I am NOT looking for another creationism vs. evoltuion debate here, as there are other threads for that. Mods, please close this thread if that happens, as it defeats the purpose.
For the purposes of this thread, I concede that evolution is the way life appeared on this planet. I do not entirely buy that theory, but anyways…
The impression that I get from a lot of people when I’m discussing creationism vs. evolution with them (assuming he/she is an evolutionist) is that the theory of evolution entirely disproves the existence of God. Not necessarily the Christian God, but of any kind of god/higher being. I’d like to hear from the teeming millions as to their thoughts on this.
God vs. Evolution - are they mutually exclusive concepts, or can they coexist?
I never thought of it as disproving God or gods, nor is that the purpose of the study of evolution. What it does do is scientifically explain some of the phenomena that had previously been attributed to a higher being.
Science doesn’t answer a lot of the “pre-Big-Bang” questions, so I see no reason that a god couldn’t have started it all. I don’t believe it (or in a god, for that matter), as I haven’t seen a shred of evidence, but it’s still a possibility.
My personal belief is that God is the one in charge of evolution… There are too many coincidences for everything to have just happened the way it has, at least in my mind. Also, the passage in the Bible where it says God created the earth in 6 days, it does not say how long a day is to God. Who knows, maybe billions of years are a day to Him…
What many creationists (and some evolutionists) do not grasp is that the methodological naturalism which is the foundation of modern science renders supernatural explanations for phenomena unnecessary. It says nothing about the existence of the supernatural itself. Therefore, science (and therefore evolution) cannot, and, indeed, does not, prove anything about the existence of God one way or the other.
Similarly, the existence of God does not render evolution inviable. God may “guide” evolution, God may have essentially “created” the natural laws whereby all phenomena can be explained (by initiating the “big bang”, for example), and so on.
Where the problems begin is when one treats Genesis as literal. If one is a Biblical literalist, then clearly both evolution and “The Word of God” cannot both be true, as they clearly claim different causality for the existence, and form, of life on earth. To the literalist, then, clearly they cannot coexist.
Seeing as how the largest Christian sect - the RCC - accepts evolution, and (I’m eduguessing here) the majority of Protestants in the world belong to sects that accept evolution, there is no conflict whatsoever between the two concepts.
Actually, I interpreted the OP to be an IMHO question, rather than a GD question. Lord Ashtar, aren’t you just polling us on whether we are aware that God and evolution are compatible? Or are you interested in debating whether that’s the case?
And if the debate was intended to be about that compatibility then there is no debate because millions (probably) are able to accomodate both concepts with no strain on their system whatever.
It’s really pointless to argue about something so amply demonstrated.
God is not disproved by the evidence of evolution. Creationism is, though.
Creationism is not the same thing as faith in the Lord, or even fundamental Christianity. Creationism is a very narrow view of biblicalism. While it is the assumption of most, and all of the most ardent of proponents of Creationism that it is a science, that is simply a lie. Creationism is an attempt to impose a predetermined set of beliefs upon reality. It has nothing to do with faith, or even religion. It has to do with acknowledgment of authority. One must accept the authority of one particular sect’s interpretation of the bible as unassailable truth, and modify all observations to conform to those tenets.
The story of Genesis remains a beautiful metaphor for the majesty and power of God, and the omnipresent nature of his being. But it never was a biology textbook. Pi does not equal three. The bible doesn’t say it does, because the bible is not a mathematics textbook, either. The bible is the story of some people who came to know God. They kept the story, because it was very important to them. But they did not understand genetics, and abiogenesis was not very important to them, so it got only a couple of lines, at the very beginning of the story.
Creationists attempt to fool the faithful into exchanging their joyous love for the Savior of Man for a fabric of tortured pseudo science to prove that the world is what they (the creationists) think it should be. And the end up telling lies, most of the time. I must admit at this time that I am not an impartial witness to Creationism. I despise it with an intense passion. Not because it is bad science, although it certainly is bad science. I hate it because it is bad faith, and self-righteousness, wrapped in lies, to aggrandize the Creationists themselves. And the cost is that my Lord’s precious children are led away from faith. I hate that. I try very hard not to hate the Creationists themselves, but I often find that my rage comes out, despite my wish to control it.
No, evolution is not evidence that there is no God. Creationism is evidence that men seek vain glory far more often than they seek truth.
Tris
“It is as respectable to be a modified monkey as modified dirt.” ~ Thomas H. Huxley ~
First off, I wanted to take the time to applaud this paragraph as a manner to start a thread. Threads too often go waaaaaay off the original point when a couple posters decide to take up an old, unsolvable argument.
