Hmmm. I'm not sure how that excuses the lack of toe-related-injury awareness, Dan S de Merengue...

>>Pericles, For the record, I did play cricket, though I wasn’t particularly good, not nearly as good as my dad. I played five years in juniors, four years seniors, and then three years umpiring.<<

...but it does add some colour to your confession that...

>>Three times in my life I’ve visited the hospital because of cricket injuries.<<

In such a short career, to be thrice hospitalized with injuries from the field of play is some achievement. Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is...

Aha, perhaps the injuries were sustained while umpiring? Just a thought.

So, a quick recap. Have we agreed that the toenail is either a piece of unfortunate Design, placed there perhaps to remind us of the sinful state in which we live, or a redundant feature that will eventually disappear through natural evolutionary processes?

Or something else entirely, perhaps.

And while we're chatting, a comment or two on Mr Sproul (senior, of course. Let's not talk about junior, shall we)

>>R.C. Sproul is one respected Reformed theologian coming to mind who has recently declared himself to have adopted the creationist view.<<

Having read his reasoning, I note that it suffers from the circularity disease that you and I enjoy batting backwards and forwards. He appears quite blatant about it:

"According to the Reformation hermeneutic, the first option is to follow the plain sense of the text. One must do a great deal of hermeneutical gymnastics to escape the plain meaning of Genesis 1-2. The confession makes it a point of faith that God created the world in the space of six days."

http://www.ligonier.org/blog/what-rc-sprouls-position-creation/

So, no useful alternative interpretation of the text, ergo it must be true.

Convenient.

But surely, resting an argument solely on a literal interpretation of the Bible is dangerous? E.g. most of Deuteronomy...

But as soon as you protest "Ah, but...", you will also need to admit the same "Ah, but..." option for Genesis.

Any thoughts?

Pericles,
As an atheist I don't know why you want to read Sproul. But I'm glad you did. He's quite a well known theologian. I quite enjoy his books. I'd be happy for you to look into his writings a bit further.

To say a toe is poorly designed because it suffered an injury is analogous to saying a Mercedes is poorly designed when it was damaged after skidding on a drizzly day and hitting a tree.  Even for a Mercedes with its front end crumpled in, there is much for which we still notice that it came about through a process of intentional design. It didn't evolve by itself.

Rhian,
I can't let your first point go unchallenged. Your heliocentric solar system and evolution is comparing chalk and cheese. Heliocentrism is accepted because it is readily verifiable. If you want to check it, any day of the week, you can observe it, and take the measurements. It's a constantly repeating process. While the scientific method relies on the repeatability of its experiments, we don't get the chance to see apes repeatadly turning into humans. We're not observing nor able to observe reptiles turning into birds. At best these these notions are historical. That's why evolution is destined to stay in the realm of the philosophical and the controversial.

Dan
We don’t get the chance to see apes turn into humans, but we do see a fossil record of evolution and we do see progressive variations within and between species consistent with evolution - the variations that Darwin observed in finches in the Galapagos, for example. You described evolution as “in vogue”, suggesting a temporary and superficial popularity. This is a gross misrepresentation of the longstanding and widespread acceptance of evolution among biologists.

Small correction, Dan S de Merengue.

>>Pericles, As an atheist I don't know why you want to read Sproul.<<

I'm the atheist, not you. You're the Christian.

But let's not get sniffy about dangling modifiers.

I read Sproul for the same reason I discuss creationism at all. It is important to me to read as widely as possible on any subject I find interesting. And as I'm sure I've mentioned before, I find the idea that there are still, in the twenty-first century, people who believe that the universe was created by an omnipresent deity, all at once, in the space of six days, quite fascinating. Gob-smackingly, amazingly, rivettingly fascinating.

But please...

>>To say a toe is poorly designed because it suffered an injury is analogous to saying a Mercedes is poorly designed when it was damaged after skidding on a drizzly day and hitting a tree.<<

Once again (for goodness' sake, how many more times?) let me say this.

I. Do. Not. Believe. The. Toe. Is. Designed.

Either well designed, poorly designed, usefully or wastefully designed, or any other wise designed. The toenail is vestigial, from a distant ancestor that found it useful. Possibly in the form of claws, for climbing trees more easily in order to escape a predator.

If anything, it is waiting to be "designed out". In other words, in a few hundred more generations - unless we find a use for it in the meantime that improves our chances of survival - humans will be toenail-less. Which, if they are still playing cricket, will be a time of great rejoicing for opening batsmen.

But the discussion lacks one important input from yourself. Since you believe that the toenail deliberately Designed in its present form, what purpose does it have?

Surely not solely for the purposes of encouraging batsmen to move their foot more quickly to the onside, to allow enough room for a free swing of the bat?

Although that would be rather impressive.

Rhian,
Your point about the acceptance of evolution being ‘widespread’ and in the ‘majority’, like the ‘billion people in China can’t all be wrong’, type argument isn’t so persuasive in this context. Majority opinion can often be swayed and history shows many examples of where scientific opinion has sweepingly changed. But now you raise a different issue, that of the fossil record. Creationists are more than happy to defend their viewpoint on the fossil evidence alone, which as they expect, shows major categories of living things with gaps between. The variation you and I notice within finches or humans doesn’t explain the origin of those finches or humans, which is the ultimate question.

Hi Dan,

There is an interesting article in today's Australian, detailing the biological commonalities, and common ancestry, of humans and gorillas, going back many millions of years - not just by using the vast fossil record, but by corroboration from thorough DNA studies.

Fossils + DNA.

Disparate branches of science corroborating each other's accounts.

Sounds good to me :)

Cheers,

Joe