"Apparent" theistic evolution

I'm not a young earth creationist (YEC). That said:

Some people criticize YEC on the grounds that it makes God a deceiver if not a liar. He created the world in something like 10,000 years, but he created it with the appearance of age, empirically speaking. Critics say that's deceptive. Some critics even say it makes God a liar.

Some theistic evolutionists may face a similar problem. They say God guided evolution, but they also say we can't detect evidence of design. Such as in entities like DNA, cells, flagella, eyes. Apparently God guided evolution in such a way that his guidance is empirically undetectable. (Otherwise, if design is detectable, why not embrace design like Behe does?) Apparently theistic evolution is empirically indistinguishable from naturalistic evolution. So does this mean theistic evolutionists are making God out to be a deceiver if not a liar?

If theistic evolutionists respond there's nothing necessarily unethical about God's deception, then why couldn't YECs say the same about YEC?

Some comments on theistic evolution

For what it's worth, here are some comments (revised) on intelligent design and theistic evolution that I recently left in a previous post in a friendly conversation with Eric:

1. I'll use evolution as shorthand for neo-Darwinism. And I'll use ID for intelligent design.

2. To my knowledge, ID is relatively "new" in the sense that Dembski describes it in his chapter "How does intelligent design differ from the design argument?" in his book The Design Revolution. An excerpt is available here. However, ID is "old" in the sense that it's in the same or similar vein as teleological arguments in general (aka arguments from design, which might be more clearly termed arguments for design). This stretches back as far as Thomas Aquinas' Five Ways if not earlier.

3. I'm very sympathetic and greatly appreciate the work of the ID guys. At the same time, I think I'm persuaded by Alvin Plantinga (e.g. "design discourse") and Del Ratzsch (e.g. "the persistence of design thinking") when it comes to assessing their work.

4. My impression is, relatively speaking, secular physicists (cosmology) seem more open-minded about arguments for design (e.g. fine-tuning) than secular biologists. I mean, there are plenty of close-minded cosmologists, but I'm speaking in comparison to secular biologists. Secular biologists seem like the dwarves in the stable in C. S. Lewis' The Last Battle, imprisoned in their own minds, and "so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out". They stick their fingers in their ears and refuse so much as to entertain the possibility of anything other than a strictly material world. I guess most of them take after Lewontin: "materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door". Regarding fine-tuning, see the works of Robin Collins and Luke Barnes.

5. An interesting question to explore is whether evolution itself requires design to operate. By contrast, if the universe and all it contains including life is not designed, then would evolution even be able to get off the ground?

For starters, evolution appears to be goal-directed, that is, it appears to be teleological. It appears to be able to adapt means to ends. However, if the universe and all it contains is not designed, then how would evolution come to be goal-directed? How would it come to be able to adapt means to ends? For example, if all is undesigned, without teleological purpose, then how did the heart come to exist to pump blood to the body? A happy accident? Not to mention all the other functions in every organism on this planet. Multiply all this together and the chances of all these serendipitous events occurring seem improbable to say the least.

Stepping back, what are the chances of the origin of life? Next, of the origin of the first cell? Next, of the origin of the first multicellular organism? Next, of the origin of the first warm-blooded animal? Next, of the origin of intelligence or consciousness? And so on. Each step is not one small step, but a giant leap. A leap as giant as a human being becoming a star-child à la 2001: A Space Odyssey.

And all this is in addition to the chances of finely-turned laws to drive all this, but what are the chances of a law like natural selection in an undesigned universe?

Does Evolution disprove Christianity?

One of those Bambi meets Godzilla debates:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Idyy8p4lShc&t=4616s

In addition to Jonathan's performance, a few observations of my own:

1. Jonathan McLatchie is well-qualified to discuss the issue. That said, the title is ambiguous. It could mean does evolution, if true, disprove Christianity. Or it could mean evolution fails to disprove Christianity because evolution is false.

