>On the Progessive Creationist model, as set out in its most general
>form by Ramm:
>
>"In progressive creationism there may be much horizontal radiation.
>The amount is to be determined by the geological record and biological
>experimentation. But there is no vertical radiation. Vertical
>radiation is only by fiat creation. A root-species may give rise to
>several species by horizontal radiation, through the process of the
>unraveling of gene potentialities or recombination. Horizontal
>radiation could account for much which now passes as evidence for the
>theory of evolution. The gaps in the geological record are gaps
>because vertical progress takes place only by creation." (Ramm B.
>"The Christian View of Science and Scripture", Paternoster: London,
>1955, p191),
>
>I would expect there to be similarities between living things
>(because of a common Designer), but also deep differences which cannot
>be bridged, except by the Intelligent Designer's intervention (be it
>ever so subtle).
But why certain similarities and not others? Why do mitochondria and
chloroplasts look like prokaryotes? You always give the same answer to
every question. Your PC model does not seem to be a very fruitful theory:
it does not differentiate among questions or explanations. The
endosymbiosis theory accounts very nicely why certain similarities are
found and not others.
This raises an interest question that I pursued with one of our
philosophers here at Calvin. Do similarities and the nested patterns found
in biological world support common design and common ancestry equivalently?
I've always been willing to grant that they support both postions
equivalently and that my preference for common ancestry is due to other
knowledge of genetic and other biological processes. To my surprise, he
said no and gave all sorts of reasons why the common ancestry hypothesis
was to be preferred from a philosophy of science point of view.
Unfortunately, I wasn't taking notes, so I can't remember all of the
details. But part of his argument had to do with what sorts of questions
one could ask of each model and what sorts of expectations each theory
would lead to. Part of the argument had to do with the fact that the
common design argument made no necessary predictions about the patterns we
see, but that common ancestry did: for example, the amount of diversity in
a given family (say the cat family) and their biographical distribution and
the degree of diversity over time. Part of the argument related to the
fruitfulness of a theory in provoking additional questions or additional
research.
I'm still inclined to say that people's resistance to evolutionary theory
stems primarily from a belief that Christian theology requires/favors a
special creationist/interventionist mode of creation and that they are
worried about the apologetic impact of an evolutionary account (--like Phil
Johnson's view that if God's activity is not evident then he is a
superfluous add-on to our thinking). I think that Stephen's own posts over
the past year is evidence of the former. I happen to disagree and am much
more open to the evolutionary account than he is as a result.
TG
_____________________________________________________________
Terry M. Gray, Ph.D. Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Calvin College 3201 Burton SE Grand Rapids, MI 40546
Office: (616) 957-7187 FAX: (616) 957-6501
Email: grayt@calvin.edu http://www.calvin.edu/~grayt