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The Talk.Origins Archive: Exploring the Creation/Evolution Controversy

Feedback for September 2006

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Response: Ah, yes, I keep meaning to fix that... of course I meant William Buckland. Now fixed.
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Response: Thank you. We're all expecting complimentary sainthoods.
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Response: Sure we do...
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Author of: Problems with a Global Flood, 2nd edition
Response: There has been a great deal of research on ancient climate. Ice cores and other evidence give us a pretty good record of temperature and atmospheric composition for the last few hundred thousand years. Extraterrestrial clouds have been seriously considered as one influence on climate (mainly by obscuring sunlight), but there is absolutely no evidence to support that hypothesis. Climate variationis are much more readily explained by known factors such as the precession of earth's axis.

Oral legends of floods do not indicate a global flood. R. S. Ludwin et al., for example, make a good case that many flood traditions from the northwest North American coast arose from a tsunami in January 1700. World flood traditions are diverse and almost certainly reflect experiences with separate, diverse floods. Keep in mind also that oral legends around the world talk of the sky as a solid barrier, which tells us nothing accurate about the actual state of the sky.

Finally, a rain from space would be impossibly hot from the graviational energy alone, not to mention the chemical energy of the hydrogen combining with oxygen. Rainbows form from sunlight through liquid water droplets; in the scenario you propose, all the water would be superheated steam. See the FAQ for more on this and other problems with a global flood.

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Author of: Dino Blood and the Young Earth
Response: As to the age of the Earth issue, I suggest that you read

Dalrymple, G. Brent 1991 The Age of the Earth Stanford University Press

After 15 years, there is little that needs to be updated in his book. There are several articles on the TO website that could relieve your anxiety and/or ignorance. Resources you have overlooked for example include a contribution from Dr. Dalrymple. I might even be said to have added a small voice to the choir, opposing the creationist abuse of reality.

As far as reading the Bible, the TalkOrigins crew are a diverse group with diverse approaches to faith. I personally read the Bible, particularly the Old Testament, regularly (some days I go fishing). I have found during the 50 years that I have been able to read the Bible, that dogmatic clarity has receded while understand has advanced. For example, young Earth postulants assert that the loosely summed "ages" found in Genesis and elsewhere are the age of the Earth and the Universe. Not only is this absurd in light of geology and chemistry, this is discordant with the overwhelming Christian scholarship, let alone that of Jewish biblical scholars. Some suggested readings are;

Blenkinsopp, Joseph 1992 The Pentateuch: An Introduction to the First Five Books of the Bible The Anchor Bible Reference Library New York: ABRL/Doubleday

Cross, Frank Moore 1973 Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic: Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel. Boston: Harvard University Press

Dahood, Mitchell 1965 Psalms I, 1-50: Introduction, Translation and Notes New York: Anchor Bible- Doubleday

Dalley, Stephanie 2000 Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, The Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others Revised Oxford: Oxford University Press

Friedman, Richard Elliott 1987 Who Wrote the Bible New York:Harper and Row (Paperback Edition)

Jewish Publication Society 2004 The Jewish Study Bible, Tanakh Translation Oxford University Press

and for extra credit, read;

Speiser, E. A. 1962 Genesis: Introduction, Translation and Notes" The Anchor Bible, New York: Doubleday, Inc.

Schmandt-Besserat, Denise 1992 Before Writing Volume I: From counting to cuneiform Austin: University of Texas Press

Generally speaking, there is no more biblical support for a young Earth than scientific. Tomas Aquinas wrote, "In discussing questions of this kind two rules are to be observed, as Augustine teaches. The first is, to hold to the truth of Scripture without wavering. The second is that since Holy Scripture can be explained in a multiplicity of senses, one should adhere to a particular explanation only in such measure as to be ready to abandon it if it be proved with certainty to be false, lest Holy Scripture be exposed to the ridicule of unbelievers, and obstacles be placed to their believing." - Thomas Aquinas, c.a. 1225 - 1274, Summa Theologica (1273).

Aquinas refers to the Christian father, Augustine of Hippo (A.D. 354-430) who advised Christians trying to interpret Scripture in the light of scientific knowledge in his work The Literal Meaning of Genesis (De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim). The following translation is by J. H. Taylor in Ancient Christian Writers, Newman Press, 1982, volume 41.

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion. {Augustine here has refered to 1 Timothy 1.7}

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Response: The modern synthesis (which is no longer modern - scientists should be more careful in naming their ideas!) was the joining of the new science of genetics with the ideas of evolution as Darwin proposed it. While I am hesitant myself to call anything a "paradigm shift" (a term that means more in advertising than in philosophy these days) it truly was novel. It meant that several problems with Darwin's own presentation - that of the origin and retention of novelty in inheritance, which on his account would blend after only a few generations) were solved, while at the same time overcoming the objections of the mendelian geneticists who thought that evolution had to be sudden and episodic. The recognition that genes play a role in many traits and many genes play a role in a single trait allowed geneticists to realise that variation could be almost continuous rather than discrete. This is what natural selection needs in order to work - sudden stepwise variation would make novelties either completely unfit or miraculously more fit, in a way that lacked any explanation.

Punctuated equilibrium doesn't mean that changes happen in a single mutation, but only that the rate of "uptake" of more fit genes is very rapid and then settles down to a relatively static equilibrium in the population. But the mutations are still relatively continuous, and it only means that species remain static over most of their existence once the fitter alleles have been spread through the population.