2. A couple of issues:

i) Lim thinks disease is incompatible with God's existence, but diseases perform a necessary function in maintaining that balance of nature. In addition, most organisms were never designed to be immortal. 

ii) Lim fails to understand that there are constraints on what an omnipotent God can do by natural means. In many cases, God can bypass natural processes to produce a result directly, but if God is creating a cause/effect world, and God is using a physical medium, then that's a self-imposed limitation on God's field of action.

3. We also need to distinguish between Christianity and generic theism or perfect being theology. Even if we posit that disease is incompatible with an abstract concept of God that's a philosophical construct, the existence of disease in no way disproves the existence of the Biblical God. In Scripture, God coexists with disease. So disease in no way counts as evidence against the existence of Christian theism, but is entirely consistent with the God of the Bible.

4. Lim acts like the Genesis creation account indicates that God made all the species from the outset. But Gen 1 doesn't detail the species. Gen 1 doesn't preclude adaptation. Gen 1 refers to a few general taxonomies based on their natural habitat (land animals, freshwater or marine organisms).

5.  Since the issue of how best to interpret Genesis came up, here's a free, recent book: https://frame-poythress.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/PoythressVernInterpretingEdenAGuideToFaithfullyReadingAndUnderstandingGenesis1-3.pdf 

6. Lim constantly raises hypothetical objections to Christianity, but ignores al the evidence. He mentions prayer, but there are countless examples of answered prayer. The fact that many prayers go unanswered doesn't cancel out the evidence for the prayer requests that God does grant.

7. Lim then trots out Sai Babba, but from what I've read, there's lots of evidence that he's a fraud.

8. There are multiple problems with Lim's appeal to alleged pagan parallels between Jesus and hero archetypes:

i) You can't legitimately compare a well-documented historical figure with fictional characters in pagan mythology. Jesus is a historical figure. We have 1C historical sources documenting his life. 1C sources about a 1C individual. 

ii) You also have to take into account the chronological gap between a historical figure like, say, Buddha, and the dates of our earliest sources. 

iii) In addition, you have to take into account the Jewish worldview of the NT, which precludes pagan syncretism.

iv) Did the NT writers even have access to the pagan sources? 

v) How specific are the alleged parallels?

Interpreting Eden: A Guide to Faithfully Reading and Understanding Genesis 1–3

https://frame-poythress.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/PoythressVernInterpretingEdenAGuideToFaithfullyReadingAndUnderstandingGenesis1-3.pdf

Is Omphalism ad hoc?

https://randalrauser.com/2020/03/would-it-be-deceptive-if-god-created-a-young-world-with-apparent-age/

Gosse’s apparent age thesis never won much support for one good reason: it is baldly ad hoc. In other words, the apparent age supposition is offered only to explain away the great age of the earth. Thus, there is no independent reason to adopt the thesis.

I believe that's incorrect. Although it's been many years since I read him, Gosse's argument, as I recall, is that nature is cyclical, so that absolute creation must initiate creation at some point in the ongoing cycle, as if the cycle is already in process. There is no logical place to break into the cycle. It could be further into the cycle or earlier in the cycle. So any entry point will be arbitrary. To exist at all, the world must come into being at some stage in the cycle. 

Now, you can try to challenge the presupposition of Gosse's argument, but it's not ad hoc in the sense of having no independent reason for its adoption. Or you might allege that it's an ad hoc solution to salvage YEC chronology. That it was only motivated with that in mind. But the theory must be assessed on the merits, because it is a philosophically significant proposal. 

Rauser follows this up with a useful comparison: 

And what about the fact that colors are not in the things we perceive but rather are only in our minds? That firetruck isn’t “red”, for example. Rather, the fire truck has the dispositional property that produces a quale in my mind when I see it and I call that experience “red”. But there are no colors, as such, in nature. There are only dispositional properties to produce particular types of subjective experiences in conscious perceivers.

We could go on enumerating such examples of nature misleading us.

Suffice it to say, however, that it would be grossly overreaching to conclude that God was thereby deceiving people by creating the world with the actual characteristics that we have discovered it to have. Mutatis mutandis, it could well be that the universe appears to be old when, in fact, it is not so at all. It hardly follows that God would thereby be deceiving us.

