This is another chapter of the continuing discussion I am having with a local Pastor.  Part 3 can be found here:

Me -> “Can you define evolution for me?”

“My understanding of evolution is that it is the process whereby scientists try and explain how life evolved from the simplest of structures to the complex creatures we have on our planet today.”

Not a bad definition, although the “try” part is humorous.  I guess it’s no more inaccurate than the theory of gravity ‘only scientists trying to explain why we don’t fall off the Earth.’

“BTW I don’t believe that evolution talks about the start of life so Darwin’s treatise “The origin of Species” should have had a different title.”

That’s why Darwin didn’t call his book “The Origin of Life” because that’s not what it explains.  He outlines the origin of species.  Have you read it?

“No it’s not – all we have in the fossil record is different types of animals not that they have changed.”

Do you expect an animal to change after it has died?  can you explain the progression of forms over time as indicated by the geological column and dating methods?  Did your creator create this organisms just so they could be destroyed and replaced with other (but similar) ones?  How does your model work?

“And the type of changes that we can measure do not prove evolution, all that they prove is adaptation and mutations.”

Mutation (although I prefer the term change) and natural selection and what drive adaptation – you have just described evolution in the same breath you denounce it.

“The famous moth we all studied in high school biology that changed from white to black so that it could blend in with soot coloured trees is no more evolution than my whole family had brown eyes except me but all of my kids have blue.”

This comes down to your definition of species or “kind” (whatever that actually is).  A species are two organisms which are unable to produce viable offspring – genetic islands if you like.  A “kind” is not defined scientifically and I have yet to hear a coherent definition of one.

Take a single population of moths and randomly split them into two groups.  Place one group in an environment where black ones will have a better chance of survival.  Let random DNA changes in each generation and natural selection take its course.  After a number of generations there will populations of white moths and black moths.  Perhaps at this point they are still able to breed (and are thus the same species), but given enough change the two populations will no longer be able to breed and will become (by definition) two *species* of moth.

Are they still moths?  Yes.  Their descendants will always be moths for one cannot escape your ancestry.  If a moth suddenly turned into an octopus it would be great evidence – for creationism.

“Scientists cannot “observe” evolution because according to them we’re talking millions of years for just the smallest of changes to occur.”

Wrong.  What is important is the rate of change and the time between generations.  There are many examples of observed speciation both in the lab and in the wild.  can you explain the emergence of the H1N1 flu?  Can intelligent design account for its similarities with its parent swine flu?

Or how about ring species?  There is a species of salamander which circles a valley.  The population starts at one end of the valley and goes down either side, each being able to reproduce successfully with it’s neighbour.  However, by the time they meet again they cannot breed – they are separate species (by definition).  Why?  Were they designed that way?  How could you tell?  Which particular genetic change(s) make them separate species?  Why is it impossible for this change to occur naturally?  What necessitates an intelligent designer to do this?

I notice you ignored my previous examples of evolution (islands, marsupials, tiktallik, etc) and decided to bring up the entirely new subject of prophecy.  I wonder why that is?  Can you answer those questions?  Can you name one prediction ID makes that would qualify it as science, thereby allow it to be taught in science class?

I can wait.

“You take an intelligent designer out of the equation and you have to come up with something to explain how we arrived here. The holes in the evolutionist theory are so big you can drive trucks through them.”

You open by stating “I don’t believe that evolution talks about the start of life so Darwin’s treatise”, now you say evolution does not explain “how we arrived here”.  Which is it?

Reading between the lines would I be right in concluding you DO accept evolution, but assert it was guided by an intelligent designing force?

Also, specify where you think the “holes big enough to drive a truck through” appear in the theory of evolution.

“Please note I never said I was a creationist.”

OK, so your open to the idea of aliens deigning life on Earth?  That would classify as an “intelligent designer” would it not?  If not, why not?

“I do believe in intelligent design though. Why? Because it makes the most sense given the evidence that we have available to us. I have never had a scientist answer my questions re evolution.”

