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The shoe that fits Theistic Evolutionists

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  • The shoe that fits Theistic Evolutionists

    A recent letter written to the editor in USA TODAY. It rather well summarizes how Evolutionists regard the “moderate Christian” who believe that God and Evolution are compatible. (“moderate Christian” -- false label alert!)


    No Middle Ground between God and science

    Infusing theology into science via concepts like “divine evolution” is no improvement to science, notwithstanding Tom Krattenmaker’s recent claims in USA TODAY’s column “Creationism support is at a new low.” “Divine evolution” isn’t only wrong, it’s also intellectually dishonest and almost always hypocritical. [emphasis mine]

    The scientific concept of evolution isn't simply a collection of observations regarding changes in species or the frequencies of gene variants over time. It is also a theory—which is to say, an explanation.

    And, unlike “divine evolution,” the scientific explanation is that evolution is an unplanned, unguided, natural process. Natural and supernatural explanations are inherently incompatible, no matter how much moderate theists may want to embrace both. Although moderate Christians often disparage fundamentalist views, they too promote evolution by miracle. Invoking divine intervention to explain evolution is no more scientific (or credible) than is claiming that hurricanes are God’s punishment to strike the wicked.

    In that respect, Williams [sic] Jennings Bryan, the creationist, antievolution prosecutor in the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, had it right: “One miracle is just as easy to believe as another.” Or, as defending attorney Clarence Darrow retorted: “Just as hard.”

    “God did it” can explain anything, and hence explains nothing. Supernatural explanations don’t improve science, They impede it.

    —USA Today Letter to Editor, July 20th 2017, Gregory A. Clark, p.



    As most of you well know I've been preaching that and other similar messages to TE's since my first day here on TWeb. Give in to the Evolutionary myth as a "Christian" and you earn contempt, not admiration, from Evolutionists. TEs are tolerated (barely!) by hardcore Evolutionists in the sense of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". Except that Evolutionists don't consider TEs as "friends", only as useful idiots. That is the status that TEs have earned for themselves - it is the shoe that fits.

    Jorge

  • #2
    So you are saying that people should determine their beliefs by who "admires" them or holds them in contempt?

    Comment


    • #3
      His letter is retarded and you couldn't jam more cliches into him if you tried.
      "As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths." Isaiah 3:12

      There is no such thing as innocence, only degrees of guilt.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by Jorge View Post
        A recent letter written to the editor in USA TODAY. It rather well summarizes how Evolutionists regard the “moderate Christian” who believe that God and Evolution are compatible. (“moderate Christian” -- false label alert!)


        No Middle Ground between God and science

        Infusing theology into science via concepts like “divine evolution” is no improvement to science, notwithstanding Tom Krattenmaker’s recent claims in USA TODAY’s column “Creationism support is at a new low.” “Divine evolution” isn’t only wrong, it’s also intellectually dishonest and almost always hypocritical. [emphasis mine]

        The scientific concept of evolution isn't simply a collection of observations regarding changes in species or the frequencies of gene variants over time. It is also a theory—which is to say, an explanation.

        And, unlike “divine evolution,” the scientific explanation is that evolution is an unplanned, unguided, natural process. Natural and supernatural explanations are inherently incompatible, no matter how much moderate theists may want to embrace both. Although moderate Christians often disparage fundamentalist views, they too promote evolution by miracle. Invoking divine intervention to explain evolution is no more scientific (or credible) than is claiming that hurricanes are God’s punishment to strike the wicked.

        In that respect, Williams [sic] Jennings Bryan, the creationist, antievolution prosecutor in the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, had it right: “One miracle is just as easy to believe as another.” Or, as defending attorney Clarence Darrow retorted: “Just as hard.”

        “God did it” can explain anything, and hence explains nothing. Supernatural explanations don’t improve science, They impede it.

        —USA Today Letter to Editor, July 20th 2017, Gregory A. Clark, p.



        As most of you well know I've been preaching that and other similar messages to TE's since my first day here on TWeb. Give in to the Evolutionary myth as a "Christian" and you earn contempt, not admiration, from Evolutionists. TEs are tolerated (barely!) by hardcore Evolutionists in the sense of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". Except that Evolutionists don't consider TEs as "friends", only as useful idiots. That is the status that TEs have earned for themselves - it is the shoe that fits.

        Jorge
        I really don't give a flying poop sickle whether the more militant atheists like a Richard Dawkins thinks I'm "deluded" (his expressed opinion about Theistic Evolutionists) or if PZ Myers "loathes" me (his expressed opinion about Theistic Evolutionists) any more than I care what Neil deGrasse Tyson thinks of me as a Christian who accepts that the earth orbits the sun and not the other way around.

        I believe in God and am a Christian and I think that the scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports evolution. That being the case I believe that God is responsible for evolution just like He's responsible for gravity, atomic structure, photosynthesis or any other mechanism or process.

        I'm always still in trouble again

        "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
        "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
        "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by Jorge View Post
          A recent letter written to the editor in USA TODAY. It rather well summarizes how Evolutionists regard the “moderate Christian” who believe that God and Evolution are compatible. (“moderate Christian” -- false label alert!)