To be sure, it might still be the case that God is deceiving us. That would depend on the divine intent in creating the world as God created it. But we can at least conclude that even if God created a young universe with the appearance of great age, it does not follow that God’s action was thereby deceptive.

Were humans originally vegetarian?

The prooftext of original human vegetarianism is Gen 1:29. And it's possible that the traditional interpretation is correct. However:

i) The language is permissive rather than contrastive. It doesn't say they were granted vegetation as opposed to meat. Although the verse allowed for that distinction, it's not a logical implication of the verse. The verse isn't worded in terms of two antithetical sources of food, where one is verboten. 

ii) Explicitly stating that vegetation is generally permissible to eat might be theologically relevant insofar as it foreshadows the significance of two particular trees in Gen 2, one of which is forbidden. 

iii) Gen 1:24-26 includes a category of livestock. Normally, certain kinds of livestock are consumed. Indeed, that's one reason to domesticate them. It's easier than hunting. 

But even if we don't press that issue, some livestock are also used as a food supplement for milk and eggs. But even on that "vegetarian" interpretation, the intended scope of Gen 1:29 can't be confined to an exclusively plant-based diet (fruits, nuts, roots). Rather, it presumptively includes supplementary food provided by farm animals, even if, for the sake of argument, we don't insist that they were butchered for meat. But that means the licit original diet of man was already wider than Gen 1:29. 

The only alternative is to suppose the livestock were used as beasts of burden, rather than a food source of any kind. But that's highly artificial, and unlikely that the original audience would draw that dichotomy. 

iv) In addition, the tree of life wasn't give for food, but it was permissible to eat. So a food stuff isn't the only function of plants, in the creation account. 

v) Humans often prefer herbivores to carnivores for meat. (That depends in part on what's available for consumption.) So there's an indirect link between a meat diet for humans and a vegetarian diet for livestock and game animals. A vegetarian diet is foundational to a meat diet. 

vi) Another way of putting this is that Gen 1:29 is permissive rather than prohibitive. Although the wording is consistent with a ban on meat-eating, that's not entailed by the wording.

Moreover, given repeated references to livestock in the same account, it's implausible that a human diet consisting only of vegetation was originally allowed. The narrator couldn't reasonably expect the original audience to have such a restrictive view of what livestock is for. 

Even if, for the sake of argument, we think Gen 1:29 excludes the consumption of livestock, how could it also be understood to exclude the consumption of milk and eggs from livestock? 

What's the point of livestock? Other than a source of food, the only other function is beasts of burden, but God created Eden with an orchard, It already had fruit trees. So there was no pressing need farm the land with oxen. 

Of course, humans domesticated wolves for guarding and hunting, but that's not terribly consonant with the vegetarian interpretation. 

Mind you, the reference to livestock might seem anachronistic in a creation account. Did God directly create livestock? Are they not, by definition, domesticated wild animals?

So the reference might be proleptic. But even so, livestock are represented as part of the original goodness of creation, and not a natural evil due to the fall. 

Vegetarians or carnivores?

Young earth creationists (YECs) typically argue there was no animal death either before the Fall or before the Flood. Moreover YECs typically argue animals were vegetarians either before the Fall or before the Flood, but became carnivorous either in the postlapsarian or postdiluvian period. The basis for their arguments is exegetical.

By contrast, OT scholar Iain Provan offers a different exegetical argument about animal death and animal feeding behavior in Seriously Dangerous Religion (pp 226-234).

Human Genesis

http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2019/09/yes-im-working-on-new-book.html

Todd Wood is writing a new book. Working title Human Genesis. He tells me it will model human origins from a creationist, biblical, theological, and scientific perspective. Wood is one of the most sophisticated and independent YEC scientists on the scene, so this should be a landmark contribution when published.

A single-couple human origin is possible

Justin Taylor interviews Ann Gauger and Ola Hössjermon their new research paper:
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/new-scientific-study-showing-come-original-adam-eve-interview-authors/

What's good for the Gosse is good for the gander

On Twitter, progressive theologian Randal Rauser labored to mount a rejoinder to a post of mine responding to a post of his.

