Questions from Christians Regarding Evolution

[John Bauer]

[Re: Oxygen and the Lenski LTEE]

They didn't want oxygen, because they would have to explain that.

As I showed (here), that is false.

So where did the oxygen come from?

Lenski himself—so to speak. I mean, oxygen exists in the air.

The experiment was conducted under normal atmospheric conditions, and the flasks were shaken specifically to keep the medium oxygenated. Oxygen was not something that “leaked in” or required explanation. It was a constant background condition, just like room temperature and gravity. And it was on purpose: The experiment was not modeling an oxygen-free early Earth; it was testing whether bacteria could evolve new metabolic abilities in an oxygen-rich environment. That requires oxygen. Treating its presence as a problem, like Malone apparently did, simply reflects a misunderstanding of the experiment itself.

The answer, as we learned, was yes.

I guess you haven't heard the joke:

God: Make a planet with life on it.

Microbiologist Team: Sure, we'll need x, y, z …

God: I don't think you understand; you have to make those, too.
​

I haven’t heard that joke. It’s definitely a good one.

And it reminds me of a Carl Sagan quote: “In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

Having read this, I am now convinced that I do not want any further 'categories' set by you about what is 'off-topic.'

You said “a God-figure does not act into nor intervene in” a closed system of nature.

I found it confusing to hear you make that claim because it follows from metaphysical naturalism, and yet neither you, myself, nor anyone else here identifies as an atheist—so why introduce it at all?

And somehow that means that I am unqualified to determine what is off-topic. That simply does not follow.

As a Biblical theist, I have to talk about other views, like Bhuddism. That does not mean I don't know Bhuddism because I am a biblical theist, or that I have left it.

Fair enough. But, again, nobody here is an atheist (or Buddhist), so why did you inject that point into the discussion at all? It was out of left field.

Unless, of course, you consider evolution inherently atheistic. Then it would make sense. It would be absurdly wrong, of course—like saying chemistry is inherently atheistic—but at least the dots would be connected.

I am not making that claim; I am reporting it. If you find the report faulty, don't say that I'm making the claim.

There were exactly zero markers indicating that it was being reported. You didn’t indicate that it was a claim made by someone else, there were no quotation marks around it, there was no citation or link—literally nothing.

You referred to a “uniformitarian” system, and I signaled hesitation over that term because it is rife with equivocation from the lips of creationists. To that you responded, “Causes and effects are limited to a closed system of nature. A God-figure does not act into nor intervene in that.”

Where was there any indication that you were reporting here, whether in this statement or the context in which it sits?

There was none.

Who was the subject of this reporting? To whom were you referring when you shared that claim? And what is the relevance to our discussion?

Explain the fault of the report.

I did: “That claim follows from metaphysical naturalism.” That’s the fault.

To clarify (if needed): Metaphysical naturalism is self-referentially incoherent. It is nothing but fault.

 

[John Bauer]

This is simply not true. None of us are in a vacuum; everything relates to everything else, no matter how minutely.

That statement addresses ontological connectedness, not methodological competence—which means it fails to address the point I made (about you criticizing a field for failing to answer a question it does not, by definition, claim to answer). I made an epistemic point about the scope and limits of science. You responded with a metaphysical platitude about the interconnectedness of reality. A swing and a miss. Interconnectedness does not convert metaphysical questions into empirical ones.

Science cannot investigate ‘nothing’ prior to spacetime because science, by definition, operates within a spatiotemporal framework.

Have you ever noticed that the more remote the time period the more dogmatic a science becomes?

No, I have noticed precisely the opposite. Science is far more dogmatic about what can be observed or replicated (here and now) than about what can only be inferred (a billion years ago). Evolutionary theories and hypotheses about events hundreds of millions of years ago are chock full of hedging language like “plausibly,” “might have,” “it’s possible that,” and so on. This is especially true regarding possible high-energy conditions of the early universe—things like the “colliding sheets” of brane cosmology—ideas which are openly labeled as speculative and held provisionally and tentatively. They are debated, published, critiqued, and often abandoned.

