From: “Chris Ho-Stuart”
Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian
Subject: Re: faith (was creationism)
> Gladys Swager wrote:
> [snip]
> > Charles Darwin did not originate the idea of Evolution. The idea had
> > been been discussed among philosophers and intellectuals for up to two
> > thousand years, according to the information I have.
Response. (Original and response fairly obvious in the rest):
> That is correct. What Darwin did was to propose a mechanism
> for evolution, and backed up both the phenomenon of evolution
> and his particular model (natural selection) with a massive
> amount of data.
>
> The evidential problems with special creation were apparent
> long before Darwin, and there was plenty of evidence for
> evolution — which is why it had been discussed long before.
> But the problem was… how could it occur?
>
> What changed with Darwin’s publication of “Origins” was the
> arrival of a theory or model able to explain the observed
> facts of living diversity and relationships, and account for
> how evolution occurs; and also a thorough and comprehensive
> argument based on many lines of evidence.
>
> Subsequent work has confirmed and extended those insights,
> to the point where evolution is now as solidly confirmed as
> any scientific theory can be. The only remaining objection
> is religiously motivated, and has nothing to do with any
> empirical evidence.
>
> There are many outstanding questions, of course. Do not imagine
> that scientists think they have all the answers nicely wrapped
> up! But creationists are cut off entirely from the active
> scientific ferment and debate in biology, by their commitment
> to medieval views, already solidly disproved long before Darwin
> came along.
>
> > What Darwin saw in the Galapagos Islands were
> > changes in finches and tortoises due to environmental
> > circumstances.
>
> Actually, we can be much more specific and accurate about what
> Darwin saw. Credit here should be given to other scientists
> as well, in particular John Gould, who took charge of Darwin’s
> bird collections after his return to England, and first pointed
> out, in 1837, that all the Galapagos birds were actually
> closely related finches. Darwin had originally thought his
> collection was much more diverse, including “wrens, gross-beaks
> and blackbirds”.
>
> When Gould pointed out that Darwin had actually collected 13
> different species of finch, Darwin immediately recognized the
> implications…
> “Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one
> small, intimately related group of birds, one might really
> fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this
> archipelago, one species has been taken and modified for
> different ends.”
>
> See
> <http://www.txtwriter.com/Backgrounders/Evolution/EVpage05.html>
>
> The point is that this inference shattered the alternative to
> evolution, which was fixity of species. Darwin recognized that
> the finches were all closely related, and deduced that they were
> all descended from some small original founder population, which
> subsequently diversified in different species.
>
> The scientific evidence is that the finches have diverged from
> about 570,000 thousand years.
> “Genetic Variability and Differentiation in the Galapagos Finches”
> Yang, SY and Patton JL
> Auk 98 (1981)
> This is very recent, in geological time, but enormously too ancient
> for a young earth creationist model.
>
> Creationist handling of this phenomenon is not consistent. On
> the one hand, they can’t admit evolution as understood by
> scientists. On the other hand, it is plain as a pikestaff that
> the Galapagos finches are closely related, and have diversified
> on the islands.
>
> The usual creationist approach is to insist that the
> finches represent “microevolution”, which is different from
> “macroevolution”. The problem is that the diversification of
> the finches is indeed a diversification into fourteen distinct
> species with their own special adaptions. This is macroevolution;
> and once that amount of diversification is accepted there is no
> basis for imputing some bound on how much further they could
> diversify over hundreds of millions of years. The finches do
> represent macroevolution.
>
> The other absurdity is that a young earth creationist model
> would require these finches to have diversified from the common
> stock since their release from Noah’s Ark about six thousand years
> ago or so. That is an enormously rapid bit of evolution — far
> more radical that what is proposed by evolutionists!
>
> > Scientific Creationists say that when he extrapolated
> > from those animals to the whole of nature that he made a
> > mistake. That mistake has been perpetuated by those who saw
> > his theory as the means to take God out of their thinking
> > and their lives.
>
> I still think that the creationists must take a large part
> of the responsibility for fostering a chasm between science
> and Christianity. It is the creationists, far more than the
> evolutionists, who have insisted that God cannot have a
> part in evolution. The plain witness of the natural world
> is evolution, and it is the creationists who are most
> emphatic that God has no part of that.
