Secular or Christian Bio

[albeto.]

But the problem with the evolution theory is that everything began as slime on a rock. Some of the slime became those cave fish; some became elephants; some became humming birds; some became us. Why?

 

It is much easier for me to believe that God created us all, sometimes for no other reason than to make us ponder who He is.

 

And there are way too many plants and animals that are so intricately designed that they could not possibly have evolved that way for me to think that everything started as slime on a rock.

 

Not really.

 

It's easier to believe a simple story than to understand an enormously complex explanation, but that doesn't mean the story is true. 

 

********

 

For a child who is interested in biology and yet wants to maintain a faith in their god, I would recommend a secular biology course. There will be facts presented and nothing but. You can interpose your religious beliefs in addition to those facts, but when false information is taught, not only will the child learn erroneously, but the hit to a faith realized to have been deceptive is tough to put on the shoulders of a child, I think. 

[Ellie]

Not really.

 

It's easier to believe a simple story than to understand an enormously complex explanation, but that doesn't mean the story is true. 

 

********

 

For a child who is interested in biology and yet wants to maintain a faith in their god, I would recommend a secular biology course. There will be facts presented and nothing but. You can interpose your religious beliefs in addition to those facts, but when false information is taught, not only will the child learn erroneously, but the hit to a faith realized to have been deceptive is tough to put on the shoulders of a child, I think. 

 

But there are serious scientists who have significant research that supports Special Creation, so to put forth that theory is as scientifically valid as the slime-on-a-rock theory. :-)

[albeto.]

TY for you concern, but I am well aware of what the theory of evolution is. It is why I mock it. Feel free not to do so.

 

If you are under the impression the theory of evolution is that everything began as slime on a rock, some of the slime became those cave fish; some became elephants; some became humming birds; some became us, you are mistaken. Either way, the link is for general informational purposes. 

[Embassy]

The Miller-Levine Macaw Biology book is only $15 as an e-text.  If you already have the lab materials for Apologia, maybe you can use those same labs with another textbook.

[Ellie]

If you are under the impression the theory of evolution is that everything began as slime on a rock, some of the slime became those cave fish; some became elephants; some became humming birds; some became us, you are mistaken. Either way, the link is for general informational purposes. 

 

Thanks, but I am generally informed. :-)

[Guest inoubliable]

But there are serious scientists who have significant research that supports Special Creation, so to put forth that theory is as scientifically valid as the slime-on-a-rock theory. :-)

 

O.o

Who?

[kiana]

This does not exist. And there is no "slime on a rock" theory. Those who wish to discuss the theory of evolution should be familiar with what it really is, not some silly, misleading, attempted mockery of what it is. 

Very important point and a serious flaw in all of the YEC curricula that I've visited. They set up a straw-man, and then do a wonderful job of knocking it down.

 

When a lot of these young people get to college and realize that they've been misinformed by people they trusted -- that what they have been told is the theory of evolution bears no resemblance to what it actually is -- for many of them, it causes a serious crisis of faith. In some cases, they end up rejecting the church entirely -- for some, for a few years, for others, permanently.

[Erin]

But the problem with the evolution theory is that everything began as slime on a rock. Some of the slime became those cave fish; some became elephants; some became humming birds; some became us. Why?

 

It is much easier for me to believe that God created us all, sometimes for no other reason than to make us ponder who He is.

 

And there are way too many plants and animals that are so intricately designed that they could not possibly have evolved that way for me to think that everything started as slime on a rock.

 

 

God can form everything in a few literal days from dust, but He can't form everything in a few billions years from primordial soup (I assume this is the slime in question)?

 

Why not?

[albeto.]

Very important point and a serious flaw in all of the YEC curricula that I've visited. They set up a straw-man, and then do a wonderful job of knocking it down.

 

When a lot of these young people get to college and realize that they've been misinformed by people they trusted -- that what they have been told is the theory of evolution bears no resemblance to what it actually is -- for many of them, it causes a serious crisis of faith. In some cases, they end up rejecting the church entirely -- for some, for a few years, for others, permanently.

