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Unnatural Selection: Leading Evangelical Theologian Canned After Acknowledging The Scientific Basis for Evolution

Bruce K. Waltke is considered one of the country’s best known evangelical theologians. His work on the faculty of the Reformed Theological Seminary, however, came to an end when he dared to acknowledge the scientific basis for evolution.

Here is the heresy that ended his career:

“If the data is overwhelmingly in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult … some odd group that is not really interacting with the world. And rightly so, because we are not using our gifts and trusting God’s Providence that brought us to this point of our awareness.”

The video that exposed Waltke as impermissibly rational was shot during a BioLogos workshop — an organization that tries to reconcile faith and science.

Michael Milton, president of the seminary’s Charlotte campus and interim president of its Orlando campus, insisted that the seminary allows “views to vary” about creation, including whether the Hebrew word yom (day) should be seen in Genesis as a literal 24-hour day. However, Darwinism is not allowed as a permitted view: “We are a confessional seminary. I’m a professor myself, but I do not have a freedom that would go past the boundaries of the confession. Nor do I have a freedom that would allow me to express my views in such a way to hurt or impugn someone who holds another view.”

My guess is that Bill Nye may want to avoid this particular audience as well, here.

It appears that academic freedom like evolution is not to be heard in the halls of the Reformed Theological Seminary.

So much for survival of the fittest.

For the story, click here.

69 thoughts on “Unnatural Selection: Leading Evangelical Theologian Canned After Acknowledging The Scientific Basis for Evolution”

  1. I’m not ridiculing anything, I’m just saying that it doesn’t meet the accepted definition of science (unless it makes falsifiable hypotheses which are vetted by repeatable experiments). There’s nothing wrong with spending the night in the Jacuzzi discussing those theories, but that doesn’t make them scientific.

    *************************************

    So scientists studying quantum theory, string theory, m-theory, the origins of dark matter, brame theory, etc are not scientists.

    There’s is not science because a mathematician says so?

    Nice try, but there’s plenty of my friends over at Goddard Space Flight center, who will disagree with you.

    What else you got troll?

  2. I didn’t say that there aren’t questions like ‘what is outside the universe?’, just that those types of questions weren’t scientific.

    ********************************

    Yea, and I told you last night that there are scientists studying those very things right now who will disagree with you.

    What else you got Rainman?

  3. Slartibartfast 1, April 13, 2010 at 6:30 pm

    Once again:

    DON’T FEED THE TROLL
    *********************************

    I cannot believe you are now calling me a troll.

    I bent over backwards trying to politely respond to your stupid misconceptions and attacks on me all night and now you just label me a troll?

    So why exactly did I waste my night trying to help you see your own stupidity?

  4. Canadian Eh,

    Thanks. Good to hear from you – I was starting to get worried that you had gotten lost in the 120% thread (warning: Bob just replied to my latest post there which means a response is in the works…).

  6. goneville,

    As with the other thread, this will be my last post addressed to you on this thread – again, after you change pseudonyms again I will engage your new self until you make your nature clear again.

    goneville posted:

    [Me] …if you can’t use mathematics to generate testable hypotheses then you aren’t doing science and if your testable hypotheses aren’t actually being tested by experimentalists then you are not doing much more than mental masturbation (that’s my opinion anyway)

    Thank you for pointing out after all that hubbub, that it was just your “opinion”.

    You’re welcome.

    And I have more than a few friends over at Goddard who would disagree strongly with that opinion.

    That’s fine – there are many people in mathematical biology who find biology a rich source of interesting math problems and don’t care that no biologists ever see their work or test their results experimentally. It’s my view that this is pointless but it is their life and career to live as they see fit. However, if you are not adding to scientific knowledge then you are not a scientist and knowledge only becomes scientific knowledge when it is vetted by experiment.

    Don’t think just because you have an education or work in a given field that everyone is “ignorant” around you.

