Please note that the dots represent only a small and incomplete part of the whole sine wave. They show aliasing, meaning the dots misrepresent the whole sine wave.
It seems a shame to deny a most significant part of God's handiwork, but that is what traditional "Creationists" have done. They have denied or ignored the great evolutionary continuity of the origin of species. Instead, Biblical literalists have made the presumption that phrases in Genesis, like "Let there be…" or "God created…" referred to some divine process that was instantaneous, abrupt, sudden, and creatio ex nihil. In shorthand, I call this the digital view of creation. It is, frankly, incompatible with the natural world as we find it.
We humans have a strong tendency to limit God to our own way of doing things. We often assume that our methods should be His.
A carpenter constructs furniture from readymade pieces in a woodshop. Would God use such a digital process to make furniture? No. I imagine a continuous cycle of cells, microbes, multicellular organisms, plants, fish, trees, land mammals, primates, and humans, who would chop down trees to make "God's furniture." God's ways are not ours.
Again, the common literal view of creation is that God made each individual type of species one at a time. According to this view, God drew up the "blueprints" and somehow assembled males and females, who then over time became parents to start the next generations. Once a species had been made, then it reproduced on its own.
I refer to this literal view as "digital creation," because the process reminds me of "1's" and "0's." Before God made a particular species of bird, let's say the robin, the mathematical state of the robin was "zero." Once God made the robin, then it existed as a whole, suddenly becoming a digital state of "one."
Why must God do "creation" the way humans would do "creation?"
There are Latter-day Saint blog writers who are pro or con with respect to Darwinian evolution. Much of the discussion from these writers revolves around whether or not the Church is neutral or anti-Darwin.
All I really know is what nature says. The evolution of life is analog. Fossil rocks reveal an underlying continuity of life. Yes, there are many transitional fossil forms, contrary to many claims made elsewhere. Further, DNA nucleotide sequences can reproduce basically the same phylogenetic trees suggested in the fossil record. Scientists call this kind of agreement "convergent validity."
I love the use of the word "organized" found in the Book of Abraham:
Abraham 4:1
1 AND then the Lord said: Let us go down. And they went down at the beginning, and they, that is the Gods, organized and formed the heavens and the earth.
Joseph Smith elaborated on the meaning of the term "organize:"
Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, p. 350
You ask the learned doctors why they say the world was made out of nothing; and they will answer, "Doesn't the Bible say He created the world?" And they infer, from the word create, that it must have been made out of nothing. Now, the word create came from the baurau which does not mean to create out of nothing; it means to organize; the same as a man would organize materials and build a ship. Hence, we infer that God had materials to organize the world out of chaos--chaotic matter, which is element, and in which dwells all the glory. Element had an existence from the time he had. The pure principles of element are principles which can never be destroyed; they may be organized and re-organized, but not destroyed. They had no beginning, and can have no end.
By the way, I think God would organize materials for the ship using continuous methods, not digital ones. But, yes, the ship would get built, beautifully.
Joseph Smith's Hebrew transliteration baurau is usually spelled bara' (Strong's #H1254), which means to create, shape, form or organize.
The Latter-day Saint concept of God's organization seems highly consistent with the notion of analog evolution – a continuous process. Again, digital creation sounds too close to making something out of nothing. To me, Joseph Smith would object to such a notion.
POSTSCRIPT: Be on the look out for the soon to be released movie entitled "Creation: The Life of Charles Darwin." The movie is based on the book Annie's Box by Randal Keynes, who is a descendant of Darwin. The book and the movie examine the effect of Darwin's ideas upon his family, and how the death of Darwin's daughter, Annie, dramatically affected him.
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20 comments:
"We humans have a strong tendency to limit God to our own way of doing things."
I heard a talk the other day where the scientist remarked "evolution seems to make decisions that are so much greater than anyone could have conceived."
