Creation or Evolution Do We Have to Choose

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Creation or Evolution Do We Have to Choose?
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What do people in the UK think about creation and
evolution?based on ComRes Poll published Feb
2009, Fieldwork Oct 2008
Q Young Earth Creationism is the idea that God
created the world sometime in the last 10,000
years. In your opinion is Young Earth
Creationism Definitely true 11 Probably true
21 Probably untrue 22 Definitely untrue
38 Dont know 8 Q. Theistic evolution is the
idea that evolution is the means that God used
for the creation of all living things on earth.
In your opinion is Theistic evolution Definitely
true 12 Probably true 32 Probably untrue
20 Definitely untrue 26 Dont know 10
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What do people in the UK think about creation and
evolution?based on ComRes Poll published Feb
2009, Fieldwork Oct 2008
Q Atheistic evolution is the idea that
evolution makes belief in God unnecessary and
absurd. In your opinion is Atheistic evolution
Definitely true 13 Probably true 21 Probably
untrue 27 Definitely untrue 30 Dont know
10 Q. On human evolution By a process which
removes any need for God 37 By a process which
can be seen as part of Gods plan 28 By a
process which required special intervention of
God or higher power 11 Humans were created by
God sometime within the last 10,000 years
11 Dont know 8
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What do people in the UK think about creation and
evolution?based on ComRes Poll published Feb
2009, Fieldwork Oct 2008
The Take-Home Message Roughly 10 convinced
young earth creationist 14 convinced
intelligent design 25 convinced
evolutionist 50 more uncertain of what they
believe Overall about half the UK population
seems to accept evolution
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The Christian understanding of creation
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Three key facets of God as Creator

• Gods transcendence in creation
• Gods immanence in creation
• Gods personal trinitarian nature in creation

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Gods transcendence in creation
Before the mountains were born or you brought
forth the earth and the world, from everlasting
to everlasting you are God. Psalm 902
My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are
your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the
heavens are higher than the earth, so are my
ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than
your thoughts Isaiah 5589
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Gods immanence in creation
Through him all things were made without him
nothing was made that has been made
John 13
The Son is the image of the invisible God, the
firstborn over all creation. For by him all
things were created things in heaven and on
earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or
powers or rulers or authorities all things were
created by him and for him. He is before all
things, and in him all things hold
together. Colossians 1 15-18
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Free Inquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion
of Nature, 1682 Robert Boyle (1627-1691)
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God is personal and trinitarian in his creation,
so the emergence of personhood and relationship
in the universe is what you expect
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What do scientists do?
GOD
EVERYTHING THAT EXISTS THE SECONDARY CAUSES
WHEREBY THEY EXIST
SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION
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All living things share together a common
evolutionary history
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Evolution involves a two-step process
Gene Flow
SET OF GENES - The Genome in one lion
Mutations/ Gene Duplication
STEP ONE
Recombination
STEP TWO
FILTER OF NATURAL SELECTION
Reproductive Success
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Very small differences in the genome can make
very large differences in morphology (structure,
appearance)
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Evolution involves a two-step process
Gene Flow
SET OF GENES - The Genome in one lion
Mutations/ Gene Duplication
STEP ONE
Recombination
STEP TWO
FILTER OF NATURAL SELECTION
Reproductive Success
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What is a species?
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Speciation by Isolation (Allopatric)
Species A
Species B
Species C
e.g. a river
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Mechanisms of speciation? (macroevolution)
Nearly 50 of existing flowering plant species
are thought to have arisen by polyploidy
multiplying of the total number of chromosomes
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Evolution in Lake Victoria
14,700 years ago
2 Species of Cichlid
LAKE NABUGABO 4000 years old 7 Cichlid Species
170 Species of Cichlid
Present
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Response 1 God creates by a process
GODS INTENTION AND PURPOSES
AN EVOLUTIONARY PROCESS
CREATION
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Aubrey Moore 1843-90, St. Johns College, Oxford
The University of Oxford Botanic Garden is the
oldest botanic garden in Great Britain
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A Government wants to design a system to
take money from a lot of people for good causes,
including themselves, in the process making a
few people very rich. How should the design
proceed?
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Richard Dawkins The Blind Watchmaker
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Convergence in evolutionindependent lineages
converge to similar phenotypes independently
under selection pressure
Simon Conway Morris FRS Lifes Solution
- Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe pp.
283-4

• For example
• Compound and camera eyes taken together have
  evolved more than 20
• different times during the course of evolution.