    I said that EVERYONE is ignorant about many things, INCLUDING me. The only way to disprove this statement is to exhibit someone who is omniscient.

    A real debater lets their words carry their message, and doesn’t try to prop them up by calling their opponent ignorant or showing off their PHD.

    You demonstrated ignorance and I pointed it out (and explained why your position was ignorant (i.e. I explained what you showed that you did not understand). I think that my words carried the message that I intended very well.

    Scientists study multi dimensional theory, and I’m not talking about Star Trek.

    PEOPLE study multi-dimesional theory, but unless they are making falsifiable hypotheses and testing them via experiment, they are not scientists.

    There is speculative evidence for these other dimensions.

    That’s nice, but science is only concerned with empirical evidence.

    The ejecta from the event horizon of a black hole. Dark matter. The source of gravity, which many scientists believe is leaking into this dimension from another, master dimension.

    Again, I’m sure that some PEOPLE believe in those things, but unless there is empirical evidence which confirms falsifiable hypotheses, it’s not science.

    So please don’t try to ridicule such theories, they are science, at least to the scientists studying them. I know because we have spent many a night discussing it in the Jacuzzi.

    I’m not ridiculing anything, I’m just saying that it doesn’t meet the accepted definition of science (unless it makes falsifiable hypotheses which are vetted by repeatable experiments). There’s nothing wrong with spending the night in the Jacuzzi discussing those theories, but that doesn’t make them scientific.

    And when you can explain what the source of the primordial quark is, and then explain what energy acted on it, and the reaction that created that energy, and what caused that, and what caused that, I’ll be all ears.

    As far as I know there’s no empirical evidence for any of that. When the people that came up with those ideas make predictions which are confirmed by experiments, I’ll be interested, but until then it isn’t science.

    Until then it might do the PHD some good to admit that at that point, science breaks down and there is not only no answers, but speculations either.

    Scientific knowledge is the sum total of all of the experimentally verified scientific hypotheses (and their logical implications). If it is possible for science to address any question about which a scientific hypothesis can be formulated. Sometimes the only answer we can get is that the experiment cannot be preformed yet, but this is a perfectly legitimate and honest answer.

    There IS a question.

    You just cannot answer it.

    I didn’t say that there aren’t questions like ‘what is outside the universe?’, just that those types of questions weren’t scientific.

    Once again:

    DON’T FEED THE TROLL

  7. lol, see what your logic did to you there?

    Gyges approached me Slarti, so misrepresenting it does nothing to strengthen your case.

    But don’t worry. I would no more hold Gyges to such a ridiculous dictate than I would hold myself or anyone else to. Its ludicrous. Not even remotely sane.

    When I debate someone, I let them state their OWN opinions, or the opinions of those WHOM THEY AGREE with. I do not force an opinion on them and ask them to define their debate by my own stacked parameters.

    If you have to first define your opponents argument, then you have no argument.

    Why you’d suggest I had to do that is beyond me.

  8. No, I was saying that if you want Gyges to debate you, you must agree to his terms – you cannot force him to engage.

    ***************************************************

    Gyges approached me Slarti.

    Once again you’re projecting some false sense of reality that never occurred and falsely painting me as having done something I never did.

    I never tried to “force him to engage”, so go back and look at the thread.

    When you do, you’ll see Gyges POSED ME THE QUESTION.

    Not the other way around.

    OBSERVE:

    **************************************

    Gyges 1, April 12, 2010 at 1:44 pm

    Gone,

    I think Epicurus summed it up best (although Twain does a valiant attempt in ‘Letters From Earth’)

    “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?

    **********************************************

    See?

    And now you’ve gone and painted yourself in a corner.

    You just got through claiming that if I want someone to debate me then I must agree to their terms.

    So here we see Gyges APPROACHED ME to debate, and not the other way around.

    Hence by your own logic that you just spelled out, he would have been compelled to MY terms.

    oops

  9. In the note I specifically say that the term was not meant to be pejorative. We are all ignorant on a wide range of topics – there’s nothing wrong with that.