It is amazing how majestic evolution and what is accomplishes is. If I was God, that's what I would use:
It would be such an "intelligent choice". :)
We humans also have a tendency to assume too much without thouroughly proving the imaginations of the mind in a real physical world. For instance- we see an ape and say- "wow, it looks like us, walks kind of like us, maybe perhaps we are related genetically somewhere...." Even though no evidence for real substancial evolution has turned up, the imagination and heart of the scientist has filled the void with many a fable to assume to think like God and yet only think in a "man" sort of way!
Creationism/ ID doesn't require a "digital" type of creation you propose. Personally, (and I am firmly against Darwin and his evolution model) I believe Abraham speaks of preparing an earth that will support life as far as the creation goes. Getting the elements in correct order and form, temperatures and atmospheres correct, etc. Once this was accomplished, animals that were already in existance then came and populated their individual species upon our planet- thus life only coming from life in an eternal perpetuation model. Clearly that is what the evidence shows in my opinion.
Oh, and those fossils are the testimony that the flood actually occurred.
Evolution as a model for oragnizing the earth requires such a godless frame of mind- I have never picked up any evolutionary teaching that mentions God or "creation". Truth be had, evolution and God do not mix together- no biology or science manual on evolutionary theory mentions God.
"Even though no evidence for real substancial evolution has turned up"
This is absolutely not true. We live in a day and age where there is absolutely no justification for just a statement.
If you are looking for evidence I suggest you start with the wikipedia: http://tinyurl.com/2fq7jy
However, given what I just said, given everything that has been demonstrated and how much information that so freely can be obtained about evolution, pretty much the only people who would make such a statement are people who are intentionally going out of their way to ignore the evidence for some personal agenda.
Personal agendas do not make a truth a falsity. But if you are willing to take an honest assessment of the statement follow that Wikipedia link and keep going.
Anonymous:
Thanks for your honest opinion. I am grateful we can be in a Church where scientists can sit with non-scientists and worship God.
I know many LDS evolutionists. There are many of us, and we are NOT godless.
In science we do NOT know the role of God, nor do we know how to fit God in our equations. Even so, one should NOT assume scientists or evolutionists are godless (well, except Dawkins).
By the way, chimps, bonobos, and gorillas are almost genetically identical to us. Obviously, there are important differences in the DNA, but the differences are the exception, NOT the rule. For example, humans have 46 chromosomes and apes have 48, which means only that humans have organized their DNA into slightly fewer "containers."
Keep reading the scriptures. They are more important than Darwin.
Thanks for your comment.
Joseph S,
I think the statement I made is totally justified. We live in a day an age where thousands of watchful observers are closely monitoring life. You know what they are seeing? That Flies will remain flies no matter how many mutations happen, and that of those mutative flies, they do not benefit from those mutations.
Nowhere has the watchful eye of science observed horses give birth to a non-horse. For that matter, every animal out there has only shown to give rise to their own species, and this has been observed continuously billions and billions of times. Justified? You bet!
It's not that I am just totally against believeing in evolution, it's just that I am against believeing in a system of belief that has never been able to document it's findings on any scientific level! And I am not talking about viruses or the like changing, I am talking about species actually changing into new species and benefitting from those changes.
I also keep awaiting for Evolutionary science to aknowledge the great Creator of the heavens- the almighty being who we know as Christians to exist. It is with a firm voice that I am led to say that it strongly appears that Evolutionary science is a godless science that actually refutes the idea of any Intelligent designer out there. I am sorry that I feel this way but it is the awful truth- I make nothing up.
Whether you Call Christ the Intelligent designer, the Creator, or whatever you will, evolutionary science refutes such a being to both exist and be an active part of why and how life came into existance.
Show me one pro-evolutionary accredited manual or teaching material that aknowledges God and I will back off my statements, until then I am totally justified in my assumptions.
Rob O.
Rob,
"Nowhere has the watchful eye of science observed horses give birth to a non-horse."
You know and I know that that this is not a prediction of evolution. This is a mis-characterization of the theory.
Your "proof" against evolution is what they call a strawman argument. You set up something that looks like a real prediction, (but isn't) knock it down and say: "Ha, no evolution."
Again, I have to believe you are not living under a rock and that you know full well that evolution predicts slow, very slow, but steady gene changes in populations so that given enough time and other factors, different sectors of populations slowly diverge until they have become different species.
