Has anyone in this forum changed evo/creo sides?

Debbyglee,The rules by which people decide what is true are called epistemology. Creo's, because they respect the Bible, more or less, take from that book an epistemology that says basically that it is good to change your mind, to repent. Thus, they are prepared for the normal scientific process, whereby theories are shown to be "wrong" and replaced by better theories. Evos, on the other hand, are more vulnerable to the normal human condition of being opinionated. Even those with scientific training often focus on science as what you know instead of science as how you learn. They can look squarely at the history of science, how say, Newtonian Mechanics were basically disproved by quantum and relativistic mechanics, even though richly confirmed by evidence and still useful in application. Newton is still regarded as a great scientist. The "disproof" of his theory is seen as normal science. Evos can look at that story, and still operate as if evolution will never be similarly disproved by good science. But of course, it will, with Darwin still respected as a great contributor to the process.So, you won't see as many evos as creos changing their minds. Too bad. The new theories that blend the best, and discard the worst, of both classical evolution and traditional creation, will of course be a delight to those who can change their mind to accept them. I like to call the new theory, evolition, in honor of evolution's important role in breaking us intellectually away from some pretty dysfunctional creationist ideas.Good question. Thanks for asking.Stephen

MrHambre,It's good to unload the stuff on our chests, that get in the way of quaffing a few brews together. Apology accepted, with the hope that you'll accept mine of sending out my THYSOB's. I'm supposed to be somewhere else, you see, so I get out of control....But, your posts usually make me smile, though I have no idea why.Stephen, too.

TL,First of all, thanks for helping me remember that MrHambre makes me smile, before he makes me mad.Now, to the main point of your post: This is an astute, to me, analysis. My own experience, back in the early 70's, was that creos converted to evolution (accepting and loving me, who was teaching evolution) way more often than evos converted to creationism, which I was at the time pondering. I, meanwhile, having been prepared by Henry Horn and other truly great scientists, was trying to blend the two theories, and did, to my satisfaction at least.The problem is, we are dealing with a very, very small subset of either group. Creos who are bible quoters are in my experience as in yours, astonishingly hard-headed and stiff-necked. Not really much fun to be with. But, the few exceptions really do change. Evos, not bible quoters, are often good for bull sessions and hearty times, but almost none can really change their minds. How can they? They haven't been taught how, nor are in any program that teaches good epistemology. Thus, (statistical model coming up) the average stubborness of creos is greater than that of evos, as you note, but the variance is higher. So the area under the curve below the "Ah-Ha Erlebnitz (sp?)" (C'mon Mammathus, help us out here!) that precedes a true revelation and mind change is greater for creos than that for the evos.Of course, the evidence plays a great role in both sides of this question. I changed my mind (this for Debbieglee) when my prayer experiment for my incurably neurotic daughter brought her back to my arms in joy. I suddenly knew that "we are not alone" and that the "Other" out there was not leaving most or any of descent through modification to natural selection. When I brought this evidence to my evo colleagues, they shut down. When I brought the evolutionary evidence to my creo friends, they listened. I think that there is evidence going both ways. But the average evos, I agree, do a better job than the average creos, in dealing with evidence. Less stubborn. There are just more creo extremes than evo extremes.But for me, when I learned that both sides, Jehovah and Darwin, wanted us to consider the evidence, I knew I was safe. I went back to my philosophy of science course with renewed vigor, and taught my best students how to be great scientists (which they are!). I saw that the evidence, though necessary, isn't enough. You have to know the rules to open your mind to the evidence. You have to know, be taught, that being human or holy, means adapting, changing your mind. It's obvious, sorta, but being human means having a teacher tell you what you already know, too.The creos get more of this "change your mind" teaching than the evos, more's the pity. It's an accident, maybe grace, that the deeply opinionated creos teach this, but there it is. I have no hope of getting even more creos to teach this, but maybe the evos....I was an evo when I learned, and first taught it. The rules for getting the truth.It's a great question for me, TL. Thank you. I hope and pray someone besides myself got something out my attempt to consider it.Stephen

