You may or may not have been following my running debate with several atheists from Australia on my blog and on the following blogs:
http://www.naontiotami.com/?p=341
http://www.naontiotami.com/?p=350
I have been studying science and theology my entire life and I am amazed how quickly people who are otherwise reasonably intelligent will come to conclusions that lead them away from God and conclude the Bible is lying on scant evidence, all the while asserting that they are only "following the perponderance of evidence".
Keep in mind, before I go forward, that all this got started because I posted a review on the video called Nephilim Rising in which I stated that there were no transitional fossils showing common descent from one life form to another for human and apes. Of all the things that I stated, I was only challenged on this point with a remark to a fossil discovered in 2004 called Tiktaalik that supposedly was touted to be the "missing" link between fish and amphibians. I quickly put another post together, basically about this fossil, pointing out that not all scientists agree with this assessment. I suddenly had 4 or 5 people attacking me, commenting about my being wrong. The debate spilled out onto one of their blogs, but one good thing visits on my own blog did spike. Thanks for the exposure fellas. It stuck me hilarious that they themselves admitted that Tiktaalik cannot be confirmed to be the ancestor of modern fish or amphibians. If they could then I would have to agree that there would be strong evidence that Tiktaalik is the missing link between fish and amphibians. But it's not. So they argued that it shows that it's possible that such a fossil connecting fish and amphibians allowing them to infer that macro evolution is true. I disagree. They are walking by faith.
I don't think that one even needs to go to the Bible as a reason to reject macro evolution, but they brought it up. They immediately attacked the veracity of the Bible and seem to think that everyone who believes in Intelligent Design are actually trying to trick people because they are really creationists. I said it before so many times, but here goes: Not all people who believe in Intelligent Design believe that the God of the Bible did it. I do! But not everyone. In addition, to macro evolution, we talked about the origin of the universe, and whether or not the Bible is true. Physics, Computer Science, Theology, History and just about everything has come up. I've enjoyed it although it was like hitting brick. Fortunately, God always sends help when you need it. I wasn't alone because there was one person who was speaking out and agreeing with the Bible. I appreciated that.
One thing that came up a couple of times was the Dover trial from a few years back where again it was up to a court of law to decide whether it was right to teach creationism in public school along with evolution. Seems to happen every decade such a case become high profile. In the 1920's it started with the Scopes trial, but the roles were switched. Then the question was should evolution be taught alongside or instead of creationism? I have found a video on GodTube that documents the Dover Trial, and not from a Christian point of view. I found it interesting that the evolution position was defended using 2 main points of evidence: Transitional fossils and Genetics. The video was well done. They had reenactments of trial testimony, interspersed with dynamic animation, and interviews with intelligent leaders in the field. But they did not present any rebuttal information from experts in the field, so I put together my own rebuttal.
Let's take a look at the Transitional fossil "evidence".
The video does a great presentation of the now accepted view of evolution and this is how I have been taught about what it is. The problem is the theoretical model of common ancestory looks different than the graphic for where these "transitional" fossils are placed in the "Tree of life". They are on a different branch - twig - than the species they are supposed to bridge. To this day, no common ancestor has been found to show us that fish and amphibians share a common ancestor, let alone any other connections evolutionary scientists attempt to make.
Now what about the genetic "evidence"?
Their argument is that because apes have one less chromosome than we do, two chromosomes merged into a single. Their evidence is that you can see that there are two chromosomes stuck together, therefore evolution is vindicated because we can see traits being passed genetically. Problem is that there is no discussion of what those traits are and if theyt are truly common among humanity and apes. It's hinted at that the merged chromosomes correspond to the missing chromosomes in apes, but it's never actually stated. If it were, and I'm not sure if that could be validated, then that would mean that they might have something there. In addition, I liked the presentation of basic genetic theory, however if evolution is true then we would expect to see positive mutations - mutations that give rise to beneficial traits - fairly often. There aren't many, if any examples. The example of a butterfly's color change is an example of adaptation not macro evolution. What we do see in nature is a tendency to steer away from random mutation. The goal is that offspring have as close to a perfect copy of parental DNA code as possible. It's like installing software on a computer...would I want the installed code to be the same or off from what was originally encoded? There are issues that can be raised against evolution because of genetics, but I will put that in a different post.
One more point that a lot of people like to try to use in favor of macro evolution is that there is a consensus among the world's top scientists that evolution is true and the only people who disagree are no-talent, stupid and/or ignorant, fundamentalist hacks who don't know what they are talking about. They call us deluded individuals who blind ourselves to the truth because of religion. (Funny, that is what the Bible says about them!) I wholeheartedly disagree with them. Dismissing people's intelligence and expertise because you disagree with them is not fair. In addition, some don't like bring God up because then it's "arguing from authority". They say that "God said so" is not a valid explanation. I would agree it does not explain how but it does explain why. Besides saying that we should accept evolution because the majority of the scientific community accepts it is also "arguing from authority" and not all scientists agree with the conclusions reached by evolutionists. Don't forget that there was a time when most scientists thought that the world is flat. Or that flies spontaneously generate from rotten meat. We have learned better. One day we will outgrow evolution too and people will have to come up with other reasons to deny the authority and truth of the Bible.
Just so no one thinks that I took the Dover video out of context, I've presented it in the playlist below.
You can even read the transcripts of the Dover case here.