This is the actual prediction and can be found in every place you look: fossil record, genetics, etc...
Rob, this is an important concept. If we are to do science correctly you judge theories based on their actual predictions. Science would go nowhere if we said theory X is false because with no more than knocking down a strawman.
Now as for acknowledging God, the greatest scientific body on earth is called the National Academy of Sciences. They wrote an evolution book that goes to great lengths to assure you there might be a God. You can view the book here.
Or what about Francis Collins? He is famous scientist and pro evolution and has a pro-evolution book called "The Language Of God" where he "presents evidence for belief [in God]".
There you go Rob, pro-evolution books that acknowledge God.
Now we will see if you will do the honest thing in the future: judge a theory by its actual predictions, or whether you will continue to attack evolution by nothing more than setting up a strawman and knocking it down.
PS. S. Faux: If my comments drifting too far from where you want the comments to go, tell me, I will stop and feel free to delete them. (You run a good blog here and I don't want a side-discussion to distract that.)
I always think of digital creation as the "swish and flick" method. =:)
Rob -
"Oh, and those fossils are the testimony that the flood actually occurred."
The fossils aren't laid out nicely small to large as flood theory predicts. There are fits and starts in the fossil record due to multiple mass extinctions. Also the various dating methods virtually agree on the age of sedimentary rocks. Science makes its most powerful statements when differing methods agree on an answer. I just read "Bones, Rocks and Stars: The science of when things happened" Give it a try!
If you're really open minded, you could try "Your Inner Fish: A Journey into the 3.5-Billion-Year History of the Human Body" The author actually made a prediction of a certain key transitional fossil being located in rock of a specific age. He selected rocks of that age because he knew, based on other fossils and their age, that it was the only place this fossil could exist. In other words, if fossil 1 appears to be a primitive form of fossil 3 and fossil 1 is X million years old while fossil 3 is Z million years, there must be a transitional fossil 2 that is Y million years old. That is what he predicted and that is what he found. Very powerful evidence.
S.Faux,
Thanks for the opportunity to discuss this often contentious issue. I hope comments, including mine, appear civil.
Let me start by saying that I agree with your suggestion that God would not personally design every living species upon the earth. There are so many varieties of life on earth (many yet undiscovered) that it is hard to imagine Him taking the time to personally design each. I believe that much of the variety in smaller life forms may be due to evolutionary processes. I like to think that God “uses” evolutionary processes to create new and interesting varieties of life. Yet it is also conceivable that these varieties of life were designed and created on other worlds and then transported here. If life is eternal into the past, then many forms of life could have been created by gods before our world came into existence.
Now for mankind. I don’t see how God could ever create mankind through evolutionary processes. By definition evolution is environmental selection acting on random mutation (by the way, I like how the essence of evolution is so parsimonious – a sign of a good theory). To a certain extent I believe that God uses environmental selection to prepare worlds for mankind. The big problem, however, lies in the random mutation part. Heavenly Father did not rely on random mutations in the genome to create mankind. The creation of mankind did not involve random processes – it was guided (although I am not sure how). If we are created in His image, then there is basically one possible outcome to the creation of mankind, not several million that are conceivable in a scenario with random mutation.
I have heard a couple of explanations from other theistic evolutionists.
I reject the assertion that genomic changes just “appear” random to us mere mortals. To people who tell me this I say, “Well, let’s forget appearances. Were the genomic changes random or not? If it was not truly random then it was not evolution because, by definition, evolution involves random mutations in the genome.” I also reject the argument that Heavenly Father directs environmental selection to compensate for the random changes in the genome, thus achieving His desired result. I don’t think that a supreme being would play this sort of cat and mouse game with the vicissitudes of nature when forming His crowing creation – mankind.
Perhaps theist evolutionists could come up with a post neo-evolutionary theory that allows for divinely directed changes in the genome. Is this not the answer to these and other concerns?