Phatboy,The term, evolution was defined to describe Darwinism, the origin of species by natural selection. The idea of Theism is that some higher being is out there. Theistic evolution says that there is a higher being, but that He does not and did not meddle in the common descent of modern life forms, which came about through natural selection. If you believe that (a passive God and natural selection), you are a theistic evolutionist, or believe in theistic evolution.If you believe that God is out there, and intervenes in the production of biological diversity with a creative purpose, you believe in creation. If you feel that you have to believe this, no matter what happens or what evidence you might see,(have this peculiar notion of faith), you are a creationist. Or, if you believe that evolution happened, and there is no way you can be convinced otherwise, you are an evolutionist. If the theory of evolution attracts you, and you sense that there are some really good points, but maybe some creation took place too, who knows? Then, you believe in evolution, but are not an evolutionist.(the -ist suffix harks back to God naming Himself as "I am." Attaching some form of the verb "to be" to an idea makes that idea God-like in your mind. -ist for example. Without that suffix, you are expressing that you consider the idea plausible, but not certain)Evolition is the idea that biologic diversity originated by artificial selection, genetic engineering, and any other willfull, creative activity by a personal being, man, angel, or God.Belief in and honoring of a creator God, while accepting the evident common descent, ancient process of producing biologic diversity, would be theistic evolition.Truthists believe that truth is out there, to be approached by various applied epistemological strategies, including the scientific method, and prophecy.You know about YEC'ers, with the weird notion of a young earth. I know of no title for those who believe in an old earth and evolition, which was destroyed by Satan many years ago, but miraculously restored 6000 years ago, in seven days. Right would work for me.Cheers,Stephen

TL,Erlebnis, erlebnis. erlebnis .... got it. I passed German to get my doctorate, tranlated a few papers, then got lazy and let it slide. But it remains true, there are some things you just cannot say in any other language.Good, too, to know that I don't always have to tranlate my mental statistiacl images. I'll send them to you for interpretation, too!Still chewing on your thoughts about why people change their minds. I can see that I stress training, and, ah, spiritual influences, more than evidence. Because I think the spiritual influences are conspiratorial, it does not surprize me that their negative pressure is greatest where the training curriculum is the best. Hence, creationists seem most opinionated, yet most able to learn. But, I was converted myself to believing in creation by evidence, just as I was converting others the other way by other evidence. So, I've never noticed the evidence going either way. There are as many observations of prayers, even dramatically answered prayers, as of fossils, after all. Much was anecdotal and while such anecdotal evidence carried somewhat less weight, I only had to go and see for myself to replicate.Anyway, since the evidence for me went both ways, I clearly needed a blended theory, which I have in evolition.Stephen

Ah, Truthlover,Who else could touch the nerve!It's all in the definition! Is evolution common descent? Or is evolution "natural selection on random mutations?" When friend Darwin titled his book, The Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection one would have thought that this issue would be clear. But, it is not. That we descended, in some sense, from primates, that we are in our flesh, primates, seems clearly proven by science. That Darwin's contribution contributed to settling this, is eternally to his credit. Even, that species are not immutable, also to his credit.But, somehow, God got thrown out with the bath-water of some sort of six-day, new earth vision of creation.Which was, I think, the devil's way of side-tracking Darwin.A forgiveable mistake, of course. And, I think that it is to science's credit that it corrects this mistake. For answered prayers for better living prove that God artificially selects, that He manipulates fitness. Probably Satan does too, as we know that we do. This reduces the importance of natural selection, and says that evolution, as originally defined, is not the whole story. May not be any of the story.I will concede that evolution is "wrong" only in the sense that Newtonian mechanics is "wrong." Right for most practical purposes, but really untrue, only a useful approximation to truth. And, to ignore the wrongness is a fatal error, just as to ignore relativity today would be fatal to a nation.Anyway, as I say, to honor evolution's contributions to theology, I call the mixed theory, evolition. The origin of species by means of artificial selection on genetic engineering. It's a better theory because it takes what is good from evolution (common descent, time) and merges it with what is good from creation (Jehovah and others have willfully designed the outcomes in many, perhaps most cases, and ought to be credited for their creativity).Creationists are not thereby tempted to conceive of God as some sort of distant, finger-snapping omnipotent-but-unapproachable despot, and evolutionists are not tempted to admire (worship?) a glorious creation while ignoring its creator. Instead, we have a baby-stepping daddy, slowly but surely making a better life for all of us in many ways, only asking that we remember His inputs. And we can blame mosquitos and some other disgusting parasites on Satan.But, as has been pointed out here, the science of answered prayer is not convincingly public. Those who have experienced this personally may be convinced, but there remains room for skepticism. Yeshua and His parables suggest that this may always be the case.But, when we pray for a genotype (ours) to become more fit (we have more children and grandchildren), and God answers and makes it so, we have artificial selection, by us and Him in cooperation. So, evolution has ceased, and evolition has manifested.At least, that's how I see it.Stephen