What you call “straining” is just the normal pain of a scientific field operating at the edge of observability. In paleontological debates about dinosaurs, we don’t judge it for lacking photographs. We understand that inference replaces direct access. Cosmology works the same way, just at a larger scale.

Although you claim to be familiar with Schaeffer, I have yet to see where you grasped the “split world of reality,” “the upper story leap,” etc.—which is most of his passion about basic views. It is what neo-orthodoxy is about, mostly in theology.

You seem to think that invoking Francis Schaeffer’s categories proves your case. It does not. The question is whether your critique of science actually tracks Schaeffer’s concern. He was opposing autonomous human reason which cages meaning in an irrational upper story, not disciplined empirical inquiry that acknowledges its methodological limits. You seem to be weaponizing his language while ignoring his actual target—which was neither Christians nor a biblical world-view. (For what it’s worth, Schaeffer is the one who launched my journey into presuppositional apologetics, which eventually led to Cornelius Van Til and Greg Bahnsen.)

So, then, because we have a propositional record/narrative with a secure custody that says there was a moment when physical reality started by an agent outside of that physical reality, we do not have the limitation you have mentioned.

We do have that limitation I mentioned. Presumably, this “propositional narrative with a secure custody” is the Bible, by which that agent communicates essential truths to us. Yes, the Bible tells us that this universe had a creator. But that’s exactly what I said, isn’t it? “Science, as methodologically empirical, is categorically incapable of answering [what caused the Big Bang]. That task belongs to metaphysics and theology, not science” (emphasis added). Science cannot answer that question because it cannot operate independent of its own preconditions for intelligibility. “Science, by definition, operates within a spatiotemporal framework,” I pointed out, so it ceases to function apart from that framework.

[Joe Rogan and Stephen Meyer] can agree that an ‘infinitely’ small amount of mass was used to produce the result we now have.

That “infinitely” small amount of mass … is an amount of mass. That implies spatiotemporal dimensions and, thus, the very early universe (post-Planck epoch). Since the universe cannot create itself, that amount of mass can’t be what caused the universe. So, whatever question Rogan and Meyer were exploring, it couldn’t have been the cause of the universe—because that wasn’t it.

Yes, I would criticize any arithmetic that could not explain why numbers exist.

That would be a self-referentially incoherent position. It requires a methodology to justify the existence of what it already presupposes without relying on those presuppositions to do so, which is logically impossible. If your standard were applied consistently to every field of inquiry, no knowledge system could ever emerge.

Arithmetic is a methodology, mate, not an ontology. Distinctly different categories.

You are seriously fractured in your thinking.

You haven’t yet managed to demonstrate that.

And, given your statement above, it is a wildly ironic accusation.

I believe you said you knew what Lewis stated in [the] "Religion and Science" analogy about the coins that regularly accumulate in the office drawer. Even though a psychiatrist or detective has an explanation, they know what coins are and what counting is and what accumulation is.

They’re also conscious beings with intellect and will. There is no equivalence between them and arithmetic.

[The existence of numbers] must be explained, and refusing to do so is slop.

I agree their existence should be explained, but that’s not the job of arithmetic. You need an ontology for that.

The universe is far, far more coherent than what you are suggesting.

I haven’t suggested anything about the universe’s coherence.

Otherwise the text of Genesis 1 has things like two creations …

That does not follow. The book of Genesis has two creation narratives—chapters 1 and 2 separated by a toledot formula—but Genesis 1 is a single liturgical creation narrative.

 

[Josheb]

The following was split from another thread.​

What does "suddenly appear" mean? Do you mean within seconds? Weeks? Millennia? And from the womb, like a dog giving birth to a cat? Or speciation over thousands of generations after a lineage split?



How do you justify that claim? What prevents a later species from resembling an earlier form? Say, for example, Carcharhinus leucas (today) versus Hybodus reticulatus (150 mya).



I cannot decipher this sentence. Please rephrase.