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Response: Given that it's not a scientific question, there is no consensus to be had from the scientific community. As a philosopher, allow me to respond instead.

Evolution is not "by chance" as such, but it is undirected and full of contingency. Adaptations are the result of non-chance operations of natural selection, on the raw material of mutations and events that are not correlated to the needs of the organisms, which is the only sense of "chance" that matters in this context.

Chance in this sense has no relation to questions of good or bad, except in the operational sense of some variation being better or worse for an organism in a specific environmental condition. But even if we grant that all evolution is chance in some broader sense, why should that affect our moral stance?

Back when we thought that good or evil was the whim of a god or gods that couldn't be predicted, we still had moral beliefs and codes. When we thought that good depended on the moral dictates of a god for no other reason than the god so dictated, we still had moral beliefs and codes. And when we think that moral beliefs are independent of the physical state of things, we still have moral beliefs and codes.

The ethicist G. E. Moore named what he called the "Naturalistic Fallacy" back around the turn of the 20th century, in which he noted that it is a mistake of reasoning to think that the Good is a natural property. By extrapolation, the Bad is also not a natural property. If Nature is "red in tooth and claw" as Tennyson said, or is a domain of total cooperation, or something in the middle, our moral codes do not rely on those physical facts.

There is another fallacy to be mentioned here - the Genetic Fallacy. This has nothing to do with genes, but rather is the claim that something is good or bad because of its origins, like drug money being tainted because it was gained through the exploitation of addicts. If we evolved into moral beings because of "chance" or if we were made moral beings by fiat, either way we are moral beings. It doesn't matter, from a moral perspective why we are moral beings, only that we are. Virtue is a fact of our natures. Likewise, that drug money will still support an orphanage, should you come into possession of it by chance.

Finally, there is a third fallacy - the fallacy of adverse consequences. Merely because some adverse outcome derives from a scientific claim doesn't make it false. Einstein's theory of special relativity gave rise to the atomic bomb, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki don't make it false. If natural selection is true, and let me assure you that it is, the use of that principle by some to do horrible things doesn't undercut its truth, though it may undercut the moral standing of those who did horrible things with it, or who justified what they did with it. For example, the acts of the crusaders, killing thousands if not millions of civilians in the name of God and Jesus, don't make Christianity false thereby.

I find it odd that people seem to think that we need to deny truth in order to be moral.

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Response: Besides, conception is by chance, and people arise by conception, so society must be doomed already.
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Author of: Dino Blood Redux
Response: Sure, if you like. I deleted your telephone and fax number as a favor.
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Response: As some of us are teachers, we know that :-)
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Response: Readers may also be pleased to know that the Gallica project at the Bibliotequé Nationale de France will allow you to download a facsimile copy of the 12th edition. So far I haven't found any facsimiles of the canonical tenth.
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Author of: Dino Blood and the Young Earth
Response: You have my sympathy. Can you get your money back?
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Response: What about it? We know that it occurred over about 20 million years. We know that there are fossils from before that period and molecular evidence that prior animal evolution goes back at least another 70 million years. And there are plenty of pages on this site that give information about it.
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Response: We had a crash a while back and restored the comments from archives. It may be that you got wrongly connected from another comment. I'll send a note to the techies...
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Response: The "crash" that John refers to could not have possibly been the problem since the feedback script does not actually post or modify the actual web pages. The script generates a page which is manually saved to the correct location. (Though some HTML cleanup, etc. is done first.) The "crash" was an index file for for a month getting erased somehow and thus a manual recreation of the index was had to be done. Since then Douglas Theobald has put into place improved backup system.

I conducted an investigation of what went wrong. The file was last modified on July 17, 2005 long before the crash. The Way Back Machine verifies that what you object to was on the web on September 21, 2003 or pretty much since the file was created. I then used the feedback system of this website to look at the August 2003 feedback. I searched for a feedback from "Adrian Maler". And the explanation became immediately became obvious: human error.

Feedback responders at this website are provided with three text areas. The first is "The reader's original comment [Changes to this window are not saved.]" The second is the same thing except that it can be edited. I just used it to blockquote your quotes to make it more readable and to link to the feedback. Other uses would be to cut down on over-long comments, remove profanity, etc. The third text area is the response. Here is what Adrian Maler actually submitted:

I'm a first-time commentator and really enjoy your informative website. Thank you for including some comments on the molecular or circadian clock at www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/apr01.html

Recap: humans have an organ called the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN, aka "Circadian Clock") that keeps our bodies on an approx. 24-hour cycle without environmental cues.

I was getting ready to write a comment about that molecular clock (re: "watchmaker" creationist argument) when I saw the page. I have done some work on the circadian clock myself, which involved writing differential equations to simulate that organ's function.

I think it is interesting to keep this organ in mind when considering "watchmaker"-type creationist arguments. It is also a fascinating example of evolution producing "design-like" structures for humans to marvel at. :)

Anyways, thanks for including that bit of info that I can relate to.

The system indicates that after Mark Isaak made his reply that Ed Brayton made a blank reply that was edited out. I also notice that Mark's reply makes a lot more sense as a reply to the first feedback for that month. This appears to be a case of posting of materials to the wrong locations. Mark's reply will be moved and yours will be restored.

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