Yeah, not to mention the emotional toll it takes on many young people coming to terms with the idea that the information they trusted to be right, is not considered by anyone but a very small subset of one group. That's a pretty tough thing to face, much less while dealing with a huge change in life, such as college. I think setting up a child with erroneous information sets him/her up to be vulnerable, and as parents we don't want to do that to them. 

[Julie in MN]

Julie asks a great question.  On the surface, the only difference between asking how God evolved something and how God designed that thing is the method God used.  But the differences get bigger fast. 

 

For starters, and please understand that I believe the universe and its systems have a loving Designer and a Sustainer who keeps holding it all together, YEC insists that God designed everything directly to be exactly the way it is.  But there’s a loophole: Things that are beautiful and work well are understood as God’s design, but things that seem ugly or broken, like birth defects, are blamed on a cosmic Fall that changed the physical nature of things.  This always bothered me as a YEC because it seemed like inconsistent picking and choosing.

 

Evolutionary creation doesn’t assume that God designed every feature directly, but rather created systems that allow freedom to develop in many directions.  I personally don’t know how much God directly intervenes along the way, but I never knew this as a YEC either, for the reason that I mentioned above:  are the blind, useless eyes of cave fish the result of God’s design, or the result of a cosmic Fall?

 

YEC did not have answers for many other questions.  Besides the blind eyes of the cave fish, some other animals have useless parts, such as nipples on male mammals, and wings on birds that can’t fly.   Why did God design a parasite that eats its host alive from the inside out, one organ at a time?  Where I grew up in Florida, two kinds of snakes have stripes colored red, black, yellow and white:  the coral snake is deadly, while the king snake is harmless.  Why would God design a poisonous snake that’s nearly identical to a harmless snake?  And why would the harmless king live only near the deadly coral?

 

Whereas YEC had no answer for this, evolutionary creation has a great answer:  in the coral snake’s neighborhood, the king’s resemblance makes it unappealing to predators who mistake it for the poisonous near-twin.  The resemblance gives it a survival advantage. Outside the coral’s neighborhood, the resemblance is a disadvantage, because the king’s bright colors make it a conspicuous target, so king snakes don’t venture very far from coral snakes.  God designed the system that lets creatures find their niche and make the most of their surroundings, then change when change becomes necessary.

 

In my understanding, evolutionary creation explicitly removes God from direct responsibility for the details while allowing God to intervene in ways I can’t measure.  As I said earlier, I always implicitly did this before, but without noticing that I was assigning the details I liked to “design†and the ones I didn’t to “the Fall.† Now I don't wonder why God made someone with a cleft palate, even while I know God can bring good out of this person's suffering.  Beyond this, evolutionary creation has turbo-charged my faith, my awe at the power and brilliance of God as creator, my gratitude for the generous provision of all that we need, and my humility before the task of “keeping†and protecting the creation entrusted to us.  

Which brings me back to the original poster's question about her daughter, who's really interested in science.  My oldest son loves biology now thanks to the Campbell and Reece bio textbook that we used two years ago, which he still picks up to read for fun because it invites him into the story of the how and why--not the Ultimate Why, which science can't answer--but the proximate why's and all the puzzles that remain to be solved.

    

Thanks for appreciating my question, Carol, but I still think you are making errors in logic.  The cleft palate is not explained much differently by evolution than by creation.  Nor is the coral snake, nor nipples that have never evolved out of men.  In either case, the theories are basically the same -- there is an advantage to that creation, or we will later realize the "unnecessary" feature actually has a function (e.g. tonsils), or there was a genetic error at birth, or etc.

 

Also, I would assume you realize this but thought I should check -- micro-evolution is understood by YEC.  It is possible God created only one snake, and all the other snakes branched off of that snake over time.  But they are all snakes.  "Exactly the way it is" is not a stand taken by YEC science that I know of.

 

And yet, when we discovered DNA and learned to sequence it, all living things on Earth are related. Remember that Darwin had no idea about DNA. Gregor Mendel was just doing his pea experiments and nobody really understood his scientific papers until several decades later. They figured it out the process by observing nature very closely and they actually got it right. That's astonishing!

