[OT] Plato's Pub and Philosophical Society

[Krsqk]

I would agree that all of us seem to accept some degree of change--i.e., the flora and fauna we see today are not necessarily identical to their predecessors. Such an idea isn't contrary to Biblical creationism, either; the Bible only says things would bring forth after their "kind." As taxonomy isn't a natural science, but a man-made classification, it's rather hard to say exactly where the line would be drawn. I would say that "kind" demands similarity. *bum bum bum* "Which one of these things doesn't belong..." Out of a dog, a wolf, a coyote, and a cat, I think the cat would be a different kind. Except maybe in some sort of metaphysical way, the same way we all are manifestations of Puke.

Following the same line of thought, then, the usual "cheap" reply to the intelligent design argument doesn't hold water--the "there's all sorts of systems that any freshman engineering student could design better" line of thinking. If things are quite possibly different from how they were originally, we don't know what the originals were. It also makes sense to design something which can continue to work even after some loss of functionality.

Along the same lines, the apparent old age of the earth may either be actual, or the result of conditions at the creation. For one, Biblical creation requires a mature creation--trees and plants bearing fruit and seed; man fully grown and able to marry, walk, talk, learn, and work from day one (actually Day 6, if you're picky )... God wouldn't create baby Adam and baby Eve and toss them a sack of seed and some garden tools and say, "Get to work, dinner's in an hour." For another, climatic and atmospheric conditions at creation could have been majorly different from how they are now, including "constants" way out of line from today's numbers.

From the creationist perspective, macroevolutionists aren't bad scientists--they just are misinterpreting the evidence from their own worldview. No falsehood is accepted without some amount of truth--no thinking person accepts something without rationale. Intra-species change, and to some extent, speciation does occur. From my view, evolution takes that truth and extrapolates it far beyond where it holds true--that all life came from a common ancestor (or two or three, etc.).

I also agree that the terms of the debate do come down to one's worldview--either natural force or supernatural force. You may quibble over which natural forces or supernatural forces do the causing, but there isn't an in-between. Put differently, it's a battle between materialism and "spiritualism," for lack of a better word. If you only accept what can be scientifically measured, you will interpret many things differently from one who accepts things out of the realm of science.

I cannot accept, based on my worldview, that God would use natural selection as a mechanism to accomplish His creation. 1)There are more efficient means to create, such as creating things the way you want them right off the bat; 2)No God who cares about His creation would use death as a means to accomplish it. That is not the God of the Bible; and if such a God is responsible for creating the world in such a manner, He may as well be a natural force. He is not interested in the plight of the puny inhabitants on the earth; we are no more than pawns to fulfill the designs of creation (and let's not be arrogant and assume we're the culmination of all life).

Now for some quotes:

He does a very good job of showing that life itself has a direction though not necessarily a divine one.

Ahh, but then it's still a question of material or immaterial--the same old worldview debate.

Just the same way that human conception is considered a miracle of God, even if it's been explained in detail from a biological/medical point of view.

While accepting the biological/medical point of view, the "miracle" is not seen as merely conception; rather, it is the joining of a new soul with a newly-created body. Of course, one cannot be a materialist from that viewpoint. A strict materialist would only refer to it as a "miracle" in a colloquial, metaphorical sense of the word.

The bottom line is, worldview is the determining factor in how related evidence will be interpreted.