          No Middle Ground between God and science

          Infusing theology into science via concepts like “divine evolution” is no improvement to science, notwithstanding Tom Krattenmaker’s recent claims in USA TODAY’s column “Creationism support is at a new low.” “Divine evolution” isn’t only wrong, it’s also intellectually dishonest and almost always hypocritical. [emphasis mine]

          The scientific concept of evolution isn't simply a collection of observations regarding changes in species or the frequencies of gene variants over time. It is also a theory—which is to say, an explanation.

          And, unlike “divine evolution,” the scientific explanation is that evolution is an unplanned, unguided, natural process. Natural and supernatural explanations are inherently incompatible, no matter how much moderate theists may want to embrace both. Although moderate Christians often disparage fundamentalist views, they too promote evolution by miracle. Invoking divine intervention to explain evolution is no more scientific (or credible) than is claiming that hurricanes are God’s punishment to strike the wicked.

          In that respect, Williams [sic] Jennings Bryan, the creationist, antievolution prosecutor in the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, had it right: “One miracle is just as easy to believe as another.” Or, as defending attorney Clarence Darrow retorted: “Just as hard.”

          “God did it” can explain anything, and hence explains nothing. Supernatural explanations don’t improve science, They impede it.

          —USA Today Letter to Editor, July 20th 2017, Gregory A. Clark, p.



          As most of you well know I've been preaching that and other similar messages to TE's since my first day here on TWeb. Give in to the Evolutionary myth as a "Christian" and you earn contempt, not admiration, from Evolutionists. TEs are tolerated (barely!) by hardcore Evolutionists in the sense of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". Except that Evolutionists don't consider TEs as "friends", only as useful idiots. That is the status that TEs have earned for themselves - it is the shoe that fits.

          Jorge
          The person who wrote this letter to the editor is conflating his atheistic worldview with scientific theory. The only type of evolution that he can imagine is unplanned, unguided, and dysteleological. He can't imagine a divinely guided, teleological process. His perspective is as narrow-minded as Dawkins' or Jorge's.

          Modern "evolutionary creationists" accept all of the science of evolution, but see it as God's method of creating. But this is not a new view; it was held by leading theologians in the past such as B.B. Warfield. It is also not a fringe view; it is held by respected scientists such as Simon Conway Morris.
          "Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind." – Albert Einstein

          Comment


          • #6
            I've always found one guy's letter to the editor will always perfectly encapsulate the diversity of thought in a large group of humans.

            (How do you add sarcasm tags at TWeb?)
            "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
              I've always found one guy's letter to the editor will always perfectly encapsulate the diversity of thought in a large group of humans.

              (How do you add sarcasm tags at TWeb?)
              [sarcasm]like this[/sarcasm]

              you end up with this

              For the sarcastically impaired the following is said in jest

              like this


              I'm always still in trouble again

              "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
              "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
              "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Sparko View Post
                So you are saying that people should determine their beliefs by who "admires" them or holds them in contempt?
                Of course not. You've just provided an excellent example of the logical fallacy non sequitur.

                Leave it to you people to take whatever I say in the worst possible way. You must be taking lessons from O-Mudd.

                Jorge

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Darth Executor View Post
                  His letter is retarded and you couldn't jam more cliches into him if you tried.
                  Except for the fact that we hear the same rhetoric coming from countless hardcore Evolutionists.
                  Kind'a destroys your post in one fell swoop, DE.

                  Jorge

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
                    I really don't give a flying poop sickle whether the more militant atheists like a Richard Dawkins thinks I'm "deluded" (his expressed opinion about Theistic Evolutionists) or if PZ Myers "loathes" me (his expressed opinion about Theistic Evolutionists) any more than I care what Neil deGrasse Tyson thinks of me as a Christian who accepts that the earth orbits the sun and not the other way around.

                    I believe in God and am a Christian and I think that the scientific evidence overwhelmingly supports evolution. That being the case I believe that God is responsible for evolution just like He's responsible for gravity, atomic structure, photosynthesis or any other mechanism or process.
                    There you go AGAIN setting up misrepresentations and Straw Men in order to justify your anti-biblical beliefs.

                    I too believe that there is "overwhelming scientific evidence for 'evolution' ". But there is no real scientific evidence for Evolution and absolutely ZERO theological evidence for Evolution -- that is, unless the Bible is distorted to make it say what you want it to say (which is what TEs do invariably and often).

                    As for your logical (non sequitur) nonsense -- "God is responsible for gravity, photosynthesis, etc." --again, evolution (change) does indeed occur. That is verifiable, testable, observable, reproducible. To go from those facts to conclude that "therefore, that is how God created all life" is a perversion of logic - sort'a like saying "all men are mortal" and as a consequence we must conclude that Hillary Clinton is a sweet old lady that always tells the truth.

                    Jorge

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by Kbertsche View Post
                      The person who wrote this letter to the editor is conflating his atheistic worldview with scientific theory. The only type of evolution that he can imagine is unplanned, unguided, and dysteleological. He can't imagine a divinely guided, teleological process. His perspective is as narrow-minded as Dawkins' or Jorge's.

