Does Evolution Make The Christian God Impossible?

From one of the many Sarah Palin threads:

Friar Ted:

I don’t like it when some Evolutionists insist that God is totally written out of the equation and can’t even be considered by scientific-thinking people.

I was told for years by my parents that evolutionism (hate the “ism”…)as described by science today does not preclude the involvement of the Christian God as described in the Bible. Sure, the Genesis account is quite a bit off, but that’s just humans mistranslating the words of God over and over thru the centuries (or other such hand waving).

I am not and was not then a believer in their god, but I never really questioned the rationale above.

It seems to me, though, that the Hebrew god is NOT possible if evolution is correct. If evolution is in fact the way everything on the planet came to be how it is today, then there was no “first man”; i.e. Adam and Eve. If there was no Adam and Eve, then there was no Original Sin, and if no Original Sin, then there is no need for Jesus to come back to redeem mankind. The Bible without Jesus is kind of pointless, isn’t it?

My question then is how is the above reasoning false? If it isn’t, then how can you justify a Christ based faith system but also accept “theory” (read: FACT) of evolution?

--------Obviously, this line of reasoning doesn’t apply to other faith based systems and Gods. Therefore, I am talking specifically about the Christian God, and not all other spiritual beliefs.

It’s not at all difficult to reconcile evolution with Christianity. You just have to read the first chapters of Genesis as a collection of metaphorical stories that set out the basis for the relationship between God and people.

I understand that. That’s the line I have heard for years. The problem is, Adam and Eve could not have been just metaphors. They lay the groundwork for Jesus to redeem mankind in the New Testament. They can’t be metaphors for the same reason Jesus couldn’t have been: it renders the entire message meaningless.

I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to spell that out for me. Why can’t Adam and Eve be metaphors? Because you need some singular act for the Fall and original sin? Why?

Modern humans evolve from earlier primates. At some point, those humans become moral agents, and become responsible to God for their actions in ways that animals are not. Those first moral agents fail, and fall out of grace with God. Second chapter of Genesis in a nutshell.

Note: I’m atheist and don’t believe any of this. But it’s no less coherent than any number of other religious views, and lots more coherent than a bunch of others.

It’s very simple: God’s an engineer. :smiley:

Okay, more seriously, you have the Creator set the laws of the universe and then kick off the Big Bang - ‘Let there be light’. Why do every little thing yourself when you can set up the parameters and just set the ball rolling. Think of Conway’s game of Life. Eventually our solar system forms as does the Earth, and life takes hold, leading up to us. Maybe you give things a little nudge or two along the way. That this has taken billions of years isn’t relevant because you’re outside the Universe looking in. Anyway, humans come along and your buzzer goes. ‘Ping!’ and you want to lead them to enlightenment, so you gradually inspire them. Initially this comes across as polytheism (“God spoke to me!”, “But God also spoke to me and he said something different!” “Hey, maybe there are two Gods?” “Sounds good to me!”), but as humans learn more and more it becomes monotheism.

Christians believe the last great episode of this process was Jesus; Muslims believe it was Mohammed.

That’s my synthesis; I’m not saying that that’s what I believe!

I could see someone believing that in the line of evolution from the first cell to us there was one individual that was the first man, and that the Biblical Adam refers to him. “Created from dust” could mean “evolved from self-replicating rna strands in a muddy puddle”. I’ve heard more ridiculous hand-waving to justify stuff.

I’m not sure this is necessarily the case though. “Metaphor” doesn’t mean “fictional,” it’s a comparison used to convey meaning. According to the Gospel, Jesus himself thought it was perfectly appropriate to use parable and metaphor to illustrate his teachings. It doesn’t make any difference whether there really was a woman who lost a coin, or a farmer with two sons, or a good Samaritan.

So perhaps “Adam and Eve” are also a metaphorical allusion to the sinful nature of man that Jesus was sent to redeem, and the ‘short version’ of two originally created people illustrates that truth in a more clearly accessible manner.