    ************************************

    So I’m not ignorant, just on this topic?

    That’s better how exactly?

  10. goneville posted:

    [Me]“It was not my intent to degrade you”

    *************************************

    And in the very next breath:

    *****************************************

    [Me] “it’s your ignorance* I’m trying to attack”

    ********************************************

    So you’re not trying to degrade me.

    You’re just calling me ignorant.

    Gee, thanks for clearing that up.

    In the note I specifically say that the term was not meant to be pejorative. We are all ignorant on a wide range of topics – there’s nothing wrong with that.

    [Me] Since I don’t recall you posting on any thread where I’ve mentioned this, I should probably let you know who I am and why I care about this so much. My name is Kevin Kesseler and I have a PhD in mathematics from Duke University (2004) and I do research in protein-interaction modeling of intra-cellular processes (my current project is a mathematical model of the DNA damage G2 checkpoint in the cell cycle).

    ******************************************

    Fine. You could be Kevin Klien for all I know.

    Feel free to check my credentials or ignore them. I was just trying to let you know why this topic is important to me and what basis I have for saying the things that I do.

    Please don’t try to impress me with your college degree. We all have degrees in something.

    I wasn’t trying to impress you – just to provide my bona fides.

    I prefer to focus on a persons words and I don’t need their Doctorate to shore them up for me.

    Either the words stand, or they don’t.

    That’s fine, my words stand on their own.

    And you just spent half the night arguing with me that in my debate, my OPPONENT has the right to make MY argument.

    No, I was saying that if you want Gyges to debate you, you must agree to his terms – you cannot force him to engage.

    So that PHD didn’t do you much good there, did it?

    Nor did I expect it to.

    Thank you for pointing out after all that hubbub, that it was just your “opinion”.

    I was referring to the ‘mental masturbation’ remark.

  11. Scientists study multi dimensional theory, and I’m not talking about Star Trek. There is speculative evidence for these other dimensions. The ejecta from the event horizon of a black hole. Dark matter. The source of gravity, which many scientists believe is leaking into this dimension from another, master dimension.

    So please don’t try to ridicule such theories, they are science, at least to the scientists studying them. I know because we have spent many a night discussing it in the Jacuzzi.

    And when you can explain what the source of the primordial quark is, and then explain what energy acted on it, and the reaction that created that energy, and what caused that, and what caused that, I’ll be all ears.

    Until then it might do the PHD some good to admit that at that point, science breaks down and there is not only no answers, but speculations either.

    There IS a question.

    You just cannot answer it.

  12. I can tell you that this is a BIG deal – if you can’t use mathematics to generate testable hypotheses then you aren’t doing science and if your testable hypotheses aren’t actually being tested by experimentalists then you are not doing much more than mental masturbation (that’s my opinion anyway

    ********************************

    Thank you for pointing out after all that hubbub, that it was just your “opinion”.

    And I have more than a few friends over at Goddard who would disagree strongly with that opinion.

    Don’t think just because you have an education or work in a given field that everyone is “ignorant” around you. A real debater lets their words carry their message, and doesn’t try to prop them up by calling their opponent ignorant or showing off their PHD.

  13. Since I don’t recall you posting on any thread where I’ve mentioned this, I should probably let you know who I am and why I care about this so much. My name is Kevin Kesseler and I have a PhD in mathematics from Duke University (2004) and I do research in protein-interaction modeling of intra-cellular processes (my current project is a mathematical model of the DNA damage G2 checkpoint in the cell cycle).

    ******************************************

    Fine. You could be Kevin Klien for all I know.

    Please don’t try to impress me with your college degree. We all have degrees in something.

    I prefer to focus on a persons words and I don’t need their Doctorate to shore them up for me.

    Either the words stand, or they don’t.

    And you just spent half the night arguing with me that in my debate, my OPPONENT has the right to make MY argument.

