More Stones Thrown at the Phrase "Theistic Evolution"

Forbes has a post by John Farrell, the science and technical writer, about the inadequacy and inappropriateness of the term “Theistic Evolution.”  He points out that those who label themselves as such are often pariahs not just to modern young-earth creationists but to atheists as well.  Both sides regard them as “compromisers.” But, beyond that, he notes that there are problems with the appropriateness of the term, as well.  He quotes Stacy Tracanos, who writes: 

“Think about it. If you are a believer, it is already implied that you see all biological and physical processes as created and held in existence by God. You do not need “theistic” in front of biological terms. Who speaks of theistic reproduction? Or theistic gestation, theistic meiosis, or theistic menstruation? Plus, to qualify a biological process as ‘theistic’ implies that the opposite is possible, that God may not be involved in creating certain laws of nature.”

She is correct about this. This is why I tend to favor the term “evolutionary creationist.” It takes the emphasis off the “evolutionist” and puts it on the “creationist.”  This differentiates it from “progressive creationist” or “young earth creationist.” Farrell finishes with this:

The main point is Christian scientists who accept evolution have a much broader understanding of God than—chief engineer. And ‘theistic evolution’, as its summarized for example at Wikipedia, simply misrepresents their position.

Atheists have voiced many arguments for wondering how Christians can maintain belief in a benevolent deity in a world that features so much apparent waste and suffering ‘built in’ to the program, as science has revealed.

But ‘theistic evolution’ isn’t one of their answers, at least not among the serious scientists I know who are theists. And it’s well past its sell-by date.

Probably true.

Am I a Theistic Evolutionist?

I am reading Long March of the Koalas and the author, Fred Clark, makes some interesting points about the term “Theistic Evolutionist.” He suggests that it is a term without meaning for several reasons:

• It does not necessarily apply to all who might be Christians that accept evolution—it includes people that are not scientists, despite making use of the “ist” suffix. 
• He argues that we cannot apply the word “theistic” to the word evolution.  It is an inappropriate use of the word because it is being applied to the discipline of evolution, which is non-theistic. He writes: “Sir Isaac Newton earnestly believed in God's active, pervasive providence, but he never saw fit to christen his theory as “theistic gravity.” 
• His final argument is that when we merge the two terms “theistic” and “evolution,” we conflate the metaphysical understanding of the process and the observational understanding of it.

I will have to think on his argument some, but he makes some valid points. He does not, however, tackle the phrase “evolutionary creationist”  Thoughts?

Ken Ham Waxes on the Cost of Belief in Evolution. Dan Wilkinson of Unfundamentalist Christian Responds

Ken Ham had a personal note on the AiG page about the upcoming debate.  He writes, in part:

Because our ministry theme for 2013 and for 2014 is “Standing Our Ground, Rescuing Our Kids,” our staff thought that a debate on creation vs. evolution with a man who has influenced so many children to believe in evolution would be a good idea. Now, those of you who know me realize that I don’t relish public debates, so please pray for me. But this debate will help highlight the fact that so many young people are dismissing the Bible because of evolution, and even many young people who had grown up in the church decided to leave the church because they saw evolution as showing the Bible could not be trusted. This exodus of young people from the church is documented in my coauthored book Already Gone.

Dan Wilkinson, on his blog Unfundamentalist Christian, responds:

No, Mr. Ham, no one’s leaving the church because evolution shows that “the Bible could not be trusted.”

Mr. Ham, they’re leaving the church because of people like you: people who fervently create walls, erect barriers, establish rigid rules for what one must believe in order to be a Christian. They’re leaving the church because your version of Christianity has nothing whatsoever to do with right practice, and everything to do with “right” belief. They’re leaving the church because by essentially demonizing everyone who doesn’t agree with you, you’ve made believing in Young Earth Creationism* more important than Jesus’ explicit explicit commandment to love God and neighbor.

Ken Ham did not like this much. He responded thus:

Apparently they call this sort of thing 'Progressive Christianity.' I guess that means 'evolving Christianity'--whatever the secular world believes about where they came from, you accept that as infallible and then change their assumed fallible Word of God to fit! So sad. In many ways these sort of people are more dangerous to Christianity than the atheists.

Note--the typical personal attack; no research cited (at least AiG had a professional group--America's Research Group--conduct real research into why kids are leaving the church and published it in the book 'Already Gone'); only one verse of Scripture referred to (Matthew 22); just this person's fallible opinions to justify holding man's word as infallible and God's Word as fallible.

Ham is correct about the lack of research. Wilkinson is working off of anecdotes and conversations. He could quote Glenn Morton, however, who left young earth creationism exactly for the reasons that Wilkinson writes about.  There are others out there, I am sure.  I personally know of one person who walked away from the faith after being home schooled using a young-earth curriculum.  When she got to college, her faith was rocked by the fact that there was quite a bit more evidence for evolution than she had been told.  Ham is also correct that there is invective and ad hominem in the post.  It would have been better if the writer had steered clear of such language. 

