Continuing my chat with a pastor.  Part 4 can be found here.

Me -> “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.

Pastor -> “No I haven’t – name a mutation that has led to the growth of a new limb with an entirely different function than any other current limb on an animal? You can’t because according to evolutionists these changes happened so slowly that you can’t see them.”

Limbs (and other structures) do not magically appear from one generation to the next.  What I described was the slow transformation of of a structure from one purpose to another.  In the case of tiktallik his fins were “transforming” into legs.  In other words the species had evolved (change slowly over many generations) to use their fins to prop themselves up in shallow water.  Why this is an advantage I can only guess at, but it could easily be imagined that it allowed them to more easily see their prey on land or to escape predators in the water.  Whatever the reason, we know it happened, and during which time period.

It is also a misnomer to state that all changes happen so slowly that we cannot see them.  We know and can witness the mechanisms (random mutation and natural selection), and we have seen speciation happen in the lab and in the wild (remember the ring species I described?).

Let me try to draw a few analogies.

Have you ever seen a sapling turn into a tree?  We witness trees of all different sizes everyday. If we looked closely we could see they get a little larger with every passing day, so it is rational to conclude that trees grow from small to large.  We believe this, yet no one has ever witnessed a plant grow from a seed to a full mature tree – we have better things to do that watch a plant grow.

Another – we can observe planets moving in the night’s sky and with careful observation and calculation (thanks to Isaac Newton) we can conclude they orbit the sun.  We calculate Neptune’s orbit takes 164.79 years.  No one has ever witnessed a full orbit of Neptune, yet we accept it as fact based our observations.

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Tags: chat, Pastor

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.

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Part 2 of my discussion with a pastor can be found here.

“I think that what gets creationists hot under the collar is that if you’re going to teach evolution in a classroom then teach creation as well – they both have the same credentials.”

From this comment I can conclude you think there is no evidence for evolution (or that is some kind of faith or religion), so the two “theories” are on equal ground?  This shows either a massive misunderstanding of what evolution actually is, or you properly understand the theory but do not accept the evidence supports it.  So I must ask – what do you think the theory of evolution says, and what would constitute as evidence that would support it?

Moreover, you are presenting a false dichotomy.  It’s not a choice between evolution and creationism.  Partly because there are many versions of creation we can choose from (each with exactly the same amount of evidence supporting them), but mainly because disproving one idea does not automatically prove another (except in strict mathematical senses).

Where is the evidence *for* creationism?  What predictions does it make that we can test?  Where are the experiments that conclusively show creation is the only viable solution?  You talk about creationism being science, so where is the research to back it up?

Furthermore, the veracity of the theory of evolution has absolutely nothing to do with the existence of a god or not.  There are many theists who accept the theory of evolution.  The two ideas are not mutually exclusive unless you adhere to a strictly literal interpretation of Genesis.

“Andrew I sat in uni lectures hearing lecturers state with straight faces that finless fish evolved into finned fish with absolutely no shred of evidence.”

Then that is a poor lecture.  I would not expect anyone to accept *any* idea without supporting evidence.  So again, where is the evidence *for* creation?

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This is a continuation of a discussion I am having with a local Pastor. Part 1 can be found here.

“Intelligent design isn’t about religion Andrew.”

Perhaps not, but Ben Stein seems to think ID is about God, which is why he scolds Richard Dawkins for humouring him and proposing aliens did it.  Of course, Prof. Dawkins goes on to explain the aliens themselves would have had to come from somewhere and proposes a Darwinian evolutionary method for this.  Mr. Stein personally believes god is responsible for creation, but fails to provide any evidence this is actually the case.  So far no one has shown me that creation of anything is required in the first place (and no, the big bang is not creation ex nihilo).

“Religion is man’s attempt to explain God – it can be true or it can be false.”

I say god is man’s attempt to explain why there is something rather than noting.

“God stands outside of religion as the creator – in that sense Ben Stein is correct when he says that ID isn’t about religion.”

But Ben Stein or yourself are not talking about a creative force, or some designer.  You are talking about a specific creator god, with specific behaviours, wishes, actions, desires, and plans.  A god who intervenes in human affairs and tinkers with reality when required (miracles).  These are all claims that require even more evidence than ID provides. So not only do you inherent all the problems of ID and creationism, but also the additional burden of demonstrating your deity in particular.

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Close to my home here is a man meet on a few occasions. A friend of a friend.  He is friendly, approachable, and reasonable and in some sense this makes it all the more surprising to also know he is also a Pastor of a local church.

Recently, I have been in a discussion with him and thought I would use the material as a blog post (seeing as though original content is scarce here).  So what follows is a straight cut and paste of the discussion with the boring introduction removed (he posted a note that atheists not finding god being equivalent to a thief not finding a policeman).

I have removed any reference to other people’s name to protect their identity, and it would serve no purpose to reveal who they are in any case.

I was sitting at the gardens a few years ago and I was thinking about the bible verse that says God is evident in the natural world and I thought to myself that even though nature is awe inspiring it’s also for the most part oblivious to my presence. I can stand at the top of Mt Wellington and 100 years from now the mountain will still be there but I won’t be. I was thinking that there needed to be more to it than just nature because what nature told me was that God is awe inspiring but indifferent to mankind. As I was sitting on the bench looking around I felt rather alone even though I was surrounded by beauty. Then I had one of those moments where you look a little harder and I noticed something that had been there all along but I’d missed. Looking down between my feet I noticed that the ground was teeming with insects, they were everywhere. I wasn’t alone – I was surrounded by life. What had changed? My perspective had changed. The insects had been there all along but I hadn’t noticed them. God is awe inspiring but he’s also personable. I could list umpteen times that God has broken through into my world but as you stated above, we’re all different and we all need different evidence to believe.

I might ask what the ants were doing. My imagination has them fighting for survival, fending off predators, competing for food, dismembering the body of another lost life to drag back to the queen and the hungry pupae.

While that may be a pessimistic view, I think it’s also realistic. We are told either God made it like this from the start, or after the fall everything started killing each other (which makes me wonder how everything survived beforehand).

It nature beautiful? Yes. Brutal? Yes. Thrilling and uplifting? Yes. Terrifying? Yes Are all these aspects of God, or just the bits that make you feel nice? Why? What about the awful stuff, are they not ultimately the results of God’s actions?

Of course, these arguments are directed at the nature of a proposed god, and the arguments of design only support a creator, but that’s not the god you believe in, is it? You believe in a specific creator, who did specific things. Each of these claims require more evidence to support them. You can’t go from creative force to Jesus without supplying additional data.

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Tags: chat, Pastor