    So that PHD didn’t do you much good there, did it?

  14. Slartibartfast 1, April 13, 2010 at 2:20 am

    “It was not my intent to degrade you”

    *************************************

    And in the very next breath:

    *****************************************

    it’s your ignorance* I’m trying to attack”

    ********************************************

    So you’re not trying to degrade me.

    You’re just calling me ignorant.

    Gee, thanks for clearing that up.

  15. goneville posted:

    [Me]“Seeing your lack of understanding of simple logic here makes your misunderstanding of science on another thread more understandable, understand? I don’t think that many people on this site will let you get away with abusing logic”

    Slarti, please. No need to degrade me simply for responding to the challenges presented to me. I’m trying to be accommodating here and I’m putting myself out here so if you can’t have empathy then some of that human compassion would be appreciated.

    It was not my intent to degrade you, but I do think that you are misunderstanding logic and I will attempt to explain why on the other thread. I have empathy and compassion for you, it’s your ignorance* I’m trying to attack (like fighting cancer, sometimes some healthy tissue needs to be excised to ensure all of the cancer is removed).

    *Ignorance is not meant to be in any way pejorative, I just think that you lack understanding on a couple of issues.

    I’m just answering your questions. Now, as to your statements.

    My misunderstanding of science?

    Yes, I think that you don’t clearly see what the domain and structure of science is. Namely, science is limited to questions that can be addressed by the scientific method. That means that to do science you need a scientific (falsifiable*) hypothesis that you can test experimentally. Any hypothesis about anything outside of the universe or before the universe began cannot meet this standard (at least at present).

    *If you’re not familiar with why falsifiability is crucial to science, I suggest you investigate the works of Karl Popper.

    M-Theory is not part of science?

    The standard is if it makes experimentally testable hypotheses that will invalidate the theory if they are not correct then it is science. I think that the appropriate question in the case of M-theory is probably ‘could results from the large hadron collider disprove M-theory?’ If the answer is yes then it is probably science, if the answer is no then it probably isn’t (at least not yet – if it makes predictions which could be tested in the future it could become science).

    The scientists working on M-Theory are not scientists?

    If they are not making experimentally testable predictions then they are probably mathematicians. At Duke (where I got my PhD) the string theory group was a part of the pure side of the math department – they interacted with the theoretical side of the physics department, but not the experimental side. It is my belief that string theory and M-theory and the like have gotten too far ahead of the experimental side – it’s possible that their theories are correct and will be validated by experiment eventually, but until that happens they aren’t doing science.

    You claimed science is only an understanding of this universe and if that is your limited view of science that is your right. But it doesn’t make M-Theory and dimensional theories non science.

    If you’re not using the method, your not doing science. Every scientist I know would agree with me on this. The scientific method is the basis on which science is built – if you can’t experimentally test your hypothesis you can’t use the scientific method and you aren’t doing science.

    But feel free to explain how it does, or how those are things in “this” universe.

    As I said in a previous post, different dimensions are not alternate universes like in the movies or on TV, they exist all around us. If you’ve never read it, I suggest reading ‘Flatland’ by Edwin Abbot Abbot – you can find the entire text of the book here:

    http://www.math.brown.edu/~banchoff/gc/Flatland/

    Also please explain how the science of “parallel universes” deals with “this” universe.

    There is no science of parallel universes until we can actually test predictions made by hypotheses involving parallel universes.

    I’ll be waiting for your warm response, lol.

    I hope you found this response warm – it was certainly intended to be.