Have you asked scientists who are experts in the field?

“How does a finless fish end up with fins”

DNA changes (mutation) and natural selection.

“What mechanism enables a fish that has never had fins to develop them and why would they?”

Random changes in the DNA result in populations with variations.  The variations which give the individuals an increased chance of survival have a better chance of survival.  Over successive generations the original (less advantaged) population is replaced by those with more beneficial adaptations.

“To operate a fin you need the physical structure of a fin situated in the right place on the animals body, you need the nerve pathway to the brain, you need a part of the brain that knows how to operate the fin.”

All of these things do not need to appear at once – again that would be great evidence for intelligent design or creationism (don’t software makers add multiple functions to new versions of programs all at once?)

“Science can’t show me how these stages could develop.”

Yes they can.  Existing structures can be repurposed for new applications.  The fins of Tiktallik (here he his again) are used to prop his body out of the water and look around.  In fact they do this so well they are almost legs rather than fins.  It’s almost like it was a transitional form.

“It can’t show me how the new genetic material can be added to an animal to cause the creation of a fin.”

I am going to dread this, but define “add”.  Actually I will attack that here.  “Add” is not a good fit for what is going on here, “change” it better.

There are four sequences of the genetic code referred to as U, C, A, and G.  Errors occur in the replication of the double helix resulting in duplication, inversion, deletion, and trans-location.  So in much the same way we can go from “Margaret Thatcher” to “That Great Charmer” to create an new words and meanings, we can change the DNA sequence to produce entirely new sequences (eg GTCA->GTTCA), which results in new (although very, very similar) organism.

In the example above, did I add new information or just rearrange what what there?  Have we seen new “letters” of the genetic “alphabet” suddenly appear, or is ALL life based on the the four letters U,C,A, and G.  You know what the answer is, don’t you :)

“And remember they want me to believe that it all started with the simplest form of life, a cell (which in itself is incredibly complex) and then over millions of years built up to the complex creatures we have roaming the earth today.”

Modern cells are incredibly complex, but we did not evolve from them now did we?  We share a *common ancestor* with them.  The first proto-cells would not have been anything like what we see today.  In fact there is a time when it would have been very difficult to label it life.  After billions of years complexity as built to what you call “incredibly complex cells”.

A modern cell magically transforming or giving birth to another completely different type of organism would *totally* disprove evolution, yet that is exactly what you are proposing here.

“You remove an intelligent designer out of the equation and you are left with foolishness – people trying to come up with answers that aren’t there – that don’t make sense. And they call it science?”

I am happy to call intelligent design science IF you can provide one prediction the hypothesis makes that we can test to verify its accuracy.  Until then, don’t claim it IS science and that real science is somehow lacking without your unsubstantiated ideas.

Me -> “I do not claim you did not have an experience, but there are rational explanations for them that do not involve the supernatural. How can you rule these out without considering them? Is that reasonable? Is that (gasp) scientific?”

Pastor -> “Good questions and yes I ask myself the same ones. Was this just my imagination – did I make it up? Were there other factors contributing to the way I felt? You see, I don’t believe everything that people tell me about God or their experience of Him. I’m a sceptic as well at times but the people that I struggle with believing are usually those who are inconsistent in their story, who’s lives are in turmoil, who change their mind constantly.”

Is my life in turmoil?  Have I changed my position anywhere here or in previous replies?  I will let you and the readers decide.

“I have had numerous occasions in my life where God has broken through in an undeniable way and quite often when I wasn’t actively thinking about him. If we had the time and I didn’t have to type :) I’d love to share them with you.”

A few friends and I are about to start a podcast on these and other topics.  I would dearly love to have you on the show as a (regular?) guest sometime.  Perhaps we can discuss it there?

“How would a scientist prove or disprove my experience of the supernatural?”

By definition a scientist cannot prove or disprove the supernatural.  Science deals with the natural world, so anything supernatural (if there is such a thing) is beyond its reach.

