>hey guys,
>
>I need some suggestions.Can anyone recommend sources for the laymen which
>shows major flaws, contradictions, inconsistencies, etc.
>with the theories in volved in evolution???
>
>I work in the financial industry and discussions at work have touched on
>these topics with the majority (all laymen as well) feeling that Darwin
> and the others are irrefutable. Any websites or books that would be
>good for this kind of debate/discussion??
>
>Any help would be appreciated.
>
>Darrin
>
Darrin,
I would suggest that a better methodology is to go into your search not
already having your conclusion in hand. Go look at the evidence on both
sides. Since you weren't here last time I was on the reflector I will
tell you my tale. It should be a cautionary note to believers that all is
not well in this apologetical region.
Below is a e-mail extract I sent to an old friend, who has published a
couple of books in creation/evolution and would be known to most on this
list. It was in answer to his question as to what happened to me. For
background, know that I wrote 27 items for the Creation Research Soc.
Quarterly and ghost wrote the evolution section of Josh McDowell's Reasons
Skeptics Should Consider Christianity. I WAS AN ENTHUSIASTIC YEC. And I
would suggest my web site for an alternative.
the e-mail extract dated 12-13-95:
--------
You need to know why I became involved in the issues at all. The source
of the change in my views was that when I became a Christian in the early
70's I was taught that the Bible was opposed to evolution, opposed to an
old earth, and taught a universal world-wide flood.I was a physicist and
so did not know geology. But I went into the oil industry as a
geophysicist where I was forced to learn geology. Professionally as a
geophysicist the great contradiction of my career has been that nothing
of what I was taught by Christians about the geologic record was true.
Not a single fact which differed from conventional geology turned out true
when I went to check it out. This forced me for years to live and act
with one set of principles at work, and another worldview after work, on
weekends and on Sundays.
All the articles I published were attempts to deal with the geological
data in a fashion which was compatible with what I thought the Scripture
was saying. I was really desperate to find some solution to the fact that
creationism was factually wrong. By 1985 I quit writing although a few
things were published later than that. In 1986, I was laid off from my
job with Arco because I was a young-earth creationist. (a freind who had
not previously known of my views found out and told me that was why I was
canned.)
After 1986 I became very disenchanted with what I was pursuing in the area
of creationism. In fact, I rejected it and quit publishing and didn't do
anything in the area for 8 years. I could no longer hold out for a
solution to the geological problems and I knew that what I had proposed
was wrong. I tried to pushed the issue out of sight and go about my
life. I spent about 5 years doing little but playing with nonlinear
programs on my computer. This was recreation for me.But in the back of my
mind I always knew that the Bible talked about a flood (I used to believe
a global flood), and that there was absolutely NO evidence of it in the
geologic record. The thought kept nibbling at me, "If the Bible is the
Word of God, why do we Christians greet every new discovery in science
with scorn or disbelief?" Why should the worshippers of the True God who
created the universe have to disbelieve every observation?
As the years went by and this contradiction remained unresolved, I more
and more became disenchanted with the Christian response to science in
general and finally I found myself becoming disenchanted with
Christianity. My time at church was merely a time to go through the
motions. About 4 years ago, my company hooked up with internet. I found
talk origins and decided to take a peek. The Christian anti-evolutionists
were saying the same things about geology (which I KNEW to be untrue) as
they had said ten years earlier. They were saying things factually wrong
about biology, astronomy and every other science also. Frankly, I found
the atheists to be more honest and forthright about the FACTS of science.
Looking at Talk Origins made me once again come face to face with the
great contradiction of my entire professional life. It made the entire
issue come up again only this time, I was in crisis. I had to make a
decision: Either find a solution to the difficulties or reject
Christianity.
I could not take the road of so many christians who believe that the
early chapters of Genesis were allegorical. I had the following problems
with making Genesis non-historical.
1. No Fall, no need for Jesus.
2. If it is an allegory why didn't God give us an allegory which
represented what happened? This implied to me several options: Either God
was not powerful enough to ensure that His message was delivered (it was
inadvertently messed up), was a poor judge of character in choosing Moses
who messed up the message(Impunes Gods foreknowledge), or God
lied.(Impugns God's honesty).
The issue for me was not inerrancy as many want to make it. It was an
issue of God's character. If God can so mess up the message about
creation, (or lie) how can I trust Him to get the message of Salvation to
me? If He lies, then maybe when I die He will tell me that the joke was
on me, Christianity is wrong and thus it is off to Hell with me. If he
can't ensure the proper message, how can I be sure that he has the power
to deliver on His promises anyway?
As to the flood, I could not see how God could have a global flood because
there was no evidence, but neither could I go with a local flood because
there is no way to have a local, riverine flood, have Noah float down
stream for a year and then land on top of a mountain. That makes NO
logical sense. Neither could I see how the "high mountains" could have
been covered by such an event. If you had a global rainfall, the latent
heat of evaporation given off by the condensing waters would burn the
earth up. But in a local flood, you couldn't get enough water quickly
enough to do what the Bible seemed to be indicating. This problem once
again reinforced the problem that the Bible, supposedly inspired by the
Creator of the Universe, was telling me something that was observationally
erroneous and fictional!
I am sorry to go on so long, but if you are going to hear the story you
are going to have to hear the whole ugly mess.
It was about this time, 1993 that I first heard of two pieces of
biological data. The first was the pseudogenes. I learned that the
chimp, gorilla, gibbon and man have the same, non-working gene inserted at
the same location in their genomes. The odds of this happening by chance
can be illustrated by the following: Assume that 4 individuals from 4
different towns are asked to type the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire
and at some point insert a paragraph from any book they want to choose
from the local public library. When they are finished with their project
and the 4 copies are compared it is found that they not only chose the
same paragraph (the first paragraph of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales), but
they also chose to insert it at the same word and letter in the 4 separate
and independent manuscripts. Unfortunately, I had to learn this from an
atheist and not from a Christian. Christians don't seem to be the first
out there with the bad information for our viewpoint. I frankly think it
is because we do not trust God to be correct.