                      Modern "evolutionary creationists" accept all of the science of evolution, but see it as God's method of creating. But this is not a new view; it was held by leading theologians in the past such as B.B. Warfield. It is also not a fringe view; it is held by respected scientists such as Simon Conway Morris.
                      Being a "respected scientist" does not imply that the person is intellectually honest or a good theologian or understands Christianity properly. The Pharisees knew their "scriptures" forwards and backwards yet Christ told them repeatedly that they "understood NOT". Albert Einstein is regarded as one of the greatest scientists of all time yet many of his theological views were, from an orthodox Christian perspective, wrong to the point of being heretical/blasphemous.

                      So try again, KB. Stop using poor logic to defend your faulty position.

                      Jorge

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        And BB Warfield? Kirk gave you 2 examples, one from the theological side, one as a scientist. Both respected in their field and professing Christians.

                        Jim
                        My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. James 2:1

                        If anyone thinks himself to be religious, and yet does not  bridle his tongue but deceives his own heart, this man’s religion is worthless James 1:26

                        This you know, my beloved brethren. But everyone must be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; James 1:19

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Jorge View Post
                          There you go AGAIN setting up misrepresentations and Straw Men in order to justify your anti-biblical beliefs.

                          I too believe that there is "overwhelming scientific evidence for 'evolution' ". But there is no real scientific evidence for Evolution and absolutely ZERO theological evidence for Evolution -- that is, unless the Bible is distorted to make it say what you want it to say (which is what TEs do invariably and often).

                          As for your logical (non sequitur) nonsense -- "God is responsible for gravity, photosynthesis, etc." --again, evolution (change) does indeed occur. That is verifiable, testable, observable, reproducible. To go from those facts to conclude that "therefore, that is how God created all life" is a perversion of logic - sort'a like saying "all men are mortal" and as a consequence we must conclude that Hillary Clinton is a sweet old lady that always tells the truth.

                          Jorge
                          Your problem here (well, one of many) is that you have your own definition for many words and phrases that doesn't correspond to the accepted definition. For instance you have what you have called the "General Theory of Evolution" (GToE) which is nothing more than a grab bag of various things that you don't like and often have nothing whatsoever to do with evolutionary theory. Your "GToE" includes things like natural star formation, extrasolar planets and plate tectonics.

                          What is amusing is that over the years the leading YEC groups, such as AnswersinGenesis (AiG), have increasingly accepted if not outright embraced the core elements of evolution. Things like natural selection and mutations giving rise to new species as well as genetic drift -- things that they fought against tooth and nail a few decades ago (they used to declare that the Bible clearly teaches that new species arose separately through divine intervention)

                          Source: HEARD OF ELEPHANTS?


                          The “culling” of some of this information by natural selection (plus other factors, such as “genetic drift” —chance loss in small populations)

                          © Copyright Original Source


                          Source: Science or the Bible?


                          Operation science uses the so-called “scientific method” to attempt to discover truth, performing observable, repeatable experiments in a controlled environment to find patterns of recurring behavior in the present physical universe. For example, we can test gravity, study the spread of disease, or observe speciation in the lab or in the wild. Both creationists and evolutionists use this kind of science, which has given rise to computers, space shuttles, and cures for diseases. ... Of course, evolutionary scientists can test their interpretations using operation science. For instance, evolutionists point to natural selection and speciation—which are observable today.

                          © Copyright Original Source


                          Source: Top Ten: Myth 10: Creationists Don’t Believe Species Change


                          A popular caricature of creationists is that we teach the fixity of species (i.e., species don’t change). And since species obviously do change, evolutionists enjoy setting up this straw-man argument to win a debate that was never really there in the first place... Species changing via natural selection and mutations is perfectly in accord with what the Bible teaches. Such changes are not evolution

                          © Copyright Original Source


                          Actually, that is also at the core of what Darwin was saying in On the Origin of Species So it seems they now accept these things just as long as they're called anything other than evolution (I propose "Biblical adaptionism")

                          Very recently Creation Ministries International (CMI) even announced that macroevolution (evolutionary change at or above the species level -- although that's yet another thing you've made up your ow definition for), the ultimate YEC boogeyman, is real when they added "Creationists believe in microevolution but not macroevolution" to their "What arguments are doubtful, hence inadvisable to use" section on their "Arguments we think creationists should NOT use" page.

                          They claim "we do observe quite ‘macro’ changes that involve no new information." But in fact we do[1] see increases in information, but the important thing here is after long last they are finally conceding that macroevolution does take place.

                          Slowly but surely YECs are finally entering the 20th century. Someday they may even make it to the 21st.








                          1. An ability to digest and gain nutrition from new food sources counts as a gain in information. For instance, most people lose the ability to digest milk when they hit puberty but several thousand years ago, after the domestication of cattle and goats, various groups of people in Europe and Africa independently acquired mutations that permitted them to continue digesting milk into adulthood.

                          Ask any biologist about this and he will confirm that the genetic mutation that allowed this constitutes a gain in information. Similarly, when different bacteria have a mutation that allows them to digest things that they could not consume previously -- and in some cases were toxic to them -- that is a gain in information.