    Since I don’t recall you posting on any thread where I’ve mentioned this, I should probably let you know who I am and why I care about this so much. My name is Kevin Kesseler and I have a PhD in mathematics from Duke University (2004) and I do research in protein-interaction modeling of intra-cellular processes (my current project is a mathematical model of the DNA damage G2 checkpoint in the cell cycle). As someone who considered himself a mathematician (or was a mathematician – I’ve proved an original theorem and earned a PhD in mathematics) and now considers himself a scientist, I’ve done a lot of thinking about the difference between the two and what it means to be a scientist. As someone who has created a mathematical model which has produced a testable hypothesis (early results were hopeful but inconclusive) I can tell you that this is a BIG deal – if you can’t use mathematics to generate testable hypotheses then you aren’t doing science and if your testable hypotheses aren’t actually being tested by experimentalists then you are not doing much more than mental masturbation (that’s my opinion anyway – I’m a hard-liner on this issue, but every experimentalist I know would probably agree). Anyway, that’s why this is so important to me and why I take so much time to explain my position. If you’d like to learn more about what being a scientist is all about, I suggest reading ‘Surely You Must be Joking, Mr. Feynman’, the autobiography of Nobel-laureate physicist Richard Feynman. Dr. Feynman was the model of what a scientist should be and this book shaped my idea of what it means to be a scientist. I hope that you have found this post interesting – writing this all down has helped me further solidify these ideas in my head, so thank you for that.

  16. Pete,

    I miss him too, the universe is a little less shiny without him…

    If you want some advice, stay away from the Big Bang Breakfast Bar and, of course,

    DON’T PANIC

    (the best I could do for large, friendly letters)

    Enjoy the Milliways and don’t forget your towel…

  17. Well Pete, I did state the question, but I didn’t say anything about being a “believer”. I said it ultimately pointed to the supernatural. Whatever that supernatural is, if it is something that cannot be even fathomed by our own finite minds then by definition it is beyond the natural.

    Dismissing people as “believers” and reducing very real questions that somewhere, must have some very real answers, to the questions of children is not really fair. I’m not sure whether you were referring to me or someone else who might indeed be a believer but the fact is there is a question you cannot answer, I cannot answer, and science hasn’t an inkling of an answer. The question is simple.

    Its tangible. Its factual.

    Assuming the Big Bang theory, (and folks were speaking of Plank Epoch hence big bang) what created the primordial quark.

    And what energy caused it to superheat and expand?

    These aren’t questions for children, religion or atheists.

    These are questions for science and all mankind and to dismiss them because they make your head hurt is to be unscientific.

    There’s an answer somewhere. The question is can we handle it.

  18. @ Slartibartfast

    Some (not many) of my best friends are “believers” and when they ask me about my atheism they invariably ask what they think is the slam dunk question of where the universe came from.

    Douglas Adams (I miss him very badly) had a response for that type of query.

    If The Universe (42) is the answer to The Question (life, everything) then we certainly don’t know what the question is yet.

    Science tells us that we may, or may not, be able to develop an understanding of the “wheres” or “hows” of something like the universe, but until our understanding of time is complete, we might be a long way off.

    Can there be a “before” time started?

    My head hurts. I’m off to Milliways.

  19. slati:

    ” … what is the origin of the numeral that comprises the posterior of your pseudonym? This question has been plaguing me for some time….”

    *****************

    People ask me that all the time. One of the reasons is that I like that year in Roman History. Vespasian (my favorite Roman Emperor) built the Colosseum 72 AD (which I first visited in- you guessed it- 1972), and it was in this year that the Legions laid siege to Massada which I believe is the classic story of courage and sacrifice founded on principle. The number also has a lot of religious significance as it is simultaneously the number of disciples of Confucius; the number of books in the Catholic Bible; the number of immortals in Taoism; and, charmingly, the number of devils according to students of demonology. A friend of mine in college told me it is the minimum amount of Hertz needed to make objects–like human minds–vibrate. I like that rationale the most.

    All in all it’s a very interesting number, and according to some it displays mystic properties. Also, I wore it in college and high school for some of the same reasons stated here and it sort of stuck.

