darwinism was first adopted, when we bought this wagon, our knowledge of the internal workings of the living cell was approaching zilch, nada, nuffin. For all we knew, the cell was a rind stuffed with a gelatinous substance. As our scientific knowledge has exploded, the wagon—still manfully teetering down the road—has filled up with rocks. Boulders. A couple of small mountains. Darwin died in 1882, and the term genetics was not born until 1905.
The more we learn, the more the wagon has to “carry.” At some point, the scientists will give up trying to make this wagon go any further, and will agree to get a new wagon. The new wagon will have rocks to carry, but it won’t have to carry the intolerable burden of massive libraries embedded in strands much, much smaller than the head of a pin.
But the community of scientists is comparatively small, over against the general population. I want to suggest that something else has happened that will do to evolution in the general populace what increasingly refined equipment is doing for the scientists themselves. I am talking about the camera.
As cameras get better and better, more and more portable, with higher and higher definition, not to mention cheaper and cheaper, what will happen? This world is absolutely stuffed with testimony of the God who is the exquisite engineer. And we are sending people out into that world with cameras. One day the YouTube wagon is going to break down in the middle of the road.
Allow me to present an exhibit of the kind of thing I mean.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgGv2HrGGK4
The day is coming, and is almost upon us, when the sober professor—at a secular university—will show a clip of this, or something equally gobsmacky, and tell the class that it is a grand testimony to the power of blind chance working on dead matter. And without any pre-planning or collusion, the class will all start laughing.
And that will be the year when we all got the joke.
If this is true, most of the purveyors of this secular creation myth harbor strong doubts. I never cease to be amazed at just how angry they get when you refuse to believe their sacred doctrines.
Amen. Why would the force of nothingness assemble millions, even billions, of molecules in incredibly intricate and complex ways such that even the most advanced organisms created by this nothingness cannot fully comprehend the glory and the grandeur and the intelligence of that which fills every corner of the entire planet from the deepest depths of the ocean to the peaks of the highest mountains with unfathomable beauty and engineering that can only be described as awe-inspiring in its suitability and functionality? Does this grand supernatural presence so obvious in the natural world all around us ordain, does it call… Read more »
Remember that old thought experiment – a large enough group of monkeys hitting keys at random will eventually type out the complete works of Shakespeare. What the atheists/naturalists believe is that that actually happened!
Without the aid of an infinite improbablitity drive no less.
Even a blind nothingness occasionally creates a universe of nuts every once in while?
And I hope there’ll be a camera around to catch this as well!
There is always a camera nowadays.
Thank you for this post. More pastors and Christians need to make your points above. The idea of evolution as an explanation for the origin of life is completely absurd. The more a person or society knows about science the more absurd the idea becomes.
Just to be technical for a second, evolution does not try to explain the origin of life. Descent and diversification, but not origin. The problem I have with your statement is that the vast majority of biologists do in fact accept the theory of evolution. They may see areas that are not yet fully understood; they may discard some evidence as inconclusive or wrong; but there are very few biological scientists who think the theory is absurd. One might still believe they are wrong, but as someone with no training as a scientist or a biologist, I would be hesitant… Read more »
At some point, evolutionary ideas and the origin of life have to meet.
Otherwise where do the Protozoa come from whose diverse descendants are accused of giving rise to ever more complex and diverse life forms?
They do. But I don’t think any biologists claim they are at that point.
I wondered if I could ask you: Is there any evidence you can conceive of that would cause you to accept macro-evolution from a common ancestor?
Jilly, back to the top, Darwin’s theory book was called ” On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”, (even Canadians ; – ) how is that different from “the origin of life”?
I am under the impression that Darwinian evolution does try to “explain” that.
Am I mistaken?
Also, “evolution” and “adaptation” get conflated in these types of discussions, when there is lots of adapation, but perhaps not much evolution.
Does this sound reasonable?
Well, Darwin’s work (as I understand it, and please remember that my academic background is English and history!) deals with speciation from a common ancestor. “Races”, of course, meant “species” and can’t be taken to prove that Darwin was a racist as some people allege. I don’t think he goes further back than the positing of a common ancestor. I don’t know if Darwin had thoughts about abiogenesis that are not part of “Origin of Species” but I have been told that any such thoughts are conjectural and not settled science. Ken Ham accepts micro-evolution, which I think would be… Read more »
Darwin believed in more vs. less evolved “races” of people and predicted genocide based on what he believed to be the superior evolutionary fitness of caucasians. He did so in the Descent of Man and his personal correspondence archived by Cambridge.