On the other hand, Ham, himself, has been guilty of the same kind of behavior, personally attacking Peter Enns to the point where Ham was dis-invited from a home schooling conference for his lack of Christian spirit.  He seems to be unrepentant about this.

Additionally, Ham is guilty of a "one way" approach to the scriptures, in which there is no value placed on either current or past interpretation.  Scripture is revealed directly to us and we do not question what it says or how it says it.  Consequently, passages that have provoked discussion and disagreement in the past are rendered flatly, with no color or depth.   He seems to be unwilling to admit that there may be different interpretations of scripture out there by very thoughtful, honest Christians.  Everyone who thinks differently from him is guilty of believing "progressive Christianity."

Most of the folks at BioLogos and the ASA are charitable to young-earth creationists, even if they don't agree with them.  There is no such reciprocity from Ham.  In describing the EC/TE mindset, he is venomous, calling us "more dangerous to Christianity than the atheists."  More dangerous to Christianity than Richard Dawkins, P.Z. Myers and Sam Harris?  Really?  We seek to follow God, understand His ways and trust in Jesus as our savior, just as Ham does and yet, for him, that counts as nothing.  That is sad. 

New Poll Results on The Huffington Post

HuffPo has an odd post on a new survey that tracks the belief in evolution and how it has changed since the last such poll.  Yasmine Hafiz writes:

According to a YouGov poll, only 21% of Americans believe that human beings evolved without the involvement of God, and 25% of those surveyed said, "Human beings evolved but God guided this process."

37% of respondents answered that "God created human beings in their present form," in response to the question "Which of the following comes closest to your views on the origin of human beings?"

The research shows a slow change in the national acceptance of evolution, as in 2004 only 13% of Americans said that human beings evolved without God's guidance.

However, the country remains divided on the issue of what to teach in schools, as 40% favor teaching creationism and intelligent design in schools while 32% oppose it and 29% are unsure.

The poll results, themselves, are here.  Ms. Hafiz writes that there is change in the national acceptance of evolution.  That statement is without evidence.  What the poll does reflect is an 8% swing away from a theistic evolution/evolutionary creation explanation of human origins, which may reflect a deeper move of those people away from the church.    Acceptance of evolution may or may not have increased in the last nine years but that is not what is being identified.

Further, despite her consternation regarding the teaching of ID in schools, it is not difficult to see that, if 37% of those polled think that people were created in their present form (that question is a bit fuzzy in and of itself), that 40% would support the teaching of ID and creationism since creation by divine fiat precludes an evolutionary explanation. 

Interesting poll results.  Fuzzy interpretation. 

A Plea From Dennis Venema

Dennis Venema, who has written many good posts for BioLogos has written an article for the Colossian Forum titled “What I Would Like To Hear A Young-Earth Creationist Say.”  Rather than wax scientifically, he focuses, instead, on the things that we should have in common:

...the most important thing I would like to hear a YEC say to someone of my views isn’t a scientific statement at all – it’s a statement of unity in Christ. It’s the simple “brother” or “sister” that says – “we’re both part of the same family.” Even if we disagree on the mechanism of creation, affirming our unity in Christ needs to be the starting point for the conversation.

For those of us who are Evolutionary creationists/theistic evolutionists, he writes about a hypothetical conversation which, for some of us, is a constant fear:

“So, what do you do for work?”
 
“I’m a biologist. I teach up at the local Christian university.”

“Oh, really? You must really love the work that (insert the individual’s favorite anti-evolution ministry) does. It’s so good to have Christians like you who fight against evolution.” 

“Well, actually…”

 I have many friends in church to which I dare not bring up the evolution/creation debate.  I remember when one of of my friends from Bible Study was looking at my poster of the Tower of Time, a small version of the one by John Gurche that hung in the Smithsonian for years.  She remarked "How can you believe any of this?"  Implicit in her comment that was the poster represented an anti-God, anti-biblical  view of the world.  How do you bring someone like my friend, who had little to no scientific background, up to speed on the evidence.  Even if you could, would it matter?

Venema suggests (and I agree) that this issue should always be of secondary importance to the call of Christ and the unity that we should feel and express with each other:

So, to my YEC brothers and sisters, I would make this request. Without minimizing the importance of the exegetical issues that the creation/evolution controversy raises, let’s first and foremost sit at the Lord’s table and break bread together, recognizing each other as brothers and sisters in Christ and members of the same body. Those of us who see things from an EC perspective may need to repent of belittling our YEC brothers and sisters as scientifically ignorant or theologically naive. Those of a YEC perspective may need to repent of condemning their EC brothers and sisters as “compromisers” or theologically liberal.