I can understand why other traditions would insist on a literal reading of their holy texts, but it just seems way out of place in Christianity where the founder himself didn’t preach that way. I suppose there are probably Christian schools of thought that insist the parables must also have been literally true. “Obviously there must have been a real judge who was annoyed by a widow, somewhere. Otherwise Jesus wouldn’t have claimed there was.”

I’d say it’s the other way around: the Christian God makes evolution impossible.

Since the Christian God is omnipotent, omnisicient and prescient, and communicates fundamentally through the Holy Scripture, the only reasonable assumption is that such a God would present a clear, unequivocal and straightforward account for everything Christians are supposed to believe. Since the Biblical Creation Account is at odds with evolution, either it was not authored by God or he was unable to prevent errors. If one accepts that the Christian God embraces the qualities mentioned above, the Bible must be correct in its telling of origins, and evolution is therefore impossible.

(The notion that Genesis can be reconciled with evolution and human history requires so many contortions that it’s not even worth discussing.)

ETA: for thousands of years none of this “metaphor” crap was even considered. It is a recent invention in an effort to salvage an obviously incorrect story.

You don’t understand Original Sin, philosophically. That’s your problem.

Bishop Pelasgius, I believe in the seventh century AD. The Fall of Man wasn’t inherited sin, but rather the example of sin- the demonstration of willful disobedience.

There is the literalist interpretation you embrace, yes, but it’s far from philosophically mandated, and that’s the flaw in your reasoning.

The stories are at best apocryphal. Given there is a God, do you think he’d give a damn about telling those kinds of stories, as long as the message was preserved and not altered?

Cite? Proof?

Specifically, why are Christians supposed to belief anything in specific as regards creation, aside from the fact God was behind it (regardless of form)?

I’ve held about every variation on Creationism (Young Earth, Old Earth-Gap Theory, Old Earth Day-Age) and I’ve settled now into Evolutionary Creationism. While I’ve toyed with the idea of Adam & Eve as metaphor, I can also fit quite easily the possibility that out of all the Neanderthals or Cro-Magnons or whoever was around at the time, there were two who were uniquely endowed with a God-awareness and they were put to a test of their trust. Perhaps their God-awareness/falleness passed to all humanity as their family went out among them or they “flicked the switch” for all humanity in a “Hundredth Monkey” (yes, I know…:D) type of situation. All the legends from the ancient past about “great teachers” or “gods” coming to live & teach & interbreed with “common humans”- the Adamites.

I think something that tends to get lost in the Adam and Eve story is that it’s principally a story about mortality. They are forbidden to eat from the tree of life, therefore all humans die.

I think there’s an inherent contradiction in eating the fruit being a “sin,” since it occurred before they knew right from wrong. It was the eating that made them morally responsible.
Anyway, the story can be read as an allegory not only for humans evolving to a point of moral culpability, but also to an awareness of their own mortality.

My pleasure.

"Genesis 1

1:1 In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

3 And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.

6 And God said, “Let there be an expanse [1] in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters.” 7 And God made [2] the expanse and separated the waters that were under the expanse from the waters that were above the expanse. And it was so. 8 And God called the expanse Heaven. [3] And there was evening and there was morning, the second day.

9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, [4] and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.

11 And God said, “Let the earth sprout vegetation, plants [5] yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, on the earth.” And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.

14 And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, [6] and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.” And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights—the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night—and the stars. 17 And God set them in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day.

20 And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds [7] fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens.” 21 So God created the great sea creatures and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth.” 23 And there was evening and there was morning, the fifth day.

24 And God said, “Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds—livestock and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds.” And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the livestock according to their kinds, and everything that creeps on the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good.

26 Then God said, “Let us make man [8] in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them."

Be serious.

Less angry with a fuller answer:

Claim to divine authorship, please.

Your question, as I understood it, is why Christians are supposed to believe anything specific with respect to creation. I gave you the cite for that–Genesis 1.

Christian theology follows from Scripture, and Scripture contains the Genesis account I quoted. That account is at odds with evolution; believing in the Christian God and believing in evolution are contradictory beliefs, for the reasons I mentioned above. As you are probably aware, a number of efforts have been made to reconcile Scripture with evolution. None are persuasive. For that reason, (belief in) the Christian God makes (rational belief in) evolution impossible.