Certainly he shared nineteenth century beliefs that some races were much more developed than others. By our standards, calling Australian aboriginals savages shows racism.
On the other hand, he did campaign for the abolition of slavery, based on his belief in the common parentage of all races.
jillybean wrote: Certainly he shared nineteenth century beliefs that some races were much more developed than others. This is an understatement. The Darwins were vanguards of such beliefs. Several Darwin family members were founders and board members of the eugenics societies. jillybean wrote: On the other hand, he did campaign for the abolition of slavery, based on his belief in the common parentage of all races. Does jillybean have a reference that Darwin actually campaigned? With regard to the entire British Empire, the Slavery Abolition Act was already passed in 1833, well before Origin of Species was published in 1859.… Read more »
I don’t think it is entirely fair to decide that Darwin favored slavery in principle based on his observations of the social behavior of ant colonies, especially when he so explicitly opposes human slavery in his writings. If he had described the mating habits of a black widow spider, would we conclude that he was not opposed to murder? It does not take knowledge of evolutionary theory for a wide-eyed observer to conclude that both nature and human history are indeed red in tooth and claw. Most writers describing natural history don’t feel obliged to comment that the animal conduct… Read more »
Much more than that, multiple members of the Darwin family were founders of eugenics societies for many decades until they fell out of favor after Hitler. Just one of the dirty little secrets they don’t teach in government evolution classes.
Many people, including Christians, supported the eugenics movement–states here in the U.S. sterilized the unfortunate in the belief they were bettering society. I don’t think Darwin’s theory can be blamed for social Darwinism. But any bad use to which the theory was put proves nothing about whether it is supported by the evidence.
jillybean wrote:
Jillybean is welcome to her opinion, but it wasn’t shared by the members of Darwin’s own family who became founders of eugenics societies. They credited Charles Darwin’s theory. What else explains the Darwin family dominance in the movement? Coincidence?
You inspired me to do some reading. His half-cousin Francis Galton is credited (or debited) with the birth of the eugenics movement, and a couple of his sons were heavily involved with it. On the other hand, if the involvement of Darwin’s family members in the eugenics movement is a “dirty little secret” which somehow discredits him and/or his theory, wouldn’t fairness require us to acknowledge that the families of both Darwin and his wife were passionate and active abolitionists? And, if we use his cousins’ and sons’ involvement in eugenics to discredit or undermine Darwin’s theory, we must also… Read more »
“My problem with his thinking is that, if we allow for sufficient time, there doesn’t seem to be much difference between micro and macro-evolution.”
My go to example for this is virus’. While they are hailed as an example of observable evolution do to their rapid change through multipe generationd they are still virus’ with no sign (that I know of) of evolving to a ‘higher’ life form.
Except hyenas aren’t canine animals.
Who knew? Well, take hyenas off the list.
When I was growing up, every time a kid said panda-bear, he or she was told firmly that pandas are not bears. I have now been told that they most definitely are, which every kid could have told you from time immemorial. But I’ll take your word for it on hyenas–you get the last laugh.
I believe hyenas are considered to be phylogenetically closer to cats than to dogs. That’s why cats are not Darwinists.
Anyway, was Jonah swallowed by a fish or by a whale?
Since fish and whale aren’t Hebrew words, and the scientists who made the arbitrary (though not useless) distinction between fish and whales weren’t born yet, that’s probably not a question with a real answer.
Except it was probably a whale
“Since fish and whale aren’t Hebrew words…” was more or less my point. OT Hebrews probably wouldn’t have given it a thought that there might be any difference. However, that doesn’t mean there is no answer, it just means that it doesn’t matter to the event, that and I’m sympathetic to people who look at hyenas and think “canine”. I’m not sure why you think distinction between fish and whale is arbitrary though.
It’s arbitrary in the sense that it’s just a distinction someone made up (albeit a worthwhile one with reasons behind it.) The classifications could have been drawn up in such a way that a whale would be considered a fish and there’s no absolute reason that would have been wrong. (E.g, anything that swims all the time, has no limbs, and has a tail for propulsion is a fish. And that’s the implicit biblical definition.) By “arbitrary” I don’t mean a foolish or useless distinction, just one that exists only because someone made the distinction that way, when it could… Read more »
I can prove that a coconut is a mammal. It is hairy and it produces milk.
