On Thu, 22 Jun 1995 17:04:19 +0930 you wrote:
MP>Does PC fit the facts worse?
>Can one really make quantitative predictions using evolutionary theory? On a
>micro-change level perhaps you can ??? But on a larger scale I would have
>thought genetics and 'the relationship between DNA and functionality is not
>sufficiently well understood to make any realistic quantitative predictions.
>
GM>PC fits the facts, but can not make any predictions of any kind.
>Go back to the mid70's and consider the situation in relation to the
>whale transition. Evolution predicted that there should be some type
>of transitional fossil with legs between the Mesonychids and the
>Whales. What could PC predict about this morphological gap? While
>evolutionists could not tell you precisely what you would find, they
>could tell you the broad outlines, i.e. a critter with both
>mesonychid and cetacean features which had four feet. The problem PC
>has with prediction of what should be found in the fossil record is
>that we can not possibly know what God would or would not have
>created. Most predictions from most creationists of the time was
>that there was a gap which would never be filled.
MP>What was the justification for the prediction that the intermediate
>would be "a critter with both mesonychid and cetacean features which
>had four feet"?
I have no doubt that evolutionists believed that a whale came from a
land mammal. What else could it come from? Whale skeleton's have
what appears to be arms and legs. This is either: 1. a common design
feature of the vertebrate body plan; or 2. a vestige left over from a
common ancestor; or 3. both 1 and 2.
My question to Glenn was whether in "the mid70's...Evolution predicted
that there should be some type of transitional fossil with legs
between the *Mesonychids* and the Whales."
My Encyclopaedia of the Animal World (edited by Prof. Don A. Arthur
MsC, PhD, DSc, Head Department of Zoology, University of London), in
1977 states:
"No fossils exist to link the Cetacea closely with other groups of
mammals, the earliest fossils are already well defined whales.
However, a number of features point to their being closest to the even
toed ungulates, the Artiodactyla." (Arthur D.A. ed., "Encyclopedia
of the Animal World", 1977, Bay Books, Sydney, 4:365).
Since these Artiodactyla are hoofed mammals (eg. pigs, cattle,
camels, buffaloes, deer, etc), I understand that mesonychids are
in the faimily Condylarthra, which are thought to be ancestral to
Artiodactyla, but not part of same.
I am therefore sceptical of Glenn's claim that in the 1970's
evolutionists in general predicted a "transitional fossil with legs
between the Mesonychids and the Whales".
GM>You (and evolutionists) suggest that there will be
>(what we consider to be) gradual changes from the mesonychid to the
>whale. This will _only_ be true if gradual "genotype" (DNA string)
>changes correspond to gradual "phenotype" (resultant animal body)
>changes. As I understand it, geneticists only have a small
>understanding about how genotype changes affect the phenotype, thus
>evolution, as it stands, has very little predictive power.
I was surprised to see Glenn claim this, because it was my
understanding that evolutionists generally claim that Darwinist
evolution has very limited predictive power.
MP>The only way to give evolution more predictive power is to add to
>your theory something like the assertion "small changes in genotype
>lead to small changes in phenotype". But this is an unsubstantiated
>claim - it is not backed up by a biological-mechanistic
>justification. If you allow evolutionists to make this claim, why
>not allow Progressive Creationists to make the claim: "God formed
>the animals by taking one animal and slightly modifying it to form
>another". With this addition to the theory of Progressive
>Creationism, PC would be just as likely to predict the ambulocetus as
>evolution.
Agreed. I would have no problem with this modification to PC. It would
clearly remain within the PC model.
MP>So surely, evolution as it stands, is no more predictive than PC?
>
GM>Now, quantitative predictions are not always necessary for a
>science. Science can not predict the quantitative location of a
>particular electron next year. This does not mean that physics is
>useless or that Schrodinger was wasting his time.
MP>Yes you can predict locations of electrons. You can not predict it
>with arbitrary precision, but you can predict it. You can say
>quantitative things about the electron - eg, it will be in "such and
>such" small region of space at "such and such" small interval of
>time.
GM>I can think of a theological reason for rejecting the latter, PC
>model. The Scripture says that God created things in 7 days. I know
>the arguments that the days can be periods of time, the plain fact is
>that long periods of time do not have evenings and mornings.
>If the Genesis 1 account is taken to have a poetic nature and use
>metaphor (which seems quite reasonable to me), then, metaphorically
>speaking, long periods of time _do_ have evenings and mornings.