Joseph, S,
I will take another approach. According to the OP, it is thought that Creationism/ID speaks of a creation where things just magically appear out of nowhere. I subscribe to no such view as an ID proponent. However, under this premise, evolution itself must then show how life really did come about, not how it "may have" which carrys too much conjective baggadge. We talk about that which is "falsifiable". Ultimately what we are really speaking of, in evolutionary terms, is how life first evolved. Obviously, evolution must believe in some form of abiogenesis. Is abiogenesis falsifiable? Experiments, observations and tests have all shown that life does not arise out of inanimate matter- that which does not contain life. Evolutionary theory states that the building blocks of life necessary to make life and perpetuate it must have been formed and came together at some point in the past- a past we cannot observe! So what we are left with is just an idea of how evolution came into existance. Never mind the fact that we do not observe or document species change in taxonomy, what is more important than that is the absolute fact as has been tested that states that biogenesis (life only from life) is a principle law in nature.
So what I find interesting, is that in evolutionary science they can take known laws and principles and then state that in the past (of which we cannot observe) these same laws did not exist or were different to allow life to start and begin it's chain of ever evolving life. In order to try and prove this supposed hypothesis, scientists manipulate a controlled environment and strategically place the building blocks of life into place to try to replicate what an early environment might have been like, (of the which they still cannot directly observe).
So in the end we have a falsifiable theory (abiogenesis) that so far has yeilded no fruit whatsoever and as it stands- it is thus at this point a false theory and principle!
So whereas evolution can mock at creationism because they supposedly "only" view a God that speaks everything into existance from nothing (which I myself find totally fairyland material!), They themselves are believeing in a theory whcih has been proven false, never observed nor documented, and above all- goes against their own known principles and laws they themselves have ascribed to observable nature!
You tell me, which is worse?
As for Scientists who both believe in evolution and God- sure, of coarse they exist. But what does not exist, is how in established evolutionary science, God is removed from the process of how life originated on this planet. To me that is an atheistic view of nature and thus- godless- not in an evil sense, no, in an "atheistic" sense.
I just wanted you to know I stopped by and love your thoughts.. Keep up the good fight.
Anonymous,
Believe it or not, my tone does not convey this I am sure, I do appreciate your thoughts.
1. ID: My thoughts on ID as best described by a comment I left on another blog here.
2. How life begins is not very well understood, I freely admit that. However, be careful concluding that science can't explain it. History is full of stages where people said "science can't explain X, therefore science isn't enough" only later to learn that science really does explain X. So just be careful.
3. I also admit, if you read my comment linked in #1, that moving ID from the science classroom to the religion one may be perceived as making science godless. Please read my above comment to see why people who believe in God would still justify this.
4. Everything is going to work out in the end so though we fight, argue and disagree, eventually we will all be on the same page.
Joseph S,
I agree that eventually all of us will be on the same page. What that page is remains to be seen.
Personally, as far as what should be in the classroom- in biology class: That which is both testable and observable phenomenon in nature.
Theories on both a Creator or abiogenesis as bringing life to the planet should be left completely out of the science classroom until proof positive shows up. It's all really philisophical anyway- science doesn't need to explain how things may have come about- rather, they should just stick with the obsevable phenomena in nature and leave the rest for the varios religions and philosophers to debate over.
But because Evolutionary science is pressing the issue the debate will rage on. Kids themselves should not be subjected to ideals that are not based on testable data.
Joseph Smidt:
You wrote above that you were worried that you might be making distracting comments. Please do NOT worry. I love your comments and your way of thinking. I appreciate your respectful tone when disagreeing with someone. That is refreshing.
Dave C:
I always appreciate your comments. We do not agree on evolution, but I find your ideas worth pondering.
You and I need to have a discussion, however, on randomness, because I know that you know statistics extremely well.
Natural selection is all about non-randomness. It is about how design can result from nature.
Imagine a mammalian class of organisms with a similar DNA code and biotic environment existing on a earth-like planet. Given certain environmental conditions I would predict that canine-like animals would eventually arise. Given other conditions, primate-like animals would arise, and so forth.