At the risk of coming off like a know-it-all… Some fish are endothermic. Not all fish have scales. None have placentas, but then neither do all mammals. Some fish can, but not must, breathe directly from the air, whereas no whale can breathe oxygen dissolved in water. All mammals, whales included, have mammary glands, but no fish do. I think I understand what you are getting at, but the distinction between whales and fish is an observation, not an invention. Intuitively “swims all the time, has no limbs, and has a tail for propulsion” seems like reasonable basis for grouping… Read more »
These days we are accustomed to using the word ‘arbitrary’ in a pejorative way. But here it seems clear that Dunsworth is using it in the original sense of ‘arranged through arbitration’. Nobody is suggesting that the difference between fish and whales is a human invention. But classifying them as we do is a sensible human CONvention based on our observations of similarities and differences. And there’s nothing wrong with that. All that’s being pointed out here is that ancient marine biologists (or at least the writer of Jonah) apparently did not have those conventions. Or maybe Jonah didn’t happen… Read more »
Jonah would probably be puzzled by any debate on the subject. It was a big sea creature. Whaddya want? True story. Once when I was leading a Bible study and we were on this topic I made the observation that the Hebrew writers of the Old Testament were, after all, not marine biologists. A woman in the group spoke to advise me that the Holy Spirit *was* a marine biologist. The point I was making earlier impacts nothing about the story of Jonah. However, the nerd in me insists that the more data you have the better you can arrive… Read more »
My money is on a shark. Specifically Megalodon.
Oh gosh Jilly! I had no intention of possibly getting you in trouble in a wide ranging comment string.! I had similar thoughts as you about dogs. They are: If all the dogs we see today, did spring from a common dog ancestor, they are still dogs, and not dolphins. Beyond that, humans purposely breeding dogs, to create the specific breeds we have today, is a proof of intelligent design, before all else.
And of course we are all thankfull that dogs enabled P. D. Eastman to write Go dog Go!
; – )
The way I originally heard the distinction, micro-evolution acknowledges changes in gene expression, and possibly mutation or deletion of already present genes, but not the addition of new genetic information.
jillybean wrote:
Aside from the hyenas (which others already pointed out), jackals, wolves and coyotes can all interbreed, and produce fertile offspring *today*. So I’m not sure what sort of evolution jillybean supposes is necessary to produce them.
I would have to say, overall, that I accept it in the same way I accept the germ theory or the atomic theory: on authority I consider trustworthy. I was brought up in a religious environment where I did not meet Christians who saw evolution as problematic, and in an academic environment where it was regarded as settled science. I had no idea that anyone doubted evolutionary theory until I learned about the Scopes trial in history class, and even William Jennings Bryan accepted scientific evidence about the age of the earth. So, it is a bit difficult to identify… Read more »
I appreciate your comment jillybean. While Darwin used evolution they way you describe, most every materialist uses evolution as the origin for life. I am sure you are familiar with the primordial soup hypothesis. A corollary of Wilson’s point above is that Darwin and biologists are no longer solely qualified as the arbiters of evolutionary theory. Whole areas of science have been opened since Darwin created his theory (e.g.s organic chemistry, microbiology, biochemistry). Also, given evolution’s appeal to large amounts of time and space to make the theory work, it implicates physics and mathematics. As an amateur mathematician I find… Read more »
I have been hearing that Darwinism is on the verge of collapse for over 40 years. Instead I have seen one institution of Christian higher education after another fall to one species of another of old earth creationism, common decent and/or theistic evolution. If the YEC types can not carry the day in the faculty lounges of Wheaton, Calvin and even Westminster what hope have they got in the wider academy? I am not a scientist or a theologian but I can tell there is a huge gap between what thoughtful ID types like Michael Behe mean by the collapse… Read more »
The fact that several of the “Christian” universities go Darwinian some time before their theology shifts liberal is a good argument that Darwinianism is false.
or that the alternative models are not intellectually creditable.
Yeah, why would anyone believe the words of the Creator of everything when we have intellectuals to give us their theories?
