Having devoted fourteen years (1994-2008) to the Creation/Evolution debate, 
including my own CreationEvolutionDesign Yahoo discussion group (2001-2005), and
[Right: "The Christian View of Science and Scripture" (1954), by the late Bernard L. Ramm (1916-1992). Next to the Bible, this book has been the most influential in founding my views on Creation/ Evolution/Design. Ramm was an early advocate of a form of Progressive Creation.]
completing a Biology degree (2000-2004), I had quite frankly become bored with Creation/Evolution/Design issues, and more interested in posting on my other two blogs The Shroud of Turin and Jesus is Jehovah!
One of the reasons for my loss of interest is that I am now even more persuaded that the evidence for Christianity being objectively true (i.e. true whether it is believed or not) is now so overwhelming (e.g. Daniels' 70 weeks and the Shroud of Turin), that some form of Creation must be true, and Progressive Creation best fits the Biblical and scientific evidence. And since Christianity is true, Evolution in "the standard scientific theory" sense "that `human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process.'" (Shermer, M.B., "The Gradual Illumination of the Mind," Scientific American, February, 2002. My emphasis) must be false.
I have decided toput my planned "Messianic Prophecy" series on the backburner, and start a series on on my theory of Progressive Mediate Creation (PMC). Factors that have played a part in this include two recent comments [here and here], especially the second one, to which I could not think of what to reply. I also feel that this my General Theory of Progressive Mediate Creation is, in the final analysis, all that I have to offer in the Creation/Evolution/Design debate.
I have fallen behind in my reading of Creation/Evolution/Design issues, so what I post may have been said better by someone else more recently, or may even be factually wrong. If that is the case, I ask that a reader will let me know in a comment under that post. And due to the Global Financial Crisis I have had to work as a high school relief (substitute, supply) teacher, mainly teaching Maths and Science, so I have less time to research issues in depth.
What I write will probably be mostly `off the top of my head' and not referenced or linked. This may be an advantage since I tend to get bogged down in detail! Each of these major headings will have minor headings inserted under them. And each heading, major and minor, will be linked to a separate post.
Comments are welcome, but if they are nasty, substandard or off-topic, they won't appear, as per my stated policy.
© Stephen E. Jones
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. What is Progressive Mediate Creation?
1.2. What is Evolution?
1.3. Since Christianity is True, Naturalism is False!
2. ORIGIN OF THE UNIVERSE
2.1. The Big Bang
2.2. Fine-tuning of the Universe
2.3. Before the Big Bang?
3. ORIGIN OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM
3.1. The Sun
3.2. The Planets
3.3. Fine-tuning of the Solar System
3.4. Uniqueness of the Solar System
4. ORIGIN OF THE EARTH
4.1. The Earth-Moon System
4.2. Fine-tuning of the Earth
4.3. Uniqueness of the Earth
4.4. Survival of the Earth
5. ORIGIN OF LIFE
5.1. Failure of All Naturalistic Origin of Life Theories
5.2. A Minimal Cell
5.3. Origin of all the Materials
5.4. All the Materials together at the Same Time and Place
5.5. Self-assembly of Materials into a Living Organism
5.6. Self-replication
5.7. Farsightedness of Life's Design
6. ORIGIN OF LIFE'S MAJOR GROUPS
6.1. Universal Common Ancestry
6.2. Single-Celled Organisms
6.3. Multi-Celled Organisms
6.4. Plants
6.5. Fungi
6.6. Animals
7. ORIGIN OF MAN
7.1. Bipedality
7.2. Stereoscopic colour vision
7.3. Arms, Hands and Tools
7.4. Intelligence
7.5. Language
7.6. Society
7.7. The Human Package
8. CONCLUSION
Stephen E. Jones, BSc. (Biology).
My other blogs: The Shroud of Turin & Jesus is Jehovah!
Posts
7 comments:
Stephen
I can understand how your research might help show that Jesus died for us and rose again, but I'm at a loss as to how proving that or other particular aspects of Christianity proves a god that tinkers with evolution.