Just to put things in context, part of Rauser's schtick is to say we shouldn't create unnecessary stumbling blocks that drive people away from Christianity or deter them from considering it in the first place. And it just so happens that the list of unnecessary stumbling blocks always lines up with what progressive theologian Randal Rauser doesn't believe in. What a coincidence! And by yet another amazing coincidence, he never classifies his progressive theology or ideology as an unnecessary stumbling block, even though progressive theology and ideology constitute a turnoff for many people.  

Science doesn't deal with eschatology. It simply projects the future of the universe based on current conditions. And based on current conditions, the universe will suffer a heat death. When Christians offer a different future, they do so based on divine intervention, and science has nothing to say about that.

I was wondering if Rauser would take the bait, and what do you know–he stepped right into the trap. It doesn't occur to him that a young-earth creationist can take the very same principle and apply to the past what Rauser applies to the future. 

Science also doesn't disprove "immortal souls". 

I agree, but for the sake of argument I was alluding to neuroscientists who routinely appeal to evidence they think shows that mind events are brain events. The brain generates the mind. 

But neither do you need to believe in such things to be a Christian.

Of course, Rauser has a long list of biblical teachings that you don't need to believe in to be a Christian. Indeed, considering the many examples he's given of biblical teachings he disdains, if he was to draw up two lists, the list of biblical teachings he rejects would be appreciably longer than the list which he accepts. 

Triablogue should place their eschatological hope in the bodily resurrection, not an immortal soul. 

i) Enter a false dichotomy. The biblical eschatological hope includes both the intermediate state and the final state. 

ii) That's a fixture of pastoral grief counseling and funeral services. The hope that your loved one didn't pass into oblivion when they died. 

iii) In addition, physicalism raises problems for personal identity. If you cease to exist, and after a chronological gap God resurrects you, is it you that God resurrects if that's just a copy of you? For instance, is a copy of your memories transferred to a new brain the same you? 

This is why "Christian physicalist" Peter van Inwagen once proposed that the body that's buried isn't the actual corpse of the deceased Christian but a simulacrum. God preserves the actual corpse in stasis. That is what is resurrected. He was driven to that outlandish proposal because, as a physicalist, there's no immortal soul to maintain personal continuity between death and resurrection. Rauser skates over the metaphysical difficulties of his position. 

And science doesn't address divinely wrought resurrections. Which brings me to the last nonsense point. Science says dead people stay dead in the natural course of events. But Christ's resurrection is not part of the natural course of events so science has nothing to say about it.

Rauser still hasn't caught on to the fact that he's trapped in the same dilemma (see above). Once again, a young-earth creationist or–even Philip Henry Gosse–can invoke the same principle to defend mature creation or Omphalism. What's good for the Gosse is good for the gander. 

Kabwe

Worth watching the whole video (all 7 minutes):

http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2019/09/fossil-focus-kabwe.html

Among other things:

If it's human, what's it doing way down in Africa at such an early radiometric date (around 300,000 years ago)? That's considerably before the earliest signs of civilization that we see in the Middle East…What does this mean for dispersal after the flood.

On a YEC or OEC paradigm, humans originate in the Middle East. Regarding how Kabwe-type humans migrated to African and how that antedates civilization in the Middle East by however long, perhaps there is no good YEC explanation.

However, depending on where we put the last ice age in relation to man, that would have a highly disruptive effect on civilization so that after the thaw, humans might have to start from scratch. Pre-ice age civilization would be largely lost and forgotten. That might fit into an OEC timetable, don't know about a YEC timetable. 

There's a stone age, bronze age, iron age, age of writing timetable that's post-ice age. But humans are capable of independently developing the same technology. So Gen 4 doesn't have to be intercalated into that timetable. 

Creation, evolution, and male nipples

I've discussed this before:

https://triablogue.blogspot.com/2015/10/why-do-men-have-nipples.html

but I'd like to make an additional observation. Take a comparison: camouflage in general is functional. It conceals prey from predators. Conversely, it conceals ambush predators or predatory stalkers from prey.

