Theistic Evolution/Old Earth Creationism

[General Mung Beans]

Young Earth Creationism is pretty much considered a steaming pile of BS at this forum however what is your opinion of theists who accept old earth and/or evolution but just think it was guided by God. To note I'm of the theistic evolution perspective myself.

Examples:

http://www.theisticevolution.org/
http://www.theistic-evolution.com/
http://www.answersincreation.org/
http://www.biologos.org/
http://www.reasons.org/

[Anguirus]

They are still wrong and dangerous to science education, but less deluded about certain indisputable facts of geology?

If you seek to understand the process of evolution, conjuring an additional unexplained agent with anthropomorphic qualities will only hinder you. Such an agent was rendered unnecessary by Darwin.

[Vehrec]

Evolution needs god like a fish needs a bicycle. Even less so perhaps!

Old Earth Creationism is basically a fancy way of saying 'the bible is obviously wrong, but I don't want to admit this fact, so let's have some complicated explanation that allows for geological time and radiocarbon dating. They have no evidence, and admit the validity of geology up to a point, making them even worse than YECs in my book.

Theistic Evolution can pretty much be ruled out as a 'theory', it's more a metaphsycial stance that people believe regardless of evidence to the contrary. According to these individuals, Evolution is directed or started by god and then allowed to run it's course. But Evolution doesn't need a guiding hand, Abiogenesis doesn't need a magic finger in the dust, and the Big Bang does not need a prime mover. Creation does not imply a Creator-especially when you deal with vast spans of geological time.

[Liberty]

I tend to agree. They accept that evolution happened, which is good. I don't mind people thinking there is some sort of deistic god out there somewhere, or even equating "god" with "mother earth," but it becomes a problem if one explains the stickier points of evolution with a simple "that's where god comes in" (i.e., abiogenesis), rather than trying to understand it.

Oh, and, theistic evolutionists don't come right out and say "the Bible is wrong." They don't believe the Bible should be all read as literal in the first place. Their view of the Bible is completely different from that of fundamentalists, and evolution fits in quite well.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Young Earth Creationism is pretty much considered a steaming pile of BS at this forum however what is your opinion of theists who accept old earth and/or evolution but just think it was guided by God. To note I'm of the theistic evolution perspective myself.

It's still a steaming pile of bullshit. If you accept the mechanics of evolution, then why dirty it up by invoking a supernatural actor? What does the presence of the supernatural actor do, apart from give you a warm, fuzzy feeling that yes, you are a unique snowflake; and not just an ape with delusions of grandeur. Though "theistic evolutionists" are still an improvement over Old-Earth Cretin-ists . . . but that's a bit like saying coprophilia is an improvement over necrophilia.

[Serafina]

Well, both say "science is right, but god did it anyway".
Of course, they have no room where they can say WHAT or WHEN god did it. All they can do is point at a yet-unexplained observation and claim that god influenced it somehow. Oh, and sometimes god is brought up as a selective pressure to direct evolution, since it's pretty hard to determien the exact selective pressures that happened in the past.
That's just a god of the gaps fallacy, of course - our knowledge get's bigger and bigger and their version of god smaller and smaller.

Either way, at least they do not reject science. They try to inject their beliefs into it, but they do no immedeate (or apparent, at least to me) damage with it.

[General Zod]

Young Earth Creationism is pretty much considered a steaming pile of BS at this forum however what is your opinion of theists who accept old earth and/or evolution but just think it was guided by God. To note I'm of the theistic evolution perspective myself.

Examples:

http://www.theisticevolution.org/
http://www.theistic-evolution.com/
http://www.answersincreation.org/
http://www.biologos.org/
http://www.reasons.org/

Did you actually read over any of these sites or did you just dig up a bunch of creationist websites and throw them out in order to get a reaction? Adding "god did it" to evolution is still complete bullshit because it still assumes that God must exist and be responsible for events with no observations to support the assumption whatsoever.

[Samuel]

The defining part of evolution is selection. Which is a nice way of saying "individuals die horribly and the survivors determine the future gene pool". You can have theistic evolution, but it would be both incredibly immoral and impractical.

That and the fact you have a large number of dead ends (goodbye trilobites!) makes it even more asinine.

[Serafina]

Actually, i wouldn't regard a god who shapes evolution by killing of certain animals and aiding others to be that immoral.
Perhaps it's amoral to be a "god in the sandbox", but i find it hard to assess it's morality such that i can call it immoral, simply because i can not determine whether the changes were done out of cruelty, a worthwhile goal or for any other reason - and whether they were, overall, better than what would have happened naturally or not.