I confess that belittling is easy to do and that is where the problem lies. It is too easy to do that and not to see the unity in Christ. We enjoy arguments and we enjoy disagreements. It gets the blood flowing and the dander up. But at some point, we have to see beyond that. Are the Christians that espouse the YEC viewpoint going to heaven? Yup. Are those of us that are EC going to heaven. I certainly believe so.

Having said all of this, we do have a responsibility to honestly treat the evidence that we encounter and to learn about God's creation from it. That does not change. To point out the variances from this is a worthy cause, but we should never believe that those who espouse those positions are not saved by grace, because, when the dust settles, we are all in need of that. 

Not As Off-Topic As It Might Seem...

The Tennessean ran a story today about how Thomas Nelson publishers, famous for their line of bibles, is dropping a new book on Thomas Jefferson by David Barton because the book “contains historical errors.” Bob Smietana writes:

Barton’s book, The Jefferson Lies, claims to expose liberal myths about Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence and the nation’s third president.

But a group of conservative scholars says Barton’s take on Jefferson is factually untrue. And a group of ministers from Cincinnati called on Nelson to cancel the book.

Casey Francis Harrell, director of corporate communications for Thomas Nelson, said the publisher had gotten several complaints about the book and found enough errors to cancel it.

“Because of these deficiencies, we decided that it was in the best interest of our readers to cease its publication and distribution,” Harrell said.

The story goes on to detail some of the disputed information in the book, none of which I am remotely qualified to assess. That is not why this is important. I bring this up because Barton has also been active in the creation/evolution debate. Those of you who read up on that might remember this exchange:



Now, it is quite true that the idea of biological change has been around for some time but it was only with Lamarck in the very late 1700s and early 1800s that any sort of mechanism was attributed to biotic change and even then, the vast majority of people believed in fixity of species. Even Darwin did when he set out on his trip aboard the Beagle in the 1830s. But that is not what Barton is getting at here.

In his own writings on the subject, Barton consistently confuses evolution at a cosmic level with evolution at a biological level. These are not the same. Did the founding fathers debate whether or not the cosmos had a grand design? Yes they probably did. Did they debate the theory of biological evolution? No they did not. Yet that is how Barton frames his response. Subsequent to his thoughts on cosmic evolution, he writes:

As confirmed by Dr. James Rachels, professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham: Mivart [1827-1900, a professor in Belgium] became the leader of a group of dissident evolutionists who held that although man’s body might have evolved by natural selection, his rational and spiritual soul did not. At some point God had interrupted the course of human history to implant man’s soul in him, making him something more than merely a former ape. . .

Lost in the shuffle is that Dr. Rachels lived and wrote in the 1800s, quite some time after the founding fathers debated “intelligent design versus evolution.”

Barton spends a good bit of ink writing about how many of the founding fathers have argued that the universe looks designed. That is a very different thing from the idea that evolution, even in a cosmic sense, does or does not happen. I doubt that there is a person alive that does not accept evolution of some kind. One only has to look at the changes in a river's path or the location of the shoreline at Ephesus (where once Paul gave a speech but that is now twenty miles inland). Evolution, after all, is change over time.

I do think that, based on what Barton has said in public and what he has written in more in-depth fashion, that he is being misunderstood. The problem is that neither are very clear. To his credit, Barton seems to view the theistic evolution perspective in a not-unkind light, although it is not clear what, exactly, he thinks from this post. He is also quite correct that the four viewpoints he delineates have not altered much in recent years in their adherents. He just needs to articulate his viewpoints more clearly with regard to evolution in general and biological evolution in specific. He may agree with one and not the other but there is no way to tell from what he has either written or said.

This might just be my own personal take on what I find in Barton's writings. If your take is different, let me know.

The PCA and Earth History: Litle Progress

A reader sent in the most recent PCA Historical Center Creation Study, a part of the 2012 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in America. The link to the complete study is here. It begins with a historical account of how the Genesis days were treated. In this account, evolution is featured prominently. Sadly, their exposition of it is predictably garbled. They define “naturalistic evolution” as:

“The diversity of life on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, chance, historical contingencies and changing environments” (National Association of Biology Teachers). This rules out any supernatural activity of God in the origin and development of life and of humans, and hence makes a naturalistic metaphysic the basis of science.

It does nothing of the sort. It simply states that there are knowable, observable processes that produce evolutionary effects in organisms. It says absolutely nothing about supernatural activity because evolutionary theory does not deal in origins of life. It deals in the modification of life after it appeared. Science is metaphysically neutral. One can make unwarranted extrapolations based on one's preconceived understanding of how nature works, but the results of science simply are. The scientific testing and engineering involved in airplane design is metaphysically neutral, as is the appearance of two species of salamander in the Great Basin where there was once one. Their definition of science is equally garbled.