                          Or take a look at Old World monkeys have a mutation in a protein called TRIM5 that resulted in the formation of a new protein called TRIM5α or TRIM5alpha that prevents them from getting infected by HIV and several other retroviruses. A similar mutation in some New World monkeys that created a new protein called TRIMCyp (or TRIM5-CypA) isn't as effective as the one in Old World monkeys but also appears to grant some immunity to HIV.

                          In both cases though we are looking at new proteins with new functions thanks to new information.
                          Last edited by rogue06; 08-06-2017, 07:12 PM.

                          I'm always still in trouble again

                          "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                          "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                          "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by oxmixmudd View Post
                            And BB Warfield? Kirk gave you 2 examples, one from the theological side, one as a scientist. Both respected in their field and professing Christians.

                            Jim
                            Benjamin B. Warfield, regarded as the great the great conservative champion of biblical inerrancy and whose influence can be seen in the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (in that he was probably the most vocal advocate of Biblical Inerrancy) once referred to himself as a "Darwinian of the purest water." He noted, in 1915 while commenting on Calvin’s use of the distinction between primary and secondary causes, that

                            All that has come into being since [the original creation of the world stuff] – except the souls of men alone – has arisen as a modification of this original world-stuff by means of the interaction of its intrinsic forces…. [These modifications] find their account proximately in ‘secondary causes’; and this is not only evolution but pure evolutionism.


                            Warfield explained that "If under the directing hand of God a human body is formed at a leap by propagation from brutish parents [that is, per saltum evolution (evolution by mutation)], it would be quite consonant with the fitness of things that it should be provided by his creative energy with a truly human soul." IOW, God created the matter of the universe with the forces of nature ex nihilo, through evolution he providentially formed man, and by a special act of mediate creation he created the soul of humans.[1]

                            Warfield considered evolution as a valid theory but was noncommittal on its correctness (no surprise since the science was in its infancy). Recently, historians Livingstone and Noll have argued that Warfield abandoned the theory of evolution temporarily but that over the course of his career came increasingly again to embrace it.

                            But he was hardly alone.



                            The other great leader of Biblical Inerrancy was Archibald Hodge, son of the eminent theologian Charles Hodge[2], wrote in the Introduction to Theism and Evolution by Joseph S. Van Dyke and reprinted in The Princeton Theology:

                            Evolution considered as the plan of an infinitely wise Person and executed under the control of His everywhere present energies can never be irreligious; can never exclude design, providence, grace, or miracles. Hence we repeat that what Christians have cause to consider with apprehension is not evolution as a working hypothesis of science dealing with facts, but evolution as a philosophical speculation professing to account for the origin, causes, and end of all things.




                            James Orr, an influential defender of evangelical doctrine and a contributor to The Fundamentals (as were some of the others mentioned here) and vocal critic of theological liberalism, advocated a position which he called "theistic evolution" which he defined as those evolutionists who "held that the development of an organism could not be explained without the assumptions of intelligence and purpose," and looked with favor on the work of such theistic evolutionists as St. George Mivart and Alfred Wallace (the latter is the co-founder of the Theory of Evolution along with Darwin). In God's Image in Man, and Its Defacement in the Light of Modern Denials, Orr maintained that God supernaturally guided the evolutionary process leading to humanity.

                            Orr declared that "evolution" was just "a new name for 'creation'," and said "man's origin can only be explained through an exercise of direct creative activity, whatever subordinate factors evolution may have contributed." His The Christian View of God and the World contains a good bit of speculation about how the new evolutionary ideas might actually support Christianity.



                            Augustus Hopkins Strong was perhaps the most respected Baptist theologian of the 19th and early 20th centuries and served as the president of Rochester Theological Seminary in New York State and who is regarded as being consistently orthodox, had no difficulties accepting evolution.

                            On page 223 of Miscellanies, Volume 2 we read that "We have lost all our fear of evolution since we discovered it is simply the method of God, only the glove which can do nothing apart from the hand within the glove..."

                            Strong, in his Systematic Theology (which has been a mainstay of Baptist theological education even today and still required reading in some conservative Christian colleges), wrote that "We grant the principle of evolution, but we regard it as only the method of divine intelligence." He said that the brutish ancestry of human beings was in no way incompatible with our excelling status as creatures in the image of God. He drew an analogy with Christ's miraculous conversion of water into wine saying that "The wine in the miracle was not water because water had been used in the making of it, nor is man a brute because the brute has made some contributions to its creation."

                            During the 17th Annual Sessions of the Baptist Congress held in the Delaware Baptist Church in Buffalo, New York during November of 1898 Strong submitted a paper tackling the issue of "Man's Fall and Redemption in Light of Evolution" where he made it quite clear that "Evolution does not exclude Christianity" and immediately followed with

                            "If we were deists, believing in a distant God and a mechanical universe, evolution and Christianity would be irreconcilable. But since we believe in a dynamical universe, of which the personal and living God is the inner source of energy, evolution is but the basis, foundation and background of Christianity, the silent and regular working of him who, in the fullness of time, utters his voice in Christ and the Cross."


                            A little later Strong stated that

                            "Evolution declares that [man] is the product of resident forces, the outgrowth of previous forms of life, the crown and culmination of a long course of palaeontological history. Scripture declares him to be the creation of God. But, if we have grasped the conception that these resident forces are only the manifestation of God's mind and will, then we can see that the biological solution does not exclude the theological. To all intents and purposes, these forces are God; for the will of God is the only real force in nature ... That man is the offspring of the brute creation does not prevent him from being also the offspring of God."


                            Strong also thought that evolution wasn't just compatible with design, but rather that it enriches design by removing some traditional objections to the teleological argument (it answered objections that imperfections in nature was evidence against a benevolent design).



                            And Strong is hardly the only esteemed Baptist to hold such views. William Louis Poteat who served as president of Wake Forest University from 1905 until 1927 defended the teaching of evolution as the "divine method of creation," arguing it was fully compatible with Baptist beliefs and was largely responsible for persuading the North Carolina General Assembly to defeat a bill that would have banned the teaching of evolution around the time of the Scopes Trial in neighboring Tennessee.


                            While on the subject of Baptists, Billy Graham, perhaps the greatest evangelist of our time and a staunch supporter of Biblical inerrancy wrote in his autobiography Billy Graham: Personal Thoughts of a Public Man (written with the help of David Frost):

                            "I don't think that there's any conflict at all between science today and the Scriptures. I think that we have misinterpreted the Scriptures many times and we've tried to make the Scriptures say things they weren't meant to say, I think that we have made a mistake by thinking the Bible is a scientific book. The Bible is not a book of science. The Bible is a book of Redemption, and of course I accept the Creation story. I believe that God did create the universe. I believe that God created man, and whether it came by an evolutionary process and at a certain point He took this person or being and made him a living soul or not, does not change the fact that God did create man ... I personally believe that it's just as easy to accept the fact that God took some dust and blew on it and out came a man as it is to accept the fact that God breathed upon man and he became a living soul and it started with some protoplasm and went right on up through the evolutionary process. Either way is by faith and whichever God did it makes no difference as to what man is and man's relationship to God."


                            And this wasn't something that Graham has only recently come to believe. Over 50 years ago Graham is quoted in the United Church Observer in July of 1966 as saying that "How you believe doesn’t affect the doctrine. Either at a certain moment in evolution God breathed into one particular ape-man who was Adam, or God could have taken a handful of dust and blowed and created a man just like that."



                            J.I. Packer, considered one of the most influential evangelicals in North America, another defender of Biblical Inerrancy and is theologian emeritus of the Anglican Church in North America, wrote an endorsement for the pro-TE anti-ID book called Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? in 2008 and has said that he could not see anything that bears on the biological theory of evolution one way or the other.

                            the biblical narratives of creation... don't obviously say anything that bears one way or another on the question of whether the evolutionary hypothesis might be true or not...


                            More recently he "heartily commend[ed]" in the forward another theistic evolutionary work, Melvin Tinker's Reclaiming Genesis. And when he was shown the quote from Billy Graham (see above) Packer's response was "Most excellent! My sentiments exactly. Well said!"



                            Henry Ward Beecher the Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, ardent abolitionist (younger brother of Harriet Beecher Stowe) was regarded by many as the greatest clerical orator of his time[3], championed Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution[4], stating that it was not incompatible with Christian beliefs and seeing it as God's means of creation. He wrote that evolution, "will be regarded as uncontradictable as the Copernican system of astronomy, or the Newtonian doctrine of gravitation, can scarcely be doubted" and noted how heliocentrism and gravitational theory had been "charged by the Church, as is Evolution now, with fostering materialism, infidelity, and atheism." And that evolution "will obliterate the distinction between natural and revealed religion, both of which are the testimony of God."

                            Stowe also stated that

                            Evolution will multiply the motives and facilities of righteousness, which was and is the design of the whole Bible. It will not dull the executive doctrines of religion, that is, the forms of them by which an active and reviving ministry arouses men's consciences, by which they inspire faith, repentance, reformation, spiritual communion with God. Not only will those great truths be unharmed, by which men work zealously for the reformation of their fellow-men, but they will be developed to a breadth and certainty not possible in their present philosophical condition... It will change theology, but only to bring out the simple temple of God in clearer and more beautiful lines and proportions.


                            Stowe further remarked that "For myself, while finding no need of changing my idea of the Divine personality because of new light upon His mode of working, I have hailed the Evolutionary philosophy with joy."



                            George Frederick Wright, who pastored Congregational churches in Vermont and Massachusetts before becoming professor and later professor emeritus of New Testament language and literature at Oberlin Theological Seminary, was another outspoken defender of evolutionary theory, and later in life he emphasized his commitment to a form of theistic evolution. Wright believed that humanity was still probably the result of special creation, but he otherwise taught that the creation accounts in Genesis were meant to teach theological truths, and thus should not be expected to reveal scientific knowledge -- that it wasn't meant to be viewed as a scientific tract but rather a polemic against paganism (a view that I hold).

                            Wright argued that an evolutionary natural theology could support belief in God just as well as one based on special creation. “In any case of secondary causation,” he wrote, “we do not care, so far as the argument for the existence of an intelligent designer is concerned, at how many, or at what points, the various elements of design entered.” He noted that Genesis truthfully portrayed "an ordered progress from lower to higher forms of matter and life" that left room for God's creation of life forms with "a marvelous capacity for variation" -- and for Adam and Eve as well.

                            After a crisis of faith in the 1890s brought on by Charles Augustus Briggs' higher criticism, he readjusted his views on origins to line up more closely with a literalist reading of the creation accounts[5]. Although in his later writings, including the chapter he wrote for The Fundamentals, he accepted geologic time, but argued that human origins required divine intervention, and that biological variation extending to form new species would be evidence of design. He stated

                            "By no stretch of legitimate reasoning can Darwinism be made to exclude design. Indeed, if it should be proved that species have developed from others of a lower order, as varieties are supposed to have done, it would strengthen rather than weaken the standard argument from design."


                            That is, he subscribed to theistic evolution.



                            James McCosh, was a Scottish minister before coming to the U.S. in 1868 to become president of Princeton (then the College of New Jersey) where he is credited with laying down the foundations of the world class university that subsequently emerged. McCosh, who was considered to be one of the world's preeminent defenders of the faith[6], viewed evolution as God’s method of creation.

                            While he was one of the more prominent clergyman to assuage the American public's fears concerning evolution while incorporating evolution into a conservative Christian worldview it is interesting to note that he was initially extremely hostile to evolution

                            In his Christianity and Positivism as well as elsewhere he argued that evolution, far from being inconsistent with belief in divine design, instead glorifies the divine designer. McCosh often debated with Charles Hodge, head of Princeton Seminary, during the late 1860s and 1870s and wisely noted that the atheistic appropriation of evolution did not make the theory in and of itself atheistic.


                            Now a few from across the pond.

                            Another great champion of conservative Christian thought, G.K. Chesterton[1], was staunchly against materialistic evolution but favored theistic evolution, writing in his Orthodoxy, a classic of Christian apologetics:

                            IF evolution simply means that a positive thing called an ape turned very slowly into a positive thing called a man, then it is stingless for the most orthodox; for a personal God might just as well do things slowly as quickly, especially if, like the Christian God, he were outside time." (But if it means anything more, it means that there is no such thing as an ape to change, and no such thing as a man for him to change into. It means that there is no such thing as a thing. At best, there is only one thing, and that is a flux of everything and anything. This is an attack not upon the faith, but upon the mind; you cannot think if there are no things to think about)




                            In his Eight Brampton Lectures on the Relations between Religion and Science written before becoming Archbishop of Canterbury, Frederick Temple, pointed out that the "doctrine of Evolution is in no sense whatever antagonistic to the teachings of Religion" as well as that evolution "tended to make the Creation more wonderful than ever. For it shows not a number of isolated creations, but all creation knit together into a complete whole."

                            In his The Relations Between Religion and Science" Temple stated that "[God] did not make the things, we may say: no, but He made them make themselves... It has often been objected to Paley’s argument that it represents the Almighty as an artificer rather than a creator... But this objection disappears when we put the argument into the shape which the doctrine of Evolution demands."



                            The Rev. Aubrey Moore, a scientist-priest at the University of Oxford who was Curator of the Oxford Botanical Gardens was one of the first Christian Theistic Evolutionists and accepted the theory of natural selection, incorporating it into his Christian beliefs as merely the way God worked. He wrote that evolution "as a theory is infinitely more Christian than the theory of "Special Creation." For it implies the immanence of God in nature, and the omnipresence of his creative power. Those who opposed the doctrine of evolution in defense of "a continued intervention" of God seem to have failed to notice that a theory of occasional intervention implies as its correlative a theory of ordinary absence..." He held that the human body was evolved by natural means from other animals, but that the soul came by divine gift.

                            In 1889 Moore wrote in "Lux Mund," "The break up of the mediaeval system of thought and life resulted in an atomism which if it had been more perfectly consistent with itself, would have been fatal alike to knowledge and society ... God was ‘throned in magnificent inactivity in a remote corner of the universe’... Science had pushed the deist’s God farther and farther away, and at the moment when it seemed as if He would be pushed out altogether, Darwinism appeared and, under the disguise of a foe did the work of a friend."



                            John Stott, a leading British evangelical and principal framer of the landmark Lausanne Covenant of 1974 (regarded as one of the most influential documents in modern Evangelical Christianity), said in his Understanding the Bible: Expanded Edition:

                            It is most unfortunate that some who debate this issue (evolution) begin by assuming that the words “creation” and “evolution” are mutually exclusive. If everything has come into existence through evolution, they say, then biblical creation has been disproved, whereas if God has created all things, then evolution must be false. It is, rather, this naïve alternative which is false. It presupposes a very narrow definition of the two terms, both of which in fact have a wide range of meanings, and both of which are being freshly discussed today.














                            1. Interestingly after Warfield reviewed "The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin," he was deeply moved by Darwin's tragic loss of faith and began to carefully analyze Darwin concluding that his departure from a biblical world view was born out of a literalistic reading of Genesis and that "Darwin displayed a 'total misapprehension of divine providence, and…a very crude notion of final cause.'"

                            2 While Charles Hodge, the conservative Presbyterian theologian, who taught at Old Princeton Seminary in the 19th century, and who is considered ultra-orthodox, wrote in What is Darwinism? that evolution by chance is atheism (p.156), he did in fact allow for evolution, "If God made them it makes no difference so far as the question of design is concerned how he made them; whether at once or by a process of evolution." (p.95). IOW, he accepted Theistic Evolution or, if you prefer, Evolutionary Creationism.

                            3. Personally I think that Charles Spurgeon could give him a run for his money for that title. While Spurgeon expressed doubts about evolution he definitely believed that the earth was millions of years old (he said "We know not how remote the period of the creation of this globe may be—certainly many millions of years before the time of Adam" in his sermon The Power of the Holy Ghost). This was quietly removed by AnswersinGenesis (AiG) when they re-printed the sermon on their website.

                            4. While he didn't think science of his time had shown man evolved from apes he did say that those that mock the idea "having a smattering of fragmentary knowledge, they address victorious ridicule to audiences as ignorant as they are themselves" and said that it was "not proved and yet probable."

                            5. He did criticize evolution in his later years but this was the very materialistic version pushed by Huxley and Spencer

                            6. From an 1880 article in the American Naturalist, "It appears that Dr. McCosh, one of the ablest defenders of the Christian faith against the attacks of modern infidelity, is a pronounced evolutionist!" Henry Ward Beecher (see above) called him "a Presbyterian of the Presbyterians"

                            7. The YECs at Creation Ministries International (CMI) admit that "Chesterton’s statements about evolution as a scientific theory are sometimes ambiguous and might even be taken as supportive of a theistic evolutionary stance; for instance, he states that even if biological evolution were true, it would not mean that Christianity was false, because God is outside of time and could do things any way He wanted."
                            Last edited by rogue06; 08-06-2017, 06:44 PM.

                            I'm always still in trouble again

                            "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                            "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                            "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

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                            • #15
                              And for those who don't care about what highly respected theologians said about evolution, here is a list of some noted scientists who are theistic evolutionists:
                              • Denis Alexander, molecular immunologist and Emeritus Director of The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion at St. Edmund’s College, Cambridge, where he is a Fellow
                              • Francisco J. Ayala, the biologist and philosopher, former Dominican priest and President and Chairman of the Board of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
                              • Robert Bakker, the paleontologist and minister known for his revolutionary ideas concerning dinosaurs
                              • John D. Barrow, the cosmologist, theoretical physicist, and mathematician and current Research Professor of Mathematical Sciences at the University of Cambridge.
                              • Robert James "Sam" Berry, British geneticist and member of Royal Society of Edinburgh and Royal Society of Biology, former President of the Linnean Society who has served as a lay member of the Church of England's General Synod and president of Christians in Science
                              • Warren S. Brown, Director of the Lee Edward Travis Research Institute and Professor of Psychology at the Fuller Theological Seminary
                              • Joan Centrella, astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, where she heads the Gravitational Astrophysics Laboratory, and Fellow of the American Physical Society
                              • Alasdair Coles, Professor of Neuroimmunology, consultant neurologist to Addenbrooke’s and Hinchingbrooke Hospitals, and an Anglican priest at St Andrews Church, Cambridge
                              • Francis Collins, the geneticist who headed the Human Genome Project and is director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH)
                              • Theodosius Dobzhansky, the geneticist and biologist who was a key figure in the development of the evolutionary synthesis
                              • Joel Duff, professor of biology at the University of Akron in Ohio
                              • George Francis Rayner Ellis, a cosmologist who is Emeritus Distinguished Professor of Complex Systems in the Department of Mathematics and Applied Mathematics at the University of Cape Town, South Africa
                              • Darrel R. Falk, Professor Emeritus of Biology at Point Loma Nazarene University and past president and current senior advisor with the BioLogos Foundation
                              • Keith R Fox, Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Southampton & acting Head of Centre for Biological Sciences there as well as Associate Director of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, Cambridge
                              • Seymour Garte, director of the Division of Physiological and Pathological Sciences at the National Institutes of Health's Center for Scientific Review and formerly a professor of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health and a member of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute
                              • Karl W. Giberson, physicist who teaches courses on physics, astronomy, and science and religion at Eastern Nazarene College
                              • Owen J. Gingerich, the Professor of Astronomy and of the History of Science at Harvard University, and a senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory
                              • Lisa Goddard, PhD in biochemistry from Cambridge and Phd in theology from Liverpool University
                              • Stephen J. Godfrey, Curator of Paleontology at the Calvert Marine Museum in Solomons, Maryland and former YEC who wrote Paradigms on Pilgrimage: Creationism, Paleontology and Biblical Interpretation about his becoming a TE
                              • Jeff Hardin, developmental biologist and chairman of the University of Wisconsin’s Zoology department
                              • Deborah Haarsma, former Chair in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Calvin College and current president of BioLogos Foundation
                              • Martinez Hewlett, the professor Emeritus of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Arizona
                              • Nicholas Higgs, Research Fellow in the Marine Institute at Plymouth University UK
                              • Ruth Hogg, lecturer at Queen's University Belfast's School of Medicine, Dentistry and Biomedical Sciences
                              • Norman Hughes, the biologist and Professor Emeritus of Biology at Pepperdine University
                              • Colin J. Humphreys a Director of Research at Cambridge University, Professor of Experimental Physics at the Royal Institution in London, a Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge, and a Fellow of the Royal Society
                              • James P. Hurd, Chair of the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at Bethel University
                              • Ian Hutchinson, the nuclear physicist and professor of nuclear science and engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
                              • D. Gareth Jones, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic and International) and Professor of Anatomy and Structural Biology at the University of Otago, New Zealand
                              • Michael N. Keas, a Fulbright Scholar and the professor of the history and philosophy of science at the College at Southwestern in Fort Worth and an adjunct professor in Biola University’s M.A. program in Science and Religion
                              • Denis Lamoureux the biologist who holds a professorial chair of science and religion at St. Joseph's College at the University of Alberta
                              • Ard Louis, the Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford who also taught Theoretical Chemistry at Cambridge University
                              • Joel W. Martin, the marine biologist and invertebrate zoologist at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church
                              • Alister McGrath, PhD in Molecular Biophysics, DD in Theology, who holds the Andreas Idreos Professorship in Science and Religion in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford and former Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Education at King's College London. A former atheist and now an Anglican priest who wrote The Dawkins Delusion?
                              • John McKeown, former research associate at Leicester University then worked for Christian environmental charity JRI (The John Ray Initiative and module leader for the University of Gloucestershire's Open Theological College, and former YEC
                              • Harvey McMahon, neurobiologist from Cambridge at the Medical Research Council Programme Leader at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology
                              • Keith B. Miller, the geologist at Kansas State University
                              • Kenneth Miller, the cell biologist and molecular biologist and professor at Brown University
                              • Simon Conway Morris, Chair of Evolutionary Palaeobiology in the Earth Sciences Department at Cambridge University for over 20 years, Fellow of the Royal Society of London and the palaeontologist widely known for his work at the Cambrian aged Burgess Shale in British Columbia
                              • William Newsome, Neurobiologist at Stanford University School of Medicine, member of the National Academy of Sciences and is the faculty sponsor of the Intervarsity Christian Fellowship graduate student group at Stanford
                              • Martin A. Nowak, the Professor of Biology and Mathematics at Harvard
                              • Philip Pattemore, Associate Professor of Paediatrics at the University of Otago based at the central hospital in Christchurch New Zealand and the Christian Medical Fellowship of New Zealand board chairman
                              • William D. Phillips, the physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997
                              • John Polkinghorne the theoretical physicist, theologian and Anglican priest
                              • Wilson Poon, Senior Research Fellow at the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC - UK's main agency for funding research in engineering and the physical sciences), and Professor of Condensed Matter Physics and Director of Research in School of Physics at the University of Edinburgh and former "entrenched" creationist
                              • Michael J. Reiss, Professor of Science Education at the Institute of Education, University of London, where he is Assistant Director, Research and Development, President of the International Society for Science and Religion and the International Association for Science and Religion in Schools, Visiting Professor at the Universities of Leeds and York, and an Anglican priest
                              • Joan Roughgarden evolutionary biologist at Stanford and Fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
                              • Mary Schweitzer, the paleontologist from North Carolina State University famous for her discovery of "soft tissue" inside fossilized dinosaur bones
                              • Roseanne Sension, Professor of Chemistry at the University of Michigan and Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS -- world's second largest organization of physicists)
                              • Thomas P. Sheahen, professor of theology and science at Holy Apostles College and Seminary, Director of the Institute for Theological Encounter with Science and Technology (ITEST), PhD in Physics from MIT
                              • Richard Swinburne, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford and one of the most influential English philosophers of religion of the 20th century
                              • Howard J. Van Till, the physicist and emeritus professor of physics at Calvin College
                              • Charles Hard Townes, the physicist who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1964 for his work research in quantum electronics leading to the development of the maser and laser
                              • Dennis Venema, professor of biology at Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia and winner of the 2008 College Biology Teaching Award from the National Association of Biology Teachers
                              • David Vosburg, Associate Professor of Chemistry at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, California (small but prestigious)
                              • David C Watts, Professor of Biomaterials Science at the School of Dentistry and the Photon Science Institute of the University of Manchester, a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Society of Biology, and visiting professor at the universities of Jena and Munich (Germany), Padova(Italy), and Oregon Health and Science University
                              • David L. Wilcox, expert in population genetics and Professor of Biology at a Eastern University in Philadelphia (Christian university)
                              • Jennifer J. Wiseman, Senior Astrophysicist at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and senior project scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope
                              • Davis A. Young, Emeritus Professor of Geology Calvin College, long time OEC opposed to evolution but recently wrote "How an Igneous Geologist Came to Terms With Evolution"
                              • Michael Zimmerman, the biologist and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science

                              I'm always still in trouble again

                              "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                              "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                              "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

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