Apologetics in a Post Christian Age (Audio) Introduction -- Part 3

Here's the audio from our Wednesday Night Bible Study -- "Introduction to Apologetics -- Schools and Methods of Apologetics"  Part 3  Click Here

Comments

[Scott Buchanan]

Hi Kim,
When I was pondering eschatology issues a couple of years ago, your writings were a big help. I ended up writing an article on my blog about C.S. Lewis's "The World's Last Night", https://letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/2012/01/07/the-worlds-last-night-c-s-lewis-on-the-second-coming/ , where as you can see I gave a shout-out to your book.
I have gotten interested in apologetics more recently, and when I wandered over to your blog here I found this, and listened to it. Or to most of it, anyway, since the mike cuts off now and then. As usual, you are discussing issues calmly and learnedly. I look forward to further installments.

The reason for my comment, however, is to give a scientist's perspective on creationism and evolution, which you touched on in this lecture. Like most people who came to evangelical faith in the 1970's, I was taught, and taught others, young earth creationism as fact. Some years later, after I had gotten some scientific learning (I have PhD in chemical engineering, and have worked in research for 30 years), I started looking into the facts here. To my dismay I found that all the evidence presented for a young earth is completely bogus. I can supply lots of examples if you are interested, but it seems that this is not a big issue for you, since you seem to go with view that the six days of Genesis one are a literary framework, not actual chronology. So far, so good.

However, about ten years ago someone at church challenged me to use my scientific abilities to get on board with Intelligent Design etc. to help refute evolution. So I started digging into the pros and cons of evolution. I found, again to my dismay, that all the arguments I had read and had been using against evolution were likewise bogus. The issues around evolution are more complex and nuanced than the age of the earth, so the anti-evolution evidences don't sink to the level of outright dishonesty seen with young earth creationism, but a careful and unbiased examination of the evidence will find that the physical evidence overwhelmingly supports full-on evolution, including common ancestry between humans and other primates.
Trying to keep this short, I will just reference two articles in this regard. First, this shows that the fossil record, including transitional fossils, is exactly what is predicted by evolutionary theory (and thus the charge that "there are no transitional fossils" is false):
https://letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/2014/04/02/realistic-expectations-for-transitional-fossils/
That is a pretty long article -- you may want to skim quickly down to the middle, then stop and savor the fish-to-amphibian and reptile-to-mammal diagrams to appreciate how thoroughly the facts support evolution.

A second article that directly shows unambiguous evidence of human common ancestry with chimpanzees: https://letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/2015/11/07/endogenous-retroviruses-in-your-genome-show-common-ancestry-with-primates/
(That article closes with some discussion of Reformed hermeneutics applied to Genesis).

Now, the evangelical blogosphere is rife with supposed new findings from scientists which seem to overturn "Darwinism". Here is how this works: some creationist reads an article which he spins such that it appears to the unlearned that the results of this article seem to contradict evolution or an old earth. The spin is done by ignoring a whole bunch of other facts which place the particular article in perspective and which show the article is in fact consistent with evolution. You would be familiar with this sort of thing in theology: someone who (for whatever reason) is opposed to Calvinism will latch onto verses like I Tim 2:4 and I John 2:2, etc., and refuse to listen to Reformed nuanced explanations.

Just one example here: When gorilla and chimp genomes were sequenced, it was found that for about 30% of the genes in these three species, there are greater differences between the human and chimp forms of the gene than between gorilla and chimp or between gorilla and human. Since science claims that humans are more closely related to chimps than to gorillas, Intelligent Design author Casey Luskin claimed that these results caused great embarrassment for evolution. As usual, this latest "problem" for evolution was broadcast gleefully through the Christian blogosphere. And as usual, the supposed problem pose for evolution was in fact non-existent, as noted here: https://letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/gorilla-orangutan-chimp-and-human-genomes-population-genetics-and-intelligent-design/

My reason for taking my evening to write all this down for you is that you seem to be a reasonable man who is interested in the truth. It seems in your podcast here that you have been taken in by some supposed DNA evidence against evolution. Before risking misleading your flock on these issues, I urge you to not repeat any "evidence" against evolution without checking it out. For instance, as I recall you repeated some evidence that human may have migrated from Asia to Africa, as though that overturned the "Out of Africa" consensus. First, evolution does not depend on "Out of Africa". But second, if you look at the Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recent_African_origin_of_modern_humans , and especially at the figure titled " Map of early diversification of modern humans according to mitochondrial population genetics ", you will see why it is widely held that modern humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) were in Africa first, and then waves of migration went into Asia and Africa. There is some evidence that in addition to those people movements, there may have been one or more later migrations from Asia back to Africa. That seems to be what you are referring to. But that does not change the overall picture. That Wikipedia captures some of the nuances and controversies here.

Finally, I realize that you may be theologically wedded so closely to a literal interpretation of the Adam references in the Bible that your brain will simply not admit the evidence for evolution. If so, I may have wasted my evening typing all this. But out of respect for your clear thinking in a different realm, I felt I should give it a try. There is a need for trained theologians (like you) to help the church come to grips with the facts here. I gave a try at how to deal with Romans 5 in the light of evolution, https://letterstocreationists.wordpress.com/2011/08/21/adam-the-fall-and-evolution-christianity-today-and-world-get-it-wrong/ , but I am not a theologian.

All best regards,
Scott Buchanan