If this is your own response, then you have misunderstood the Lenski long-term evolution experiment (LTEE). If this was taken from somewhere else, then that person didn't understand—and you ought to have verified his claims before repeating them.

"They had no way to prevent oxygen reaching the mutations," you said—but why would they even try to prevent it? The Lenski LTEE was explicitly designed as an aerobic experiment. The flasks were shaken to ensure continuous oxygenation, because the goal was to study adaptation in an oxygen-rich environment typical of many natural bacterial niches. Oxygen was a stable, controlled parameter, not a contaminant or design flaw.

If the experiment had aimed to simulate anaerobic conditions, oxygen exclusion would have been trivial to engineer. That was never the objective. The emergence of citrate utilization occurred within the very environment the experiment deliberately maintained. Any claim that this represents a breakdown of the setup is simply inaccurate.

Normally, E. coli cannot use citrate when oxygen is present because the gene that makes the citrate "import protein" is switched off in aerobic conditions. After about 30,000 generations, one group of bacteria evolved a new ability: They could now take in and use citrate even with oxygen around. This happened because a genetic rearrangement duplicated the citrate transporter gene and placed it under a different genetic switch that turns on in the presence of oxygen. This rewired gene control system now allowed access to a food source that was previously unavailable.

Also: While the LTEE itself has been running for "several decades," the specific evolutionary event being cited occurred more than 20 years ago. The citrate-utilizing phenotype was first clearly identified and isolated in 2003, and later analyzed in detail in Zachary D. Blount, Christina Z. Borland, and Richard E. Lenski, "Historical Contingency and the Evolution of a Key Innovation in an Experimental Population of Escherichia coli," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105, no. 23 (2008): 7899–7906, https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0803151105.

Good Morning @John Bauer,

I did not read the through the entirety of the previous thread, so I do not know whether this was addressed there or not. Are you familiar with "irreducible complexity"? I suspect what @EarlyActs is referring to that matter in more than one of these quotes, especially in regard to something "suddenly" appearing. An eyeball, for example, cannot function unless and until all of its basest constituent elements exists. An eyeball, for example, can't be an eyeball without a sclera, cornea, pupil, iris, retina, rods and/or cones, optic disk, optic nerve, and multiple other structures. A significant change in any one component renders the device (the eyeball) inoperable. Therefore (or so the reasoning goes), an owl eyeball cannot evolve from the tinamous eyeball (or whatever other birds existed between the tinamous and the owl on the evolutionary tree) unless all the base parts also change and change in an effectively functional manner simultaneously. Otherwise, that bird is blind and dies. Then, in turn, other elements of the bird's physiology must change (mutate, naturally selection, etc.) or adapt in coordination with changes in the eyeball. For example, in the case of the aforementioned owl, all the physiological mechanisms that aid the owl's immovable eyeball must also develop. All the components of the rotatable head in the neck, changes in the feathers to create silent flight, changes in the ear to facilitate extra-ordinarily acute hearing. It won't do the owl any good to have a nocturnally effective eyeball if he cannot capture the prey he alone can see in the night. The eyeball's changes most also coordinate with aspects of sexual reproduction since owls are sexes are nearly identical in appearance. In other words, no matter how short or long these changes may take an owl - with the owl's many unique physiological structural differences - doesn't exist unless and until all that makes that owl an owl exists. It cannot "appear" in the evolutionary tree unless all the basest elements of many of its unique structures exist at the same time.

@EarlyActs may feel free to correct me if I have misrepresented his pov.

 

[CrowCross]

Not true. The humpback and hippo do not trace back to a linage that split.

You replied with...

f you’re placing evolution under critical scrutiny, then this claim is question-begging and must be remedied. Rule 4.4 would now be in effect.

The same applies if you are simply dismissing evolution as false and assuming the truth of young-earth creationism. That would likewise invoke Rule 4.4.

Allow me to remind you: This thread is for questions regarding evolution. Critiques of evolution are permissible and welcomed, too, but simply dismissing it as false is not a critique and will not be tolerated.

You presented a fallacy...that is the humpback and hippo are descendants of each other.

Then you replied back with rule 4.4???