A large chunk of the document deals with interpretations of the first six days of Genesis. This is equally problematic. When it gets to the objections to the “calendar day” model, the writers make some extraordinarily wrong and biased assumptions and conclusions. They write:

Some have asserted that this view “seems not to take science seriously and impugns the veracity of God because, on the one hand, it dismisses central conclusions of the current scientific consensus on cosmogony and, on the other hand, it supposedly requires one to view the general-revelation evidence as to the age of the earth as misleading.” This criticism is based on the assumption that man is able to interpret general revelation correctly without the light of special revelation. That assumption reverses the proper principle of Biblical interpretation, which is, that special revelation must govern our understanding of general revelation. Those of us who hold the Calendar-Day view make no apology for arriving, after careful consideration of the facts, at conclusions that differ from this so-called consensus. It is not the veracity of God which is impugned but the evolutionary presuppositions of the majority (not consensus) of the scientific community whose assumptions are regularly passed off as facts. Furthermore, it seems disingenuous to fault the Calendar-Day view for differing with current scientific dogma when creationists of all stripes claim to reject the most dominant aspect of that dogma, namely, evolutionary origins of the species. One unique strength of the Calendar-Day view is that it leaves no room to accommodate any version of evolutionism, Theistic or otherwise, while some other theories seem bent on finding some common ground with it.

First, the criticism is not based on the idea that man is able to correctly interpret the data without special revelation. The criticism is based on the fact that God has revealed to us the inner workings of His creation and they do not accord with a strict literal (and theologically debatable) interpretation of the scriptures. It does not reverse the proper interpretation of biblical interpretation, it assumes that the works of God are to be believed just as the word of God is to be believed. How is it that people that writes these things never once reexamine their own biblical interpretations in the light of the data? That never fails to astound me.

The writers then make an unwarranted assumption that “creationists of all stripes” reject evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory has absolutely nothing to do with arguments about the age of the universe. It is the inferred age of the universe that allowed for the formulation of evolutionary theory. This is the oldest creationist argument in the book and the fact that the writers are unaware that it was disproven over forty years ago is disturbing. It makes one think that they have read only Henry Morris in formulating their opinions. They then argue that it is a strength of the Calendar day argument that it rejects evolution. They can reject evolution if they wish, but they do not speak for me or anyone else that accepts evolutionary creationism.

Much more could be written that I do not have time to write. Read the whole document to see where the PCA is going with regard to this issue. It seems to me that they are adopting a flat reading of the scriptures and, despite giving lip service to the historical debates, regard those debates as unimportant to the current discussion. The document is heavily influenced by young earth creationism and, as such, is myopic and narrow in its interpretations and understanding of science.

Hugh Ross on Common Ancestry

What in the Wide World of Sports is a' Goin' on at RTB??????????

One of my readers clued me in to a podcast by Hugh Ross in which he tackles theistic evolution, otherwise known as evolutionary creationism. The title of the series is “I did not know that.” This particular talk can be found here.

The focus of the talk is how there is evidence for a historical Adam and Eve and that they were created between fifty and sixty thousand years ago. He specifically contrasts theistic evolution with what he calls the “Biblical model for human origins,” as if there is no theological basis for TE.

His understanding of TE is that we evolved from early ape forms but that it was controlled by God in a way that we scientists can never discover. This is a peculiar statement because science, left to its own devices, is not in the business of discovering whether or not God controlled events and processes. It is through faith that people believe in God.

Ross is one of the original proponents of the “tweaking” argument—that the universe shows evidence of a divine hand that tweaked the gravitational constants and elemental formation in just such a way as to allow life to occur. One degree off either way and...nothing. This is put forth in his book Fingerprint of God.

As I have mentioned before, the problem with this argument is that it is post hoc. We think that it is tweaked because we are here to observe it. There was always a slight probability that the universe would have developed like this anyway.

First he argues that evolution cannot explain the complexity of life because the second law of thermodynamics will degrade the genome of any species over time.

Wrong.

The second law of thermodynamics only applies to closed systems. Hugh Ross is a physicist and he is not aware that the earth is not a closed system? How can that be? It is part of the earth/sun system. There is also interaction with other bodies such as the moon. Everything on earth receives energy from the sun and this, in itself, is a thermodynamic process. Further, as someone else put it, if the earth really is a closed system, then God cannot operate in it. As soon as you introduce intervention from outside, the system opens. Onward...

He then says that the human genome has gotten more decayed over time since the creation of Adam and Eve also because of the influence of the second law of thermodynamics.

Wrong.

The second law of thermodynamics does not explain this. Genetics does. Our genome is more decayed (if you will) because of the influence of genetic load. With extensive gene flow, bad alleles are masked and can persist in a population in large numbers without expression. As we have been able to address many genetic defects with medical treatments, the number of these alleles has increased in our population. This is especially true in western nations, where our diet and behavior has created even more problems for us.

Ross states that there is evidence that modern humans have not been around very long because in Chromosome 21, there are only three different haplotypes and that, if humanity was older than that, there would be more.

