Are the Fundamentalists correct when they say Evolution negates God?

Great Debates
21

But herein lies the point. And not only for the literalists.

Religion is revealed truth. It is truth by definition and truth which provides the axiomatic basis for Law, a basis for group membership, and explanations of how things came to be (folk science). This is very differrent than truth in science which is always probationarily held.

If any part of revealed truth is shown to be false, then, many feel the whole of the structure is threatened. For others it opens up the conundrum of picking and choosing which parts of the revealed truth to accept unconditionally (on faith) and which parts to reject or to accept only metaphorically. Down that path lies (gasp) moral relativism and different points of view with individuals and groups of individuals straying from orthodox interpretations.

Hard to get past that.

22

Go on.

23

It gets better. Sometimes what the heck does this metaphor mean ITSELF has to be accepted on faith.

The easy way around this is you send your collections in to the home office, and they use it to hire some serious theologians to drive themselves nuts trying to make heads or tails of it, and at the end when they reach their conclusion THEY tell YOU what to believe and you just take it on trust. :dubious:

Hey, it’s worked for thousands of years… :stuck_out_tongue:

24

Fortunately, we have theologians who debate and think about professionally. Sometimes, minds change collectively, though it may take eons about some subjects. In any event, who cares about the details?

Sidetrack: whether it took 6 billions years or 6 days to make the universe is not relevant. In a very specific sense, the universe did not exist before man except possibly as an amusing galactic construction project (active work may have finished in the late quagma stage, but it’s not my department).

25

Alas, I had skimmed past this comment by JRDelerious, which caught much of what I would say.

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=6136040&postcount=14

I’d go further & I will say that at some time in the past, perhaps as recently as 6000-10000 years ago, a pair of humans were endowed with spiritual capabilities & awareness not possessed by their ancestors or contemporaries. This pair was put in a special training center where the main challenge was- would they trust God as their Parent & grow into maturity as His faithful children? If they were faithful, they would have a family & go out mature & potentially immortal to bring the rest of humanity into that same level of spiritual awareness.

But they were not faithful, thus they were exiled from that center with the spiritual knowledge but neither the maturity nor potential immortality, but STILL with the same mission- to bring the knowledge of God’s Parenthood & humanity’s child-of-God level to humanity.

It is quite possible that as these spiritually-capable & intellectually-advanced people spread throughout humanity, they misused their gifts to corrupt & oppress the other humans, even while raising their God-awareness. Thus, they- the fallen Adamites- may have been the mythic Nephilim, Annunaki, pagan pantheons.

26

Or even outright atheism. One question I have with some of the metaphors used in the bible is were those stories considered metaphors 3000 years ago? Or have they had to become metaphors since then because of the general advancement of knowledge in the population, the advancements of science, the larger global/historical mythological knowledge people have now?

I am sorry, FriarTed but this was meant as a joke, right? If not, would that make Jesus Christ the son of Jehovah and the “brother” of Zeus and Thor?

27

No- I have no problem at all believing that some of the pagan deities may have been deified warlords, kings, queens, wizards & sorceresses.

Jesus is the Logos/Avatar/Incarnation/OnlyBegottenSon of YHWH, in essence both Deity & human. These pagan “gods” would have been just super-humans (at least to the rank & file of humanity at the time). As they interbred with the pre-Adamic humans.

28

…the Specialness would have been diluted. Thus, we are the descendents to the gifted but fallen Adamites & their more primitive mates, according to this theory.

29

One way to resolve it, similar to what folks have said before:

All human societies share many traits (existence of language, music, humor, poetry, familial groupings, hierarchies, sexual jealousy, taboos against mother/son incest, humorous insults, history, etc.). One trait that is shared among all human societies is a sense that some actions are good, and other actions are bad. Moms having sex with sons, for example, equals bad. Sons bringing food to mom, for example, equals good. In other societies, son living with mom into adulthood equals bad (“he’s a little stay-at-home mooching loser!”) while in other societies, son living with mom into adulthood equals good (“He really takes care of his mother, doesn’t he?”)

But in all human societies, there is a acknowledgment of the difference between good and evil (though that specific knowledge varies). That suggests pretty strongly that such an acknowledgment is part of our makeup, that something in our core is capable of making such distinctions.

Religious folks might call this core our “soul”; scientific folks might call it our “genes.” While our soul comes from God, our genes come from evolution.

Adam and Eve, therefore, may be a metaphor for that point in the evolution of homo sapiens when our brains first developed the wiring necessary for distinguishing between good and evil. That wiring may also be responsible for subsystems like awareness of our own suffering, which explains why God cast us out of the Garden. And the knowledge of this difference contains within it the capability of committing evil: a creature without the wiring necessary to distinguish between ethical and unethical acts is incapable of committing an unethical act.