That is, of course, if you assume a god who is limited in power. If you have an omnipotent god, creating a universe where such measures are necessary is morally wrong.

[Kanastrous]

Young Earth Creationism is pretty much considered a steaming pile of BS at this forum

Not just at this forum. I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that YEC is regarded as a giggle-worthy crock by all but a tiny eccentric percentage of professional scientists in every field upon which it presumes to touch.

The fact that you imply that it's just 'at this forum' makes me wonder about you, General.

however what is your opinion of theists who accept old earth and/or evolution but just think it was guided by God.

Wish-fulfilling fantasy fans? What need of God to explain the processes if you 'accept' the extensively documented physical evidence for both an 'old' Earth and for the evolutionary model? Makes you sleep better at night if you need that sort of thing, but it's extraneous to 'old Earth' or evolutionary theory.

To note I'm of the theistic evolution perspective myself.

I know I'm going to regret this, but...your evidence? That is to say, your *new* evidence, not regurgitated bullshit that's been demonstrated as worthless, time and again whenever someone chooses to barf it out...

Examples:

http://www.theisticevolution.org/

<snip desperate scrabbling to maintain la-la happy bible fantasy-land>

I got as far as 'The credibility of Christianity is at stake' and abandoned it. Can't place at-stake what you don't have to begin with.

[Akhlut]

Theistic evolution is only good insofar as it means people will accept science to some extent.

It is also nonsensical to anyone who really understands evolution. Evolution is a blind process, selecting only what will work for the moment and never selecting for something in the far future. To think that humans are the endpoint and goal of evolution is rather sad and is putting the cart before the horse. If we are to accept that theistic evolution is true, one must then immediately conclude that humans are little more than an interesting sideshow to the most important group of macroscopic life: beetles.

[Kanastrous]

Really, it's sort of like this desperate begging - aw, I know that the evidence is entirely against my faith where it presumes to explain the real world, but couldja pleeeeeze just play along and agree that my invisible sky man was involved *somehow*...?

[Packbat]

It might not be "desperate begging", Kanastrous - it could be a simple refusal to draw the conclusion that God was not involved. Sort of like how lots of people refused to draw the conclusion that Pluto was not a planet that the Earth went around the Sun.*

* Edited because I don't want to argue about the definition of a planet.

[Kanastrous]

Sometimes it's desperate begging. Sometimes it's insistent self-righteous demands. Sometimes it's merely an internal monologue. It's pretty much equally distasteful in any way.

I don't think the Pluto analogy is a good one; whether or not a given astronomer wants to call Pluto a planet there's no question that it's there, can be seen through a telescope, its orbit can be calculated, it's a real object existing in the observable universe whose influence upon other bodies can be measured. Unlike any facet of the God-did-this-or-that bullshit. And the heliocentric solar system is a poor analogy too since at least a geocentricist is talking about the relationship between two real objects, not between real objects and figments of his own imagination.

[Akhlut]

More like astrology, then.

Yeah, I think I like that analogy a lot. Theistic evolution is like astrology; both rely on using real, material objects/concepts and using them to justify some shit-for-brains metaphysics that doesn't make sense when you examine it in any detail.

[Packbat]

I'm talking about the mechanism that generated the conclusion, not the conclusion. Yeah, when it comes to shit-for-brains-itude, theistic evolution is more like astrology, but the reasons for believing theistic evolution seem to come down to an unwillingness to reject a belief inculcated from youth. An unwillingness which, I argue, backs the refusal to acknowledge the differences between Pluto and the 'other' eight planets. "I was told Pluto is a planet, therefore it must belong in the same category with the four gas giants and the four terrestrial planets, not with this Kuiper belt thing I never heard of" differs in degree, not in kind, from "I was told God created humanity, therefore evolution must be a tool that God uses to design creatures, rather than an uncontrolled, undirected, and inhuman optimization process."

Of course, it differs even less with "I was told God created humanity, therefore these dinosaur bones must be from creatures that died in the Great Flood." Theistic evolutionists simply rationalize their belief with more science than other old- and young-earth creationists.

[Kanastrous]

The problem I find with that is just that calling Pluto a planet or not doesn't seem to threaten an individual's entire sense of self, of reality, of place-in-the-universe the way that admitting or not-admitting the God-did-whatever business seems to affect believers.