Agree. In Ps 90:6 the terms "morning" and "evening" are used for the
beginning and ending of our lifespan of 70 years!
GM>Thus the PC view must make the Bible not say what I believe it IS
>saying. We don't talk about the evening and morning of the
>Cretaceous Period, nor the evening and morning of the Mesozoic Era.
>The language doesn't fit long ages.The creative acts took place on
>single days. Secondly, God must have engaged in tens of thousands of
>creative acts over the years, so what is this stuff about creation
>being done in seven events/acts/days or periods? How do you divide
>the geologic ages into seven periods? On what evidence? PC raises
>some thorny and unaswered questions.
GM>If you read Genesis 1, not as a scientific account, but as an
>account telling, in broad terms, about the creator creating the world
>- talking to people who didn't know science and passed things down by
>word of mouth, then it seems quite reasonable that the account would
>not be strictly accurate in a scientific sense. The reason for the
>separation of the creation event into days then, is then done, not as
>a scientific theory about separate geological ages, but rather as a
>literary tool, making the account easy to remember and easy to
>retell. It also serves a secondary purpose, providing a foundation
>for sabbath observance.
Agreed. To expect that Genesis 1 was written for the benefit of
scientifically trained moderns betrays a lack of historical sense.
GM>Why must God be limited to creating each species rather than
>creating a system which can in turn produce the varieties?
>What do the seven days mean to you? Do you mean to tell me that God
>took six literal days to create a "system", that would later create
>the relevant objects and life forms? This doesn't seem to fit very
>well.
I agree. This seems a unique mixture of YEC and theistic evolution!
If Glenn is maintaining that Genesis 1 is scientific, there are
enormous problems of trying to harmonise it with a strictly scientific
order of events.
GM>I love those wave tanks you can buy in which blue water lies under
>clear mineral oil. The motor causes the tank to tip back and forth
>producing waves. The creator of this time-waster could have come to
>my office and created each individual wave form me if he wanted to,
>but other customers would want him to do the same for them. He
>solved his difficulty by attaching a motor which would produce each
>different wave. In a very real sense, he is the creator of each wave
>even though he is nowhere in sight. Why must we limit God to
>standing in the office?
MP>Maybe we don't need to limit God to standing in the office - maybe
>TE is correct? But maybe PC is correct? The advantage with PC being
>correct is that, potentially anyway, we may be able to discover
>objective evidence that God is indeed standing in the office. On
>theological grounds, it seems to me that any problems PC has, will
>also be problems for TE.
Glenn's argument is really a straw man. Not even Fiat Creationism
insists on God directly creating each new species, let alone PC. And
although Glenn will no doubt deny it, his argument that God created a
"system" that in turn "later created the...life forms", sounds more
like Deism than Theism. This is reinforced by his wave-maker
machine model.
The real analogy between PC is ordinary history. Has ordinary history
proceeded from an original "system" that has had no more need for God
to intervene than the wave-maker machine? Or has God intervened at
crucial moments, even in our own day (eg. calm weather at Dunkirk,
Hitler's critical mistakes, Israel's 6-day war, collapse of USSR,
etc)? No doubt a naturalist historian could write a perfectly valid
history of ancient Israel and even out the bumps by attributing it all
to ordinary socio-economic factors. No doubt they have already done
this with Jesus - mystic revolutionary, opposed Romans, killed,
followers believed his memory lived on, borrowed ideas of resurrection
from pagan cult legends, etc, etc. If God can't intervene in history,
then why do we pray for Him to intervene in *our* history?
PC may not be able to be proved from the limited evidence available,
any more than the miracles of the Exodus or the resurrection of Jesus
can be proved, yet PC should be able to accommodate any facts that
TE can. In one sense PC is the Christian analogy of Punctuated
Equilibria, whereas TE is more like Neo-Darwinism. The more evolution
draws away from gradualism towards saltationism, the more it fits the
PC model.
PC (as well as FC) starts with the Biblical picture and tries to
accommodate scientific facts into it, whereas (it seems to me) TE
starts with the scientific picture and tries to accommodate the
Biblical facts to it. The real metaphysical issue is that, as Carl
F.H. Henry has pointed out, evolution is not a Biblical idea at all,
but derives from Greek pagan philosophy.
God bless.
Stephen