>
> > In so doing, they have not given God the the praise and honour
> > due because of the wonders of His creation. (I am aware that
> > some do not like the masculine ‘he’ when speaking of God,
> > but there is no other suitable pronoun in English).
>
> Whether God given praise and honour has to do with whether
> or not you believe God exists. This is NOT answered either
> one way or the other by evolution.
>
> > I posed the issue of a younger earth that is not acceptable to
> > evolutionists.
>
> The fact that the earth is way older than you can admit
> was established long before Darwin and the adoption of
> evolution by the scientific community.
>
> > One reference is to the number of Aborigines in Australia in
> > 1788. I have calculated that if only 10 indigineous persons
> > were in Auatralia about 1 200 BC – about 3 000 years before
> > 1788 – and the population doubled every 200 years then in
> > that time there would be about 3 000 Aborigines that has
> > been estimated and recorded in some texts to have been in
> > Australia when the English settlement began.
>
> I think you mean about 300,000 aborigines. This number is
> widely reported. It drives from estimates made in the early
> nineteenth century, and it is not a reliable figure. But I
> am willing to accept it for the sake of argument.
>
> The fact is that population levels are pretty much useless
> for determining the length of occupation. Populations can
> grow extremely quickly, and crash even faster. The classic
> creationist strawman of a nice smooth population growth
> extrapolated for thousands of years is irrelevant.
>
> We determine how long people have lived somewhere by dating
> remains; and never by working back from a current population.
> The Aborigines have been in Australia at least 40,000 years,
> and there is no conflict at all between this and any population
> level.
>
> Recall… your own creationist model has the entire world at
> the time of Christ being populated from 8 individuals over
> less than 3000 years. That is several hundred million people.
> So if you were consistent, you should expect at least
> several hundred million Aborigines in 4000 years. But of
> course, Australia could not support that many people. So it
> had a smaller population, and it would have a smaller
> population even given a million years of occupation.
>
> It is a common creationist lie that “evolutionary” science
> predicts population levels inconsistent with observation.
>
> I do call this a lie. Gladys is the victim, not the originator.
> There is no reason to doubt Gladys’ honesty. But I wish
> she would GIVE A REFERENCE to where she hears this stuff.
>
> In real science, a major clue to population levels is simply
> carrying capacity.
>
> A good reference for a rational consideration of Aboriginal
> occupation of Australia is
> “Economics and the Dreamtime. A hypothetical history”
> by N. G. Butlin, Cambridge Uni Press, 1993.
> As you can tell from the title, this makes considerable
> focus on the kinds of basic economic forces which lead
> people to migrate, occupy and populate a region.
>
> There is another point…. population levels are useless as
> a guide for how long people have been around. But genetic
> diversity is another matter. The fact is that existing human
> diversity is too great to have arisen over 10,000 years. So
> humans have existed as a species for significantly longer than
> this; and cannot be descended exclusively from a few survivors
> of a geologically recent flood.
>
> > Some statistics appear to support an older universe – others a younger
> > universe. What has to be done is to work out the reasons for these
> > differences.
>
> No. What has do be done is for
> –> YOU TO GIVE SOME REFERENCE FOR YOUR CLAIMS <-- >
> WHAT statistics support a young universe?
>
> As far as I know, there are no statistics at all which
> support a young universe. I am quite well informed about
> creationist arguments. Mostly, it attempts to refute the
> abundant evidence for an old universe (badly, I might add).
>
> But evidence FOR a young universe? (Younger than ten thousand
> years.) There is no such “statistic” or evidence. The various
> arguments which purport to be “for” a young universe are
> invariably completely nonsensical, and can easily be shown
> to be nonsense. I invite you, or anyone, to present one of
> these line of evidence. If you are not able to do so, you
> have no business making the claim that they exist. And if you
> are not willing to put up the claims for examination, then the
> comments about “needing to work out the reasons for differences”
> become hypocrisy. You are a better person than that. So please,
> take the risk. Tell me what statistics you mean above.
>
> And welcome back! I hope you had a good break away from the
> Internet. I did.
>
> Best wishes — Chris