I’m sorry, Alan, but it appears to me that the scholars are just as good as the average layman at explaining away the things they don’t like in the Bible. It seems to me that if the scholarship were as clear as you make it seem there wouldn’t be such terrible arguments over the matter as exist after what? 6000 years.
And none of the scholars has yet justified to me why God allows Satan to toy with Job.
But to get back to ID. The Designer has seemingly designed a universe, and a world in it, that presents Him with continual changes in the environment that His creatures must face. This calls for continual design changes just to stay even since He, or She, seems to make tose “nudges” only at long intervals.
The problem with the design analogy, which is what ID relies on, is the one that David Hume pointed out a long time ago. When we see a designed object we base our knowledge that it is a product of design on a set of characteristics that are well known to belong to a whole class of objects that are designed. We see that happening every day. We sometimes even know the designers personally. In any case we have many examples of design and manufacture to use as a data base.
When it comes to the design of universes and their contents we have only one example and its origins are lost, at least for now, in a distant and unrecoverable past. We cannot draw on experience to tell us anything about how universes and their contents are designed or even if they are designed at all.
The whole ID project is a flight of fancy devised to inject a supernatural element into science education. Such a thing has no place there.
The thing is, even if we stipulate an intelligent designer, said ID need not be divine, just really advanced in a technological way.
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A basic argument for Intelligent Design is that God made all organisms able to adapt to the environment and defend themselves against hostile environments. You apparently believe that if He exists, God should have only given this capability to those creatures you consider to be “good”. But according to the Bible account, it was all good when first created. Only after man’s fall did the creation turn on itself.
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Satan had his agenda and God had His own. You will notice that Satan’s was answered quickly and he is gone after the first few chapters. Job’s troubles persisted until God got to the root of Job’s problem: he had become self-righteous and spiritually proud. God used Satan, who’s only agenda is to steal, kill, and destroy, to ultimately produce something good in Job ie, a better relationship with God.
That is not what I meant.
My point was that if evolution is viable and visible over intervals of a few weeks, then why is not acceptable to account for things over millions of years.
In just two words, bah loney. Why does an all-powerful God need to act on one of His creatures through a mediator?
And I really think it’s stretching to say that Job had become “self-righteous and spiritually proud.” However the first words in the book are “There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God and eschewed evil.”
And God, Himself, is quoted as saying, “Hast you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?”
Your statement is a simplified example of the tortuous means by which scholars justify the unjustifiable. The last resort in that operation is the statement that we can’t judge God’s actions. And that, by the way, is God’s ultimate justification to Job.
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My point was that if evolution is viable and visible over intervals of a few weeks, then why is not acceptable to account for things over millions of years.
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The ability of organisms to adapt doesn’t justify a theory that organisms eventually become other species over a long time period. It’s a theory that’s completely unsupported by the fossil record and by currently observed scientific processes. Nevertheless, some strain an observable fact (adaptation) to fit a scientifically unsupported speculation (evolution). Those who choose to believe evolution accept it as a matter of faith, they don’t know and can’t prove how it happened they just know it did, and hope someday they will find a way to prove it.
When you add the Biblical account into the mix, it rules evolution out completely, saying God initially created things after their own kind and also limits the time of creation itself to 6 literal days (the days are defined as consisting of an evening and a morning). Whichever you believe, it becomes a matter of faith, but current observable processes support the Biblical account ie, the yearly erosion of Niagara Falls, the dissipation of the rings of Saturn, the depth of moon dust, the flow of sediment into the oceans etc. These and many other scientifically observable processes support the Biblical account (and a young earth) while little in science can support the species leap in support of evolution. No matter how long you give that bacteria it’s not going to sprout wings and fly off the petri dish, it’s going to resist assaults, but it’s going to do so in order to remain a bacteria.
Going back to the OP.
The question in no way undermines ID (or evolution for that matter). Since there is no change in the bugs’ DNA but simply the reproduction of the lucky survivors, there is no evolution nor change; it’s simply that survivors survive. There is no new gene.
So, at least for this question, ID people can sleep comfortably.
You are correct, but not for the reason you think: organisms don’t become other species, populations of organisms do. As for the justification, the whole of The Origin of Species was exactly that justification: new species arise as a direct consequence of populations adapting to their environments.
Populations change over time. Given sufficient time, or a sufficient degree of change, the “end” population will be different form the “start” population. That’s one type of speciation. Another occurs when one population is broken into two or more sub-populations, with limited or no reproductive contact, for an extended period of time. These populations then vary independently of one another, and will eventually diverge until they are no longer indistinguishable from the original population. Speciation has occurred. The origins of higher taxa are simply the same story, at a grander scale.
As for the fossil record…it exactly matches what we would expect to find looking backwards from the present. We see marked similarities between birds and reptiles. We should expect to see even greater similarities going backwards in time, if the two groups are related. That is precisely what we see. Eventually, we come to fossils in which one cannot make a clean distinction bewteen “bird” and “reptile”. Going farther back, we see unambiguous examples of feathered reptiles – animals which can only be identified as reptiles, but which bear the supposedly-diagnostically avian character of “feathers”. And this is but one example of how the fossil record supports the notion of common descent. Despite what you may have heard, we have an awful lot of fossils, and we have a very good idea of the timelines and sequences which have resulted in modern species.
He doesn’t, He can use any means He desires, but in many cases uses His own enemies to accomplish what He wants. With Isaiah, He transported the prophet to heaven and had an angel touch his tongue with a burning coal to purify him, but in the case of Joseph, He used his evil brothers to accomplish His will. In the end, Joseph proclaimed to his brothers, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good”. God had allowed them to put Joseph in a training program so that he would learn to be the perfect servant\leader. It’s why we must always look past the motives of those who might bring trouble into our lives to see why the sovereign God allowed them to do so.
