Here is why an increasing number of Christadelphians are accepting evolution

While I have received many letters of support from people who have found my material instrumental in showing them both the reality of evolution, and the fact that it does not contradict a robust Christian faith, I must be honest and state that by far the bigger reason why we are seeing an increasing number of people either accommodating evolution or accepting it is both the wretched nature of the anti-evolution arguments, and the frankly unpleasant, abusive, patronising nature of remarks made by some of the anti-evolutionists in our community. 

Of course, saying this is one thing, but demonstrating it is another, so a post dedicated to showing the growing number of those accommodating or accepting evolution in our community would not go astray. Names have been hidden due to the fact that regrettably, there are self-appointed zealots who think that slandering, persecuting, and abusing people who have the intellectual honesty to accept the evidence for evolution is somehow consistent with being a humble follower of Christ. One prays that soon, the idea that people would even be questioned, let alone excommunicated for accepting evolution will soon be little more than a scarcely believable memory.

The 55,000 year old anatomically modern human fossil from Israel: yet another nail into a well-hammered YEC coffin

It's been a good week for paleoanthropology. First, we've had the amazing discovery of a mandible off the cost of Taiwan of a mandible from a decidedly archaic member of the genus Homo. Now, Nature reports the discovery of a 55,000 year old anatomically modern human skull from Manot Cave in Israel. For those who still persist in denying the reality of human existence well before the earliest possible date for Adam and Eve, no amount of evidence will penetrate their dogmatism, but when discoveries like this accumulate in the minds of fair-minded members of our community, the dogmatists will find peddling their denialism increasingly more difficult.

The Third Way of Evolution is Most Likely a Dead-End

There's a good chance that whenever you see a group of scientific mavericks claiming that the modern synthetic theory of evolution is broken and needs to be discarded, you will quickly see the intelligent design / special creationist community seizing on such minority opinions as evidence that evolution is very much a theory in crisis. Inevitably, given that many science denialists in our community uncritically source all their information in evolution from such bastions of pseudoscience as Evolution News and Views, Uncommon Descent, ICR, CMI, or AiG, you will invariably see our resident science denialists taking their lead from these intellectually bankrupt organisations, demonstrating in the process a tragic failure of critical thinking skills.

The latest fringe idea to be lauded by science denialists is The Third Way of Evolution, which is yet another attempt to show that the modern synthetic theory is dead in the water. When in doubt about such matters, it pays to consult those who actually know something about evolution. Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne delivers the goods:

The evidence for multiple ice ages in the last 1.5 million years from speleothem growth patterns

The evidence for an ancient Earth was compelling even before radiometric dating allowed geologists to quantify its great age. As the evidence for an ancient Earth is beyond rational doubt, some YECs have resorted to the argument that God created the Earth with the appearance of age. As this argument can neither be evaluated nor refuted, it is worthless as an explanation and can be immediately dismissed.

Attempts at justifying the argument usual revolve around the claim that Adam would have been created fully mature with an illusory age. Extrapolating from this to the assertion that the Earth was created 6000 years ago with a completely invented stratigraphic, palaeontological, and geochemical history however does not follow, not just because it makes God out to be deceptive on a colossal scale by embedded an incredibly detailed lie into the very structure of the Earth, but because there is no functional need for a planet to be created with a fictional history embedded in its crust. A rock that is 3000 million years old as determined by Sm-Nd dating would provide the same structural support as it did 6000 years after its formation, making the creation of a planet 6000 years ago with bogus radiometric dates completely unnecessary from a functional point of view – unlike humans, rocks are not living creatures so do not need to be created ‘mature’.

Palaeoclimatology graduate student Jonathan Baker at his excellent Age of Rocks website has an excellent article on how the careful analysis of stalactites and stalagmites (along with other similar formations collectively known as speleothems) provides hard evidence of multiple ice ages over the last 1.5 million years. Baker notes that if water infiltration into a subterranean cave ceases due to drought, speleothem growth slows. Another cause of reduced water flow to cave and subsequent speleothem growth retardation is permafrost. During ice ages, permafrost will expand away from the polar regions, meaning speleothem growth in caves that are normally not under permafrost will show growth cessation during ice ages when the permafrost cover extends over the caves:

The first archaic Homo from Taiwan - more problems for YECs

The discovery in 2003 of the remains of the dwarf hominin Homo floresiensis on the Indonesian island of Flores confirmed that as recently as 13,000 years ago, there were two species of humans living on this planet, a fact that poses considerable problems for special creationists who insist that humans are sui generis. Now, the publication in the Jan 27 2015 edition of Nature Communications of a paper announcing the discovery off the coast of Taiwan of an archaic human mandible which could be as young as 10,000 years raises the tantalising prospect that in eastern Asia, there could have been three species of Homo. Add to this the existence of the Denisovan hominin in Siberia and Homo neanderthalensis in Europe, and we have the fascinating possibility that within the last one hundred thousand years, it is possible that five species of human beings existed on Earth. Needless to say, this poses insuperable problems for special creationists who insist that humans were created de novo six thousand years ago. The genetic and genomic evidence comprehensively falsifies this assertion.

But what of this new discovery? Here it is:

No, there is no 'very substantial evidence' that supports a young Earth.

Nearly 170 years ago, John Thomas, writing in Elpis Israel not only referred to the Earth as being millions of years old, but recommended that his readers consult the geological literature of the day to find out more information on this point. Robert Roberts bluntly stated 130 years ago that "it is demonstrable fact that the earth has existed for ages" [1] while C.C. Walker, writing just on a century ago noted that:

Ten years ago the average scientist would have asserted that our habitable globe had not existed for more than a hundred million years. Now it would be hard to find a competent physical specialist who would fix a definite maximum below a thousand million years." [2]

While none of the early Christadelphian writers accepted evolution, they were overwhelmingly in agreement that the Earth was millions of years old and that modern science was a reliable source of information on the age of the Earth.

As I have noted earlier, around the middle of last century, our community contracted a debilitating case of fundamentalism, importing nonsensical ideas such as Biblicism, YEC, and flood geology into the community. To a man, every YEC has abandoned the eminently sensible views of the early Christadelphians on the age of the Earth, and uncritically subscribed to ideas imported straight from the extreme fundamentalist wing of the Evangelical church, and ultimately from the Seventh Day Adventists, whose views on the subject came from the apocalyptic visions of founder Ellen G White. The irony of YEC zealots railing against not only evolutionary creationism but old earth creationism while uncritically taking their lead on science from people whom they regard as being theologically heterodox would be amusing if the effects on the intellectual health of our community were not so damaging.

What does it mean to 'rest' on the seventh day of creation? Yet more evidence against the YEC distortion of Genesis

Although aimed largely at an academic audience, for the motivated, informed reader, John Walton's "Genesis One as Ancient Cosmology" will reward careful, close reading. If the reader comes away with an appreciation of the need to read Genesis not as a modern scientific description of creation, but as an account of functional origins which reflects ancient cosmogeography, that will be more than enough to rescue them from the theological sterility of YEC.

Another point which is often ignored is the powerful link between the view of cosmos as a temple, and the motif of the deity entering into his palace-temple to rule over an ordered world. John Walton's comments on the link between the cosmos-temple and divine rest deserves as wide a possible audience in our community in order to provide another means by which the error of YEC and literalism can be banished from our community.