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Response 2 The response of Young Earth
Creationism10 of the UK population

• The world is less than 10,000 years old
• Everything was made in six literal days of 24
  hours
• Adam and Eve were made literally out of the
  dust of the ground
• There was no death before the Fall

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(No Transcript)
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Rescuing Darwin
CREATIONISM
ATHEISM
Competing ideologies
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Early Jewish and Christian commentators Interprete
d Genesis 1-3 figuratively
The highly influential Alexandrian Jew, Philo, a
contemporary of both Jesus and Paul, explained
at some length how the days of creation, the
image of God, Adam and Eve, and the garden of
Eden were all intended symbolically rather than
literally, being no mythical fictionsbut modes
of making ideas visible.
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"There are no sudden changes in nature all is
gradual and elegantly varied. There is no being
which has not either above or beneath it some
that resemble it in certain characters, and
differ from it in others. . . . From a plant to
manthe transition from one species to another is
almost insensible. The ape is this rough draft
of a man an imperfect representation which
nevertheless bears a resemblance to him, and is
the last creature that serves to display the
admirable progression of the works of God! There
is a prodigious number of continued links between
the most perfect man and the ape."
A survey of the Wisdom of God in Creation, 1763
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Response 3 Wishing to accept current science,
wishing also to stay faithful to the Bible, but
genuinely puzzled

• How do we understand the Adam and Eve accounts
  in Genesis
• in the light of evolution?
• How do we understand the doctrine of the Fall
  in light of
• evolutionary history?
• What do we make of the fact that the death of
  plants and animals
• is central to evolutionary history and has
  existed as long as there
• has been life?

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COFFEE-BREAK QUESTION

• How do we understand the Adam and Eve accounts
  in Genesis in the light of evolution?

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Our last common ancestor with chimpanzees lived
about 6 million years ago
Last Common Ancestor 6m years ago
Around 10 Intermediate Species?
First Cousins
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Pseudogenes are genetic fossils in our genomes
that reveal our ancestry
For example, our chromosome 7 encodes 1,150
genes, but also 941 pseudogenes, molecular relics
of our genetic past.
Amazingly the human genome contains at
least 19,000 pseudogenes, nearly as many as our
actual 20-25,000 working genes.
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Genetic fossils in our genomes from viruses
reveal our ancestry
Gibbon
Orangutan
Gorilla
Chimpanzee
Human
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Figure illustrates common ancestry
GENETIC INHERITANCE
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Anatomically modern humans
Archaic Homo sapiens emerged in Africa c. 0.5m
years ago
Spread across Africa, into Near East
Asia displacing populations of Homo erectus
Anatomically modern Homo sapiens earliest
fossils date from c. 195,000 years ago, found in
S. Ethiopia, see Nature 433 733-736 2005
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Adam Eve, the Fall and Evolution
Michelangelo's Temptation and Fall from the
Sistine Chapel Ceiling
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Are there any ways in which the theological texts
about humankind in Genesis 1-3 and the
anthropological accounts can talk to each other?
INTERACTIONS?
MODELS?
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Adam Eve, the Fall and Evolution - Three
Models
MODEL A the Ahistorical View The story of the
Fall has no intention to be historical in any
sense. It is a theological narrative that
describes the common human experience of
alienation from God through disobedience to Gods
commands.
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Adam Eve, the Fall and Evolution - Three Models
MODEL B a gradualist Protohistorical View As
anatomically modern humans evolved in Africa
there was a gradual, growing awareness of Gods
presence and calling upon their lives, but this
awareness was consciously rejected in favour of
choosing their own way rather than Gods way.
Therefore the Fall is a process happening over a
prolonged period of time.
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Adam Eve, the Fall and Evolution - Three Models
MODEL C a more event-based Protohistorical
View God chose a couple of Neolithic farmers in
the Near East to come into fellowship with
Himself, so that they might know Him as a
personal God, giving them commands and
responsibilities, in particular that stewarding
His earth is a holy enterprise. The Fall then
becomes the disobedience of these first Homo
Divinus to the expressed, revealed will of God.
Adam is the Federal Head of humankind.
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Adam and Federal Headship
Federal Headship
Federal Headship
REST OF HUMANITY
REST OF HUMANITY
Homo Divinus
Adam Eve (Third Century) Fresco. Catacomb of
St Piretro and St. Marcellino, Rome
THE FALL
Federal Headship
Federal Headship
REST OF HUMANITY
REST OF HUMANITY
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Creation or Evolution Do We Have to Choose?
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The natural origin of species is not
inconsistent with intelligent design in nature or
with the existence of a personal Creator of the
world
I have been defending Evolution but, in so
doing, have given the proper account of it as
the method of Gods procedure, and find that when
so understood it is in no way inconsistent
with Scripture.
James McCosh 1811-1894 President of Princeton
University
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RESCUING DARWIN GOD AND EVOLUTION IN BRITAIN
TODAY NICK SPENCER DENIS ALEXANDER FEB 2nd
2009 DISCOUNTED 65 TO 3.50