The Definition of Evolution and Its Relationship with Intelligent Design.

we see evidence of of dramatic discontinuity in the fossil record and dramatic discontinuity in the genomic um record that the genes of different organisms are much more dis disperate than we thought even even 20 years ago I I'd love to talk a little bit about Evolution because you know there's a sense in which you think about how different breeds of dogs are created even through breeding and you can um you know the the famous example is the woolly sheep in the coldest climates you know the ones that aren't as woolly die off so the wooliest Sheep made with one another and create wooler sheep right so that's change over time that's a s in a sense in which people might use the word Evolution for that but what is the you know what is the definition of evolution as far as what we might talk about in this context and how does that interact with the science of intelligent design well that is a fantastic question and it's where a lot of the confusion comes in because the word Evolution can mean many different things and you can provide um evidence in support of evolution in one sense that's very strong that doesn't actually support evolution in some other sense so there's a fallacy of equivocation so three three key def different ways of defining Evolution the first is change over time uh do biological systems change over time yes they do no question um and there's different ways in which we could even Define change over time we could think of the change that occurs with things like a population of sheep responding to changes in the environment or Darwin's famous uh finches that where the beaks got a little longer a little shorter changeed shape a little bit this way and that in response to varying weather patterns and what they had available to eat uh if if there was only the really hard shelled nuts than the be than the finches with the longer beaks survived more than the ones with the shorter beaks so you know that you have this this type of modest change within the within the limits of a pre-existing gene pool is what it turns out to be uh and some sometimes that's called microevolution you also have change over time in the sense that the the living forms that are on the planet today are not identical to the forms of life that it live during the Jurassic or the Cretaceous Period as much as I Lament it we do not have any dinosaurs running around today which you know and so the forms of life we don't have trilobites such as existed in the Cambrian Period so there are many the representation of life forms on the planet is different now than it was a long time ago that's also a form of change over time nobody disputes that meaning of evolution a second meaning of evolution is the idea that the change that has occurred on planet Earth in living forms has been gradual and continuous such that the picture of life that we see is best represented by a kind of branching tree picture and this was one of the the the ways that Darwin depicted how he envisioned The evolutionary process so you start with one or very few simple forms a simple one-celled organism it gradually becomes more and more complex becomes a multicellular organism and then you those organisms uh evolve and morph and change and eventually have all the forms of life we see today but they've Arisen through a slow gradual process and and such that all the forms of life today are related by Common ancestry going back to that that very first simple form or forms uh and that's sometimes called the theory of universal common descent or Universal common ancestry so you've got change that's one meaning but then you have the idea of continuous change such that the picture of the history of life is best represented as a branching tree now that meaning is um well let's get to the third meaning the third meaning then is the idea that the process that has produced that continuous change is completely unguided and undirected such that the appearance of design that we see in living organisms is an illusion it's just an appearance because an unguided process natural selection acting on random variations and mutations produced that little bit by bit gradual change over long periods of time and that explains all the new form that's Arisen in the history of life and the appearance of design that those new forms exhibit so the theory of intelligent design is challenging that third meaning of evolution many of us are skeptical about the second meaning of evolution as well the idea of universal common ancestry we see evidence of of dramatic discontinuity in the fossil record and dramatic discontinuity in the genomic um record the the genes of different organisms are much more dis disperate than we thought even even 20 years ago there's something called orphan genes a fantastic new discovery that suggests discontinuity at both the genetic and at the fossil level so that would challenge the idea of universal common descent but that's not our our principal um uh the principal thing to that we are challenging we are challenging the idea that there's a purely unguided undirected mechanism that can produce all the new form of forms of life we see and the appearance of design that they manifest and so that is in a sense where can contrast the idea of apparent design produced by natural selection the unguided process of natural selection with the idea of intelligent design that's where the real argument is taking place and where we we are um developing uh I think uh very powerful Arguments for intelligent design and showing that the the appearance of design in nature is in many many cases demonstrably real it's the product of intelligence not an undirect directed process [Music]

Channel: Alisa Childers

Views: 5,870

Keywords: apologetics, progressive christianity, deconstruction, live your truth, another gospel, historic christianity, alisa childers, podcast, philosophy, christianity, truth, gospel

Id: 0CZ5ecgFpPU

Length: 6min 4sec (364 seconds)

Published: Thu May 09 2024