Our newfound capability, by this reasoning, can only be moderated by a moral code of compassion. That’s what Jesus brings to the scene.

Personally, I don’t find this a useful metaphor; I categorically reject the idea that it was originally intended to be a metaphor. However, I see no reason why, if it’s treated as metaphor, the underlying message of the Christian creation story (and redemption story) would contradict the facts of natural selection.

Daniel

30

Darwin’s explanation for the fact of evolution, that species are replaced by previously non-existent species over millions of years, does not “negate God”, it negates (or, at least, diminishes) one argument for God.

31

My theory is that a young couple ran away and found a nice meadow in which to cavort. Getting hungry, they found some mushrooms growing a the foot of a tree. Their animal instincts (i.e. God) told them that eating mushroom is dangerous because they could be poisinous, but their free will overrode that and they ate 'em. It turns out that they were psychedelic musrooms. Psychedelics “open your eyes” and you really get into the concept of, like, good and evil, man. You also can become extremely self-conscious and paranoid, and you freak out about snakes (reptiles being our ancient evolutionary selves, as well as our main evolutionary nemeses). It’s all about instinct vs emerging free will.

32

Please expound a bit, if you would, because you seem to be saying that “reason” has disproven God and that it is unreasonable to believe in God.

33

A book – which I have not read, but will when I acquire it – dealing with this sort of question is titled Did the Greeks Believe In Their Myths? by Paul Veyne. There is an English edition translated by Paula Wissing.

It is, of course, not about the Hebrews; I suspect, however, that it would give a decent level of insight into the mythological mindset of more ancient cultures than just the Greeks.

34

To me it clearly seems that evolution is a clear demonstration that the Bible Genesis isn’t or can’t be a “literal truth”. Therefore anyone who takes the Bible as more than mythology or like some put it as “metaphor”, must necessarily deny/fight evolution.

The metaphor interpretation sounds like adapting to the times bull to me… the literal Bible seemed quite enough to most until a few hundred years ago… suddenly one must justify why things in the real world don’t match Bible babble.

Now for those of religious persuasion that don't base their beliefs on the Bible accounts... evolution in no way negates God or their beliefs.

Actually many animals don’t breed with brothers and sisters… Chimps avoid close family members sexual advances. Social animals have behaviours that could be quite similar to what you described.

35

I’m not a mod, but You should probably start a new thread to debate this because it’s a huge topic in and of itself.

Though as an interesting Tangent, just the last night I stumbled across information regarding various scientists who were determined to prove the existance of God through Science(or Specifically, Mathematics), just as there are scientists determined to prove the non-existance of God via the same methods.

Facinating stuff.

36

Interesting point! However, I’m not sure if any nonhuman animal generalizes in that way. That is, if Koko finds out that Nim Chimpsky* has been gettin’ it on with Ma Chimpsky, Koko is unlikely to react in revulsion. Humans, on the other hand, don’t just judge behavior by whether it helps or hurts them: they judge other folks’ behaviors by the same standards they believe they should meet, and behave according to their judgments of whether the other person has acted in a good or an evil fashion, even in cases in which the other person’s behavior has no bearing on their own well-being.

Daniel

  • I know they’re two different species; pretend they’re not.
37

Gosh, I wonder what form such a proof would take? Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice! :wink:

Daniel

38

::the wallpaper begins to split and curl, revealing stone walls:: http://www.theneitherworld.com/multi/bjani.rm http://www.bjsroadhouse.com/id170.htm

Is there “Evidence” of God?

39

I am sure there were many metaphors written by the priestly castes of various cultures that were known by the priestly castes to be “simply” metaphors. But the Judeo-Christian religous path takes a very ethical, literal stance on the ideas of God and Man, especially in terms of the “physical” and ethical separation between them. So it makes me wonder if when Moses (or whomever) wrote the story of Noah’s Flood did he believe he was transcribing oral history? Did he believe he was translating oral history of the creation? Even if he was transcribing these stories to relay the truth of God’s greatness, it would still matter if he believed them to be true or not.

I am a fan of Joseph Campbell and he talks about the metaphor quite a bit. It is rather interesting.

40

Good point too… but that might mean we intelectualize “natural” repulsions and then judge others. We even invent a bunch of new stuff that revolts us. How do we define if other chimps aren’t revolted with incest too ? (I guess that isn’t too hard though).

We might be a step or three ahead of chimps… but I don’t call that having a soul or being of divine origin :slight_smile: We just have more complex thought processes or capacity. Morality refined and expanded only. We are more complex not more moral.