Re: [asa] Of motes and beams

On 7/18/06, Vernon Jenkins <vernon.jenkins@virgin.net> wrote:
>
> Iain,
>
> You say, "...in the case of the immune system, God has used evolutionary
> processes to defend your body against disease." But is this not an example
> of *micro evolution*, so-called? It is hardly the _real thing_ . Indeed,
> where - except in the *minds* of its protagonists - are we to find even
> one clear-cut example of *macro* evolution?
>

Vernon,

I suggest you take a good look at Francis Collins's lecture "Faith and the
Human Genome", at

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/2003/PSCF9-03Collins.pdf

Francis Collins was head of the Human Genome project, an extremely high
profile scientist, who is also a highly committed evangelical Christian. He
was converted in his 20's from being self-admittedly a highly obnoxious
atheist whom you wouldn't want to go to lunch with, to a Christian, by
reading C.S. Lewis's "Mere Christianity", and being forced to accept that it
was perfectly rational to be a Christian.

Collins also says that as a scientist he finds the evidence in favour of
(macro) evolution overwhelming. The talk he gives in the above link gives
very compelling evidence that macro-evolution has occurred, notably in the
following quotation. Everything we see is in line with the predictions of
the theory. The following is a key excerpt from his talk. I think it's a
pretty clear cut example of how macro evolution has occurred, by looking at
real data, not by some mental delusion as you suggest.

It is not just a human/mouse comparison
one can do. Eric Green at the Genome Institute
has looked at this same region in many
other species and, in fact, you can find this
same CAPZA2 gene in everything from
chimps down to zebra fishes and a lot of
things in between (see Figure 4). Notice the
pattern. The chimpanzee is almost 100% identical
to the human, except the chimp has a
deletion just before exon 2 that we do not
have. Otherwise the match-up, as in most
cases of human and chimp comparison, is
about 98.5% to 99%. You can see that the
baboon is starting to diverge. The cat and the
dog and the cow all look a lot alike, and
again if you look at the CAPZA2 exons, you
will see that every one of those species has a
nice conserved little segment there. But as
you get further away to rats, mouse, chicken,
two different kinds of pufferfish and then a
zebra fish, about the only thing you see is the
protein encoding regions, while the rest of
the scattered noise goes away. Again, this is
a very compelling kind of pattern in terms of
what one would expect from evolution.

Collins also accepts, just like you and me, that miracles can occur. He has
just brought out a book called "The Language of God", about the genome
project, and about his own faith, which I have on order from Amazon, and am
looking forward to reading. No doubt I'll be reporting back to the list on
what he has to say, if someone else doesn't beat me to it.

Knowing you to be attentive to the Lord's words, I gather you
> accept evolution as a 'tree' that yields *good fruit**.* Possibly you are
> able to defend that view by suggesting a few of its merits.
>

How about: it brought forth you and me; intelligent beings who are able to
sense and worship their creator. Not a bad start.

 If you read Genesis Ch 1 carefully, you will see that it says "Let the
earth bring forth ... plants , seed-bearing fruit etc etc". God endowed
earth with the properties that it could bring forth all this amazing
creation. To me that is the most mind boggling miracle of all. That the
earth did the bringing forth according to the marvellous properties with
which God endowed it.

We should recall that in Colossians Ch 1 it says that Christ is before all
things, and in him all things hold together. If we hold true to that, we
should be able to look unflinchingly at scientific evidence, and find out
just how all things hold together. The elegance and subtlety of God's
creation is truly amazing if you allow yourself to look into the science,
and not just give up and say "That must have been a miracle".

Iain

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Received on Tue Jul 18 19:47:02 2006