RE: Christians, what is your VERY BEST arguments for the existence of God?
February 8, 2010 at 4:35 pm
(This post was last modified: February 8, 2010 at 5:04 pm by rjh4 is back.)
(February 8, 2010 at 4:13 pm)Tiberius Wrote: The veracity of common descent doesn't depend on their being a single instance of life emerging. Common descent still works, evolution still works, etc with more than one starting point. The only difference would be that some species wouldn't be related to each other. This doesn't stop them being related to *some* other species, nor does it stop evolution from being true.
The only assumption needed for science is that of materialism, we've been through this before. Evolution doesn't need an assumption of some single starting point, since it has nothing to do with the origin of life. Evolution explains the diversity of life, i.e. what happens to life if you let it live and reproduce. None of this (mutation, natural selection, etc) depends on an assumption about some starting point. Even if God did come along and magic a load of animals into existence at the dawn of time, what has happened to those animals since then is still confirmed by evolution. Life adapts, it evolves, it changes. Nothing stops that.
If that is all that is meant by evolution...then I wholeheartedly agree (in which case, I could be considered both a creationist and an evolutionist).
But I do not think many evolutionary scientists would agree with you. If one took your view, there would not be much debate between evolutionists and creationists. Creationists think that there were many different initial life forms created by God and would agree that the life forms that we see today descended from those initial life forms. I wonder what would happen if someone tried to explain evolution in a schoolbook such that it covered the situation where there were multiple initial life forms. Would the governments/courts allow this? I wonder what would happen if a scientist tried to publish a paper in a scientific journal using such a broad definition of evolution. Would it pass peer review? It would sure eliminate much of the conflict. But I think evolutionary scientists would balk at such a teaching since evolution as it is taught in schools is "common descent", meaning ALL life forms have a common anscestor.
Would you support teaching evolution in that manner in schools (including the possibility of multiple initial life forms)?