You have given absolutely no reason for thinking that the only acceptable interpretation of Genesis is a literal one.

For a pedant much less a chief one, Chief Pedant, you are blatantly failing to see that the critical question here is your premise that “communicates fundamentally through the Holy Scripture”. At least, if by “fundamentally”, you assume it means “literally”. That’s not a belief of the majority of Christians. In fact, it’s the belief of a tiny minority. If you pointed out that Genesis has two accounts of the creation of the world and asked which one was “rea;;y true,” they’d look at you like you were crazy.

Anyway, the literal truth of Genesis is quite a silly question. The ancient Hrewbews wouldn’t even have understood the question “Is this literal of is this an explanatory story which helps people understand their God?” The question would have no meaning because they wouldn’t know the difference. And we can’t even really know it isn’t true. Talking about an omnipotent creator being, he can make gardens and form humanity in any way he wants, multiple times over if he wants.

I’m a liberal Christian, so I can’t speak for the fundamentalists with any sense of authority. But for the first paragraph, I’ll spell it out. The New Testament lays out the lineage of Jesus from David to Jesus, and the Old Testament lays it out from David back to Adam and Eve. David’s right to be king is based on this direct lineage, and so is Jesus’. A & E had the original sin which flawed the whole line and doomed us all, but the incarnation of divinity which was without sin when sacrificed (i.e. crucified) redeems all that. The sacrifice needed to be from the line of David and without blemish. Anything else would not be good enough.

The contrary view is: “Cite?” This is all pieced together by inference, and there is no savior from sin algorithm in either the Old or New Testament. It just makes sense and hangs together. And I do kinda see that.

The problem with that is that Genesis doesn’t claim to be a historical account, but rather the “story” of how we all got here. My Jewish friends inform me that it translates “this is the story/myth of creation”. The next problem is that the Garden of Eden story doesn’t mean a whole lot without interpretation. With interpretation you can look at it at least a dozen different ways, each of which has a great deal of wisdom of everyday living. If it’s an ancient newspaper account, then there isn’t so much wisdom, if any. For example: God says that if you eat of it you will surely die. Well they eat of it and they don’t drop over dead. And if you don’t believe that people lived forever then (as we don’t now), we knew they were going to die anyway. What to make of that, if anything? As a strictly accurate account, pondering this is meaningless, there is little or no deeper meaning.

The fundies and strict interpretationists say that Jesus story is meaningless if Adam and Eve isn’t a factual account. I call bullshit. And my opinions hereafter are heresy, so beware: Jesus teachings of love, understanding and forgiveness are all the proof that you should need of his divinity, and his death at the hands of those who rejected these teachings are proof that he walked the walk. When we partake of love, understanding and forgiveness, we feel peace and are in communion with the divine, for if these things and the peace they give are not the closest thing to divinity that humans can experience, if they are not the quality of life everlasting, is there something else that is more so? In my experience, no. If the divine is something that does not encompass this, then it lacks the qualities that I require to determine divinity. (It may encompass that and more, but that’s another post.) In short, these teachings and the example set meet my personal requirements for finding them divine. Jesus could be the normal child of Joseph and Mary or even entirely fictional (both of which are entirely possible), yet the teachings do exist and are real examples to me of principles and actions that I am compelled to elevate to the status of divine. It occurs to me that this is similar to St. Anselm’s proof of God. http://www.saintaquinas.com/philosophy.html and Ontological argument - Wikipedia

Rejecting that biblical figures might have been just metaphors because it would make all of it untrue seems to me to be rejecting the teachings and wisdom in all these accounts. If you allege only factual truth, and no Platonic “form” truth from any of these things, then you deny the forms and any metaphorical and greater truth from these stories.

Do the forms exist? Yes. Infinity is just a concept and as such only a form. But from it we get Calculus and can plot orbits, build buildings, etc. Without infinity you cannot do these things.

But according to Matthew and Luke, Jesus wasn’t from the line of David. Joseph was, but he wasn’t Jesus’ father, so his lineage is irrelevant.