One of the most appealing aspects of Young Earth Creationism is, it offers a simple, trouble-free view of God. “God made everything perfect. It was just us HUMANS who messed everything up. It’s all OUR fault.”
Reader Daniel, a Christian, asked:
“I have to say you have a very interesting take on the Bible then. If Adam and Eve were real people and did not do the original sin like you suggest then where did death and suffering come from? Surely God did not create via suffering, that would be an affront to his glory.“
Long-time blog follower “Old Git Tom” poked the beast with this comment:
“It is preposterous to call Darwin’s Natural Selection (NS) theory of bio-evolution ‘successful’. It remains a failed hypothesis.
It was never even a valid scientific one. It is a tautology; it it is self-reinforcing, circular.
The NS merry-go-round goes this way:
1. Fitness determines survival.
2. Survival is proved by all the organisms that exist, or ever did.
3. Therefore, existence proves fitness, & all life-forms prove natural selection’s correctness.
This kind of circular proposition is as unshakably true (and unscientific) as the statement, “I am my mother’s son”.
As such, it is not scientific, since it’s unfalsifiable under ANY experimental test.”
Tom is not disputing the adaptive process evolution itself. Nor is he disputing the activity of Natural Selection. There’s always a few winners and many losers.
What he is saying is that “Evolution Through Natural Selection” is a non-explanation of how evolution actually produces winners.
Saying “Mammals evolved by natural selection” is like saying “The Seahawks made it to the Super Bowl by winning the playoffs.”
That might be a perfectly satisfactory answer to a person who has no interest whatsoever in the minutiae of football games… but no true football enthusiast would be content with it.
“A minimal cell is usually defined as a cell in which all genes are essential. This definition is incomplete, because the genetic requirements for survival, and therefore the minimal genome size, depend on the environment in which the cell is grown. The work described here has been conducted in medium that supplies virtually all the small molecules required for life. A minimal genome determined under such permissive conditions should reveal a core set of environment-independent functions that are necessary and sufficient for life. Under less permissive conditions, we expect that additional genes will be required.”
I have plenty of atheists friends whom I get along with just fine.
If you look at all the scientific data out there…
What we know about genetics…
What we know about the origin of life…
All we know about the birth of the universe…
How life changes and evolves…
Where humans came from, and why we think and feel like we do…
If you take a look at all of that — and all the big questions it raises — it infers a tremendous amount of majesty and precision in the universe. But if you decide there’s no God behind it all, I won’t jump down your throat.
Anybody who’s developed a modicum of chops with Google ads knows how utterly Darwinian Google is. Most of your ads vanish forever after being seen by (maybe) a few thousand eyeballs.
1% of the advertisers get 50% of the traffic. Everyone else fights over the scraps. And every ounce of your AdWords education costs you money.
Hoàng Bùi Đình { The ancients through experience and life experience went through generations of refinement to write the Bible and philosophies in different ... }
Fi Parker { This perfectly explains why living systems are different from physical ones. Physics follows mathematical rules because consciousness (teaspoons, rocks, electrons) ... }
vanish forever after being seen by (maybe) a few thousand eyeballs.