The faith of an Evangelutionist

Before I weigh in, I should note that the stylish, intellectually agile, and clear-minded Patrick Chan has added his own lucid commentary to this ongoing thread.

TOUCHSTONE SAID:

“I didn't see any complaints, or even mention of common ancestry in Steve's original post ("Adam and Evolution"). In fact, common ancestors would put man and gorilla together. He clearly believes Gorillas have the minimum resources for survival -- they are offered as the example of what man is *not*. If we superimpose common ancestry on the picture, then Steve's point becomes hopelessly confused: you have a man-ape creature to assess for survivability. Was the man-ape ancestor a viable species? How do we know? Steve is keeping his magic formula to himself, so we can't say on our own.”

i) You have to wonder what the problem is? Is the source of the problem that the Evangelutionist is really too obtuse to grasp the position of the opposition side, however often that is stated and explicated?

Or is the problem that he does understand it, but he can’t deal with it?

The conundrum facing the Evangelutionist is that he is a man who suffers from divided intellectual commitments. On the one hand, he finds the case for evolution to be convincing.

On the other hand, he wants to cling to some semblance of Christian orthodoxy. And theistic evolution is the only mediating position available to him.

The best explanation I can offer for his systematic inability or unwillingness to accurately reproduce the opposing position—whether it’s YEC, or OEC, or ID—is that if he allowed himself to even acknowledge the opposing position, that would place unbearable pressure on the rickety compromise of theistic evolution.

So his only refuge is to repeatedly caricature the opposing position, or ignore the repeated answers to the questions he asked, or ignore repeated distinctions, or demand “more.”

ii) As I have explained, from the first post in this continuing thread and onwards from there, I am comparing and contrasting the implications of Gen 1-3 with the implications of evolution.

a) On my own view, as I already stated, Adam had no ancestors. There were no pre-Adamites of hominids.

b) But, of the sake of argument, I am also mounting an internal critique of evolution.

“I think Steve must be supposing some model that has early man "unprotected" as part of his evolutionary past, and thus man can't be here? I admit, I responded to that post simply because it seems inchoate on the face of it. It the present implies the past, and we believe there is a causal chain at work, then it seems one would need a pretty strong rationale to tell us that what we see in front of -- lots of humans surviving to the present day -- didn't really happen.”

This is only the latest example of how impervious the Evangelutionist is to interacting with the opposing position. Once again, I can only attribute his incapacity to absorb a counterargument.

All he’s done here is to reiterate his original fallacy, although I pointed out the fallacious character of his appeal. He does nothing to interact with what I said.

Instead, he chooses to play dumb, as if his opponent has denied “that what we see in front of -- lots of humans surviving to the present day -- didn't really happen.”

I walked in through the fallacies of this inference once before. No one denies the present. No one denies the past. No one denies a causal chain.

But the general fact of the present does nothing whatsoever to validate a specific theory of the past.

One of his problems, aside from his state of denial, is a failure to distinguish between consistency and implication.

The fact that human beings survived is logically consistent with YEC, OEC, theistic evolution, naturalistic evolution, and panspermia.

The present implies the past. The present is consistent with more than one theory of the past.

“Evolution didn't happen according to his particular interpretation of Genesis, and that's all the rigor he needs.”

As I’ve had to explain throughout the course of this thread, I’m operating with a two-track argument:

i) How did man survive, given Genesis?

ii) How did man survive, given evolution?

In this course of this thread, my criticisms concerning the evolution of man were never based on Genesis. Rather, my criticisms were internal to evolution itself.

It’s quite true that, as a Christian, I regard divine revelation as more than sufficient to tell us, in broad strokes, what really happened.

But there can be more than one reason to find evolutionary theory wanting.

“To make anything but silly guesses about the survival dynamics of a particular species half a billion years ago, one would need an *enormous* evidential base, and some sort of calibrated model for running the numbers. Did (proto-)humans reproduce fast enough to compensate for all the predator attrition? We don't know. No PhD I've read could say with any certainty what the reproductive rates were a million years ago. If you can find some scientific evidence for that number, I'd be glad to know that -- it would be useful to the question at hand.”

So, by his own admission, evolutionary theory is radically underdetermined by the evidence.

“Does Steve have this number? He better! How else could he determine that the predator attrition rate was sufficient to make man non-viable?”

Notice how the Evangelutionist has the burden of proof upside down:

i) At a minimum, his evidentiary demand cuts both ways. Why does he think the opponent of evolution has to come up with this number?

Why does it not occur to him that the proponent of evolution has to come up with this number? Why the double standard?

ii) But it’s worse than that. He is acting as if evolution is a given. An unquestionable datum.

