Re: Special Creation

 *Man is God's final and greatest creation, and that Man
was made to have a relationship with God here on Earth and
that this was to be eternal, then why wouldnt you start
with a fresh and perfect genome? It is the creation of
imperfection that I think is a contradiction, therefore
illogical.*

Well, the same argument would prevail against any form of theistic
evolution, or indeed against any concept of creation, wouldn't it? I don't
have a huge problem with that. I suppose God developed the human genome to
the point where it was suitable for the sort of creature on which He desired
to impart the imago Dei in the environment in which we live. The creative
process He used to do that leaves traces like pseudogenes and such -- kind
of like how you can use infared and xrays to see the pencil sketches and
early brushstrokes underlying a painted masterpiece.

On 3/3/06, drsyme@cablespeed.com <drsyme@cablespeed.com> wrote:
>
> Its illogical in the sense that;
> if Man is God's final and greatest creation, and that Man
> was made to have a relationship with God here on Earth and
> that this was to be eternal, then why wouldnt you start
> with a fresh and perfect genome? It is the creation of
> imperfection that I think is a contradiction, therefore
> illogical.
>
> On Fri, 3 Mar 2006 07:25:21 -0500
> "David Opderbeck" <dopderbeck@gmail.com> wrote:
> > i*t seems illogical, i.e. not surviving Occam's razor as
> >you suggest, that
> > the genome of this new creature would include
> >preexisting pseudogenes,
> > useless gene duplications, fatal mutations, etc.*
> >
> > I'm not sure it's illogical. In fact, it would be
> >exactly what we'd
> > logically expect if God used something like a cloning
> >process to genetically
> > engineer Adam using gentic material from an earlier
> >hominid. I do agree
> > that it doesn't survive Occam's razor, but I don't think
> >of that as a test
> > of logic, but rather a test of plausibility among
> >competing alternatives.
> > The simplest explantion isn't *always* the true one,
> >though. Remember, even
> > a pure TE position feels the blade -- Occam's razor
> >would also cut out God
> > as having any role at all in evolution.*
> >
> > *
> > On 3/3/06, jack syme <drsyme@cablespeed.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>
> >> If as Ross suggests, God fashioned Adam out of the dust
> >>of the earth,
> > (even if he used existing materials), it seems
> >illogical, i.e. not surviving
> > Occam's razor as you suggest, that the genome of this
> >new creature would
> > include preexisting pseudogenes, useless gene
> >duplications, fatal mutations,
> > etc.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> ----- Original Message -----
> >> From: David Opderbeck
> >> To: jack syme
> >>
> >> Cc: glennmorton@entouch.net ; asa@calvin.edu
> >> Sent: Thursday, March 02, 2006 8:52 PM
> >> Subject: Re: Special Creation
> >>
> >>
> >> The thread that touched all this interesting discussion
> >>off was the
> > announcement that Alan Templeton's work has falsified
> >the RTB model. Having
> > now had a chance to skim through Ross/Rana's "Who Was
> >Adam," I'm not clear
> > on why that is necessarily so.
> >>
> >> As I understand it, the problem for RTB's model arising
> >>from Templeton's
> > work would be that, although the genetic evidence still
> >supports the recent
> > (~100,000 years) emergence of "humans" as RTB define
> >them (home sapiens
> > sapiens) from a smal population migrating out of a
> >Africa, it also suggests
> > those modern humans interbred with indigenous
> >populations of hominids that
> > had migrated out of Africa in two earlier waves ~1.5MYA
> >and ~750,000 years
> > ago. Such interbreeding would suggest the indigenous
> >populations were
> > "human" as well, and thus human-kind is too ancient to
> >trace back to a
> > single Adam and Eve less than 150,000 years ago.
> >>
> >> But Ross/Rana seem to suggest, as I had earlier on the
> >>list, that God may
> > have used existing genetic material from earlier
> >hominids when He formed
> > Adam out of the "dust of the Earth." If God did this,
> >then our genome would
> > reflect the history of those earlier hominids, including
> >those two earlier
> > waves of African migration. The "replacement" theory
> >could then still
> > possibly be correct. Obviously, this wouldn't survive
> >Occam's Razor, but
> > neither would just about any theory that seeks actual
> >historical events in
> > Gen. 1 and 2.
> >>
> >> I realize there are other possible problems with the RTB
> >>model, but it
> > seems to me that the Templeton data doesn't kill it
> >completely. Have I
> > completely missed something here, or could that body in
> >the cart be shouting
> > "I'm not dead yet?" I admit I'm no genetic
> >anthropologist.
>
Received on Fri Mar 3 08:57:52 2006