In other words, I really believe that ENVIRONMENTS select certain kinds of adaptations that are reliable and effective. These is not mere speculation, since "parallel evolution" across continents is known to exist here on this earth.
As you know, normal curves, F-distributions, and Chi-square curves result from random sampling. My point is that order can always result from that which on the surface looks chaotic. In nature it is rare to find possibilities or events that are equally probable. Your notion of randomness seems to imply equal probabilities of all possibilities, but that is an extreme that hardly ever exists in nature.
Some mutations are random. Regardless, variation is merely an ingredient that natural selection ACTS upon. The process of natural selection, itself, is VERY non-random.
Correct me, if I have mischaracterized your ideas.
Rob O.
You express the concern that no one has observed speciation in the laboratory. I would argue otherwise, but that is not my point. My point is that the fundamental set of facts in evolution are:
1. The fossil record is systematic overall. Pockets of disorganization, when found, are clearly a result of geologic activity. Further, multiple dating methods of those fossils show convergent validity. Science is OBLIGATED to give an account of the geologically and temporally ordered layering of fossils.
These fossils, by the way, cannot be explained away by a massive flood.
2. DNA sequences of organisms are systematically ordered as a function of the organism's placement on the phylogenetic tree. DNA sequences generally agree quite closely with the fossil record.
These two facts (numbered above) cannot be swept aside.
Science insists upon parsimony. One cannot explain these facts with Noah's flood, or the existence of previous worlds, or the deceit of the devil. The facts are merely facts, and they are NOT in dispute, among scientists.
Now, I don't think religious leaders have to waste their time on evolution. They have critically more important issues to worry about. But, I do hope we can learn from the past. Religion was harmed when it claimed that earth was the center of the universe.
Evolution is an overwhelmingly verified issue. True, there are many crazy theories associated with it, but that is par for the course in any science.
Many religionists have chosen to do battle with evolution ... BUT they have taken on a lost cause.
S. Faux,
The fossil record is anything but evidence for evolution! I guess it is all in how someone views the rocks. I have been to southern Utah/Northern Arizona many a time and you couldn't convince anyone with any logical mind that the rocks there are the remnants of a slow gradual depositation process. The uniformity of the thick layers (now seen as partially eroded away) show that what happened was a quick rapid deposit of both animals and sediment alike.
Establishing a plausible slow model of sediment buildup over millions of years and having those layers build up gradually in a uniform matter brings into question a myriad of problems! The biggest of these problems is that the amount of deposit in a given area cannot possibly have come from an eroded mountain or chain of them in the nearby area. Just in the Grand Canyon area alone we know that certain thick layers are abundant for thousands and thousands of square miles. How do natural non-flood events deposit such large thick layers over thousands of square miles in a relatively uniform fashion? Geologists state simply that it happened while it was under a shallow sea or ocean. Ok, so then tell me exactly how many thousands of mountains and hills had to erode higher up than this "shallow sea" and then be carried out to sea and deposited over thousands of square miles in a relatively uniform fashion? You get the drift? There just aren't enough mountains to erode over and over again that is going to deposit such large quantities of sediment without a massive flood.
In a massive catastrophic flood event where literally thousands of mountains and hills can be eroded all in a general time frame, it can easily be accounted as to how one could account for relatively uniformly layered strata- it is the only way!
The deposits we see in the oceans, lakes and riverbeds create a finer varve which is completely different than waht we see in the strata of the great earths exposed rock layers. So if the "key to the past is the present", then it can firmly be stated that nothing happening in the world in the present can account for the layers of strata as is exposed like in the Grand Canyon. Why is that? Because no global flood is happening in the present!
We have all done that neat little sediment experiment where you get a dozen different soil and clay samples and put them in a bottle, add water and mix it all up and then wait for the sediments to deposit. In the end one ends up with generally uniform layers of strata. What we have just done is recreate a global flood on a much smaller scale!