I mean, you don't usually see the kind of fight-or-flight emotional-territorial responses from astronomy fans with regard to Pluto that you encounter with the deity fans. Yeah, sure, people get excited over the Pluto thing. People don't go to war over it.

If it were a matter of I was taught that Pluto was there and it isn't, that would be a better analogy.

[Packbat]

True enough. "Pluto is a planet" lacks the emotional ties and network of dependent beliefs that "God created humanity" has, and so is not likely to attract the same kind of fanaticism.

I still contest "desperate begging", though. The theistic evolutionists I've seen don't seem desperate. That's the domain of the intelligent design proponents.

[Kanastrous]

The theistic evolutionists I've seen don't seem desperate. That's the domain of the intelligent design proponents.

[Simon_Jester]

I'm talking about the mechanism that generated the conclusion, not the conclusion. Yeah, when it comes to shit-for-brains-itude, theistic evolution is more like astrology...

I disagree.

Astrology is purely made up, and effectively denies facts about reality.

Theistic evolution is only partially made up; it denies no facts about reality and its only real intellectual problem is that it posits unnecessary invisible entities.

I can live with theistic evolution; it's not a threat to my high school science curriculum. Young Earth Creationism is.

[Channel72]

In general, people who believe in theistic evolution are generally reasonable in the sense that they respect science, but they probably haven't really studied either evolution or Christian theology at any real depth. Their religious predilections aren't powerful enough to drive them over the edge into fundy-land, so they simply adopt theistic evolution as a good compromise. But really, let's face it, Judeo-Christian cosmology is totally incompatible with biological evolution. Death and extinction are critical components of evolution. This is completely incongruent with the Judeo-Christian idea of a death-free paradise in Eden prior to the Fall. Ironically, fundamentalists often bring up precisely this point when debating against proponents of theistic evolution.

[Liberty]

Think of it like this:

Liberal Christian believes in God. Liberal Christian learns that science says all life evolved. Evolution doesn't automatically disprove God. The liberal Christian determines that all life evolved, but God was still there somewhere, perhaps involved in small ways, or perhaps not, but still there. Some theistic evolutionists limit God to just starting the big bang. Which isn't as ridiculous as you might think, because scientists are still trying to figure out how that got started. And really, most are theistic evolutionists because the believe in god, not because they think evolution is flawed and needed help.

The problem is that god is still largely a god of the gaps. We don't understand what started the big bang? God! We don't understand how the first life started? God! This negatively affects scientific study. And yes, it still is an invisible sky fairy.

[Packbat]

I'm talking about the mechanism that generated the conclusion, not the conclusion. Yeah, when it comes to shit-for-brains-itude, theistic evolution is more like astrology...

I disagree.

Astrology is purely made up, and effectively denies facts about reality.

Theistic evolution is only partially made up; it denies no facts about reality and its only real intellectual problem is that it posits unnecessary invisible entities.

And "Pluto is a planet" makes up nothing, and its only intellectual problem is that it is inelegant. On the grounds of "harm to the school system", yes, theistic evolution is more like Pluto planethood, but on intellectual grounds the case tips the other way.

[Starman7]

Isn't this a violation of Occam's razor, and therefore quite contrary to actual scientific thought?

I acknowledge that it's a possibility, but it simply takes the gaps in our knowledge and tacks something untestable on top of it, tripping over the God of the Gaps fallacy to boot.

[Lord of the Abyss]

I'd put the argument over Pluto in an entirely separate category, since it is an argument over which human created definition to assign to Pluto. God either exists, or he doesn't; he was either involved in evolution or he wasn't; those are questions of fact. But if we tomorrow collectively decided that from now on we'll just call all the planets and asteroids and Pluto "sky lumps" that would be just as true as our present system, or the one that assigned Pluto the name of planet.

The defining part of evolution is selection. Which is a nice way of saying "individuals die horribly and the survivors determine the future gene pool".

Actually no. Evolution is about the survival and propagation of your genes regardless of your personal survival. If an individual dies horribly but propagates itself in the process, while another lives to a ripe old age but never has offspring, it is the horribly dead critter that is the Darwinian success. Selection is about the propagation of genes, not life or death.

Isn't this a violation of Occam's razor, and therefore quite contrary to actual scientific thought?

Definitely, and it's a good example of why Occam's Razor is useful. Without applying the Razor you can tack on any ridiculous claim you like to a theory as long as you carefully avoid making it outright disprovable.