Is Evolution a Sub-Category of Progressive Creation?

No; that was friendly confrontation. All the best.

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@Guy_Coe

I knew perfectly well what it was. Every once in a while, we will encourage each other in the same way.

As far as the thread title is concerned, Progressive Creation is the OPPOSITE of Evolution, except to the extent someone allows minor evolution to occur until such time that variations from the Created Species go extinct.

Progressive Creation doesn’t even allow Natural Selection to continue indefinitely, should there be even MINOR evolution. An “imaginary barrier” appears to be conceived of by which a population is not allowed to continue its evolution for millions of years thereafter.

They are different labels for the same evidence; one flies better among academic scientists, of necessity; the other flies better under the rubric of those who know better than to place some kind of artificial limit upon how God is “allowed” to act in nature.
They are not contradictory, and forcing a choice between them is a false dichotomy.
That much is clear to everyone in the room; even to you, I suspect. Even Patrick has not raised on objection to the labels; only to how one employs them in the name of the currently popular conception of what constitutes a proper scientific method.
No particular scientific method is implied by the label “progressive creation,” only philosophical background.

This is plain dumb. You cannot say Special Creation of a million separate species populations is EQUIVALENT to the evolution of a million species by common descent, ultimately derived from a single original population.

@jongarvey… for some reason, a few folks turn dumb as soon as you leave the room!

Did I say they were equivalent? That would just be dumb.

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He is saying something else.

He is saying that Progressive Creation is a an overarching category that includes Theistic Evolution / Common Descent as one sub-type. On the other hand, special creation of species all the time (e.g. the RTB model, or what I tested the watter with here: A Better Way to Reject Common Descent - #2 by swamidass ), is not an example of Common Descent / Theistic Evolution.

Isn’t that a possibility?

One value of that is it challenges OEC Christians to figure out why exactly they are objecting to common descent. Especially in light of the Genealogical Adam, that is getting harder for them to justify on theological grounds alone. If they already accept “Progressive Creation,” claiming TE is just another type of Progressive Creation provokes those conversations. That, I think, is why @Guy_Coe is doing it.

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Yes. Another way of saying this is, even if evolution is shown to be a perfectly adequate explanation, the fact that God is the Creator of nature makes it a means of His progressively creating all things. But, I don’t think that natural evolution, all by itself, is adequate to explain all that we study in nature, and to me, it’s obvious that both things are going on --the regular AND the highly unusual, especially when it comes to humanity.
I personally see RTB rejecting common descent as totally unnecessary, because it is not a repudiation of progressive creation or even of special creation.

This is JUST as dumb. The only over-arching is the word GOD.

Guy

Too true. But once again, so much of the confusion is caused by weasel-words like “natural”, whose meaning varies between “independent of God”, “following regular God given laws of nature,” “having a rational chain of efficient causes including irrational randomness…” etc, none of which appear demonstrable (except my definition, which is simply “regular or repeatable”, cutting through the metaphysical mush).

As far as science is concerned, there is no explanation for those “regular laws”, which might be anything from brute fact, through divine creations, to occasionalism (ie God’s daily habits).

Science is even less equipped to talk about unexplained contingencies as “natural”, at least unless it is a bit more clear and less metaphysical than it is about what that word “natural” means. Paul Nelson, at BioLogos, linked to a paper (paywalled) by a philosopher of science demonstrating that citing “unique events” in biological history is effectively indistinguishable from citing “miracles”.

I guess behind the paywall the paper would be considering the old chestnuts like origin of life, but evolutionary history is actually a catalogue of unique events, so deciding “natural” or “miracle” appears to be a metaphysical choice, not a scientific one, in every individual case.

What’s dumb is regarding God as a mere word, rather than the active sovereign He actually is.
GIGO.

You’ll have to unwrap the implied meaning here. Nothing I have written entails that I don’t treat God as the active sovereign.

While, at the same time, you are trying to subsume

“God’s use of mutations, natural selection and common descent from a single original population of living things”

under the topic heading of “Progressive Creation” - - which is a phrase specifically embraced by its users to EXCLUDE anything that involves common descent from a single population of living things.

Look, I support efforts to use terms creatively … but I don’t think it is necessary to try to overhaul the entire range of terms that are commonly used by the various schools of Creationism that line up in opposition against those schools Christianity that support Evolutionary operations as real and valid.

No more calling ideas dumb. Got it guys?

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Okay… not “dumb”… I will rely more on the adjective: “incomprehensible”.