As always it is a it is all about of hermeneutics. The question it a what point do you abandon you preconceived idea’s about what the text says in light of new information. I know a number of serious reformed Christians that are Geocentricist. You are never going to persuade them otherwise based on pure exegesis. You need to bring external data into the mix. The same goes for the age of the earth and related questions.
quote: “The question it a what point do you abandon you preconceived idea’s about what the text says in light of new information”
– Oh, about the time you abandon the text in favor of filtering it through the “science by consensus” wing of naturalistic atheism.
I’d say that was precisely the time.
There isn’t any external data supporting abiogenesis, though.
So what’s your point? Science should stop investigating?
My point is that you’re making a category error. Science does not address the questions you seem to think it does.
This time I think your beef is with Steve in Toronto.
To be clear, are you saying science doesn’t or shouldn’t attempt to discover the origin of life on planet earth? What would change in your ontology if data supporting abiogenesis were observed? Don’t freak, it’s just a thought experiment.
Yes, I’m saying that the origin of life is not something science can address. It’s a historical question, certainly, but there’s no way to directly observe what actually happened.
As for your second question: it’s too late for abiogenesis now.
From what I’ve observed, their theology shifts first and then the science follows along.
I heard of a debate where the 3 scientists were arguing for creationism and 3 theologians for Darwinism.
I would love to see that.
I don’t understand you here, Bethyada. Evolution stands or falls based on the evidence, which exists (or does not exist) outside what any individual or institution holds as theologically true. What am I missing?
Correct. But I am responding to Steve. His comment was that many Christian institutions are rejecting creationism over the years because of the evidence of Darwinism was increasingly manifest.
I disputed that by noting that some of these same institutions have also abandoned theological orthodoxy. (I suggested they adopt Darwinism before theological error, Ginny suggested it was in the reverse order).
So if a “Christian” institution believes obvious theological error, they are hardly in a place to rightly judge creationism.
As always, you gotta keep in mind the equivocation between “evolution” the biological observation of variation in populations of organisms, and “evolution” the account of the origin of life. The former is actual science since experiments and observations can be made, the latter is a philosophical belief. (Though, I’m sure someone will be glad to slyly point out, they have a common ancestor….)
How long was the USSR on the verge of collapse? :)
An eleven second video? Dream on.
This. Better?
Oh yeah. That settles it. Thanks.
When asked if Darwin’s theory is completely wrong Michael Behe (one of the world’s leading proponent of intelligent design) replied: “Not at all. It is an excellent explanation for some features of life, but it has sharp limits. Darwin’s theory is an amalgam of several concepts: 1) random mutation, 2) natural selection, and 3) common descent. Common descent and natural selection are very well-supported. Random mutation isn’t. Random mutation is severely constrained. So the process which produced the elegant structures of life could not have been random.” http://www.discovery.org/a/4097
GREAT article. May very well have to get Behe’s book. Thanks for the link!
Behe is a Catholic, and although Catholics aren’t bound by formal church teaching on this subject, the Vatican accepts a very old universe and common descent. I am puzzled by the difference, in his case, between theistic evolution and intelligent design. There are plenty of Catholic biologists, including Kenneth Miller who testified against Behe in the Kitzmiller trial. Was the issue that Behe was claiming ID as a science-based theory?
I don’t really get the difference either. I suspect it has to do with a fundamentally different understanding of what “randomness” is. As I understand it to a christian their really ought to be not such thing as a random event. A phenomena might look random but it is only an illusion. This of course would be an impossible premise to test scientifically.
Perhaps I am misunderstanding Behe, but surely no biologist is saying that random mutation alone is responsible for producing elegance and diversity. Natural selection, on the other hand, is not random. Genetics may randomly reshuffle the cards, but who survives long enough to pass along his genes is a different question.
The only beneficial mutations I know about (without looking it up and finding text I would copy without necessarily understanding it, so I won’t) are the hemoglobin mutation that confers protection against malaria–assuming you have only one copy, not two–, the one that gives primates three kinds of color vision, and the one for lactose tolerance. I am always keenly aware in these discussions that I am a non-science person talking to people whose scientific expertise is much, much greater than my own. What I know about biology comes from reading as a layperson and from having lived with a… Read more »
They are beneficial in a certain environment. But they are also breakages when analysed on a molecular level.
