Should Have Been Sunday......
......because I am putting up a couple of theology threads right in a row today. I know I have to get back to an Arkansas focus soon.
I know that much of the debate over creation vs. evolution is "faith based" on both sides. That is to say, that people tend to believe what they want to believe and take only a superficial look at the evidence. This is unfortunate because even though the old saying is that the devil is in the details, a close look at the details actually reveals the case for the Creator.
Reasons.org has a couple of good ones up. One discusses the latest scientific evidence for or against a "multiverse". That is to say, universes beyond our own. This is important in the creation-evolution debate because if the universe is the result of Divine intervention then it opens the door to the principle of Divine intervention in the emergence and diversification of life forms. If the universe is not by accident, then the living things in it probably aren't either.
Scientists who have a philosophical bent against Divine intervention (that is, they are naturalists) have for years realized that the evidence from the natural universe strongly favors the hypothesis that the fundamental values and laws of the universe are "fine tuned" to permit life to exist. If any of these values were any different from what they are by even an extremely tiny amount, the universe would be barren of galaxies, planets, and life. Even the big bang is the creationists friend, because it states that the universe had a beginning, and that is why the most cutting-edge atheists are trying to find a way to escape the implications of the it.
To avoid the obvious conclusion that this universe is not the result of chance forces, such scientists have advanced a number of ideas to the effect that our universe is just one of many universes, perhaps even an infinite number. That gives them an "out" because there could still be no God. By chance, one of the infinite number of universes became suitable for life and here we are. We just lived in the one universe that turned out right for life.
Of course these ideas can barely be considered science at all. We can't really test whether or not an infinite number of other universes exist, in the end their evasions are just as much a matter of faith as the average person's faith in God. Still, there are measurements we can make in this universe that imply something about the possibility of the existence or non-existence of such regions. Read the link and some of its links for a fuller look, but the bottom line is that whatever slight evidence we can collect leans against the kind of multiverse they would need even being a possibility. Creation contains evidence of the glory of God.
The other piece answers the question "is junk DNA evidence for evolution?". The short answer is no. There does not appear to be much junk DNA, just DNA that we were not smart enough to figure out what it did until recently. Further, the way such DNA is distributed in certain mammals for instance, fits much more in line with the hypothesis that they were designed by a common Creator than it does the idea that they evolved from a common ancestor.
I know that much of the debate over creation vs. evolution is "faith based" on both sides. That is to say, that people tend to believe what they want to believe and take only a superficial look at the evidence. This is unfortunate because even though the old saying is that the devil is in the details, a close look at the details actually reveals the case for the Creator.
Reasons.org has a couple of good ones up. One discusses the latest scientific evidence for or against a "multiverse". That is to say, universes beyond our own. This is important in the creation-evolution debate because if the universe is the result of Divine intervention then it opens the door to the principle of Divine intervention in the emergence and diversification of life forms. If the universe is not by accident, then the living things in it probably aren't either.
Scientists who have a philosophical bent against Divine intervention (that is, they are naturalists) have for years realized that the evidence from the natural universe strongly favors the hypothesis that the fundamental values and laws of the universe are "fine tuned" to permit life to exist. If any of these values were any different from what they are by even an extremely tiny amount, the universe would be barren of galaxies, planets, and life. Even the big bang is the creationists friend, because it states that the universe had a beginning, and that is why the most cutting-edge atheists are trying to find a way to escape the implications of the it.
To avoid the obvious conclusion that this universe is not the result of chance forces, such scientists have advanced a number of ideas to the effect that our universe is just one of many universes, perhaps even an infinite number. That gives them an "out" because there could still be no God. By chance, one of the infinite number of universes became suitable for life and here we are. We just lived in the one universe that turned out right for life.
Of course these ideas can barely be considered science at all. We can't really test whether or not an infinite number of other universes exist, in the end their evasions are just as much a matter of faith as the average person's faith in God. Still, there are measurements we can make in this universe that imply something about the possibility of the existence or non-existence of such regions. Read the link and some of its links for a fuller look, but the bottom line is that whatever slight evidence we can collect leans against the kind of multiverse they would need even being a possibility. Creation contains evidence of the glory of God.
The other piece answers the question "is junk DNA evidence for evolution?". The short answer is no. There does not appear to be much junk DNA, just DNA that we were not smart enough to figure out what it did until recently. Further, the way such DNA is distributed in certain mammals for instance, fits much more in line with the hypothesis that they were designed by a common Creator than it does the idea that they evolved from a common ancestor.
posted by Mark Moore (Moderator) at Monday, March 09, 2009
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