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What is the catalyst of evolution?

While it is true that there are many things that evolve and change, it is equally as true that many things do not. If an organism can exist long enough to proliferate its species, what in nature would prompt it to evolve into something else?

It just seems to be accepted that evolution is this normal, scientifically viable change that occurs in a species, when it is nothing of the kind. There is no way to explain the actual process that is evolution.

If you want to tell me that a finger evolved on the “hand” of an organism, it’s kind of important for you to be able to say why. You could say, “because the organism needed it to survive—creatures with fingers survived more than those without.” Fine, well and good. I don’t dispute that at all; it makes sense. But what in that organism prompted such a development? Do our cells have minds of their own that are connected to “nature” that say “I’m not doing so hot right now…perhaps if I could gather more cells in a cylindrical shape at the end of this nub, I might have a better chance of survival”?

In other words, where does the wonderful intelligence of evolution come from? If fingers developed out of necessity, it would have to be instantaneous to do any good. If evolution says “I need a finger”, and all it gets in the first try is a stump, what prompts it to keep going? How does it know it’s on the right track? “If I keep going this way, in a couple million years I’ll have what I need!”

Evolution, as described by anyone who talks about it, seems to have a mind of its own. There is an inherent intelligence in the organism that prompts or demands change. And by necessity, that need has to be perfectly communicated to the next generation for it to work. If one generation is inspired by evolution to start growing a limb, that understanding has to be handed down so that the next generation can pick up where the former left off. The DNA has to not only say what the organism is, but what it was working on and what it must become.

All indications would point to a type of chaotic evolution. If you would say that evolution is not intelligent—that it just happens at random and in many different ways to form new and improved species, how can it be so uniformed and resolved in purpose to continue in one vein of evolutionary development?

If you have a ball of clay, you can shape it in countless ways. You can pinch it, twist it, squish it, separate it…the options are endless. I don’t know how “dumb” evolution could be any different. Unless “it” can somehow recognize the need for something in particular within itself, it has to be trial and error. But if that’s the case, how does it know when to stop trying? How does it perceive error?

If some alligators evolve a fifth limb on their backs, and all the alligators with that extra limb die, that only leaves the normal alligators, right? …So why doesn’t the next generation take the same evolutionary track? How does the “evolution” in the next generation of alligators realize “hey, that whole fifth-limb thing we tried earlier was a failure, lets not do that again!”? And if it is mores subtle (ie just the beginnings of a fifth limb that cause the alligator to die prematurely), why don’t future generations continue to try?

If evolution has no intelligence, how can it know what didn’t work before and never try it again?

The bottom line is that evolution is real, it makes sense, and I think it’s pretty darn cool. But it’s a little too smart for me to just think that it naturally and randomly happens. And if it’s not random, what is dictating the change?

Living is instinct. It’s what an organism does by default. Any organism that does not live by default will die and be no more. So living is necessary for anything to survive. But again, if that species can survive, what prompts it to do better? Even if there is a sudden and severe temperature change in a certain area, what in the local species says “crap! Gotta change or we’re gonna die! Need something to keep warm!” and start the evolutionary process to stay alive?

It is this magical catalyst that evolution without intelligence does not explain, and does not attempt to explain. If I put my hand up to a fire, I will pull it away instinctively. That is natural—it just happens. It’s the process of receptors in my hand sending a message to my brain that says “danger, pull back” and then sending that signal to the muscles in my arm for me to pull away.

But there is no message that says “need to change my body so that the fire doesn’t bother me.” What’s more, even if my body were to somehow say that, there’s no way for it to know how to go about doing it, or to pass the message along to my son or daughter to work on it. There is a difference between reaction and evolution that I think gets overlooked. Evolution is not instinct—if it was, we’d have new versions of everything (albeit with small differences) with each new generation. There would be no control in evolution…it would not be dictated by necessity, but rather simply occur because it has to.

I don’t think I evolved from a monkey. Does it matter if I did? Not really. I don’t believe in God because of the Bible. I believe in God because He is, and has been, real in my life, and I have a relationship with Him. I can’t prove it, just like I can’t prove to anyone that I’ve got a relationship with my mother. But no one can disprove my experiences and what has happened in my life, so arguing about whether I came from a primate is really irrelevent to me. I couldn’t care less.

But as I read about evolution, and see both “sides”, I am convinced more and more that evolution is just another part of God’s brilliance. I believe it is He who inspires the changes that we see, gradual or sudden. It is simply too smart, too focused and too goal-oriented for me to just accept it as what happens just because it does. Evolution as a process (again, we’re not simply talking about DNA that stores concrete data, we’re talking about the knowledge that a certain characteristic is in development and needs to be worked on—“the thumb and four fingers are standard issue—don’t change those…the extra little lump on the palm is a work-in-progress that I need you to develop further”) has to be handed down from generation to generation to work, it has to realize where the dead-ends are (and since there are literally countless dead ends, simply saying “it takes millions of years” doesn’t explain it) and not try to reproduce them in the future, it has to understand when it is on the right track (so as to keep the incremental progress it makes and not discard it), and it has to know when to stop.

You can believe that all of it happens “just ’cause”, but as someone once said, “it takes just as much faith to believe that there is no God as it does to believe that there is one.”

I disagree that creationism or Intelligent design are incompatible with science. It starts at the same place science does — with a hypothesis or theory — and studies and finds that its studies supports its theory. The only difference is creationism believes its theory is fact — but then some scientists do the same, studying to prove their theory true rather than see if it is true or not, though, to be fair, there are some who aren’t that way.

