You know, I've always wondered...

[TubbaBlubba]

According to ID:ers, when scientists reproduce large populations of bactiera, does God guide their evolution?


And does God guide the evolution (mutations) that give horrible disfiguring diseases in humans and animals?

[Dinwar]

What I've always wondered is why Creationists focus on phylum chordata. I mean, within animals mollusks have some of the best fossil records (they basically make limestone shells (aragonite, but still), which preserve fairly well). Outside of animals you have forams and diatoms, which have incredibly good records through the Triassic.

Though I suspect the answer to your last question is "Yes. God gives us challenges to overcome." As though suffering and pain were the price of salvation somehow (they never explain that part).

[Wowbagger]

According to ID:ers, when scientists reproduce large populations of bactiera, does God guide their evolution?The answer will depend on the IDer or creationist.

Most young earth creationists (YECs) will probably say "Yes, God ultimately guides everything!!"

But, I think the majority of ID advocates are willing to accept the evolution of bacteria as "micro-evolution". They only seek to debunk what they think of as "macro-evolution". (Though, of course, the distinction is only a matter of perception. There is no real empirical differnce between the two. One follows from the other.)


And does God guide the evolution (mutations) that give horrible disfiguring diseases in humans and animals?
"Yes", is what most of them might say. Though, for different reasons.

The YECs would cite "suffering" as part of God's grand plan.

The IDer would cite such horroble mutations as "proof that evolution is impossible", since, they argue "mutations only lead to disease". (They are forgetting, of course, that the power of evolution does NOT come from random mutations, it comes from the natural selection algorithm acting against a wide set of variations in the gene pool.)

As a consequence of these attitudes, ID has yet to be productive in the science of biology.

[Red3]

I've always wondered where the I.Ders stand on the issue of gay and incestuous animals. Did god guide their evolution? And if so, why?

If he did it raises more questions than it answers, and if he didn't it means he's not perfect after all.

[HansMustermann]

Actually, from what I've seen, most young-earth creationists have a position more along the lines of "it doesn't happen: everything that exists was created by God in the first 6 days and hasn't changed ever since." Some will grudgingly acknowledge "micro-evolution", but even then with the claim that no new genes ever appear, and all that changes are small tweaks and/or only the kind of mutations that break a gene and cause a genetic disease.

I.e., there's nothing for God to guide there, since it doesn't happen. (In their world view.)

Most ID-ers basically are YEC's plus a thin disguise, too. The irreducible complexity argument basically doesn't say that an intelligent designer guided the evolution of the eye or flagellum. (Both disproven as examples of irreducible complexity, btw, but it won't stop them from repeating it one more time and hoping you'll believe them.) The whole argument is that there is no evolution possible towards the eye, since it only works at all in its final form. I.e., an intelligent designer _couldn't_ just guide the iterations towards an eye, but had to create it in one go, and tweak the crap out of it at that moment too.

Other flavours, especially the non-literalists, may take it as basically anything non-literal. Ranging from God's gentle guidance and supervision, to it being just a metaphor God just tweaking the constants of the universe just right and letting evolution do the rest of the work, to just about a metaphor for it just happening as science says and nobody knows exactly how God was involved there, to whatever else.