Fangs

From Natural God by Beth Houston:

[in] Darwin's world of fangs and ovipositors, good equals harm successfully inflicted on another. In other words, benefit exists only through harm...Darwin know that his theory was dependent up on the inherent ruthlessness of Nature, not upon something reminiscent of the benevolent God of his abandoned religion (p. 167)

This type of observation, unsurprising for one familiar with Darwin's work, and the Victorian atmosphere that hosted it, one finds theistic evolutionary positions held, particularly by evangelicals (or their 'neo' cousins) completely untenable, and requiring a god most unlike the God of the Bible.

Young ages

On a website on Australian Aboriginal culture, it has this to say about creation stories:

This shortened concept of time may be universal within the origin of religions. For example, in the religions of Judaism and Christianity, the Bible’s Old Testament tells how God created the entire universe, including the four major rivers local to Babylon (now Iraq and Iran), in 6 days. It then goes to great lengths to describe many of the people who lived following Adam and Eve, the first people.

 It then goes on to explain:

The earliest bible stories may have only been in oral form, later becoming written in Aramaic and Hebrew possibly around 1700 B.C.. and read as though the time of creation was about 4,000 B.C.

But, we get the party line at the end:

However, since modern dating techniques have placed the earth’s age at about 3,600 million years, many people embracing those religions today still believe that God created mankind and the universe, but imagine this happening over a different time scale to that described in the bible. For all of us, the concept of a million years of humanity and thousands of millions of years of existence for our planet is beyond our comprehension.

A few observations: the first look at the Bible is taken, not to be a metaphor...but the metaphor has to be introduced to align belief with materialism; and that makes our attachment to our origins "beyond our comprehension". Good for materialism, not good for fellowship with our Creator.

Myth

I've rarely come across good definitions of myth. Here's one I read today:

"Myth" has many connotations, but for our purposes "myth" is defined as a  "thing existing only in imagination of whose actuality is not verifiable; a belief given uncritical acceptance by members of a group in support of existing...practices and institutions. [Myth] is...used to designate a story, belief, or notion commonly held to be true but utterly without a factual basis. In this context myth is opposed to history since it is "usually fabulous in content even when loosely based on historical events".

That's a pretty good summary in my view. So if you insist that the Genesis account of origins is not factual, then it is myth: either imaginary, non-verifiable, or without factual basis. If it has a factual basis, then it is confabulated. Not a good look for theistic evolutionists, because they are left with the theological basis for Christian belief being content free.

On the other hand it describes evolution very well: fabulous in content and loosely based on historical events. Very loose...so loose as to obscure the particular facts on which it is based.

And the source of the quote? "The Myth of Maneuver Warfare" a critique of the U.S. Marines' warfare doctrine manual FMFM-1. Just thought you'd like to know.

Self-organization

There was a phase of evolutionist fantasy that looked with forlorn hope to 'self-organising' systems being a model for the outfolding of creation: all these complex creatures, why, they 'self-organised'.

An engineering blog had this to say about self-organising systems (edited by me to clean up the English and particularise it for here):

Self Organization requires several conditions for it to occur and be observed:
    •    A high degree of structure
    •    The capacity for coordinated action
    •    A mechanism for system-wide feedback and amplification
    •    Some means to transform a small event into a larger driving force for the system to organize itself into a coherent system
Primary is coordination across boundaries and the capacity for action. This implies - quite explicitly - a deterministic response to external stimulus. The self-organization properties require structured communication channels for the systems to posses this property.
So next time you hear self organizing as the way evolution works, best ask to see what structures are identified to provide the channels for coordinated actions. What mechanisms are being used for system-wide feedback within that highly structured process framework, and what are the means of transforms small - potentially very small stimuli - into the collective actions of the whole?
In the broader sense, these concepts all live in a world governed in a deterministic manner through...
    •    Feedback - the return of a portion the output of a process or system to the input. These means modeling the transform function - usually G(S), where S is the system dynamic model, and G is the transform function. Both can be represented by non-linear differential equations
    •    System Dynamics is the next level of modeling for the structured, coordinated, system-wide feedback and amplification (both positive and negative).
    ◦    This involves state-space modeling or phase space) where an abstract space - a mathematical model in which all possible states of a system - are represented, with each possible state of the system corresponding to one unique point in the state space. Dimensions of state space represent all relevant parameters of the system. For example state space of mechanical systems has six dimensions and consists of all possible values of position and momentum variables.
    ◦    The Trajectory of the system describing the sequence of system states as they evolve.
    ◦    A fixed point in the state space where the system is in equilibrium and does not change. In complex projects and systems they represent, this is the steering signal needed to compare the feedback to so corrective actions can be taken by the system to maintain equilibrium and run off the cliff.
    ◦    The Attractor is a part of the state space where some trajectories end.
    •    The actual dynamics of the system - where the set of functions that encode the movement of the system from one point in the state space to another. This is the foundation of the mechanism for feedback and structuring of the disconnected components of the system. These dynamics are many times modeled with sets of differential equations containing the rules for the interactions.

Above all this, it must be remembered that the control system has to be at least as complex as the system it is controlling: accommodating entropic loss; somewhat along the lines of an Ashby-Conant regulator.

Of course, evolutionary speculation contains none of this detail, or even a sketch of it...