@Ron: Sin, Evolution, and Cancer The “maintenance” of a system in …

Comment on Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull by Sean Pitman.

@Ron:

Sin, Evolution, and Cancer

The “maintenance” of a system in its original functional state would mean that it is not changing or “evolving” beyond its original genetic programming. Natural selection is actually a pretty good “preserving” force of nature. You are correct in noting that NS is in fact able to reduce the rate of degeneration and decay in living things. However, the force of natural selection is not a very good creative force. It doesn’t make anything new that wasn’t already there before…

Of course, evolutionists argue that the new stuff is created by random genetic mutations which create novel genetic options for natural selection to pick from. However, these new genetic options are almost always functionally detrimental to one degree or another. Natural selection primarily selects to get rid of all the new options it can in favor of the original starting point.

Very rarely, of course, random mutations will actually hit upon something that is both new and beneficial. The problem is that these rare beneficial discoveries are always at a very low level of functional complexity (well below the level of 1000 specifically arranged amino acid residues).

The other problem is that natural selection isn’t perfect at weeding out all detrimental mutations as they enter the gene pools of all individuals in all slowly reproducing species (like all mammals for instance). In every generation every single individual sustains dozens of detrimental mutations that were not present in the parental generation. Natural selection simply cannot get rid of all of these detrimental mutations as fast as they are entering the gene pool. So, all mammals are headed for an eventual genetic meltdown and extinction…

Another problem with the evolutionary mechanism of RM/NS is that it doesn’t have the big picture in mind… since it hasn’t been given a mind. This mindless evolutionary mechanism gives an advantage to the individual that sustains a reproductive advantage regardless of what this advantage might do to the overall system or environment within which the individual lives. In other words, this evolutionary mechanism is what is responsible for various forms of cancer which end up destabilizing the higher level environment, causing eventual death to the system as well as all of the offspring of the individual that originally sustained a personally “beneficial” mutation… a mutation which is actually very detrimental from the perspective of the host. After all, the host now has a rogue population of cancer cells with improved survival and reproductive fitness… which will end up taking over the entire system and kill the host – and themselves as well.

So, your evolutionary mechanism is actually part of the sin problem. It causes cancers. It is responsible for parasites and viruses and bacterial diseases and carnivores that plague humanity… all of which are based on random mutations that enhance the survivability of the individual cell or bug or virus or animal that sustained the mutation – at the expense and suffering of humans…

I’d say that these are some pretty big problems for your evolutionary perspective – don’t you think?

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com

Sean Pitman Also Commented

Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
Consider the following comments from the E.G.. White Estate regarding the origin of disease, suffering and death:

Suffering, other than sickness due to neglect of physical laws, is also caused by Satan and not the deliberate intervention of God. On many occasions she reinforced the teaching of Jesus on this point…

Her teachings regarding the cause of death, as well as suffering, flowed from the big picture of the great controversy between God and Satan:

“It is true that all suffering results from the transgression of God’s law, but this truth had become perverted. Satan, the author of sin and all its results, had led men to look upon disease and death as proceeding from God—as punishment arbitrarily inflicted on account of sin… Sickness, suffering, and death are [the] work of an antagonistic power. Satan is the destroyer; God is the restorer.”

Ellen White, The Desire of Ages, p. 471. and The Ministry of Healing, p. 113

http://www.whiteestate.org/books/mol/Chapt7.html

So, again, neither the Bible nor Mrs. White see diseases, like childhood leukemia, as being the result of a deliberate act or intervention of God…

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:

Where talking about the ability to detect the need to invoke intelligent design to explain various phenomena that exist in nature – regardless of if the intelligent agent is God or your wife or some alien from Zorg.

The loaves of bread that Jesus made by Divine power were the obvious result of intelligent design. They looked like regular loaves of bread that your wife might make. No one could tell the difference by looking at them if they were placed side-by-side. Yet, one loaf would have been made by God and the other by your wife. The fact is that God can make what humans can make. What would be obvious, however, is that both loaves of bread required intelligence to produce. In other words, they weren’t the product of mindless process of nature or natural laws that had no access to deliberate intelligence.

In short, just because your wife’s intelligence is “natural” doesn’t mean that all natural processes have access to intelligence or that every natural phenomena requires intelligence to explain beyond the basic non-intelligent laws of nature.

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


Revisiting God, Sky & Land by Fritz Guy and Brian Bull
@Ron:

So, you think that if God is directly responsible for the death of anyone that He is therefore the direct cause of all sickness, disease, death, and destruction? Every natural disaster is God’s doing? – a miracle of Divine design and creative power?

Do you not see the difference between the miracle of something like Lazarus being raised from the dead and a tornado wiping out an entire town the other day in the Midwest?

Sean Pitman
www.DetectingDesign.com


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