How can you consider it a hypothesis when there can be no scientifically valid proof to either side on these theories? Scientific theory can be debunked at any time when just evidence of its invalidness comes to light.

Certainly, some “scientists” may hang very tightlyon their “theories” even though there is undeniable evidence to the contrary, but the scientific world tends to notice such cases sooner or later.

Well, why would a God who proclaims himself a God of love create a world full of hate and pain? I don’t know, but there you have it - the world is full of it.

I’m sure you’ve heard this before — but He didn’t create it that way. He created it perfect, but then sin entered the world. To wipe out sin, He’d have to wipe us all out, for we all sin. He allows free will. And He provides redemption.

I find your reasoning that regarding the Bible as truth is idolatrous absurd.

Why do fundamentalists insist that everything that isn’t a parable must be historical?

Why do liberals insist that unless something is date and time stamped and notarized that it isn’t literal?

It’s pretty simple logic: If God is omniscient, and if God is just/righteous/truthful, then he would not deliberately include error in his book. If he is as perfect as the Bible claims Him to be, then he would not accidentally include error in his book. Ergo, his book must be the truth, or else God must not be the person he claims to be in the Bible.

Just replace every instance where you wrote “include error in his book” with “allow evil in his world”, and I think you’ll see the problem with your argument.

Its ironic that those who claim a literal interpretation of the Bible don’t really take it literally. At BJU I was taught that the poetry should not be taken literarlly, but everything else was supposedly historical fact. There was no allowance for the Bible as a record of ancient stories and myth. Or, should I believe that the Jews have absolutely no myths? Everything which happened, happened exactly that way? That’s ridiculous. I’m not making an argument here that the Bible is not profitable for doctrine, for reprove, for correction in righteousness. I’m just saying that its been elevated to be something which it was never meant to be.

I’m neither a scientist nor particularly interested in science, but I am fascinated with ancient history and I find that the Bible is pretty accurate back to at least the time of Josiah. There may or may not have been a King David - there’s no hard evidence, however, at a very early date the Kings of Judah were known as coming from the House of David - so he probably existed. Moses is another story - there’s not much record of him. (Oddly - there’s more historical proof for King Hezekiah than there is for Jesus Christ.)

So, like the Greeks, the Jews had stories about how they came to be who they were and where they were. These stories were rooted in fact but heavily embelished by muth and stories. At some point the stories merged with actual people and this point probably was blurred for several hundred years.

Recently I watched the (really awful) movie, Troy. Its unclear whether the Greeks ever attacked Troy - that those characters ever existed. Troy existed, as did Greece but the story of Troy with the trojan horse and Helen whose face launched a 1000 ships, and Achilles and his heel and his lover Patroclus didn’t exist and are part of the founding myths of the ancient Greeks. Does that in any way diminish the story of Troy? No - thousands of years later people are still reading about it as they still read Genesis.

Idolatry - to ascribe power to a thing which is representative of a God is the definition of idolatry. When the fundamentalists talk about the “power of the word”, or about the efficacy of memorizing scripture, or to see the absurd lenghts that the KJV only crowd go - that’s clearly idolatry to me.

What you’re really saying is that since God is Truth, his word must be true in every sense; morally, historically and scientifically. You’re attributing the power of the object to the power of the deity and that is idolatry. The object which represents the god has the power of the god. That’s what the savages believe.

Wait, what? I don’t think it’s out of the question to assume that a truthful God would write a truthful book. I fail to see how that assumption can be equated to idolatry.

It’s pretty simple logic: If God is omniscient, and if God is just/righteous/truthful, then he would not deliberately include error in his book. If he is as perfect as the Bible claims Him to be, then he would not accidentally include error in his book. Ergo, his book must be the truth, or else God must not be the person he claims to be in the Bible.

It’s hardly idolatry; it’s just logical thinking.

Well, why would a God who proclaims himself a God of love create a world full of hate and pain? I don’t know, but there you have it - the world is full of it.

If God can create a world which has gone off track so badly for whatever reason, he can certainly inspire a text which gets the science wrong and gets confused between myth and history. That’s not a big stretch for me to understand.

What you’re really saying is that since God is Truth, his word must be true in every sense; morally, historically and scientifically. You’re attributing the power of the object to the power of the deity and that is idolatry. The object which represents the god has the power of the god. That’s what the savages believe.

I’m just arguing for a more realistic reading of the Bible. No where does the Bible claim that there was a historical Jonah who was swallowed by a great fish at date and time certain, any more than Mark Twain claimed that there was a historical Huck Finn. Why do fundamentalists insist that everything that isn’t a parable must be historical? To my mind they have set up an idol to be worshiped in the same way that the Israelites were still worshiping Nehushtan (the snake Moses made) hundreds of years later.

Why must it also be historically or scientific accurate to be “true?” Its already true.

It’s already true and therefore it is scientifically and historically accurate. Why would a God who proclaims Himself a God of truth be inaccurate in what He inspires?

You know, gordo, we could keep going round and round with this, but I don’t know that it would serve any purpose. I am firm in my beliefs and you appear to be as well. I would recommend to you reading articles from Answers in Genesis, the Institute for Creation Research, and books like the one by Lee Strobel that I already mentioned, The Case for a Creator. The first two are groups of actual scientists, not fundamental preachers. Lee’s book is interesting in that he started out as an atheist who believed in evolution but over time came to see that he was wrong. He did not spend his whole life being taught these truths: he came to these conclusions after a lot of thought and study. So he did not come to belief because he grew up with that lifestyle and didn’t know any differently, but he came to the same conclusions.