However, many animals don't simply have camouflage, but symmetrical camouflage. That, however, isn't functional. Indeed, it's somewhat counterproductive because it makes the animal easier to detect. The symmetry doesn't blend into the background. That's why military fatigues use disruptive coloration to break up the outlines of a soldier. 

A Darwinist may say camouflage mirrors bilateral symmetry. But while that may be true, it doesn't confer a survival advantage. It has no evolutionary utility. 

Moreover, many animals have disruptive coloration or countershading, so the evolutionary explanation isn't consistent. 

BTW, this is a problem with evolutionary explanations: if a feature is functional, the Darwinist says that's adaptive, but if the feature is useless or counterproductive, they say that because evolution is blind. So the theory is too flexible. Something and its contrary are both evidence for evolution! 

From a creationist standpoint, male nipples may have the same explanation as symmetrical camouflage: it's decorative. In creationism, not everything has to be functional. Some things may be aesthetic. 

Polyphonic narration

1. I'd like to consider the hermeneutics of young-earth creationism, old-earth creationism, and theistic evolution. In particular, how does Gen 1-9 map onto natural history according to these three positions? How, if at all, does Gen 1-9 provide guidance for the way primeval history unfolds? 

2. Because YEC operates with a face-value reading, it posits a straightforward correlation between the narrative descriptions and natural history. For YEC, Gen 1-9 is a clear-pane window onto natural history. 

3. Conversely, because the narrative of theistic evolution is at such variance from Gen 1-9, it has several options:

i) Gen 1-9 is pious fiction rather than historical narrative. There's no correlation between Gen 1-9 and natural history. It doesn't operate at that level. Rather, the text teaches "spiritual" truths. 

ii) Gen 1-9 is purified pagan mythology. It's not directly related to what happened. Rather, it corrects prevalent heathen narratives by removing the objectionable features and substituting a theologically orthodox concept. The frame of reference isn't natural history; rather, the frame of reference is pagan mythology, but using that as a foil. But if the template is fiction, then a redacted template is fiction. If the template is a pagan creation myth or flood legend, then after all the impious elements are edited out, the end-result will still be fictional. 

iii) Gen 1-9 is allegory. There's a kind of analogy between Gen 1-9 and natural history, but it's not a recognizable description of what actually happened. You can't use the text as a guide to what really happened. It's like an extended metaphor. The allegory is consistent with any number of scenarios. 

For theistic evolution, Gen 1-9 is a mural. It doesn't show the viewer what's outside. It doesn't show the viewer what lies on the other side of the wall. 

Underinterpretation and overinterpretation

https://frame-poythress.org/humility-required/

Bipedal apes

The cranium, known as MRD, is noticeably different from known A. afarensis skulls.  MRD is smaller with a much more projecting face.  Down the center of the skull runs a sagittal crest for attachment of jaw muscles.  The skull is longer and narrower than A. afarensis skulls.  To my eye, MRD looks more like a living ape like a gorilla than A. afarensis does.

The existence of bipedal animals that look so similar to us raises many questions about God’s design and their relationships to each other.  How many created kinds of upright apes are there?  In past analyses, Paranthropus seems well-separated from other australopiths, and A. afarensis and A. africanus are also very distinct.  Are these patterns merely the result of a sparse sample of species?  Will we eventually find that all bipedal apes belong to one created kind, distinct from humans?  What can this new skull tell us about even less well-known fossils like Ardipithecus or Sahelanthropus?

https://humangenesis.org/2019/08/28/a-face-for-australopithecus-anamensis/

i) I'm not quite sure what Todd means by bipedal animals that look so similar to us given what he says about MRD. However, that may be tangential to his main point. 

ii) To consider the question in general, Darwinians and atheists will take this to be yet another example of how science continues to put the squeeze on Christianity. There's increasingly less that makes human beings unique. Science keeps chipping away at human exceptionalism. One theological outpost after another falls to the invincible march of evolutionary biology. Christians are constantly in retreat. Constantly ceding ground to evolution. At least that's how it looks to Darwinians and atheists.