Please demonstrate that the humpback whale and hippo derived from a common ancestor.

 

[Josheb]

Considering it is a print of a dinosaur that has stepped onto of a human foot print....and the dinosaurs didn't live past 65 MY's...man must be older than 30 MY's.

Well, it looks like a human footprint, quacks like a human footprint and smells like a human footprint, but it doesn't fit with the existing geological timeline of existing evolutionary theory so it must not be a human footprint . Someone must have put it there under the dinosaur footprint .

 

[John Bauer]

I did not read the through the entirety of the previous thread, so I do not know whether this was addressed there or not. Are you familiar with irreducible complexity?

If you had read through the entire thread, you would have discovered @Carbon and I very briefly touched upon Stephen Meyer and intelligent design. He asked if I’m familiar with Meyer and I explained that I was formerly an old-earth creationist of the Hugh Ross variety who advocated for intelligent design.

(I am still an old-earth creationist but I no longer accept Ross’s interpretation of Genesis, and I have largely abandoned intelligent design because it squeezes God out of the picture; Behe, for example, argues that if we can explain something scientifically then it’s not a product of intelligent design. That’s in the 2006 edition of Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, page 203.)

So, yes, I am quite familiar with Stephen Meyer (early Cambrian radiation), William Dembski (complex specified information), Michael Behe (irreducible complexity), Discovery Institute, Access Research Network, Evolution News & Views, and so on.

I suspect that @EarlyActs is referring to that matter in more than one of these quotes, especially in regard to something “suddenly” appearing.

He said that no creatures would appear complex in 30 million years, not no features (like the eyeball). But it tracks the same issue anyway, I guess, just scaled up. That being said, are you making a point or asking a question? I can’t tell.

If you are suggesting that something as exquisitely sophisticated as the owl would not appear in just 30 million years (“suddenly”), then I would agree with you. I suspect it took closer to a billion years. Molecular clock analyses place the emergence of primitive photoreceptive systems at ~800 million years ago or more—long before the Cambrian.

Well, it looks like a human footprint, quacks like a human footprint and smells like a human footprint, but it doesn't fit with the existing geological timeline of existing evolutionary theory so it must not be a human footprint . Someone must have put it there under the dinosaur footprint .

Don’t embarrass yourself needlessly, Josh. If even young-earth creationists admit this claim is debunked, what sort of people are still pretending it’s credible?

 

[John Bauer]

You presented a fallacy, that is, the humpback and hippo are descendants of each other.

I never said anything of the sort. That is a gross misrepresentation, which is another violation of the rules.

I said the humpback whale and the hippopotamus shared a common ancestor as recently as 30 million years ago. If you want to call that a fallacy, you will have to identify it and show how this commits it.

But not until after you have resolved the allegation made against you (here).

Once again, you tried to refute the Delk tracks—and failed.

I did not attempt to refute them. I said they have been so fully refuted (by others) that even organizations like Answers in Genesis advise against using them in arguments for a young-earth creation. If even creationists admit this claim has been debunked, but you’re still trying to pretend it’s evidence of humans and dinosaurs living together, that is revealing.

I looked at the link from Ken Ham (2010) and it didn't even mention the Delk [tracks].

Yes, it did: “… supposed human and dinosaur footprints found together at the Paluxy River in Texas …”

I am dumbfounded that you willingly published that reply.

 

[Josheb]

Don’t embarrass yourself needlessly, Josh.

It was a joke.

 

[CrowCross]

I never said anything of the sort. That is a gross misrepresentation, which is another violation of the rules.

I said the humpback whale and the hippopotamus shared a common ancestor as recently as 30 million years ago. If you want to call that a fallacy, you will have to identify it and show how this commits it.

But not until after you have resolved the allegation made against you (here).



I did not attempt to refute them. I said they have been so fully refuted (by others) that even organizations like Answers in Genesis advise against using them in arguments for a young-earth creation. If even creationists admit this claim has been debunked, but you’re still trying to pretend it’s evidence of humans and dinosaurs living together, that is revealing.



