@Holly Pham: There are many problems with the Bible story,

Comment on Dr. John Sanford Lectures on Inevitable Genomic Deterioration by Ron.

@Holly Pham: There are many problems with the Bible story, I am sure you won’t like my perspective. Please try to be patient and reserve judgement until you get to the end though. You might find that it isn’t quite as bad as it first seems.

Justice: The penalty of death for Eve and all her off spring violates the principle of proportional punishment. If a parent exacted such a harsh penalty on a child, they would be prosecuted for murder.

Equality of Justice: Eve got the death penalty for stealing an apple, while Cain only got banishment, in fact, God even protected him from revenge. That basically says that God values a piece of fruit higher than the life of a man.

Then there is the way God wants to be worshiped: By killing innocent animals. Really? What does that say about God? What kind of a ruler would want to be worshiped that way? (Don’t lecture me on what Mrs. White says about it. I already know. Her explanation doesn’t work for me.)

Then there is the story of Job. God was an accomplice to the murder of Job’s children and servants, and he doesn’t even have the courtesy to tell Job why.

Then there is God killing the whole world in a flood. Lot’s wife is killed just for mourning the loss of her home, and letting her curiosity get the best of her.
The God has a man executed for picking up sticks on the Sabbath, and kills a priest trying to protect the ark. By today’s standard, commanding Israel to commit genocide is a crime against humanity.

God punished David for the murder of Uriah by killing an innocent child?

Then, there is Paul’s theology. Basically, God hates you so much that he won’t accept you unless Jesus compels him to accept you by dying on the cross. Even then, you better watch out. You slip up too much, and you are outta there no matter what Christ does.

Lets not forget where Paul’s theology comes from. What was he thinking when he stood there holding the coats of the men stoning Steven? Or while he was murdering the Christians?

God can’t forgive without killing something? Where does that come from? No body I know requires the death of anything before they forgive, certainly not over something as minor as stealing a piece of fruit. Forget about Christians, it seems to me that even secular people today are more just and forgiving than the God presented in at least the OT.

Holly, Why were Adam and Eve afraid of God?

It must be because they thought God would be abusive toward them. You don’t run away from someone unless you believe they are a threat.

If they had not thought of God as an abuser, then a more appropriate response to God when he called for them, would have been to walk up to God and say,

“Hey! Glad you are back. By the way, I loved the fruit from the tree of the KOGAE”

“You ate of it?”

“Why yes, of course.”

“Why did you do that. I told you not to or you would die.”

“Hmmm, Well, I don’t know what death is, but I have been thinking. You have been so good to us. I love you. And after thinking about it I decided that I want to be like you. The snake told me that if I would eat from the tree of the KOGAE, that I would become just like you. After eating from the tree the snake got smarter, and prettier, and it could even talk. I figured that if death could do all that for the snake, it must be wonderful. Imagine what it could do for me! For awhile I felt fabulous, like I was entering a new spiritual dimension, but now I don’t feel so good. What happened? I want to die too and know the difference between Good and Evil just like you. Tell me about good and evil. What is evil?”

You see, if Adam and Eve had had a different attitude about God, then God’s response would have been different because the problem would have been different.

Think about it. Death is NOT necessary to forgive. God forgave the 1/3 of the angels that originally sided with Satan and then repented, without having to kill anything. You forgive your children, God only knows how many times, for crimes far more serious that stealing a cookie off the counter without demanding the death penalty.

The only appropriate reason for Christ to die, is to prove that God would rather die passively than to assert himself against human freedom and justice. To prove that man does not have to be afraid.

As for abusers, Moses was obviously a severe abuser having grown up in his childhood as a slave, then in the royal palace served by a whole nation of slaves. We see his abusive mind set in numerous incidents. We see it in the way he killed the overseer. Then again, the way he gave up and ran away into the wilderness. Someone without an abusive personality would not have killed the Egyptian, and certainly would not have given up and runaway. There is the way he felt he had to be in charge of everything in the camp, and couldn’t see that he needed to let go of some authority, until his F-I-L Jethro came to visit. Then he got angry an destroyed the tablets that God gave. He had no right to do that! Only an abuser would do something like that. Then again when he got angry and struck the rock. That is clearly the action of an abuser. Someone without an abusive mind set would never have gotten angry, and certainly wouldn’t have put himself on a par with God. I think the reason God had to punish Moses so severely is that Moses gave the Israel such a wrong picture of God as being harsh, dictatorial, and perfectionistic, that God couldn’t let it stand. It is that seed, planted by Moses, that grew into the tedious perfectionism about the law that ultimately caused the Jews to reject Jesus.

Abraham was a horrible criminal by today’s standards. Incestuously marrying his half sister, the wandering all over the country trespassing on other peoples property claiming it belonged to his children. He even perjured himself to the king of Egypt.

Abraham was also a child abuser and believed that God could somehow be OK with child sacrifice. Can you imagine what would happen to Abraham if that story happened today? The thought of what it must have been like for Isaac gave me nightmares as a kid. It still does if I really stop to think about it.
Imagine the conversation with today’s child protective agent.