I agree with Guy. I see progressive creation as a proposal that things change over time and this includes modification of pre-existing forms rather than outright generation of complete novelties. So, evolution could be placed in that context.

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@swamidass, @jongarvey
I know there are a few Progressive Creationists that believe in Common Descent; however the vast majority believe only in microevolution and accept the science of the universe just as evolutionary creation. But the key is the Progressive Creationists do not accept macroevolution and Common Descent. It is really the Day-Age Theory of American Baptist Church theologian Bernard Ramm. Some Southern Baptists accept this view and reject YEC. I have always believed in an old universe. To me, YEC is impossible. YEC is mostly found in Free Will Baptists and Independent Baptist churches. Bernard Ramm was a professor of Theology and New Testament at Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary and Eastern University in King of Prussia, PA. I personally walk the tight rope between progressive creationism and evolutionary creation. I have a hard time with Common Descent, but as a linguist and comparing the similarity of languages and comparing the similarities of my cat to humans, I can see the possibilty of Common Descent.

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Yes, the evolution of languages really does provide a compelling argument. I believe using languages as an illustration of evolution can go a long way towards making breakthroughs in a student’s understanding of the concepts.

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It is worth clarifying that the common understanding of “day/age theory” is already suffering from a confused perspective.
It is not as if adherents are saying, “Well, we know it says ‘day,’ but what we think it really means is ‘age.’ "
The accurate conception is to say, “Among the available translations for the Hebrew word ‘yom,’ we understand it to be saying a long period of time.”
The “24 hour ‘day’ theory” is no less speculative an interpretation of the original Hebrew text as the " ‘day/age’ theory” is.
Paying attention to the wider context is how you settle this question, because both meanings for the Hebrew ‘yom’ are equally valid.

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You are right, Allen. And you saw exactly what I was saying. That shows the linguist in you. I usually say the following to wife when I go to bed.

Te video et te amo, mea Nancy.
I see thee and I love (admire) thee, mine Nancy.

OE: Ic cann gan.
NE: I can go.
Ger: Ich kann gehen.

I’ve attempted to define Progressive Creationism by dividing it into two main subcategories I call PC-1 and PC-2 which are mostly differentiated by how much macro-evolution they are willing to accept. I would be interested in where you think I am not characterizing PC properly or could improve this definition. I’ve found the PC model of origins to be difficult to characterize the more I’ve tried to wrap my brain around it.

Progressive Creationism/Day-Age Creationism. Progressive creationism advocates believe God created new forms of life gradually over a period of hundreds of millions of years. It accepts mainstream geological and cosmological estimates for the age of the Earth. In this view God created new organisms at key moments in the history of life in which all “kinds” or species (see PC-1 and PC-2 below) of plants and animals appear in stages lasting millions of years. These key moments represent instances of God creating new types of organisms by divine intervention. All PCs hold that species or “kinds” do not gradually appear by the steady transformation of its ancestors; [but] appear all at once and “fully formed.” PC may or may not be fully overlap with Day-Age creationism in which the days recorded in Genesis 1 are considered to be long-ages corresponding to the great ages of Earth’s history.

For example: With respect to polar bears the PC may believe God created an ancestral bear kind or, possibly more specifically, the original brown bear and that common ancestor (primordial type?) had the capacity to adapt–genetic parameters designed by God–into many species including the polar bear that we observe today. However, the first bear “kind” was created fully formed apart from any animal ancestor.

PC-1 (Progressive creation typically at the taxonomic level of species) God specially created all (or most) species–no common ancestry except within “species.” For example domestic dogs were not specially created but are a variation of wolves and were adapted via natural processes from a wolf ancestor. This is the historical PC view which is a held by those who accept the evidence of an old earth but reject evolution as a process capable of generating new species and higher taxonomic categories. This view is uncommon today except among lay Christians and pastors that have not invested time studying origins models.

PC-2 (Progressive creation of “kinds” usually equivalent to the taxonomic category of family) God specially created “kinds” of organisms at various intervals throughout Earth’s history. Those kinds were created with the capacity to adapt to their environment including speciation within some limits. Speciation within “kinds” occurs similar to that of the YEC-3 hyper-evolution model except that this speciation process occurs at speeds consistent with measured rates of changes–mutation rates, natural selection and genetic drift–observed today.

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It seems like there is a very large range of views here. It might better to describe this as a continuum, with some examples across the continuum, and explanations how they would concieve different case studies differently. At a high level, some seen the creative acts required for roughly sub-species, species, genus, phyla, and biogenesis level change. So there is a wide diversity of OEC view, and they seem partly defined by rejecting “evolution” as a term.

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