A mutation that looses teeth may be useful if your diet is liquid (no peridontal disease) but it is hardly an improvement on teeth; and there is no way to get the teeth back (mostly).
melanin deficiency in northern latitudes would be another beneficial mutation. Us pale folks metabolize vitamin D better during short days then our darker brethren. On the other hand when we move south we get skin cancer. Kurt Vonnegut wrote a fun book that argued that Human intelligence had become an evolutionary liability and imagined a world where the next step in human evolution was dumber a (and furrier) . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gal%C3%A1pagos_(novel)
Melanin levels in different populations are the result of selection, not a gene mutation.
Lactose Tolerance it a good example of a relatively recent beneficial mutation. This is one of the reasons that northern and central Europeans have been so successful in the last millennium. We (folks of European stock) take it for granted but only about 30% of all the people alive can digest raw milk’s dominant sugar, lactose, after childhood.
You’ve left out the part about lactose persistence existing in Africans and Middle Eastern people.
Also the part about how not all genetically lactase nonpersistent individuals are noticeably lactose intolerant, and not all lactose-intolerant individuals have lactase nonpersistence.
It all sounds very good in theory until you consider the fact that there really is no genetic marker for whether or not you can easily digest lactose in adulthood.
I am not sure how any of the issues you raise affect my argument. Lactose Tolerance is a recent mutation and it is beneficial. You can quibble that my summery of the issue is a bit crude but I have addressed your question. It would seem to me you now need to reevaluate your position based on this new evidence.
“Lactose Tolerance is a recent mutation and it is beneficial.”
Except, I am calling into question the very existence of such a gene and whether or not it actually has any relationship to lactose persistence. There are people who do not have the alleged mutation and are still quite able to digest milk. There are also people who have the alleged mutation and are still lactose intolerant.
To add to the complexity, lactose persistence is found all over Africa, the Middle East, and Europe.
“In humans, the ability to digest lactose, the sugar in milk, declines after weaning because of decreasing levels of the enzyme lactase-phlorizin hydrolase, encoded by LCT. However, some individuals maintain high enzyme amounts and are able to digest lactose into adulthood (i.e., they have the lactase-persistence [LP] trait). It is thought that selection has played a major role in maintaining this genetically determined phenotypic trait in different human populations that practice pastoralism. To identify variants associated with the LP trait and to study its evolutionary history in Africa, we sequenced MCM6 introns 9 and 13 and ∼2 kb of the… Read more »
Thanks you for that link, Steve. I’ll call your attention to this sentence, “It is thought that selection has played a major role..” “It is thought.” Thought is all well and good, but thought is not evidence, proof, or established fact. It is, well, simply “thought.” One cannot simply baffle people with bovine poo by adding fancy smancy words like, “allele frequency spectrum and long-range linkage disequilibrium,” as if that now means something, as if “thought” has now risen to the level of “established fact.” You said, “Lactose Tolerance it a good example of a relatively recent beneficial mutation.” 1.… Read more »
I sure looks like a very sound theory. I expect this will be nailed down very tightly within a few years. In what sense is it not beneficial? Causality is always tricky but the utility of the mutation in northern Europe a region with relatively short growing season seems self evident.
Well, theory, thought, and expectancy belong more in the realm of faith than science.
However, I am glad the possibility excites you, it is just that we cannot yet establish and declare that this is a proven mutation or that it is beneficial. To be “beneficial” we first need evidence of it’s existence and than we need to demonstrate a relationship between lactose persistence and human success.
Theory and thought belong to faith rather than to science? The theory of gravity or the theory of relativity is religious rather than scientific? If scientists may not think and theorize, I am not sure exactly what you envision their role to be.
You seem to have a problem with the use of scientific terminology to discuss a scientific hypothesis. I don’t think scientists use the terminology of their work as a “fancy smancy” tool to baffle people, and it is hardly reasonable to expect a geneticist to discuss heredity without reference to the frequency of alleles in a population. If you have done enough research to conclude that lactose tolerance is not an inherited trait, you must have encountered these terms before and have managed to understand what they meant.
The National Institutes of Health and a large number of medical researchers state that lactose intolerance is a genetic mutation, have determined its chromosomal location, and have identified the two single-unit DNA changes that bring it about. https://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/lactose-intolerance#inheritance. A genetic test has been developed. I am puzzled about why you think geneticists are mistaken in their reading of the evidence.
Lactose intolerance is extremely common among Ashkenazi Jews. I expect that the current trend toward intermarriage will reduce this genetic tendency.