If you prove Chrsitainty is objectively true, why couldn't God have stopped at the Big Bang?
Gerald
>... I'm at a loss as to how proving that or other particular aspects of Christianity proves a god that tinkers with evolution.
I don't claim that my theory of Progressive Mediate Creation "proves a god that tinkers with evolution."
For starters, if my theory of "Progressive Mediate Creation" is true, then evolution in "the standard scientific theory" sense, "that `human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in this process.'" (Shermer, M.B., "The Gradual Illumination of the Mind," Scientific American, February, 2002. My emphasis) is false.
>... why couldn't God have stopped at the Big Bang?
As Phillip E. Johnson once said, questions starting with "why couldn't God have ...?" are close to meaningless, because, since God is omnipotent, the answer almost always is, "He could have (but didn't)"!
Stephen E. Jones
Great posting, although I've always been confused by Ramms flood interpretation. Gen 6 clearly states man beginning to fan out some on the earth. While I have no problem with a local flood, I do have issue with it being limited as far as humanity is concerned. I just don't see this allowed from the text.
You'd said to contact you here vs email, and so I am.
My true question stems from looking at the old ASA ListserveArchive and good ole Glenn Morton popped up with an objection I've heard recently from the biologos bunch (Collins, Falk, Venema, Enns) that humanity has never suffered a bottleneck of only 8 survivors, nor a beginning with only 2 members.
You're a studied fellow and I'm interested in your opinion on this matter.
Thanks for all you do.
Good shroud blog as well.
Morgan
>Great posting, although I've always been confused by Ramms flood interpretation.
from memory Ramm lists different local Flood possibilities, e.g. known world of Noah, anthropologically universal, etc.
>Gen 6 clearly states man beginning to fan out some on the earth.
The word "earth" [Heb. eretz] in Genesis means "land". It does not mean "globe" as we today understand "earth" to mean.
>While I have no problem with a local flood, I do have issue with it being limited as far as humanity is concerned.
Agreed. Australian aborigines have been in Australia at least 50,000 years, so if the Flood was anthropologically universal it would mean it had to have happened at least 50,000 years ago.
Which in turn would stretch the Gn 5 and 11 genealogies beyond their breaking point.
>I just don't see this allowed from the text.
Agreed. The Bible itself rules it out because the Nephilim existed both before the Flood:
Gn 6:4: "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days ..."
and after the Flood:
Num 13:33 "And there we saw the Nephilim (the sons of Anak, who come from the Nephilim) ..."
So the Bible itself indicates that the Sons of Anak's Nephilim ancestors were not wiped out by the Flood.
Therefore the Flood cannot have been geographically global or even anthropologically universal.
>You'd said to contact you here vs email, and so I am.
OK. But as I said I have ceased posting on this CED blog and I am out of touch with the latest in Creation/Evolution/Design.
My focus these days is on my The Shroud of Turin blog.
If the Shroud of Turin is the burial sheet of Jesus, bearing the image of His crucified, dead, buried and RESURRECTED body (which it does) then Christianity is true and Naturalism is false. In that case Naturalistic Evolution ("...God had no part in this process") is false.
>My true question stems from looking at the old ASA ListserveArchive and good ole Glenn Morton popped up with an objection I've heard recently from the biologos bunch (Collins, Falk, Venema, Enns) that humanity has never suffered a bottleneck of only 8 survivors, nor a beginning with only 2 members.
I have no problem with that. If you search my blog you will find that I had posted approvingly on E.K.V. Pearce's Genesis 1 Man and Genesis 2 Adam theory. E.g. "Re: snake ritual discovery in Africa".