iii) But is that the case? Even in Gen 1-2, it's clear that humans share much in common with the animal world. That's because we're embodied agents and earthlings. Ancient Jews and Christians could see that humans have animals bodies. Physically, our bodies function like other animals. It's not as if modern science provides a revolutionary perspective in that regard. Prescientific observers could see that just fine. 

iv) I don't see that bipedal apes pose any greater threat to human exceptionalism than animals with forward-facing eyes. It's my impression that different body designs maximize an organism's ability to exploit a particular niche. Obviously we've never seen bipedal apes in action, but that presumably enables them to take advantage of certain opportunities their environment presents that quadrupedal apes cannot exploit. 

But there are tradeoffs in any body design. Gains in one respect are offset by losses in other respects. Leopards lack the power of lions, but that's offset by their superior tree-climbing ability. Cheetahs can outrun prey that's too fast for leopards and lions, but that's offset by weaker jaws and lack of razor-sharp claws. 

v) There's the question of what makes something unique. It is a single unique feature or a unique combination of ordinary features? 

vi) What makes humans unique isn't primarily our bodies but our minds. Suppose a wolf had a human body. That wouldn't make it human. A lupine mind in a human body would be a disastrous mismatch. It wouldn't survive. It has the wrong kind of intelligence to operate with a human body. 

vii) This doesn't mean human bodies are unimportant to human identity. But they are secondary in the sense that human bodies are instruments of human minds. A human mind requires a body that enables it to do human things. A human mind in the body of a dolphin would be stultifying and maddening. 

If you hand a mediocre tennis player the racket of a world-class tennis player, that doesn't make him a world-class tennis player. Conversely, a world-class tennis player can beat a mediocre player with an off-the-shelf racket–no matter how good the racket the mediocre player has. Same thing with pool. It isn't the cue or the balls that make the difference. Although Heifetz plays better with a Guarneri or Stradivarius, handing that violin to a mediocre violinist doesn't transform him into Heifetz. Imagine what Newton could do with a computer. 

A body is just a medium. It's generally a necessary medium for humans to develop their potential and exercise their humanity, but it's what the operator does with it that's special, and not the medium in itself. 

Like animals, we produce offspring and raise offspring, but human parents and their offspring both get far more out of the experience than animals because we have more complex minds. Lower animals may not even have minds. If they do have minds, they have very simple minds. Like animals, humans engage in sex, but we get far more out of the experience because we have more complex minds. There's so much more we can take in. 

viii) It's like science fiction stories about extraterrestrials. What kind of bodies does the writer give them? If they rely on advanced technology, they need body parts that enable them to build and operate fancy gadgets. They require bodies suitable to their alien intelligence and alien proclivities. 

Seven is your lucky number!

In his new commentary on Genesis, Andrew Steinmann says: 

The crafting of the table can be seen in the fondness of its use of the number seven and its multiples... (122). 

In correspondence, I asked him if he could be more specific. He responded:

The table contains 70 names listed as “sons” of Ham, Shem, Japheth or their descendants. (The Philistines are different, since they are not said to be “son,” but are part of the Casluhim “from whom came the Philippines.”) Japheth has 7 sons and 7 grandsons. Mizraim has 7 “sons.” Shem has 21 grandsons/ great-grandsons.

That septunarian pattern could be produced by starting with real, albeit larger figures, then omitting certain links or individuals to get it down to groups of seven or multiples of seven. The result of editorial selectivity. 