Wrong.

This is a complete misread of a paper by Jin, et al (1999)¹ in which the authors study the haplotypes of Chromosome 21 in an effort to shed light on modern human origins. For one thing, there aren't three haplotypes, as Ross asserts. There are ten. There are three haplogroups that suggest that there were three migratory episodes of modern humans out of Africa. Ross focuses on the word “entropy” and, unfortunately, interprets it the way a physicist would. In this case, entropy refers to a function of Wrights F_st, which is a measure of genome variability. For example, North Americans have less entropy because they have greater genetic homogeneity than other groups that were studied. It has nothing to do with thermodynamics.

Ross argues that the chromosomal evidence that humans and the higher apes have a different number of chromosomes is invalid or misunderstood. In the early 1990s, it was discovered that human chromosome two is an end-to-end-fusion of two ape chromosomes. A close examination of chromosome two revealed that, while the other twenty-two chromosomes have one centromere, or central segment, human chromosome two has an extra non-functional centromere. Furthermore, while every chromosome has end segments known as telomeres, human chromosome two has inactive adjacent telomere segments in the middle of the chromosome. It is argued that, sometime in our early past, there was a translocation of two chromosomes to form Chromosome two. Ross argues that such a translocation could not possibly have happened because this would be “catastrophic for the organism” and would result in death.

Wrong.

There are many documented cases of translocation in animal species. There are species of horses that have different numbers of chromosomes and yet can produce fertile offspring. Ross further hampers his argument by saying that the jury is still out on whether or not the evidence is real because they might only appear to be centromeres and telomeres. This is, again, nonsense. It is obvious what they are. Further, how does he explain the duplication of the genes sequences in each chromosome?

Ross then tackles evidence for common ancestry contained in the disovery that the great apes and humans share the inability to manufacture vitamin C. He argues that in place of the inability to produce vitamin C is a new mechanism that recycles vitamin C in apes and humans. This is, he argues, not a loss of genetic function so much as it is a gaining of a new function. What Ross side-steps here and never mentions is that the arising of this mechanism in apes and humans is still evidence of common ancestry. In fact, it is better evidence because it means that exaptation happened in a common ancestor which was then passed on to each line.

And how does the evidence of the creation of a new mechanism in apes and humans figure into his idea of genome degradation?

He then launches into a discussion of the mitochondrial DNA evidence for the origins of modern humans and suggests that it demonstrates that we are descended from one woman (Eve) and then argues that this person likely lived between 50 and 60 thousand years ago. He further argues that Adam lived at the same time, based on Y-Chromosome evidence. This is their “testable creation model.”

There is a distinct problem with the harmonization of this evidence and the Bible. First, you have to really stretch the biblical genealogies to get them as far back as 50 to 60 thousand years. Second, while it is true that there was one original mtDNA variant from which modern humans are said to have arisen, that does not mean that there was only one woman alive at the time. In fact, there is evidence that there were thousands of modern humans alive at the time and that there was no distinct human couple at all.

Worse, the new evidence indicating that modern humans have 9% Neandertal genes calls into serious question the integrity of modern Homo sapiens as a unique species, suggesting that we are much, much older than we thought—perhaps 200 to 300 thousand years old.

He closes out by suggesting that the DNA evidence supports the disembarkation of four women and four men from Noah's ark, like that in Genesis 6-8. Aside from the genetic data indicating that the modern human population bottleneck reported by Venema occurred in sub-Saharan Africa, not the Middle East, there is not a scrap of biological, geological or palaeontological evidence that there was a world-wide flood of any kind.

In one fell swoop, RTB has turned its back on its historical Old-earth, progressive creation model and embraced the heart of young earth creationism, a model that has no serious scientific support of any kind. Is this really what RTB wants to do? If it really is accepting the idea that there were only eight people alive at the time of the flood, it must. It has always carved out a place that is separate from that of the major YEC groups and attempted to use conventional science as support for its apologetics. Now it seems that they are willing to accept a completely concordist model, even if it means the world-wide flood model, warts and all.

Not a fine day for scholarship.

¹Jin, L., Underhill, P. A., Doctor, V., et al. (1999). Distribution of haplotypes from a chromosome 21 region distinguishes multiple prehistoric human migrations. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 96(7), 3796-3800. doi: http://www.pnas.org/content/96/7/3796.abstract

----------------
Now playing: Yes - Into the Storm
via FoxyTunes

Center for Faith and Science International

My first post for the Center for Faith and Science International, called "What is Theistic Evolution?" is up. Have a look.