Of course, DNA could have evolved or been created, it makes no difference as far as studying DNA -- or as far as using close observation, as well. 

 

 

 

It's good to educate our kids about the latest theory of evolution, but evolution is everywhere in my area -- every plaque at every museum, every nature center program, every comment on the news, every random thought from a field trip docent.  That's why I liked to read at least some of Apologia.  I don't remember the every-page thing in his high school texts, but Biology would probably be the one where God and creation would come up the most. 

 

Here is a list of some Christian thinkers, some of which have been YEC and some evolution/Christians:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_thinkers_in_science#2001.E2.80.93today_.2821st_century.29

For obvious reasons, today some YEC scientists do not broadcast their faith. 

 

Julie

[C_l_e_0..Q_c]

Here is a list of some Christian thinkers, some of which have been YEC and some evolution/Christians:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_thinkers_in_science#2001.E2.80.93today_.2821st_century.29

For obvious reasons, today some YEC scientists do not broadcast their faith. 

 

Julie

 

One can be Christian without being YEC. That list has many Catholics for example. Catholics are not Young Earth, and are fully behind the theory of Evolution. 

 

It amused me that, in Apologia General Science, the author disses the Pope for refusing to believe Galileo about the Earth moving around the Sun, because the Bible said the opposite, but the author goes on saying that the Earth is 6000 years old because the Bible said so.   Pot meet kettle. At least, the popes have learned from their mistakes.

[Julie in MN]

What a good way to put it!  I've always lived by the philosophy that God is continually revealing Himself through His creation and tend to keep it all in the directive of Isaiah 55:8-9 (my ways are not your ways…)

But I really like the notion that science is looking at His work first-hand and the Bible, no matter how divine, is still second-hand.  

More importantly, the Bible is many things; love story, historical account, lessons and instructions, guide to salvation…but only in the early verses of Genesis does anyone think it's a scientific treatise.  This has always puzzled me. 

Why would it be a scientific journal, but only for a few verses??  No one thinks when He holds the sparrows in His hands that it's an explanation of how they fly...

Erin,

I thought I'd just explain your question that I underlined above -- you may have said it rhetorically, but in case it's a question you have for YEC...

 

The problem between the Bible and OEC is not a simple problem of "literal" interpretation of the word "day."  It's also not a problem of placing all of science into several chapters of Genesis - for instance, I've mentioned that micro-evolution is a part of every YEC theory that I'm aware of, and so is the extinction of species over time - there is plenty that's been discovered that isn't explained in the Bible.

 

The issue is bigger than that -- at least for me.  The whole picture of what Jesus is restoring is in that first part of Genesis, and evolutionary theory would affect its foundations.  For example, we couldn't exactly have been created in God's image.  And if we evolved, then there must've been death whilst God said, "It is very good."  And there was death before God's warning about death.  There was death before sin.   And we'd need to add what seems to me a significant event of "dropping in" our human spirit somewhere along the evolutionary tree.  And so on.   I don't think evolution is the most essential issue, but It is not an issue of one small detail.

 

What flabbergasts me is the common prejudice today that one cannot study science without being OE.  Every testable scientific concept works whether YE or OE, and theoretical concepts can be just as fun for YE as OE.

 

Julie

[albeto.]

Why would it be a scientific journal, but only for a few verses??  No one thinks when He holds the sparrows in His hands that it's an explanation of how they fly...

 

Because to read those verses allegorically would mean other verses might be read figuratively, and where would that leave people with regard to the crucifixion, the resurrection, eternal life? Generally speaking, certain verses are read literally and others are read allegorically to maintain a deeply held belief regardless of the particular theology believed. It's the same process - protecting a deeply held belief against evidence to the contrary - that explains your own belief in a creator god "revealed" in a world that is explained perfectly well by natural means. 

[albeto.]

What flabbergasts me is the common prejudice today that one cannot study science without being OE.  Every testable scientific concept works whether YE or OE, and theoretical concepts can be just as fun for YE as OE.