“Why did you kill your son?”
“Because God woke me up in the middle of the night and told me to”

Isaac would be taken away immediately and Abraham would be diagnosed as psychotic and taken the the mental health prison until he became sane enough to put on trial.

If you think about what is going on there, you could imagine that God was testing to see what is the spiritual issue in humanity that needs to be addressed. Abraham’s tacit acceptance of the assignment proves that he thought that God was so abusive that it was appropriate for God to ask it of him.

I think God’s request of Abraham was the answer to Christ’s prayer in the garden, “If it be your will, let this cup be taken away.” Whether the death of Christ is an appropriate remedy for sin depends on what the issue is. If the issue had been different then a different remedy would be appropriate and Christ’s prayer could have been answered differently.

The fact that Abraham accepted the test, proves that humanity still considered God to be abusive. So, God couldn’t change the plan and answer Jesus prayer positively.

If Abraham had answered God, “Hell no, I am not going to take my son to be a sacrifice! That is abusive, and the God I worship would never ask such a thing.” Then that would have demonstrated that the problem in the fall of humanity was something different than fear of abuse, and God could have given Christ a different solution. It is man’s perception of God as an abuser that required Christ’s death on the cross. In a very real sense Abraham signed Christ’s death warrant because Abraham demonstrated that he thought killing something would atone for sin and make God happy.

I know this seems terrible to you, but this is the way I hear the usual gospel story. Don’t worry about me though, I have answers to these questions that work for me, so I am OK with this.

Part of an answer that might help this discussion, is that I have learned to see the Bible as a history about man and man’s spirituality, more than as a description of God. So, it doesn’t really bother me so much than Abraham had a horrible concept of God. It doesn’t mean that that is a true picture of God. It only means that that was Abraham’s understanding, and that Abraham had the best understanding of all the humans in his day. Since Christ, we know better now. We will know even better in the future.

So, to Sean,
Yes, I am OK with a God who at least allows all of those diseases, if not outright causes them. I value life so highly, that to me, even the shortest, sad and most misshapen life is wonderfully valuable, and I am thankful to God for life, whatever it brings. Because whatever it brings, God is right there with me. In fact, through the H.S. living in me we are closer than would ever have been possible if Eve had not started the experiment. We are living it together, and together we are learning the difference between good and evil, and the more I learn, the more I become like Him.

Also, one of the things I have learned is that, except for the trees, everything that was in the Garden is still here. It would be a shame to spend so much time grieving the presence of evil, that you fail to notice the good. I used to live in hell, but now I chose to live in Eden. And I am not afraid of having bad theology. If it turns out that the Atheist is right, and my experience after my death is the same as it was before I was born, then I am OK with that. And I won’t feel cheated, because I am not waiting for some future heaven. I am living in an earth made new with Jesus right now.

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Dr. John Sanford Lectures on Inevitable Genomic Deterioration
@Sean Pitman:
Sean, The problem with this assertion is that there is no way to know if the prophecy is being properly interpreted, or even that it isn’t a lie as the prophet who was killed by the lion found out, until the prophecy is fulfilled. A good example is the second coming of Christ. The church has been predicting his soon return for 2000 years now. While the prophecy, at least for believers, is no doubt true, it is totally unhelpful in any meaningful predictive way.

Dr. John Sanford Lectures on Inevitable Genomic Deterioration
@Sean Pitman:
Thanks for the link to this post from the other thread, I had indeed missed this post. (I just hope I can find the one that had the link again.)
And I freely admit to being a little dense and methodical, so I appreciate your patience.

I notice that Mendelson’s work was not published until 1866, and was pretty much ignored until it was rediscovered in 1900. Whereas Darwin’s book was published in 1859. I agree that the finches beaks, if not strictly Mendelian, then at least they are the result of multigenetic variations which does not add anything new to the genetic library.

Darwin however, did not have access to Mendelson’s work when he wrote, and Darwin obviously considered the finches beaks to be an example of evolution, so why do you exclude Mendelian genetics from Darwinian evolution? I would think that you would have to include Mendelian variations as one of many mechanisms that accounts for Darwinian evolution. I know, it doesn’t add any new genetic ability, and it doesn’t account for “amoeba to horse evolution”, but it at least accounts for the finches beaks. It just seems more logical than to deny evolution altogether as Bob and Bill do, it would be better, to say, yes of course there is evolution. It just can’t replace God. (I think you actually do say that. I think it is Bob, Faith, and Hope and Bill who are still giving mixed messages about whether evolution has a place.)

I am not sure exactly when 2SM was written, but probably before 1900. So presumably when Mrs. White said that “theistic evolution” was the worst infidelity, she had in mind all forms of evolution which would have included any form of evolution attributed to Mendelian genetics as well, since she was referencing Darwin’s theory, and Darwin’s theory was based primarily on Mendelian variation. Why is it that people who otherwise are quite literal in their interpretations, suddenly exclude Mendelian inheritance from Mrs. White’s statement?

To draw from Bob’s reasoning that 6 days have to be literal because the author considered them to be literal. By the same reasoning Mrs. Whites statement about evolution would have to include Mendelian genetics as infidelity because Mendelian genetics are the cause of the kind of evolution Mrs. White was talking about, i.e. Darwin’s finches.