----------------
Now playing: Ben Vereen & Marc Pressel - Heaven On Their Minds
via FoxyTunes

William Dembski "Admits" to Something We Pretty Much Already Knew

Ed Brayton of Dispatches from the Culture Wars has called William Dembski on the carpet for being a creationist. The problem is that we have known all along that William Dembski is a creationist. He just hasn't admitted it until now. The Discovery Institute tried valiantly to disassociate itself from the term "creationism" some years back. John West wrote in 2002:

Scientists and scholars supportive of intelligent design do not describe themselves as "intelligent design creationists." Indeed, intelligent design scholars do not regard intelligent design theory as a form of creationism. Therefore to employ the term "intelligent design creationism" is inaccurate, inappropriate, and tendentious, especially on the part of scholars and journalists who are striving to be fair. "Intelligent design creationism" is not a neutral description of intelligent design theory. It is a polemical label created for rhetorical purposes. "Intelligent design" is the proper neutral description of the theory.

As Barbara Forrest has shown in devastating fashion, however, this may be true figuratively but is not true practically. About William Dembski, she writes this:

Dembski contends that ID proponents must “engage the secular world, reproving, rebuking, and exhorting it, pointing to the truth of Christianity and producing strong arguments and valid criticisms that show where secularism has missed the mark” (quoted in Forrest and Gross, 2005, 200).

Brayton points out that Dembski complained bitterly about being labeled a creationist by Robert Pennock, and it is not clear in what sense Pennock meant "creationist." Dembski has stated on many occasions (here and here, for example) that, in terms of the age of the earth, ID has no horse in the race and that he is not a creationist. Imagine everyone's surprise when he took off the mask and said "I am a creationist":

Johnny T. Helms' concerns about my book THE END OF CHRISTIANITY as well as his concerns about my role as a seminary professor in the SBC are unfounded. I subscribe to the Baptist Faith and Message 2000 as well as the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy. I believe Adam and Eve were literal historical persons specially created by God. I am not, as he claims, a theistic evolutionist. Within the Southern Baptist seminaries, both old-earth and young-earth creationism are accepted positions. True, young-earth creationism remains the majority view in the SBC, but it is not a litmus test for Christian orthodoxy within the SBC. I'm an old-earth creationist and the two SBC seminaries at which I've taught (Southern in Louisville and Southwestern in Ft. Worth) both were fully apprised of my views here in hiring me.

I don't have a problem with Dembski being a creationist. It is also perfectly fine to stand up and say "I am a Christian!" I am also a creationist. I just happen to be a old-earth theistic evolutionist as well. That's not the problem. The problem is that many within the ID camp want to claim that ID has absolutely nothing to do with belief in God but is amenable to the pursuit of science by itself. The public agenda of those promoting ID, however, is very bent on linking it with Christianity. Dembski himself has said:

Intelligent design, on the other hand, readily embraces the sacramental nature of physical reality. Indeed, intelligent design is just the Logos theology of John’s Gospel restated in the idiom of information theory." - quoted from Dembski, W., A., Kushiner, James M., (editors), Signs of Intelligence: Understanding Intelligent Design, Brazos Press, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2001.

The long and glorious history of the Wedge Document also belies the "neutral description" of the activities of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and culture. Contrast that with the quote that began this post. It is this air of deception that makes people think twice about the whole enterprise.

----------------
Now playing: Steve Hackett - The Air-Conditioned Nightmare
via FoxyTunes

Uko Zylstra on Christianity and Evolution

Dr. Zylstra is the Dean of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at Calvin College, the eternal hotbed of progressive Christian thought, from which the writings of Davis Young, Howard van Till, Clarence Menninga and Terry Gray emanated in the 1970s and 1980s to shape the lives of theistic evolutionists everywhere. He has an editorial in Michigan Live on what it means to believe in God and yet also accept the evidence for evolution. He writes:

Often, as Christians and as scientists, we simply fall to our knees in gratitude for what God has revealed in nature and in his word, and in humility because of all we do not know. Yet as Christian scientists, we affirm the essential truth, revealed in the Scriptures and perceived through the eyes of faith, that God is the creator and sustainer of all things.

And we know that the created world is a form of God’s revelation to humankind.

For a biologist, this means the fossil record is a revelation that God has brought about a pattern of change throughout the history of God’s creation of living beings. Certainly, one basic feature God reveals in the fossil record is the world God created is a dynamic one with change (evolution) as a fundamental feature. This pattern of change is one of the basic meanings of evolution.

If I read my John Polkinghorne right, this is similar to his concept of a self-sustaining, evolving creation. This kind of thinking is in sharp contrast to that of people like creationist Todd Wood, who argues that a true walk with Jesus Christ renders the evidence of the natural world irrelevant. To my way of thinking (along with Polkinghorne, Kenneth Miller, Francis Collins and a whole host of other TEs) the evidence is almost as important as the walk with Christ because, as Miller put it, it reflects the mind of God. We can hardly walk with Christ and ignore his creation.

