Faz Rana swings and misses on evolution

PS should comment of this like was done with Behe. Faz Rana of RTB swings and misses big time on 4 billion years of evolution of life on Earth.

https://www.reasons.org/explore/blogs/the-cells-design/read/the-cells-design/2019/07/17/does-old-earth-creationism-make-god-deceptive

https://www.reasons.org/explore/blogs/the-cells-design/read/the-cells-design/2019/07/10/membrane-biochemistry-challenges-route-to-evolutionary-origin-of-complex-cells

Whoa, that’s embarrassing. Nothing more than the same lame, recycled creationist arguments. Nested hierarchy reflects common design? Seriously?

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Not sure what is to comment.

It isn’t anything new. So there is already a lot out there to debunk it.

The more interesting thing is that RTB will be partnering with PS. I know this sounds crazy, but there are some opportunities. Of course, we do not endorse their arguments against evolution. The more interesting questions, though, are in the human origins model.

  1. I’m curious how many tweaks are required to bring their model out of conflict with the evidence. It might not be much.

  2. I’m curious if they will create space for a secondary model in their camp based on the GAE.

  3. I’m curious how their community will respond to a trusted collaboration with scientists that affirm evolution.

This might sound alarming, that we might work with them. I assure you that I will not hide my disagreements with them when they arise. I also hope to bring other scientists from PS along too, including non-religious scientists. For all our disagreements with RTB, let’s keep in mind our agreements, and they are a fair few.

  1. They affirm an old earth and have been doing work to make that clear to many for a while.

  2. They are not aligned with ID, and take a non-oppositional approach to other scientists, even if disagree with them on evolution.

  3. They will tolerate, and even advocate, for those of us that affirm evolution, insisting we are treated fairly and with respect in communities that do not always do so.

This is quite a bit of common ground. We have our disagreements, and we will deal with those too. There is important common ground here too.

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What is their model?

On human origins: Engaging the Zoo of RTB Models.

As for beyond human? I’m not touching that yet.

I don’t see anything in that model about de novo creation. Did you leave it out or do they not demand it?

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I think that is going to be a major sticking point that raises lots of theological questions. Maybe they are answerable, but I don’t see how yet. You can certainly expect we will enumerate those questions as we make a good faith effort to hear them out.

That is what makes WLC so interesting as a counterpoint. In many ways, he is similar to them, but more flexible. And he does not care at all about de novo creation. It will be far easier to bring his view into alignment with all the evidence and to do so with far less theological loose ends.

As for RTB, questions are the right starting point. We cannot predict where things will go. I can, however, engage with the highest standards of scientific integrity, regardless of what they choose to do.

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You don’t seem to have answered my theological question: Do they in fact (as things currently stand) demand de novo creation of Adam and Eve or are they open to the possibility of common descent among Homo species, at least?

This is a valid claim.

First, my skepticism is not theologically motivated but scientifically informed. For example, I point out in an article I recently wrote for Sapientia that a survey of the scientific literature makes it clear that evolutionary theory as currently formulated cannot account for the key transitions in life’s history, including:

  • the origin of life
  • the origin of eukaryotic cells
  • the origin of body plans
  • the origin of human exceptionalism

As to this quotation:

Why would a scientific theory which explains changes in allele frequencies in populations over time be expected to explain the origin of life? (It is much like arguing that the Theory of Relativity fails to explain how light began.)

That expectation makes no sense. It sounds more like a concession to popular anti-evolution propaganda than any sort of cogent argument.

I appreciate Reasons to Believe in many respects—and the Christian witness of Hugh Ross and company—but this kind of argument doesn’t help their credibility as scientists.

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I agree you make a fair point as this is not a claim that evolution makes. The three other points are claims that evolutionary theory makes.

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They demand de novo creation of Adam and Eve, progenitors of all Homo sapiens, but are open to interbreeding with other Homo speices. So they are actually open to a modified GAE.

This raises challenges they have yet to address in theology. In a nutshell, if God didn’t want AE to interbreed with others and he de novo created them, why were they able to produce offspring together? Explaining this as a consequence of the fall does not make sense. Maybe there is an answer but I don’t see it yet.

Now, on the science, just by turning up the dial on interbreeding events their model seems like it would easily be brought into alignment with the data. There are other theological and philosophical questions that arise, but they are all confined to the distant past. The evidential conflict, it seems, is resolvable, fairly trivially.

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RTB should stick to astronomy. Hugh Ross is very good at explaining cosmology. The rest of RTB is just anti-evolution Christian apologetic especially Faz Rana. Faz seems to be angling for a job at DI as he is touting the ID horn much more than OEC. With his lack of expertise in evolutionary science, he would be prefect fit for EVN. Having DI pay his $163,000 salary would save RTB donors a lot of money for useless commentary on the latest in evolutionary science.

Fuz is many things but he is not ID. Strange, but true!

He is sounding more and more ID as he get further and further outside his expertise in evolutionary science. He is a complete amateur in genetics and current evolutionary science.

Can you expand upon what you mean here? I’m confused.

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If God didn’t want them to interbreeding, it would have been trivial to render interbreeding impossible if AE were de novo. Why didn’t he?

We need some good answer to this. I don’t have one yet, but maybe we will find one in time.

How do you know this?

So, when you say “why were they able to produce offspring together?” you are talking about A or E doing so with others, not Adam and Eve, individually (able to have children together?) I misunderstood, I think, your use of “they.”

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I mean Adam and Eve’s lineage with the people outside the Garden. You got it.

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