In the past I've noted how the seven motif is embedded in the flood account:

Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate (Gen 7:2)

and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth (Gen 7:3)

Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made” (Gen 7:4)

And after the seven days the floodwaters came on the earth (Gen 7:10)

In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, on the seventeenth day of the second month—on that day all the springs of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened (Gen 7:11)

and on the seventeenth day of the seventh month the ark came to rest on the mountains of Ararat (Gen 8:4)

He waited seven more days and again sent out the dove from the ark (Gen 8:10)

He waited seven more days and sent the dove out again, but this time it did not return to him (Gen 8:12)

By the twenty-seventh day of the second month the earth was completely dry (Gen 8:14)

If Noah's flood is a real event, then it has a certain natural rhythm. So we wouldn't expect it to be so repetitively septunarian. As such, the seven motif in the flood account seems to be a stock number, just like forty is a stock number in Scripture. In some cases is might be due to rounding up or rounding down to seven of something. And in some cases there's no natural interval, so the interval will be stipulative. But the frequency appears to be artificial by design. 

So it's interesting to see the same motif in the Table of Nations. That kind of numerology suggests the narratives are somewhat stylized to highlight artificial septunarian patterns. Nature in the raw isn't that symmetrical. It doesn't normally operate in cycles of seven. 

There's nothing deceptive about that so long as the numbers were understood to be stock numbers, sometimes used for their symbolic connotations. It may be code language for God's control over events. Septunarian iterations clue the reader to the hidden hand of providence. Too coincidental to be sheer coincidence.  

Since we see this in the flood account as well as the Table of Nations, it has backward casting implications for the creation account. By analogy with the flood account and the Table of Nations, is the number of days in Gen 1 a stock number, too? 

Looking ahead to Africa

http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2019/08/looking-ahead-to-africa.html

What is the creation model?

http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2019/08/what-is-creation-model.html

Giving up Darwin

This is from a generally sympathetic review of Meyer's book. The reviewer, a Yale computer science prof., seems to agree that the theory of naturalistic evolution, as currently formulated, can't deliver the goods, but he remains unpersuaded by intelligent design as a satisfactory alternative:

If Meyer were invoking a single intervention by an intelligent designer at the invention of life, or of consciousness, or rationality, or self-aware consciousness, the idea might seem more natural. But then we still haven’t explained the Cambrian explosion. An intelligent designer who interferes repeatedly, on the other hand, poses an even harder problem of explaining why he chose to act when he did. Such a cause would necessarily have some sense of the big picture of life on earth. What was his strategy? How did he manage to back himself into so many corners, wasting energy on so many doomed organisms? Granted, they might each have contributed genes to our common stockpile—but could hardly have done so in the most efficient way. What was his purpose? And why did he do such an awfully slipshod job? Why are we so disease prone, heartbreak prone, and so on? An intelligent designer makes perfect sense in the abstract. The real challenge is how to fit this designer into life as we know it. Intelligent design might well be the ultimate answer. But as a theory, it would seem to have a long way to go.

https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/giving-up-darwin/

That raises a number of general issues, as well as issues specific to intelligent design theory:

i) The reviewer erects a false dichotomy between deistic providence and continuous divine intervention. But it's not as though there can't be something reasonable in-between those two extremes. There's a sense in which the degree of divine intervention is arbitrary inasmuch as God could intervene one more time or one less time. There's no absolute logical cutoff for exactly the right number of times God should intervene. 

ii) Moreover, divine intervention involves tradeoffs. It can be a good thing, but it also has a disruptive impact on the future. As such, there can be too much divine intervention as well as too little. Human existence needs a fair measure of stability and predictability. 

iii) If we view evolution as the process by which life originates and/or diversifies, then evolution is an inefficient process for achieving a long-range goal. Of course, that takes the truth of evolution for granted, which is the very question at issue. 

On this view, some organisms are the means by which other organisms come into existence. So their purpose, if they have a purpose, is instrumental. And if we cast that in terms of theistic evolution, the process is very convoluted and "wasteful", as a way of reaching the final outcome. If, on the other hand, we're talking about naturalistic evolution, then that's not a goal-oriented process to begin with. Species are the incidental byproduct of a blind process. 

iv) If, however, we reject an evolutionary narrative, then life on earth is not primarily a process for deriving newer species from prior species. Prior species don't exist as a bridge to more advanced species. On that view, doomed organisms aren't evolutionary dead-ends, since it never was the primary way of producing new species. 