----------------
Now playing: Kraftwerk - Autobahn
via FoxyTunes

Dennis Venema Videos on Being an Evolutionary Creationist

In his post on Focus on the Family's "Truth" Project, Steve Martin had a link to some videos done by Dennis Venema on how a Christian can accept evolution. Dennis teaches biology at Trinity Wesleyan University and was faced with a situation where his church began to use the "Truth Project." He felt that he needed to respond, so he gave a series of lectures on evolution. He has graciously posted these to YouTube here.

There are eight of them and I would encourage you to look at all of them. Here is the first one.



----------------
Now playing: Nazz - You Are My Windowvia FoxyTunes

Karl Giberson and Darrel Falk: A Plea For the Middle Ground

Karl Giberson and Darrel Falk state that "We Believe in Evolution—and God." One might quibble with the title of the piece; one doesn't "believe" in evolution, and, in my opinion, God and evolution should be reversed, but the sentiment is correct. They write:

We are scientists, grateful for the freedom to earn Ph.D.s and become members of the scientific community. And we are religious believers, grateful for the freedom to celebrate our religion, without censorship. Like most scientists who believe in God, we find no contradiction between the scientific understanding of the world, and the belief that God created that world. And that includes Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

Of course, evolution has progressed well beyond Charles Darwin and there is a certain connotation to the term "Darwinism," that needs to be heeded. Nonetheless, there is a growing group of scientists who are coming forward, as these two have, and professing their faith. They continue:

Almost everyone in the scientific community, including its many religious believers, now accepts that life has evolved over the past 4 billion years. The concept unifies the entire science of biology. Evolution is as well-established within biology as heliocentricity is established within astronomy. So you would think that everyone would accept it. Alas, a 2008 Gallup Poll showed that 44% of Americans reject evolution, believing instead that "God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years."

Such is the state of science education in this country. Many have been taught in church that they cannot accept evolution or they will have to abandon their Christianity. Groups like Answers in Genesis rely on this and on the general lack of science education in the country to marshall support for their causes. How good is this science?:

The "science" undergirding this "young earth creationism" comes from a narrow, literalistic and relatively recent interpretation of Genesis, the first book in the Bible. This "science" is on display in the Creation Museum in Kentucky, where friendly dinosaurs — one with a saddle! — cavort with humans in the Garden of Eden. Every week these ideas spread from pulpits and Sunday School classrooms across America. On weekdays, creationism is taught in fundamentalist Christian high schools and colleges. Science faculty at schools such as Bryan College in Tennessee and Liberty University in Virginia work on "models" to shoehorn the 15 billion year history of the universe into the past 10,000 years.

Davis Young has written a great piece on the demise of "flood geology" in the 1800s. As amazing as it is, this idea gained a resurgence culminating in the 1920s with the publishing of George McCready Price's The new geology: a textbook for colleges, normal schools, and training schools; and for the general reader, which was soundly ridiculed by the geological community. Sadly, its ideas were rehashed by Henry Morris and John C. Whitcomb for their book The Genesis Flood, a book that served as a model for generations of creationists to come. As the authors put it, this is not how it has been historically been:

Many biblical scholars across the centuries have not seen it that way, concluding instead that the biblical creation story is a rich and complex text with many interpretations. Putting modern scientific ideas into this ancient story distorts the meaning of the text, which is clearly about God's faithful and caring relation to the world, not the details of how that world came to be.

How has the most myopic view of scripture come to become the dominant one in the United States? How has it gained ascendancy in the private schools, the legislatures and homeschool organizations? This is especially perplexing since the vast majority of scientists who were believers in the late 1800s had rejected this view of cosmology.

----------------
Now playing: Utopia - Hoi Poloi
via FoxyTunes

Where Does ID Fit?

I received some criticism (correctly) that my taxonomic tree did not leave room for Intelligent Design. I responded by suggesting that they might fit in either the 'progressive creation' box or the 'theistic evolution' box depending on who they were. Here is the problem:

Michael Behe: writer of Darwin's Black Box and promoter of the flagellum as being intelligently designed—principle witness for the plaintiff at the Dover trial, YET, according to Kenneth Miller accepts evolution as it applies to common descent and species creation.

Scott Minnich: another witness for the plaintiff in Dover, when asked "Is Darwin's theory of evolution inconsistent with your private religious beliefs?" replied "no. He states that there is not unanimity with regard to how evolution works among biologists. Newsflash: there probably never will be. That does not make the theory bad.

William Dembski: Pulled out the the Dover Trial before it began. Mathematician who argues that "Darwinian evolution" cannot create biological information. Uses the Law of Conservation of Information to argue that evolution cannot produce new species. Has been criticized for suggesting that some of creation appears designed and some does not. Also criticized for having an unrealistic model of biology and biological systems.

Philip Johnson: Has this to say about evolution:

What we get as science in the Darwinian theory of evolution is not based on science. It's based on a prior commitment to materialism and philosophy. Facts take second place to that philosophy, and therefore what we're getting is what I call a materialist mythology. That's what I mean by intellectual superstition.