As for dating the rocks, I am somewhat skepticle because I know that usually rocks are not scientifically dated with precision processes and instruments. Instead rocks are usually dated by the fossils found within them which also of coarse are not dated with precision processes or equipment. We all know that no real group of scientists actually dig through the layered sediments in a given area to validate the sequence of fossils as to what they should be according to proposed models. The process is just way too hard and time consuming. Scientists though would have the world believe that they do such things on a regular basis. No such work actually takes place to document the layered strata in succession down to the basement rocks so we cannot thus state that fossils are in harmonious layers in perfect succession to propsed evolutionary models!
I think the greatest obstacle for evolutinary science to overcome is all of the "living fossil" specimens out there of the which the coelocanth is probably the most famous- it was supposed to grow legs millions of years ago according to the evolutionary tree and yet when they drug them up in nets- there they were in all their un-evolved glory! How does science explain a species that doesn't change (mutate) for tens of millions of years? That is the grand question!
Rob O.
Rob O.
I grew up in southern Utah and took many geologic field trips with my father who taught in the sciences at C.S.U. The scientists I know are struck by the evolutionary consistencies and ordering of the stratigraphy and the layering of fossils in southern Utah and northern Arizona.
Utah is a gold mine of geology. I suggest examining the Utah Geological Survey. It is a thing of beauty.
How can one NOT love Utah dinosaurs?
I appreciate your skeptical concerns, but ultimately I don't think they hold water [sorry for the dumb pun].
As for the coelacanth, I think you misunderstand how evolutionists view this fish. My first university evolution professor had a "scale" from a coelacanth, and it was a most prized possession. I HIGHLY recommend reading Your Inner Fish. This book brilliantly explains the evolutionary view.
I am tempted to write a long response, but I am tired, and I fear I would never persuade you.
It is a difficult thing to claim that all the geology textbooks are wrong, but you are welcome to do so.
As for me, I cannot wait to go fossil hunting. I've got some beautiful fish vertebrae on my desk right now. I would love to add to the collection.
Best wishes...
Rob -
Just a quick correction. Fossils are dated by dating the rocks they are encased in, not the reverse. The rocks are dated using radioactive decay of specific isotopes with half lives in the millions of years. These methods are calibrated by studying various isotopes with different decay rates as well as stable isotopes with no decay. Various methods with differing parameters validate each other pretty closely.
The most reliable method of dating is tree rings. You count the rings and viola! You have a date (ok, a year) . By aligning tree ring patterns you can match up living and dead trees to build a sequence that dates back as far as 10,000 years! I hope you're not a young Earther. :)
Anyway, radio carbon dating, which is reliable as far back as 40,000 years and in some cases 60,000 years, is calibrated and validated, at least to 10,000 years, by simply counting tree rings. Validation to 40 and 60 thousand is done using other methods. It is also validated by dating objects with known dates of origin. Other kinds of radio active decay are used to date rocks.
Oh, regarding the erosion of mountains, geologists believe that what are now the Appalachian mountains were once as large as the Himalayas and rose and fell (eroded) 3 times!
I'm not going to give up on you until you read some of these awesome pop science books!
Thanks, Stan, for catching some things I missed, and also for NOT giving up on Rob O.
I LOVE the interdisciplinary nature of evolution. The field requires some background in anatomy, neuroscience, genetics, statistics, physics, chemistry, ecology, psychology, anthropology, and geology. Yet, this interdisciplinary aspect is also a humility factor. One cannot be a complete expert in all these fields (at least within a normal lifetime).
I am convinced there are two key features of heaven: 1) it has great golf courses; and 2) it has advanced college courses in science. Thus, I cannot wait (not that I want to rush things) for the post-mortal college classes in heaven on evolution. This lifetime must be spent in preparation.
Where's my golf clubs?
S. Faux -
My wife is a mathematician and in Sunday school she mentioned how we would all be learning advanced mathematics in the after life. The stake presidents mom, who is very old and frail and nearly ready to sign up for those advanced courses, had a look on her face that told me she was reconsidering going there if she had to learn math.
Stan:
When we are all in the great beyond, please look me up, and I'll be sure to sign up for your wife's courses on vector, multivariable, and tensor calculus. I am sure I will need that math to use the quantum-based computers they use in heaven.
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