However, if something “supernatural” can an effect on the natural world we should be able to detect it.  Once an hypothesis of the supernatural is backed by experimental data, then it becomes part of the natural order of things.  In essence, the supernatural becomes the natural.

“I prayed for a girl who had smashed her foot between a motorbike and a brick letter box – she was in great pain. Others were praying for her and nothing was happening. I laid hands on her foot and the pain instantly left.”

Interesting, but I have no idea what the injuries where beforehand or afterwards.  Did she have any x-rays showing a broken bone?  Was another one taken afterwards?

Even if there was a change, it says nothing about the cause of that change.  Sure you were praying to a god, but how can you be sure this was the god responsible?  Perhaps there are perfectly natural explanations for the event that we currently do not understand?  How could we find out – through scientific enquiry.

“Is it repeatable? Can I do it again? Sometimes yes but usually no but I keep praying for people because the odds are I’ll have a better chance of seeing it happen again if I do than if I don’t.”

Really?  How often have you prayed for someone and they have been healed?  How often have you not prayed for someone and they have been healed anyway?  How long do you wait for a prayer to be answered?  How do you know the prayer was the cause of the cure and not some other factor?  Do you keep a tally of cures to non-cures? Because otherwise you might be experiencing confirmation bias.

“Why did I pray for her? Because Jesus said to ay hands on the sick and they will recover.”

The Bible also says you can drink poison and handle deadly snakes, yet not die.  Do that often?

“It works from time to time but not all the time – I struggle with that but it doesn’t invalidate what happened.”

Ahhh, yes it does.  I sometimes ask Elvis the Alien to cure me of illness.  Sometime he does, sometimes he doesn’t, but it does not invalidate the existence of Elvis.

“I’ve prayed for people who are dying and seen hem recover miraculously (no explanation could be given by a doctor) and prayed for others who have died.”

Can I speak to these doctors?  How many times have you prayed for people who are dying, but they die anyway?  etc.

“What about prophecy?”

What about it?

“When God impresses on someone something that will happen in the future and it comes to pass?”

I can feel Jesus now – “There will be wars in the Middle East”, and “A great leader will rise up in a land far away”.  Impressed?  Neither am I.

“I preached a message on this topic last year on Good Friday – it makes for compelling reading when you look at the Bible and it’s predictions about Jesus birth, life and death.”

<<lots of prophecies removed for brevity, such as it is>>

Let’s make an observation.  Do you think the people who wrote the New Testament might have read the Old Testament?  Is it even remotely possible that the character of Jesus was invented by a few people who wanted to capitalise on the Jewish religion and found their own cult?  What actually evidence (beyond stories) to you have that Jesus actually existed?  Do you have any bones (of course not, he flew into heaven)?  Did he write anything down (nope)?  Do we have contemporary accounts of his life and events (no, even the gospels were written at least 40 years after the supposed events)? Are there any reliable impressions of what he looked like (no)?  Is there any evidence of the miracles he supposedly performed (no)?  Wow – there does not seem much to support the idea he actually existed at all.

“Using the science of probability, we find the chances of just forty-eight of these prophecies being fulfilled in one person to be one in 10,157 (a one followed by 157 zeros!).”

How do you calculate the chances of a prophecy occurring, or is this is a simple binary decision?

In any case, it’s all undone is we assume the New Testament was written after the old and the character of Jesus was created to fulfil the supposed prophecies.  Is it really a miracle if we know exactly what would count as a Messiah ahead of time?

“The task of matching up these prophecies with one man is further complicated by the fact that all the prophecies of the Messiah were made at least 400 years before He was to appear.”

It could have been 100,000 years.  It makes no difference.

“Certainly God was making an iron clad case in history that only the Messiah could fulfill. Approximately forty major claims to be the Jewish Messiah have been made by men. Only one; Jesus Christ; appealed to fulfilled prophecy to substantiate His claims, and only His credentials back up those claims.”

Assuming he existed at all, and the prophecies are specific, unmistakeable, and unambiguous.

Over to you.

On to part 5.

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