But their laughter would not disprove natural selection or common ancestry. They might have laughed equally at the notion that the earth goes around the sun, or that organisms too tiny to see cause fatal diseases.
Their laughter will not be the proof, but a good and true reaction to something ridiculous being said. The proof lies elsewhere.
I think the point is that no one would laugh at the earth going around the sun today. Theories are laughed at when they first start to get traction. They are also laughed at after they have lost traction.
Cosmic aesther was once almost universally accepted. Now it is laughed at.
This one is pretty amazing too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOYsD2zQPe4
You always present these trivial objections as though they are massive earth-shattering challenges that somehow no one ever thought about. But of course they have thought about them, and a simple google search is all one needs to investigate. Here’s a preview: the feather starfish doesn’t actually have feathers. “Darwin died in 1882, and the term genetics was not born until 1905.” Which might mean something if genetics didn’t fit right into Darwin’s theories like it was made for them. It’s a testament to the strength of the base ideas of evolution that the new science of genetics posed no… Read more »
“… a simple google search is all one needs to investigate…”
Sure, cause if its on the internet it has to be true. Oh, wait, but doesn’t that mean that what Pastor Wilson wrote here is true as well?
You really should stop. You’re not helping your cause. It wouldn’t be a surprise to learn you are flat-earther who believes the sun orbits the earth because – the Bible says so. Damn those evil astronomers.
Chapter and verse please….
I didn’t think so.
Please stop shattering my golden illusions of white-coated scientists fearless in the pursuit of truth.
You might enjoy this, but don’t tell anyone.
Adam and the Genome: Reading Scripture after Genetic Science
This looks good. I appreciate the find!
I would prefer one from Justin Trudeau if it is all the same to you.
Ahhhhh!
“Far Side” scientist cartoons!????????????
Yet many secularists are abandoning gradualism for catastrophism—but only if it involves multiple-catastrophes, not a single Noadhic one. Interesting.
You can believe in a conspiracy if you like, but I’m going to require some real evidence.
Case closed. Thanks for the
storyevidence.You’re the one making the claim of widespread crooked research by crooked researchers somehow invalidates genetic research. Your experience at three universities, even if accurate, is just your experience at three universities. It doesn’t prove anything except perhaps, your on personal bias. But of course, you already knew that.
Easy, tiger, I’m just a regular joe.
I think you mean with bated breath.
Can one infer from your first sentence that you now have a personal bias in regard to genetic research?
The closed mindedness exhibited by Mr. Wilson, especially when science collides with his view of scripture, only insures that his tribe will fizzle out. Unfortunately it will shipwreck a fair number of good folks who planted their flag on his hill.
Crouch wrote:
As if the vast majority of Christian believers prior to Darwin planted their flag on some other hill.
The vast majority of Christians prior to Darwin didn’t have the benefit of modern science..
I’m giving you a D- for the effort.
How many genders has modern science discovered?
First, you have to define what you mean by genders, then what your parameters are for modern and science.
That’s the problem, nobody knows what gender means anymore because the word has been kidnapped and brutalized by the leftist “scientific establishment”. There are new “genders” being “discovered” every day, but all that scientific advancement can’t obscure the obvious fact that the human sex is binary. Just like all the scientific “advancement” in the world cannot obscure the foundational truth that, in the beginning, God created the cosmos.
There’s nothing confusing about the meaning of gender or sex. It’s just confusing when they are used as if they mean the same thing. Of course human sex is binary. Gender isn’t. Your boogeyman reference isn’t necessary and it cheapens your argument.
As for God creating the cosmos, that’s a faith statement (one to which I happen to subscribe), but not a scientific fact. I’m okay with that tension. Are you?
“It’s just confusing when they are used as if they mean the same thing.”
IOW, it’s just confusing when we treat biological reality as defining a biologically-rooted aspect of things, and eschew making up new categories based on the way people would like things to be in order to avoid the necessity of calling more people dysfunctional than we want.
Well you know my feelings on the topic: There’s only one gender. The American gender.
That’s funny. You’re certainly consistent. Don’t mistake that for a compliment.
If I was getting compliments from you, I’d be concerned.
Crouch wrote:
I appreciate Crouch conceding my point that the vast majority of Christians throughout history have planted their flag just where Wilson is planting it. So Crouch’s argument about flag planting and shipwreck is just closed-minded bigotry on his part.
