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Armstrong and Getty radio was talking about Rick Perry refusing to take sides in the creation/evolution debate during a politcal rally yesterday. They kept playing a sound clip of Perry talking, with some mother in the background prompting her kid to say "Ask him why he doesn't believe in science... Ask him why he doesn't believe in science..."
Perry had the "nerve" to say that evolution has holes, and that is why creationism alternative explanations should be taught along side, so that smart people can see both sides and make up their mind.
A reporter they talked to said that a recent poll shows only 16% of Americans think the earth and man got here without God. 38% believe God's hand somehow guided evolution, but the reporter didn't know the name of this idea. (Its called "theistic evolution".) The host was claiming creationists dont believe in dinosaurs or think fossils are plaster casts. Thats an unfortunate characterization, quite untrue.
I distilled a few decades of study and thousands of pages read on all sides of the debate to the following:
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Garnet Chaney <thegarnet@gmail.com>
Date: Thu, Aug 25, 2011 at 9:55 AM
Subject: evolution, god, intelligent design, creationists, dinosaurs
To: ArmstrongAndGetty@yahoo.com
The name for believing that God is somehow guiding the evolution process is "theistic evolution".
- Many catholics fall into this group. About 15 years ago the Pope came out and said "I believe God's hand has guided evolution." My wife, who was catholic, and from Malaysia where Catholicism is very conservative, was shocked. But I had heard this idea from nuns at my Cincinnati catholic high school 15 years before that.
- Religious people who believe in this view are generally on the liberal end of the religious spectrum and are willing to claim that large sections of the Bible are allegory, or just good stories
- More conservative theologians and writers, such as John MacArthur, will point out that theistic evolution actually creates large problems for many doctrines derived from the Bible. Once you start declaring more and more of the Bible to just be allegory, it is hard to stop.
- Seventh-day Adventists who are generally more conservative, will point out that taking the Genesis creation story literally is important because of ten commandments. The fourth commandment that says to honor the 7th day as a sabbath because God worked 6 days and rested on the 7th day. Such a commandment is an important memorial and reminder of God's original creative act. The only commandment that says "remember", because man likes to forget this inconvenient idea that God is the Creator, and therefore ought to have a say about what is happening in the creation.
Intelligent design is a more religiously conservative view. The best book on this is "Signature in the Cell". In a nutshell this 700 page book says this: "If you saw flowers arranged on a hill saying 'I love Armstrong And Getty' you would never assume they just happened to grow in that pattern. You would assume the existence of a gardener (designer). We see a lot of intricate arrangement of information in the cell, (various kinds of DNA like material very carefully sequenced like a computer program or a ticker tape), with very specific arrangement and function, with careful dependence of various parts on each other. In any other realm of existence, such an intricate arrangement would indicate the existence of a designed.
- Intelligent design says that design by an intelligent agent is a better explanation of the information in the cell. Darwin didn't know about all the information in the cell, in his day the interior of cells was assumed to be a generic fluid,
- Intelligent design tries to avoid saying who the designer was. We may not be able to prove the identity of the designer.
- Intelligent design tries not to say when the design happens. It is an open question needing to be investigated further.
- Intelligent design says be willing to consider the evidence of a non-evolution explanation for things we observe
- http://www.thedailyspiel.com/Stephen_Meyer.html - "Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (Harper One, 2009) shows that the cell is incredibly complex and the code that directs its functions wonderfully designed. His argument undercuts macroevolution, the theory that one kind of animal over time evolves into a very different kind."
More conservative religious thinkers will try to look at the Genesis story and are willing to ask, "If this was true, do we see evidence that can be well explained in this context?" Some of the most conservative will state emphatically "Science, rightly understood, does not contradict a proper understanding of the Bible." - Ellen G. White
Creationists do believe in dinosaurs.
- The creation science museum in Kentucky puts it this way: "Evolutionists and creationists are both looking at the same fossil evidence. We just have different viewpoints on how they were deposited in the earth."
- Believers in a young earth will claim that the story of the global Noah flood, and the massive changes in the earth and its atmosphere at that time, changed the earth to the point that the dinosaurs could not survive, or even that they were all buried in the sediments of the flood.
Creationists, while not believing in macro-evoluton of reptiles changing into birds, do not dismiss the idea of smaller changes, called "selective adaptation."
- One kind of bird could develop into a slightly different bird with a different beak to adapt to changes in its environment.
- Plants clearly have a range of expression, for example, corn can grow in many sizes and many levels of sweetness.
- But birds always stay birds. Corn always stays corn.
- And often, the plants or animals bred to emphasize one particular trait, such as sweetness, can not survive as well in the wild, they often have a more limited range of environment where they can live. This is known as "hybrid vigor." The most hardy varieties of plants an animals are the generic mutts.