 

With respect, your comment misrepresents how the scientific method works. The scientific method is for more than just explaining what we see (in this case, the biodiversity of the natural world), it offers the ability to predict based on evidence. Every great scientific discovery, including the theory of evolution, has been a process of observation, prediction, testing, and falsifying. As an example of this predictive quality, in 1862, Charles Darwin was sent a series of orchids from Madagascar. This particular orchid, Angraecum sesquipedale, has an exceptionally long nectary and in a book on orchid pollination, Darwin suggested that this extreme feature may have evolved alongside a moth with an exceptionally long tongue to pollinate it. As no one had observed the creature that did this, this prediction was based purely on the predictive qualities of the evidence of the theory of evolution.

 

He wrote to a friend at Kew "I have just received such a Box full from Mr Bateman with the astounding Angraecum sesquipedalia [sic] with a nectary a foot long. Good Heavens what insect can suck it", and in a second letter just a few days later suggested "in Madagascar there must be moths with probosces capable of extension to a length of between ten and eleven inches [25.4–27.9cm]".

 

This is the kind of prediction science can offer, the kind of prediction "God created it thus" simply cannot. While we now recognize the idea of such co-evolution to be common and well known, but it was at the time a novel suggestion. Creationists today can say they observe this, but this observation was once theorized, tested, and falsified, all using the scientific method, none of which can include the assumed creative qualities of a supernatural being. 

 

 

[Julie in MN]

With respect, your comment misrepresents how the scientific method works. The scientific method is for more than just explaining what we see (in this case, the biodiversity of the natural world), it offers the ability to predict based on evidence. Every great scientific discovery, including the theory of evolution, has been a process of observation, prediction, testing, and falsifying. As an example of this predictive quality, in 1862, Charles Darwin was sent a series of orchids from Madagascar. This particular orchid, Angraecum sesquipedale, has an exceptionally long nectary and in a book on orchid pollination, Darwin suggested that this extreme feature may have evolved alongside a moth with an exceptionally long tongue to pollinate it. As no one had observed the creature that did this, this prediction was based purely on the predictive qualities of the evidence of the theory of evolution.

 

He wrote to a friend at Kew "I have just received such a Box full from Mr Bateman with the astounding Angraecum sesquipedalia [sic] with a nectary a foot long. Good Heavens what insect can suck it", and in a second letter just a few days later suggested "in Madagascar there must be moths with probosces capable of extension to a length of between ten and eleven inches [25.4–27.9cm]".

 

This is the kind of prediction science can offer, the kind of prediction "God created it thus" simply cannot. While we now recognize the idea of such co-evolution to be common and well known, but it was at the time a novel suggestion. Creationists today can say they observe this, but this observation was once theorized, tested, and falsified, all using the scientific method, none of which can include the assumed creative qualities of a supernatural being. 

Thank you for outlining all that, but I'm not sure why a YEC can't deduce that there must be a long-nosed moth somewhere. 

 

 

[albeto.]

Thank you for outlining all that, but I'm not sure why a YEC can't deduce that there must be a long-nosed moth somewhere. 

 

 

 

They could today, now that co-evolution between species is an identified phenomenon. They couldn't, and didn't, before this fact was established. There are other hypotheses today that cannot be explored or falsified through a reading of the bible, or through prayer. They require evidence. Creationism cannot provide evidence of any kind. The most it can do is apply a literary source (Genesis) to an observation (the natural world), but that's not science. 

[Erin]

 

The issue is bigger than that -- at least for me. The whole picture of what Jesus is restoring is in that first part of Genesis, and evolutionary theory would affect its foundations. For example, we couldn't exactly have been created in God's image. And if we evolved, then there must've been death whilst God said, "It is very good." And there was death before God's warning about death. There was death before sin. And we'd need to add what seems to me a significant event of "dropping in" our human spirit somewhere along the evolutionary tree. And so on.

 

Julie

It WAS rhetorical, but thats OK, :)

See for me, Christ's coming is indeed restorative. Beyond a doubt, people have a sin-nature that simply is not found anywhere elsewhere in Creation. Why it came about, OTOH, I've never really cared, though I'm fairly sure the God I believe in didn't actually punish an entire species because of two peoples' disobedience... (Btw, "adam" is both a name and the word for mankind in ancient Hebrew. I find that interesting)