One of the main arguments between creationists and evolutionists is over the fixedness of species. At least in the mid 1800’s creationists and evolutionists both thought that if the fixedness of species were abandoned or proved false, that it would falsify Genesis and prove God was excluded from the process. I think that is and was a false dichotomy. I think that Mrs. White’s statements about amalgamation, (yes, it referred to interbreeding of son’s of Seth with the daughters of Cain, but it also references animals) proves that Mrs. White did not believe in the fixedness of species, thereby validating the idea that fixedness of species is not determinative as to whether or not God was the creator.

So, if Mrs. White wasn’t concerned about the fixedness of species, then what difference does it make by what mechanisms species are not fixed? As you noted in your article about the donkeys and horses it is very difficult to define a distinct boundary. So why try? I don’t think it really makes any difference to the question of creation. Obviously God could have created all the species capable of interbreeding as well as he could have created all species incapable of any interbreeding at all, or any combination he wants.

Is it really so vile to accept that Darwin saw what he saw and agreeing with the fact of evolution without buying into the argument that the existence of evolution somehow disproves creation?

Just for the sake of argument, if it could somehow in the future be proved that there are biological systems not yet discovered that would allow organisms to reach your somewhat arbitrary 1000aa level of specificity, would that prove that God didn’t create the whole kit and caboodle 6000 years ago? I don’t think so. Would you really give up belief in God if that threshold were somehow reached?

Dr. John Sanford Lectures on Inevitable Genomic Deterioration
@Sean Pitman: “If you understand the mechanisms so well, please do explain them to me.”

Your current argument is based on statistical arguments. I am not enough of a mathematician to comment on your current discussion. So I won’t.

I do see evolution happening in many places by many mechanisms. I can list a few, but before I do, let me ask you, what is your definition of evolution. I keep offering examples looking for some common ground from which to start a discussion. If you don’t accept the examples that Darwin himself used, like the finches, then it seems to me that you must be talking about something other than Darwinian evolution.

1. The HIV virus evolves through a sloppy reverse transcriptase that has an extremely high rate of error. Again, without trying to get into your argument, to a non-mathematician this seems like an example that would disprove Dr. Sanford’s theory, since HIV’s mutation rate is exceedingly high, and so far we see no sign of a genetic meltdown.

2. Antibodies in the blood are created by the generation of random segments on the variable chain, then the thymus exerts a selective pressure by killing all the lymphocytes that produce antibodies that happen to match the HLA antigens.

3. Large mammals of different species can pass genes between species through hybrids. For example the horse and the donkey. They have a common hybrid in the mule. Generally mules are sterile, but occasionally one is fertile. When a Mule is fertile, then it can randomly pass whole chromosomes between species just like any other pairing within a species.

4. Ideas in my shop evolve through a process of intelligent design. (At least I hope there is some intelligence.) I come up with a solution to a problem, I build something that I think will work, and as I am in the process of building it, I often get ideas about how to make it better, so over time, it continues to evolve to be more functional and higher quality.

5. Nylonase Gene, I’m not sure, I think the bacteria copied and combined nonfunctional gene fragments.

6. Sickle Cell trait. It was a single base transcription error. I think there are lots of mechanisms that can do such a thing. I don’t know if we know which one was the actual one. Maybe ionizing radiation?

7. Cars and other transportation devices evolve through a process of intelligent design responding to the selection pressures of the market.

8. The shape of the tree out front evolves each year based on selective growth as each leaf tries to optimize it’s sun exposure. Limbs that get more sun grow better.

9. I heard on the radio today that violent men tend to have higher testosterone levels, and tend to father a higher ratio of males to females, so that creates a selection bias in favor of violent men. I have no idea how accurate the statement is, but it is an example of how pervasive evolutionary principles are.

10. Relative HIV resistance in humans is conferred on Europeans, compared to Africans, by an increased prevalence of the CCR5 allele which most likely entered the Northern population through a plague, probably viral.

11. I read recently that there have been identified 38 specific mutations in the Tibetan population that has occurred in the last 3000 years that has allowed their population to escape pressure from the Han Chinese by moving to higher altitudes. I don’t know the mechanisms. But, are you denying that this is evolution?

12. At one point, humans had the same number of Chromosomes as the chimps, but two of the chromosomes combined into one chromosome, so now Humans have one less chromosome than chimps do. How do you fit that fact into the Biblical narrative? Do you think that the chromosome combination took place some time after creation? I have a hard time imagining God creating us originally with a chromosome with double centrameres and telemeres.

I would note however that the presence of evolution does not necessarily imply an improvement. Let’s go back to Darwin’s finches. We could imagine an island that had both finches and gross beaks on it at the start. Then some catastrophe destroys all of the gross beaks. Those finches who have larger bills may be more successful at taking advantage of the new ecological niche that opened up, so the finch population evolves toward larger beaks. But that doesn’t mean that the finches are better than the gross beaks were. This would be an example of “devolution” on the larger, island scale, with positive evolution on the smaller, finch, scale. I suspect we will see more and more of this kind of evolution as we kill off more and more of our highly specialized species.