There are many men who went through pruning processes which seem uncalled for considering their righteousness which excelled their contemporaries (Jesus was the foremost). Joshua was given a new change of clothing, Daniel faced the lions, the aforementioned Joshua and Isaiah. In most cases it was to equip them for a higher calling. In the case of Job, he became an intercessor for his friends who had fallen into the same shallow relationship with God. Like the prodigal’s brother, their relationship with God became based on mechanical obedience to God’s commands which they expected to be rewarded with material blessings. The heart of the prodigal’s brother was similarly consumed with self righteousness and exhibited by his condemnation of the prodigal, just as Job’s friends condemned him for some hidden willful sin.
Job’s self righteousness is exhibited when he called God to account for the unrighteous way that He had allowed him to be treated. His repentance at God’s rebuke, “placing his hand over his mouth”, in the final chapters was the step God was waiting for him to take in order to heal him and install him as an intercessor for his friends.
God’s ways are indeed higher than ours, His thoughts higher than our thoughts
Sounds like a sociopath to me.
-Joe
(Bolding mine.)
FYI, Intelligent Design is not a theory because it cannot be proved false. It is a belief system.
Thank you.
God sent His own Son to the earth to be crushed and destroyed by the sociopaths of the day. There was no other way (without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sin). His motivation was love and to restore those who were separated from him. His ways seem bizarre to us but He accomplishes great things with what we consider weak. The crucified Christ is declared to be the Wisdom of God and the Power of God. All those who come to Him are healed and restored.
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Yeah…you’re certainly not changing my mind.
Ah well, enjoy.
-Joe
coughsplutter* MOON DUST?.. Pretty much everything you’ve said above is nonsense, but I’m simply flabberghasted that you’re still using the moon dust argument; even Answers In Genesis has scuttled away from that one.
This is a clue as to the difference between the scientifically oriented and the religiously oriented in the discussion of this subject. The scientific are willing to wait until an answer is found that is compatible with the general knowledge in all areas of science. Many of the religious, especially the young-earth creationists, want a definite answer now.
Incidendally, ID doesn’t require a young earth. I think most ID supporters are happy with the present scientific figure of about 4.5 billion years for the age of the earth.
Precision astronomical measurements have not been around long enough to make any inferences about changes in Saturn’s rings. The claim by creationist Harold Slusher on whom you seems to base this and other statements in the post seems mostly based on the the survey in 1852 by astronomer Otto Struve of observation reports from 1657 to 1851 that seemed to show an increase in the width of the rings and of the large and easily observable gap in them. Hardly conclusive (Chap. 18 Science and Earth History, Arthur N. Strahler, 1987).
Our trip to the moon thoroughly answered the depth of the moon dust question. Here again Slusher used old data on the amount of interplanetary dust and he failed to take into account the actual mechanism of meteoric impacts on the moon that produces dust. Core samples were taken of the surface that show the depth to which meteors penetrate and the effects of the impact on the boundry between the crystaline rock and the regolith. Such core samples show that the same thin, top layer of the surface is worked and reworked much like the farmer who plows the same top 8" of a field without ever disturbing the deeper layers. (Strahler. Again Chap 18).
I don’t know about Niagara Falls. I haven’t read anything about its rate of erosion in creationist writings. Enlighten us with a cite.
As to the fossil record. The “tree” of connection between the various lines of manlike animals, man, apes, gibbons, ourangs etc. that was constructed based on DNA and molecular biology agrees remarkably well with the various “trees” that were constructed based on the fossil record. Considering the fast difference the the techniques used in the generation of the “trees” and the difficulty of constructing one from the fossil record the correspondence is astonsighing and lends stong support to the thought that both are pretty close to correct.
I assume it’s this argument (the other arguments are all elsewhere in the index too).
And I suspect the ocean sediments comment is about this one.
Some ID supporters are indeed willing to compromise with the Biblical account by allowing a different time period for the days of Genesis 1. But this leads to a false conception of the God of the Bible Who then becomes either incompetent (finally gets his creations right but only after billions of years of fine tuning) and\or He just starts things and then watches from a distance. Both concepts are Biblically untrue.
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You can use the most generous numbers you want for the existing processes that we now observe taking place ie, even if the Saturn rings are presently expanding at one inch per year, with your estimate of the process starting 4.5 billion years ago – they would have already dissipated.
The argument about what we see at Niagara Falls is an example of what usually takes place in these debates ie, even when irrefutable proof is given about an existing process that couldn’t have been ongoing for over 6-7 thousand years, the evolutionists simply counter by theorizing that for some reason that particular process started a few thousand years ago and therefore doesn’t affect their fundamental beliefs in evolution and\or a godless universe. Once again, it’s faith vs faith.
Correction: we aren’t waiting for answers, we believe God has already answered the questions about earth’s creation, ensuing physical changes since then (global flood, removal of cloud canopy, formation of the poles, formation of the continents) as well as the origin of nations, peoples, and languages (Babyl). Further, He also has proclaimed the end of all these things and what we can do to escape the same destruction. Further, we believe all the general sciences are compatible with the Bible and become more so on a daily basis as science catches up. Like I said previously, both sides operate on a foundation of faith. We are content with the Biblical answers and you must be content with waiting for a big scientific breakthrough while hoping that the Bible’s testimony is wrong. However, from the rate Biblical prophecy is being fulfilled on an almost daily basis, you don’t have much time left.