Yes, it did: “… supposed human and dinosaur footprints found together at the Paluxy River in Texas …”

I am dumbfounded that you willingly published that reply.

It has been demonstrated to you using several aspects of science as well as the bible that evolutionism is not true.

The funniest thing is watching you run around the Delk Tracks. Trying to use AiG advice against YEC. Yet you didn't even show where they said the Delk Tracks were debunked......Your fallacy is getting thicker.

 

[Arial]

It has been demonstrated to you using several aspects of science as well as the bible that evolutionism is not true.

The funniest thing is watching you run around the Delk Tracks. Trying to use AiG advice against YEC. Yet you didn't even show where they said the Delk Tracks were debunked......Your fallacy is getting thicker.

Crow: Go back to post #19 and address the fallacy named. It is clearly stated by @John Bauer in the first line. Read it carefully to comprehend precisely what he is calling a fallacy. By not doing that you continue to violate rule 4.4. Read the rule if you need to. If you can't do so simply say something along the lines of "You can't prove evolution is not valid through science alone but you believe it is not because you adhere to a literal six-day creation account.' If that is the case. If that is not the case address it however you think it should be addressed. Do not continue posting on the subject until you have done so.

 

[CrowCross]

Crow: Go back to post #19 and address the fallacy named. It is clearly stated by @John Bauer in the first line. Read it carefully to comprehend precisely what he is calling a fallacy. By not doing that you continue to violate rule 4.4. Read the rule if you need to. If you can't do so simply say something along the lines of "You can't prove evolution is not valid through science alone but you believe it is not because you adhere to a literal six-day creation account.' If that is the case. If that is not the case address it however you think it should be addressed. Do not continue posting on the subject until you have done so.

I have answered all of JB's questions. In fact I have even expanded on his fallacies.

I have proven that the six day creation as per the bible is a reality and Good didn't use evolutionism as a means of creating man.
If you disagree with that...the so be it.

Post 19 said....So far, all you have done is (a) dismiss evolution as false and (b) assume the truth of young-earth creationism and its flood geology.

I presented that creation science and the truth behind the six day creation is more than an assumption and why evolutionism should be dismissed as a lie from hell.. You now said....Do not continue posting on the subject until you have done so....With all due respect, I have already "done so".

{Edit: violation of rules 4.9 and 6.3}

@John Bauer I am directing Crow Cross's post above to you since Crow addressed it to me. It is his claim to having refuted the fallacy charge.

 

[EarlyActs]

If you’re referring to the early Cambrian radiation, then “suddenly” means after 30 million years.

In which case your claim is false. The theory of evolution is untroubled by the idea of new, morphologically diverse species appearing “suddenly” if that means tens of millions of years. Cladistics routinely posits such histories.

Note: There were no bees or spiders in the Cambrian period. Those appeared much later (from Devonian–Carboniferous onward).



There has never been a 150-million-year span with “no trace of evolution.” Bull sharks today look a lot like Hybodus reticulatus from 150 million years ago but that doesn’t imply evolutionary inactivity. After all, Carcharhinus leucas (bull sharks) are a different species from H. reticulatus; in fact, they belong to entirely different shark lineages. In other words, evolution was still happening. There are tens of thousands of species of fish, many of which resemble one another morphologically. Does that mean they are the same species? Of course not. Species resembling each other doesn’t indicate an absence of evolution.

You claimed that later species would not resemble an earlier form (here) but failed to justify that claim. The theory of evolution predicts that many species could resemble earlier forms in similar, stable ecological niches, and C. leucas and H. reticulatus are an example of that. Your reference to bees and spiders is another example: Bees today resemble those from 120 million years ago, but they are not the same species enduring for hundreds of millions of years; they are different species from different lineages that resemble earlier ones.

To think of evolution as an unstoppable reshaping engine that must produce constant visible morphological change is an inaccurate caricature. That is not what evolutionary theory predicts. Under stable ecological conditions, evolutionary theory explicitly predicts long periods of morphological stability—a phenomenon known as stasis (ecological stability predicts morphological stability).