Casey Luskin: The Discovery Institute's chief mouthpiece. He is also the co-founder of the Intelligent Design & Evolution Awareness (IDEA) Center. The center is designed to bring about awareness of the "strengths and weaknesses" of evolution. About evolution, he states:

Science and education are suffering because Darwinists are using bluffs about the evidence, fear-mongering about religion, and discrimination against minority viewpoints to stifle the debate over evolution.

He rarely addresses the debate in non-political terms.

This is a short list, but it seems clear to me that these guys are all over the map with regard to evolution. Some sort of belong to the 'theistic evolution' camp, some don't. None are out-and-out young earth creationists. This, as I said, is the potential drawback for this model, it pigeon-holes people. On the other hand, it potentially exposes cognitive dissonance as well.

Evolution and Creationism: A Continuum or a Taxonomy?

Steve Martin over at An Evangelical Dialogue on Evolution has some thoughts about the NCSE Creation—Evolution "Continuum." This comes originally from an article written in the late 1990s by Eugenie Scott called Antievolution and Creationism in the United States¹The NCSE has modified it over time to give ID more prominence. Dr. Scott views the continuum as being a beneficial heuristic in getting students of all ages to understand how complex the controversy really is. Steve is not convinced:

Pointing out these intermediary positions is a good way to help people understand that there is some complexity to this discussion. However, it is my view that this model may actually be counter-productive, particularly when promoting evolution in various faith communities. I believe that those of us that support the coexistence and coherence of evolution and an Evangelical expression of the Christian faith need a much better model if we are to make any progress on this issue within the Evangelical community.

The problem relates to how the continuum is put together in the first place. As Steve points out, Scott assumes a priori that if you are on the bottom of the continuum at the evolution end, you have no faith in God, whereas if you are at the top, you interpret the Bible literally. I am reminded by what Jerry Coyne had to say in his review of Ken Miller's book Only a Theory:

The reason that many liberal theologians see religion and evolution as harmonious is that they espouse a theology not only alien but unrecognizable as religion to most Americans.

Steve and others, including myself, would disagree. This is why TEs walk a very thin line. We are castigated by the YEC crowd as having fatally compromised our faith in the acceptance of an old earth and evolutionary theory and yet we are pilloried by the philosophical naturalism crowd who assume we either have to check in our brains at the door when we go to church or that we don't think the Bible is the word of God (Jesus Seminar, anyone?). Steve also suggests that the scientific criterium is incorrect as well, in that it assumes an inverse of the religious criterium. There are other things. It assumes that there is a difference between Theistic evolution and evoutionary creationism, a difference that has certainly never been made clear to me. Also, placing evolutionary creationism right smack against progressive creationism is sort of like sitting in row 6 on an airplane where smoking is permitted in rows 1-5.

In response to the continuum, Steve has devised a new model that sees three positions

1. theistic evolution
2. non-evolutionary creation
   
3. naturalistic, or materialistic evolution

This is reductionist almost to the extreme. Several benefits and disadvantages become evident. The obvious benefit to those of us that are TEs is that we can take our Bibles and walk toward the back of the plane, away from the non-evolutionary rows. The problem is that the non-evolutionary positions now take up to row 22! Mixing my metaphors here, this is truly "big tent" creationism. The non-evolutionary creation sphere includes everybody from Reasons to Believe, an old earth non-evolutionary site to the folks at fixedearth.com who truly, honestly believe that the earth is fixed and is in the center of the universe (Or maybe I've been had and it is like the Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division). In that mix is the Discovery Institute and the ICR who are allies in much the same way that Churchill and Stalin were allies during the Second World War. I posit that the question can be looked at in a different way.

Being a biologist by training, I would suggest that a taxonomic tree is, perhaps, more appropriate for this question. It might look something like this:


Here, those who espouse the YEC viewpoint and those that are TEs can be traced back to a "common ancestor," belief in God. The disadvantage of this model is that it is subject to pigeon-holing people and has, currently, no place for agnostics, although in practice, agnostics split out to the right at the very top. I do not know of a single agnostic that accepts a young earth or progressive creationism. Its strength is that it does show elements of commonality and distinction (plesiomorphic and apomorphic traits, if you will). In this case, acceptance of evolution is convergent in both the "Yes" and "No" camp from the "belief in God" node. Help! I'm starting to sound like a cladist!!

No model will be completely satisfactory and this one has its problems, I am sure. I completely agree with Steve that Eugenie Scott's diagram makes unwarranted assumptions. I also think, though, that his model does not make enough distinctions between different lines of thought. This is by no means a finished product and I invite any and all discussion of this.

BioLogos

I am adding Francis Collins' site BioLogos to the list of links on the left hand side. Their mission?

The BioLogos Foundation promotes the search for truth in both the natural and spiritual realms, and seeks to harmonize these different perspectives.

The section on "What Does the Fossil Record Show?" is excellent.