DEFINITIONS


 

Blind Chance is a misnomer. The eyes that are implicitly referred to are those of the Creator, but the God of the Bible is all-knowing, even of future events. (Isaiah 42:9). Anyone, whether creationist or evolutionist who uses this term has an erroneous view of the Creator.

Concordism The attempt to shoehorn the Genesis creation account into a modern scientific perspective. It has been deftly defined as the rewriting of scripture to fit science. Also see Creationism and Relativistic Hermeneutics.

Creationism can simply mean the belief that there is a Creator. However it usually refers to young earth creationism, which has been deftly defined as the rewriting of science to fit a certain view of scripture. Also see Concordism and Relativistic Hermeneutics.

Darwinism The theory that natural selection operates on variations in older species to produce offspring that can be called new species, and that this explains the appearance of all species - see neo-darwinism. Unlike what most people think, Darwin did not claim the variations were random, nor does the theory assume the starting material was non-living matter. Because of these important details, the theory is a far cry from the modern theory of neo-darwinism.
The term darwinism is often used when what is really meant is neo-darwinism.

Evolution has several meanings. 1) Life has a history of change through time. 2) Living things are all related by descent from common ancestors. 3) Darwin's theory of natural selection. 4) Life arose by chance, therefore there is no creator.
The word evolution can mean any combination of these definitions and can sometimes be determined from the context. Unfortunately, often the meaning is ambiguous. In almost every article where you see the word "evolution" the author has the mistaken impression that there is only one meaning to the word, and it refers to the most modern theory. Other times it could mean only that life has changed on the earth. It is helpful to keep in mind is that it is only a modern phenomenon that in most minds there are only two possibilities for origins: atheistic materialism or 6 day creation.

God_of_the_Gaps_Theology A a phrase used by those who are critical of others who apparently don't realize that God, being omniscient and all powerful, is intimately involved in all His creation, not just where natural science has no explanations.

IDers - ID stands for "intelligent design", and the "IDers" are those involved in the intelligent design movement. They seem to invariably have the position (wrong in my view) that neo-darwinism is philosophically inconsistent with theism.

Methodological Naturalism To approach science with the assumption that it is not necessary to invoke the supernatural as a cause. This approach has had tremendous success in science, with three notable exceptions: 1) The origin of the universe, 2) The origin of life, and 3) Consciousness.

Neo-darwinism Adds to darwinism that the source of the variation on which natural selection works is random molecular accidents in the genetic code. See darwinism.

Orthogenesis A theory of evolution popularized by Eimer around the year 1990. It stated that life has an innate tendency to move with forsight to ever greater perfection. It has one important feature in common with Macrodevelopment which is that the power of evolution is from within.

Relativistic Hermeneutics To interpret scripture, such as the Genesis creation account, from the point of view of the ancients who first received the text.

Science is the study, discovery, and appreciation of what God has created in the natural realm.

Theistic Evolution Usually, the view of theists who accept the modern theory of evolution (neo-darwinism). Theistic evolutionists make an excellent and much unappreciated point that a creation that results from the laws of nature is not inconsistent with an almighty creator who invented these laws. At the same time, these same theistic evolutionists seem to fail to appreciate that these same laws of nature fail to explain the physical data.

Transmutation of Species The idea that a species can change in time so that the descendants eventually became a different species. This is opposed to the idea that God separately created each species independently.




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