The second thing I learned was of Gerald Joyce's experiments, the
directed Evolution experiments in which he was finding that many functions
can be performed, even if poorly, by 1 out of 10^6 to 1 out of 10^14
molecules. This means that the odds of finding a useful protein/DNA/RNA
were significantly less than the apologetical books were saying. All the
Christians I asked about this either didn't know it, or tried vainly to
explain why the math didn't kill the probability argument. Once again, I
had to learn of this not from the Christian apologetical books but from
the atheists.
These two points, along with the geological problems of the flood
made me realize that everything I had ever believed was wrong. My the
crisis of faith became critical. I remember one night sitting at my desk
playing with my nonlinear equations when I finally decided that I had to
tell Debi and the kids that I was NOT going to go to church anymore. I
was not going to be hypocritical. I couldn't quite get up the nerve
though. How do you tell a wife of 21 years (at that time) that your
entire world view had changed especially when she and you had felt it was
so important a worldview.
Two weeks later, it hit me like a ton of bricks how to have a flood, a
local flood, exactly like what the Bible describes. I mean everything.
Noah could be on the ark for a year, land on mountains, REAL mountains.
The rainfall was a natural outcome of the cause of the flood. I found a
way to have the first 11 chapter of Genesis to be historical, and not to
have to reject one single piece of modern scientific data. No longer did
I have to dread the next scientific discovery for fear of what it would do
to our apologetics. I could marvel at the discovery and enjoy it. And
Genesis 1-11 actually happened exactly as written (not as interpreted by
most Christians). For instance, you can not show me a single verse in the
Bible which says "animals reproduce according to their kind". Genesis
1:11 says "let the LAND produce vegetation ...according to their various
kinds." Land is the subject not vegetation. Why do we interpret this as
ruling out evolution? Genesis 1:21 says "God created the great creatures
of the sea...according to their kind." It doesn't say the great creatures
reproduce according to their kind. Genesis 1:24 says, "And God said, 'Let
the land produce creatures according to their various kinds." Once again,
it does not say let the creatures produce creatures according to their
various kinds. The view is based upon a "Days of proclamation"
interpretation of Genesis 1. I do not subscribe to the day-age theory,
the intermittent days of progressive creation (paleontology refutes that
view) nor am I a gap person.
My 5 years of recreational study of nonlinear equations let me see exactly
how evolution occurred in punc-eq. There are equations which I stumbled
onto by making typing errors in a computer program which produce screen
characters which evolve by sudden jumps. (Notice I said I made errors
which resulting in an improved program. This invalidates the argument
that a computer program can not be improved by random error. The problem
is that only certain places in the program can be mutated in this way. So
some mutations have greater effect than others) The form is static for a
while then all of a sudden the next iteration the form is entirely
different. Each form's "DNA" is created by a mutation to the previous
forms' "DNA. The living systems are similar being iterative with each
generation. The program is iterative. Some mutations are more important
than others in affecting morphology and that is how evolution proceeds. I
would refer you to a recent (October?) Nature article on Monkey flowers in
which it has been found that only 8 mutations are required to alter a
flower "designed" for bumblebees into one "designed" for hummingbirds.
The morpologies are quite different and it only takes 8 mutations.
I started researching and researching and researching. I finally wrote it
all up in a manuscript. I wanted to know what kind of reaction these
ideas would have. I got 5 young-earthers, and 5 atheists to review the
manuscript. While the book advocates an absolutely historical Bible, the
atheists were not opposed to what I was saying. They all were quite
helpful. Only 2 of the 5 young-earth creationists bothered to respond,
inspite of having agreed to review the book before hand. Who was more
faithful?
Charles, I have something that really works. The atheists knew exactly
what I was doing with the data (arguing for a factually true and inspired
Bible) and they helped me with good critiques and better references for
the book. That does not happen often in the area of creation/evolution.
The view is quite radical and I am selling it and it is selling pretty
well for being such a small operation and for having only been selling
since August. The conservatives do not like my evolutionary views. The
liberals do not like my taking the Scripture seriously. In my opinion
that places me in the correct position. I have the first evolutionary
interpretation of the Bible which allows even for the surgical development
of Eve (this is a point often used by anti-evolutionists to say that
Evolution and the Bible are incompatible.
The only reason I am still a Christian is because at the very last minute
I stumbled onto the views I now beleive. I no longer have to fight
science as if it is some type of enemy. Observational science should not
be an enemy of the religion which worships the True Creator.
Unfortunately, most Christians believe that we have to disbelieve all of
science inorder to save the Scripture. That is sad. Do we really want to
have to disbelieve everything in order to have a valid Bible? I have
since found that many of the atheists on Talk.Origins used to be
young-earth creationists. They too said that they were driven to the same
type of crisis I had.
Enough for now. If you want any details on my views, my book or anything
else I will be glad to share them, but be sure that I am now a man with a
mission to change forever what Christians believe is the relation between
Science and Faith. I may fail but I do explain the data in a positive
way.
I am no longer restricted to explaining why the data doesn't say what it
OBVIOUSLY says. Christianity will continue to shrink until we somehow
reconcile the facts from observation and the facts of our Scripture. And
the approach I took, the different approach you have taken and the
approach most of Christendom has taken will end in failure because we
explain more things away than we actually expain. As Josh McDowell says,
"The heart can not rejoice in what the mind believes is false."
With much respect
glenn
Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm