Saturday, April 12, 2008

Myths About Evolution and Creation

Today an athiest/evolutionist friend of mine gave me a link to watch a youtube video that outlined the "Myths of Evolution". I believe it was split up in to two parts, but I only watched the link he gave me. There were some points in it that I wanted to comment about.

The first "myth" that he listed was that creationists always say that evolution is a "theory" and that what we think of as theory is different from scientific theory. He gave examples of theories such as cell theory, and the atomic theory that have been proven through experiments. I decided to look up the defintion of "scientific theory". I was given this definition from Merriam Webster online dictionary: "a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena " Another definition I was given was, "6 a: a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or investigation b: an unproved assumption : conjecture c: a body of theorems presenting a concise systematic view of a subject " I will be the first to admit I'm not a scientist, but it seems to me that both of these definitions still refer to something that is plausible...but not necessarily proven.

His second myth had to do with Abiogenesis. Abiogenesis means that life was created out of nothing. Many creationists accuse evolutionists of believing that life erupted in to being suddenly...like the "Big Bang" theory suggests. Interestingly enough, although producer of the video seemed to be arguing against creationists, he did admit that Evolutionists do not suggest how life began, only what happened after life began. I might add that Evolutionist have an erroneous myth about creationists. They believe that we think God created man "poof" out of nothing. I can't speak for all religions, but that isn't what ours believes. In fact, He used a period of time (day) for each phase of the creation, and the creation of man took one of those "days".

His third myth was that many Christians accuse evolution of being the cause of many social ills. He went on to mention studies that show that countries that predominantly believe in evolution have lower crime rates. He failed to mention however, that countries such as China, that has a communist government, don't allow religion, and have extremely strict punishments for crime. It is easy to see why their country would have a lower crime rate. I have to agree on this point though, I don't see how believing in evolution could cause more crime. But I also think that countries where the majority of the people believe evolution, could also have higher education, thereby producing a people less likely to have the need to commit crime. So many factors could be at play besides just the commonality that they all believe in evolution. He did seem, however, to blame all of history's violence on religion. This is a notion I often find in evolutionists and athiests. What they don't realize is that it is usually only fanatics that are at the core of the violence, fanatics such as muslim extremists.

Another myth he mentioned, (the number 4 myth was inconsequential to me), is the myth that there are no transitional forms. He went on to show slides of different skeletal forms that showed both reptile and avian characterisitcs. This was his proof that evolution occurred. My question to him is, "How do you know those weren't designed that way?". Those creatures easily could have existed without evolution having occurred. I don't see them as "proof"...only "plausible" explanations.

The last myth I wanted to comment on (because the other wasn't really something that concerned me) was that creationists say that mutation cannot increase information. He talked about how genes can duplicate...new information can be formed. I would agree with that. I don't however believe that they could occur in the quantity and variety needed to create all of the life on Earth.

One last thought, this from an LDS scholar of ancient history and languages, Hugh Nibley. In his book, "Approaching Zion" he quoted Sir Fred Hoyle who, "was constantly plagued by the thought that the number of ways in which even a single enzyme could be wrongly constructed was greater than the number of all the atoms in the universe. [vs. only in the right way], So try as I would, I couldn't convince myself that even the whole universe would be sufficient to find life by random processes--by what are called the blind forces of nature....By far the simplest way to arrive at the correct sequences of amino acids in the enzymes [forming those biological grains out in space] would be by thought, not by random processes....Rather than accept the fantastically small probability of life having arisen through the blind forces of nature, it seemed better to suppose that the origin of life was a deliberate intellectual act." Hugh Nibley, Approaching Zion, pg 121 quoting Sir Fred Hoyle "The Universe: Past And Present Reflections"

As a Christian, I will freely admit that I don't have all the answers about how this Earth was created. But I also believe that science also doesn't have all of the answers. I as a Christian will admit that processes such as adaption could have occurred. Is science willing to admit that it all could have been guided by intelligent design?

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