Hence, the burden of proof is not to verify evolution, but to falsify evolution.

But by his own admission, evolutionary theory is radically underdetermined by the evidence: ““To make anything but silly guesses about the survival dynamics of a particular species half a billion years ago, one would need an *enormous* evidential base, and some sort of calibrated model for running the numbers. Did (proto-)humans reproduce fast enough to compensate for all the predator attrition? We don't know. No PhD I've read could say with any certainty what the reproductive rates were a million years ago.”

Oh, and this isn’t just a question of “certainty,” but probability. Absent an “enormous evidential base” about the “survival dynamics of a particular species half a billion years ago,” what way is there for him to even probabilify the chances?

His only fallback argument is his fallacious appeal to the fact of survival, as if the *bare* fact of survival *entails* the *specific* claim of an *evolutionary* survival mechanism.

“No one is suggesting that evolution has fossil evidence or some other kind of forensic proof for every part of every species' history. It's frankly remarkable that we have as much fossil evidence as we have, and what we have leaves long periods of time wide open.”

And that’s one of the fundamental problems. When you leave “long periods of time wide open”:

i) You can’t establish lineal descent from the fossil record, in which case:

ii) You can’t establish encephalization. What is more:

iii) You can’t establish that early man had a viable, evolutionary defense mechanism during those long, undocumented intervals.

“That said, I guess you will have to tell me what problems he's pointed out with evolutionary theory that need to be addressed. Saying you need an intact fossil skeleton for every 20 year period (generation) back for a million years is completely unreasonable, if that's what you (or he) is demanding. We wouldn't expect to find that kind of evidence whether evolution was true or not.”

I may be unreasonable to expect continuous fossil evidence, but it is not unreasonable to demand evidence commensurate with the claim. If you claim an evolutionary series without serial evidence, especially when, by your own admission, the data points are widely separated in time and place, then your theory is severely underdetermined by the actual state of the record.

The Evangelutionist can only find the evidence for evolution probative because evolutionary theory is rearranging the isolated data points in an evolutionary is rearranging the isolated data points to form an evolutionary trajectory, and filling the gaps with more evolutionary theory.

But if you take away the evolutionary scaffolding, then they date points do not line up in any particular direction. Once you remove all of the evolutionary interpolations, you’re left with a high proportion of gaps to a low proportion of data-points.

Keep in mind that this isn’t merely my take on the fossil record. The Evangelutionist actually appeals to the extremely fragmentary state of the record as if that were a problem for my position rather than his own. In his desperation, he tries to make a virtue of necessity by treating the absence of evidence if that were a positive asset for his position.

His argument has now degenerated to the point where all he can say is, “You can’t beat me because you don’t have enough evidence to the contrary!”

But absence of counterevidence assumes the absence of supporting evidence. When you can only defend a scientific theory by invoking the paucity of the evidence, then the lack of evidence undercuts your own theory.

I can’t disprove the existence of blue-nosed fairies. Does that make fairyism a rational belief?

Suppose a DA were to prosecute a suspect for a 50-year-old crime. Suppose, using the logic of the Evangelutionist, this was the gist of his closing statement:

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury. We have a murder victim. A murder victim implies a killer. So we can reason back from the murder to the killer. Therefore, you must find the suspect guilty of murder. Sure, we don’t have any probative evidence connecting the accused to the murder. But you can’t expect that kind of evidence 50 years after the fact. The trail went cold a long time ago. The witnesses, if there were any, all died without leaving any depositions. We didn’t find his fingerprints on the gun. We have no record that he ever owed the gun. The other forensic evidence is lost due to the ravages of time. No forensic pathologist could say beyond a reasonable doubt, or even from a preponderance of the evidence, that the suspect murdered the victim. But to expect that sort of evidence at this stage of the game is completely unreasonable. Therefore, it’s your civic duty to convict the accused.”

Now, if I were a member of the jury, I’d vote to acquit the accused. Yes, *someone* did it. But there’s no compelling evidence that *he* did it. Indeed, there may even be exculpatory evidence.

But I realize that my rules of evidence reflect the warping bias of my fundy presuppositions. Any juror in his right mind would vote with the Evangelutionist.

“OK, so you said this time around you don't have a problem with my math.”

I said nothing of the kind. The Evangelutionist is becoming delusional.

“I will accept that you are simply unwilling to provide this information. If so, just let me know. We can draw the appropriate inferences one way or the other then as to why you will not. As it is, you're just leaving things hanging.”

And I will accept the fact that the Evangelutionist is unable to interact with my arguments. If so, just let me know. We can draw the appropriate inferences one way or the other then as to why he will not. As it is, he’s just leaving things hanging.