Kate’s floundering. Someone please throw her a life ring?
Sure, but epicycles fit right into Pythagorean cosmology too. You haven’t internalised Kuhn’s point yet: the history of science is the history of being wrong.
(Your attempt to put the actual science done by Mendel, Darwin, Watson/Crick, etc., at odds with belief in a young earth and literal six-day creation is risible.)
It’s entirely plausible that the theory of evolution will…evolve, perhaps even into something unrecognizable to us. It’s less plausible, but possible, that it will be abandoned in favor of something else that can’t be meaningfully called evolution. It’s almost totally implausible that it will be abandoned in favor of Christian-flavored scientific YEC specifically.
Science is about being wrong and correcting course, true. But when we revise incorrect elements of, say, atomic theory, we don’t revert back to classical suppositions about the “four elements” or whatever.
Consider the history of scurvy.
Matt wrote: It’s entirely plausible that the theory of evolution will…evolve, perhaps even into something unrecognizable to us. … It’s almost totally implausible that it will be abandoned in favor of Christian-flavored scientific YEC specifically. Matt seems to be in denial of the fundamental tenet of his evolutionism. Matt is supposing that evolution can’t scale the genetic wall between different kinds of theories. He’s using a creationist argument. The point has been noted before that, in evolution theory, there can be no insurmountable barriers between kinds. This means that, given enough time, the impossible becomes improbable, the improbable becomes probable,… Read more »
Well put!
The word nuffin should be preceded by absolutely.
With a hoo-ah in there somewhere.
Interesting. I’ll have to check out Kuhn…
One of the comparisons I try and make when talking with others about Science vs Scripture, is that molecule to man Evolution is a hot stock right now and that they would do wise to reflect on how the educated/smart people in Politics, Media and Wall Street didn’t sound the alarm about the recent crash, (that almost took it all down) rather It was the dissenters that had the appropriate indicators to know what was going on.
One of the ways you can tell that Darwinism is in trouble is the level of hysteria, defensiveness, and outrage against anyone who publicly affirms Creation. If Creationism is so flimsy, you’d think these atheistic scientists and theistic evolutionists wouldn’t carry themselves with such a threatened posture. Scientism has become a full blown religion. They project that their dogma is as brittle as a window of sugar glass.
One of the ways you can tell that Creationism is in trouble is the level of hysteria, defensiveness, and outrage against anyone (especially a Christian) who publicly affirms a different reading of scripture. If genetic science is so flimsy, you’d think these self-anointed pastors and their followers wouldn’t carry themselves with such a threatened posture. Creationism has become a full blown religion. They project that their dogma is as brittle as a window of sugar glass.
See how easy that was? Does that make me a plagiarist?
Crouch wrote: Creationism has become a full blown religion. Not sure where Crouch has been, but Creationism started out as a full blown religious view, so Crouch has found a superfluous tree to bark up. My point was to draw attention to ways that Evolutionism itself is a religious dogma, complete with its own creeds, prophets, blasphemy and heresy laws. Evolutionism, from its utterly dominant grip on the scientific zeitgeist and the grant-dispensing politicians, must silence any opposition with an iron fist. It can’t even tolerate disclaimers on government school textbooks. This demonstrates that they, in fact, still see Creationism… Read more »
I think the problem with textbooks stickers is that they suggest something that isn’t entirely accurate. Evolutionary theory is not in crisis and is not controversial among the vast majority of biological scientists. An accurate sticker would have to avoid misusing the word “theory” to make it sound like an unsupported hunch as opposed to a unifying explanation. It should also point out that, while there is much opposition to the theory among some religious groups and some scientists working in other fields, this opposition is not shared by most biologists. Stickers typically have suggested that the theory of evolution–as… Read more »
Evolution from lifelessness to mammals, even with 4 billion years to play with, is not only mathematically improbable, it’s impossible (if you disagree, cite any study that shows otherwise without using abracadabra). Many evolutionists know this and are kicking the time-constraint-can down the galactic road by invoking the specter of aliens “seeding” the earth. If you want to tell the gospel to an educated friend, you will often get hung up on Genesis because of geology, not because of biology. Even educated folks are usually smart enough to see we are too complicated to have arisen by blind chance. But… Read more »
Organized science is an opiate for the masses.