Creation & Evolution: How should we respond? - 2
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So is evolution true?
Is evolution true? This is a scientific question, and it requires a factual scientific response. Well established scientific facts cannot be rejected by books written in a pre-scientific era, not even the Bible. any more than “did a man ever walk on the moon?” may be defined by our statement of faith. These sorts of factual truths can only be resolved by diligent examination of the evidence and by careful weighing up of the facts.For many years most scientifically informed Christadelphians held out against the growing weight of evidence for evolution in hope that something new would turn up that would recast the data back in favour of a more literal reading of Genesis in which animal species were created separately from the ground and mankind did not share a common ancestor with apes.[1] New evidence did arrive in the form of the genetic code and the study of the genome,[2] and the findings settled the question of universal common descent as surely as DNA evidence settles a paternity dispute.[3] With untold billions of independent lines of evidence from thousands of creatures converging on the same answer, all reasonable doubts are now dismissed. In fact evolutionary biological descent is now regarded by scientists as “among the most reliably established and fundamentally important facts in all of science”[4]While the implications of these and other discoveries will take time to sink in and be properly integrated with our beliefs, the writing is on the wall for all to see. We were wrong, the scientists were right, and the evolution of mankind along with all other creatures is an undeniable historical fact. Common descent has been proven true beyond all reasonable doubt. Some will be surprised, affronted, even angered to hear this so plainly stated, and protest loudly and say it isn’t so. This is to be expected; it is human nature, just like the Jews when told salvation was come to the Gentiles. They reacted angrily and could not stomach the fact that God would save whomsoever believed in his Son. History is repeating itself, only the subject is different.
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- ↑ “Both humans and chimps have a broken copy of a gene that in other mammals helps make vitamin C... It's hard to imagine how there could be stronger evidence for common ancestry of chimps and humans.”
COMMENT: This remark is especially significant because Michael Behe is best known as a champion of Intelligent Design.— Michael Behe, The Edge of Evolution, pp 71–2 - ↑ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Genome_Project
- ↑ See http://phylointelligence.com/genetics.html, Evidence of common descent (Wikipedia), and Talk Origins.
NOTE: We have avoided citing original scientific papers in favour of more accessible on-line sources to condense and simplify what is now a vast field of research, evidence and information. - ↑ “Over the past 150 years, this initial list (Darwin’s evidence including the biogeographical distribution of species, homology of structure, the occurrence of vestigial organs and atavisms, and the already well established process of extinction) has been
supplemented by countless observations in paleontology, comparative anatomy, developmental biology, molecular biology, and (most recently) comparative genomics, and through direct observations of evolutionary change in both natural and experimental populations.Each of thousands of peer-reviewed articles published every year in scientific journals provides further confirmation (though, as Futuyma (1998) notes, “no biologist today would think of publishing a paper on ‘new evidence for evolution’ ... it simply hasn’t been an issue in scientific circles for more than a century”). Conversely, no reliable observation has ever been found to contradict the general notion of common descent. It should come as no surprise, then, that the scientific community at large has accepted evolutionary descent as a historical reality since Darwin’s time and considers it among the most reliably established and fundamentally important facts in all of science.— Gregory TR, “Evolution as Fact, Theory and Path” Evo Edu Outreach (2008) 1:46-52COMMENT:This paper is highly recommended reading for anyone questioning whether evolution has been proven true.
