Scholarly essays on creationism

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JOwen

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A young college student has asked me for resources that challenge evolution from a scientific rather than a theological perspective. She is herself a firm believer in 6-day creation, but such a position will not help in a secular biology class. She's very interested in informing herself on this subject. She's a freshman.

Thanks for your help in advance.
 
See Creation.com. Look for the articles that they also publish in their journals, which are usually done with more scholarly care. If she has questions, I think she can contact a scientist associated with creation.com for further assistance.
 
I supposed I understand what she's asking, but it's sad that she feels forced to deal with an unscientific theology with supposedly untheological science.
 
I supposed I understand what she's asking, but it's sad that she feels forced to deal with an unscientific theology with supposedly untheological science.
Ya, well that's the climate when you are in the sciences in a secular university. She's trying to do her best. All I'm asking for are some resources. Know of any? It would be helpful. I'll take care of the pastoral part.
 
Ya, well that's the climate when you are in the sciences in a secular university. She's trying to do her best. All I'm asking for are some resources. Know of any? It would be helpful. I'll take care of the pastoral part.
I don’t know where his scholarly stuff is but I’ve enjoyed his blog over the years. I’m sure he’d point you there.

 
I went through that. I majored in Botany and it was evolution all the way. The head of the department was at least honest enough to say in class that the lack of intermediate species in the fossil record is very strange.

There are two ways to go on this. One is Christian creationism. The other is intelligent design which includes many microbiologists and chemists and mathematicians who are agnostic or non Christian and look at the subject without any faith in the bible at all.

The second group is fascinating and in some ways can be more helpful. They just stick to science, with no bible to cause non believers to tune out immediately. What you need to do is tell the student to google " Intelligent design irreducible complexity" or "Intelligent design irreducibly complex systems". You will pull up all sorts of things. One popular guy is Michael Behe who is catholic and does believe in evolution, but that there had to be a designer because Darwin's 'chance mutations" are impossible to create what we have on earth. There are classic evolutionists ( believe life is all by chance, generally teach in all the colleges) and theistic/designer ones. Even if you don't agree with theistic evolution, they do blow holes in the idea of life developing by chance mutations with all kinds of scientific reasons why such complex systems can never happen with classical evolution theory.

For creationists, I loved books by Malcolm Bowden. Not even sure what's available now but he has some things online. He wrote "Evolution, the Fossils say No" and " Ape Men, Fact or Fallacy". British guy, not sure if he is still alive. My favorite is "True Science agrees with the bible" but that has all sorts of subjects, not just evolution.

One book that is oriented more to geology is "In The Beginning" by Walt Brown. It is tremendous, just fascinating to read. It is young earth, flood of Noah based. Lots of color plates and pictures. https://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Compelling-Evidence-Creation-Flood/dp/1878026097
 
Creation.com helped me immensely when I first started college ten years ago!
Prior to finding them, I was under the impression that creationism was an insular, marginal group with some fringe characteristics. Though I had rejected theistic evolution after following Francis Collins and Biologos for some time, I believed in six literal days and like Elijah thought I was the only one who maintained a straightforward reading. Thankfully, I was wrong! They ultimately took the wind out of the sails of evolution. While I am not as stringent as I used to be about six actual days, evolution is not proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Its merely a presuppositional framework for secularism.
They were awfully helpful in helping me to refute Enns' objections when I ran across his book.
You can email them anything and they will respond. I still do so occasionally.
 
On matters relating to astrophysics, Dr. Jason Lisle is worth checking out. He's written popular stuff, but also has academic research papers.
 

“he demands that they stand up and call him a liar if anything he says isn’t true. His message is an alternatively scathing and hilarious indictment of claims from the origin-of-life studies community. Dr. Tour’s work in nanotechnology, an ulta-ultra-painstaking field, provides the backdrop for his demonstration that origins scientists don’t have the slightest idea how the first life was somehow naturally synthesized by blind, mindless forces.

The field hasn’t advanced an inch in 60-plus years. “Everyone’s clueless on this but no one wants to admit it.” Great scientists writing in the highest profile science journals are “lying to you” when they assert otherwise. “Show me the chemistry” of abiogenesis, he says. “It’s not there.”

Jim Tour is without parallel. Truly, I’d love to hear from our materialist critics how they would answer any of this.” https://evolutionnews.org/2019/04/c...me-the-chemistry-of-abiogensis-its-not-there/





 
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The Discovery Institute and Evolution News are very help at poking holes in evolution and are insistent on a Designer. They aren't six day creationists but, they certainly aren't Biologos Deists who ridicule "god of the gaps."
 
The Discovery Institute and Evolution News are very help at poking holes in evolution and are insistent on a Designer. They aren't six day creationists but, they certainly aren't Biologos Deists who ridicule "god of the gaps."
Yes, it’s what I use, as well the positive mutation fallacy, blind probability factor, the futility of SotF/NS and overall non scientific-anti-method foundations of evolution.... especially since the OP mentioned: “young college student has asked me for resources that challenge evolution from a scientific rather than a theological perspective. She is herself a firm believer in 6-day creation, but such a position will not help in a secular biology class.” I thought this would be a most relevant source.

Just remember ToE community are the masters of bait and switch and billions of years is their friend. The newest defense is the genetic code... which can be spun in a multitude of ways too. It gets boring after a while.... https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03061-x
 
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I myself am in the tiny tiny minority of posters here who believes in evolution, but I might still have something to contribute.

There's a dude called kabane52 who maintains a page about creationism, which I've found to be a good hub for resources on it. He himself is a young-earth creationist and is Eastern Orthodox and he strongly believes that most creationist resources out there are terrible so he's tried to signal-boost the ones that he thinks are most scientifically literate and compelling.

Here's his main page on creationism, his list of good and bad creationists, and his list of recommended reading on creation science.
 
I could never take darwinism seriously, since my parents never did, and my father was an MD PHD neuroscience researcher at Yale. He claims that evolution has nothing to do with research science and any claim to the contrary is silly. It's embarrassing to see Reformed Pastors bending and twisting Scripture to allow for evolution, while Christians actually in the sciences who know far more about the biology have no trouble holding to orthodox understandings of the Scriptures.
 
I actually think there are very sound YEC resources but they are usually presented as a type of ministry. I personally don’t think it hurts their credibility, but many on both the religious and secular sides of the divide usually do.
 
As a biology professor at a large public university, I closely follow various sources that challenge evolution from a scientific standpoint. Hands down the best resource that I've encountered is the book Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique. While this book as a whole is aimed at theistic evolution, the scientific critique portion addresses evolution more broadly. This portion of the book consists of a superb collection of essays that challenge the science of evolution from multiple branches of the life and historical sciences. There are essays that critique evolution from a scientific big picture perspective and essays the get into the weeds and minutiae of specific evolutionary models. I've not encountered any other website or resource that performs as well as this book from the scientific perspective. The philosophical section of the book is also superb.
 
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