Here is a summary of it:
[continued]
[continued]
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What I believe about Creation, Evolution, Design and Christianity ... Adam & Eve. I regard the best fit of the Biblical and scientific data on Adam and Eve to be E.K.V. Pearce's "two `Adams'" model. That is, there was both Genesis 1 "man" (Heb. 'adam in Gen. 1:26-28 is without the article and therefore is translated "man") and a Genesis 2 "Adam" (Heb. 'adam in Gen. 2:20 is with the article ("the man") and therefore is translated "Adam", i.e. an individual, a name). Genesis 1 "man" (male and female-Gen. 1:26-28) were the actual and/or symbolic common ancestors of all Homo sapiens. But Genesis 2 "Adam" (Gen. 2:4,20;3:17,20-21; 4:1, 25; 5:1,3-5; Hos 6:7; 1 Tim. 2:13-14; Jude 1:14) was a literal individual and/or symbol ("the pattern of the one [Christ] to come"-Rom. 5:14) and was/symbolised the common ancestor only of the line which led to Christ (Lk. 3:23,38) and therefore through Him, "the last Adam" (1 Cor. 15:45) was united back through Genesis 2 "Adam" and Genesis 1 "man," to all humans as their Representative (Rom. 5:12-14; 1 Cor. 15:22,45).
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>You're a studied fellow and I'm interested in your opinion on this matter.
See above. I hope this has helped.
>Thanks for all you do.
Thank you.
>Good shroud blog as well
Thanks again.
Stephen E. Jones
My question came our poorly. I'm saying that it seems necessary from the text that the flood include all mankind. A region is fine, but all mankind seems necessary from the setting of Gen 6 (when man began to multiply...)
Morgan
>I'm saying that it seems necessary from the text that the flood include all mankind. A region is fine, but all mankind seems necessary from the setting of Gen 6 (when man began to multiply...)
Disagree. The first principles of believing Christian Biblical interpretation is that: 1) All the relevant Biblical information be considered; and 2) the Bible be assumed not to contradict itself.
The verses I cited above about the Nephilim existing both before and after the Flood shows that the Flood was not global (either geographically or anthropologically).
Bernard Ramm also pointed out that the Table of Nations in Gn 10 states which nations descended from those on the Ark and "no mention of the Mongoloid or Negroid races is made":
"An examination of the Table of Nations of Gen. 10 discloses that no mention of the Mongoloid or Negroid races is made. Some anthropologists believe that it is impossible to make any racial distinctions among humans, others make two main divisions, but most accept with modifications and qualifications and exceptions the triadic division of Negroid, Mongoloid, and Caucasoid. As far as can be determined the early chapters of Genesis centre around that stream of humanity (part of the Caucasoid race) which produced the Semitic family of nations of which the Hebrews were a member. The sons of Noah were all Caucasian as far as can be determined, and so were all of their descendants. The Table of Nations gives no hint of any Negroid or Mongoloid peoples." (Ramm, B.L., "The Christian View of Science and Scripture," Paternoster: Exeter UK, 1955, Reprinted, 1960, p.234)
And "Noah certainly was not a preacher of righteousness to the peoples of Africa, of India, of China or of America-places where there is evidence for the existence of man many thousands of years before the flood":
"The purpose of the flood was to blot out the wicked civilization of Mesopotamia, and being a local flood of a short duration we would not expect to find any specific evidence for it, especially after the minimum of another six thousand years of weathering. There are three views of the local flood: (i) Some assert that man never spread beyond the Mesopotamian valley. This is impossible to defend in that it is so well proven that men were to be found outside the Mesopotamian area long before the flood. (ii) G.F. Wright believes that the ice-age drove man into the Mesopotamian valley. (iii) A third view, and the one which we hold, is that the entire record must be interpreted phenomenally. If the flood is local though spoken of in universal terms, so the destruction of man is local though spoken of in universal terms. The record neither affirms nor denies that man existed beyond the Mesopotamian valley. Noah certainly was not a preacher of righteousness to the peoples of Africa, of India, of China or of America-places where there is evidence for the existence of man many thousands of years before the flood (10,000 to 15,000 years in America). The emphasis in Genesis is upon that group of cultures from which Abraham [and through Him Christ-SEJ] eventually came." (Ramm, 1955, p.163).
Since I don't have the time (or inclination) for extended debate on this matter (especially now that this my CED blog is inactive) you have had your last comment on this topic.
Stephen E. Jones
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