To take a comparison, sometimes a family line dies out. There are no more descendants. But it doesn't follow that that linage was a waste of time. There's value in individual human lives even if the linage terminates at some point. That's not a blind alley–as if the value of the linage was instrumental, in producing decedents for the sake of descendants. 

v) Suppose we consider old-earth creationism as an alternative to naturalistic evolution or theistic evolution. On that view, species may become extinct, species may be phased in and phrased out, not because God lacks foresight and repeatedly backs himself into a corner (although that is a realistic scenario in open theism), but because not all species can coexist. For one thing, there's not room enough for all species to coexist. 

In addition, some species require a different biosphere. A different atmosphere. Different ratio of oxygen to nitrogen or carbon dioxide. Fauna that require a different kind of flora (e.g. tropical swamps). In that event, creation will be diachronically staged, in part to make room for new species, and in part because the conditions for the life of certain species are variable. 

vi) As for disease prone or heartbreak prone, in Christian theology that's not a design flaw or artifact of creation but a consequence of the Fall. And the Fall has a purpose, too. 

vii) It would still be the case that intelligent design theory is guilty of postulating ad hoc divine interventions to resolve unexplained problems in the fossil record. I'm not commenting directly on that. 

Blank canvas

1. I've discussed this before. It's a perennial issue in apologetics. I'm going to use a different example to illustrate a point I've made before.

To my knowledge, there's overwhelming scientific evidence for the antiquity of the universe, from multiple interlocking data points. 

From what I've read, the most impressive scientific objection to conventional dating is the preservation of soft tissue in dinosaurs. I'm not qualified to assess that, but it's intriguing. 

That generates a paradox: due to the interlocking nature of the scientific evidence for the antiquity of the universe, if it turns out that there's no scientific explanation for the preservation of soft tissue in dinosaurs, over tens of millions of years, then that invalidates the entire dating scheme. 

If, however, YEC chronology is correct, it's odd that nearly all of the scientific evidence points to the antiquity of the universe while precious little points in the opposite direction. You'd expect the evidence to be more consistent one way or the other.

In general then, I think the effort to defend YEC chronology on scientific grounds is probably a losing argument. That doesn't mean it's necessarily a lost cause–just that if you try to make the argument from scientific evidence, I expect that's doomed to fail. Nevertheless, the anomaly of soft tissue in dinosaurs is fascinating. 

2. A limitation on appeals to scientific evidence is that science operates within a particular framework. But the act of creation lies outside that framework. The scientific framework is the result of creation. So beyond a certain point, you can't extrapolate from the framework to the set up. 

To take a comparison, a painter begins with a blank canvas. There are almost no limitations on what he can put on the canvas. There's no natural starting-point. Rather, he's working from scratch. 

Likewise, a filmmaker begins with a roll of blank film. There's nothing on the frames. He can film whatever he wants. 

The medium imposes almost no restrictions on his range of options. The medium offers no direction. What the artist paints or films is wide open. There's nothing in the medium to indicate where to begin. 

Different painters with a blank canvas paint different scenes. Indeed, the same painter paints different scenes. Give him 50 blank canvases, and he'll paint 50 different scenes. 

Hand different filmmakers a roll of blank film, and they will make different films using the same roll of blank film. Indeed, the same filmmaker will make different films using  rolls of blank film. Nothing in the medium constrains the choice of plot, setting, characters, or dialogue. And in the digital age, it's even mere flexible.  

What's put on film or put on the canvas doesn't derive from the medium but from the mind of the artist. It comes from outside the medium. In that regard, the choice is arbitrary.

That doesn't make it absolutely arbitrary. In a movie with a good plot, there's dramatic logic to where the story begins and where it ends. However, that's internal to the narrative. The medium itself doesn't point in any particular direction. 

Mature creation has antecedent appeal because it parallels the nature of human creativity. And the comparison is even stronger in reference to the divine creator, because God is freer than human agents. He creates the medium. Not only is this an argument by analogy, but an argument from the lesser to the greater. So I find the idea of mature creation powerfully appealing.