Crash, My operating hypothesis, currently the most plausible that I'm aware of, is this.Words spoken by a conscious mind transfer energy and matter from the realms of dark energy and matter into the electromagnetic parts of the universe. This always happens, but to varying degrees according to "faith" which in this system operates as a sort of machine that can be of variable size, taking stuff from the one part of the universe and transfering it to the other. Spoken words can also build faith machines, to do other work of transferance.God, or us, or both speak words that create electromagnetic stuff. I, for example, attempt to speak longer telomeres into my genome, so that I have more youthful cells. God speaks genetic changes that produce new and useful proteins. He also speaks knowledge, and moves objects, by speaking words that channel energy from Einstein's cosmological constant into some electromagnetic, gravitational event.The words must have meaning, be well defined, and be "truthful." Liars speak lies and almost nothing happens. But, liars can speak truths, and curse themselves. For example, call your children "kids" assigning both them and you to the "goat" category, and "goatishness" as a spiritual behavior syndrome begins to alter their and your personality. This happens even if you normally lie. The changes are both soulish (in the dark energy/matter realm) and biochemical (neural changes that habituate and facilitate selfish, carnal responses). That you "didn't mean it" has little effect on the outcome. Words have meaning and power, independent of your meaning or understanding. Thus, speaking in tongues can be quite powerful. Most people calling their children "kids" are close to cursing in tongues. Of course, those who "testify" to the blood of Yeshua break all curses.A curse, of course, is a demon with an agenda. Being cursed is like having a hit man on your case. The police will try to protect you, but you will have problems. Count on it.Satan has his own "creation" agenda, and you are on it only insofar as he can use you and yours to uglify God's creation. There is some indication that Satan is speechless, however. He has to work through our speaking. Not too sure about this, but he certainly goes to great length to get us releasing negative sorts of changes into the electromagnetic world through the use of slang and casual ("idle") words. Spooks are great moaners, but don't seem to say much.God's prefered way of working now, of course, is through us. He somehow puts an idea into our heads, which we identify as His speaking to us. We speak this, and the electromagnetic world changes.Brash of me to even attempt to answer this question, actually. Just wanted you to know that I think about these things, get ideas, experiment with them.Stephen

Crash,I am familiar with the hypothesis that you assert, but don't find it compelling, or useful. Certainly, a lot of word evolution takes place, in usage. But there is little effort to keep track of the spiritual implications of this. Daniel Webster was an exception to this, actually, and tried to get to the "real" meaning of words, in order to increase spiritual power in prayer. Remember, the hypothesis includes the devil's perversion of language, his efforts to create (Prov 2:12) "the man who speaks perverse things."Note too the taxonomic rule, that the earliest name given to something is the one we are to use. All words, in a sense, are the name given to some object, concept, thing, according to the original definition.S.

Chiroptera,I think the main details of this point have been made on the thread, "The Best Scientific Method" over at "Is it Science." But,
I was a scientist that believed that evolution was true. I was taught, however, a definition of science that appears to differ from many here, it that it allowed for the testing of supernatural hypotheses, and had a rather looser criteria for "evidence." Anyway, it was looking at the evidence mainly from prayer experiments that I came to believe that the earth and biological diversity were willfully created.Now, your point my be that evolution is mainly common descent, against which there there appears to be no good evidence. Then I agree. I'm 62, and when I was taught evolution, the main point was natural versus artificial selection, biological engineering versus random mutation. That's what I was converted away from by evidence from prayer studies.So, whether I am your first evidential convert from evolution, or not depends on how we define the terms, and the scientific method.Stephen

Crash, Did your use of the word, "prove" here reflect anything subjective?Anyway, there's a biblical story asserting that God invented all the languages, so that words from any language, properly used, are "God's" words, and therefore have the potential to punch holes between the "spiritual" (dark energy/dark matter) world, and the electromagnetic one.But, we can strong inference test these two hypotheses, unless you are convinced that the matter is "proved" already. Find a dozen children that you know, divide into two groups at random, at random pick one of the groups, and call them "kids" in conversations about them when they are not present. Call the other "children" in
similar conversations. Before you begin, decide on some measurable behaviors that are trivial, disrespectful, frivolous, and some that are honoring, sober, serious about growing up to be responsible. Carry on your "name-calling" for a month or so, and then begin to record the frequencies of the various behaviors when you see the children. Or, ask others how they see the children. Wouldn't hurt to collect such data before and after the experiment.This would be one way to get evidence that when conscious minds speak words, as God was supposed to do at one point in His management of creation, electromagnetic things change.Stephen