I wasn't quite done with Nov.22, 6:45am posts you made, but I do like to make things more conversational and current, so I'll remark on this.

The observation that objectors to evolution about the Cambrian explosion has never had to do with how early or late in a theoretical timeframe it took place (for the sake of argument) but how suddenly.

When you say things like this, I don't believe you realize what your opposition is saying, because you address a completely distinct idea.

Secondly, why would anything appear suddenly when there is supposed to be a 'chain of custody.' I mean, isn't that what the expression 'missing link' has always meant--missing! Either that or the scientist needs to accept that the setting has been seriously disrupted, which it has.

 

[EarlyActs]

If you’re referring to the early Cambrian radiation, then “suddenly” means after 30 million years.

In which case your claim is false. The theory of evolution is untroubled by the idea of new, morphologically diverse species appearing “suddenly” if that means tens of millions of years. Cladistics routinely posits such histories.

Note: There were no bees or spiders in the Cambrian period. Those appeared much later (from Devonian–Carboniferous onward).



There has never been a 150-million-year span with “no trace of evolution.” Bull sharks today look a lot like Hybodus reticulatus from 150 million years ago but that doesn’t imply evolutionary inactivity. After all, Carcharhinus leucas (bull sharks) are a different species from H. reticulatus; in fact, they belong to entirely different shark lineages. In other words, evolution was still happening. There are tens of thousands of species of fish, many of which resemble one another morphologically. Does that mean they are the same species? Of course not. Species resembling each other doesn’t indicate an absence of evolution.

You claimed that later species would not resemble an earlier form (here) but failed to justify that claim. The theory of evolution predicts that many species could resemble earlier forms in similar, stable ecological niches, and C. leucas and H. reticulatus are an example of that. Your reference to bees and spiders is another example: Bees today resemble those from 120 million years ago, but they are not the same species enduring for hundreds of millions of years; they are different species from different lineages that resemble earlier ones.

To think of evolution as an unstoppable reshaping engine that must produce constant visible morphological change is an inaccurate caricature. That is not what evolutionary theory predicts. Under stable ecological conditions, evolutionary theory explicitly predicts long periods of morphological stability—a phenomenon known as stasis (ecological stability predicts morphological stability).

re species
I'm sorry but I find this to be an ongoing word-game in which the original thesis cannot be challenged because the terminology does not mean the same thing 5 minutes later. It is tiresome.

What connection do you find between this and Gen 1, since you are the one claiming you believe all of the above to be true?

When was the 'spreading out'? I believe that is the connection to Biblical truth and that current celestial observation has found that we are relatively close to the center (of said spreading out). This means we have accurate celestial mechanics in these Biblical terms, and in the local vs distant categories that I write about. It means there is a much smaller range of time that earth has existed lifelessly.

 

[EarlyActs]

re species/mutation
So long as we are on the topic, please state concisely your answers to Seegert's analogy of deletion, duplication and repeating in mutations to a book. I don't care which article/video of his that you use, just identify it.

I have a local friend whose mother has worked in TB research and mutations as a career and who says there is nothing that mutations contribute toward life or improvement of a living creature.

 

[Arial]

Once again, if you would like me to leave this forum....just ask and I will comply. Otherwise...STAND DOWN with your constant bickering.

Mod Hat: This is a flagrant violation of rule 6.3
6.3. Respect the role of moderators. Moderators have the final say in rule enforcement, working to ensure that discussions remain constructive and in line with the vision and purpose of the CCAM forums. Publicly debating or criticizing moderator actions within the thread is not allowed. If you have concerns, contact the moderation team privately.

It is a violation of Rule 4.9
4.9. Do not impersonate a moderator. Members are not moderators and should not impersonate or act as though they are. This includes issuing warnings, referencing rule violations as if in an official capacity, or directing others to comply with the rules. If you believe a rule has been broken, use the Report feature and allow the moderators to handle it.

You are not being picked on Crow. You are continuously violating rules. That is on you. Moderators are not to blame they are just doing their job.