  20. Mespo(3^6)(2^9),

    Your words are always a welcome and thought provoking addition to any discussion, sir. If I may be permitted to ask a question, what is the origin of the numeral that comprises the posterior of your pseudonym? This question has been plaguing me for some time…

    goneville posted:

    [Me]Science doesn’t break down. Science is a tool for answering questions about the universe. Questions about anything that happened ‘before the universe began’ or anything ‘outside the universe’ are by their very nature unscientific.

    Well if you want to predefine science as something that only answers questions about “this” universe, then that’s your choice.

    So I guess we need to define ‘science’. Those of you familiar with me know what that means…

    Wikipeida says:

    Science (from the Latin scientia, meaning “knowledge”) is comprehensive information on any subject, but the word is especially used for information about the physical universe.[1] As knowledge has increased, some methods have proved more reliable than others, and today the scientific method is the standard for science. It includes the use of careful observation, experiment, measurement, mathematics, and replication — to be considered a science, a body of knowledge must stand up to repeated testing by independent observers. The use of the scientific method to make new discoveries is called scientific research, and the people who carry out this research are called scientists.[2][3] This article focuses on science in the more restricted sense, what is sometimes called experimental science. Applied science, or engineering, is the practical application of scientific knowledge.
    A scientific hypothesis is an educated guess about the nature of the universe, a scientific theory is a hypothesis which has been confirmed by repeated observation and measurement. Scientific theories are usually given mathematical form, and are always subject to refutation if future experiments contradict them.
    In the modern world, scientific research is a major activity in all developed nations, and scientists are expected to publish their discoveries in refereed journals, scientific periodicals where referees check the facts in an article before it is published. Even after publication, new scientific ideas are not generally accepted until the work has been replicated.
    Scientific literacy is the ability of the general population to understand the basic concepts related [to] science.

    By this definition (which comports with what I, as a scientist, believe science to be) any hypothesis involving something ‘outside’ the universe is necessarily unscientific. Rule of thumb – if it is not possible for an experiment to prove a hypothesis wrong, then the hypothesis is unscientific. I would ask you to read the above definition and my words carefully and take them to heart in order to raise the scientific literacy level of the population.

    But its not correct.

    As you can see, it is.

    Are you familiar with Quantum Physics? Brame and string theories? Dimensional theories?

    By the way it’s BRANE theory – as in memBRANE. I am causally familiar with all of the theories (hypotheses, really) that you mention. None of them hold any particular interest to me.

    Another dimension by definition is not part of “this universe”.

    This shows a definition of dimension suitable for Bukaroo Banzi movies, not science. Different dimensions are not different universes. Just like the different spatial dimensions are inseparable any additional dimensions are as well. General relativity showed us that the 4th dimension (time) was inseparable from the 3 spatial dimensions, the fields you speak of attempt to show that there are additional dimensions present as well.

    Are you saying string theory, M theory and other multidimensional theories are not science?

    The are hypotheses about the nature of the universe which (at least theoretically) make predictions which may be tested – to the extent which they make testable predictions they are scientific theories.

    The scientists working on such theories I think might beg to differ.

    If they do, they’re wrong. My problem with modern cosmology is that it lacks experimental verification – without that, it’s just some interesting and beautiful mathematics, not science.

    The fact is when the hard questions come out, science breaks down. The really hard questions. As there is no theory capable of explaining certain aspects of our existence.

    Science answers every single scientific hypothesis. As Mespo pointed out, ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I don’t know, yet’ is a perfectly acceptable answer (if not necessarily satisfying).

    And without a theory, there is no science. Saying that its just “something not yet discovered” is a childish argument that evades real questions.

    Theories are the end product of science (the result of hypotheses being confirmed by repeated experiments). Science begins by asking a question and making a scientific hypothesis which answers it. As Socrates said, “The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing.”

    It should bother anyone I would think of a scientific mind to have a glaring question staring us all in the face to which our minds cannot at least speculate as to an answer.

    We can speculate on answers to any question, but not all of these answers are scientific hypotheses.

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