As for the topic itself…
Bertrand Russell states a couple places in his famous collection of essays, Why I am Not a Christian, that he thinks evolution puts a major dent into the validity of the argument from design. This isn’t a claim that god and evolution are incompatible on his part, merely that evolution weakens one of the three classic a posteriori arguments for the existence of god. The natural law and first-cause arguments remain relatively untouched by evolution, though they have their own unrelated flaws.
The Roman Catholic Church, at least as early as 1909 when the relevant essay in the Catholic Encyclopedia was written, endorsed developmental creation as a possible theory including both god and evolution. Their basic conclusion about the relationship between science and “faith” is that no scientific discovery could ever contradict a matter of “faith”. That is supportable by the observation made by Darwin’s Finch that:
For those that wish to take dreamer’s approach on the issue, there are any number of ways to reconcile the “days” and the order in which they come. Her quote is complemented by the remark to Adam that he would not survive the day, and that according to the story he lived to be 900 and some-odd years, falling short of one thousand. It at least gives a possible internal consistency to her interpretation. (Sorry I cannot cite it, but I am attempting to have a better knowledge of the bible for purposes of debate in the future.) The other point from that perspective is that under storytelling frameworks of the day, the order of the days in Genesis would not have been given chronologically, which is an important observation for developmental creationists to note when addressing which things were existent before other things.
So in a nutshell, most theological positions can still be maintained with full acknowledgement of the evolutionary origins of the Earth, life, and so on. And kudos to Lord Ashtar for avoiding a rehash of the general debate and instead choosing to tackle a nuance, large nuance though it may be.
What an eloquent statement- your post is being emailed to quite a few of my friends. It reminded me a bit of what an Old Testament professor of mine once said : “Genesis tells us whodunit, not how.”
The only effect that scientific theories should have on anyone’s faith is that they place constraints on how any being could have made the world. Other than that, they’re independent.
Sure, Ben. What would you like to debate about the question as to whether or not it is reasonable to believe in both God and evolution? What are your thoughts on this matter?
I must say, after the last thread I started, I had a very different opinion of most of you than I do now. I misunderstood you before.
I recently had an epiphany about evolution, and I’ve come to matter that the theory means nothing to me. It could be the case. I don’t know. I’m definately a better musician than I am a biologist, so I can’t argue the points of it very well. But I’ve come to realize that how He did it, didn’t matter.
FWIW, this board helped someone get over a major herdle with his faith. Thanks, all.
—For those that wish to take dreamer’s approach on the issue, there are any number of ways to reconcile the “days” and the order in which they come.—
Or indeed, to simply not take the passage litterally at all.
The arguement for (and then from) design is apparently, at least according to polling conducted by Michael Shermer, the preeminent reason that people believe in god. As liirogue puts it, the sentiment is essentially “There are too many coincidences for everything to have just happened the way it has, at least in my mind.”
Unfortunately, evolution and the ideas that have cropped up in its wake have severely underminded this sort of view, so we should not make light of the fact that evolution and related ideas do indeed look like a threat to people’s faith, at least on the surface (in that they directly attack a major line of evidence for many people’s belief in god).
Believers are not simply confused: when an idea that commonly unlies their belief is threatened, they are certainly justified in feeling that their beliefs are being threatened as well, including all the myriad of beliefs related to their idea of god (which often include morality, how ot deal with death and dying, etc.)
The reality, of course, is that the falling of a major school of proof is not, in the long run, necessarily a threat to anyone’s belief in god (though it certainly is a threat to some theologies, that cannot be denied). Some religions have indeed fallen before this sort of event, but most major religions around today are now too abstract for it to be a lasting problem for theology. People will simply turn to other reasons for belief, as long as it remains important to them.
I also have no problem with evolution and belief in God. If I had to make an argument to reconcile the Biblical description of creation and evolution, I’ve even got what looks like a workable rationale to me. I’m a programmer. If I’ve got a large complicated project to deal with, I’ll break it into smaller chunks and get each of those working, keeping in mind how they’re all supposed to interact. When everything’s running well and connected properly, I start the program, it get any information it needs from the user, and it starts running. Anyone for “on the seventh day God hit Enter?”
Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. Or should I say, fortunately? For example, you can’t have animals before plants, or plants before light.
Back to the OP, if you consider just the Christian god and evolution, they don’t “disprove” one another, so to speak. However, since the foundation of science is naturalism, while embracing the Christian god is embracing supernaturalism. These two are not exactly compatible.
Just to clarify, the scripture is not “my approach”, it is the word of God. Time outside of how we experience it here could be completely different and/or irrelevant to God.
“A day is like a thousand years” seems to me a statement that God made to try to help us understand how his “time” works compared to our earthly time.
For example, you can’t have animals before plants, or plants before light.