Theistic Evolution

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

My own position is that YEC requires either a massive conspiracy among scientists to distort the evidence or a massive number of miracles to produce things that look like evidence in favor of creation and the arrival of life happening multi-millions of years ago.

[Doom]

My point is that all science encourages an atheistic outlook by encouraging a naturalistic approach to looking at the world. Once you start seeing a naturalistic explanation to everything you start thinking everything has a natural explanation and you absolutely no need for God, so by Ockham’s Razor, God doesn’t exist because he is an unnecessary hypothesis.

This is one of the two arguments against the existence of God that St Thomas thought compelling enough to attempt to rebut it, the other being the problem of evil.

[ProZak]

One need not prescribe to YEC to reject TE, as I pointed out earlier from Hank Hanegraaff. Yet I do no believe that St. Augustine believed in TE, or perhaps not even in an old Earth...

https://answersingenesis.org/days-of-cr ... -creation/

[Doom]

You're analogy is lacking as well, especially if you don't buy into TE...

So, everyone else, including multiple popes and canonized saints is part of a massive conspiracy to hide the truth, for what purpose exactly?

Don't you see that if the deeper you get into the weeds, the more you have to assume that the people who disagree with you are evil and acting from malevolent motives, then this is kind of a problem with your theory?

[Doom]

The primary issue with macroevolution is philosophical - how can a creature give its progeny something it doesn't have itself?

This is not an accurate way to characterize evolutionary theory. If you have to resort to caricature, then you don't have a strong argument.

[gherkin]

My point is that all science encourages an atheistic outlook by encouraging a naturalistic approach to looking at the world. Once you start seeing a naturalistic explanation to everything you start thinking everything has a natural explanation and you absolutely no need for God, so by Ockham’s Razor, God doesn’t exist because he is an unnecessary hypothesis.

Well, right, that's the distorted and insupportable kind of thinking I'm referring to when I say that evolutionary theory had a massive cultural impact despite the fact that there are no really good arguments along those lines. I mean, of course, we know that God's creating things with their own natures and creaturely powers, which can be understood through natural reason, is in fact a greater demonstration of his power than would be the creation of an unintelligble, arbitrary universe, or one ruled solely through Divine causation. That many things are knowable to a great extent (though obviously not completely) through naturalistic means just doesn't actually give any rational support to atheism, but in fact to theism.

This is one of the two arguments against the existence of God that St Thomas thought compelling enough to attempt to rebut it, the other being the problem of evil.

Yes, and the rebuttal is compelling: "Since nature works for a determinate end under the direction of a higher agent, whatever is done by nature must needs be traced back to God, as to its first cause." That's why the argument is no good.

[Doom]

Well, obviously, I don't think that science, properly understood and properly ordered, needs to lead to atheism. But there can be little doubt that people who have other grounds for disbelief do find in science, not just in evolutionary theory, but science in general, a mind of basis to encourage the doubt.

[ProZak]

You're analogy is lacking as well, especially if you don't buy into TE...

So, everyone else, including multiple popes and canonized saints is part of a massive conspiracy to hide the truth, for what purpose exactly?

Don't you see that if the deeper you get into the weeds, the more you have to assume that the people who disagree with you are evil and acting from malevolent motives, then this is kind of a problem with your theory?

Did I say that anyone was evil or had ill will who holds to TE? That's quite a jump!

[peregrinator]

The primary issue with macroevolution is philosophical - how can a creature give its progeny something it doesn't have itself?

This is not an accurate way to characterize evolutionary theory. If you have to resort to caricature, then you don't have a strong argument.

Where's the caricature?

[gherkin]

Well, obviously, I don't think that science, properly understood and properly ordered, needs to lead to atheism. But there can be little doubt that people who have other grounds for disbelief do find in science, not just in evolutionary theory, but science in general, a mind of basis to encourage the doubt.

Evolution, though, has played a different kind of role, though. As an example of what I mean, some Big shot atheist philosopher--I think it was Dennett--said that after Darwin, it became possible to be an intellectually satisfied atheist. It fulfills a massive felt need in ways other scientific theories can't.

True, again, these folks are still avoiding the big problems of why there's anything rather than nothing (which they tend to try to reply to just through scorn rather than argument) and where life originated (which in fact some of them actually try to answer by referring to evolutionary pressures leading to the emergence of life, which is self-contradictory, of course, since there can't be evolutionary pressures in the absence of life, but let's not let that undermine a nice-sounding thought).

[gherkin]

One need not prescribe to YEC to reject TE, as I pointed out earlier from Hank Hanegraaff. Yet I do no believe that St. Augustine believed in TE, or perhaps not even in an old Earth...

https://answersingenesis.org/days-of-cr ... -creation/

Once again, this is definitely not my area, but I'm pretty sure that most neo-thomists like Ed Feser and others are against TE. I'm pretty sure they aren't YEC-ers. So there's some kind of extra space, like you're saying.

[Obi-Wan Kenobi]

I disagree with gherkin. It was Dawkins, not Dennett.

[Vadim]

Theistic evolution contradicts Romans 1:19-20 (“For what can be known about God is evident to them, because God made it evident to them. Ever since the creation of the world, his invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made. As a result, they have no excuse”).

Compare this biblical quotation with this excerpt from the book written by the leading evolutionary biologist Francisco J. Ayala:

“The design of organisms is often so dysfunctional, odd, and cruel that it possibly might be attributed to the gods of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, who fought with one another, made blunders, and were clumsy in their endeavors. For a modern biologist who knows about the world of life, the design of organisms is not compatible with special action by the omniscient and omnipotent God of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.” (“Darwin's Gift to Science and Religion”, p. 158)

It may appear that this was written by an atheist, but Ayala, unlike Dawkins and Dennett, mentioned above, allows theistic evolution, — in particular, in the same book on p. 175.

From the scientific point of view, his argument is erroneus too, because as the time goes on, created things which were thought to be imperfect by evolutionists, turn out to be perfect, but with such a purpose which is so advanced that it was difficult to understand it earlier.

[Doom]

The primary issue with macroevolution is philosophical - how can a creature give its progeny something it doesn't have itself?

This is not an accurate way to characterize evolutionary theory. If you have to resort to caricature, then you don't have a strong argument.

Where's the caricature?

Evolution does not hold that one species gradually evolved into another species, the way many creationists have it “one day an ape gave birth to a human”.

An actual example of evolution in action is the African elephant. Thanks to poaching ivory, the tusks of elephants are getting shorter and shorter. There was always a natural variation of tusk length, but with ivory poachers killing all the ones with long tusks the ones with short tusks now have an evolutionary advantage.

That is what evolution is, not a radical sudden change in a species, but normal variations with one variation being advantageous got survival becoming universal because all the ones without it quickly die and never reproduce.

[peregrinator]

Evolution does not hold that one species gradually evolved into another species, the way many creationists have it “one day an ape gave birth to a human”.

But that's not what I said.

An actual example of evolution in action is the African elephant. Thanks to poaching ivory, the tusks of elephants are getting shorter and shorter. There was always a natural variation of tusk length, but with ivory poachers killing all the ones with long tusks the ones with short tusks now have an evolutionary advantage.

I agree that microevolution happens.

[ProZak]

Is Sasquatch really a myth, or is he the "missing link" in Evolution...